Legos, from my boys

How my brain works

     "Hmmm, I have a second; I'll check pinterest for clever holiday decorating ideas.  Let's see, rustic holiday, traditional holiday, modern holiday, decorating your porch, decorating your entryway, decorating your kitchen, decorating your bathroom....
      "Wait a second. Somebody has a board all for decorating their bathroom for the holidays? Is that a thing now? That's so stupid!"

I click on it.

     "I suppose Christmas hand towels make sense. And a couple candles. Ooh, holiday scented soaps!"

I open a google tab and search Christmas+scented+soap.

     "Why does everyone show photos of the actual soap? No one cares what their bar of soap looks like! I need to see the pretty decorative wrapper!  Oh my God, why do the ones with pretty decorative wrappers cost so much more than the ones that just show the soap? Are they charging me ten dollars more for twelve square inches of Christmas paper?! I could do that myself with wrapping paper."

light bulb

     "Why don't I just buy the scented stuff in the ugly wrapper, wrap it myself with Christmas paper and a glue stick, print a label to go around it, and save tons of money?  I. Am. A. GENIUS!"
     "Shit, I've been on the computer forever. When am I supposed to pick up the kids from school?"

More on that one quilt.

Tommy saw a quilt on a sale site, that was marked all the way down to $80, so of course I wouldn't buy it. But I did try to make it, although I decided to try stripes instead of squares. So here's the inspiration: 

They do sort of have a point.

Sometimes when I'm on pinterest, and I see all of the decorative uses for pumpkins and apples and corn for this time of year, I think of starving nations and realize that the rest of the world is kind of justified in hating us.

The pressure to be finished with a work in progress is a LOT.

I have picked up subtle and less subtle hints that I should show off my new house. And man, would I love too. Except that my kids wreck it as fast as I clean it.  But also, I have always been weird. And a lot of it was by design.  My mother's voice echoes in my head, "You do this all for shock effect."  I now have a home I love, and feel comfortable in, but are the visible eccentricities just sad cries for shock effect? Am I begging for attention? I don't think so. I feel relaxed and comfortable whether or not anyone sees the man under the stairs, but if I were photographing the house, the man under the stairs would be a photo I'd include.  But when I get the place cleaned up more, maybe for Xmas???  I'll post photos. Promise

What have I been doing instead of blogging?

   

Ryan's quilt.

 

Danny's quilt

 

Tommy's quilt

 

Couch quilt just to try to get rid of some scraps.

I just finished a lap quilt tonight but it's in the wash so I can't take a picture of it yet.  I desperately need more blankets and sheets for filling and backing. I guess I have no choice but to run to Goodwill.  Tommy's and Danny's quilts have $5 Walmart blankets in them and $5 Walmart flat sheets for the backs, as well as (gasp!) new fabric I bought just for them. Swanky stuff. Don't worry, though. There's some old stuff there, too. The tye-dye/cloudy sort of fabric in Tommy's quilt is from my mom's stash, so that's almost 40 years old, and the thin orangey flowered strips in Danny's is some of my highly prized authentic vintage 1970s polyester. They don't make that shit anymore. Mostly because people requested that they stop actually making shit like that.  Anyway, this is what I've been doing while the kids are good, so mainly after they've gone to bed. I'm pretty durn proud of myself, actually.Five quilts finished in half a summer. Not bad.

Best. Weekend. Ever.

Tom let me sleep in on Saturday before he went golfing and then when he got back, I took Ryan and went shopping for flowers, a trellis or two, some bird feeders, and dirt. When we got home, I took a quick shower and then Tom and I took the boys to see Godzilla and The Amazing Spiderman 2 at the drive-in. We were out until almost 3:00am. Then on Sunday I woke up with the boys at 10:00 and hung out with them until Tom took them and their best friend, Corwen, to watch the Monster Truck Jam he won tickets too on the radio. While they were gone, Ryan and I did some more landscape shopping and tore a hole in the front yard to take advantage of the only full sun area we have. We de-sodded it, ringed it with blocks, mulched it, filled a lot of planters with strawberries and flowers, and got it looking pretty decent before Tom got home.

Dirty, sweaty, tired, sore. I have a new flower bed, Ryan has a container garden and a trellis that will grow fragrant flowers right up her bedroom window, both my boys had two nights in a row of best-dad-ever time, and Tom maybe appreciates a little more of what I go through with the boys. Best weekend ever!

My bathroom is an unfortunate and undignified shade of pink. Pink sink, pink tub, and pink 4x4 tiles all over the place.

We don't want to do a gut and remodel because it's terribly expensive. My idea, which I love with a tiny hidden bit of glee, is to wander around home improvement stores and antique stores, waiting to find the perfect stuff, with no eye on any style other than "We like this".  We found a sweet dresser, the perfect size for a double sink vanity, at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for like $30. Now we need basins. To keep as much storage as possible, we need either a vessel sink or a low drop in one. And then we need two of them. And Tom is unwilling to even part with the money to paint the walls! It's a battle. But when it's won, I will love that bathroom forever. Like victory over plumbing.

I am pretty heavily medicated right now.Anxiety meds, beta blockers that I just learned from Bones might make me impotent, antibiotics for my sore throat, Xanax to calm me down when the really super itchy side effects of the antibiotics drive me mad, and ambien so I can sleep though it all.  So I'm thinking pretty clearly and I think I may have cured the world. Just, bear with me here.

I propose a revolution in how we teach teenagers how to live. For one thing, teach them the real boring crap that they should just know.Teach them the actual chemical names for their medicines so they know what they're taking. Tylenol = acetominophen. Motrin-Advil=ibuprofen.  But it's the tylenol you have to hide from. In fact, there's no reason to even buy it. It's not an anti-inflamatory like ibuprofen is, so it won't help when pain comes with swelling. And even better, if you drink and take acetominophen regularly, it's the highest single cause of spontaneous liver failure in the US. In fact, downing a bottle full of it is the preferred method of suicide in the UK. So I think wew need to teach kids that tylenol isn't harmless.

Also, We should teach them how to do laundry. Not the whole thing about sorting colors and don't forget the fabric softener. I mean, how to get black oil stains out of a pink tee-shirt. My daughter wore my new shirt to her jazz band concert and it came home with valve oil spots. First I'll try dish soap, then bar soap. Then the actual detergent, with color-safe bleach, and prayer.

I've probably done this before, but . . . .

I have a friend who is expecting a first baby and I offered him any advice/tips he may want. But I figured a generic link to a list might appeal more to him. Kind of like a cracked.com childbirth class.

