i obsess.

why i started blogging.

Thanks for the (much-needed) reminder, Mrs. C.

rememberies.

I'd quite forgotten how inspiring it is to suggest I'm gonna disappear from the blog; inevitably, there's a gush of things to say to you eight people who straggle by on the random odd weekend to peep and see whether I'm still just as seriously incapacitated by insanity as I've always been.

(The answer is yes.)

Feel free to keep reading!, though. 

About bloggers I'd like to hump.  Or, rather, who you'll want to hump.  But you'll have to wait in line behind me.  I brought snacks, though, so that's okay.  I'm a sharer.  As my son has recently informed me that I must be if I'd like to survive socially.  (Unless you don't eat nuts.  Because it's trail mix.  Jack already picked out most of the fake m&ms, and most of the dried berries, so the balance is kind of -- nuts.  Apropos, non?)

Anne Nahm.  Read her.  Well, I mean, it's not a fucking *mandate*.  Just - a hearty recommendation.  If you like to laugh.  Which I do.  But what do I know?  I'm insane.

Mithras.  He's kind of a pompous ass with a sex-blog fetish, and I suppose that's why I like him so much.  Also, he's rather overtly taken with politics.  (Probably a direct result of having a sex-blog fetish.  Once you've gone down that road, it's all cattywampusness from there.  As you've probably observed with other equally sinister types.  Plus, he needs some assisting, I understand, in winnowing down the stale links in his sex-blog links section.  Maybe you could do him a solid on that.  You know.  As a favor.  To me.  Remember?, about the trail mix sharing?  Yeah.  You're that much closer to already-handled nuts.)

better now.  Kristin's writing is more attractive than television.  I do not say that lightly.  Nor should you take it lightly.  Televisions are very, very heavy, and can ruin feet and other limbs for generations.  Or at least days.

Halushki.  (But we've been promised to one another for after our husbands die, you know, so we can hold hands in the nursing home and shit, iow: don't bother barking up that particular tree.  Just love her from afar.  There's to be no snack-sharing on this one, either, yo.  Unless you're her sister.  In which case, heh!, I was only kidding.  I have but the most platonic brand of love in my heart for Jozet.  Girl scouts' honor.  *three-finger salute*)

Lotta and Gwen.  Although my envy for their neighbor-status has lately outweighed my ability to appreciate them as much for their individually incredible qualities.  You can have all the snacks in this queue.  I'm off pouting in the corner, and will be doing so for some time.  (Plus I get to talk to them both on the phone *almost* enough to sate me.  Enough, anyway, that I don't need to stand in a fucking queue for them.  You can jostle to the front here.  Unless Lotta's doing a ring-giveaway, in which case, back off, bitches, 'cause I want me one a' them rings, and I'll do whatever it takes.  InCLUDing pay actual money for one.  Yes.  I know.  I'm a wild thing.)

Nora's taking two this time.  She's rather greedy.  And I'm ecstatic for her.  Also, my mind is kinda blown regarding how amazing science is, but then, my mind fails over simplistic shit, so, you know, no surprise there.

Cristina's rabid fan base needs to rediscover her.  Her writing, albeit far less frequent of late, is still sharp as a goddamn sushi knife.  Go.  Go forth and read.  Here's a fresh bag of trail mix for you (Jack finally decided to eat the nuts, since the fake m&ms and dried berries were depleted).

Oh Joy! doesn't need any bumps from me, but I do find that my heart feels lighter when I read her blog.

Jenny needs help from me even less than the last blogger.  She needs help from me like a dog needs a flea's assistance on matters of -- any kind.  It's possible I may even *damage* her shiny rep by including her, but I'm a loyal, little bag of pathetic, so she's on the list.   (Also, I may be wrong, which means I *am*, but isn't it a little *overtly* coincidental that "bloggess" so clearly imitates "i obsess" -- yes.  You're right.  They rhyme.  Obviously, Jenny came up with "the bloggess" after having fallen fathoms-deep in love with my blog name's sound.  Rhythm.  Feel.  Touch.  Scent.  The way its hair looks just after a dip in the ocean.  The way its ass swishes when it's walking through the mall in adorably sassy* high-heeled sandals.  The way it can carry a tune and bowl every.damn.body. in the room at the karaoke bar OVER with its moderately acceptable quality.  Them bitches is SCREAMIN' when the song is through.  And this blog?  Oh, it just bows.  And smiles.  Quiet.  Assured in the knowledge that Jenny's blog wants it so damn bad.  So. bad.  But we won't tell, it says.  It says this with its eyes.  Its woebegone, knowing eyes-that-are-actually-just-streaming-code, like in The Matrix.)

*Yep.  Bringing sassy back.  It's needing a good airing, I'm thinking.  I'm Irish, so leave that last sentence alone.  Mostly German, really.  A wee bit o' Irish.  Mostly just the whiskey I drank earlier.  It wasn't actually Irish whiskey, though.  It was American-made.  We can't afford the Irish kind.  Those SNOBBY, STUCK-UP FUCKING IRISH BITCHES THAT THINK THEY'RE SO RAD because they make whiskey in IRELAND. 

Fuckers.

Uhm.

Ruth, of the exploding-tampon-Ruths.  You may remember her; she's kind of TOTALLY FABULOUS.  Her blog still, in fact, exists.  She's awfully busy with something she refers to as "a job," not sure what she means by that, I think it's some vaguely-worded insult she made up on the fly to pretend she wasn't just blowing me off all those times I called, but it's cool.  The point, people, is that you need to read her.  She won't write you back, and she most CERtainly won't call you back, or even answer your calls, and at some point you may not even be able to call her at all, because her number will have been disconnected super-randomly, and you may be inspired to drive to her house, all the way across the country, and snuggle down in the grass nearby with some binoculars and an industrial-sized box of Easter peeps, already ripened, just to discover what the deal is with her phone (or you can use whatever excuse you like; that was mine, but it's been used, so I highly recommend inventing a fresher one, or she'll see right through you, and if you're in the field eating those peeps when you do it, she'll DEFinitely see through you because those bitches can make you radioactive, which shines out of your fucking pores, so maybe just stick with Cadbury cream eggs if you insist on eating Easter candy while stalking Ruth).  You may never find out about the phone, though, but you will seriously enjoy the tour of the local police station; it's lovely.  You can't go wrong with that restroom, and those people know how to FRISK. Let me tell you.  It's a hell of a trip.

n+1 = a very good online publication.  I enjoy it, but not nearly often enough.

Mary writes like Faulkner, if Faulkner fucking RULED as much as Mary.  Read, and thank me later.

There's funny, and then there's Melanie.  I'll let you decide what's what.

Did you know the fucking stellar/brilliant Cho blogs?  I did.  And now, so do you.

Got any tips for me?   Post 'em in the repository.  And have some sticky nuts, along with my undying gratitude.  *bows*

the "health" exception.

I had an abortion when I was about seven weeks along.

I was working as a temp at the time.  Twenty-six years old.  No health insurance.  I made about $1200 a month.  Couldn't afford to live on my own because I couldn't cover rent, car insurance *and* living expenses simultaneously.  I had just moved out of my best friend's one-bedroom apartment, where I had been paying slightly less rent than she, with her in the bedroom and me in the eating area of the kitchen (I'd rigged up a wall of cardboard-and-fabric between the breakfast bar and the kitchen for "privacy").  Was in-between, uh, well, just generally in-between (and, yes, I'm referencing The Cure here, along with my horrific life in my terrible twenties).  Staying at my parents while I hunted for a reasonable place to rent that would be close enough into town that I could give up my car and just bike to work.  Had discovered a teeny 1-bed next to Laurelhurst, somewhere near 32nd and Stark - but adjacent to the park, so sort of between Stark and Burnside.  Just where the crummier houses leave off and the mansion-y places begin.

I was still sort of suicidal from being wrecked by my experiences in Alaska the summer prior; being molested by one of my roommates there really fucked up my head and I spent that winter after I returned being an utter mess.  I won't describe it.  I've done so before and I don't feel like going down that path just at this moment.  It was horrid.  I wanted to die but I didn't exactly want to have to be directly implicated in the process, so I just did all kinds of self-destructive things instead.

The abortion was out-of-pocket.  My boyfriend paid for it, as well as for the additional general anesthesia expense (more than doubling the cost, making the total around $500, as I recall).  He had allowed me to make the decision (I'm sure it hurt him very much to leave that up to me, particularly because of the one I did make) as to whether I would terminate the pregnancy, but he insisted that I have general anesthesia as opposed to local.  He knew I couldn't face such a thing if I were only locally anesthetized.

(I still live with the guilt of having had the privilege, the luxury, of general anesthesia for the procedure; because of all the other women who experience it with only local anesthetics, their thoughts of what is happening to them intact afterward.  It is - it is unfair, it is cruel, and I will never forgive that small part of me that was too weak to face what I was doing to myself, to my would-be baby, too weak to watch.  To be present.  I am still ashamed at my own cowardice in the face of it.  When others *must* face it because they cannot afford to do otherwise.)

I never allowed, to myself, to him, to anyone, that I was hurt.  That it hurt me to do such a thing.  I only cried when I tried to get assistance from the state of Oregon in order to cover the cost of the procedure and they turned me down, because, as they explained, I made approximately twenty-seven dollars too much for them to give me even their most basic level of coverage.  The person I spoke with said that I would have to have a child in order to receive benefits.  I explained, but you see, I plan to remove any need for Oregon to have to cover me on their plan on a long-term basis through this procedure that I need and cannot afford, if you could only help cover it.  I'm SAVing you! - the state! - MONEY!, I said, plaintive.  The woman simply shook her head, her mouth a line.  No.  No, she told me, adamant, you can't receive coverage *until* you have the child.  I said, hah aahhaahha hahah.  That's so funny.  I am trying to terminate the thing that would require you to pay for my insurance.  I just need a little help to do so.  And she said, Yes.  I understand.  You still can't get coverage until you *have* the child.

