Ruminating

I love you guys, really I do. To show my love, here are two wildly different links to entertain you.

This chic is hilarious. Seriously. And she makes pretty, PRETTY art that I want to buy and hang in every room of my house.

This is not even remotely safe for work. Seriously - it involves penises - LOTS of them. But oh my shit, is it funny. And a little scary. Scroll down, you'll see what I mean.

I couldn't find the exact quote - but there's a part in "Best In Show" where Sherri Ann Cabot is standing at the snack bar, saying that she's too nervous to go in the auditorium and her brain told her to just stay there, and until she gets another message, she's just gonna stay right there and wait.

When I'm dealing with big decisions, that's sort of what I do. It's not intentional, but whenever I try to sit down and reason out an answer or a solution, it goes a little like this:

"Ok, so I need to - OOOH SHINY!"

So, yeah, the idea of sitting down and reasoning things out and weighing the pros and cons of a situation is just ridiculous for me. The answer to a problem is more likely to come to me at the end of a 3-mile run than at the end of a hour long conversation with a friend. Honestly, by the time I've gotten around to talking with a friend, I've usually made up my mind about the situation - if I can verbalize it, I've decided. I'm weird that way.

Sometimes, the answer comes in a dream (yeah, I know how hippy-trippy that sounds, shut the hell up) and sometimes it comes to me while I'm writing an entry and sometimes it comes to me while I'm having an imaginary conversation with someone who's pissed me off (what? You don't do that?) and sometimes it just slowly dawns on me what I need to do. Sometimes it comes to me when I ask a pain-in-the-ass insightful friend for advice and I see my question or "problem" (note the use of quotes) and I realize how ridiculous I sound and I know exactly what PITAIF is going to say before they say it. Self-awareness can suck the root sometimes.

I think part of why I've been feeling so overwhelmed lately is because I've got some questions brewing in the back room of my brain. But see, the problem with this method is that I don't always know what the questions are either. HEH.

I know part of it is money-related, because it's always money-related. This is the joy of being responsible for my own shit. I still think I prefer this to the old way.

Part of it is my upcoming trip to Louisiana. Jef and I are heading down there around the 12th to visit and pick up the kiddo's truck* and I'm a little leery about this trip. I've already warned Jef that he'll be going on The Tour of Sadness 2007, since we have the whole year anniversary thing and I'd love to show him my childhood home(s) but HEY, they got eaten by a hurricane! And look, my poppa just got one of his knees replaced! And yeah. Just...bleh. I want Jef to meet both sides of my family, (which says quite a bit, actually) but I just wish he could have met them a year ago. I wish he could have met my dad and I wish he could have met my grandparents (on both sides) before Katrina. So, yeah. That's sort of weighing on me a little.

HM....there's more, 'cause I wrote about that and usually when I feel this way and I write, I get this "aha!" feeling and I suddenly feel lighter. Or sometimes I cry. Anyway, none of that has happened yet, so there's something else.

I'll figure it out, and I'll let y'all know. In the meantime, enjoy the links and have a glass of wine on me. Might I recommend the Norton Malbec? Cheap, easily drinkable, cleans out of beige carpet easily. Ahem.

*Not sure if I told y'all this story or not. My dad fretted about what to leave me and Kayleigh because that's just the sort of guy he was. He decided to sell his truck and leave the money to me so I could buy kiddo her first car. She spoke up and said "No, I want the truck." So - she gets her poppa's truck. Which is pretty darn cool, if you think about it.

Don't look at me like that

*
Well, as always, I feel the need to clarify my last entry. I have this almost pathological need to be understood in real life too, so it's not you baby, it's me. I started to write a big ol' clarification, but then the entry got all wallow-ey and weird and BLEH. So nevermind.

Let's just say that life takes more effort than I'd like sometimes and I have trouble with that concept. But y'know, sometimes life is like that and we can't all walk around with sunshine and rainbows shooting out of our asses, now can we? No, we can not, because that would be awfully distracting in meetings. So there.

Anyway, and so, plus also, hi. How are you? You look lovely in that color, really. It brings out your eyes.

I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed lately because I have a lot of things in my life that I want to do and a lot of things that I need to do and, like always, I'm having trouble sorting out the two and prioritizing them and getting them done. So instead, I sit on the couch and watch CSI reruns and drink wine instead.

When I get this way, I also start feeling listy. Like, I want to get a notebook and start making lists - lists of things I need to do, projects, groceries, stuff I need to get done around the house, people I should call, work stuff I should do, daydreams, favorite songs, movies I want to see, books I want to read, other lists I want to make (yes, it's that bad.)

It's just one more way to try to grab the tail of my life and wrestle it to the ground, that's all. I've managed to go a whole month of feeling this way without buying a notebook (one my resolutions! Whoo!) I have a box of blank books taunting me from the closet. It may be time to dig one out and start list-making.

