i obsess.

to market.

We're selling our house.  I cannot breathe under the weight of this debt.  Neither can Caleb. 

Jack will adjust. 

We'll be spending all of our time and energy on finishing the painting and other little tidbits, plus refinishing the bathtub and retiling around it + installing a showerhead (the fucking ASSHOLES who owned prior to us dismantled the perfectly good, working shower because, from what we can guess, the tile they'd purchased was on clearance and there was only enough left to go halfway up the wall, so rather than buy more expensive tile, they removed the shower element.  I. HATE. THEM. SO MUCH.  I WILL NOT MISS HATING THEM. SO. MUCH).

Oh, the amount of hate I've felt for those people in the last year; the day we took possession of this house, I began feeling a horrific loathing for them, because they left piles of their shit in the garage and in the kitchen and in the basement, and they didn't clean ANYTHING -- ATRHGKLAL;DSKJFASDKFJ!!!!!@#$%@$#%@ so ANGRY! --- STILL!!! 

*breathes deeply*

*breathes deeply some more*

*throws things*

Anyway, where was I?, so I called Caleb and said, I don't want to live here.  I have a terrible feeling about this house.  He was driving over with his brother, in the rental van, a van already packed with our things.  I told him he could turn around and drive it to my parents' house (they live in a large place that, since they've been empty-nesters, has ample space for our junk, and while I dread the thought of living with my parents, I figured we could find something to rent inside of a week, so it was more just a rest stop, a horrible one, but better than making a tragic financial error).  He said, NO, DEBBIE, WE'RE NOT DOING THAT.  I cried, he yelled, I yelled, I backed down.

The agent told me, after I called him, that he'd let the former owners know through their agent about needing to pick up the rest of their things, and that they'd schedule a time to do so.

A few hours later, while I was unpacking and trying to cope with the bile in my throat over how filthy, HOW FUCKING DISGUSTING everything in the house was, how I didn't want to set any of our stuff down on any of the vile surfaces, there was suddenly someone yelling at me from the garage.  It was, natch, the former owners, or, more precisely, the former owner-dude and three of their four children.  I went into the garage and said, um, yes?  What do you need?  (I was shaking with anger.)  The (late-forties-ish) owner-dude wouldn't look at me, and since he was wearing those cheesy, dark Oakleys with the sharp corners, the ones from the nineties that guys wear while riding fucking ski-doos, along with his killer muscle shirt, wearing those fucking sunglasses while inside the dark garage, I was kind of alright with that.  I spoke with his teenage son who asked just what I wanted them to take.  I pointed at the piles (having already moved all of their nasty kitchen shit, all of the gross dishes and containers of MOLDING FOOD and the CRAP table and broken chairs into the garage, next to the disgusting garage refrigerator full of years of mold and filth, plus other boxes packed with nasty, extraneous detritus that I used gloves to carry) and said, please take ALL OF YOUR THINGS.  ALL OF THEM.  And then I went back into the master bedroom to sort out where I was going to PUT my clean, nice things in that filthy fucking disaster of a house.

A few minutes later, I heard the kid yelling at me.  Lady?  Lady, do you want this?

I was fuming when I walked back toward the garage.

What?  I asked.  What is it?

Lady, the kid said, rather quietly, do you want to keep the microwave?

NO.  No, I don't.  I HAVE a microwave.  Please take ALL.   OF.   YOUR.   THINGS.

ALL OF THEM.

I pivoted and left.

The last time he yelled at me, I was on the phone with my mother-in-law, pacing and crying and swearing about how much I did not want to live in that fucking squalid mess of a building, especially given how horrible the people were that we were buying from, I was coming to discover.  I told her I'd call her back, and stomped back to the garage. 

Lady, do you want this box full of spa stuff?  It's for the hot tub and the pool.

Fine.  Yes.  Leave the box in the garage. 

A trail of smoke followed me back to the bedroom.

I hunkered down and waited for their car to leave, talking to my mother-in-law in a muted string of castrated screams, and when I heard silence emanating from the other end of the house, I went and peeked out.  They were gone. 

There was still a stack of their shit.

::inner rage became a physical tyrant, leaving my body momentarily and filling the garage like a violent storm::

I reigned it in and went back to determining where things would, where they COULD, go.

We found out later, after the papers had been signed and all was done, that the spa they'd sworn was working?  Wasn't.  And that the furnace was beyond repair, and that the water heater was on the verge of needing to be replaced.  (Some of this we knew, sorta, through the home inspection, but our inspector explained that the furnace could probably be serviced.  He was in error.  The water heater hasn't started leaking yet, which is why it's the only thing we haven't had to replace.  However, if we have to, we'll work out a deal with the future buyers, because WE'RE HONEST LIKE THAT.  Did I mention that the a/c broke about eleven months into our residence here?  Yes.  We are currently faced with either fixing or replacing it.)  (Yay.)

They freaked out when Caleb began emptying the pool (the CHEESY AS FUCKING HELL LINER POOL THAT THEY'D TRIED TO MAKE LOOK LIKE AN INGROUND POOL BY DIGGING A HOLE IN THE GROUND AND LOWERING IT INTO THE HOLE) into the street, a few days after we'd gotten our things all moved in; they called their agent, who called ours, who called us, because, you see, they were standing on the property across the street, watching the water empty into the gutter.  Get this: they are adopted grandkids of the people who live directly across from us. 

AND THEY COME OVER AT LEAST TWICE A WEEK.

*shoots self in brain*

Also.  She always uses our driveway to back into when she's leaving the neighbor's house.  But I dare not speak of it, or I shall simply melt into a puddle of rage, and also, I'll be late for my second fucking interview with a company I've already worked for for two + years.  This is a job that pays approximately $9-$10 an hour.  You'd think it was a high-salaried upper-management position with a Fortune 500 corporation, given the litany of phone and in-person interviews I've had to conduct with them in the last two months.  Oh, and sending them my resume.  Twice.  (Did I mention, I WORKED FOR THEM FOR TWO YEARS?)  Sigh.  We are broke.  I have to take the flak.  It's probably good for me anyway.  Humble pie.   Yum!  (brain = not very tricked.)

Suffice it to say, I want to move like I have never wanted anything in my life.

Wish us luck.

No.

Wish *me* luck, because if we don't sell this house soon, I will go through with that suicide pact I made with me last week.

I'm almost serious.

*shakes fist at house*

*clique, clique*

Or:  The Road to Success is Paved with Assholes.

