i obsess.

blogger prom blues.

It's just kind of hard to get worked up about the conference, even given the awesome people I'll get to foist my embarrassing selves self on, because of the people who *won't* be there.

Cristina won't be there.  She has a "wedding" to go to that weekend.  She's supposedly in said wedding, or some fancy waxen-spun tale of that nature. 

Sure, C.  Sure. 

Neither will Mel, even tho I've spent hours via ma bell bullying her coaxing her gently and sweetly into un-hermiting for a few days' time, and promising spiked turkish delight and other equally sumptuous niceties in order to get her to be my prom date.  But no go.  She's too busy being into Portland and refusing to leave her even for a second.  But it's kewl.  I guess.

*sniff*

Ruth won't be there.  The best blogger-prom '07 roomie ever.  Oh, you may believe, you may even be convinced, that you had the best roomie.  But you would be wrong.  Because Ruth was the roomie, THE numbero-uno roomie, to be had.  And I got her.  And I frightened her.  And it was wonderful and perfect.   And I'm fairly certain I haven't violated the restraining order, seeing as how you live about three thousand miles beyond what I'm required to adhere to in distance-maintenance.  So, phew.  Love you, Ruth.  Call me?

Mary won't be there.  Gwen and I will be sure to make her ears burn regularly with our musings over her ingenious keystrokes, though, so at least there's that, M.  (*sigh*)

Anne won't be there, though she insists she doesn't care.  I'll bet she was just as cool at school, too.  I'll bet she rocked her feathered hair and her back-pocket comb and made all the girls jealous and all the boys swoon with her smooth-ass swagger.

Stacy won't be there, and GODDAMMIT, STACY, I swear you better go next year or -- *ends threat meekly* -- I'll be really bummed.  I'm looking at you equally testily, Mignon.  (yes.  you're both shivering and quaking.)

G won't be there, tho as of this writing, said information is unconfirmed.  I just figure, she's kinda busy with the paint chips and subsequent paint-toxins high.  Enjoy the ride, G.  Enjoy it.  For I shall miss thee as ardently as last year, even if we *don't* talk much anymore.

*Updated to include Emily, because for some reason I had assumed she was coming.  Since, you know, I spaced that she LIVES IN ENGLAND.  Sigh.  My stupid is personal and it hurts.  p.s. Emily, I will miss your presence dreadfully.  I really DID think you'd be there.  Ai.  The idiocy.  Owwie.  *sees stars of stupid dancing across stupid eyes*

*Further updated to include Andrea, because, AGAIN, I was making this stupidly wildly incorrectly idiotic assumption that she'd be there.  Sans any reasoning.  Just - wishful thinking, I guess.  I r dum.  Such has been evidenced too often to count.  Let's not.  Rather, let's just be collectively sad that the brilliant author of Little Bald Doctors will be too busy digging around amongst steel thingies (?) on a business trip in MO-land to grace us with her genius presence. 

Oh, Andrea.  You will be missed.  So very missed.

*Doy.

Also, Julia and Mama Tulip and Sandra.  Goddammit.  You three - well, Julia, I missed you painfully there last year, and Mama T, I wouldn't have let you outta my sight last year *or* this year, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise (for you, not me) that you won't have to be subjected to my constant stares this time around, either, and Sandra?   Well, shit.  Who will I lust after if you're not around to make ga-ga wolf eyes at, with your golden, glowing, prom-queen bodacious (yeah!) beauty?

There are so many who will be there who I will piss myself to be near, but there are so many who will not.

Feeling all half-and-half.

*goes to the fridge, glares moodily at its contents, drinks straight from the milk carton*

i wanna be medicated.

Can't get an appt. to see a psychiatrist until the middle of July.  The 16th, to be precise.  Iow, the day before I leave for the SF BlogHer conference.  Prolly isn't a good idea to start dosing on something unknown the day before I reconvene with a thousand crazy-a$$ bitches and behave in the expectedly ridonkulous fashion that I will do.  (It's the hyper aspect of adhd - kicks in whenever I'm even mildly mentally stimulated by something in my environment.  Give me a thousand shimmery, brilliant stimulants?  And I'm dancing like a marionette on trucker speed.  For untold hours.  It's - annoying.  And embarrassing.  And tiresome.  And unpredictable.  Etc.)