Here's an example of my first list - Ways in Which I'm Completely Off My Rocker:

1 - Well, the list thing.
2 - Compulsive nail cleaning.
3 - I can NOT handle anything coming towards my eyes. Like, if you're talking to me, don't gesture with your pen in my direction. I'll seriously squeal and duck.
4 - Oh, and don't even think about talking about eye surgery around me.
5 - Do I even need to mention my reaction to eye-related gore in movies? No? Good.
6 - I am deathly afraid of crickets and grasshoppers. yes, really. Shut up.
7 - I love pasta in any shape or form except bowtie pasta. Yech, I can't STAND that stuff. I think it's because of its association with mediocre pasta salad.

Anyway, I'm nuts and I need to sit down with a notebook and a pen and do some writing of the bulleted kind tonight, I think. You normal people are sitting there, all "why don't you just DO the stuff that's bothering you??" Look, if I could, I would OK? But I look at a messy house or a pile of laundry or whatever andI cI don't see a task or a set of tasks. I see a mountain. I see Everest. I see this insurmountable thing that I will never, ever be able to get a handle on. So I wander off somewhere safe (couch, wine, CSI - keep up.)

We all cope the best way we can, right? I cope with drugs, my penguin-esque waddles down the hike and bike trail, making lists and laughing at inappropriate times.

How do you cope?

*This is Jef's cat, Harold, looking very serious and judgey.

Crazy

I didn't get too far on my list the other day. I did go run and I did get the pile of clothes folded, but they got replaced by a whole new pile when kiddo cleaned out her bathroom. I made some progress on my horrifying living room, and I did go to Kohl's for new bathroom stuff (shower curtain and a couple of counter thingies. Why do we decorate bathrooms?)

I got my eyebrows waxed yesterday, for those of y'all keeping score at home.

Every time I get my eyebrows waxed, I end up with a GIGANTIC zit right smack-dab in the middle of my forehead. I mean it's a third eye sumbitch, too. I can't decide which is worse, the Bert brows, or the giant cyclops zit.

A long time ago, I resigned myself to the fact that maybe some people are just supposed to be happy and some people aren't and I was one of the ones that wasn't. After about a year I realized that living that way was gradually driving me insane, so I started looking for a way to be happy. I looked in a lot of places, some of them more logical than others, until I finally found myself in a therapist's office.

I started talking to her and I got on anti-depressants and mood stabilizers and I started getting happy.

I got divorced and I got even happier.

The other day I realized that I'm truly, honestly happy for the first time in a long, long time. The last time I remember feeling this way was probably my freshman year in college (1989-90.)

But I still have to take the drugs, and I still have to run 2 or 3 times a week and I still have to stay away from the diet sodas and I still have to make sure I pay attention to certain silly things and I still need to remember to stick up for myself and say what I think (things that should just come naturally, shouldn't they?) and so much, there's so much work to being happy.

There's so much maintenance to being low maintenance. HEH.

As I told Jef - it's not that I'm low maintenance, it's that I'm self-maintenance. The idea of somebody else dealing with and taking care of my crap just mortifies me. I need drugs and regular exercise and fresh air and sunshine and 3 meals a day and lots of water (Jesus, am I woman or a poodle??) in order to function, so the idea of somebody else taking on all of this crap? UGH.

I don't need jewelry or flowers or *stuff* to be happy. I mean - it's nice, don't get me wrong. But, for one thing, I went for 14 years with a husband who didn't give me flowers because he gave them to everybody else so he felt like that de-valued them. Same with jewelry. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get some fucking jewelry. I am stereotypically female in that I love the shiny stuff. But the Ex had some bizarre notion that he wouldn't get it right, so he didn't get anything.

What the fuck was I saying?? My daughter just came in here, dancing around....Oh...yeah. The idea of asking anybody else to take on my crap. Just, no. If we define "high-maintenance" as needing lots of material shit, then no. Y'know, presents are nice, but no. If we define "high maintenance" as needing lots of actual maintenance in order to function in reality? Well yeah. That's me. But I do it myself. I work really hard to keep it separate from everything else too.

Maybe too hard.

Hi Jef - baby, if you read this one?? I'm nuts, OK? Seriously. I mean - you already know about the meds, but see here's the thing. I run so I don't get fat, but I also run to keep myself sane. If I drink too much Diet Coke, I start to get nutty. I have problems with low blood sugar. I'm afraid I'll get cancer like my dad did, so I'm trying to be healthy, but then I'm convinced I'll get it anyway so sometimes I say "why bother??" I'm petrified of my ex and can't stand up to him at all. I think getting divorced is the smartest and best thing I ever did. I know why I'm with you, but sometimes I wonder why you're with me.

See? NUTS! NUTSNUTSNUTSNUTS.

I just think somewhere along the way I got the idea that I'd be able to sit back and relax, all "aaah, here I am in Happiness U.S.A." and well, so far that hasn't happened. There are times when I know that I'm in the right place at the right time, or I know I'm doing the right thing and I know what "happy" feels like. But most of the time? It eludes me. I wander around, wondering if I'll ever be satisified, if I'll ever go through a whole day without feeling like crying or feeling like there's an oily knot of fear in my chest. One day without feeling like I have to defend everything I do, without worrying that someone will expose all my secrets, will point me out in the crowd for being the moron, the fraud, the dupe the I am. One day of not feeling like I'm pulling the wool over all the normal people's eyes.