We would sit on the bench along the rear wall of the dressing room lockers and discuss books and music and film while waiting for our turn at "up-time" - a horrible cat-walk get-the-evening-going system devised by the pimpy manager of the club where we worked, Pure Platinum (yes, that was the real name *gags*).  There were two locations; one sort of along the freeway in the middle of a random strata of San Diego burroughs, and one near the airport.  We worked at the one along the freeway.  It was considered the better of the two, which was laughable to us.  Sometimes, during a table dance (and they meant it, at this joint; the dancing was done in a little circular cut-out on the top of the tables) one would cling to the ceiling for balance during the routine, often meaning that bits of decrepit ceiling would flake off and drift down into one's locks.  Picking them out later was a true delight.

There were several dancers who would sit in the same seats, night after night, in front of the mirror that stretched along the wall just beyond the door into the dressing room. It was as if those seats belonged to them.  They were senior dancers in the club and also usually the best money-makers, and they were entitled, somehow, and no one else dared sit there.  Well, there were nights where those girls weren't working and then a second-tier dancer would take her seat; but otherwise, it was understood.  They got those spots.

We called them the mirror-girls.  When we were together and away from the club, we'd mimic them and their almost-ghoulish behavior while putting on their faces; how they spoke to one another, how they flipped their hair, how much rouge they applied to their decolletage. 

They had a name for us, too.  One night, one of the girls flipped her hair and, turning to give us the once-over while we mused quietly on Hemingway and feminism, said something pointed about our being "the nerd group."

We all laughed, genuinely laughed, laughed so hard the three of us were laying about on the floor in choking spasms.  It was such a filthy floor, too, with anyone's guess as to when it had last been cleaned.  But we couldn't help it.  We really *were* the nerd group.

I was so proud of that.

(I was also proud of the fact that, on an almost-nightly basis, I flashed the bouncer, ready to walk me to my car, and the dancers still waiting in the queue to be escorted out, with my regular bikini underwear, that they all referred to as "granny panties."  The other girls wore g-strings, without exception.  This was in ancient times, or about twelve years ago, so it's funny to think of g-strings being so edgy.  But they were.  Going commando wouldn't become a thing until at least a few years later on.)

I'm pleased when I'm not associated with what everyone else is doing in a large group.  To be different, to be able to distinguish myself from the rest of the inhabitants of a scene, it makes me feel alive. 

As a blogger, I'm glad to not play at being a hipster.  I don't know anymore what's cool in the music world, in film, or the realm of fashion, really, though once upon a time, it was the most important thing I could fathom. 

It's an honor to be friends with other bloggers who, while possibly not the edgiest, are the most genuine, the most sincere.  I'm humbled by their continued search for their truth, whether it means their traffic fluctuates or just plain plummets.  It's what makes them the very most edgy of us all.

And FUCK you if you think you're so cool you can't speak to something because it's beneath you.  Even when it's presented by someone who is lovely and genuine and a hundred times the writer, a thousand times the person, that you could ever be.  Especially then.

May your beloved mirror give you the unending pleasure and validation you apparently seek.  But don't assume there aren't people mocking your every move while you absorb yourself into its depths.

Oh, there are.

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.

money woes don't pack so well into an old kit bag.

Am so stressed out about money.  We're waiting on a refinance that, if it doesn't go through, will ruin us financially.  And we didn't do stupid things with equity and all that.  We just picked a *really* shit moment to buy a house that needed work - and not the kind that was willing to wait for a few years (look for my next book!, about what to avoid when purchasing an older home, and how many cabinets and inch-sized niches to peer into using a micro-lens in order to best determine whether said old house is worth the duckets!).

Will be returning to a full-time position with the mountain resort, in their sales office, at first of September.  Jack begins preschool the same week, and I'll just be coming home from the convention the Friday prior.  He'll be in daycare all day, three days a week, as a pre-schooler, with the bigger kids, in a classroom of twenty children and two teachers.  He'll also be attending grandmacare for the other two days (and thank jeeeesus they can do that for us, although I have my reservations about it all, which are drowned by our need for me to be working full time, so, reservations be damned).

Today he cried so hard when I left him off at school, harder than he has since he began there last fall.  It was horrid. 

I am witless as to how to manage this.

And hopeful that the medication I'm waiting for a prescription on from the psych will ameliorate the scattered, dull memory issues, and general lack-of-focus/disorganization.  Because if I'm ever gonna need to be able to organize myself and my family, this is that time. 

junior-high memories; un-green in their resistance to disintegration.

I spent several years vacillating between being embarrassed about being pretty and being embarrassed about being smart.  (The puzzling element of this sort of vacillating is no longer a puzzle, given my recent comprehension of how ADHD works, and how it's affected me since I was small, but I want to nit-pick the one see-saw just highlighted for a minute and see where it goes.  I'm sure I'll work some of the opposing pieces to death and beyond at a later date, so if you were really, really hoping I'd be squeezing my brain to the choking point on a separate subject, be sure to come back for the exciting series! on opposing-personality-overanalyzation! that will follow this, or, you know, remember how I operate and face the fact that I'll n.e.v.e.r. do this particular study again, merely because I said I would.  *face crumples*)

So.  Embarrassed about being pretty.  Embarrassed about being smart.

And never really making much of either asset.  For, surely, they were that.  Assets.  I see, as an adult, an adult who eats her own heart out over having lost opportunities, having been too busy with the mortification of being in possession of natural gifts that others did not inherit, shame that I was selected for wit (such as it is - ah-ah!, *there* you are, self-deprecation, just in the nick of time, too - I was about to start feeling slightly positive about my minute slice of the smarty pie - don't dilly-dally, now, self-dep; just shove on in and guide me away from taking note of my potential.  Keep me from enjoying it or even acknowledging it without the regular sledge-hammer of shame and guilt!  Do your damn job, self-dep.  Holy stupidity.  Where would you be without me, you fiendish predator?, I mean, favorite lover/hater of all time?).

Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead and refer to the pretty/witty as asshat rather than asset.

They do both share a commonality, after all; ass.

*********

Trying again!  Sticking my fingers in my ears and ignoring self-dep!  Lalalalalalalalalacan'thearyouselfdep youareataselfdepconferenceforasshattedassetsbye!

*********

I vacillated all those years (though, quite obviously, not anymore, *ahem*) about having been smart and gregarious and attractive.  I seemed to have an easy time making friends.  I had some kind of gift.

And then some people didn't like it, my gift, and they stomped on me.  Eighth grade.  A rainy day under the eaves at middle school.  Amy, and yes, it's her real name, because if she ever stumbles on this, I'd like her to know how it still stings, this darkly-lit pinpoint of my memory, Amy wanted to pick someone's hair out with an eighties perm-pick.  Black.  With a long handle.