(The irony, of course, is that those who would insist on a woman having her baby regardless of the circumstances, is that she must then scrap and scrape and save and work three jobs in order to support the child, because there is simply NO WAY those same insistent folks will fork over the social services, i.e., their taxes, to assist such a woman in caring for the baby after it is born.  No! to the welfare! queens!, they scream.  Get a job, loser!, they scream.  Have your baby, even if you were raped!, they shriek, and in the same breath, they blaspheme you for leaning on the system to raise that child.  The one they said you had to have because otherwise God would smite you.  You shouldn't have had sex, they simper, if you protest.  You slut, they imply, the corners of their mouths tucked in just-so.  That the man who fucked you and didn't have any requirements post-fuck?  Ah, well.  Such is a man's luck.  Oh, shame on those men, they cluck, their feathers bunched tight around their big asses.  But where is the man?  And where is the evidence?  And does that man get to go on and have a profitable, head-held-high kinda life?  While his child's mother toils and strains and struggles, the system with its allure of come-hither-and-have-your-child, the system giving you another good fucking-over, once you've had it, where you must place your child in daycare and work during the day and maybe another part-time or full-time job at night to pay for the daycare and the health care and the fucking mandatory car seat that costs a minimum of $150 for a decent one, never mind the pricey kind that consumerreports.org insists on if you're a good, mindful parent and want your child to actually be *safe*, the $300-and-up variety, and there are the co-pays and the medicines, the over-the-counter cough syrups and inhalants that you try to give your sick, miserable child in vain in order to help them sleep so you can sleep so you can work so you can pay for the care and the medicines and the formula because you couldn't breastfeed because you had to go back to work when the baby was six weeks old and you couldn't afford a breast pump and then you find out that the formula and the bottles and cough syrup are possibly, no, DEFinitely toxic for your baby, your sweet, sweet baby they insisted you have because God would curse you and where in the world are those people now?, you wonder in the spare moments when you have the energy and presence of mind to wonder and not fall into the pit of despondency over your life, your whirlwind maddening life of work and toil and never seeing the child you gave birth to because they told you you must, backed you into a corner and threatened you with everlasting hell if you didn't listen, and now the aspersions and looks and glances you get on a daily basis when you're with your child, the whispers and the looks and the withering eyes that burn you, because, while it's no longer socially acceptable to comment to a single mother that she's a slutty sinner, the eyes still have it.  Oh, they have it.  And the man is off somewhere in Ibiza with his new girlfriend, the one he met in college while you were with your baby working sixty hours a week and barely surviving.

And the irony of the system giving you the fucking-over after you've already been fucked over is not lost on you.

But I know you're already aware of that.  I just had to say it.  It feels good to say it.)

I left.  Head high.  Stumbling a little on the way out to my boyfriend's car, and letting that be the reason I cried.  But then, crying, because I knew, if I couldn't acquire state assistance, on my oh-so-robust wage, that there were women already with babies and kids who HAD to live on less than I was doing in order to receive state-provided benefits.  SHITTY ones.

and I cried for myself because I had to go through the procedure because I was too unstable to have a baby.  Drunk.  Drugs.  Series of relationships too miserable to recount.  Latest boyfriend totally, bizarrely different, but -- based on my experience leading up to him, I knew better than to rely on the notion that it would survive my - me.  however, I wrapped up that crying portion of the crying menu quick.  didn't need to linger.  this was too important.

I could not do that to another human, not knowingly.  Not with the little handful of sanity I clutched, desperate, like a miser with a small collection of dirty pearls gathered from dustbins around a large city with dark pockets.

I had a dream about it, just before the procedure.  A morning or two prior.

I don't want to relate the dream.  But I remember it.  I still don't know what it meant, if anything.  But that it has remained with me, that dream, makes me feel its significance, all of these years hence. 

I woke up after the surgery and I was sick.  So sick.  I threw up.  A lot.  My old friend happened to be a nurse's aid, worked with the doctor who performed my surgery, only at a different clinic.  I'd requested that she be present during the thing to - watch over me.  She held me while I barfed in the clinic's toilet.

Weeks later, I still bled freely.  New, orange-red blood (because my uterus had been swept clean, so the lining had to replenish itself, which takes time).

I will never forget.

I will never forget what it meant to decide with lightning speed that I would not produce a child that I could not give up if I were to carry it to term because I don't trust people.  That I could not be a mother to. 

I occasionally -- maybe once every few years -- do the math.  Think about him, especially now, in relation to my son.  How old he'd be (of course I have no idea whether it was a boy or a girl but I have somehow, in more recent times, chosen his gender as boy.  Not sure why). 

My health exception was life-and-death.  My own life.  The child's life.  My prescience regarding this subject was crystal clear, the cleanest pane of glass you ever laid eyes on.  I could not mother that child, I could not give it up to some stranger to mother.  I would have done terrible things that the child -- oh, I don't dare think of what I would have done.  I cannot.  They are unspeakable.  Unthinkable.

I was not in the third trimester.  But my health was at stake.  Sanity.  My life.

Now - I have a child.  One who will be (relatively) unscathed by my current bordering-on-insanity, because of, thanks to, my supportive, wonderful parenting partner, and our family.  (I hope.)  This, after I've aged and settled down and done some soul-searching and taken some anti-depressants and other shit, besides.  Grown up a little (as much as someone stricken with the permanent childishness of adhd can).

Is that not to be made exception for?

I would not have this now, my son would not exist, this life we have now, it would not exist, if I had not been able to decide to release that first child from me.

Is that not a health exception worth excepting?  Accepting?  Is that something someone, anyone, could have possibly decided for me, given all the details I have deliberately not shared here - the ones that would convince the most ardently anti-me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was choosing correctly - that is, if thou hast spent any longer than a sliver of time inside this skin, this spirit?  That thou canst do if not in possession of this uterus, this heart, this head?  And to think, for but a moment, that thou wouldst attempt to do so for any NUMBER of women.  I am mortified by it.

Am I a blip on the lefty-liberal agenda?

generosity by which i'm befuddled. also, humbled. also, apparently, drunk, but only on fumes of embarrassment. (and maybe wine.)

I was driving to one of my many therapy appointments this week and thinking, "It's always darkest before the dawn."  (My head goes on cliche-autopilot during the dark spans.  Makes for very kicky water-cooler talk.  I sound like a cross between June Cleaver and the adorably zany neighbor on Valerie.  You know.  That show in the eighties that starred Valerie Harper [or, as you may remember her more immediately, Rhoda, whom I also adored, who also happened to be a zany neighbor herself, earlier, on the Mary Tyler Moore show.  jesus.  This may never end.  Didn't Dick and Laura have a zany neighbor, too?  No.  That was covered by Dick's comedy teammates.  But, Rhoda -- oh, the accent!  oh, the head scarves!  Lovvved].  Valerie, the show, also starred my favorite at the time, the appetite-for-the-eyes Jason Bateman.  Edie Clurg played the zany neighbor.  She was righteously zany.  Not quite as good as when she was the secretary with the endless number of pencils in her 'hive and her "oh, Ed"s on FBDO, you know, the one who sniffed glue and swore under her breath with perfect comedic timing, but -- I'll take my Edie Clurg where I can get her.  Well, unless it's on Hannah Montana, which I just found out she's recently done a guest turn on, because I looked at her page on imdb, because, dude.  I don't have cable.  Or a tweenage daughter.  Or any desire to know anything about Hannah Montana beyond its mere, burbling existence.  Etc.

June Cleaver and Edie Clurg.  Yep!  You betcha!  Fucker!

Wow.  My devolution of/war on clever conversation proceeds at its stumbling-yet-regular rate. 

*pats self on back*)

I am, quite obviously, stalling.

See, there are these bloggers, these people who came outta the woodwork and got together and sent me some gift cards that arrived today in the mail, that will buy this week's groceries, and a free-wheeling trip to Starbucks for treats and delicacies and non-necessaries -- oh, the frivolous things one can buy at Starbucks! -- and a card that is specifically for fun items only. 

They did this, these people, these amazing, incredible, thoughtful, beautifully kind people, because I've kind of been a massive fucking headcase-y mess of all hot messes, well, the broke-ain't-no-joke kind, and you have no idea how embarrassed and humbled and grateful and awed you can be until you're standing in my slightly-worn flats, shivering with shame and blessedness. 

There's simply no way for them to know how opportune it was, this gift, this kindness.

My darkest has, seemingly, broken up and is being replaced by the first lovely beams of pink-and-lavender-hued dawn.

Also, you fucking beautiful wenches made me cry.  Twice.  Then and now.

This week's groceries and dinners and lunches and breakfasts and mealtime toasts will all go to you, since you've made them happen.

Thank you so much.

I really wish I could think of something else to say, something to make you understand how depthfully you've touched me, touched my family, your kindness.  (Aside from making up words in your honor.  Words like "depthfully."  And "happy-diddliferous."  Although, quite honestly, that second one sounds more like something Ned Flanders would say, or maybe the zany-neighbor/La Cleaver would come up with.  Not as honorful as "depthfully."  However, "honorful" is kinda working for me.)

Shit.

(Maybe I could just swear a few more times and call you some more filthy names?  That's always *my* preferred form of thanks.)

You beautiful fucking wenches.   Love to each of you.

Er, that is, to

you

and you

and you

and you

and you

and you

and you

and you

and you

sick *and* tired.