Phoning it in

Y'all, I was gonna do another projecting my issues type entry about Britney again, but FEH. I just don't have it in me anymore.

I do, however, have the day off tomorrow. Right now I'm headed out for martinis and gossip with a friend. Tomorrow, tonight and this weekend, I'm planning to do some of the following:

Put away the mountain of clean clothes in my room
Take a bunch of stuff to Goodwill
Weed through my books and take the rejects to Half-Price Books
Get my Oscar the Grouch eyebrows waxed
Clean my horrible living room
Wander through Target and consider some new bathroom stuff
Go for a run
Make something with the beads I bought in Dallas last weekend
Write a real entry

SMOOOCH!!!

Go home, mister

For years, I've gotten homesick on Mardi Gras. Last year, it just made me sad. This year I'm more than happy to pretend it's not even happening. In fact, until Sunday it didn't even really click with me that it was carnival season.

I just don't want to think about Louisiana right now. It makes me miss my hometown and it makes me miss my dad.

Lately everything reminds me of my dad, and I know it's because down in the part of my brain that I try to ignore, I'm reliving last year and I'm doing a countdown. This time last year, he only had a month left. We knew, but we didn't know.

So y'all forgive this New Orleans girl if she embraces her adopted Texan status today and ignores all that south Louisiana foolishness. I'm going for a run on an Austin trail, then I'm going home to work on my filthy little hill country apartment and perhaps knit some very silly projects, considering winter is just about over down here.

I will drink cheap Spanish wine and eat sauteed mushrooms over avocado (it's good, you should try it.) I'll have some of those damn mini Cadbury creme egs for dessert.

I will ignore any and all Mardi Gras coverage, even if it means going to my room and closing the door and the blinds and burying myself in books I've read 4 times already.

Tomorrow I'm not giving up a damn thing, because I'm not Catholic.

Thoughts on a shiny noggin

Y'all, Britney's bald head makes me all kinds of happy. I mean - home skillet done snapped, and I just know she's gonna start decorating her noggin with Swaroskis and shit now. (PLEEEEEEEEEEEEZ) I gave up celebrity gossip and have been so good about not following it, but dude. Bald Britney! I am not made of stone, people!!

I'm joking, because the truth is, I kind of feel for Britney. There was a time during my divorce when I really, truly thought I was going to lose my mind. One more phone call or email from the ex, one more shitty comment and I'd be writing this from the loony bin. (Instead of someplace that's totally NOT work. Ahem.)

There's a point in any stressful situation where you realize that there's not a Goddamned bit of what's going on that's in your control. Nothing. The only thing you can handle is getting up and putting one foot in front of the other. Arm in shirt, leg in pants, key in door, you can handle that. When you get to that point, you either relax or rebel.

The relaxers do exactly that. They sit back and just ride the roller coaster. They do a lot of deep breathing and perhaps some eye rolling, but they mostly just mutter "not my marble, dude" and wait for the storm to pass.

The rebels reach out for anything upon which to exert some control. In the extreme forms of rebellion, they lash out at other people to try to make them feel bad. In the mild form, they do things like re-decorate, buy new wardrobes, get tattoos, take up new exercise regimens and get extreme new haircuts.

When I got divorced, I chopped off 5 inches of hair and got two spur-of-the-moment tattoos - one of them on my neck.

As long as I can remember, I had dreams where I was trying to walk but I couldn't because I was floating above the ground. I wasn't flying, but actually floating about 2 feet above the ground and every time I'd try to walk, I couldn't get anywhere because I couldn't get any traction. You don't have to be a shrink to figure that shit out.

About 2 years ago, those dreams stopped. I haven't had one since. I've been more scared and alone and freaked right the fuck out in the past two years, but I've been able to control what happens to me during it. I know that at the end of the day, I made the decisions on what happened to me, and I was responsible for my own shit. It might suck, and it might be the worst damn decision I ever made, but dammit, I made the decision.

It felt really Goddamn good to get rid of those dreams.

Getting divorced sucked. Hell, being divorced sucks. Even if your marriage isn't happy, when things get rough you always think to yourself, "Man, if I'd stay married, somebody else could be picking up the chicken noodle soup/dry cleaning/cat barf right now." I guess I'm old-fashioned, but as a Woman Who Left, it feels like I failed. We won't even get into the ways the Ex failed, because every story has two sides and water under a bridge and caveat emptor and all that happy horseshit. But, you (I) do sometimes wonder if you (I) really gave it your (my) best effort.

So that my mom, Jef and Jane can all breathe again - does that mean I want to go back and give it another shot? Good fucking God, NO. I'm depressive, not delusional.

As much as it sucked, and as much as I'd like to go back to a HAPPY partnership someday, I'm glad I did it. I know I wouldn't be happy if I were still married to the Ex, and I'm happy now.

I'm happy with my life. There are things about it that could use a little fine-tuning, but I'm happy.