No one would let her, and I didn't either, but she decided to just start in on me anyway.  Some backstory: my hair was, while thick and coarse throughout my youth, fairly straight until pre-pubescence, when the DNA gods saw fit to bring it to a new plateau of horrid, and I developed tight ringlets.  This was just beginning to happen, but I had no awareness of it as yet, and had chopped my hair off in the seventh grade *after* a very-Brady-perm (I KNOW) left it soul-glo-quality-gerry-curled.  So was growing out a perm and it was still in a fairly awkward period of re-growth.  I didn't really have an arsenal of managing the largess of my locks, yet, because of this new precedent of curliness taking place, and, in fact, developed it only as a result of the following event.  Amy began picking at my hair, and I continued to quietly complain, saying no, don't, stop it, but quietly.  And others began to use their fingers to back-comb it, and suddenly it was The Lord of the Flies, with my supposed best friend, Marisha (also another real name, and another person who I hope feels shame if/when she ever reads this, because I want her to know the sting this still holds), laughing hysterically.  So many kids had descended on my head that I felt a little wild.  The arms, the hands and nails grazing my face, the pulling and tugging and the little stabs of pain, and then I noticed it was raining next to my leg, there were drops of water.  I thought it strange, given the giant eaves under which we had taken refuge from the weather, and then it occurred to me I was crying, *I* was making those drops land, sizzling, on the cold concrete.  I leapt to my feet and threw my arms out, yelling, banshee-like, FUCKKKKK! OFFFFF!, and dashed inside and into the nearest bathroom, hunkering down into a stall in the middle and sobbing.

Jade (you, too, you heartless wretch) and Amy chased me down.  They got into a stall on either side (a chess move I hadn't foreseen else I'd have taken a corner stall) and climbed onto the toilets, choking down laughter through their speech, "Debbie -- heehehehehehheee -- are you -- gasppp -- okaaaaay??"  BWAHHHAHAHAHAHAA!, and there were kids gathered outside the door, laughing like a group of monkeys.  Cackling and gasping and maniacal.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the councilor's office.  (One of the adults working there was Amy's mom.  Well, technically, she was the office secretary.  But she was present.  And knew why I'd been molested.  There wasn't a lot of eye contact made by her with me that day.  Go figure.)

I tried, in vain, to get all of the hair into the tiniest knot possible, with the aid of bobby pins scrounged by the kind councilor, and a rubber band.  I didn't return to classes until the next day.

With my hair in a band and kept bound around my face with all the pins I could manage. 

For months.

Months without end.

I don't just have hair shame because of that event.  I have shame about my bigger-than-life personality, a thing highlighted by the gigantic frame of hair. 

Only, you know, I'm starting to realize that the pain and the power of that episode is ebbing.  At the conference this year, I still grappled with the guilt over my enormous energy x hair x voice x non-stop verbal stream, but it was less than last year.  I told Gwen the story about the eighth-grade hairmare (as I panicked while late, again, to one of the conf. parties, in a desperate hunt for a hair tie), the utter desertion by my supposed best friend (some best fucking friend), and my almost-compulsive need to have at least one hair band and one hair pin (but two or three are better) on my person at all times.

And the telling didn't hurt as much this time.  I didn't want to cry.  I didn't feel devastated.

That's something.

voices carry. specifically, mine. it carries. eh.

This morning, at the farmer's market, with my last few dollars I decided to buy the pig-in-a-blanket the pork vendor sells, and after being handed the plate loaded with a pancake and topped with big chunks of scrambled egg, a long piece of bacon and a huge piece of sausage (the round kind), and some forks, and having poured a big dose of syrup all over the top, I went to walk away and dropped one of the forks.  Bending down to pick it up, I forgot to consider the plate and its wobbly contents, and the gigantic, semi-round sausage, coated in syrup, toppled onto my lap, before falling ungently to the ground.  The noise I made after the fork fell was kind of a "mehhh" grunt, but when the sausage doused me in syrup and then landed on the dirty cement, I blurted a fairly ungraceful "DAMMIT" -- and was looking down at the offending syrup stain on my upper left thigh as I did, so I missed that it stopped the surrounding market attendees cold.  When I looked up, it was to see many faces turned my direction.  There I was, already feeling totally ass-ish, coated in syrup, my fork on the ground, my sausage also on the ground, having apparently yelled through a bullhorn the play-by-play, and everyone was FUCKING STARING.  Sans sympathetic smiles.   Just - looks.  From strangers.

I only knew to do one thing in that moment:  crack wise.  Turning to the girl behind the counter who was offering me a napkin with a lamely sad smile (so, see, I lied about the zero-sympathy effect), I said, "Evidently, my pants felt they needed that sausage more than me."  Only, I said it loud enough for the surrounding crowd to overhear.  Some people chuckled.  I just feigned nonchalance, like I'd planned it all.  And the ultra-nice butcher gave me a replacement sausage.  And I commented that somebody's dog was gonna be STOKED (that is some fine sausage they sell).  (A lot of people stroll with their dogs at the market.  Srsly.  Somebody's dog got the STOKE after my mishap.)

Then I ushered Jack over to a nearby bench, but not *super* nearby where the incident had occurred, you know, maybe fifteen or twenty feet away, and we sat, calmly chewing the different elements of the food, until the people next to us, whose little girl, belted into her stroller, began screaming, "MOMMMMYYYYY," after which, the mother turned to us and said, "maybe you could try and be still and zen like that little boy, the one whose mommy had the syrup accident."

See?

I'm FUCKING LOUD.  Gwen and Nora, consider yourselves warned.  Well, except you already knew that, Nora, and Gwen, you already ought to.

Stupid, delicious pig-in-a-blanket (and, ftr, Jack ate most of it.  Nice, huh.  After all I went through for that meal.)

telephone game.

Me:  Jack, have you seen my phone?  

Jack: Yes, Mommmmmy.  *sing-songs the words while pounding on the wall with a play hammer and nails*

Me, trying to sound patient, because I know that I turned the ringer off so as to not disturb us during the naptime that wasn't, which means I am not going to be able to easily locate it simply by calling myself from the other phone:  Did you take my phone and put it somewhere?