I'm tired.  So tired.  I don't care anymore.  I don't.  It's all just so nuts.

Lying cuddled together with my kiddo a minute ago, because he had come into the room, suddenly, demanding a hug, and upon returning him to his bed, I discovered his playmates, some toys he's not allowed to go to sleep with - because he *doesn't sleep* when they're present - and then we sang some songs and snuggled.  And I felt his length, even with legs curled all pretzel-like around my knees, feet stuck randomly between my knees and thighs, hand curled around mine, and my breath halted, quick, brief, because - it's all happening.  So fast.  Too fast.  Blazes of light and *poof* and he's growing, growing, grown.

And I will have done nothing throughout his growth but bemoan my own beleaguered state, my own incapacities for things that - well, that I just am not, and cannot have, and cannot be, and yet I reach, I reach, waggling my fingers 'til they're outstretched to the point of pain, and my son, this beautiful, amazing creature, this creation, he is turning tricks and cartwheels and pulling rabbits out of hats all 'round me, and still I reach, and bemoan, and waggle, and pine for things.  Unknowable, invisible things.

And soon he will, too, be invisible, this smallness, this wee synapse of time, this sharp echo against the rocks of the ages, his once-tiny hands and feet and legs and elbows all crescendoing and I see its harmonic rise in such finite, too-fleeting, too-few moments.

Is nothing in life what it ought to be?

anyone got an abattoir they don't mind lending out?

You see, I have this, ... uh, this friend.  Yes.  I have a friend, named -- Shmebbie.  Yes.  Her name is Shmebbie, and she's interested in renting an abattoir for a short-term lease.  Extremely short-term.  Maybe, oh, -- well, how long does it take to travel through the interior of an abattoir?

She's willing to pay whatever the asking price is.  (Just what does the short-term lease for such things go for these days, anyway?  Not that I care.  This is for Shmebbie.  It's barely any of my business.  I've merely been requested to procure it for her, and find out the rates.  She doesn't blog; she's a recluse [iow, she has loads of friends, but doesn't go anywhere near the internet.  She's heard it gives out viruses by the truckload, and she's cyber-germ-phobic].)

Please feel free to email if you aren't comfortable discussing the details or location of your abattoir in the comments.

Thank you.  Er, Shmebbie thanks you.

what it's like when you have a disability but can't get assistance because you forget to call because of the disability:

I'm on hold but it's already afterhours for the mental health triage for Kaiser and I have a feeling I should've tried to call maybe slightly earlier than I did, which was, hilariously, right at five o' clock.  You know.  Quittin' time.  So, basically, I nailed la hora solid.

What I want to know is this:  after I get the help I need, and b'lieve you me, I need it, N.E.E.D., should I write a book about my ADHD experiences?  Now don't you all (hee!  I said "you all," like there are more than three of you reading) kiss my ass and say, sure, honey, you should do it!, sure's shootin', don't just blow a bunch of hot air at me; tell me if you think there might be someone who would benefit from my semi-horrific collection of disarranged, colossally messy life puzzle pieces, none of which fit together in any coherent fashion.

Or, conversely, tell me if you think that, oh, poor dear, she really *is* a big, sodden, ridiculous mess (and please take note of my having deliberately NOT described myself as a fierce, hot tranny mess, b/c I am simply not that interesting anymore, people), and she just needs to find somewhere quiet where she can whisper to herself and rock out in her kewl granny chair.

Book?  Or whispery chair scenario?

It all starts here, people.  IT. ALL. STARTS. HERE.  (It also all falls out of my ear, or ass, depending on your pov, or maybe quite possibly where you're standing, in which case, I apologize and -- you're right.  Absolutely no more beans/beer at the same time.  Scout's honor.)

Dweedle deedle dee!

it feels like the end. or, i'm hungover.

I'm sure it isn't, but it does.  Feel that way.  I mean, the hangover is only part of the equation.  There's also this awful broken feeling inside, beneath my gnawing belly, this sense that I'm beyond repair, and it (the feeling) was present prior to the hangover.  Which I came by honestly, in the form of delicious rose` (how the fuck does one make the little accent mark sit astride the "e" without having to perform keyboarded acrobatics of which I am decidedly unaware; anyone?) at Clyde Common, with uber-fabulous people to drink alongside, and properly offend by my drunkenness, and general boorishness.