Caleb called me while I was at the Dem Convention last week -- maybe it was Tuesday?  Yes.  Tuesday.  Anyway, he called me Tuesday after getting back from his appointment with his physician to inform me that he had been diagnosed with pneumonia.  And I wasn't scheduled to come home until Friday in the a.m.

That would've been tough enough to take if I hadn't already been feeling beyond useless, given that my laptop crapped out completely the day I arrived in Denver and refused to stay on long enough to let me read email, let alone post anything.  So I was unable to participate at all in writing my experiences about the events unfolding around me, ostensibly the reason I'd attended.  So, hearing the news about Caleb's being very ill and with me stuck in Denver, unable to help, knowing he would have to continue to solo-parent and work while I sat on my ass in the blogger hang-out and did some blogging 1.0 (yes, I read JD Salinger books and wrote things using a pen and paper), it was kind of TOTAL BULLSHIT.

Then on Monday, when we had planned to attend a Labor Day function, we found ourselves at urgent care again, only this time it was for Jack and *his* diagnosis of pneumonia.

Also, some random thing that's sweeping the universe, called cough-variant asthma; both he and Caleb have it.  Enter the ventilator-thingies that little kids loathe and scream over.  Super-double-awesome.

I went to work with Caleb today to make some extra do-re-mi.  I worked on the production line.  The people I worked with are super, duper nice.  They didn't make me feel like a weirdo, and while I've known one of them for a long time (Caleb's been working there since before we met, which means that some of his co-workers attended our wedding, etc.), the rest were virtual strangers, so having them all be so nice was a pleasant experience.  Usually I feel totally stupid in that kind of situation.  But I didn't today.  Just, you know, content to be doing something, working hard, helping out, making a little money.  I worked as hard as I could, too, and they were complimentary, and even a little surprised, I think.  Which was - satisfying.

I'm doing it again tomorrow, and Jack won't be happy about daycare on Friday (it's his first Friday bout of daycare, and since he and his classmates just switched rooms to preschool this week, things are already kinda horrible in that realm, but it can't be helped.  We need the money, and we all just have to hang tight and try to manage.  It's hard, but I'm so certain that there are a trillion people in this world dealing with harder things that I simply refuse to let it get to me).

Hope you all have a nice weekend.  I may or may not be around.  I had a suicidal bout yesterday and am worn out by it on top of the physical exhaustion from today, and don't have a thing to say that isn't dull as dirt.

(Although I suppose the insertion of "suicidal bout" could suggest un-dullness.  But I didn't put it there for the sake of being incendiary.  I'm just being honest.  It sucked.  I really had decided I was done.  Through.  Caleb talked me down, and then I rested for several hours, and felt better enough when I woke up to eat and shower and pretend I hadn't been entertaining such thoughts until -- well, just now, I suppose.  Don't please say anything.  I just needed to get it out of myself.  I'm okay today.

Really.)

minimal effort posting.

The dark-chocolate trim pops nicely against the new house color, I (would like to) think.  I'm a little bowled over by the fact that close to a G in paint and supplies for the overall job didn't really do much; it wasn't until the addition of the $12 can of trim paint and three dark brown plants placed in front of the window, at $8 per, came into play, making the entire effect pop beautifully.  I mean, damn.  $36 to blow it all up.  That's crazy.  But somehow always the way things work in design.  Accents!  Accents are key!  Or whatever.

I really dig the reddish mulch (we just tried one bag for effect, and will throw the rest on tomorrow night, in advance of the appraiser's visit on Thursday - curb appeal, or so they say, counts).  I don't generally thrill at reddish mulch; it reminds me too much of the pain of angry barkdust splinters from childhood days.  But this does so well because our chimney has remained true brick red, and requires a little color balance to pull it into the other elements.  I can't wait to see how the mulch will look around the new plants below the front window.

Caleb shaved Jack's head on Saturday, in hopes of staving off massive heat discomfort (our a/c quit on us on Thursday afternoon, just as the heat wave really got underway; our spoiled asses did NOT know what to do with the 89 degrees the upstairs portion of our house was registering).  Also, who knew?  Cookies and moisturizer don't hold together so well in that kinda heat, either.  Surprise!

Silly monster faces are the new smile.

The back route to the beach from my parents' RV spot at the campground near Tillamook, Oregon, where we stayed last weekend.

A few minutes' walk from our camp site; maybe fifty yards from the bay near our camp ground.

Caleb took this one.  I don't know WHAT he said to that bee, but DAMN.  Maybe he mocked his, uh, "wingspan."  Whatever the case, super glad I was hiding under a rock while this was snapped.  I believe in duck-and-cover.  I have ovaries of gelatinous goo.

Headless man is usurped by small parasite near coastal town!

Sand:  Toddler cryptonite.



Strawberry-headed.  Possibly an affliction resulting from overconsumption of massive quantities of late June Oregon berries?

 

Ocean attack!

Mom!didyouseeit?thatlittlethingyinthewateritwascomingandthenthewater cameduptomyfeetsanditwasso!cold!mommmy!mommy!mommmmmy!!!

This is certainly a look-back-and-sob-in-twenty-years'-time kinda shot, no doubt.

Finally.  FINALLY.  The boy/dog co-entertainment possibilities begin to unfold.  And not a moment too soon.  My (dying-to-be-sedentary) ass has been begging for this moment for three + years.

Idyllic.

A husband who can garden.  He did *all* of this.  I have, uh, real, REAL bad, uh, hay fever.  REAL bad.  *cough, cough, sorta-convincing sneeze*

And the husband pickled these *after he grew them and picked them*:  a mix of lemon cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, green tomatoes and sweet purple peppers.  At first I was all, what kind of girl are you?, and then I realized I may be damning the probability of his ever doing something so kick-ass again, simply because I couldn't let a shot-at-the-funny go, and then I realized I didn't care, because, DUDE.  WHAT A FUCKING GIRL.  THE BEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.  *MY* GIRL.  *swooon*

We gathered eighteen pounds of these bad boys.  Jack even helped.  By not eating what we'd picked.  Seriously.  My husband is a bad-ass.  He culled most of them.  I kind of mostly just grazed and thought about possible blog posts I'll never, ever write down.

"Babe?  This smile is starting to slide south (note gritted teeth) unless you deliver on that promise-of-beer, the one you gave me around an hour ago, back when the dinosaurs still roamed the Earth?"

It has begun.  For the record, I'm totally fine with that.  After all, we'll always have beer.  And that one summer -- which summer *was* that, anyway?  Alright, so maybe it was a weekend.  Or just one night.  Maybe it didn't even happen.  Here's to that possibly-made-up memory, babe.

Note the handy.  Caleb put the whole damn thing together.  It took two days, and saved us a G in installation costs. 

Guess who adamantly refuses to play in it.

Babe, it's a cheesy shot because you're so darn cute in it (but let it not be assumed that I refuse abjectly to post shots of my partner wherein he looks hot, because that assumption would be incorrect.  General apparent behavior of avoidance of deliberate highlighting of attractiveness notwithstanding, just for this particular post).  You almost make me want to have sex with you, you're so ruddy and kinda totally hot.  (It is like. walking. on hot. coals. to say this about my partner on the blog, btw.  I loathe and abhor verbal pda.  Dunno.  Guess I just think it's -- below me, somehow.  I'm a snob about the weirdest shit.  I won't overanalyze it.  He deserves to be recognized for the hotness.  The.  Fucking.  End, Debbie.  Jeeeeeezus.  Letitgo.)

Happy (fourth) anniversary on Thursday, babe.  You so deserve a toast.  What you don't deserve?  Me ditching for a week to attend the Convention while you hold down this end, and we cross even all of our smallest hairs in hopes that the refinance isn't a bust, and put off celebrating our anniversary, again, one more result of the purchase of this home (last year's awesome celebration being, lamentably, the day we moved into the hell hole in the first place, and we postponed our real celebration that time, too).  I'm sorry it's been such a rough go this year.  I'm sorry I pushed us into moving last year, and buying this house, and all the time and energy spent fixing it, and then my being such a mess because of finding out about the adhd, and just generally having too many breakdowns and epic fails to count. But I guess you're still sticking it out, after almost ten years together, and I promise to keep trying, trying my hardest.  Always.  You're so fucking worth it.

beach: 0, flu: 1

We bailed early yesterday from the rainy, yet far from bland, incredible Oregon Coast.  Jack has had a hacky cough for weeks - I keep waiting for it to abate because I really don't see the need for him to endure yet another round of antibiotics that repair nothing, and once it began raining as we tried to walk out to the sand for one more round of diggy/skippy/giggly, we cashed it in and drove home.  Neither Caleb nor I were feeling all too well, either, having both acquired whatever weird throat/raspy cough/icky chest thingy my mom was laden with, and after we got home, Caleb somehow turned feverish and punch-drunk within an hour or so.  I went inside from the back to find him sitting in the chair in our room, shivering, his face dark red, with several layers of clothes on.  He told me he felt weird and asked for a thermometer, but I insisted on just feeling his forehead, which was alarmingly hot.  He crashed downstairs on the couch and I tried to get things unpacked and all of the wet bedding into the wash (Jack had no fewer than *two* accidents during the night on Friday evening/Saturday morning; all while sleeping a few inches from me on a too-small pull-out large chair masquerading as a love seat, so awesome).  Jack ran around in circles, yelling and throwing things.  I solo-parented and hacked and tried not to put our wolf-child out on the sidewalk with a "free" sign strapped to his chest while Caleb slept. 