Jack: Yeahhh... ? *looks slightly confused, but gets up and walks confidently toward his room, so I assume he's going to fetch it, which, I tell myself, signifies that he must have removed it, and it wasn't just that I misplaced it somewhere, like, in my bum*

Me:  So, you know where it is? *smoke curls trailing from my nostrils, but still clinging to a calm tone*

Jack:  Yeah, mommmmyyyy!!  It's in da office, mommy.  Let's go in der.  Because, it's pwobabwy in der.

Me: Jack, are you sure you know where my phone is?  

Jack: Yes!  It's downstaiws.  It's pwobabwy in my secwet spot.  Somebody pwobabwy put it der.

Me: *audible breathing, fingers clenched on pant legs, following child impatiently toward downstairs playroom*

Jack: Oh, mommy, it's not in hew.  Somebody pwobabwy took it.

Me: Jack, who would've possibly taken it?

Jack: Pwobabwy the monstews.

Me: The monsters?

Jack: No!  No, mommy!  Not the monstews.  The SPIDEWS took it.

Me: Jack, I need you to help me find my phone.  Can you please, Jack, please help me find my phone?  Can you try to remember where you put it?  Where did you hide it?

Jack: But, no, mommy, I cannot, because I do not know where it is.  Because I didn't take it, mommy! 

*child runs off, sing-songing*

Me: Ah, hell.  *hopes no one of mild importance calls, pours flagon of wine, begins drinking*

And then I console myself by thinking, "If I could just have these, it would all be alright."

(Told you this was a mommy blog.)

miercoles GIGANTE! or, this post is nothing to get excited about.

I added a nice, brief, offensive rant at the very bottom of this post about how stupid and lame that one shall-go-unnamed magazine is, the one that made the awesome and candy-studded Kirtsy change their name, but since we will never again acknowledge the old name's existence, because it would draw undue attention to the other, craptastic joint, well, just, yeah.  'Course, that doesn't mean I didn't totally use it blatantly and repeatedly in my rant down below.  Heh.  I said "down below" when referring to skir-- the magazine whose name shall go unspoken.  Heh.

Anyhoodily.  Read on, brave reader.

*****

Things I would like to post on today, but haven't got the hyperfocus needed to zoom in and analyze closely (hyperfocus is a particular element of ADHD; oftentimes, prior to diagnosis, people who have ADHD assume they're OCD because of this ability to become consumed by some subject to the exclusion of all else in their lives; for example, I once spent three days cleaning a shower with a toothbrush, and I wasn't even on crystal meth.  See?  Sounds a lot like an obsessive/compulsive behavior, right?  I thought so, too.   Turns out, this is the hyperfocus thing.  I would say I'm relieved, only it's just hopping from one lily-pad of crazy to another, which just isn't all that much of a relief):

*write several posts for green mom finds on the skin care products I just bought that are all completely amazing and cool and *also* lacking in massive, disgusting chemicals, and also smell fresh and good and wonderful.  I want to do this especially intensely because, Cristina!, I *know* this time these are good products.  One of them in particular excites me, because it's a line created by a local (to Portland) mom who grows the herbs herself, and creates the products, and packages them, and does all of her own promotion and marketing and sales.  HOW AWESOME IS SHE.  Yes.  I want to meet her and court her and give her a gigantic ring made of yarrow root and sage.  (Would that be an insult?  Possibly.  I would not intend for it to be, but such is my hyperactive, impulsive way.   Bleah.)  (Her product line is called Wild Carrot Herbals, and her farm is located in a town named Rickreall, Oregon.  I just bought the vanilla bean skin cream, and the ingredients are

water, organic coconut oil, fair trade certified raw shea butter (fair trade!), virgin cocoa butter, vegetable emulsifying wax, vegetable glycerin, palm stearic acid, organic jojoba oil infused with Madagascar vanilla beans, sea buckthorn seed oil, vanilla fragrance, grapefruit seed extract and organic vanilla essential oils.  (nothing I couldn't pronounce without sounding out like a second-grader!  big ups.)

She actually printed the following alongside the ingredients list:  Resist the urge to eat it.  I'm grateful for the reminder; it smells that darn appetizing.

*write a post about this new design I made for a friend of a friend recently, and feature a photo, because DAMN but it came out supa-cute.  (hi!  I brag.  I'm a braggart.  Braggy-pants McGee!  Whee!  Uh.)

*write about my burgeoning recognition of how my stripper past is a good thing, that I need no longer be ashamed, and introduce the element into that particular piece about how my shame regarding having been a stripper was always related directly to how trashy it seemed, how low-brow, and not because I felt that it was a moral failing; in fact, I was always stoked on the fact that I had the -- okay, I was totally going to say balls, here, but that just seems a little inappropriate given that I am a female and my dancing was often (but not always, and yes, it was hot when not) for males, so prolly, unless I were she-maleing it, that would've been a big, unexpected, unpleasant surprise to those who gathered in order to watch.  ANYWAY, goddamn distractability *shakes fist at ADHD* -- I am seeing, upon considering it, that my having been an atypical "type" within the stripper realm was, in fact, a path I helped spur, along with the others who were doing similar things, performance-art things, being the sometimes-goth who refused to bleach her hair and wear fake talons and typical cheesy stripper apparel, rather, who made it burlesque when there wasn't yet a revival of such, who wore whatever struck her fancy and even if (only, really, it was WHEN) that turned off the clientele and she was mocked and almost fired on several occasions because she refused to look like the other cookie-cutter girls imitating the Playboy centerfolds of the day, and she wore actual costumes, and played specific music related to those costumes, finding ways to be sexy without being the prevalent Barbie-esque type, reveling in small breasts and slightly-larger-than-average thighs and ass, making no attempt to disguise her contempt for the obvious ploys in which to entrap the customers at the clubs where she worked.

I did it for the love of the dance, of the feeling it gave me when the music and lighting and scents and my hormonal timbre were all just so, when my favorite costume sat in just the right place on my hips and my torso, when the temperature and the barometer and the atmosphere communicated perfectly with my skin and when I felt like I was made out of an astral cloud, silvery mercurial slickly satin, I could fly and I did.  And I could feel the people watching, their eyes as much a part of my movements as the force in my gut that propelled me around the space.

What I did, those actions, the resistance to falling prey to peer pressure, to succumbing to the requirement that I look like one of the long line of prancing, long-legged Barbie horses, in order to succeed, it was crucial, because it helped women get one step closer to misbehaving, to saying, FUCK, yes, I'M SEXUAL, and on MY OWN TERMS, and whether it brings me profit (it didn't, fwiw) is beside the point.  I am establishing myself as being unique, being sexy, being beautiful, not because I look like what is SUPPOSED to be sexy, but what is, in fact, ACTUALLY sexy.  Because I'm a woman, and I can do this, and I don't care if the girl standing next to me who looks like Hugh Hefner's girlfriend is popping another Benji in her already-bulging purse, and I'm smiling nicely because someone just handed me a pity-five, because that isn't what I'm doing here.  I'm proving something.  I'm proving that I can exist in this space, too, even while I don't fit.  I'm making room for myself to fit.  See?  Here.  Therefore = fit.

