i obsess.

um, blogging is weird.

It seriously is.  We, like, sit around talking about insanely serious shit, trying to crack each other up even while we're pouring our hearts out via our keyboards.  (And when, btw, does blogging become Olympic sport?)  (I mean, if curling can be one -- yeah.)

And when you consider the commenting, all of the extremely complex societal connotations, the ins-and-outs, the significance, even during the seeming insignificance, of our connections or misconceptions of the multitude of varied interactions, and how we all have our own funny ways of bobbing and weaving and our unique hugging styles (even here, some people would probably rather see that said "embracing behavior" and that's JUST * SO * FUNNY), is it not the absolute weirdest?

I had some more to say on this subject, but I've apparently decided to forget it.  How expedient of my brain, which seems to find the notion of staring at Jonathan Rhys Myers' naked torso as preferable tonight.

Anyway, I've become pretty tedious with my copious entry-fication of late.  I guess I really *do* love blogging.

managing loss.

There's a coat of hair on every surface in our home.  (One of the maddening side effects of Ella's cancer is increased hair loss.)

I've never been good with her hair on surfaces where I cook or wash things or wash my face.  I've never really even been comfortable with her hair on the floor.  It bothers me so much.  It enrages me sometimes.  There are times when (usually coinciding with PMS, I've noticed more, lately) the hair drives me to physical action.  Not just cleaning it, which I do almost daily.  I begin to pace, and while I don't do this second thing, I ache to tear at my own hair, to pull it out of my head.  That's how unsettled I am at the sight of piles of dog hair.  (Not that there's an answer in adding to the accumulated piles with my own contribution.)

Finding a hair on my clothing, or worse yet, one in my food, disgusts me.  Getting them in my mouth is beyond the pale.  I rant.  I rave.  I get hellbent on destruction. 

She can't help it.  Last night, I inhaled draughts of nice red wine and scooped some piles of the hair on the floor into a small hill, telling Caleb how aware I am of what I predicted a few weeks before we were given Ella's prognosis; that when Ella is gone, every rotten time I find one of her hairs I'll break down and weep in sheer longing for the animal who was once in possession of those billions of short, wiry tresses. 

It's confusing, going through this.  Part of me continues to feel a subdued smolder of resentment toward the hair that I find daily, now, in my eyes, my mouth, covering my clothes, everywhere in our kitchen, the shower, the bathroom drawers, on linens and on dressers and insidiously tucked into every niche and nook and cranny.  Another part says I will miss her more than I currently loathe her scattered presence.  And that part wins the day, for now.  But this dying creature in our midst, her dying as much a physical punch in the nose with these reminders, her lumpy, swollen neck, and her lessening energy, and her looks that catch my breath, when it seems she's almost saying she knows, brown eyes hooded with lowering shades, daily lowering.

"What's wrong, Mom?" Jack says, playing around and over me with his Legos and his little-boy never-ending stories.  I can't explain to him that my head hurts today because of the wine from last night, that my body hurts from cramps because of yesterday's arrival of my period, that my chest hurts from the losing of our friend-dog, our family girly, that I'm simultaneously learning to possibly bid adieu to that child I was sure existed, that today it hurts with a renewed reminder in the form of uterine blood, and physical pain, and shards of iron in my chest, and there's all of this hair all down my front and arms and -- there, yes, one in my mouth.  So gross.  And there she is, looking at me as though she says, I know.  I know you dislike those parts.  But don't not love me.  Oh Ella, do I ever love you.  I dislike your hair in my mouth, but I love your whole self like you are my child.  I don't know how we'll manage without you, girly.

I'm so sorry it has to go down like this.  I don't know how to explain it to Jack.  Which isn't to say I'm not managing it.  The words come, they have to, and when I've said them, I realize there is no perfect way to bridge his understanding of death and loss and movement and change.  And his sensitivity on this and all other subjects -- my child who was bullied regularly at his old preschool and now, at his new school, was recently BEAT UP by one of the older kids, beat up, at four and a half, and he just doesn't react when someone physically assaults him.  He crumples into a heap.  We tell him, defend yourself.  It's okay.  If the teacher gets mad, we'll handle it.  Don't you worry about that.  Stand up to kids who try to hurt you.  Let them know they can't push you around.  But he doesn't understand.  He just falters in the face of being pushed and punched.  And I suppose, in a way, it's all the same.  That these things will come to him as they will, that I'm ultimately not in control of his finer comprehension of the world around him, or of his choice of response.  That he must find his own way to manage it (which SUCKS, because I REALLY WANT TO HULK-SMASH anyone who lays on a finger on my sensitive, too-sympathetic kid).  I'm reminded again.  And again. 