1. Pack earplugs and one of those airplane sleep masks in your bag. It's hard to sleep in a hospital at night, and harder still if you're up all night giving birth and then try to sleep in the day. A new mother could hear her baby stir through cinder blocks and earmuffs; the earplugs won't keep her from waking up to nurse.
2. Pack nipple shields, and ignore ANYONE who tells you they're for flat nipples only. I can list off so many people who were ONLY able to nurse because of a shield (poor latch, tiny baby mouth, engorgement, pain, etc) and it literally cannot hurt to try the shield when you hit the wall. They sell them at Target.
3. Depends.  Yes, adult diapers. All dignity screams NOOOOO, but after giving birth you bleed like a popped water balloon and the hospital issues those quarter inch mini pads. For cleanliness and peace of mind, sleep in the elastic waist underwear style Depends for as long as you need to.  They are NO more embarrassing or less stylish than the fishnet disposable panties the hospital gives you.
4. Pharmacies sell this stuff that's basically ambesol for hemmorhoids. It's just lidocaine cream in a toothpaste tube. Hemmorhoids or not, you may end up with an episiotomy and any kind of painkiller helps with that. Also request epifoam, Tucks pads, and giant maxi pads you squeeze to activate the chemical ice back within. And a squirty bottle of warm water. If they won't give you one, use contact lense saline. I'ts sterile and keeps stitches from drying. Oh, and pat dry, don't wipe.
5. Bring a swaddling blanket (my fave is the woombie  but Walmart sells one with velcro tabs that doesn't suck either) and use it from the first. They are wonderful and help the baby sleep so well. Added bonus: it holds too-big newborn diapers on a little tighter, gives a baby thrust into an alien world a new familiar constant if she wears it for every nap, and eliminates the need for most pajamas, so midnight diaper changes are easier.
6. SPECIFICALLY ask for a post-birth IV of pitocin. Put this in your birth plan, make several copies, give one to your ob/gyn before your due date, and hand the rest out to hospital staff when you get there. Nurses are vigilant to the point of paranoia about getting the blood out of your uterus. Pitocin will cause cramping and accomplish this. The ONE time I didn't know to ask for it, they gave me the usual treatment which is to pull down your sheets and underclothes and grind their balled up fist into your already tender uterus until tears gush from your face and blood gushes from elsewhere. Just, trust me. Ask for the pitocin instead.
7. Bring a purse full of sugar-free chocolate bars with you. The last thing you want to do after having a baby is push and sugar-free chocolate has the gentlest laxative/softening effect I've found. Better than stool softener pills, better than prunes or prune juice, better than drinking gallons of water (although you may want to do that one anyway, to help with milk supply.)
8. If you plan to nurse, cut anyone who offers to help you supplement. Don't let them bottle feed the baby while you sleep or give sugar water if the baby's blood sugar drops (if you ask, they'll bring you the sugar water and a straw. Remember holding the top of the straw to keep it full until dripping liquid on the smooshed straw wrapper to make "worms"? Same basic idea, and it doesn't cause nipple confusion.  And neither will a shield if you have to use one.
9. A well-controlled gag reflex and a bar of hand soap (I use Irish Spring) will clean just about anything out of clothes. Baby poop, spit-up, milk leakage, blood, even  the most disgusting- baby food.
10. Homemade baby wipes are the best. A roll of Bounty (you need something strong when it's wet), and a weak baby wash and water solution. Cut the roll in half with a serrated knife, remove the center tube, put it in any plastic lidded canister the right size, and pour the soapy water in and let it soak. You can pull the towels right up through the middle like our moms used to.
11. Gentian Violet. I don't know what it is but it works for thrush. And if you're nursing, you get thrush when the baby gets thrush. So you take this purple stuff and you paint your nipples purple, multiple times a day. And when the baby nurses, she gets some, too. The main issue with RX thrush meds for babies is that so much sugar is added to make the babies swallow it that it kind of feeds the yeast itself. Most definitely ask your doctors about all of this I'm saying, but I've never heard a pediatrician say anything negative about it.
12. Another nursing thing. Everyone will recommend Lansinoh lanolin cream for sore or cracked nippled.  I tried it and it was just a goopy mess.  So the next time I gave birth I tried another product, one I would use again no matter how many kids I ever have.  The Gerber Breast Therapy Stick. Imagine a big chap stick you just rub on and leave. No gooey fingers trying to close up the bra, no muss at all.
13. A nursing cami is just amazing. A good one comes with enough bra built in that you can undo and do it with one hand and no accidental flashes, plus you NEVER have to lift your shirt to nurse.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Remember today that the green-beer swilling, drunken, fake accent spewing "Irishmen" in the parades are just as accurate a representation of what it means to be Irish, as the boys in leather and dog collars and drag in the Gay Pride parades are of what it really means to be gay.

kids need to feel the doors behind them

I had an awesome childhood. The part that was left to me, anyway. Sure, there were bullies and snoopy elderly neighbors, and Mom grounding me for something every couple of weeks. But back in the eighties we had freedoms, and incentive to use them.  There was one TV in the house and we kids did not control it. But there were parks and playgrounds and bike rides, and ridiculously invented dramas to occupy our days.  My friend from up the street, Brian, and I kept busy for a week spying on a highly organized assassins' ring, at least until it got boring pretending that the squirrels were after us.  Long before I ever heard the name Boo Radley, I was dropping things into the hollow tree on Brian's front lawn. I imagine I fed plenty of feral cats and bats and mercenary squirrels a lot of Wrigley's spearmint gum (torn in half like my grandmother taught me) and the one transluscent white Lifesaver from the roll. I can accept red, orange, yellow, and purple, but not cloudy white.  Better that the mercenaries eat those.

I want my kids to have awesome childhoods, too. My daughter's on her way, but my sons are young.They need to be taught not just to think outside the box, but also to read the box once you've flipped it around. Sometimes it says "NOT FOR CHILDREN" anyway. So why the fuck do they want you inside the box? It's a bloody trap!!

I want my children to collect. For years when she was younger, Ryan collected Buddha figurines. Mostly fat buddhas, but sometimes the thin peaceful ones. It made it a little easier to shop for her.  Gave her something to enter in the county fair for a ribbon. And every once in a while she'd see one which would become a goal. A jade one, or a gold-plated one. It was a nice tradition.

My sons are 5 and 3. I think I could get the older one (Tommy) to collect Godzilla movies and merch, if he'll agree to be careful with it.   MY 3yo, if given $25 and left to pick his own toy no matter what, would pick fairies. Or princesses.  And I could run with that. I could contribute to his collection but could his father?  I don't know.  I just want my kids to feel safe here like I did. So they can feel okay riding their bikes to the park, or the grocery store for chips and juice.

I may have to kill the internet a few times and then bitch about mediacom until they get out of the house.

Top *** Best Movies Ever. In no particular order

1. Life As A House
2. The Big Chill
3. The Other Sister
4. Stranger Than Fiction
5. 
   

My baby girl

They grow up to damn fast.

Tom says it's true.

Tommy is grabbing his crotch while playing.
Me: Go potty if you have to.
Tommy: I don't have to.
Me: Then why are you grabbing your weiner?
Tommy: Sometimes a weiner needs a hug.

I'm okay, just boring

I haven't blogged in a long time, I know. And it's not deliberate; I just haven't had anything blog-worthy to talk about. Like has been plugging along, with a few notable milestones but not many. Tommy started kindergarten, Ryan has a date to homecoming this year (pix to come), we are almost done moving, and I took my position as VP of the school music boosters organization.  But I haven't really felt like writing anything, which is odd since I was inspired to blog about wanting a new laundry hamper. I'm weird that way. I'm not even making the kids' Halloween costumes this year.  But I am alive, and all is well. Maybe I'll run around the house and take pictures for y'all.

because undies on the floor are just tacky

You know what I want for Xmas this year? A dark brown wicker (real or faux) laundry hamper for my bedroom. It seems so stupid, and it's only $30 at Walmart, but it's exactly the kind of thing I won't buy myself. Because it is purely a luxury. It'll look nice, but a laundry basket, or cardboard box, or laundry pile on the floor will work just as well.  I'd like a dark brown wicker hamper, but I don't need one. And thirty bucks for a glorified laundry basket is a lot to pay for something you can't even justify for yourself. But I'd like to have it, and if it goes on sale I may buy it. But, man, would it be cool if my family bought it for me.

When do I cut my losses.