My point, and I swear I had one when I started, is that for some of us who never felt like we had control of our lives in the first place, when things get really crazy-insane? We reach out at something, anything and just CHANGE it, make a mark on it to show we were here, to show that we have power and agency and control in the world in some way.

Or, y'know - bitch could just be crazy.

A rebel and a relaxer arguing is a lot of fun to watch. The rebel is getting redder and redder, just trying to MAKE the other guy made, and the relaxer's like "dude - have you considered decaf?"

Do not pass go, do not collect $200

Because I have a corner booth in hell* already reserved, I have a picture of the future.

There is Hugh Hefner's head, floating in a jar. It is resting on a podium next to a tall, statuesque woman. She has curly blonde hair and big blue eyes and vaguely familiar features. A large, toothy grin spreads across her face. She is wearing a 20th century style dress known as a "halter" over her curvy frame.

"I'd like to congratulate Danielynn Stern on being named Playmate of the Year. I'd also like to thank her for gracing the cover of our very first 'Legacy Playboy'."

Oh, stop staring at me like that. Y'all know Hef thought of it too and he's just pissed off he won't be alive to make it happen.

*I actually don't believe in hell. I believe hell is here on Earth, in the form of Karma and the consequences of all our shitty decisions. And Celine Dion.

*BWOK!!*

OK, so I'm a giant chicken. Those of you got to read the big angry rant, lucky you. The rest of you, sorry. I took it down because I'm a weinie and because it was just entirely too much negativity, even for me.

I'll be back later.

smooches.

See what happens when you pay me a compliment?

So now that I've written something sort of damning of the ex, I feel this need to defend him or attach some sort of disclaimer. Bleh.

Before you rise up, all "Girl, don't you say nothin' nice about him!!" let me explain a couple of things. First, the ex is not a bad person. I wouldn't have spent 14 years of my life with a bad person. He just has some problems claiming responsibility for his own emotions and I am all too willing to own other people's emotions, which made us the perfect little dysfunctional match.

Second, while I do talk about the ex and some of the problems we have to Jef, I try not to trash talk about him where my boyfriend can read/hear it. Why? Well, for one thing it's just plain tacky. For another, it sort of sets a bad precedent. If I say those kind of things about the man I was with for 14 years, what do I say about the guy I'm with for 8 months?* Despite the fact that I write out here on the intarwebs, I actually don't believe in airing my dirty laundry. That's why most of my and the ex's mutual friends were so surprised when we announced we were getting divorced. I'll tell you about shaving my crotch or my horrible housekeeping, but some other things just aren't done. And this site is still semi-anonymous. The only people from my real life who know about it are my mom and Jef. I don't know, I'm starting to sound hypocritical to myself w/ the "I don't air my issues" and "I'm here on the worlda-wida-webba" at the same time. But somehow it seems different to me to sit with a girlfriend and vent and then turn around and tell the same stuff to your current partner. I'm not making sense anymore. End of paragraph.

Third, and I always feel the need to do this whenever I say anything even remotely uncomplimentary about anybody, I'm not a perfect person. So here's a list of all the ways in which I'm just a little hard to live with.

*I am a moody depressive.

*When I walk in the door, I drop my shit right in the middle of the walkway. I've tried to stop this, but can't seem to. I think the only answer for me is a house with cubbyholes right by the door. In other words, I have the housekeeping skills of a 5 year-old.

*I'm a clutterbug. Piles of crap everywhere. And yes, nine times out of ten, I really do know where everything is.

*I leave a 1/4" of milk in the jug and put it back in the fridge.

*I steal the last beer and sometimes the last cookie.

*I almost never make my bed, and usually only do it because company's coming over or because I've just washed the sheets.

*I let my cats sleep in the bed with me and if you have a problem with that, I'll probably choose them over you.

*Sometimes I take off my bra while I'm watching TV and leave it laying right there, in the middle of the living room floor. Trust me, there's no missing that bad boy.

*I can NOT cook in a dirty kitchen, not even a sandwich. If you want dinner NOW, the kitchen needs to be clean, or we need to go out to eat. The upside of this is that I usually can't go to bed unless my kitchen is clean.

*I don't soak my dishes because the thought of that nasty water bothers me way more than the thought of scrubbing a pan.

*I leave cups and glasses EVERYWHERE. I send the kid scouting through the house every day for glasses when I do dishes, because lord only knows where I've left my coffee cup from that morning.

*I'm picky about everything except food.

*I like stinky food like sardines and blue cheese. But not together - that's too gross, even for me.

*I can and will go an entire weekend without bathing or changing clothes. In fact, I rather enjoy it after a tough week. A little ferality never hurt anybody.

*Sometimes, I just don't really want to be touched.

*I think Fritos, cheese and a glass of wine is a perfectly acceptable dinner every once in a while.

*I can get a little self-involved. I still love you, but I'm over here, doing my thing - don't you have a thing to do?? No? Well, go find one.

*I'm forgetful. If I don't write it down, I'll forget it. And, frankly, if it's not important to me, I'll forget it too. Just because something is important to you doesn't make it important to me, sorry. I'm sure there's some transitive property of relationships here that I just don't get, but there it is. I'll try to share in stuff with you, I respect that things are important to you, but just because you have a big important meeting today doesn't mean I'll remember it. Sorry.