I'm not so in control of my own understanding, either, I guess.

But gosh, what I wouldn't give to understand better.  Where the fuck is my life's spoiler alert?

I gotta go.  I have to help Jack finish his latest book.  He draws the pictures and then dictates to me what to write.  Seems I have a new profession:  copywriter/publisher.  Then we're going to finish James and the Giant Peach, and discover some stories in an old fourth-grade reader that was my Grandpa Ray's.  The illustrations are pretty sick, and the stories, like Hercules and the Golden Apples, are old-fashioned and very woman-as-second-stringer, and other things besides, but he's gonna love 'em.  And Ella will lie at our feet and we'll stroke her and Jack will probably get distracted in the middle of one of the stories and begin chasing her around the house with a flashlight and I'll wander over to the computer and suddenly it will be past lunchtime and Jack will go into the kitchen and make himself his own sandwich because I'm distracted and doing some random unessential chore and I'll tell him it's the nicest-looking sandwich I've ever seen, and there'll be crumbs and jam droplets everywhere and Ella will be in the kithcen, too, trying to eat all of the crumbs and drops, and there will be more peanut butter on the knife and Jack's hands and chin than on the sandwich and he'll spill some milk when he pours it and I'll think, this is it.  This is my kid, and he's growing up.  Ella's nearly gone.  Our lives are ever-changing even in the midst of my ability to predict this small slice of already-disappearing time.

Will the mourning never cease?  Or, for that matter, the rejoicing in the achievements that preside happily over the mourning requirements (if I let them?  I want to let them).

are you there, dog?

From the beginning, I've had an ongoing identity crisis with regards to blogging.  Not from the absolute initial point, but from around two or three or six months in.  I tried on several different styles, but none really seemed to fit.  Unsure as to what people had found appealing about me when I started, I thought -- hell.  I don't know what I thought.  I have ADD.  I think strange, new things and forget the former thoughts on a minutely basis.  Of course I skipped around from mommy/photo/craft blogger to story-writing mommy/crafting/dog-owning blogger, to cynical political blogger who loves shoes, to a green-minded concerned parent blogger with some soapboxing to do.  And then there were the suicidal moments and the religulastic, questioning, darkly spiraling epics where I would rant and ramble something scary (although upon later investigation, said posts never seemed to amount to anything but annoying and tepid bites and filled with too many AND and THAT and ALSO and some other things I tend to repeat much too often in written form and it drives my writerly ambitions down into some secret pouch, the location of which my conscious mind is -- after all of this time, still -- unaware).

And after all of these years, all of these blog posts, I still don't know what kind of blogger I am.

Coincidence or no, I'm also pretty jury-hung as to the kind of [mom, wife, friend, crafty person, typist, writer, cook, baker, housekeeper, employee, student, daughter, dog-owner, homeowner, shopper, listener, conversationalist, party-goer, councilor, steady shoulder upon which to lean, book-reader, narrator of life] person I am, either.  And I'm not going to be subtly clever and try to tie the two together in an attempt to force you to draw specific conclusions as to what is worthy, whether anything is at all, I'm just going to stand back and simply observe that thought, the one where I recognize the equitable difficulty in determining whether I'm capable of assigning myself a role in the realm of blogging any more than I could do in my real-world existence.  My true colors bleed through the computer's veins and into your lap, I'm afraid, albeit quite unbidden.

I thought this dog of ours would be with us for more years than this.  I truly believed I would eventually have a second baby.  I never for a moment guessed we'd lose our home to a catastrophically awful financial setting. 

I am stunned at our fortune.  I am stunned that I have yet to work out who I am in all of this.  That my dog will die and I will go on, blisslessly unaware of the location of my true self.  No, I know.  My true self is here, it's all around me, it's not to be guessed at or disbelieved.  I'm this mess of things, this overspun wilderness of personal chaos, with wildly unblanched hair to boot.  I am these collections of identities unidentified, unidentifiable, unquantifiable, yet here, and here, every part touching every other part of me, connected but without a spark of recognition to light my way to understanding and clarity.