After I got Jack to bed, a mighty struggle in itself, I crashed for awhile, then watched this old film, Country Girl.  It left me thinking about feminist issues when I ought to have been sleeping, so I popped Groundhog Day in, just to stop the maddening spin-cycle in my skull.  Caleb woke up at some point, at which I, evidently, in mid-sleep, asked if he minded that I was watching, a la, "Is this okay?  That I'm watching this?," even though I was ASLEEP.  So, not really watching anything but the backs of my eyelids.  He was, naturally, confused.

Today was more of the same, and the three-year-old in my son richtered (I refer, here, to the "why" and the "no" and the "I don't waaaant to" fields of HOLY GOD JUST SHUT IT, SHUT IT BEFORE I AM REQUIRED TO RETHINK THIS WHOLE BUSINESS AND QUITE POSSIBLY SEW YOUR MOUTH SHUT *AND* REND MY EARS TO BITS, SIMULTANEOUSLY).  We went out a few times to a) give my husband a chance at a few winks of undisturbed sleep, and b) to fetch more acetaminophen and, yes, a milkshake for me, because it's the closest I can get on certain days to the hard stuff, and I needed it.  Don't question me.  I did.  This = truth.

Mostly, I'm grateful for the shower I got to take this morning, and for the fact that, just as soon as the quilt is dry (which, god almighty, who fucking KNOWS when that will be, it's been in the (granted, totally crappy) dryer for no less than three hours - it's kinda thick), I get to crawl into my beautiful, big, comfy bed of not-love-seat-pull-out-proportions and sleeeeeep.  Oh, and also, grateful for the incredibly delicious fresh crab we ate for dinner, a rare treat for me; we always had the imitation crab when my mom made something requiring crab in the recipe -- the real was way too $$.  Also, I got a lot of hugs and kisses from my terrifically bipolar-y child, and there was a healthy balance of laughter and giggles and general silly amidst the chaos, which must be noted, in fairness.

If you really narrow your eyes and squint, hard, at my day, it was pretty alright.

Pictures of beachy delights tomorrow.  Swears.  The nice, G-rated kind.

three.

She wipes the counter with the once-white wash cloth, the one that has acquired some smudgy, dark patches, even though she washes it in earth-friendly non-chlorine bleach.  She says, look, honey, this is the wash cloth they sent home with us from the hospital after you were born, although they didn't realize momma was sort of accidentally stealing it.  You say, oh, mommy?, Why you dood that?  And she shakes her head, laughing a little under her breath as she wipes quickly and with sure strokes.  You look quizzically at the cloth, for, while you understand "hospital," you only know one thing for certain, that is, that you have always been here.  You have always stood, with your sensitive skin and sensitive soul, in this place, this now, and the thing she speaks of, the time before you, it is incomprehensible. 

You run quickly out the back door and into the streaming sunshine, gliding through it, laughing, chasing the dog, your speed a lightning-quick accusation to her that the moments escape so quickly and she has no more capacity for their importance than a moth does the lurid, shimmering glow of the lantern's beams.

She puts down the cloth and runs after you just for a moment, chasing your little, sweet, precious body down as you scramble away from her, your laughter afloat, wafting to her like pollen, and she catches you up and kisses you abundantly on the full, soft cheek, her heart awash with the perfect beauty of the feeling of your skin, of your body, your lengthening body, and her scaled-down form as it grows leaner and less taut while yours sharpens, she rests you on the grass and dashes the quick-form'd tears from beneath her grinning lids, absorbing it.

This is your time, now.

blogger prom jitters. and a few extraneous photos. you know. for kicks.

Or maybe I'm already going through the post-prom anticlimax.  Which kinda blows, seeing as how I'm gonna have to fend off that particular suckitude on Sunday evening as well.

More likely, though, I'm just stupid-tired.  We (only, the "we" = not me) painted the house this weekend.  I did participate!, though, just not in the painting area of the task.  I helped apply the "caulk."  I'm super-good with "caulk," so it was logical to put some into my hands and get me going.

(I toldju I'z gonna brang the smut.  There.  There's your smut pie.  Eat!  Eat, ya fucking jackals!  If you get this not-thinly-veiled movie reference, I will hug you extry-hard at prom, possibly to the point of making you uncomfortable.

It's what I do.)

Jack has been such a pain in the ass lately.  There.  I said it.  He's borrowed from all buzzy creatures and created a whine so terrifyingly ear-paining, a noise that falls somewhere between fly/chainsaw, a noise that I can only listen to for s o  v e r y  l   o   n    g  before I snap and my face unscrews itself and is propelled with speed and agility toward the nearest precious, glass objet (and no, that isn't misspelled, it's *fronch*, people - le sigh) and both items shatter, only my face is slightly less the worse for wear, surprisingly.  Who knew they made faces so goddam durable?

Not me.  (Well, except that I'm kidding.  My face doesn't look so good after being busted up by glass.  Not that it happens.  It just sounded interesting in my head.  If you were in there, like you *should* be, you'd see what I meant.  So get in there and stop looking at me like that.  And while you're at it, please won't you bring me some cookies or something?  I don't think I can go on much longer like this without a flavorful snacky.

I love a good snacky.)

Want some pictures of our freshly-poo-coated, er, painted house?  (I realized after speaking with my good friend, Jen, tonight, who also happens to live in our neighborhood, that it resembles more poo-ish and less clay-ish, the intended color, only she didn't say it, I sort of blurted it, but she kind of agreed even though she tried hard not to, the good intention of which I totally respect and love her for, but dude, if it looks like poo, it looks like poo.  It isn't her fault I picked poo brown for the paint color.  Which is rad, and means that the neighborhood is probably laughing at us behind their oh-so-much-less-poo-ish walls.  So I'll be painting poo-color-downplaying trim, a very rich, dark chocolate, next week when I gits back from tha big cit-ay.  Super.)

Pitchers!  On with 'em already!

(What conference?  What packing?  I know not of this.  I have things to sew tomorrow, and a doctor's appointment, with the psychiatrist, to receive alms in the form of medicines that will make my adhd behave itself.  What fun to try out on unsuspecting roommates!  I mean, uh, on my family.  Because, I'll be here all weekend.  I'm not going anywhere.  Brain, that is all you need believe.  If you happen to hook up to your ocular tentacles, please ignore suitcases and makeup kits and the like.  It's all -- a ruse.  Practice for when I may actually go -- somewhere.  You know.  Places.  To do stuff.  And -- other stuff.  Hush, now, brain.  It's time to go back to sleep.  Here's your blankie.  Ignore the activity.  You needn't be involved.  You almost never are, anyway.  Why should this time be any different?)

Pitchers!  Yoo!

(Bonus feature alongside freshly-painted exterior; new, gorgeous maple door, w/sweet-ass stainless hardware, and - darn it all if they didn't throw in a buzzsaw in the form of a three-dimensional small child who insists on eating several-days-old hunks of refrigerated, hard-as-diamond bread and flips the buzzsaw on the "richter" setting if informed that said bread has been composted.  Iow, if you paint your house soonish, and they throw in a child for free, just let it have the hard bread.  It'll work the math out on its own as to why hard bread is the anti-delicious.)

(This child may also enjoy perusing the supple lines and details of the glimmering hardware.  Because doorbell ringing and mailslot-peeking are yesterday's cardboard box in the kick-ass kid-fun realm, evidently.  Especially when there's a dog on the other side of the door whose biggest thrill in life, aside from witnessing her blue bowl filling with small, mealy-brown, pebble-like objects that pass for food, is barking at passersby and the doorbell being rung.  It's entirely possible that she wrote the original line that inspired the song, "You can ring my bell."  Although, of course, in dog.  So, sort of this:  "Woof ow ow ow owwwww."  You get the picture.)

(Our bottom-of-the-yard veg garden.  It's even bigger, now.  This was like, a thousand years ago, aka, last week.  Or three weeks ago.  What-the-fuck-ever.  Like I care.  The garden is the MAN'S job.)

'Cause it ain't just gonna make itself, people.  Chocolate cake, btw, with crevices (heh) filled with freshly-canned strawberry jam, and topped with a chocolate whipped-cream icing that was supposedly a layering element, according to the recipe.  Pffft.  I make recipes bow low and prostate themselves -- wait, is that supposed to be prostate or prostrate?, because, I'm totally not looking it up.  Fuck you, correct-word fanatics.  Freaks.  Anyway, I make recipes nervous just looking at them.  (They're all, please don't try to make us.  You never read the directions carefully enough, you're all slap-dash and hurryupmusthavechocolatebrainpokingoutofear and rushrush and suddenly, you have a thing that *resembles* cake, only it tastes like a big, puffed-up pile of baked flour, or something that may have been alright if it weren't burned to an exquisite horribleness that even the dog is *almost* refusing to eat.  Well, except that she would never, because she'll eat bits of things that seem as though they *might* be food, so, yeah, no, she doesn't reject baked-pile-o-flour *nor* the burnty shit.  She's pleasant that way.)

And then he handed me back my beer, after I took the picture, because honestly, who paints a house and drinks beer at ten o' clock in the morning?, and I returned to caring for my child and sipping Pabst delicately through a tube connected to my hat.  I'm kidding.  I would never wear one of those hats.  They don't hold enough beer.

Those plants may even survive having been a) stepped all over while covered with a tarp to protect them from the paint, and b) planted, as shade-requiring plants, in a full-sun-exposure spot.

But probably not.

They tried to get me involved in their ridiculous bubbly shenanigans, but I explained that it's not nice to try to make mommy have to wear a beard anymore, ever since she finally got the old one surgically removed, and the flashbacks about the circus are almost completely faded.

(And then I caved.  I'm such a post-circus-member-bubble-beard suckah.)