It's the ADHD, it's the aging process, it's the failure to thrive.  I'm blowing it on every level.  I am watching my life swirl around the base of the drain and I'm thinking, how can I fucking stop this, or at least make it swirl beautifully before the giant sucking sound happens and all the life has swirled down into the black depths?

I am incapable of retaining things like learned social behaviors that everyone else is able to retain.  I'm stuck in this fucking toddler loop, and I can explain that shit to people I'm around until my mouth bleeds from the pressure of speech propelled through the tired maw (and delivered from the depths of a tired ma), but it doesn't matter, because in the end, I still come off like an asshole and people get tired of my excuses.

I'm tired of my excuses, too.  I want to change it, but the only way I can currently think to change it is to just hide, hunker down, slink along the lowest points, pretend I don't exist.  Sure, I have to exist on some level for Jack's sake, but I don't have to exist for my own sake.  If I'm only needed for familial support, I can do that without having to exist socially in my own right.

Granted, my husband doesn't love the energy I'm expelling into the atmosphere of our home when these are the turgid, clay-cloud thoughts that churn within the generator of my body, that I release this stuff and it deposits a thick layer of gray soot along the surface of the piano and the couch and the table and our bed and the chairs and the artwork and knick-knacks and the dog and the child and nothing and no one remains free of its drifting coat of heavy and clinging webs.

I am not able to do what others do.  I can't finish writing the papers or reading the books or completing the thoughts.  I can't flesh out the details and I can't complete the projects and I can't remember the important and the not-so-important.  I can't always remember to feed my child on time or keep him on his even sort-of-regular schedule and I can't recall to whom I told what and I can't keep track of my vocabulary so it slips in and out and there are plenty of occasions where I feel as though I've gone further backwards in my time on earth than forward, in fact, I am beginning to be convinced that the only things that have been allowed to grow are my ability to convey the pretense that I am an adult, like a great toddler-mimic, and my body has aged appropriately in order to push the pretense's believability up toward quasi-truth, but at bottom, in my gut, under my gnawing belly, I know that it's all just this gigantic farce.  I am a toddler who cannot remember how many months ago something happened, and thinks it was yesterday, cannot get beyond the oppositional behavior, cannot manage to pull off the necessities required of an adult life.

And I am beginning to be convinced that there is nothing that can alter this sequence. 

Which is why I was right to not want to have a child, ever.  It's why I always knew I shouldn't procreate.  I'm not capable enough to manage things.  I can, for awhile, but not for the length of time necessary.  (disclaimer:  I'm not suggesting my son is not amazing and wonderful; I'm suggesting that I am not capable of taking care of him well enough to merit his worth.)

I'm failing, and I'm failing hard and fast. 

And I don't believe there's anything I can do or think or inhale or swallow or drink or eat or work on or write or talk about or downward-dog or run toward or away from or above or around to fix it or heal it or aid it or even ameliorate it.

Everyone is having seconds, they're filling their bellies with second babies and more life and bigger chances for fear and failure and success and their courage in the face of such odds appalls me because I don't have that option.  I shouldn't have optioned the first belly full.  I am failing him, and he knows, he knows the way I knew with my parents.

Fuck.

(I'm leaving comments closed because to see the sad, round zero staring back at me two days from tomorrow will just make it worse.)

emotions, allow me to introduce surface.

Oh, hi, Surface!  Nice to meet you - again!  I mean, I'm assuming we've met before.  I feel like we must have, even though I totally can't remember.  Whatev.