If there's an equation, if there's a greater significance to what we do, to what our daily machinations proudly or piously or impetuously or dispiritedly provide to the sum total of -- everything, I should like to know.

It would help, somehow.  It would help make the rifts between the selves decent, worthy, possibly even sublime.  The selves who fight and struggle and war and shove and kick and won't give me a moment's peace.

Oh my god.  Maybe I'm schizophrenic.

broek, uterus, broek.

After my delightfully explorative papsmear appointment on Monday, the physician informed me that I'm likely not producing eggs so well at this juncture, and if the blood test in a few weeks' time proves her right, she will highly recommend IVF.  I explained, quietly, that IVF is not an option for us.  She demurred that people often find a way to achieve IVF-ocity if they ardently long for a child as much as I professed to do.

But I wasn't kidding around.  We can't do it.  IVF is not an option.  We can't keep our house which means we certainly can't afford a costly, highly uncertain shot at a second baby.  (Some, I'm sure, would suggest, testily, that we shouldn't even consider another child, even the free kind, if we're losing our home.  To them I say, FUCK RIGHT OFF.  Go on.  Get the fuck away from me.)

So along with all of the other cymbal-crashing good news around here, I may be infertile.  No more babies.  (Probably.)

Sorry, Jack.  It's looking distinctly like there'll be no siblings on the horizon.  I wish I had different news to report.

I may have different news to report, of course, but I'm trying to accustom to the idea now rather than hope only to have the hope punctured with the used needle left over from the blood test where they pronounce my baby-maker kaput.

SO!  How's that?  Great!  Things are great here.

I'm glad you read my blog.  I'm glad that you read even when I don't have anything good or interesting or funny or newsworthy to report.  I'm glad that you don't mind my increasing bitter quality.  I'm glad you don't mind when I spout hatred for those whose lives suck less than mine.

Hatred is very satisfying in moments such as these, I'm finding.

cancer, some days, is less awful than others.

We hiked up through the clean, jagged, bright air, up, up, along the trail that hugs the side of Mt. Tabor, Ella circling us in her zest for chasing down the very most enticing scents and sounds hiding alongside the path, under spry, curly ferns and beneath low-growing vegetation.  Some other dog owners bounced more quickly up the trail than we, as their numbers were smaller (no kid whose hiking skills are still being discovered to slow them down).  Their dog and Ella began to interact, and I asked them about the breed, standard poodle, what she was like, whether she was a good companion.  Jack interjected, "our dog's eight.  She's sick.  She has cancel."  I said, "you mean, canCER, baby."  He took off, running down the path, yelling "CANCER!  CANCER!  CANCER!" 

I'm glad to know that, even in the midst of family crisis, it's possible to note how your son sometimes reminds you of Jim Carrey's character in Dumb and Dumber.  It helps.  It helps with the living-in-the-moment. 

you people in there inside the internets over there: get ready for some crazy-pie. (crazy DELICIOUS, and you know this.)

*I wrote this last night.  I was un-sober.  Go forth and read, if you dare.

Jersey-Shore-speak has embraced my tongue, it would seem.  Like a snake dry-humping a mongoose clothed in a colloquialism.  And you thought I was gonna say codpiece.

I'm sort of enchanted by that notion.  There's an exoticablayciousness imbued in the image of a snake wearing clothing.  Snakes don't strike me (YES! score) as the most sartorial of creatures on their good days, let alone the first couple bites at an all-you-can-eat lunch.

You know something weird and completely unrelated to the above?  (Because I'm sure you are ready to shiv me for leaving behind the thing about a snake at a buffet joint wearing golfing pants and a short-sleeve button up.  Polyester takes the lead!)  It's this:  Writing funny, writing in a deliberate, pointed fashion gets -- heyyyyy.

I just figured out something that's about twenty-five (okay, I LIKE even segments of time, GWEN, I appRECiate them because I'm a dullard, THERE) layers of everyone-including-my-four-year-old-knew-but me - namely, habits:  THEY'RE HABIT-FORMING.  My god.  Semantics knowledge, even in a limited amount, would've been tasty in my broham sandwich, back there.  HEY SEMANTICS, YOU WEREN'T HAM.  YOU WERE KRAFT SLICES.  NO.  NOT PLURAL.  SLICE.  SINGULAR.   