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*

Jozet won't be there.  *senses searing, anguished pain in chest, realizes it's too soon to talk about how sad-making this is*

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.

 

Mrs. Chicken.  I can only wish you comfort and rest in the last days of your pregnancy, though I would much prefer you were a few months postpartum and able to join us.

Binky, I just wish you were gonna be there.  It's not fair.  It's not fair that you're not coming.  Okay, now I'm just being selfish and pouty.  I'm sorry.  I know you're busy.  I just - I said that already.  Anyway.  Sigh.

*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?

Oh, and Nancy!, Nancy.  You were there last year, and I didn't take nearly enough advantage of that fact.  I'll miss you dreadfully.

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*

where i smash (meme) rules!, and wax nostalgic about having been a stripper a little overmuch.

I am actually responding to a meme request.  Holy cow cheese.

But it's from Lotta.  How could I not?  She is the dreamiest.  She makes the word dreamy seem too benign a description.  She's like clotted cream (a very, very good thing; I think.  I don't *actually* know, but then, everyone I used to read as a child talked it up enough to make me think it equated to ambrosia, something *else* I've also never had, well, except for that ghastly canned fruit and whipped-topping melange of cloying ickiness referred to as ambrosia - only, really, it couldn't possibly be, because it's GROSS, but, uh, this was supposed to be about how awesome Lotta is, so let's pretend clotted cream is just perfectly whipped fresh cream with the exact-right balance of vanilla and sugar blended into its delicate awesomeness) on fresh, sweet berries and superbly baked cake.

I loves me some Lotta. 

(Lotta.  Srsly.  Be warned re: my approach at blogger prom.  I will try to quell the adhd alpha response you trigger, but I cannot promise absolute control over the bitch.  Only, don't!  Because my love for you is great and unquenched, so it needs a good quenching, but just, you know, reasonable amounts, like a hug, a nice, innocent hug, and I will master the adhdalphamonster if I can.  I mean that. 

Sorta.

I do!

Oh, christ on a run-on-sentence.)

15! Years! Meme! is now underway.  Gird up thy loins, my two readers, for here we goeth:

"Think back on the last 15 years of your life. How would you summarize your life in just 10 bullet points?"  -- Okay, so that would be from age 20, onward.  Yiiiikes.

1.  Ten?  Really?  REALLY?  Oh, dear lord baby jesus.  (yes.  this counts.  it's a microcosmic example of how I, uh, "manage" stress, and have done for the last fifteen + years.  see?  totally. counts.)  Did Lotta genuinely think this would short-circuit my adhd-addled excuse for a brain?  (also counts.  see above excuse.)

2.  I hate tests.  This is like a test.  (this one relates to having begun and subsequently quit and returned to university no less than four times since I started my career as a college student at age 18.  sure, it's a little over the fifteen-year guideline, but I dislike following rules.  this also relates to having quit school so often.  etc.)

3.  My parents.  (eh.  just keep sticking with me, here.  it's the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime.  *my* lifetime, that is.  right now, the roller coaster has slowed to enjoy some scenery.  iow, we're managing.  having a grandkid to proffer when conversation is awkward helps out awfully in that regard.)

4.  My husband.  Who stripped me of my turmoil-ridden "love" life and gave me steadiness and support and a sexy ass.  Shhh.  Don't tell him I said that.  He'll flush.  Which is so cute.  I love my annoying, adorable husband SO DAMN MUCH.  I cannot believe I have to be married to him forever, but I'm so glad I do, all at the same, wildly confusing time.

5.  My jouncing careen from career to career.  Since I was twenty, I have worked in the following fields (shit, this requires a bullet-point list w/in a bullet-point list.  unnervingly awesome!): 

* temporary employee (generally admin assistant or receptionist or file organizer - terribly exciting stuff) 

* staff in the mail room of a gigantic insurance company; part-time, while attending university (I got to use the microfilm/microfiche machine, and include that on resumes, later, which *ruled*) - this is when I began my side-career of snowboarder in earnest, sorta, so the jobs I took from this point on always were in consideration of the crucial need to work around my riding schedule

* day-camp counselor for the city of Bend, Oregon's outdoor program - I loved this job.  I worked with my old friend, Grand Mastah Gretch (I was DJ Deb), and we had so much fun it was scary, literally, for instance, there was this one kid who wasn't even supposed to be at the camp that day, she was just a friend of one of the campers, and we'd brilliantly handed around all of these super-sharp pencils to aid in their pirate-treasure hunt, which she used *not* to write with, rather, to jab directly into a major artery in her thigh, causing it to bleed in projectile fashion, and she WASN'T EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE THERE.  we didn't know her fucking name.  so, that ruled

* server at a little fifties diner, also in Bend, Oregon - as I was living there for the summer, I was trying to take advantage of the downtime, lacking a social life because I knew no one other than Gretch, and oh, dear, if I start along the road of explaining my reasons for every job I will NEVER FUCKING FINISH, so just you never mind, you -- nosy-pants mcgee, you

* temporary employee, some more, which consisted of the same as prior to this time, but I did, among other things, a long stint at a company working with Intel to produce computer processing chips in clean rooms (they designed/built the clean rooms), and it was chock full o' semi-middle-aged male engineers and other leery looky-loo types.  they flirted with me and the other two (female) front office peeps shamelessly.  I really couldn't tell you why I was there, because I spent the majority of my time writing horrible poetry and song lyrics and chatting with this wretchedly cute young man who had attended my high school several years prior to my having done, and was, during my employ there, fronting a band that had gained REM's attention.  they were quite popular locally, and I believe he still plays around town.  stupid fucker.  really messed my head up with the notion that he liked me, based on his regular invitations to drinks and social functions but NEVER ONCE put the moves on me, and at some point began telling me about his new sweetie.  stupid ASS.  stupid, confusing mind-game-playing ASS (and also, clearly I have completely relinquished the notion that I am capable of not involving lots of extra, not-entirely-unrelated details about extraneous happenings in/around each job, so let's all give into it and roil about in the muck of my historically embarrassing stupidity, alrighty?  great)

* cocktail server at a strip club.  this was only for approximately a month, because I bailed soon after to work for a "regular" place as a server, but it - certainly left an inescapable taste that lingered

* server at an El Torito, the one on the waterfront in SW Portland, a part of the chain, the Tequila Willie's version, where the servers all acted silly and sang really annoying, perverse, rated-R songs, and pulled patrons' chairs and scooted them to other tables and gave them "cowboy hats" (paper toilet-seat covers) as birthday necklaces and assorted other outrageous dumbocity maneuvers; and, btw, we were all drunk (and often stoned) most of the time.  my first shift, I was grabbed by one of the other servers on the way into the bus booth and asked if I liked tequila.  I said, uh, sure, and shrugged, uncertain as to *why* with the questions, only to be handed a shot of tequila, a BIG one, and ordered to drink. it. Now.  so?  I did.  I know.  but, what.  I was all of 21 years of age.  not the sharpest knife just yet.  it made behaving boorishly toward the patrons much easier, fwiw.  I fell completely and totally in loooooo -- no.  not love.  just - crazy-for-mad-about can't-have-want-goddammit-gimme-NOW! lust for a fella there, right off the bat, a fella with eyes the color of a dark chardonnay, he was a rock climber, a free climber (they shun ropes and carabiners and the like, and just shimmy up the side of a cliff, and occasionally break limbs and necks and die, and admire each other so much that they have no need of such encumberances as female companions, such is their admiration/love for other, insane-r free climbers - half-dome, dude!) - oy.  took me YEARS to move on from that one.  god but I was a hanger-on-er.  (fitting, given *his* love for climbing, I just realized.)  also dated someone else from there, a (needless to say, divinely cute) boy who I blithely assumed was gay and so was totally knocked on my ass when he requested that I go on a date with him.  and even further knocked out when he asked for the first kiss.  I just *never* saw it coming with this one, even though we dated off and on for some time (turned out later that he was completely addicted to meth the whole while, and EW, because, wow.  I mean, I had NO FUCKING CLUE.  truly.  that was sad, actually.  he was so - nice, somehow, and just, sweet, and -- nice.  poor fella.  he had to call me years later to tell me, as part of his rehab routine, and WOW did I, once again, get completely knocked flat with the surprise of it.  he was forever doing that)

* stripper (where I eventually expanded my conception of flirtable types to include those of the female persuasion, and, indeed, this career was the place to do it, if one were prone to something of that nature.  iow?  i made out with many, many girls during that time.  even dated a few.  again, this is totally irrelevant to my work experience, but not, because it's kind of related to the meme -- oh, right, the meme! -- in that I discovered I'm bisexual.  wooters!)