And now, the suicide girls and the newly popular burlesque theatre and all of the other inroads made by young feminists who are saying, fuck, yes, I'm sexy, and I don't have big tits and I don't have a perky, size 0 ass, and legs long as a colt, and it doesn't matter.  I'm part of that.  I helped that cause.  I'm proud as hell.  Because this movement, this inroad, the one that is still being made, whether women of all stripes and walks and runs and dances recognize it, the movement is doing its work.  It's erasing, nay, *obliterating* all of that singed territory between the madonna and the whore.  It's giving us all a chance to be, to embrace, all of it, the light, the dark, the dignified, the disgusting, because THAT is being a woman and THAT is real AND THAT IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL AND SEXY and it's the wave of the future if we're gonna get the beauty industry to quit wrecking us from the inside out with their shitty, chemical-rich, cancer-inducing bullshit.

Fuck yes.

But I only just realized it.

So.  ADHD?  Looks like I owe you one, today.

*another post idea, if those aren't enough:  to discuss how much I want to return to theatre, but hesitate, not because I can't do it, or don't have time, but because - I can't do it.  I don't have time.  I have already overextended myself regarding time and it wouldn't be fair to my family, and this is due to the ADHD's everpresent lure, the crooked ADHD beckoning finger, the one that whispers, c'mon, Debbie, you have time, and this! will! be! awesome!, and so much more exciting and interesting and captivating than the boring, insipid minutiae of your current regimen, and I say, oh, yes, ADHD, you're so right.  I'm coming!, and then, bam.  Even more overextended.

*more thoughts about the idea for an ADHD book; how I should format it; whether I should consult a medical personage in order to make myself sound more legit.  how I'm going to ever go about actually focusing for long enough to write one pathetic chapter, let alone all the chapters a book would require.  Ruth, your advice is perfect for me, too, but the terror that arises within me when I struggle to visualize myself seated and writing entire chapters, it makes my itching soles almost burn with the urge to run from that visual.

*there's more, but I have to leave to make a doctor's appt. and -- hey!  lookit that!  I'm late.

shit.

*******

Updated to add one more, but no less important, item to things I would post about if only I had time:

*write a post about how much the magazine SKIRT! sucks big, ugly, wrinkled-up-old-man penis.  I would include details about how the big money, colossal media corporation lifted up the combined sk*rts of the women running the awesome, fantastic site that has been renamed with something WAY FUCKING BETTER than skirt!, so nyahhh, old fucking pervs who insist on keeping their skirt to themselves, which, frankly, reeks of slightly more than a little bit of closeted behavior.  And, well done to the woman who began Skirt! back in the day, er, in the nineties, subsequently selling out to the man, and not only did she sell out her preshus, adorable company, but now they're capitalizing on her story to sashay out and playing at how they're small and start-up and cute, too, only they're not, because they're a bunch of old, white thugs who can stop with the pretense at being otherwise and may instead be excused to go herewith and suck each other's old, wrinkly penis -- penisi?  penises?  What the hell is penis plural?  I can't believe I've never run into this particular grammatical conundrum before.

*ahem*

Go Kirtsy!  Begone, Skirt.

NOW I'm done. 

phew.

on the uncomfortable end of it.

I'm so tired and angry - so tired of the ADHD winning so often, so angry that it's got such a grip.  I know everyone deals with something, but this just feels like the merry-go-round of stupid.  The stupid-go-round.

I almost started writing a poem.  But I hate that shit lately.  I hate perfection and beauty and elegance in writing, lately.  I hate composition and order and tidy thoughts, well compiled, on the page.  It all makes me sick.

I'm so tired of it all.

How much of a hot tranny mess is it that I (can't stop saying that) am forever in the tail spin of oh-so-tired-of-this-and-that.  Ya can't get tired of life, kid.  It keeps laying down tracks even while you stare bleary-eyed ahead at the endlessness of it all.

I hate this, this sounding-like-something.  When will I see the day, when will I wake up and hear a new voice, a different, fresh, interesting, novel voice?  I've lived a thousand years with this one, tired of it and learned to live with it and tired of it again.  I'm back here, back in self-hatred land once more, I am down amidst the rubble with my grime-covered hands pressed into the unforgiving surface of this boulder, shoulder blades aching with the lifetime of repeated slow rolling uphill.

I want the sap to begin moving in me.  I hate the waiting -- I hate the bile that burns from the waiting, the waiting.

I'm not good at this life thing yet, am I.

Drat.

deflecting matthew big's hatchet. (hint: move about an inch away.)

Dear Matthew Big:

Despite your attempts to convince John McSlugbrain that you want to hold hands and snuggle and dine under a full moon while supping on ambrosia and Cristal, because you think he's teh awezome, your hatchet-y piece on Obama is unsuccessful.

Why?

Because teh vot3rs aren't as stupid as you are; none of us would attempt to, *ahem*, gain access to McSnore's, uh, "lair."  We don't want to date him, or make out with him, or, god forbid, allow him to run anything bigger than his tongue around the inside of his mouth.  (Even that's a sketchy bet, since he's probably got inactive salivary glands these days, what with his being around a thousand years old, and the tongue probably has some hard work just making a half-circle.  I would guess he has to take breaks before it makes a full circuit.  Which totally grosses me out.  Now I'm grossed out.  Ew.)

Next time you write a piece on the Democratic candidate, you should consider who's going to ACTUALLY be President next year, because, unless you want to spend a lot of time cataloging McTwat's tongue-laps on a regular basis, you're wasting your time writing from the angle that you have just so recently done.  I mean, journalists *compete* to get onto Air Force One, right?  You might want to figure out how to better ingratiate yourself to the future President for that position, and not the future crypt-keeper's bro (dude).

Best of luck (which you desperately need, apparently),

Debbie

p.s. Though your love for him knows nothing of boundaries, maybe try vetting what your hopeful candidate-to-be says when he shrugs off ridiculous accusations *before* he buys dinner.  (And don't forget what they say about putting out without a ring on your finger, either, Matty.  I'd get that ring first, sweetie.  That way, you have something to pawn when the romance is over and your fella's out of the running.  Although I think it's too late in your case, given the head-over-heels piece you've written, and if you *have* gotten a ring, I'd be careful it doesn't turn your finger black.)