*laughs at Semantics' weak baby-tears*

(Semantics, as it happens?  NOT SO TOUGH AFTER ALL.)

I came here by way of the idea to post about Ella through this.  I know, technically, how it's going to feel to lose my pet, my dog, my family, but I don't know how to

/

/

/

I don't know how to lose another pet.  Not with a kid to watch me break down.  Break down.  I'm gonna break it down.  Imma make a workout video.  NO.  I'M GONNA MAKE A WORKOUT VIDEO.  Only I'm serious.  And it's gonna be me, working out to my gorgeously lame mom music that was hip anywhere from 5 to 20 years ago, and the only current thing I know about is Lady Gaga, which, seriously, I challenge you to find five people who haven't heard of Lady Gaga who aren't simultaneously in comas from watching other people in comas who were married to the people who invented comas.  But where was I about my fucking rad idea to make a workout video where I dance to my momtunes and make breakfast and call that a workout?  Like, I truly believe I've worked out?

YEAH.  THAT SHIT IS GONNA BE INSANE.

I should go.  I should note before I do that tonight, Ella went to sleep on Jack's bed.  Validly so.  Where he was asleep before her.  I SAID, HE was asleep. BEFORE HER.  *historic annotation here*

She lifted herself up after he went to sleep and lurched down from the bed, then trotted downstairs to hang out with her human dad.  It's weird to say that.  But he is.  Well, if not dad, pack-leader, then.  Important figure in her life.  Person who gives her food.  Dude who used to let her sleep on all the furniture before pack-mom put her foot down.  FELLOW DOG WHO WILL ALSO SLEEP ON EIGHTEEN-WEEK-UNWASHED SHEETS.  There.  It done got said.  As is proper.

I like her, okay I love her, I'm terrified to lose another dog.  Buffy (shut up my mom's fault not mine) was our dog from when I was eight until I was twenty four.  *soft whistle*  In some ways I'm *still* recovering from that loss.  I was scared to get another dog.  The thought of loving another creature even nearly so much as I did Buffy feels like curdled milk in my throat.  Jesus.  And in some ways I've kind of totally held myself away from her, always with the oh, the dog hair and the oh, god, the stank, and the get-out-my-way!  Not wanting to have to say goodbye in twelve or fourteen years.  And this - it's not been eight yet.  She's too young.

When my grandpa Ray died, he was eighty-four, he was (limp)armed and ready.  He had lung cancer and that's what killed him, but he was tired before its advent.  He died in our living room after lunch on a Sunday, and we put our dog down the next morning, skies gray as wet cement.  Buffy had been so ill, infirm, incontinent, my dad carrying him outside to piss and shit for over a month.  They didn't want to prolong the thing.  They'd actually kept him alive for Grandpa, who was staying with us during the last stages of his cancer, Grandpa, who loved the shit out of that dog.   And the shit, it was coming out.  Poor Dad!  Carrying Buffy!  Several times a day, even. 

And they'd already decided.  When Grandpa went, so would Buffy. 

It fucking sucked to mourn them both and not be sure who I was crying about.

I know, now, that even though I was incredibly angry with my parents for that decision cast in red-hot-poker-pointed iron, pressed to my skin, to my brother's dog-devoted flesh, I can't be so angry with them.  I find, again, my hypocrisy rearing its head and growling at my aware-brain when I see that I face a similar choice, a situation beyond my control where I must make a snap judgement and a split decision and it's for my family, this group of fellow travelers, I no longer have the liberty to point and say, you, you did this.  Because the finger hits me dead-center in my gut.  Golly.  That shit hurts.

I love my mom and dad even though they've hurt me.  I wish they accepted my non-acceptance of their religion.  If they could see it, see my choices, recognize their validity, 

that would be awesome but it ISN'T GONNA HAPPEN LET IT GO GEEEEEEEEZ.

I need to close.  Nothing's coming to complete this outline-for-the-lay-of-a-madman's-mind and wrapping-up hour hath arrived on wings of nascent taco chips (I had these KICK-ASS taco chips today from last night's burrito dinner and taco chips sound right now like kind of the next best thing to eating a roll of sour candy from the flat of Andy Samberg's palm. 

Oh, that's it, I've hit on the thing to close on.  Shy Ronnie. 