*I don't communicate my needs and wants clearly, or hell, sometimes at all. It takes me a long time to dredge up what I really want from the bottom of my brain, and if you start talking in the middle of my thought, you'll completely derail my train.

See folks? I'm hard to live with too. A moody, unpredictable, prickly, forgetful, selfish, cookie-stealing, messy, stinky cheese-eating, giant bra-leaving, crazy cat lady.

Call me!!

*Of course, I say nothing bad about him, because he's given me nothing bad TO say. Smoooooch!

The pic's from Halloween, the rant's from yesterday

I have these random skinned spots on my knuckles this morning. Why? Was I boxing in my sleep? Did I win? What the hell?

I try not to talk about my ex too much here. There's a few reasons. One - the last time I talked about him in great detail, he freaked the fuck out and I ended up taking down my last journal. Of course, he was reading that one and it was right after we split up and bleh. Whatever. Second, it tends to raise my blood pressure just thinking about the man. And no, not in a fun way. If he raised my blood pressure that way, I'd still be married to him, now wouldn't I??

Yesterday, he and I had a small run-in over the general care and feeding of our child* , which is really the only thing we have issues over anymore. Of course, it's really the only thing we SHOULD have an issue over, isn't it? Hm, funny how I still feel like he should have a say in any part of my life. Those ties, they take a while to sever. Remember this, it's important later.

Each time he and I have a problem, the argument takes less and less time to dissolve and I find myself less and less rattled by it. I find that I am more willing to tell him to take a flying leap,both more and less willing to just tell him what he wants to hear (huh?) and less apt to be upset about it later.

For example, when he challenges my parenting, I pretty much tell him to not even start with me. He may not like or agree with my parenting, but the fact is, I AM a parent. I do this full-time. I'm the one making the decisions and dealing with the emotional, irrational, insane 15 year-old girl in the house every day. I'm the one who has to play middle man between him and his child because he can't seem to figure out how to talk to her. Sometimes I feel like I'm parenting both of them, as a matter of fact. Don't tell me "be a parent" just because I don't parent like YOU.

I'm more willing to just say "Ok, I'm sorry this isn't going your way, I'll have her call you" and hang up than try to fix things, because finally, FINALLY, after years and years and years of banging my head against this particular brick wall, I've figured out that nothing I say will fix a goddamn thing. HOwever. I'm also not just going to sit there and apologize if I really don't feel like I did anything wrong. I used to do that. I used to apologize and cry and throw myself under the bus just so that he'd stop yelling. Fuck that noise. If I didn't do anything wrong, you can suck my ass, I'm not apologizing. And stop yelling, you're scaring the cats.

Do I get annoyed because he's disrupted my life AGAIN and tried to make me into his vision of what he thinks I should be AGAIN? Yes. Do I get annoyed because sometimes he has a point, but that doesn't mean he has to be such a jerk about how he makes it?? Yes. Do I let it make me cry and drag me down for the rest of the day anymore? Good lord no.

See? I will never be the person the Ex wants me to be. He claims that he loved (loves) me just the way I am, yet every time we fought, everything that came out of his mouth said differently. Everything I did was wrong, wrong, wrong. You can only be told you're wrong so many times, y'know? You can only hear apologies like "I'm sorry you misunderstood me" and "I'm sorry you got your feelings hurt" so many times. After a while, it takes a toll on a person. The toll it took on me was that I started to believe that I was the bad person in the marriage. The first thing I did was become the bad person in the marriage. Needless to say, that didn't help matters much.

Then I tried therapy and drugs. While that helped me become a happier person, it didn't help my marriage any. I realized that the problem wasn't really me. It was the marriage. So I left.

It's taken me two years of living without the ex to finally be able to figure out a lot of things about him and how to deal with him. The biggest one is that I will never, ever be able to change how he feels and I think he hates that. I believe that when he's angry he wants someone to be able to make him un-angry and life doesn't work that way. The only person who can make you un-angry is YOU. So finally, 16 years after meeting this man, I've figured out how to say, "I'm sorry you feel that way", and walk away and not worry about it.

My therapist once gave me an excellent visualization tool for dealing with other people. She said to think of other people's problems as marbles. That when they try to hand you their problems you can look at it like a marble in your hand and say "Ok, I can put this in my pocket and deal with it later" or "Ok, this is my marble now, I'll keep it in my hand" or "Dude...that's not my marble" and toss it. Three guesses what I used to do.

I've gotten irreperably off track here, but my point is, the Ex can push my buttons like nobody else and I hate it. I'm one of those people who hates to cry in front of anybody. I was embarrassed to cry at my own father's funeral, so c'mon. Gradually, over the past two years, I've found and disabled each and every one of my buttons. Some of them were easy, because frankly my life is none of his business.

Unfortunately, the parenting button sort of has to stay enabled because of the kiddo. It just pisses me off that it's the one area where I feel like, no I'm not perfect, but I can kind of point to my kid, my intelligent, funny, gourmet cooking, snappy dressing, wise-cracking, animal-loving, atheist, Janis Joplin-singing, movie-memorizing, calls me mama and tells me she loves me in public kid and say "Dude...I AM a parent. A good one. Bite my ass."