I bought a hammock and stand online, on a sale site, for $150. That's a good buy for a hammock and the stand. But then when it came, it was just the hammock. No stand.  And of course the order confirmation is long gone. So then I was on a different sale site and found a hammock stand for $60.  So I swallowed my miserly nature and bought it. Ryan spend half an hour in the back yard putting it together and then when she was finished she climbed in for a nice rest. And her ass hit the ground. So now I have over $200 sunk into this thing and I think I need a hammock pad for it, too. Is it even worth it anymore?

mmmmm. bitter grape juice

Tom: Whatcha doing?
Me: Buying wine online.
Tom: Why?
Me: I got a coupon from Cabela's. They want me to join a wine of the month club.
Tom: Uhhh, no.
Me: You can't tell me if *I* can buy wine!
Tom: Are you going to start drinking wine?
Me: Well, no.
Tom: Then why do you need it?
Me: I told you! Cabella's sent me a coupon! I'm saving money!

37

I started this blog seven years ago, in part to deal with the trauma of turning 30. Yesterday I turned 37 and I realized that a lot has changed since then. My mother's death is what finally made me feel like an adult. My hair is grayer, my face is starting to show wrinkles, I think my paunchy mama-belly is permanent, and I'm okay with all of it. I have no idea how big my fortieth birthday meltdown will be, but for now thirty seven feels right. Also, Tom bought me a black pearl necklace to go with my ring and two pieces of fenton hobnail glass "from the kids".

And I think it really says something about the effectiveness of my meds that I had a really great birthday yesterday, even though five hours of it was spent driving home from Omaha in a van with broken air conditioning.

The Orkin man now knows too much.

Tom: (in a big booming voice from upstairs) Charlie!
Me: What!
Tom: Come here!
Me: (as I stand up and start going upstairs) You know, when you yell for me like that, you kind of sound like my father yelling for me. It's very confusing sexually.
Tom: (by now right in front of me, shaking his head) I have the Orkin man on the phone. He wants to know when a good appointment time is.
Me: Oh.

This is generally how businesses get to know me as a client, actually.

I must have married for looks.

over the phone:
Tom: So then I'll just buy this carpet remnant.
Me: Won't it get wet on the way home?
Tom: Nah. It's not raining.
Me: But it's rain-y. And the sky is dark here in town.
Tom: It'll be fine. Don't worry.
.....fifteen minutes later....
Tom: Is it raining in town?
Me: It doesn't really look like it. Why?
Tom: Cars have their wipers on. Oh crap, I just drove into the rain! The carpet is getting wet!

How tragic that NO ONE could have predicted this.

Why DON'T yellow cats poop?

A conversation between brothers, standing over the sandbox.

Tommy: Uh oh. It was open over night.
Danny: I think cats pooped in it.
Tommy: I don't see any poop.
Danny: But there are paw prints in the sand.
Tommy: Yeah, but I think it was a yellow cat. And yellow cats don't poop.
Danny: Oh. Okay. (and then he climbed in the sandbox.)

Because they both have to do with imaginary men who watch you in your house.

The other day I bought three things for the new house. I purchased two mezuzahs and a What the shit?! wall graphic.  Here are my issues with these purchases. Completely unpredictable and in no way asinine issues. A) I can't read Hebrew so I don't know which way to hang my mezuzahs. And B) I'm not sure where to put my creepy stalker man graphic to ensure that it gets noticed but it's not in your face that it's completely lame. 

Why does spellcheck flag mezuzah? I think it may be anti-semitic.

It's a tiny pill. Easy to misplace. In my throat.

You know that feeling when you take your pills for the night but you're nowhere near being tired so you grab a Xanax, and then twenty minutes later you realize that you're still keyed up and you can't remember if you actually took the Xanax or not, so you start searching your kitchen trying to think of where you could have set the pill down because you have kids and pets and Xanax would be bad for either of them so you're tearing the place apart even though it's really hard to do because you're exhausted and that's when you realize that you did, in fact, swallow the Xanax?  No? Just me? Hmm.

I just want a monkey butler. Why is that too much to ask for?

I've found a monkey table I want. But it's $180.00, which is a lot of money to spend on a table that will drive Tom nuts and possibly scare the children.  Also, it comes pre-named, and for $180.00 I think I should get the right to name my own monkey table. I certainly wouldn't name it Winston, that's for sure. I think I'd name it Zac Efron. Zac Efron the monkey butler. I like it.

here kitty kitty kitty

1. I know for an absolute fact that Tom would not want me to get a new cat.
2. I know that Tom likes cats anyway.
3. I texted Tom to mention that I wanted to get a new cat.
4. Tom did not answer, thus squandering his chance to voice any opposition to a new cat.
5. Should I go get a new cat?

Conversation between me and Tom

Me: Hey I was reading in AARP magazine how you should invest in forever stamps to save money when the price goes up.

Tom: (distracted) Yeah.

Me: Which is why 200 stamps are coming in the mail. I'm offsetting the one cent price hike projected to come next year with a $1.72 shipping fee. Ironic that they charge to mail you stamps, isn't it.

Tom: (groan)

Me: Why do you always look like you have a headache when I tell you what I've done? You should come home every day and ask me how my day has been so that these things don't blindside you.

Tom: (incredulous look)

Me: For instance, the hammock in the hallway? That was an awesome deal! A hundred and twenty five dollars for a two hundred and fifty dollar hammock. And I know that was the original price because it was written right there next to the sale price. I didn't even have to price compare.

Tom: Mmm hmm.

Me: And did you know that right now we have 3 bath mats coming? Memory foam, Tom! They'll remember our feet! How could you not want that kind of service from your bath mat?

Tom: This is why I look like I have a headache when you tell me what you've done.

I hate platitudes

Pet peeve of the day: people who say happiness is a choice and then talk about endorphins. Either you believe that chemicals can determine mood or you don't, but if you do then give me the most basic level of respect and let me take the meds required for me to choose happiness. For some people jogging is enough, but for others, "Choose happy" needs a little help.

My Barbie Dream House

We're trying to buy a house. A larger house for our family, but a smaller place for us. Make no sense? Well here's the deal. The house is bigger, with a family room downstairs and an extra bedroom to be a toy room. But the master bedroom is much smaller than what we have now. And the master bath, ugh! They took about 2 feet off the end of the bedroom and built a shower stall on one end of it and a 4 or 5 foot closet on the other end.  In that closet they put a toilet facing a sink with a door in between. So when you go poo, you step out and bang your shin on the dresser. When you shower, you step out naked into the bedroom. And between the shower and the pee closet is a giant mirror and vanity just open to the room. We have to wall all that in at some point.  Also, the kitchen is smaller than our current one, but there's a dining room so it sort of evens out. Less cupboard space, a very small single sink so I don't know how we'll wash the pots too big for the dishwasher, and the fridge sticks weirdly far out into the kitchen. But it'll work better for our family and that trumps personal space. Ooh, and it's by the woods! Last night I bought a hammock online! A hammock! With which to flip my kids on the ground. Yay! And trees to walk around between and try to climb and fall out of. Lots of little boy things for my little boys. And Ryan loves to draw trees and can take long walks in the woods with her sketch pad. All around a good thing. So wish us luck on this house thing. The home inspection is in 4 days so if it's all going to fall apart, that'll be when.

Trapeze or clown car?

Years ago I worked at a convenience store and there was a lovely customer who came in every night with her teenage son to get a cup of coffee for her and a doughnut for him (free doughnut with coffee). I don't know why they were out every night at the same time, but they'd stop by and over the years we'd make idle chit chat. She had a very heavy accent (some sort of Hispanic accent) but we'd talk a little. Her older son had left with the circus right after high school. When I commented that I didn't think people really did that she looked confused. A lot of his friends had joined the circus after school because it paid so well and they gave you a place to live and you could travel. I agreed with her and every once in a while she'd come in happy because her older son had called her, or sent her a post card.