Have you ever even HEARD of such a piece of middle-age-lady-bait as Andy Samberg?  You know what that last sentence needs, there?  It needs a term that defines "middle-age-lady" in fewer syllables.  Gosh.  I surely wish there were one.

Poo.)

(But seriously, have I ever regaled you all with my vexing almost-toxic lust for Seth Rogen and all of his weirdbeard, Geeky with a TM friends?  I have a problem. 

I may be Stiffler's mom.)

Phew.  And you were worried this was gonna get sappy all over again.  I wouldn't do you like that, Boo.  I would not.  *kisses fingers, lets kisses ooze from hands like ladders of blood from an open wound*

dogs matter.

What I know this morning:  I don't care about losing the house.  Screw this house.  It's my dog.  She wasn't supposed to go like this.  We expected to have her until she was a ripe, old thirteen-year-old.  Ancient.  Grumpy.

This is completely out of line with our plans, is what I'm saying.  This bullshit cancer is interFERING with our PLANS to watch our dog get old and crotchety and gray around the mouth.

Suddenly, it's so weird, she looks old.  She looks feeble.  It took a few days.  I mean, of course it took longer, but the swollen lymph nodes around her neck on Tuesday morning, those made her neck all wobbly and loose and now she looks tired, and of course she is.  I have to meet with the oncologist on Friday to discuss our options.  I did some reading last night and found that chemo will probably extend her life by another 6-12 months.  We have to discuss whether we can afford it.  (We can't.  But this isn't black v. white.  It's not.  And Ella isn't, either.  She's black, white, gray and tan.)

She didn't finish her breakfast this morning.  Loss of appetite is, from what I read, part of the decline as a result of the cancerous tissue invading and taking over.

It's a bummer.  She's a good dog.  A very, very hirsute beast whom I love and cherish. 

This sucks.

plainspoken.

We got the call from the vet just as we were searching for parking to meet with the attorney to discuss options for how to manage losing our home (short sale v. deed in lieu of foreclosure v. foreclosure), the one where they told me that our not-quite-8-year-old dog has cancer.  Lymphoma, actually.  A very fast-moving variety.

At 3 p.m. today.  (Inner monologue: don't cry in front of the attorney!  You look awful when you've been crying!  Try to comport yourself like an adult!  The kind who doesn't look like your average short-saler!  Whatever the fuck that looks like!  Straighten up!  Angle your head so you look smart and careful and wise!  Be smart!  Be savvy!  Don't think about tragedy and its comedic effects on your skin!)

And now I look for trite things to say about whether I may lapse at blogging again for a hectodecade.  No idea what that means.  Am in shock.  We're just this side of being the subjects of a (terribly cliche) country song.

THIS POST, IN SHORT:  BAD, BAD, SHIT, FUCK, LAME, CRAP, OH, GREAT, MORE CRAP.

Hope you're better!

p.s. Funny, funny, funny, ha-ha, yay!

p.p.s. Read this if you want to think I'm funny.  I'm not, I'm not sure what funny even is, but I do try.

p.p.p.s. Why does pizza sound so good right now?  The I-didn't-cook-it part?  Or is it the burn-the-holy-jesus out of the roof of my mouth so I don't have to feel my heart breaking over our hairy dog, the one I've complained about endlessly from the beginning of our liaison with her?

You should tell me, because FUCK if I know.  Anything.  Anything at all.  You should give me good dough-nut recipes that don't require a deep-fryer.  I like dough-nuts.  Even in a crisis.

a reminder of my mommy-blogger status. (a reminder to myself.)

I wrote this post on May 28, 2008.  I want to enter it a second time because I want to remember its meaning.  It meant something to me then, and it continues to do so (and my memory is a pile of crap and bears reminding).  Selfish posting for the win!  (And why not?  Who else even reads this stuff anyway?)

to the unsuspecting eye.

While it may not be obvious, I dig through my repetoire of pain and anguished memory in order to save my child(ren?) from having to endure the things I have done.  To comprehend the madness, understand its angles and contours, see it for what it is, expose it in an uncomfortable series of essays and exposes and unhappily rendered portraits that render it weak and rattling in its feeble grasp on my soul.  I do this for my son, for Jack, and I do it for any other children I may (or may not, ...) have the pleasure of knowing, vis-a-vis, I do it for those whose children must eventually battle dissimilarly similar creatures of dark, haunting personal treason, and I do it, even, for some of the other parents (and non-parents) who find themselves in battles akin to my own.