* hostess at an Olive Garden (it was the first of many cover jobs for what I was really doing; an excuse to provide for my parents and other types, to halfway account for where the money came from to pay rent, etc)

*part-time work for my dad, who was managing a specialty food company's route on the west side of Portland's greater metro area, so we'd service all these different, high-end grocery stores, like Stroheckers, oh, the late, great Stroheckers, the Beverly Hills grocery store of P-town.  I dug that gig, and still kinda miss it.  we'd go into a store and stock the health- and gourmet-food sections with all kindsa stuff.  there were many, many cute clerks and other stocking persons to flirt with when my dad was blathering to the store manager, and it suited my adhd to a T.  capital

* hostess at a TGIF in San Diego, also as a cover for stripping - I got fired b/c I decided to take a road-trip with my cool-as-shit friend, Brandy, to Portland on a strip-tour, b/c we'd both been tanking in the San Diego scene (which was SO weird at the time, I'll go into detail at some other point, b/c oh my god this post), and I didn't adequately cover my shifts.  woopsie-doodle!, this is always the reason I've been fired - well, except for, oh, we'll get there

* one whole day training to be a cook/cashier at a taco bar in SE Portland, and though I only spent the one measly day there, I totally learned how to chop parsley and onions and garlic like a fucking PRO; my mom has yet to become underwhelmed by my ability to crush mounds of those items to bits beneath my rapier chopping blade - which RULES, b/c of my cooking issues re: minha mamae

* a few days at the first Noah's Bagels, on Hawthorne, when the initial series of people, including me, were trained, prior to its opening; the reason I quit? - because Gretchen was in town from Bend and we stayed out late the night before opening day of the store, and I made out with some random fella at Saucebox, after which G and I got in this screaming match about the dumb make-out sesh, she accused me of ignoring her, which I kind of totally was doing, since it's difficult to manage conversing with your friend when some lame-ass has his tongue in your mouth; this occurred in my car after I'd parked in my drive, and we fought until my old housie began a rain of pebbles onto the roof (we were parked immediately beneath his room, nice, huh? - yes, I was quite the thoughtful housemate).  the woman who managed the store was super-cool, though; I totally flaked on the shift altogether, because when I woke up around three hours after going to bed, hung like a mad dog, blearily, to the sound of bleety alarm noises paining my ears, Gretch was all, DUDE.  you aren't seriously going to work?  at six in the a.m.?  don't. you. dare.  and I was all, yeah, you're so right.  and promptly rolled over and eased back into soft, comfy, padded dreams.  I felt kind of bad later, but then, when I snuck back into Noah's a few months hence, just because I craved one of their delish sammys, the manager totally hooked me up - gave me the whole bag of bagels and trifles that I'd ordered, free.  winked at me, too.  whatta cool betch *she* was

* student at a two-year acting school (yet another stripper smokescreen, but also, because I really wanted to do it).  I actually finished it, too.  the whole damn thing.  highly unusual behavior from this adhd-slave

* a karaoke dj, for about a month, at this terrible, awful place my friends and I used to frequent regularly back in the day (aka the early-mid nineties), and the owner, a really sketchy dude who was supposed to be some kinda ex-con or something, was forever asking me and my friends to work there as servers or bartenders or the dj; I finally took him up on it one night because it sounded cool, + I was on a constant hunt to find a job to replace the eeevil stripping.  I had to quit, though, finally, because he was an absolute FAH-REAK.  I only really remember the last straw, that he pulled me away from a teeming throng of people trying to give me their song choice, on a Saturday night, and over to the area by the door, just beyond where a speaker was attached, and yelling at me about how, if he could hear it there, it was TOO GODDAMN LOUD, and I was all, okay!, and finished my shift, never to return (I wanted that night's tips, and I'd fucking earned them)

* band member in a paid-gigging band (even if it was only for a few gigs, it counts)

* paid gig in a short, beyond multiple-gag-reflex-inducing (legit, though! - somehow the gag-thing makes me think of pr0n, which it was NOT - too bad, because that might have made it slightly less godawful, I KID, kidding, so. kidding., remember when I said I was the prude of the adult entertainment industry?  yeah, I was not lying) film

* paid gigs in theatre (like, under $100 for the whole thing, but it counts!, 'cause it wasn't the tainted stripper money)

* (still) stripping (at this point, having worked in Portland, Seattle -- for 1/2 hr, on the strip-trip with Brandy, before we realized there was a WHOLE lot more than stripping going on up in that joint, and we split -- San Diego, LA, Vegas, and I regret to say, NOT SF.  oh, Lusty Lady, how sad I am to have never spent any time shimmying inside your cool-ass co-op walls of hallowedness and dim, dankly odd beauty)

* host/guide for Princess Cruise Lines on their series of cruise-cars attached to the Alaska interior cruise train from Anchorage to Fairbanks (can't dredge any of that up right now - too many broken, heart-smashed-to-smithereens moments to tally while I waste all this time on this effing meme, and Lotta, maybe NOW I know why you threw this at me, b/c you perceived my love for you would tarnish a little as I tried to complete it, and, hey!, but you're savvy, aintcha); fired for having overslept - it was one of their tidy ways of getting rid of employees before the end of the season and not having to lay so many off, which kept their quotas low.  smart bastards

* server at a lousy cocktail dive in Anchorage, but only once a week, which blew, because it was SUCH good money, and the owner paid me under the table, and if I'd been able to even talk him into giving me two nights regularly, I wouldn't have taken up stripping at the annoyingly cheesy well-known strip club, the name of which now escapes me, and I'm not gonna look it up, but it's something like The Great Alaskan Bush Co., ew, I think that's it.  yechhh.  that was a weird effing place to work, the end

* stripping again in LA when I came back to the lower 48 (the term used affectionately by Alaskans to refer to the bulk of the US) - I was really getting the hang of that particular club, too, but then I got SO fed up with my friend who was hosting me in order to be there in the first place, and just, oh, no, nevermind

* coffee barista at a stand inside a grocery store (NOT a Starbucks; also, where I acquired a solid education, firmly and certainly, thanks to a righteous bitch who completely freaked out on me one morning when I had a queue about eight people deep, in the knowledge that rice milk IS NOT soy milk) -- was known to drink sometimes as many as seven or eight shots of espresso in a shift, "just to see what would happen" (I would crash afterward and slump through til the end, napping when I got home for an hour or so) - my friend, Gretchen, our fellow team mate, K, and I referred to ourselves as "Team Peppermint," such was our love of the divine peppermint latte - and:  Gretch just texted me at Xmas of '07 to announce "Go Team Peppermint!," something I appreciated muchly

* stripper, after K fired me 'cause Gretch didn't have the stomach to do it, but it needed to be done, so I don't blame her (or K, for that matter), because I was flaking often and regularly (and by that, I simply mean that I was rolling in *awfully* late, like, easily an hour past opening time, sometimes - I never missed an entire shift) at le coffee bar, and this time was the very last rotation into the stripping scene; it's also when Justin Timberlake hit on me with his gigantic, puffy yellow afro and stupid faux-religious crucifix and dumb-ass coolier-than-thou attitude - oh, that stupid boy, I always thought, until he started cleanin' up awful nice and now?  yeah.  kicking. myself. more than enough to make up for everyone else who would've rolled with that action in a heartbeat -- I just HATED boy bands when they were happening, and was so beyond unimpressed, also, I didn't know who the fuck he was until I saw his picture the next day, but dude, trust me.  he was NOT the fella he is today.  also?     oy.

* temporary employee at another insurance company - I got so bored I finally just didn't show up one week, and was, naturally, let go, but only because I let *them* go *first* - my employment agency was, uhm, not super-happy with me and I sort of never got another job with them.  ever

* customer service rep for the sales office for one of the ski resorts on Mt. Hood

* student at a beauty school, which resulted in my being licensed to work as a nail technician and an esthetician, and I did nails at several racket-y salons where I paid more to work there than I made before I got out of it altogether and went back to the ski resort for another season

* ticketing agent for the sales office of the ski resort at Hoodie - preferred this position to the other one, and kicked ass at it, if I do say so my damn self, but felt like I needed something more regular and less seasonal

* worked at a very posh spa as a nail tech where they paid me hourly if I didn't have a client, SHOCK (srsly, this is not the norm in Oregon, or elsewhere, for that matter; you have to rent a station and acquire clients and it's hard and it takes years to build a business and I don't have that kinda patience or time, people), and the spa was part of a hotel so we always had clients which was good 'cause I made decent money there and worked almost full-time (but was attending school at a rate of 16 or 20 hours a term, depending, so had to have a little extra time to study and write papers and shit, also I was planning our wedding and doing most everything myself so, yeah, busy-ish)

* post-wedding crash-and-burn (got fired from the spa but, for the first time, it really wasn't my fault; the new spa director was gutting the old employees so she could replace them with people she hired and weren't influenced by the old manager's style), had, as I *finally* began my senior year, taken a job working for the english dept. of university, supposedly in order to DESIGN A WEB PAGE for the dept., which is the most laughable fucking thing ever, no rly, it's hilarious, because I?  don't know a fucking thing about web design or html or anything.  I just wanted that job because it paid better than the other ones in the dept., and it seemed more interesting and I figured I could use dreamweaver and it would be fine, and then?

I got pregnant.  and very, very sick.

* pregnancy break

* bought the embroidery machine and started learning to digitize

* digitized for awhile, then decided to start a baby clothes company! -- that went well.  as you can assuredly see, based on how impressive the site is now (iow, uh, flop)

* still digitizing, but probably going to either take another job at a fancy spa across town as a nail tech, working for my old manager, or go back to the seasonal gig at the ski resort, because I really liked that job and was proficient, at minimum, if I recall correctly, and maybe even quite good, and also, I really liked it *and* the people involved (plus a family pass would kick patoot, since I haven't snowboarded for three years, and DAMN would I like to crawl my outta-shape ass back up that hill and do some snow slidin'

Oh, fuck this meme.  Lotta, I love you, but I can't do this.

You totally knew, huh.  You knew I'd end up feeling rabidly anti-meme afterward, and my ardor for you would cool a little, and GOD but you're clever.  Diabolically so.

(don't hate me for not finishing it?)

(everyone else?  you're welcome.  I know.  it was horrid and endless.)

Only, wait, I have to add one more.

6.  Jack.  My little almost-three-year-old man alive.  Wow. 

7.  Blogging.  (okay, two more.)

Fucking blogging.  You are such a wench/my master.  *shakes fist*

It reminds me of the time, *it* being *this post*, when I was in LA, hanging out with a girl whose initials were L.A., srsly, and she and some other friends were about to smoke some pot and be silly and I was all, I'm out.  Nope.  Not gonna.  And they were all, dude, why?, and being total pushers, and I was all, no, because I'm a FREAK when I'm high, and they were all, c'mon, you're with friends.

