i obsess.

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.

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.)

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.

taking a vacation from my blogging problems.

Appreciate the Bill reference, for I am full of them just now.  I only finished including a line of his from Caddyshack to Cristina, literally, seconds ago.  Okay, minutes.  Okay, last year.

(Will someone please take this hookah from my lips?  Geez.  It's distracting.)

anyway.  ANYWAY.

I think I want to take a vacation from my blogging job.  It doesn't pay all that well, and while I was in Smell-A sucking down the noxiousness like it was liquid candy, only without the parts about candy that make it palatable, I wrote in my journal, using a pen, and paper, and stuff, and I was all, hey.  I remember this!  I like this!

Disneyland, as it turns out, is like Christmas has become; not all that much fun.  Mostly stressful and expensive (although my lovely MIL paved our way with her generosity, and bought lunch, too, which was over-the-top kind of because seriously?  I think she had to exchange several blood diamonds for the tickets and food - it hurts to think how expensive that place is lately).  And where the FUCK was Woody, THE ONE STUPID EFFING CHARACTER WE HAD TO, HAAAAD to see?   He was Mr. Invisible.  He was Mr. Nowhere.  He was biting my shorts.  Hard.  Only not hard enough to make things interesting.  Or even mildly so.

I did get to consume an entire bag of cotton candy by myself, though.  That totally ruled.

In other orbits: Pink eye makes you look unattractive to people you'd like to work with.  Which blows.

It also hurts. 

And all the illnesses melded together, when you stay with family that possesses a cat that you're allergic to because you're allergic to all household pets that aren't your own because you haven't acclimated to them for the usual 3-4 month span, causes a really cool, smoker/singer/Patti Smith/Janis quality usually referred to as laryngitis in your vocal cord vicinity.

And the garment district, she is my friendamente especial.  I like her muchly.  Muchly muchly.  Especially Michael Levine.  Wow that shop made my head spin in really uncomfortable, generally unacceptable ways.  Thank heavens to Betsy, er, Penni the beautemous (and her supa-crafty-heroic, uh, ness), for standing nearby and helping pick it up and shove it back into place whenever it completely fell off.  (It was so damn good to see you, sweet friend!  Not so long-ish next time, k?)

Also, I dislike drinking water out of plastic bottles.  Sigh.  It makes me sad to drink water out of plastic.  But I shouldn't complain because water out of plastic is better than no water.  And Smell-A tap water = sludge.  The foulness drifts up as you brush your teeth and you almost want to pour the plastic-bottle water on your toothbrush, it's so stinky.  I'm grateful for Pretty Portland Tap Water after trips down south.

(We saw a shirt this weekend that said "I'm So Cal."  I thought it was cute.  I did.  What.)

It's time to start this week off with a bang.  I gotta go hit it.

(Believe it or not, there will be no sex this evening, even after those last two extremely misleading sentences.  I'm just real tired, yo.  Realsies.)

(But that doesn't mean it isn't in the cards for later this week.  Laryngitiz iz zexy.  At least I think so.  Which may mean I could be wrong.  But I doubt it.  I'm almost never wrong.  Ask my husband.  And make sure he tells you I'm almost never wrong, or report back to me immediately.  That must be corrected.  Swiftly.)

(Heh.  I'm totally kidding.  You know I'm kidding.  He'd better say I'm NEVER wrong.)

(wink)

(only I didn't really.  wink.  duh)

(okay!  I'm not serious!  I winked!  in my mind!  I did)

(I didn't)

it's the lyrics that get me.

So far today:

"Dats yo pa-gina, mommy!  (runs off, trailing sing-song vocals) pa-GINA!  pa-GINA!  pa-GIIIIIINAAAA!"

*

"Wot dis, daddy?"

"An Allen Wrench."

"Dats my favorite.  (hugs it to chest, begins singing) Allen Wench, Alllllen Wench, Allllllen Wench, Alllllleeeeennnn Wwweeeennncchhhhhh!"  (wrapped up with big choral finish and flung-out arms)

*

(while driving, and listening to Malcolm McGillikitty, The Psychic Cat, he interrupts my half-humming/half-sing-along) "No, Mommy, it's my turn to sing, now."

"Oh.  Okay, babe.  Well, take it away."  (followed by silence, so I turn halfway around to see what happened, and observe him lip-synching pretty impressively.  he catches me looking and interrupts himself to snap at me.)

"No, Mommy!  Don't do dat!  I'm singing now."

Oops.  Sorry, Ms. Ross.  I'll be sure to have a tinted privacy window installed for just such sessions in future.

something funny and lighthearted.

Because you guys prefer it.  I know.  I do, too.

Okay, so, this:

We're driving to school on Tuesday morning.  Listening to Ralph's World, the one with the Baa-Baa Black Sheep rendition.  He's singing along all tuneless and adorable.  Then the Itsy-Bitsy Spider begins.  He starts to sing, and just as suddenly interrupts himself to say the following, while waggling both of his index fingers at me:

"NOT the chicken dance, MOMMY."

Which prompted me to begin doing the chicken dance while singing along, although there aren't words and I don't really know how it goes OR how to dance to it, also, I was driving so there was that nasty business about needing to steer and its TOTALLY interfering with my chicken-dancing.  (Which I was breaking down proper.  Because I've done it at weddings while drunk.  So I know how to break it down.  Literally.  It was broken when I was finished.  On behalf of wedding-goers from here unto eternity, I apologize.)

He liked it anyway.

*grins*