One night the teenage son came in alone to get the coffee and doughnut. When I asked him where his mom was he replied, "She's in the car with my brother. He's home for the weekend." "Oh, was he nearby?" I hadn't heard of any circuses in the area but I could have missed a poster or radio ad.  But nope, the brother had flown in with some of his friends. "Friends from the circus?" The kid looked confused. "Noooooo. No circus friends. Why?" "Because your brother's in the circus." Wow, what a clueless kid! Then he started laughing at me! His brother was'nt in the circus; he was in the Army. He'd left home to join the service, and no one but me had misunderstood before. He and his mother laughed about that for weeks.

Everyone wants to be an astronaut; it's so overdone!

My mom took me to a child psychologist when I was 4 because my (childless) aunt thought I was too moody. Maybe I was, or maybe she knew nothing about little kids and I was just prone to crying fits. Either way, Mom took me to the shrink.  I went for a month or so until the guy wanted to meet my dad and my dad gave the whole "I aint goin to see no damn shrink and the kid don't need one either. She just needs to get her ass spanked when she won't quit bawlin," speech and then the bill came and dad saw it and we never went back.

I don't remember anything about the shrink except his name (Dr Houk, which I always thought was dumb because somehow I decided it was Hawk and he was just saying it wrong) and that his office was in a town an hour away and had a deli right by it. And every time we went my mom would take me to the deli if I behaved and talked to the guy. I loved that deli! I loved the high stools at the counter and the bagel and cream cheese she bought me. I felt so sophisticated and metropolitan. I felt Jewish.

See, when I was little all I wanted to be when I grew up was a New York Jew. Brick buildings with doormen, bright yellow taxi cabs, delicatessens, Yiddish in everyday conversation, cocktail parties. I wanted all of it! Apparently at some point I'd seen Annie Hall ( my parents never waited until bed to watch TV) and been profoundly influenced by it, which is probably the least damaging Woody Allen movie for a very young child to be profoundly influenced by. Which is why I loved the idea of being in therapy and of eating at a big city delicatessen. A bagel with just a shmear of cream cheese, please.  I didn't even know what Jewish meant; I thought it meant grown-up, or interesting. I was a preschooler and all I wanted to be was Woody Allen. Not Diane Keaton. Woody Allen. Which is actually a pretty great considering that by third grade I wanted to be a hooker.

Yep, a hooker, because all I knew about sex was that it was a beautiful thing for two people to do together and all I knew about hookers (did my parents never censor what they watched with the kids in the room?) was that they got paid to have sex. Seemed like a win-win to me at the time. Plus, hookers get to stay up all night!  When I found out it was illegal to be a hooker, I switched my career goals to private detective, because I liked Scooby Doo. I wanted to be Shaggy because he got to eat cake all the time and hang out with the cool talking dog. Fred and Daphne never actually did much, Velma couldn't ever keep her damn glasses on her face so she struck me as pretty useless, and so I picked Shaggy. That's right. My lofty childhood ambitions were to be Woody Allen, a hooker, and a half beatnik-half hippy who ate dog treats in exchange for going into the dark, monster-filled basement first.

Take that, ballerinas and firemen! My career day drawings were way more interesting (and disturbing during the hooker phase) than yours were.

For bolting Grandma to the table, of course

I just google imaged this. It's not my actual photo.

My mother had whole brain radiation when she first got sick. They mold a mesh mask to your head and bolt it to the table with you in it, to make sure you absolutely cannot move while they shoot laser beams into your brain. After the treatment was done, she let me have the mask, which I have on my wall as art, and which is the only way I can see or touch the curves on my mother's face.  But this story is not about my mother's death, or about the mask on my wall. This story is about the pins they use to hold those masks to the table. See them up there in that picture- the white plastic Ts? They came with the mask but I didn't need them so I set them on some table or something and they ended up on the floor and amongst the boys' toys and got thrown out one at a time for a couple weeks.

One day, a couple days after I'd gotten the mask from my mom, Ryan walked up to me and asked, with a curious yet deeply disturbed look on her face, just what that thing on the floor was. 

"Oh, that? It's for bolting your grandmother to a table. Why?"  

Then I had to explain the radiation to her and how it was done. And with a relieved look on her face, my 13 year old daughter said to me, "Oh thank god! I thought you'd lost your IUD."

Oh for fuck's sake, he's only four!

Me: Every toy you throw I will throw away. If you throw it, I will put it in the garbage!
10 seconds later
Tommy: (whispering) Don't throw it, Danny. Just drop it.
sound of toy hitting the floor
Tommy: Mo-om! Danny throwed it!

 

How the hell did my senior year start 20 years ago?

Somebody on my facebook feed posted this link: it's a list of 29 albums that are now 20 years old.  Some of them I've never heard of, some of them I seem to remember coming out later than 1993 (probably the single I remember was released later), and some of them are pure nostalgia. 1993, now 20 years ago, was the year I moved out of my mom's and in with my dad. It was the year I went to a new school, the year I learned to play pool, the first year I had no curfew. 
I'd like to explain 1993 to Ryan. I think she would have liked it had she seen it. Had it not ended 2 months before I met her original father. But how to explain such a foreign concept? Libraries without computers, scrambling for coins for the pay phone, learning of new songs from the radio and then recording them onto cassette tapes. My old notes from class, the kind we wrote, not the kind we took down, almost looked like the iphone text messages. I wrote in blue pen and my handwriting and then my friend would write in green pen with her handwriting. Not a whale shaped little thought bubble but as close as our primitive cave painting allowed.
I miss those days. I miss the 90s the way my mother must have missed the 70s. I wonder if everyone gets nostalgic for their senior year and the decade it inhabited. If you do, tell me in the comments.

Introducing Ron Weasley

We got rid of our box turtle on Xmas day. My brother in law had a friend who wanted one for his son and our boys were too rough to really play with it here, so we gave it to the guy for his kid. We also found an inside home on a farm for our outside dog, Cheyenne. It was sad, but she needed a place with more attention and a house big enough for her. So, to dull the pain of loss a little bit, we got a new cat.  And by "we", I mean I brought it in the house when Tom wasn't looking. So now we have the 2 cats, our old ocicat Tat and our new black cat Ron Weasley. Mom's chihuahuas don't get along so well with the cats. Pupper doesn't care about them but Tripper barks at them constantly, not out of anger or hostility but because he wants them to play with him. They don't know this, however, so they hiss and their tails get bushy and they run into the basement.
At night, due to house training issues, the dogs are crated and the cats have the run of the house. I usually wake up at least twice in the night because Ron Weasley is trying to sleep on my face and purring at top volume.. Tat generally stays on the bed a few inches away from my head. I like cats more than dogs, I think. They use a litter box, which is a big selling point.

It's like capitalism, but I'd do it wrong

I wish I could afford to rent a store. I want to open a store and sell cocoa and free books. I want to open a free book store with no goal of making money. And I want to sell cocoa at cost. And maybe wine on weekends, if it weren't for the damn insurance you have to get to serve alcohol. But I think a free book store is an awesome idea. Bring in your old books and take new books, and sit in comfy chairs and read them. No even exchange needed, no requirement that you bring in anything in order to take out anything. Just a place to duck in, have a cup of cocoa (I'll make it from scratch), and pick up some used books for free.

