Picking Bones

I looked at my calendar today and realized it's July 27th, which means I have approximately 15 days to accept the fact that swimsuits are tools of the Devil designed to make any woman, whether she weighs 92 pounds or 300, feel like she's being stuffed into a sausage casing and paraded around on a conveyor belt while robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people peer over the tops of their oversized sunglasses and purse their lips as much as their collagen will let them, silently judging and making notes on scented paper before deciding who looks acceptable and who gets tossed in the bin of people waiting to be selected for The Biggest Loser, and that there's nothing I can do about that.

That sentence doesn't even make sense, does it. I can just hear Mrs. Wilcox, my 6th grade English teacher (back then it was called Language Arts) sighing and lecturing us about run-on sentences.

During the second week of August I'm going to Massachusettes with my Best for her bridal shower and while I could not be more excited to A) take a vacation, B) finally get to visit Boston, and C) spend some much-needed girl time with said Best, this trip will involve a trip to the beach.

I'd be lying if I said I've ever felt comfortable with how I look and yes, I know this is starting to read like a 'Cathy' comic strip, but it's true. My weight has gone up and down and occasionally sideways so much the past few years that I'm quite close to having a muumuu surgically attached to my body. Yes, it's shallow. Yes, it's pointless to obsess over something that you only have limited control over. And yet, here I am.

Part of this mental crisis is coming from the fact that ever since we've moved, my work-out schedule hasn't been nearly as strict as it used to be. Before we moved I was up at 4:30, at the gym by 5:15, and working out until 6:20 or 6:30. Now that I've moved 40 miles away from the gym, I've given up the membership and have started furnishing a small gym in my basement. I've let myself sleep in until 6, and have resolved to workout after work instead of before. It's worked, to a degree, but I still feel awfully out of shape. More so than I'd like to.

I guess what this all boils down to is that I'm stuck between wanting to be healthy and not wanting to fall victim to either an eating disorder or this nation's obesity epidemic. I've tried Weight Watchers, but when they started throwing around sayings more commonly heard on pro-anorexia sites, that kind of dimmed for me. I've tried methods that I'm not going into detail on and I'm afraid of getting into this destructive sneaky self-hate spiral.

It's all about choices in the end and as I sit here, re-reading this and trying to figure out if I spelled 'Massachusettes' right (I didn't), I am choosing that I'm not going to let robotic Anna Wintour-type insect people determine my self-worth. If I were meant to be waif-like, God would've made me that way. Frankly, who wants hip bones that stick out? All that does is make it really hurt when you get yanked off your feet and pulled across a high-school gym by a parachute. Don't ask me how I know this.

Frankly, the robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people can kiss my grits.

Looking Glass

We've been in our house for about 5 weeks now and we love it. I love pottering around the inside of the house, trying to figure out where the best place for a 10-year-old sentimental Orangina bottle really is while my husband is waging his own personal war against our weed-ridden lawn outside. I love coming home and knowing it's ours; that we can do whatever we want to it instead of being able to do nothing because our landlord was...well, a landlord. Just try and stop us (well, me really) from painting the garage fuchsia, Landlord. Just. Try.

People have told me it takes years for them to be truly unpacked and settled and whatnot. Frankly, as someone who's been swimming in boxes and stray, cat-chewed pieces of packing tape since the middle of May I will not have it. I have goals, and for once in my life they will be met. The house will be unpacked before the end of August.

Gosh. What else is going on...oh, right. It's almost August, which to some people means the start of back-to-school shopping, the NFL pre-season, and inexplicable Christmas shopping. To me, it means that every single weekend from here until Labor Day is booked. Between having company over, going to Massachusettes (which remains the only state I cannot consistently spell correctly), my Best's bridal shower, my husband's birthday, parent's anniversary, and my nephew's guaranteed-to-be-awesome pirate-themed 4th birthday party, my schedule and memory are going to be weeping. I've already decided that come Labor Day, I'm not doing a blessed thing except reading whatever book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series I happen to be in. And laundry. Probably laundry.

I'm looking forward to autumn and winter. We actually have trees now. Mature trees that will, with any luck, turn gorgeous colors in a few months and will retain a stark kind of beauty come winter. Oh, winter. I miss you and all your dark turns.