*Kid stayed the weekend at a friend's house. We don't necessarily approve of all the goings-on at this friend's house, but she gets to go on a conditional kind of basis. Kid's cell phone died. Charger was forgotten at home. I had back up numbers, ex did not. Unfairness and safety issues of only one parent being able to get ahold of child brought up. While I agree, general dickitude was not appreciated, because kiddo had made an effort during the weekend to call me twice a day and let me know where she was, who she was with and what was up. There was only one misunderstanding about what was going to happen on Monday (no school) that led to the whole blow up.

Three random stories that might explain a lot about me

My grandparents used to take me on vacation every summer. We usually went to either Florida or Texas - something that was a two day drive from New Orleans. I've been to Disney World, Busch Gardens, Astro World, Six Flags, a whole bunch of caves in Georgia and one year, in a burst of creativity, we went to Tennessee.

Anyway, on one of the years we went to Florida, a fan belt broke in my grandparents' Cadillac and we ended up stuck on the side of the road. I can't picture my Poppa hiking for help, but this was about 25 years ago, so I guess he did. Regardless, a Florida state trooper ended up coming to our rescue by crossing over the median and picking us up.

Now, see I don't question authority unless authority gives me a reason to do so. So I said "Um, sir? How come you get to cross the grass and we don't??"

He looked down from under the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat at the cute (I was kind of cute) obnoxious little blonde girl in front of him and, to his credit, said:

"Well, that's because it's real swampy here in Florida and we know all the safe places to cross and y'all might not. We don't want y'all to get stuck."

Given a perfectly reasonable explanation for an injustice, I'll go about my merry way.

Of course, years later, I realized that the real answer was "because we're the police and you're not."

It's up to you to decide whether "years later" means when I was in high school or, like, last week.

********

My dad had this friend named Tommy. Tommy was an incredible artist. He had a red face and a stutter and was one of the funniest guys I've ever met. He died of stomach cancer when kiddo was a toddler.

Tommy is why I will never, ever, ever have Botox.

See, here's the thing. Anytime my dad and Tommy would be hanging out, drinking beer and bullshitting (something that they wouldn't shoo me away from, thank you Dad) the worst thing Tommy could come up with, the vilest poison, the most evil thing ever??? Was botulism.

"That can's dented! Botulism!!"

"Wait, how old are those chips?? No don't eat those! You could get botulism!!"

"Red sky at night, Sailor's delight, Red sky at morning, BOTULISM!!!"

So yeah, no botulism in the forehead for me, thanks though.

**********

My grandparents had this ranch style house that had that most useless of features - the formal living room. It, and the formal dining room to which it was attached, pretty much only got used for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, for storing random things and for when my best friend Carrie and I were playing.

During one of the holidays, my grandmother made the mistake of bending over at the waist to fix the cushions on the couch. My dad snapped a picture of her butt.

"Whit-NEY!!!"
"What??"
"Did you just take a picture of my butt??"
"Why the hell would I take a picture of THAT??"

Come Christmas, there was a small box under the tree marked:

To: Ma
From: Whit

It rattled

My grandma opened it up. It was full of puzzle pieces.

"Whitney, what the hell is this??"
"Well, put it together, I'm not gonna tell you."

She put it together, and it was a picture of her, caught in the act of bending over fixing the cushions on the couch. Not a picture of her face, in other words.

Sometimes a little bubbles over

I am a terrible person.

When I come across a blog written by someone with cancer*, I get a little stab of jealousy and, yes, ANGER when I find out they're doing well or their treatment is working or they're recovered or in remission.

I get annoyed by all the pink crap for breast cancer when there's nothing out there for colon cancer and 100% of the population has a colon.

I'm pissed off that breast cancer has a walk and nobody else does. Is it because boobs are sexy and pancreases aren't??

I hate that one of my favorite writers is beating cancer right now and I can't just feel unadulterated joy for her like I should. I should be happy for her. I should poor a glass of wine and put on a silly hot pink hat and hug my kid and kiss my cats and paint a colorful self-portrait and then lift something big and heavy and lift a big ol' double-finger salute to cancer because she got away, so NYEH!!

But I can't. Because I'm still pissed off that it wasn't my dad.

This anger eats at me and it will consume me if I let it, and that makes me a terrible, terrible person.

*I hate the term "cancer blog", because goddammit, you are more than your disease.

snippet

The scene - kiddo has just put lowlights in my hair (because she doth rock in all things hair) and I've just gotten done washing and blow-drying my hair. ACTION!

"You rock!"
"Does it look good?? Is it what you wanted? Let me see!"
"Looks great!"
"Come here!! Let me see, lemme seeeee!!!!"
"Hang on, I have to put on pants!!"
".....I'll wait."

mutiny

All three cats are on the couch and I'm sitting on the floor. Something is seriously askew in my house.

flurry

It's 35 degrees outside and raining/sleeting/flurrying and since I live in Austin, Texas this means the entire city is shut down.