And then I smoked and scared the living PISS out of them, and they were all, oh, I see, and I was all, TOOOOO MOTHAFUCKIN LATE, YO, and throwing signs and running wild in the local Sevvie (7-11) and they were all, uh.  Woops?  And I was a raging behemoth of ridiculous.

Which = this post, and why I never take on memes, because it's ragingly behemoth-y.

the. end. already.

larnin disabilatee, yor on notis!

I have decided to subpoena adhd with a cease-and-desist warning.  In other words,

I'm through.

Done.

Finis(h).

O.v.e.r. it.

Got that, adhd?  Your days, or possibly hours, are numbered.  (Maybe this would be a good time to sit down and figure out the finer details of counting.)

*****

My therapist has given me an assignment; anytime someone compliments me, I am expected to write it down, long-hand, using a writing implement *other* than something with an electric cord attached to its keys, iow, yes, a pen or pencil-ish item, and paper.  Or, you know, whatever's handy.  Like a receipt.  Those are generally the most handy.  I *have* notebooks and scads of paper in this house, I just don't necessarily know how to locate them.  But the important thing is to trick my brain into thinking I'm worthy.  And stop being so focussed on the negativo.  Which means I'm allowed to go back through all the comments I've ever received on this blog and pull the nicer stuff that you've said to me (even if they were all a heap of lies, real purty ones, but lies, nonetheless), and write it down, with a pencily thingy, on the back of a bar tab a receipt for milk and cereal and local, organic produce.  Also, what Caleb says to me that's complimenty.  And what Jack says to me, like when he tells me I'm nice, and when he says I'm pretty pretty.  Etc.

Now if I can just remember how to fucking write.

the only thing missing is edith piaf on the radio, tinny and scratchy.

Saturday morning goodness. 

(After a successful trip to the downtown park blocks farmer's market; rain dripping from the lip of each vendor's awning, basil, fragrant as hell, parsley that *smells* like parsley, carrots that melt my nose with their wild, intoxicating allure, spinach with big, bright green leaves, strawberries - oh, my, the strawberries.  There's a reason that only about 5% of Oregon's berry bonanza actually make it out of the state each year.  And it's not because they aren't sought-after.  No, no no no.  Also:  fresh, free-range, hormone- and additive-free alder-smoked pork sausages, and fresh, free-range, veggie-fed eggs.  Eggs sold to me by a nice, older fellow, baked out of his gourd at 8:40 in the morning.  Fabulous.  Dude.  If I raised hens and sold their eggs for a living?  I'd be baked outta my gourd at 8:40 in the morning, too.  I would.  You KNOW I would.  Oh, and one last yummy item:  a baguette from the Pearl Bakery's stand.  Tomorrow's french toast.  AWEsome.)

Eggs scrambled with basil, sausages cooked to a turn, strawberries beautifully arrayed, a dollop of sour cream on the berries to balance their gorgeous sweetness, a sprinkling of parmesan on the eggs, and a warm beverage (coffee, chai or hot chocolate, dependent on the party consuming said beverage's preference/ability to manage caffeine).

La Vie en Rose, indeed.

p.s.  Ultraman Love.

(And, yes, that's a very good vodka.  Local-y, too.  I'm getting to be quite the locavore snob, kinda, huh.  Only, not really.  Just - mostly.  It feels good.  Right.  And I do adore being right. 

Or so my partner tells me.)

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.)

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.)

tonight i come out swinging.

I don't really know quite why I said that, I mean, that isn't entirely true, I know that I want to fight the internet tonight, I want to fight my inability to say the things I want to say and do it just like everyone else who does it without constantly peering back over their right shoulder and living in a state of terrify because of what they just told the internet, or, you know, THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD.

So here goes nothing, internet.  I've got a lot to say today and YOU ARE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO LISTEN.  So sit down and shut the fuck up.

Hee!  I just told an inanimate object to shut the fuck up.  It isn't the first time and it is most certainly -- not the first time.  I refuse to promise things that refer to "last" and "first" and "heretofore" and "inasmuch as" because I like to refuse.  It makes me feel coquettish.

So I'm going back out.  Cue Diana Ross.  I'm going back out there, I'm swinging my no-longer-twenty-four-and-solid-as-bricks pins and I'm just shaking it and going HOG WILD, people.

Today, I finally gave the kid a pass.  I told him he could skip his nap.

And he danced on my grave.  Er, forehead.

But first, before the depraved death/forehead dance commenced, I explained that I wouldn't be making him take a nap today.  That we would still read some books, and then go on with our day.  (I leave you to grasp the hell-and-back-ish experience we've lately been living, with the no-nap-sit-and-spin, on your own.  'Cause you're super-smart and I trust you.  I do.  I trust you.  Implicitly.  Is that wise, you ask, as you suck down another bowl full of smoke from the crystal meth you just purchased from a street-smarts-downtown-type?  Yes.  Probably not so much.  Nor is it wise that I am inhaling my own favorite brand of noxious fumes; eau de non-shower.  Look.  We each get to choose, okay?  That is our freeeeeeeedom!  Hallelujah pass the raisin bran.  Raisin day Etcetera.  [brung it back for the lovers.])  <--- I fucking LOVE parentheses within parentheses.   My day = complete.

But after we read approximately seventeen books, because there was no nap for me to point to as our arrival at el fin de los libros, I got so incredibly sleepy.  So I told him to play quietly because I was going to take a nap, and that if he needed to go pee-pee, that I knew he could manage it without my help.  Or that if it got desperate he could call me and I would come and help him.  Which of course happened moments after I had pulled the blind in the front window and snugged down under the couch blankie.  But then he wrapped things up kinda fast because I sort of dressed him and got his hands washed before he kind of really knew what was happening, since the wool in my ears and eyes was taking over, and I got back over the couch and re-snugged, and set the alarm on my phone for ten minutes later.

And then my heart swelled a thousand percent, because he came over and kissed me and tucked my blanket in as well as he could and he said, Mommy?  I read a book for you?, after which he fetched "Are You My Mother?" and proceeded to recite what he could remember from its pages, and I only prompted him once.  He then said, okay, Mommy, time to sweep, and he kissed my cheeks and forehead and hugged me and said, I'm going now, Mommy.  I wuv you veewwwy much.  Sweep good, okay, my Mommy?

And I did.  Sorta.  As much as I could, given that my alarm went off every five minutes and that I only drifted, and wandered, as his voice faded in and out, his pretend-play voice, where his toys talk to one another, and it's a little creepy because he kind of sounds like the kid in The Shining with the finger-voice, but I pretended not to worry that he might try to slit my throat while I slept, although I didn't qualify for full-on sleep for that reason and also out of sheer fear that I would wake up to a house full of toilet water or poo or both.

But then after around twenty minutes of drifty bliss, I turned off my phone alarm and sat up, and my little boy was still quietly playing, and everything was cool.

No more naps.

Coming out swinging.

These are today's buzz phrases.  You can tell everyone at the office I said that.  I'm sure it'll be all trendy by the end of tomorrow, and you can catch the first wave if you really want to prove how trendy you are.  Trendy.  That word has been RUINED by that silly pink-frocked hot mess, Bobby _____. 

Pink-frocked smooch.

I'm BAAAACK, BITCHES.

(Yes.  I know.  You're all, She was gone?  Wah?  Huh?  Hmmm?  Uh?)

(I was.  But I'm back.  Red-alert.  It's bidness as usual.  All-Crazy, All-the-time.)

(sWEEt.)

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!

cooking is my new bag, baby.

I've suddenly learned that cooking is not only not all that terrifying, but it's also totally healing my relationship with my husband in ways that I never before thought possible.  I can't believe it. 

Wait.  Let me stop myself before I turn into a verbal avalanche, which is inevitable, but let's see if I can pause it; we're also getting better sleep.  I dug out all my favorite books a few weeks ago, because Caleb brought them into the house finally, since we'd finished the basement and then the kitchen, and the holidays and the dizzying ride of illnesses had kind of abated for the moment (which is back, but that's another rant altogether).  The books were still cramped and pissy, all smashed together uncomfortably in their boxes, but I remedied that for a lot of them, trekking upstairs into my room while cradling them lovingly in my arms, stacked too high so that I dropped several on the way - just like old times!  And after sorting them out and spreading them through the upstairs, randomly, so wonderful, that random spread of books, so comforting and cozy and sumptuous, I noticed the Ferber book, and I grabbed it along with my complete short stories by Fitzgerald, and toted it to the living room with some tea and cookies and snuggled down into the sofa cushions.  And after re-familiarizing myself with its contents, I grabbed my husband and forced him into the chair across from me, and explained how we'd be revisiting the Ferber process.  To my amazement, he agreed; we've both reached our maximum quotient on sleep deprivation, it seems.  When I consider the rounds we've gone on that whole business, it blows my mind.  But that's all past.  Now is what matters!  Now is in our clutches!  So we set off to reinstate sleep in our home, and it was accomplished within a night.  All we did was ignore the tiny bits of weeping, just plain ignore it, and sleep was had.  It got us into a better sleep place, which sort of stimulated me to get better organized in general (I see that now, looking back), and I started having stuff done enough in the evenings that I just sort of *wanted* to get to bed earlier than usual, and then I was in a better mood, and then the organization process lent itself to my having the headspace to work out meals in advance, and get the requisite ingredients, and begin making dinner during the week. 

Which leads me to this post.  The marriage-salvage, the succor that is my making dinner Monday through Friday. 