Wouldn't you love it, Surface, if you and I could somehow form a permanent bond, so that whenever we meet, we don't have to be reintroduced?  Somehow, every time that happens, there's this surprising pain that Nervous System has to manage.  It's surprising because, well, there's that whole *ahem* (whispers) issue with Memory.  Yes.  I know, issue is being overused these days.  I didn't think that sort of thing bothered you too much, Surface.  I thought you were disaffected.  Cool.  Etc.  And I have this spidey-tingle that says you're about to launch into a long, tedious explanation as to why that's not true and cite several examples and precedents and DUDE, stop pretending to be a barrister.  Yeah.  I said barrister.  It's cooler.  You know that when you're not playing your never-knew-from-cool tired-ass bit.  But.  Back to what I was saying - about Memory having kind of sucked, well, all along?  It's not our fault Memory's so bad at her job.  Why we should have to endure this repeated pretense at not knowing one another?, and why Nervous System has to continually fend off the bouts of pain that result is totally stupid and illogical.  Which brings me to Logic.  Where has Logic even BEEN all this time?  Logic spends more time vacationing than anything, and is conspicuously absent on these recent bitter-cold, rain-soaked days, just when we need her support the most.  God!  This!  Sucks!

I have to go, Surface.  I promised Velvet-Lining-of-Chest Tucked-Inside-Inner-Depths-of-Soul I'd be back by lunch.  We're having toasted cheese and tomato soup.  Don't worry.  I'm sure you'll get some.  I'd just rather not have to watch, is all.  You eat like a mad cow.

Anyway, relax.  We'll meet again soon.  Don't start sobbing.  God.  You'd think you were Emotions.  Sure.  You can call me E. 

Just don't you fucking DARE call me Emo.

fluffy faces.

I've always referred to cats with whom I am familiar as "fluffy face."  I'll mutter it as I bump noses with the particular down-headed purring beastie I'm speaking to.  It's just like anyone else, I'm sure, who has made up a name they think is beyond all clever things ever invented by another human, and simply can't let go.

To the fluffy faces out there who have recently let go, to the detriment of the hearts of those humans left here without them to call them silly, adoring names by, with empty laps and wrung-out hearts, I say, oh, Fluffy. Face.  Sweet fluffy face.  You'll be missed.

So sorry, darling Dodo, lovely Nancy, Jenny doll.  And sweet Steph - you're in my thoughts, too.

Those fluffy babies are, I hope, now flanking the sides of my old, lost loves: Stan and Ollie.  I hope my little furry boys know to help the recently-arrived ones along as they get used to the new place.  Show 'em the ropes; where the best catnip is hidden, where the best corner to curl up and snooze, warm and soft, resides, how to refresh and learn to romp and gallivant anew.

Stupid heart pain.  Stupid, necessary evil part of the process.

What do we do when we go outside?  We put our collars on. 
What do we do when we come inside?  We take our collars off. 
Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  la la la! 
Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  laaaaaa laaaaaaa laaaaaaa!

today's blogging temperature brought to you by: hoarfrost.

Which is also, I'm pretty sure, the punchline to a joke.  The last bit, not the whole sentence.  I can kind of imagine it. 

What.  Surely you didn't expect me to tell you what I was imagining?  The joke, I mean.  Because, uh, I didn't *actually* have one in mind.  I just thought that the word "hoarfrost" really oughtta be a punchline.  You totally know I'm right.

Sigh.  This post is making my head hurt.  Worse.

We're home from Cali.  The trip was good.  I saw my luverly fry-end, Cristina, and I got to hold her little, soft, sweet-as-the-sweetest-thing-in-the-universe baby, and J and her M were all crack-a-lackin' in the restaurant where we went for lunch, cutting up and being little crazy people, and Caleb chased them around, which meant C and I had a few minutes of (voice drops into a whisper) actual conversation.  It was thrilling, and really nice, and I miss my dear friend a lot.  Wah.  Your house is too far away, C.  *stomps foot petulantly*

The ninetieth birthday party for Caleb's grandma was great, and pretty impressive.  Most of her offspring were there - the living ones, anyway.  And that's a lotta people when you consider she had five kids.  She looked lovely, as always, and I don't just say that lightly.  She not only does not look her age, but she is whip-smart.  Can join any conversation and participate with ease.  She's apparently invested in a wardrobe full of smartie-pants that won't quit. 