Good GOD, I love this town.

Anyway, I'm sitting here, with freshly blow-dryed hair (which of course looks fabulous, since I'm not going anywhere) wearing make-up, a fluffy purple turtle-neck sweater, fuzzy gray sweatpants and kelly green socks. I'm working on my third cup of coffee and wondering if it's too early to bust out the grilled cheese sandwiches. Whoo!!! Snow day!!

The kiddo, should you be wondering, is in Round Rock with her buddies and has today off anyway, since it's Martin Luther King day.

This means I have another day to myself. I staved off stir-craziness yesterday by going for a run and doing a quick work errand. Today I think I'll go tromping around in the cold. I don't drive in the ice, because I'm a southern girl and I can't, but I'm a little weird in that when it gets obscenely cold, I like to bundle up and go for a walk. Hey, I get to experience true cold one day a year, so why the hell not??

I'm watching "Charmed" right now and I know I've asked it before, but who the hell dressed Alyssa Milano on this show? Seriously.

I had to change the channel - the wife beater with lace and button straps and bizarre corset contraption ensemble was bothering me. And this is coming from a woman wearing kelly green socks, y'all. HGTV, I love Carol Duvall's craft show, it's so cheesy and earnest.

When it's cold outside, I get the urge to cook. I want to make pots of beans, pans of brownies, pies, quiches, casseroles, stews, cookies, cakes, soups, chili, souffles, complicated gourmet whizbang recipes and simple rustic throw it together and let it sits. Why? I do not know. But that's the urge. Right now I have a pound of bacon and a bag of lentils calling, calling, caaaaaalling me to throw them together. Lentils cook so very quickly, I think I'll wait till later.

But I am pretty hungry and it's never too early for a grilled cheese sandwich, right??

Blurb

Football, especially Saints football, makes me miss my grandparents' house. A lot of the Sundays of my youth were spent in the low-ceiling, dark-panelled den of their east New Orleans ranch style house, watching football game after football game, listening to my grandmother yell incomprehensible criticisms at the screen.

"Sack him! Sack him!!"
"Ma...that's not the quarterback, and he doesn't have the ball, so they can't touch him, much less sack him."
"I don't care! I don't like him! He's on the wrong team! SACK HIM!"
"......"
"Want another beer, Whit?"
"God, yes."

Expect lots of edits

Hee - Pee Wee suggested I cut out one Starbucks a week to save for my tattoo. That's actually a really good idea, except my current budget is set where I only go to Starbucks ONCE a week! HEE.

Oh, and I don't get too upset about suggestions, 'cause a)it means you're reading, b)I don't have to listen and c)as long as you're polite, who cares?? Now if you start saying stuff like "Goddamn, you need to loose wait and get rid of all thos cats, your a lozer you suck!!!1111!!", then maybe I won't be so nice. Otherwise, suggest away!!

So, the red wine's been boughted, the chili's on the stove, the Oreos are on the counter and I'm sitting here, flipping back and forth between the pre-game and "Myth-Busters." I can't figure out what's a bigger insult- the fact that my dad's not alive to see the Saints go to the playoffs, or the cheesy "24" tie-in they're doing right now. Discuss.

Y'all - even if you don't give a fuck about football, even if you HATE it, root for my boys, OK?? They're due.

Cats shouldn't eat rubberbands

I stopped at Starbucks this morning for some coffee and one of those apple empenadas that I know they'll get rid off entirely too quickly (fuckers), and the woman who went through the door and quite rudely did NOT hold it for me was one of those women who was dressed in a suit and pumps, despite the fact that it was Friday and this is Austin. I was slightly annoyed and intimidated until, while standing behind her in line, I looked over her shoulder and saw that while she was trying to look important by using her stylus to mess with her PDA, she was actually playing Collapse.

She did have on some really great jewelry though.

So look, I know nice people don't admit to reading it, but dude...what the fuck is up with Trainwrecks?? I hope somebody hacked it and it's not a case of another cool site shutting down because they lost their balls. Seriously dude. All they did was make fun of sites. That happens on LiveJournal and Diaryland and every other damn site in the world every damn day. I need my trainwrecks. I will, well, I will be mightily pissed is what I will do, if they've shut themselves down!!!

grumble mutter grumble

My fabulous boyfriend bought me a white noise machine for Christmas and the noise I like best is "rainstorm", because it works like a charm. The problem is that now, every time it rains during the day, I respond like a toddler in a moving car and fall right the fuck asleep. My boss is not amused. Anyway, right now it's raining off and on, so I'm like a narcoleptic over here. Of course, the wine may have something to do with that.

I've been obsessed lately with getting another tattoo. The problem is, that costs money (which is something I'm trying not to spend too much of) and it keeps me from donating plasma (something I'm trying to keep as an option for money making.) Hmph. I'm constantly thwarted in my efforts to turn my body into a billboard. This much real estate - it's a shame really.

Mom, be quiet.

OK, it's 12:30, I'm most of the way through a bottle of red. Talk to y'all later.