 

suburban bliss gone awry.

For a long while, now, I've felt more and more like I need to participate in the political process, that it's my -- job?  No.  That's not quite it.  It's my - duty?  Yes.  Duty.  My civic duty.  As a citizen of this incredible nation, I came around, after a lot of years of active, nonsensical discontent with a system I did nothing about, to the idea the I must somehow get involved in order to see to it that our nation continues to be a place for everyone to live as they desire, not because they're told to, but because they are free to.  Which is why I write for the MOMocrats, and DAMN but I'm proud to participate.

I just can't get over the weirdness inherent in this idea that somehow, because of our freedoms, we're free to not participate in our government.  Somebody, somewhere along the line, sold the populace the idea that we can come home from our jobs, pop into our casual gear, mow the lawn, throw the frisbee with the kids and the dog, grill up some eats, drink some beer, and chill, because they've got it all handled!  That we bought it is what I'm more saddened by, because this recession?  It's got our fingerprints on it.  We didn't do enough to rock this boat, the one headed into ever-murkier waters.

We need to get on the fucking ball, dudes.  This is our country.  If we don't want to see the equal rights parts get tossed permanently, if we don't want to allow massive corporate welfare at the expense of education and healthcare for the little gal's and guy's kids, well - we need to throw down.  Put our own asses on the line.

All of us. 

It's not a fucking right to sit out the game.  If you believe that, you've already lost.

shocking reveal -- mcgramps is grumpy!

The thing in this piece that immediately leapt up from the page was the following:

"The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me," wrote Republican Senator Thad Cochran, shortly before endorsing McCain.

And I have to ask:  why the hell did you decide to endorse someone who worries you?  Is Obama just too off-limits, given your Republican status, Senator Cochran?  Are you simply too embedded indebted blackmailed so trapped by Rove's iron fist that have your balls in a crushing grip to be able to endorse outside of your party?  That's just fucking sad. 

And it worries *me* that you would endorse someone, out loud, in public, to people, given that you haven't been owner of your own scrotum for, apparently, some time now. 

Although I do appreciate the further insight into what McGramps is really like, and not just the loving portrait often painted by his adoring fans, er, the press.

So, on second thought:  thanks for sharing.

the current dem candidacy smackdown, as viewed through the lense of an ex-stripper.

Back in the dark ages when I was, indeed, a stripper - and I happened to be one for several years, so it wasn't as though I just dabbled; I know from whence I speak - I encountered loads of conflict.  From every arena, in every gender-on-gender way.  I saw men fight men; once, when Jay, my best gay boyfriend, drove me to work for an evening shift, he kind of didn't really want me to go in because right before I got out of the car, we watched a stream of dudes exiting the rear of the building, the first of whom was badly bloodied from face to groin.  The second was carrying aloft what appeared to be a javelin, but was, in fact, I kind of remember, a closet pole dowel thingy (you love me for my scientific specificity, huh).  The first guy had evidently stabbed some dude, boyfriend to one of the other dancers, and then got walloped by some yokels.  It was dumb.  Another friend of ours, along for the ride, happened to be an EMT and was all, "do you think I should *gulp* go in?"  I said, sure, yeah, alrighty.  The subtext of that statement was YES PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME GO IN THERE ON MY OWN.  It ended up fine, and I danced the night away to fun tunes like "Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day)" - it has been my humble opinion for the last few years that the title of that song ought to be altered to "Walk and Crawl All Night, and Potty Every Day," but then, I'm the mother to a toddler who has lately made me want to chew through my chains and bolt.  But that's just this week.

maybe more political than not, these days.

This story makes me almost want to giggle with glee, just at the thought of something so stellar happening within the Senate.  Since 2006, the Senate has been trying call itself a Democratic majority, but truly, given their teensy lead of 51-49, and added to that, the record-breaking Republican filibustering, it's simply not the case. 

The following clip from the piece really just kinda kills me:

And though it is unlikely that Democrats will pick up nine seats this year, according to any reading of the political map it remains a possibility — as tantalizing a thought for Democrats as it is horrifying to Republicans.

Sure.  I can dig it.  The Dems are tangoing with a party that has wrought such damage within the system itself, up to and including how the voting process works, I would assume which is so as to maintain their power in a permanent way (not that they'd 'fess up to that, anymore than they'll ever assent to their determination to maintain a permanent, as in, forever, presence in Iraq.  Although even that's not working out so well, what with the new, schmancy embassy's completion date all mucked up, since no-bid contracts are not all that genius!!11!, after all).  I doubt they could grab nine seats and cement an *actual* majority, unless we were back to paper ballots and legally-enforced voting rules that didn't Jim Crow us to pieces (oh, the shenanigans we're about to witness in the coming election - *shudder*). 

But the thought of how horrific that process is to Republicans?  Yes.  I believe that's true.

I also believe it's true of ONLY them - ONLY the beltway insider types, and those who benefit from their corruption.  Everyone else is sick to death of their crapping all over us, this whole business of plunder-and-pillage, psycho non-romantic Piracy style, this we're-gonna-make-us-some-riches and the rest of you can all die sans health care or even a job, 'cause we got ours. 

I keep thinking of that scene in the movie, "A Bug's Life," where they all link arms because they realize, finally, that even though the grasshoppers are big and scary, there are far fewer of them.  Just like in this case.  The rich people are big and scary with their private militias and their fortresses and their millions billions trillions in dollars euros diversified money types gold bullion, stashed in fancy banks in the Caymans and Zurich --

but we have strength in numbers.

a recap and some other foolishness.

I should've probably mentioned that the glitch regarding our very canceled health insurance coverage was repaired within the same day that it was discovered; however, the fact that it was NOT covered for any given length of time made the fever that made me feel like a fever is supposed to and made me reticent to drive kind of fluctuate that much more uncomfortably, because some of the hot/cold flashes were thoughts of whether we might perish because of the no-coverage issue prior to getting it fixed, since I was driving madly in circles around the closest-to-my-house HMO-approved (Kaiser, everyone don't woo1 simultaneously, k) pharmacy for around two hours going starkers with a brain-crumbling FEVER, hoping against hope that the prescription for an antibiotic would just *magically* appear in the doorway, leaning against the sill all cucumber-cool, one leg jutted out, arms akimbo, grinning at me and beckoning.  Yes.  I had a fever.  That I couldn't get fixed with the winking, casual-in-the-doorway-flirtatious medicine because we didn't have coverage.  And trying to operate a slippery-in-my-clammy-palm cell phone, in order to fix the mess.  And there was this kid, in the back, needing a nap, not falling asleep just out of pure spite, and I had the heat up so he would plain pass out from it, only he wasn't, he was back there, laughing maniacally, and I was trying not to pass out while operating the lurching motor vehicle that I'm still trying to accustom to - I'm almost middle-aged, dudes.  I accustom less quickly than when I was a spry, young gadabout.  Look who that joke was on.  Yes.  You're right.  Not him.  Not the maniacal-laughter child.  It was on the not-so-spry-not-gadabout-quasi-middle-aged person.