J was wild with glee over the time he spent with his older cousins - the two boys, C, age 4 1/2, and E, age 8 1/2, trying to maim one another relentlessly, but with these ridiculously detailed rules involved in said maiming, and J stood and watched, clapping and giggling and guffawing and bending over with his hands pressed to his mouth, laughing fit to kill.   He would occasionally rush in and involve himself, but the bigger boys knew to sort of gently move him aside, which he was totally okay with, because he kind of also understood implicitly about the maiming business, and how much he really didn't want to get hurt.  He's just SO much more -- little, I guess, than they are.  He's really just this side of a baby, at least to me, the mommy, and I was darned relieved to see that he wasn't into joining the death brigade of boy children.  His big thing was playing the hat-ar-mod-aka (harmonica) that Uncle Dick, Caleb's aunt's husband, kindly gave to him, tootling around on it all day long, besides.  Honestly, he's pretty good with it.  On the way back to Caleb's dad's house, a drive of a little over an hour, he squawked away, and if Caleb and I tried to have a conversation in the meantime, he'd stop playing, annoyed, and state, pretty yell-y, "Guys!, You need to be quiet!  I'm playing my hat-ar-mod-aka! right now!" and then get back to business.  At one point, we just gripped hands and listened as he played an alarmingly almost-song, with a rhythm and nice-ish melody, and it creeped us out because it was - kind of, well - good.

Are toddlers supposed to be able to just know innately how to play the hatarmodaka?

I don't think they are.

Whatever.

Anyway, sinister harmonica prodigies notwithstanding, the weekend kicked ace.  I feel rested, I ate food nonstop, good, beautiful food, because my step-mother-in-law?  CAN.  COOK.  Damn Sam, that woman is a testament to the potential for art in a kitchen.  And she does it effortlessly, and being at her house is like being on vacation.  Those people don't let us lift a finger.  I try, I do, I mean it.  I request that tasks be given to me, and lately I've taken to just swooping in and folding laundry as it lands on the gigantic oval dining table, which reminds me of a story that I have to interrupt myself with:  yesterday, there was a fresh, cozy-warm pile of assorted linens and whatnot in its usual place on the well-worn wood surface.  I was sitting on my keister in the family room, reading my FIL's copy of JD Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (the only Salinger book, incidentally, I've not yet read and also don't have in my personal collection, so you can understand, naturally, my joyous excitement at being able to finally sit and read it, undisturbed, in a very comfortable recliner near the fireplace, rather, uh, UNDISTURBedly).  Suddenly, I'm being pulled into the dining room, against my will, you know - uh, why is this happening?-ish, because I don't withdraw my brains away from books easily or quickly, it takes a little time for me to recognize my surroundings, I'm usually confused for a minute or so, and can't quite connect the faces with why they're in the room with me or whatever - like, hey, youuuu look famili -- you're that guy I'm married to!  oh.  right!!  etc.   Seriously.  I'm constantly amazed at the depths of potential for me to get real stupid, yo.  So there I was, being stupid, but not stoopid-def, just the plain, old regular-stupid version, and J was pulling me toward the table and muttering something about "pwetty, pwetty wahm, mommy" - and then we arrived, his face triumphant, next to the pile of laundry.  He smiled up at me and said, "mommy, you needa wpoeirjsdfj dis wandry, because it's pwetty, pwetty wahm.  It's cozy, mommy!"

So I folded.  I mean, what else was I gonna do?  He was right - it was warm, and cozy, and I felt good helping.

Also, I think he's been informed, somehow, as to my general duties.

Other than folding a little bit of laundry, though, I mostly just sat around and ate, and snacked, and drank wine, and took this insanely long bath in the deep soaking tub in the hall bathroom, still with the Salinger, because the SMIL, she watches our child and plays with him and keeps him entertained for HOURS, and we -- yes, both of us, simultaneously -- get to just chillax (and thanks, Ruth, for getting that one stuck in my head lately - dude!  it's been there all weekend!  *shoots narrow look at Ruth from thousands of miles removed), and I napped and drank and ate and watched movies and ate, and then I ate some more.  I also went to bed early every night and slept like a dog.  Long, snore-y, deep.  It was a thing of beauty, our weekend.  I want to frame it and hang it and look at it adoringly in the months to come, when I need a respite from the harried life that is our lot, currently. 

The plane today was small.  There was much turbulence.  I cried a little when we landed, because immediately prior to that I'd begun muttering, please, no, please, my son.  Please.  He's here, on the plane, he's too small.  We can't -- yet.  Please.  Please.

So the tears came of their own accord, I was powerless to stop them, and I ground them out with the corners of my parched-skin hands, before my husband spied them. 