And, so.  Though this weblog, more often than not, has the quasi-tangible feel, the sense, of a worn, pock-marked personal journal, rather than that of a mommyblog;

don't be fooled.  This is a MOMMYBLOG, coming and going.

You see, through it all, I hope.  I hope for the things to come. 

And, thus, I wage on in my ever-tiresome, yet never-ending battle.

(Beats hell out of describing all my intrepid, albeit minutiae-enriched, introspection as naval-gazing, huh.)

While it may not be obvious, I dig through my repetoire of pain and anguished memory in order to save my child(ren?) from having to endure the things I have done.  To comprehend the madness, understand its angles and contours, see it for what it is, expose it in an uncomfortable series of essays and exposes and unhappily rendered portraits that render it weak and rattling in its feeble grasp on my soul.  I do this for my son, for Jack, and I do it for any other children I may (or may not, ...) have the pleasure of knowing, vis-a-vis, I do it for those whose children must eventually battle dissimilarly similar creatures of dark, haunting personal treason, and I do it, even, for some of the other parents (and non-parents) who find themselves in battles akin to my own.

And, so.  Though this weblog, more often than not, has the quasi-tangible feel, the sense, of a worn, pock-marked personal journal, rather than that of a mommyblog;

don't be fooled.  This is a MOMMYBLOG, coming and going.

You see, through it all, I hope.  I hope for the things to come. 

And, thus, I wage on in my ever-tiresome, yet never-ending battle.

(Beats hell out of describing all my intrepid, albeit minutiae-enriched, introspection as naval-gazing, huh.)

self-pity is a wondrous thing, in triplicate.

she arrived on the scene

mis en scene

slick and lean

low and mean

(no, that wasn't her, it was the others.  well, it was some her, too.)

like a three-eyed cat.

scatter that.  scatter it this way,

and that,

and after,

recall the bruised rose of her skin

and her eyes,

shudder.

sputtering on the water

in the filthy cup

rings on the counter

toothbrush jammed halfway into the rack

unpack and unpack

and never get to the bottom

of it.

where you were,

where you are,

it smacks of disloyalty.

of royalty.

smile and charm and bend and coo,

oh, you,

your love abates.

its imperative repetitions

replete with crucial recall

or not crucial at all

possibly.

but you wish it were so.

and so, and so.

there is a scent of finality,

of trivial pursuit,

wafting astride the distinct odor

of ham.

what's a pig got to do with it?

everything.

pigs are, after all, in zen.

zen's where you've got to

once you've dismembered the beast

and remembered you've shorn the sheet

(they are fleece).

sheer rage is what you once felt,

and now there is only a recollection,

a heartfelt hearkening back

to the there that wasn't really.

and the alcohol confused you, anyhow,

and you think, yes, sure, and certain,

i drank too much.

too often.

i still do.

i mean to keep up with it,

as i've little enough to show for these years,

this wear,

this tear,

fallen angels have nothing on me.

did you get that one, big brother?

it's a joke for us to share.

we share so little, these days.

funny bones.

While I would like nothing better than to just grind out complaint after complaint over how the last few days -- weeks -- years have gone (though things have really intensified in recent days in the seeming bad-luck dept.), I cringe at the thought of anyone reading it.  Partially out of fear of the being-boring, and some because it just seems whiny.  So instead I recall reading Mr. Lady's most excellent (not to mention generous and lovely) idea of sharing her blogging knowledge with her readers, and while she's talking html, I'm thinking - what about the techniques?  I know there are plenty of days where I would write a ranty post if I only could get the gauge in my mind to shift from SUPERPISSYMASTER to PISSYHILARIOUS.  (Like an old-fashioned dial on a stereo or TV set.  Click-click-click.)  Or, you know, I'd like to gain enough perspective and distance from le shit to be able to laugh at it and thereby make it sound funny in the written form.  Then I'd get to get my rant on AND I'd get to pleasure you all with my funny boner.

And possibly even not just through the clever manipulation of what passes for humor in the kindergarten set.

Sometimes I just try to conjure up how some of my personal humor-blogging favorites would do it.  And it feels cheatery, since they've not given express permission to copycat.  Also, it's not as though I can.  Copy.  I want to, theoretically, but then I try and it feels wrong and I can't. 