It was not that funny.  (Happy ending: I got the antibiotics delivered to me by my nice husband later in the evening.  And now, right on target, I'm losing my bowels to when-you're-slidin'-into-first-etc, just as expected, five days in, so all is well, see?  All. is. well.)

*****

I keep thinking about how good this quit-blogging decision is.  I dash about in the mighty-wind minivan (it kinda whistles like a wind tunnel, it's so long and - uh, long), and I smile inwardly and think, yes.  Good decision.  Excellent.  And I feel so good about it, so constantly confirmed, like, god, could I BE any more done with it?, I am so DONE with it, that I want to share it with someone.

But who?

Oh, good old irony.  I see you peeping out from behind that wheel-well, quietly smirking.  You funny, funny contradictory literary technique.  You have make good time with the Debbie.  Yay, you.  Well done. 

Well, possibly not done, as it happens.

liar, liar.

So this is funny.  So I was all, oh, I quit blogging.  Bla bla bla.  And I already had a semi-raging sinus infection when I made that statement, but then it turned into fully raging, and then we found out, due to some system quirk, that our health care coverage had been canceled. 

About a month and a half ago.

And I was all, oh, that's just TOO DAMN FUNNY.  I mean, I split my SIDES spewing phlegm painfully from my sinuses every few minutes for days laughing.  It took TEH AWEZOME and spun it on its head.  I did a dance of pure, uncomfortable, rancorous, head-achey joy when I found out.

(Caleb has one, too.  A sinus infection.  Not a cool dance.  That belongs to moi, thanks.  It's kinda like Snoopy's, only with extra green goo involved.)

Yay!

p.s. If any MOMocrats happen to read this, please know that I was unable to post on the official health care coverage day over thatta way simply because I was doubled over in cough laugh spasms for too long to compose any kind of post, given that it coincided almost exactly with my discovery of our family's lack of health care coverage, and also my sinuses-that-felt-broken-beyond-repair light, carefree, comfy, healthful status.

Double yay!

political blogging, so it doesn't count.

"The 'people's House' should reflect the priorities of the American people, not the fantasies of left-wing bloggers."

So sayeth Dana Perino, White House Spokes-bot.

Why is it that the astronomical, explosive, unheard-of turn-out of Democratic voters for this year's nominee seems to trend away from her statement?  I mean, maybe I'm nuts, and I am, so grab yer salt-shaker, but isn't it funny how there are virtually no news media outlets that are rooting for the Dems, well, okay, there's Keith Olberboyfriend, who we can no longer watch in the Portland region because Comcast yanked MSNBC last fall and replaced it with HIGHLY IMPORTANT WEATHER INFORMATION, and yet, despite that, the Dems are seeing record numbers of voters coming to support them and progressive policy and, uh, LEFT-WING wonkitude, and I have to just drum my fingers and wonder at how those people have arrived at their decision to rid our country of Republican rule.  Where did they possibly find that information?

Because it certainly couldn't be from "fantasy-driven" left-wing bloggers.

Nawww.

Never.  Not that.

*****

p.s. Speaking of progressive politics, and I am, please read Kyla's story about her daughter, and about the healthcare nightmare she and her family are currently wedged in, posted today on MOMocrats, and then call your damn representative or Senator.  This is sick and foul and I want to hit people that run our government because it's so fucked up.  Okay, okay.  Violence does not = the right answer (evidence: Iraq/waterboarding/Cheney's-got-a-gun/etc).  I get it.  Kapische.

But.  Still.  REAlly. want. to. hit, say, Rep. Boner, er, Boehner, in the face.  No.  The penis.  Yes.  And also the scrotum.  Definitely the scrotum.  And then tell him he doesn't have any health insurance, just as he's begging to be taken to see a doctor because he can't stop barfing.

i'm dying of not-surprise.

So Shrubya wants to gather conservative support for the Republican nominee for Prezzy in '08.  Why not?  If there's another Republican in office after him, the chances are slim/none (my money on none) for said fella to peer beneath the blanket of shame that is this administration's legacy, i.e., the thousand-and-one +++ sundry illegalities, which, you know, keeps Prezzy Bu.. Sh.. and co. out of federal PMITA prison. 

Cheney's heart couldn't take that.  Really.

No.  Rllly.

(Photo lifted from this joint.)

whatever that jetplane song title is. from the abyss.

The pink-eye strikes again.  With me, because having come down with a cold wasn't enough to try and fend off the resultant un-sleep that has been de rigueur in this house of late.  Oh, but the fights!, you say, Debbie!  They're so good!  So loud!  So ringing with drama and sincerity!  And people acting insanely!

Yes, that is true.  It's all awesome and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  Well, other than the world I'd prefer where I'm not SIMULTANEOUSLY SICK WITH A COLD AND PINK-EYE WHILE CARING FOR MY SON WHO HAS AN EAR INFECTION AND PINK-EYE AND A COLD AND TRYING TO PREPARE MY FAMILY TO LEAVE FOR SEVERAL DAYS ON A TRIP THAT INVOLVES WORK AND ALSO OTHER STUFF PLUS THE FIGHTING? THAT I ALREADY MENTIONED?  IS BETTER THAN CHEESE.  THE KIND THAT COMES IN A CAN.

Awesome.  awesome awesome awesome.

*this kvetch session is now descended into a place that not even I can handle so I'm going but have a good weekend, and for the love of god, please try to not be me.  just this once*

i was right about stink-eye.

Disclaimer: this post will not be polished.  Just spitty.  Er, shitty.