The house was 52 degrees Fahrenheit when we came in because I had the genius revelation to turn off the heat before we left.  It took all afternoon to warm the house up to a reasonable temperature.  I probed my brittle nose gently at one point to determine whether it was about to simply disintegrate from being in the midst of the frozen tundra for too long.

J's crying right now, which makes perfect sense, because it's almost 10 o'clock, and he ought to be asleep and lord only knows why he isn't, but he just said my name, or, you know, mommy, and I suppose I ought to find out for the eleventh time just what he needs.  It's sure to be a blanket or beverage or I-dunno-mommy issue but I'll go.  I'll go.

We're home. 

It's good to be home.

I think.

*****

And Jenny, my sweetest Jenny, her kitty had to be put down, and I'm so sad for her loss.  Please go give her some hugs and kisses.  So long as they're air kisses.  And air hugs.  No one is allowed to come within a certain distance of her except me.  So, you know, you can probably guess at how much more she loves me than she does anyone else including but not limited to her only daughter and her husband.

But seriously, I am sad for her, jokes about her being my stalk-ee aside.  I want you to make her feel better.  Yes.  You.  The person who read this.  Please?  For Jenny?  Solace?  Love?  Comfort?

Thanks.  She'll appreciate the visit.  I'm sure she'll notice my directing a reader her way, too, given she gets so little attention or readership of any kind.  She's an island, that one.  Nobody named Guy Kawasaki has ever heard of her.  And she hasn't made any words up (today, anyway) that have landed in the urban dictionary.  She's really boring like that.  But still, she's sad, even given all her boring, island-like isolation in the blogosphere.  So be a chum.  Go give Jenny a distant embrace. 

Just remember that I'll be monitoring it to see that it doesn't get too embrace-y.  Because I saw her first.

we will never be well again.

Yep.  Still riding the sicky-train.  *throws devil horns and then has to stop to breathe*

This one's a doozy.  Phlegm like you've never dreamed of.  Giant, billowy piles of phlegm.  As we used to say in the dorky band I was in that played three whole gigs, but can I just tell you how so-full-of-revelry-that-I-will-never-have-any Lifetime-movie-regrets it all was, despite our gigantic, mind-flaying, wretched, corpuscle'd suckedness, despite my insane dance moves (I often meshed James Brown with Mick Jagger and threw in a little Bozo the Clown for good measure, because one CANnot have TOO MUCH Bozo, no such thing - example:  I couldn't do the splits, not even when I was five and everyone in the world including the boys could do them, but I would still, despite that, gamely try to throw myself into the splits onstage as my twenty-four-year-old-self with that cheesy-ass band) -- I was in a swoony, pink-gauze realm of love with those three brief, beautiful, horrendously embarrassing, awesome-beyond-belief episodes of on-stage rawk-n-role GA-LORY, um, what was I saying? 

OH. 

Right. 

Phlegm. 

We used to crack wise about phlegm (viva la phlegm!), because I smoked and drank quite regularly (!!!! -- gross!) back then.  And when we had our morning practices, sometimes as early as, shudder, ELEVEN IN THE A.M., and I would wear sunglasses for a good part of it because it hurt to open my eyes before noon, the leader, Sean, would say things like, Gee, Deb, you're singing phlegm-tastically today.  And I would say, Yes, Sean, I'm thinking of having a phlegm-oscopy later.  And he would say, you mean, you're probably going to drink too much beer and have several cigarettes and possibly smoke some weed?  I'm phlegm-static for you.  And I would nod and grimace because, for the love of GOD, it was still pre-noon, and people should not have to do anything but sleep when it is pre-noon.

*chuckles, to cover the sound of sobs emanating from the chest area, which is harder to mask than usual what with all the phlegmaginousness, because it's funny/sad that I used to approximate. illness. by concocting phlegm, like some kind of phlegm-atician, by doing things like paying for alcohol and cigarettes, with money, the PAPER KIND, the kind that also does things like pay one's mortgage and fits beautifully inside a college fund for one's child/ren, and it also looks really pretty inside of a wallet, rather than the other version, where the wallet is thin and sad and empty, and, see?  what I mean?  about funny/sad?  or maybe I meant sad/true - do me a favor; don't tell me which one it is - I'd rather not know*

Sorry.