The pantry clock

My whole life my mom's had this wooden clock over her pantry. Way up on the wall, the same color as the woodwork, a flat wooden clock against the orange wall. I didn't even think to take it when I went through her house because, honestly, it's just always been part of the wall. It blended in and I never even looked at it because the digital clock on the microwave was easier to see, brighter and at eye level like it was. But up at Mom's the other day with my brother, I caught a glimpse of the clock and asked him if he could get it down for me. So now I have this clock and no idea what to do with it or where to put it. And I also realize that I know nothing about it. She kept that clock on her wall, never replaced it or took it down, for almost 40 years, and I don't know why. Did my dad buy it for her? Did she fall in love with it at a store or a flea market? Maybe it was her father's and she inherited it. Maybe my dad inherited it from someone on his side of the family. Or maybe it was just some 70s piece of kitsch my mother thought would look good on an orange wall above a wooden pantry door. But the thing is, I'll never ever know. I'll never know the story about that clock, or even if the clock has a story. Because my mom is dead and I can never ask her. And Dad is dead too so even if he knew why she bought that clock he can't tell me. And I swear, this isn't becoming a death blog. But I just really wish I knew why Mom had this stupid clock, because it doesn't look right in my green kitchen. The light hits it different and it doesn't match the woodwork and it goes way better with orange than with green.
I'll tell you guys, losing a parent is hard, but losing the other one is so much worse. Because you're not just losing someone and dealing with that, you're losing all of the stories you never asked to hear, and the name of that lady who picked you up when you fell out of the tree at the family reunion, and the guy with the spider monkey, and all of the other little details you never committed to memory because you didn't have to; they knew them.  And it feels like your whole childhood is gone, too, because you have to go through and dismantle the house and take down all of the pictures and see bare spots on the wall where they used to be and turn a home into a house again. And it just sucks.

Menus were better to think about.

I wanted to have a party. I had the date picked out (Dec 29) and the theme (ugly holiday sweater) and I was on pinterest collecting recipes and decorations and even a party game (stick famous names on peoples' backs as they came in and make them ask around for clues to who they were). And I was dead set on having this party. I had guest lists, I had my outfit picked out, I had a friend all set to loan me hor d'oeuvre plates. And then my mom died. And now I can't imagine having a party. I can't imagine piping sour cream onto mini latkes, or trying to make the nurse at my doctor's office guess Henry Winkler, or trying to find a non-racist way to make candy corn into a Kwanzaa representation (Hey, the term holiday party implies inclusiveness). And when I think back to my imagined and over-planned party, it seems like such a simpler time. A time when a Christmas tree shaped cheese plate was my biggest concern, when a hot cocoa station seemed like a good way to occupy my mind. A time when my mother was alive.

She's dead now. And when I knew she was going to die, I never thought past that. I thought about her dying, about who would watch the boys when hospice called me to come quick, about how I wanted to be there so she didn't have to die alone, but I never thought of her being dead. And now I live in a world she's not in and I can't get out of it. I can't get back into the world where she's up at her house and I can pop in and say hi. And I can't get the image of her dead out of my mind. I've never seen a dead body before, not without make up and embalming and a coffin. And while I am so glad she didn't die alone, I wish so much that I hadn't seen her dead. She didn't look like she was sleeping, or at peace. She just looked gone, and empty, and dead. And I wish I could push that image to the back of the file and put another one up front to take it's place. I wish I could go back to planning my party.

I hope they have a ping pong table

So I've decided what to bring to Thanksgiving tomorrow. And if they think popcorn and jelly beans and pretzel sticks don't fit the Thanksgiving theme, I'm going to ask them how the hell pilgrims made scalloped corn. 

Thankful for what?

We were going to have Thanksgiving dinner here at the house, with my mother and her friend over. Now that Mom's gone and her friend is back in Florida, we're going to the in-laws' for dinner. I like the in-laws well enough, but I'm sad that things had to change at all and, frankly, I like the food here better. Tom makes these lumpy garlic mashed potatoes with little pieces of potato skin in them, and I saute green beans on the stove rather than make that casserole with the canned beans, and I fry my own onions, too, rather than buy the can of hard ones. And my favorite is the Brussel sprouts. I cut them in half and coat them in olive oil and salt and then roast them in the oven. They're so good! And I can maybe bring the green beans up to Thanksgiving but there's no chance I can do that with Brussel sprouts. It's not the kind of dish you can drive half an hour to dinner, and you can't really show up at somebody's house with the most unpopular food in the world and say "I'm going to cook this in your oven and make your whole house smell like Brussel sprouts." And my mom won't be there, and I sort of suspect that all these other little complaints are just covering up that big complaint.
And then after Thanksgiving we always decorate for Xmas, but this year I don't want to. How can I get into Xmas when I'm just so miserable? What's the point? I always love Xmas, the tree and the lights and the Menorah and the gifts, but this year it won't be happy.
And now I'm crying so I have to stop typing. Maybe I'll bring the beans up to the in-laws'. But still, cold soggy beans off the stove doesn't sound too appetizing. Not that much does, these days.

The visitation

Tonight was my mother's visitation, and by tonight I mean all damn day because somebody (and I'm not naming names but it was me) decided to have the thing from 1:00 to 5:00 so it was too early to do things before and too late to do things after so it was effectively all day long. And there were people who RSVPed, who actually said  "I'll see you there" and then they never showed up. Friends of my mom's, people who I would totally expect to show up, just didn't. And you know how you always say it doesn't matter if people come and it's not mandatory? Well it turns out that when it's your mom, and you've spent days burning CDs of her music and printing out photos of her and picking out her jewelry to wear and stuff, it turns out that it's totally mandatory. I mean, these are people who knew her for years and worked with her and spent time with her socially and then they just didn't come by or anything. WTF.
But then some people came by whom I hadn't seen in years. Friends who couldn't afford to sent flowers. People with no link to my mother came by just to comfort me. Family members I'd never met, from my father's side, came just to let me know that the family was thinking of me. It was a really surprising outpouring.
But now it's over. And now all the little detail work that's been distracting me is over. And now there's nothing left to do but go through her stuff and clear out her house and settle her affairs and generally think about her being dead and that prospect scares the holy fuck out of me.
And Tom has been awesome through all of this. He's let me sleep in every day because the only thing that keeps me from thinking about her being gone is an absolute loss of consciousness, and he's been going through her bills and making lists of what I have to do and who I need to call and who needs copies of the death certificate, and he's been looking up things on line to see what we might be able to split between my brother and I and what we'd have to sell and then split the money from, and he's been getting Tommy off to school every day and he bought the food for Tommy to bring to his class Thanksgiving Feast (and then totally forgot to actually send the food, or the kid, to the Thanksgiving Feast) and I couldn't have gotten through this without him, which is why Tom now has to make all his own arrangements before he dies.
Any my parting advice to all of you, my 3 lonely readers, is this: Don't wear heels to a visitation. Four hours on your feet will kill them. My feet hurt so bad now.

The last update

When your aunt comes into the hospice room and sets down her soda to sit with your dying mother in the middle of the night, and casually mentions that she didn't take the time to brush her teeth before driving over, do not offer her a Mentos before reading her soda can. I think I about exploded my mom's only sister by not noticing that she was drinking a Diet Coke. Somehow, I think Mom would have found that funny. She passed about 4 hours later.

"Ouch!" say the genitals

Some lessons you have to relearn every couple of years. Today I stumbled upon one. I learned, again, the importance of making sure that the adhesive side of the panty liner is against the underwear. It seems like a silly thing to worry about, but those things come folded into thirds and if a third of it is flipped over on itself, you have a surprise bikini wax in the ladies' room to look forward to. It's just not fun.