So I'm here to query:  how do you do it?  What are your tricks to go from ANGRY, ANGRY HIPPO to feisty-funny-confident-rad?

And I need to know anywhere from pronto to time-machine-back-to-last-week when it all started going rather sideways into the garbage chute.  Preferably the time machine option, if you could manage it.

Yes!  This IS a desperate plea for help!  Life is playing whack-a-Debbie/family at the moment.  Need! to! Laugh! so as to cease spitting nails or losing teeth and hair over it all.

Okay?  Okay.  You share with me your humor-secrets, I share my -- hair.  It's curly.  You want it.  You want it so much.  You want to build a tent with it and live inside the hair tent.  You are a hair tent.

Call me and let's talk about it.  Let's chat on google mail's new chatty platform.  Let's chat on a hair phone.  Let's sit on a couch made from hair and -- no, a hair *poof* and let's slip all over it and pretend we're comfortable and we'll look very chic with those new capri pants that have the baggy waist and pleats and our jangly bracelets and silky, gem-colored tank tops and shoulder padded jackets and maybe someone from Texas will waltz in and start a cat-fight and you can call me Alexis and I'll call you Al, or Crystle, or whatever you want me to, baby.  And after the fight we'll eat cream puffs and drink champagne out of flutes.  And then we'll play the flutes.  And go shoe shopping.  Let's be sure to buy lots of candy-red patent pumps, okay?  And more collarless shoulder-padded jackets, in tweed, and maybe a quilted handbag with a chain strap, and we can get our hair cut in shoulder-length bobs and parts down the middle with bangs also parted down the middle, wing-style, and then we'll start another cat-fight.  But we'll call it a labradoodle fight.  Labradoodles are so winning, aren't they?

*I'm losing my mind.  More so than usual.

why i left, and i want to come back.

I haven't wanted to be a joiner for a real long time.  It's -- there are so many reasons, so many explanations, and I tend to be cryptic because I don't want anyone to know, not really.  If I told you why, you'd probably just blink back at me, kind of nonplussed, and think, um, whatever.  And find something more compelling to do with your time.  And you know, I wouldn't really blame you.

But it's -- I MISS BLOGGING.  I miss the connections I made, I miss reading the seductively well-crafted writing, the stories, the virtual water-cooler where people don't just crack cheesy jokes.  There's this gigantic community of people and all I've done is let it slip away because I'm envious that I don't write nearly so well and out of a sad, tortured need to pretend to myself that I don't care, don't want to know, don't want to hear about all of the life people are squeezing out of their experiences and in such a fantastic, spellbinding myriad of ways.

I've been scared.

There.  Yes.  Scared to little, teeny bits.  Frightened that you might notice I'm not so very excellent at putting words together in interesting ways.  What if you notice, I've been thinking, all of this time, what if you -- all of you -- figure it out?  That I kind of am just not all that good at it?  That people said I was, at one point, but really that was because I was very good at commenting on their blogs and making them feel good about me, even though most of the time I was genuine in my comments, and only sort of infrequently did I write stuff that I thought people might read and say, "oh-HO, now THIS sister can COOk with a keyboard and some gray cells" and not stop to consider that the comment to the person was what really mattered.  I mean, it was truly happening when I was the barrage-commenter, when I would do drive-bys and comment on thirty different blogs in an hour's time.  Obviously, I had lost a little perspective. 

It's just -- I was so worried people would stop liking me, and I would float back to the ground and look very boring and prosaic lying there, in the dirt, without any keyboard to tap on and cover myself with, and the people, you, would notice how dull I was, there. 

So if I don't write very often, and I don't read ever, then I can keep you from noticing.  If I only write once in a while, I can conjure something halfway-to-funny into existence, and if not funny, then crazy, or weird, and just enough enchanting that you'll still bother with me, maybe.  Or if not bother, at least not pity me.

Please don't do that.

I have to work every day, go to a job, and I don't have the opportunity to do what I did when I started at this.  I don't have the naptime breaks that gave me sometimes an hour or more a day to sit and read blogs and comment on them, and to compose my own strange entries in the fray.  I don't miss it, I tell myself, because MY GOD, THE TIME, WHO HAS IT, NOT ME.  But the truth, the truth that I am forced to face if I even dip a toe into the posting world, read something by Mama Tulip or Flutter or Penelope, or any of you beloved people, is that I crack wide open when I read your posts.  As I should.  