I've dreaded this becoming a truth since I was a kid.  My mom made dinner every night of our lives, and at one point she tried to induce me to start making it, and from my current vantage point I cannot blame her one wit, but at the time, I remember thinking, ew.  I hate *eating* dinner; why would I want to make it?  I like dessert, so I'll make that.  I started baking all the time, in fact, and would make a batch of cookies or a cake from scratch at least once a week.  She managed to coerce me into housekeeping and ironing, too, which I am grateful for; but I simply wouldn't budge on the dinner-making.  The reason?  My big resistance to dinner?  At the time, I couldn't have given you an answer, not much more than a shrug and an I-dunno.  Now?  I know it's because my mom, bless her honest, awesome, hard-working heart and soul and every other bit of her, is really not much of a cook.  That's being nice.  She tried.  She came home exhausted from her tiring role as executive assistant to the president of the division of the company where she was employed, every single day, and cooked dinner.  I remember how, after clean-up was complete, she'd collapse into bed, and nothing I could do to keep her out of it worked.  She was plumb wiped.

In my twenties, I insisted I'd never become domestically skilled.  (Even though I would've killed in any housekeeping challenge that didn't involve cheffery.  I can clean like you would not believe.  I love it.  It thrills me.  I wish there a clean-cathalon.  I need that ribbon, just for validation.)  So I'm not sure why I was trying to bother convincing anyone about my lack of domesticity.  I guess it was the link between my mother's lack of desire to live beyond her work and her dinner-making.  It didn't seem like much of a life.  Not one I'd want, anyway.

Caleb's been making dinner, along with all the other meals, since we've been together.  His whole family cooks like crazy.  All the kids, on both sides, are mind-bogglingly skilled.  They can all do that whole throw-it-together thing, the dash-of-this, pinch-of-that, cooked-to-perfection bit, without breaking much of a sweat.  It's beautiful.  I'm a foodie, in the eating sense, and it is AWEsome to eat the food that any of them make.  His little brother is a sushi chef; has been one for about eight years, and throws the most incredible fusion meals together on a whim.  It's frigging fantastic.

It's been an issue, all these years, my staunch refusal to share in the cooking duties.  I do everything else housekeeping-related - in the beginning, he shared laundry duties with me, but I eventually took over, and he's fine with that.  I am, too.  I'm so damn particular about folding and put-away and whatnot, although not as much lately, because of time constraints, which bums me out, but mehhh.  I'm learning to live with it.  But I've cleaned the toilets since we first began living together, and at my stubborn insistence, with his willingness, it's been my purview ever since.  I. Clean. House.  He Fixes Dinner.  The End.

Then we had our son, and that just shook everything up like, you know, just as you would expect, only in ways that you wouldn't expect if you didn't know what to expect and didn't read the what-to-expect book because you'd heard it was a crock.  And then read that crap-ass Sears bullshit and it made you insane for months, until you somehow managed to shake it all loose, and then you were *still* lost because of the sleep deprivation and the stubbornness about refusing to cook, although you were actually cooking a good portion of the time for that kid in your life, because you had to, but who counts heating up frozen peas and mashing them in that little food mill as cooking?  Not me.  But then, one day, you're making lasagna, without your husband's help, even though it's this ridiculously simple recipe from your kitchen GENIUS step-mother-in-law (seriously, she's the best cook I've ever encountered in the flesh), this sinfully delicious recipe that makes people ask for third helpings of, but also easy in a way that makes someone who lacks all the cooking skills in the world, like yourself, astonished that you made it.

And then you don't cook for a long time, because that lasagna, plus some lentil soup (also sinfully good, but in a way that makes you have some very painful interludes of gastronomic distress, plus it gives your breastfed baby similarly horrid bouts of bad gas that make him convulse with pain and make you break up with that recipe altogether, albeit totally sadly, and with sidelong glances, because it was *such* a good recipe, dammit, esp. with a side of fresh sourdough, oh my GOD it was good) was all you knew how to make, and the lasagna -- well, you can only eat lasagna so many times in a row, we're talking months on end, before you kind of want to never eat lasagna again, ever, ever, ever.

Ever.

So.  We started to get some sleep.  And I started getting organized.  And to meal-plan.  Simple stuff.  You know.  Spaghetti (a dish I've hated from time immemorial, because of the weekly church-spaghetti-dinners on Sunday evenings, with all that slimy pasta and that oily, runny sauce, sweet and cloying and yet somehow still flavorless, and the slippery-with-margarine french bread, mysteriously dry and simultaneously squishy, and the grey-green iceberg salad chunks, with the reddish, spoiling center pieces, and that white-pink chunk of tomato, hard as rock, off to the side, and the green cans of parmesan spread in bunches around the auditorium tables in the dank basement of the church quarters).  But this time, I made my step-MIL's recipe, with all that good red wine, and garlic, and wine, and liberal amounts of salt and pepper that just FLY in the face of church spaghetti makers everywhere, the flavor in it is quasi-obscene.  It's GOOD.  Amazing.  Good and spaghetti *can* live together in the same sentence.  My mind slid sideways out of my ear when I found it out, that it can happen, that *I* can make it happen.

Hamburgers.  Breakfast for dinner.  Taco night. 

I roasted a chicken and made garlic mashed potatoes, with the potato skins on for added texture and nutrients (the potato skin's so good for you, which just sounds exactly like something a mother would say, doesn't it) on Friday night last week.  Lots of butter and cream and salt in the potatoes, too, and fresh-ground pepper, and all I used on the chicken was butter, salt, pepper and some dried rosemary, and it actually turned out juicy and flavorful.  I made gravy, too, and blanched some fresh spinach.

My marriage has never been better.

I know.  It's kind of silly.  Part of the reason I've stopped being afraid of the kitchen is because my mom stood nearby and coached me while I cut up a whole raw chicken a few weeks ago.  There's something about doing that - it really makes you feel like you can do anything in the kitchen.  (It's also not a little gross.  Yeah.  I said it.  I've handled raw chicken before, in its various forms, and I even helped my mom cut a whole chicken up when I was a pre-teen, but I'd never done it myself.  With my own two hands to rely on.  It's a -- thing.  And given my lack of desire to cook partially because my mom was not so good at it - that's funny, isn't it?  But I think we all can see that it's a little deeper than that.  And we can also see that my cutting up a chicken actually managed to heal my relationship with my mom, which is a nice touch of irony, isn't it.)

Let's end it there, for now.

highlights. (not mine. i no longer have those.)

The Buzz eventually wore off.  Especially when we couldn't get our Woody.  (Thanks to Mama Tulip for that one.)

My daddy's head is my table.  It's cool.  *shrugs*

Still my table.  You know.  Whatev.  *shrugs again*

(Daddy, attempting to be in compliance with the "this is totally cool, no big whoop, my shoulders TOTally don't hurt at all, srsly" gig -- and, in fact, pulling it off nicely, at least for this particular photo)

(Pulling it off less well, and throwing on glasses to avoid being peppered in the eyes with cracker shrapnel)

And, that'squiteenoughofthatthankyou.

Baby cheek.  Soft.  So soft.  (Sorry.  I thought the ride was kinda boring; but that cheek thrills me endlessly.)

Why does it appear that my husband is directing my son to drive into me?  And also, that my son seems pretty taken with the idea? 

Maybe it's just me that sees that.  Huh.

This is a dog.  I am not fooled by your impostors.  This is not Woody.  TAKe me to WOOdy, wretched minions!  Lest I should refuse to nap for the fourteen-millionth day running, and make you gnash your teeth and wail in abject misery!  Or, you know, maybe, while you're dashing wildly about the entire park in concentric circles of sweat and borderline insanity in search of that Woody fella, I'll crash out in my stroller.  For fun.

Ice cream will sate me for only so long, you wrinkly parent-people.  I will eventually resume my beseeching demands for the cartoon-sheriff you are beginning to hate with a deep, seething, uh, hate.  I don't mind being cute for a fleeting moment, though.  Here ya go.  Catch it with a quickness.

I don't know what I was trying to do with this one, but I like it.  Consider it my self-portrait, for there is nary a photo of me con la familia in the Disney series presented here.  Be grateful.  My skin has been in a storm-trooper-style rebellion for days on end and I think it's best we end the discussion forthwith.  Etc.

It's a small world, ain't it.  The whole thing was still in Xmas mode, and J was stoked.  He diggeth the Xmas.  So that was cool.  Granted, Caleb and I weren't really on the speaking tip at that point, but at least J was rocking out, inasmuch as one can on a boat that's crawling along at .0003 knots through the midst of shimmery hula-dancing dolls and the like.  *throws devil horns*

At least he got a badge (not to mention some ears) outta the deal.  And Woody, the doll, was duly impressed. 

We hope.

Baby boy, you make my head swim with pain and adoration and raucous laughter.  And some more pain. 

It's your age.  We know.  We're wearing helmets and full body armor.

(Wish they could invent some for our hearts.)

this is when i begin squirming subtly while smiling in an awkward fashion.

So, all that brouhaha I stirred up about the paint and other make-up of the toddler trike?  I suppose I should try to keep it in mind for future reference, because the truth of the matter is this:

I.e., that my son's utter, unabashed joy over receiving his first shiny, red bicycle (okay, it's a trike, but you be the one to explain that to him, 'cause I don't really have the energy) is outweighing my concern over whether he'll spend large portions of time licking its probably lead-soaked alluring red exterior.

Thank you, Grandpa Jeff.  The recipient is satisfied beyond words.  He'd prefer to sleep with it, but is settling for just sitting on its well-curved black seat for most of the day as second-best.

And Gwen and Mignon?  Your told-you-so's are more than earned.

I'm cool with it.