Things I've recently been told aren't normal

Being petrified to walk in a room where everyone else is sitting, because they'll all notice if I stumble and they may laugh at me for it.

Being scared to walk in heels for the same reason.

Not inviting people over because when I look at it from a guest's perspective, my house suddenly gets much messier and absolutely filthy.

Rambling like a lunatic when confronted with anyone I want to make a good impression on.

Naming bugs we find in the house to make them less frightening. "Don't touch Eduardo; he may be venomous!"

Giving up on teaching your child proper prioritizing skills and instead teaching him to blame his quirks on OCD.

Hiding Nicolas Cage faces around the house just to creep out your husband. (How can this not be normal? I got the idea from pinterest.)

cancer

Do you know what smoking looks like? It looks like a bald head. It looks like a huge bulbous swollen double chin from the steroids they give you because tumors grow great in brain tissue and the extra pressure in your skull gives you headaches. It looks like paralyzation because of the tumor wrapped around your brain stem. It looks like bad breath because you breathe through your mouth because you don't have the muscle control to hold your jaw closed. And it looks like a doctor telling your kids that you could actually live for two whole weeks in hospice because the water retention from the steroid bloat could compensate for the lack of a feeding tube or IV. And why no feeding tube or IV? Because they'd only keep you alive long enough to get to the really painful part of dying. So next time you light up a cigarette and say you know you really need to quit, think of that. Next time you say you're such an addict and shrug it off, think of that. Next time you talk about the side effects you heard of that keep you from asking about Chantix, think of that.  Think of the people afraid to have a beer because they may get the call any minute to rush to hospice and don't want to be too drunk to drive. Think of your kids, really picture them, wiping wet sponges around your mouth because you've lost the ability to swallow and your mouth is dry and sticky. Think of a room full of loved ones, all looking away and up at the ceiling, because nurses are rolling you over to prevent bed sores and your ass is hanging out because you can't wear underwear with a catheter and you've lost control of your bladder. And the whole time, you're conscious and aware of it all. Think of that and then answer the question, "Why is that a better reality than throwing away that pack of cigarettes?"  Why is that panicky feeling in your chest worse than the panicky feeling in your kid's chest as they scramble to find the SIX THOUSAND dollar deposit on the hospice room because without it, you may literally be discharged onto a bench in the hospital parking lot.

This is messed up, and strangely expensive for the demand there should be

There's a picture of a kangaroo embossed on a coin purse made out of a kangaroo scrotum. Think about that. If some species made coin purses out of human scrotums, would they emboss a stick figure man onto it? It's a completely stupid comparison, though, because the stick man would curl up into a ball like a 1950s bomb drill every time you took your purse out in the cold. But hey, if you kept your coin purse in your front pocket, would it count as bestiality? Or necrophilia? Or probably some hybrid of both, I'd think.

You know what these are? I mean, aside from fashionable earrings? They're slices of oosik. They're walrus penis bone earrings! I can only assume, based on the weird holes in the middle, that the walrus had osteoporosis. Probably why it was too slow to keep from getting dong-snatched by violent jewelers.

This is a basket made out of baleen and ivory. Baleen it the filter on the roof of a whale's mouth that catches fish and lets water through. Kind of like the way nose hairs filter dust and let air through. And like hair, it's made of keratin, not bone.  Ivory is what tusks are made of. Tusks are more like teeth than anything else.  This is a basket made out of whale nose hair and (probably) walrus teeth.

See, I've given you a wonderful way to accessorize with weird animal parts. You're welcome.

A facebook status, because I'm totally phoning it in today.

The boys like to pull up the floor grate in their room and throw each other's toys "into the basement" but this time it got left open and the cat got in. Just wandering through the ductwork, having an adventure, while we humans crouch over the vent-hole, impotently calling "here kittykitty!" like morons. And people think Saturday nights lose their excitement after you have kids.

I bet Psy thinks our videos are just as stupid

Me: Oh my god, Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwear did the horsey dance at the CMAs.
Tom: What's the horsey dance?
Me: From Gangnam Style.
Tom: What's Gangwhatever Style?
Me: The video all over the internet?
Tom: (blank stare)
Me: It's internationally famous?
Tom: (blank stare)
Me: Well it's where the horsey dance comes from. And Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwear did it at the CMAs.
Tom: Well what's it look like?
Me: What? The horsey dance?
Tom: Yeah.
Me: Um, like this. (and then I tried to do the horsey dance but it didn't work due to equal parts inability and embarrassment, and then I just looked up the video on youtube.

And then two seconds into it...
Tom: Who's that?
Me: That's Psy. (blank stare) The guy who sings Gangnam Style? (blank stare) The song the video is for that has the horsey dance!
Tom : Oh. Whatever. Where's the dance?

And then the dance came on and he was equal parts flabbergasted by its stupidity and enthralled with the fact that Tommy and Danny already knew how to do it and were dancing around the living room Because that's how we live when he's not here. We live Gangnam Style!

Another pet peeve, I guess

Rape is not sex. But it does, in all honesty, mimic the physical act of sex, albeit in a traumatizing and violent way. I just hate to hear people calling it sex. "He drugged her and then had sex with her." "He had sex with her against her will." No one is doing anything with anyone in a rape. They're doing it to someone, or at someone, but not with someone. To do something with someone, they kind of need to be doing it,too. Or at least, the phrase implies it. Rape victims aren't having sex, they're being assaulted.
So I hereby move that we stop saying that rapists are having sex with their victims and instead start saying that they have sex on their victims. CeeLo Green is accused of slipping a girl drugs in a club and then raping her. The articles say he gave her E and then had sex with her. I say he gave her E and then had sex on her. He did it to her, not with her, and the vernacular should reflect that.

pills and pain

This morning I threw my back out putting Danny in his car seat. There, that's your back story for this phone conversation with Tom two and a half hours later. Also, I take lots of pills for my crazy.

Tom: Is your back better?
Me: Not really. I can move without audibly yelping now, though, which is an improvement over how it was.
Tom: Did you take some Tylenol or Aleve?
Me: No.
Tom: Why not?
Me: Because they're too high for me to reach without stretching and I can't stretch and also because my breakfast already consists of four pills and a cup of coffee and I just didn't want to add more pills to it. I mean, I wanted to get better but I didn't know I'd have to take the AIDS cocktail to do it.
(Tom erupts into fits of giggles)
Me: Why are you laughing.
Tom: (still giggling) You said cock.

Brian M Nolan, wherever you are.....

14 years ago I lost my best friend. He didn't die; I just misplaced him somewhere in New York. In the days following 9/11, I googled him and searched for him online, scared to death that he was a victim. Today I do the same thing. Wherever you are, Brian Nolan, I hope you are safe and unharmed.

Damn religious platitudes

Praying instead of planning, giving control of your life over to God, and trusting that He has a plan and a reason, it's all like climbing over the console into the passenger seat while the car flies down the freeway at $75 miles per hour. Somebody needs to be in charge and it ought to be you! There is no guarantee that there is a plan, that somebody is in control, or that everything does happen for a reason. The only thing we can be sure of is that you are there, living your life, and if something needs to change or be saved, that you can do it. So do it, already! And stop posting motivational sayings to pinterest and facebook about how great it is that you're sitting back doing nothing because you have faith.


*I would like to add that I have no problem with people praying, or trusting in their particular God, or believing that everything happens for a reason. I just get so tired of seeing good people, friends of mine, sit on their asses with their eyes closed waiting for circumstances to magically change while they take no physical actions to change them. If you need more money, don't just pray for it, job-hunt, too. If your family is sick don't just solicit prayers on facebook, make some chicken soup and take steamy baths, too.  But don't give control of your life over to God. He may be a little busy with that whole hurricane-in-Manhattan thing right now.