We didn't get a lot of sleep last night; J woke up several times and it was a rough one.  We all woke up late.  Etc.  I'm already worked from this week of pink-eye and the medicine that we were applying four times daily.  It stung, according to J, and we were really fighting him to get it into his eye -- it was a salve (kind of like vaseline) and I was supposed to, with perfectly clean hands (what a laugh - esp. when having to repeatedly aim for the eyes only to end up wiping it in his hair and then having to rewash, multiple times), deposit a thin strip of it inside the lower pouch of each eyelid, but when I was trying to do it solo it was ridiculous.  Impossible.  I managed it on Tuesday, but Wednesday I enlisted my dad's help, and yesterday I'd already thrown in the towel because I scheduled an appointment to see his pediatrician in the afternoon and, though she said to keep using it (it *is* an antibiotic, eurythromicin, and so the obvious attempt was being made to use the whole round, blah blah), I tried once, totally unsuccessfully, to get him to allow me to apply it, and then I was just like, you know what?  Fuck this.  It wasn't even working, anyway, because his eyes were just as red and swollen and goopy as the first day I observed that something was amiss, so I really didn't give a flying fuck if I got a lecture for not applying it, because it was such a total pointless endeavor.  So the appointment, it blew, because when the doc was checking his ears she noticed that the right drum was slightly red, but couldn't get a very good look with the chunk of wax that was in the way.  She tried to remove it with that little white plastic spoon thingy, which is part of our routine, because he's inherited my predisposition for wax build-up, something I'm not thrilled about, but whatareyagonnado *shrug*, only it wouldn't budge, and he was starting to get really uncomfortable, and his sobs were starting to crescendo, but I had to help her, I had to know whether he had an infection in his ear (he started complaining about ear pain a few nights before the appointment so I suspected that it might be a problem prior to her raising the issue during the check-up).  I held him, dutifully, but it was so hard to listen to him sob and say "Mommy" over and over again, and cling to me, with "Nooo!" mixed in, and that clinging, it was hurting my heart so much, but I thought it was right to find out if he had an infection.  I mean, shit.  I don't know.  I just melt into the hands of the doc when I'm there, she's a good person, we've been seeing her since J was just a few months old, I trust her.  I do.  I know that's probably rather naive but I -- she really does care about him, I know.  I'm a good enough mom to be able to determine that.  I think.

Anyway.  I was holding him and trying to reassure him and then our doctor said she'd rather have the nurse use a syringe and some warm water to help coax out the satanic wax chunk, and not chance scratching the ear drum, which I was all for avoiding, too.  But then between the time that the doctor left and the nurse came back in, he'd gotten cozy on my lap reading the book we'd brought, and didn't want anything to do with the business she was undertaking, especially once she started using the syringe, and I was trying to soothe him but it was fucking impossible.  Squirming and shaking and screaming, he was a wet, hot mess and it was all I could do to hold him in place.  She was unsuccessful, too, so I had to hold him again while she applied some iodine to soften the wax, and we waited and I got him *somewhat* calmed down, and we read again, and then she came back and he saw her coming toward him with the syringe and it was worse than before, and I had to tell my head to SHUT UP, because I was doing the right thing even though my gut said, JUST FUCKING RUN AWAY NOW, just run, grab your baby and run out that damn door.  I wanted to, I was crying because he couldn't see my face, his face was pressed into my neck like he was trying to get back into my womb through there, I cried softly and without anything shaking so he wouldn't know I was upset, and I turned it off, *snap*, when the nurse started opening the door to rinse his ear that second time.  But I cried.  Because my heart was open and bleeding on the floor of that white-and-gray space.  And the wax came out after the iodine had softened it, but also because I was praying openly at that point for it to do so.  Me and my personal jesus were at bat for that wax to leave.  Well, okay, the iodine and warm water may have had some effect as well.

And *then* the doctor came back in to look, and she used the scrapy-spoony thing again, and I was literally spread across his body, pinning his elbows, thinking, with that teeny-tiny piece of brain-space I was allotting myself to look down at the whole thing, detached, I suppose that's the id, right?, saying, um, IS THIS REALLY RIGHT?, and feeling like it wasn't.  But then she still, STILL couldn't determine whether the ear was infected but did happen to notice that after all that skirmish, his ear canal had gotten scratched and was now bleeding. 

Awesome.

So we quit with the antics and I got him dressed and quieted him down and we departed from that tiny, dank space of fucked-up-ness and out to the lobby so she and I could actually hear ourselves because he was no longer screaming insanely, instead, he was happily exploring the toys that probably gave him eighteen new illnesses to carry with us to Cali on Sunday.  But at least he wasn't screaming anymore.  And I got the instructions for the new medicine, eye drops this time, not salve, and it sounded like a dream of ease and luxury to apply it instead of having to somehow keep him pinned down while simultaneously grappling to get each of his eyes squeezed open wide enough to smear that salve into, rather, with the drops, to just drip one in the mere vicinity of each eye, no prying required, oh, dreamy.   Still, four times a day, and this time for 10 days instead of 5, but in the end, better.  Also, after we used it last night, he said it didn't sting, and that's so great.  It's bad enough to have to wrestle your kid into a half-nelson, to then apply painful stuff to his already painful spot, when there's a less painful option.  Phew.

But today, today I was tired.  Today, after I gave him a cupcake and we sat on the bench outside of the cupcake store and he ate it, swinging his small legs freely, waving his cupcake at passersby and saying, "ook!  ook at my cup-cake!  hi!!", with his little chocolate goatee and his little mutters of "yummy, mommy" - when we got home at the end of the trip, lunched, read books, and then I snuggled him down for a nap, and was falling asleep, I was so sleepy, I just couldn't not.  I could not resist the sleep's siren song.  But J, though he begged me not to leave his room, kept coughing in my face, and I was so sleepy and had to go.  I said, "I'm leaving, do not get out of this bed or I'll get upset," and crept into the living room where the sofa said, oh, hello, darling, and reached out for me and pulled me down into its cozy embrace. 

I regret saying those words.

For, upon waking an hour later, disoriented, almost drunk, I spoke briefly with Caleb, then wandered back to J's room, and was met with a scene that made me physically falter.  A stunning visual greeted me:  J, naked, half-smiling, pulling at the skin on his tummy, and his bed, covered haphazardly with poo, and stuffed creatures, also covered and smeared and besmirched with shit, and his bed, the ends, and the rug, and even the floor near the walls, and all his bedding; and there was shit on his feet and legs, and hands, and I began to cry, and he laughed.

And I swore, and spun on my heel and went into the hallway, where I found the very expensive rubber-coated wire whisk made by Le Creuset turned-mangled-plaything lying at my feet, and I threw it at the wall at the other end, I threw it hard.  It bounced off.  Good thing it's rubber-coated.  Made for a very satisfying projectile.

It was an ugly day.

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