Because they're awesome.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to do it.  I've failed, somehow.  Not at being great.  Just at trying.  At trying to do it, no matter how imperfectly.  I miss the friendships, the connections, the community so much.

I'll try harder after this.  I mean it.

so, uh, fuck you.

For the longest time I've been writing like there were people standing immediately behind me.  I couldn't shake the "who's reading?  Who's reading?" vibe.  Which puts an automatic kibosh on producing anything that isn't either kiss-ass or straight piss, given the ensuing attempts to pander and/or simply avoid offense.

Then again, I'm not certain that being at least minimally aware of an audience isn't a good thing, either.  For all the moments when it drives me to drivel, the knowing, there are an equitable amount of pieces that shake in, in good part, because of that awareness, because I'm trying to produce something with a person or people in mind who motivate me to write well.  Which seems like a good thing.

But what's true?  What's the good, the best thing, the most honest thing?  For me?  I don't know.  No.  That's bullshit.  The best thing is for me to write true, write honest, and when I have to stop and check my rhetorical mirrors I slow myself down -- mostly -- in a way that ceases being true and becomes pandering or worry that offense is being committed. 

I've always held to the don't-tell-if-it's-not-my-story notion.  Don't talk about someone else's stuff.  Which permits me to instead unpack my gut, or make up beautifully-embroidered nonsense.  Sometimes unpacking my gut means telling my husband's story, or my son's story, or even my parents' or brother's story.  Which fights with my main edict, though it hasn't always stopped me from the telling. 

Lately I want to talk about our -- see? -- troubles.  The things that make our lives, our conjoined story, a tough row.  But I can't, thanks to my own fucking rule.  And that keeps me mum.  *points to pressed lips, widens eyes in frustration*

I can't pretend about all of that stuff.  It's very hard, and it's sad-making, added to the seeming secondary infertility, a thing I didn't even know existed until after last summer's miscarriage.  I can't discuss it, and I kind of don't want to, but it's like this hurdle, there, in my way, and writing around it -- I'm not very practiced at writing *around*.  I write *through*.  I cannot lie.  Not with my fingers.  (Which probably means I should never take up sign language.)

It's annoying, this not knowing how to pretend those things aren't obstructing my writer's view.  I've been calling it a block to myself, because it looks exactly like one, but it's not that blank, white cube of invisible repulsivity.  It's just -- in my way.

Get out of my way, trouble!

Where I Obsess Over My Body's Inability to Conceive.

I want a second baby.  No great secret.

The part that is a secret?  That I'm obsessed.  It's been over two years that we've been at this, only for a long time, it wasn't too serious.  We weren't TRYING, we were just not NOT trying.  

Now, we try.  And every month I watch my cycle with eyes and thoughts trained, intent.  Another period comes and I think maybe, maybe it's not my period.  Maybe I'm spotting.  Only, that night, I recognize that I've lost too much blood for it to be spotting.

This last one was the hardest yet.  It's so hard to not be there yet.  And after last summer's miscarriage I dread losing another baby if we do manage to achieve maximum pregnancy.

I'm tired of being sad about it.  I keep thinking, well, maybe this is my body's way of telling me, NO FUCKIN' WAY, bitch.  And maybe I should just let it be.  Get in shape.  Start running again.  Endeavor to find me a good hobby.  (I have the perfect one in mind, too.  I really want to start photographing the ins/outs of midcentury modern homes, and feature them on a portland-specific midcentury modern home-worshipfulness site, aka blog.  SHUTUPICANTOOWRITEYETANOTHERBLOGTHATIMAYINFACTCONTRIBUTETOONOCCASION.)

Uh.

I write, btw, for my living these days.  You're aware of that, most of you, but if you aren't -- well, now you are.  It's pretty kick-ass to write for my supper, but I hunger to write for fun, if I only could find the leftover supply.  And I even *dreamed* of the midcentury homes blog last night.  It was pretty insane.  I was really into the photographery.  (Why leave it at "photography" when I can throw in two extra letters and make it wrong and longer?  WHY, INDEED.) 

Thing is, just as I begin to see all of that as a good way to be, I realize I really miss that baby who isn't here yet.

Shit.