All the better to blaspheme Xmas with, my dear

Remember way back when, before I had sons and my only major psychiatric issue was with turning 30? Remember the flaming gay nativity I made up? I think I shall make up something new this year. Possibly a wreath that I will make in actuality and hang upon my front door. I am taking suggestions. So, any idea?

Shit that pisses me off.

A friend once told me that I don't have pet peeves; I have whole kennels of irritations. In that spirit, I am posting a list of things I hate, in no particular order.

1. People who think they're clever by taking slang literally when I'm always mad. "Oh, shit makes you angry. As in actual pieces of feces that somehow annoy you? hahahaha." To which I respond, "Yes. For instance, you are a piece of feces and you're making me mad."
2. People who think they're clever by pointing out my typos to use against me since I hate spelling and grammar errors, as if they're the same thing. And they're not. A spelling or grammar error is when somebody doesn't know any better or worse, when they don't care. A typo is when you know how to spell the word but you hit the wrong key, or hit the right keys but in the wrong order. Mocking me for a mistake because I don't like ignorance, because you can't tell the difference between mistake and ignorance, shows your ignorance. Got it?
3. When articles about a violent death include details of it. The family sees those headlines, even if they don't read the articles. No one needs to see a big old headline about how their daughter was raped and killed and nearly beheaded. Have some damn respect.
4. When (some) conservatives accuse liberals of being intolerant because they don't like anti-gay speech/actions. "Liberals are always talking about tolerance and acceptance but they sure as hell can't tolerate any opinion other than theirs." Seriously? So it's intolerant not to sit and listen to the KKK without objection, too? We let you say your hate but we don't have to take it lying down. You have a constitutional right to free speech, but not to free speech without consequence. 
5. When dogs try to lick in my mouth. Kiss my face, fine, but stay out of my orifices.
6. When I look for tubas on google and get French horns instead. WTF people?
7. 
   

An email to Ryan's Scholastic Bowl coach

Dear Mr Smith (if that is indeed your real name),

I fear I am an idiot and have misplaced the Scholastic Bowl schedule. Could you please email me a new one? I promise not to lose this one.

Sincerely,
Charlie Melton

Dystopia is not supposed to be pretty

I would love to see a dystopian TV series or movie with realistic looking characters. Or, for that matter, a visually accurate primitive one. For instance...

Xena the Warrior Princess never had split ends. And she wore eyeliner and lipstick, and shaved her legs and armpits. In ancient Greece, while camping.
Hercules never much more than a 5 o'clock shadow. And Autolycus shaved around that little triangle thing, apparently every day.
In Falling Skies, aliens have landed and taken over the world. Only a small band of determined humans fight back, in the form of rudimentary militias. And while some of the men have beards, none are sporting the bushy, long-haired, wildman look, and the women still wear make-up. And the ubiquitous sweaty hot chick in a tank top never has armpit hair. (I hate to dwell on the pit-hair but it does exist and it should be present in a dystopian future. When survival is fought for every day, a Lady Bic just wouldn't be priority one.) And no one has, or is beginning to have, dreadlocks. Who is manning the shampoo factories? And where are these people washing their hair now that all fresh water has to be saved for consumption?
In Revolution, there's been no electricity for 15 years. And they still look like they wash their clothes daily, in gentle detergent which doesn't fade the colors. And the women wear make up (not Hollywood make up, but there's eyeliner and blush on just about everyone.) Who's making this detergent? Who's making the make up and shampoo? 

I want to see a show where the future survivors of the end of civilization look like shit. I want the women to be hairy and haggard and sun-burnt and have matted hair cut with jagged hunting knives. I want the men to look like the Unabomber, wearing the skins of animals they've hunted for food. I want a little more realism in my television. At least in the gritty dystopian television.
And please, when you make the next Merlin movie, give the man nasty hair and a bad beard. No medieval wizard had access to that much conditioner.

Texts between Ryan and I, after I gave her a shitload of grief about her grades, right before school

Me: I'm sorry I made your morning suck  :(

Ryan: It still sucks.

M: Why? What's up?

R: Testing!!!!! No!!!

M: Relax. You always do great on tests. You can do this.

R: But the computer isn't working.

M: Oh no :( Bitch to the teacher.

R: They're trying to figure it out. Another computer has the same problem.

M: It's not a virus, it's a computer PLAGUE!

R: AAAAH

M: What if all the school computers get the plague and die but in the past they got zombie virus and I.T. never noticed so when they die of computer plague they come back as zombies and kill everyone in the computer lab?

R: You just made me lol. And most all of the computers are messing up in some way.

M: And then the zombie virus & computer plague become airborn & the smart phones catch them & all the popular kids hiding in the bathrooms are attacked by their own front pants pockets (OUCH) & you are the only survivor because we are too cheap to get you 3G. YOU'RE WELCOME!

R: lol

And then she never said anything else so I assume that either the computer glitch got fixed and testing resumed, the computers killed everyone, or she got busted texting her mom during class.

My kids deserve crappy pictures.

I hide from cameras. I always have. When I look in the mirror I always suck in my stomach, and tilt my head to minimize the double chin, and when I see pictures of me where I didn't do those things I just hate them. So I have it stuck in my head that I look bad in photos. So I hide from the camera. But I'm not going to do it anymore.
I read a blog this week where the woman said that her mother died and there were no pictures of her because she hid from the camera. And the woman said that when she did find pictures of her mother, she didn't notice bad hair or extra pounds or wrinkles. She just saw her mother's smile, and kind eyes, and the lap she used to climb up on.  My mother is dying and I'm struck by how few pictures there are of her, and I realize that I'm not looking for flattering outfits and good lighting and clear skin. I'm looking for Mom, for the cheek I kissed and the face I wanted to see after a bad dream, for her smile. And that's what my kids will want to see someday. So I'm going to stop hiding from cameras. I won't look at the pictures I'm so critical of, but I'll be in them. Someday my kids will want pictures of Mom, and I'll make sure they have them, blotchy skin, extra pounds, double chin and all. Because my kids deserve to be able to remember me.

Don't we all hate her, a little bit?