Did I mention, I've been sick for like, approximately somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen-thousand weeks?  Or possibly just seven.  But it feels closer to the former than the latter. 

I love being sick, was really my only point.  It feels good.  I just can't get enough of it.  That probably explains why, lately, when I've started to rise back up through the ether to health-land, I find myself licking my son's face in hopes of picking up some stray sickitude, in order to remain ill for an indefinite period, AT ALL COSTS. 

p.s. Our Volvo is going away, soon, this week in fact, because we are pore and also stupid.  It was a lease that has now, uh, released, uh, itself.  We should not have been driving a Volvo, unless it was old x free to the third power.  But we were dumb, we were pre-parents, and now we know better, and we will begin driving the many-years-ancient American-made minivan that was bequeathed to us rather lately, i.e., this evening, by my parents, who are not as dumb as us  (I think they're going to eventually upgrade, that is, when they get back from their latest RV trip which begins Thursday, which I'm glad they're going to have but also bummed that they won't be here to rescue my pathetic ass when the menagerie of illnesses take a darker, menacing turn, which I am quietly afraid will happen now that my safety net is driving off to Florida for two months or something insane like that, I know, I can't blame 'em, but DAMN I wish I weren't so dependent on them these days).

(I am, in fact, psyched [!!! - dork!] to drive the minivan.  It equates to this:  not so struggle-y when putting J in the car seat.  And that is my life, melted down to its essence.)

Good night.  The end.

p.p.s. I give drivel a bad name, don't I.  Love me, love the drivel.

*departs from pc to hack up several pieces of lung*

if only i weren't already married.

Because I would totally ask Mary's friend to be my main dude (what.  I just watched Weird Science this week.  I cannot help the John Hughes-esque post-language-effect.  I am powerless in the face of his lexicon-twisting ways). 

You'll be lining up to arm-wrestle me for him when you see the photos and read the ensuing explanation of his fu-manchu sale.

God, but I loves me some funny-arse mens.  Or I just love to laugh.  Like that dude in the Mary Poppins movie, the one who was into inhaling helium.  Dude.  That is mighty hard on the cellular structure in your head, yo.  I've heard.  (Listen.  I was not a helium junkie.  I knew some at one point, people who were tattoo artists and used to sit around sucking helium outta their giant can of it between clients, makes ya want to run out and get one, right?  A tattoo, not a giant can of helium.  Anyway, I admit to occasionally sucking the helium out of a half-flat balloon for the giggling effect, and because I like to pretend I was in The Wizard of Oz - I do a mean Lollipop Kids even without the helium assistance - but I didn't even inhale *once* when I hung around the tattoo-shop-helium-junkie dudes.  And I never plan to run for elected office so it doesn't matter whether that is true or not.  But it is true.  Oh my GOD how did I go over here?  *traipses lamely back to original point only to find it has disappeared because it was completely without merit*)

Also, did anyone else bother to stay up well past their bedtime to witness that kinda enchanting new show after Lost?  I shouldn't have, because the cold that was already knocking heavily at my immune system's door managed to find an unlocked window and crept in anyway, after less sleep than was necessary; but it's a funny show!  Worth it, immune system!  Nyahh!  Of course, you're kind having the last laugh, because I woke up with something standing on my throat and chest, plus!, another! round! of! pink! eye! to stave off, but technically, not so much, because I will laugh next week at that same show's next episode while you're all healed and boring and bothering me for theraflu or whatever and I'll be all, um, ew, how about a nice gin martini?, and you'll be all, um, gross.  And then I'll crank up my middle finger for you and drink two gin martinis just to show ya, and then in the morning you'll be holding my brain between your cruel hands and squeezing it with that stupid vice-thingy you insist on retaining even though we have had many, many conversations about why you need to just throw it out or donate it or something.  So, I guess this round -- alright, okay, you win.

Just don't get too comfortable.  Well, you're pretty comfortable.  I meant that you had better have some speedy moving plans, if the barrel of tea mixed with vitamin c and trader joe's version of airborne I'm in the act of consuming has anything to say.  And it has lots to say.  Like, shove off, ya mealy-mouthed bastard!  And other things like that.

Yeah.