Sideways*

Dude. I've got all kinds of stuff climbing around in my brain right now, but can't seem to shake any of out in any kind of coherent fashion. This is why y'all get memes, just so's ya know. I get 30 squillion ideas in my head and they all crowd up at my fingertips when I sit down to write and I just sit there like a character in an RPG, sort of rocking back and forth. I like that image much better than "like a mental patient", thank you. Anyway, because I do not have Jane's mad segue skilz, I present you with some random, disconnected paragraphs.

So, this mommyblogging thing?? What, exactly, is the big deal? I mean, Dooce annoys the shit out of me and I think Amalah's cute but a little delusional, and yeah some of the stuff that's actually written about the children walks that invasion of privacy line, but this is all the same stuff that moms have been telling each other for years and years. The difference is, now they're telling each other over the internet instead of a party line, so it's the WORLD listening in, rather than just the operator. Oh, and they're shedding light on the idea that parenting isn't always pudding and kisses. Well, DUH. I just don't see the big deal from either end - why it has suddenly become a cottage industry to write about your children, or why some people find it so incredibly distasteful that they're doing so.

Hm, a jump from babies to Jef - yikes. No, no, there will be none of that. He's just the next subject on the list. Everything on the Jef front is going beautifully. I'm not picking out china patterns or anything, but I'm happy. I'll just bask in that for a while. His work schedule has rotated around so that he's working weekends for the next couple of weeks, but come the first weekend of February, it's on! Or...something. ?

The Saints are in the playoffs. I know, y'all just pulled a muscle with the eyerolling, but dude!! DUDE!! So if any of y'all are in the Austin area on Saturday, I'll be watching the game. c'mon by, I'll make queso, bring your own wine.

My kid doth rock. She failed Algebra II last semester (she also worked her ass off in it and is taking honors Algebra II as a freshman, so I didn't give her too much grief) and was planning on switching to regular (non-honors??) Algebra II this semester. However, the teacher told her that if she can make a 76 in the class this semester, she'll get credit for the whole year. I'm not entirely sure how that works, but when kiddo told me that, I said "I think you can do that." She said "yep, so do I." I'm so proud of her, because she's a tenacious little pain in the butt.

I'm still discovering strange habits that I had from my marriage - things I didn't buy, places I didn't go - because the ex didn't like them. I've been divorced for 2 years and finally bought some soap other than Dial white. How long does this take to go away?? The habits and the consciousness of them??

I want to make some of this, but I'm not sure what scent. Lavender seems the most obvious. Sounds like field trip time. Mom??

*The title is taken from the pictures, which is not supposed to be sideways, yet is. The magic of blogger. That pic, by the way, is of some bathroom grafitti that I discovered at the first happy hour I went to after I filed for divorce. It just seemed kind of fitting.

boys

I'm getting tired of leaving my boyfriend in Dallas, you guys. OK, well, that sums up the entry for today. Bye - turn out the lights on the way out, would you?

Seriously, this long-distance stuff sucks. At first it didn't bother me, because I'm one of those people who needs lots of space in a relationship. The idea of having a boyfriend who lived 200 miles away was actually sort of comforting. There was no way we'd get all up in each other's business, no way I'd feel like he was always in my bubble, and no way he'd feel like I was always in his.

Jef and I have very similar needs when it comes to space. Neither one of us "transitions" well - mine is getting home from work, his is waking up in the morning - and we both have times when we just need to be away. He's said that one of the things he likes about me is that I let him "go to [his] cave." I told him it's easy, because I can totally identify and assume that when I need to go hide, he'd give me the same respect. So far, so good.

Anyway, being the neurotic cave-dwellers we are, a 200-mile separation makes that whole space thing pretty damn easy. But now, it's getting a little old. We've spent 4 days in a 700 square foot apartment and all I can think at the end of it is "I have to go home already??"

Admittedly, that's without the pressure of a work schedule. Our weekends do tend to function a little like mini-vacations. But folks who know me know that I get tired of being around other people after a while. Especially in close quarters. I was not built for boat-dwelling or submarines or camping or maybe even being around other human beings on a regular basis.

But we've gotten to a point where the distance is just frustrating. At the risk of y'all getting knocked over by the pure romance of this statement, I gotta tell you - we don't bug each other's shit.

We've talked about moving to the same city and the thing that makes the most sense is for him to move down here - which is great, but not really feasible until September.

This leads me down a path of self-doubt. I'm totally comfortable with the idea of being in the same city (yes! start packing! why aren't you here yet?) and I've even thought about moving to Dallas (sorry mom, but if it weren't for the kiddo, I probably would) but for some reason, the idea of him moving here for me makes me nervous.

Fact is, I'm not comfortable with the idea of somebody changing cities *for* another person, ever. It can lead to a lot of resentment and pain if the person who moves ends up not liking the new location. I know Jef hates Dallas and loves me - that's a good combination. But I don't have enough ego to think that I'm enough to make things OK if he has problems finding a job or a good place to live or anything interesting about Austin.

I don't know - that's September. We'll get there. But right now, I'm so tired of text messaging and 3 hour drives and going a month without seeing him because of his work schedule.