This is a lovely viral photo. It's been getting a lot of reactions. Mine has been one of the negative ones. For one thing, I think there's a problem with the wording. If it said "No excuses", I'd be fine with it, but it doesn't say that. It says, "What's your excuse?" It specifically asks what my excuse it, what the viewer's excuse is, as opposed to just stating a vague message that there are no excuses. It also completely ignores the difference between excuses and priorities.
Would I like to be as thin as her? Sure. Do I think it's a worthy goal? For some. Do I prioritize it over other things? Nope. I prioritize it under bacon, and coffee with milk and chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I prioritize hour-long work-outs under spending time with my kids, relaxing with my husband, and just plain relaxing (especially now that I'm on 1200mg of may-cause-drowsiness pills). And in a much more philosophical way, I prioritize my appearance under intelligence, sense of humor, and companionship, all of which can be improved in the time it takes to work out and diet.
I hate that weight can be seen. I hate that we can instantly be judged on it. There are many things we're "supposed" to be perfect as, as women, wives, and mothers. But weight is the one that can be seen. No one can walk up to Miss Bikini Mom up there and judge her for not being a gourmet cook. No one can say "Why aren't you a gourmet cook? Why don't you only eat organic and make your own bread every day? Susan does it, Jodie does it. What's your excuse?"  No one can look her up and down at the gas station and think, "Why isn't your laundry done and folded every day? Why aren't all the beds made before school? Why isn't your house spotless? Joan's is, Barb's is. What's your excuse?"  But weight, weight is something we all get judged on. Angelina Jolie had twins and was in a slinky dress on the red carpet less than a month later.  Women who should, in all honesty, still be passing massive post-baby blood clots into pillow-sized maxi pads are out on photo shoots wearing size 2 jeans  in Hollywood. And now we have Miss Bikini Mom up there to compare ourselves to, too.  It's ridiculous. I suppose there are no excuses, in her life. She obviously has someone to watch those 3 kids, and time to work out, and a budget to buy the healthy low-cal food. She's not suffering from post partum depression, or the after-effects of gestational diabetes, or a c-section incision that prevents immediate crunches and sit-ups. She doesn't have a husband who stays away for days on end, and she isn't a single mom with no husband at all, nor the money for a sitter during work-outs. She isn't on a Top Ramen budget. She has a good thyroid. She's not on birth control or mood stabilizers that cause weight gain. But hey, What's your excuse? 
My excuse is that I don't want to be her. I like stretch marks, and wrinkled cleavage, and baby-chewed boobs. I like my mom-body, and I really, really, really resent the implication that I shouldn't, and that I'm lazy for not having her body. Her passion is working out, and kudos to her for pursuing it. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sacrifice for her passion rather than my own. It's not an excuse. It's a priority.

Unusual phrases that give me comfort

Life is arbitrary and ultimately meaningless.  This gives me comfort because it reminds me not to bang my head against the wall looking for the meaning of life, trying to figure out why we exist and who we are.  We make our own fate, our own destiny. Life is what we make it. On the converse,

It's not up to us to seek forgiveness from God, but to forgive God ourselves. This gives me comfort because it just makes sense to me. If there is a God, he's handing out cancers and plagues and earthquakes and hurricanes. All we are doing is making our way through the world to the best of our ability with human failings, failings that God gave to us. How many people do you know who secretly hold these things against God, yet still beg Him for forgiveness? No, the secret to finding peace is in forgiving God. And once you've forgiven God, it's much easier to accept His authority to forgive you. But as long as you're holding a grudge, no matter how buried and repressed it may be, it's hard to truly want forgiveness from someone you blame for killing your family.

Depression Lies

My ex boyfriend killed himself. In fact, the last 2 guys I dated before Tom have killed themselves, along with a positively wonderful guy I knew in high school but was never lucky enough or cool enough to date. Several times in my life (more than a couple but less than a dozen) I almost killed myself. I remember sitting at my mother's dining room table swallowing pills over some guy named Paul, just because he liked his ex and not me. Somehow, by some twist of fate, the bottle I'd grabbed had old antibiotics in it, not the heart pills the label said it had. I was lucky.

Sometimes I get all philosophical and trippy and think, what if I actually did? What if I killed myself back in high school over some insignificant teenage trauma and all of this, my life and my home and my family, are all some ridiculously detailed afterlife dream? What if my marriage and my children are purgatory? That thought actually makes the whole theory believable some days.

What if I had killed myself back then? Would I have killed myself over Paul, or over some boy whose name I can't remember now? Or over a report card grade I can't remember? Which insignificant drama would have been worth disappearing for? What about my life should have killed me?

Depression lies. Sometimes it lies so convincingly that you need meds to see the truth, but depression always lies. It never tells the truth.  It tells you life is terrible , and that only the weak take meds, and that everything would be better if you just ended it. Or maybe it just tells you to sleep all the time and that there's no point to getting better. But the thing is, if it were true, if there was no point and life is terrible, meds wouldn't change that so what's the harm in trying them? Why not try to get better? Even if "better" is an illusion, the illusion has to be preferable to death. So try the meds. There are tons of generics and your regular MD can prescribe them. And no matter how loudly depression lies or how convincingly depression lies, always remember that depression only lies. It absolutely cannot tell the truth. Ever. It only and always lies.

Walmart sells several anti-depressants for only $4.00 a month. Money is no reason not to get help. I know because it was my reason not to get help and looking back now I can see that it was bullshit.

Vote!

I have decided to change my wifi network name (as soon as I can figure ut how). I am taking a vote in the comments section to see what I should change it to. I will also take write-in votes from anyone wittier than me. Don't be afraid; I haven't set the bar too high.

1. Voldemort's Lair
2. Room of Requirement
3. FBI surveillance van #231
4. DEA surveillance van #231
5. All the girls say I'm pretty fly for a wi-fi
6. wi-fi full of viruses
7. wi-fi full of crazy porn (I really just want to see how many of my neighbors try to hook up to that one)

See? No resemblance at all.

People writing tutorials or posting photos of homemade Godzilla costumes online have apparently never seen Godzilla. He is black, not green, people! He has bumpy skin like a lizard, not scales like a snake. He has white-edged and round-pointed plates on his back, in three rows, not pointy triangles. This is not just a T-Rex! Godzilla is a character, a monster all his own, and it's kind of insulting to Godzilla fans when you tell people to sew a tail onto a green sweatsuit and call it Godzilla.  Here are some photos to illustrate my new pet peeve.

He's just trying to find himself

Danny comes into the room, crying, obviously distraught about something.
Danny: Where Demmy? Mommy, where Demmy go?
Me: You are Danny.
Danny: (perks up) I am Demmy! (runs toward bedroom) I Demmy! Tommy, I find Demmy! I Demmy.

I think maybe I get their names mixed up too much. Poor kid doesn't even know his own name.

Hearts aren't that important anyway

I have a harmless heart murmur called premature ventricular contraction. It means that every once in a while my pathetic white-girl sense of rhythm fails me and my heart goes from lub-dub lub-dub to lub-dub-lub.....DUB. It feels like when someone scares you and your heart skips a beat, except it happens for no good goddamned reason every couple days or so. It's completely harmless and after a while you just get used to it.

Well it's happening an awful lot the last couple days and I can't help but wonder if it's connected to my new meds. Are heart palpitations a sever enough side effect to report, or is it no big deal since I get it  every once in a while anyway? I think I'll wait and see if it keeps up at this pace or not. I really want these meds to work out and help me, so I want to wait until I know for sure I can't take them.  Wish me luck!

You didn't build that

My husband drives truck for a small family-owned, very successful company. They built that company from the ground up. And those trucks are driven on government-built roads and highways. Roads and highways plowed all winter by government employees, keeping the very successful trucking company from being a seasonal business. The trucks themselves are built to government standards. It's a comfort to me, as a driver's wife, that Peterbilt can't just find some cheaper yet more brittle metal to make truck axles out of.

I have a friend whose husband owned a business which did not succeed. They filed bankruptcy (thank you government bankruptcy laws) and got those debts wiped off. They are now purchasing a new home with a no money down VA mortgage.

My children will, god willing, become huge self-made successes in whichever fields they choose. My 14 year old has already surpassed my knowledge of math and science and is taking, her freshman year, sophomore classes. Thank you government-funded, government-mandated, government-standard-meeting public schools.  When she goes to college, she will undoubtedly go with government-backed student loans and grants. And don't even get me started on state universities!

If your business relies on roads, or on deliveries from trucks that drive on roads, if you ever needed and received a government-backed small business loan, if your business resides in a building built to safety standards, if you're grateful that the products you buy are subject to laws regulating how they are made, what can be used in them, and truth in manufacturing laws, you don't build it.  Not all buy yourself, not without opportunities and help from the government. America is a wonderful place that affords many opportunities, and it's ridiculous to base an entire political party's campaign platform on the idea that anyone who says so is insulting you.