Bombardment

Is this what buying a house is like every time it's done? I thought that if I could get through the pre-approval and offer acceptance, it'd be smooth sailing from there.

Boy, am I stupid. We're supposed to close 2 weeks from Friday and it feels like there's still so much that's up in the air. Where's the closing happening? What time? Is our mortgage 100 percent without-a-doubt approved? What happens if something's missing? Why can I not get any straight answers? RAAAAAHHHHHHHHH-

Ok. Here's what we'll do. We'll just never move again. Provided all goes well and my ne'er-do-well brain is just fretting for the sake of fretting, we'll just stay in this house and add on to it as need be. Sure, it may wind up looking like the Weasley's house but if it means not having to do the Tango de la Mortgage again I'll be thrilled.

Calm Waters

This week.

Oh, this week.

If this past week was the angry, frothing bull, my husband and I have been the novice riders trying to not get our spines compacted riding it for a mere 8 seconds.

Where to begin? How about the beginning? Ok?

Ok.

After a surprisingly short search, we found a house. We liked it, we could afford it, it was lovely. So we put in an offer and waited an interminable 29 hours for a response. The sellers countered with a price a smidge higher than what we offered. We were ok with that. We accepted. They accepted our acceptance. We accepted their acceptance of our acceptance.

Hooray!

That was last Monday. My husband scheduled our home inspection for this past Saturday and we gleefully spent the next 5 days in Homeowners Elysium. It's lovely there - there are acres and acres of yards to be mowed and landscaped, patios to be decorated, soft, warm, rainy days to sit and watch the water drip off the leaves of the magnolia bush in the backyard. We looked at paint samples, looked to see how much a new lock set would be, toyed with where to put furniture. In short, we were excited.

Then came Saturday and the inspection.

There were the normal amounts of dings and dangs in the house. The garage needs a new roof. There's some siding that needs replaced. Nothing major. We thought we were in the clear until we found out about the Foundation. Capital F. It warrants a capital F simply because of the magnitude of the problem. Long story short, the Foundation at one point was starting to bow so whoever was living there at the time had it fixed.

Poorly.

The repairs failed.

So long story shorter, the inspector said that in order to fix this the entire basement would have to be torn out and newer, stronger, Tony Stark Iron Man metal beams would have to be put in to brace the Foundation to keep the house from sliding into a parallel dimension through our TV. It would be quite costly, and the problem is considered a deal breaker. So we started moving ahead to break the deal.

Haroo.

We were disappointed and maybe a little heartbroken. It felt like we'd been stood up on Prom Night by a date we maybe didn't want to go with after all. They always had something stuck in their teeth, y'know?

That lasted until this morning, when our realtor called and said that the sellers may be able to fix this. Apparently when their realtor said 'They have no money to fix anything', she meant 'Ohwait they might. We're not sure. We'll get back to you.'

Haruh?

I don't know where we are right now. We're waiting on paperwork; waiting to hear if the sellers are going to fix this; waiting waiting waiting.

I've also been dealing with a bout of the stomach flu that everyone and their mother (including my mother [hi Mom]) says is from the 'stress' of house-hunting and whatnot. I'm not stressed. I don't feel stressed. I haven't taken on any stress-related tendencies. In fact, what's stressing me out most of all is everyone else telling me how stressed out I either am or am supposed to be. It's like a giant, horrid recursive cycle of self-perpetuating stress.

There is a house out there for us. Whether it's the Foundation house or another, it's out there. My stressing and worrying about it won't help us find it. Your stressing and worrying about it on my behalf won't help us find it.

Just relax, and watch the water drip off the leaves of the magnolia bush.

Papercuts

I take after my dad in respect to not wearing shoes at my desk. I'm not wearing them right now.

That being said, there is a social circle out there who still listen to vinyl records, who hunt flea markets and obscure music shops for LPs and 45s. One of the radio stations where I live will occasionally have a show that plays nothing but vinyls. This social circle says the sound is warmer, more genuine and deeper. They say that with the invention of CDs and MP3s, music has lost its soul.

I used to think they were just being snobby elitists who didn't want to get on the technology bandwagon, but then I realized: I'm the same way with books. I would rather have a broken, creased, dog-eared book in my hands over a Kindle or iPad or anything like that. There are two books that I can think of off the top of my head that I will probably carry with me for as long as I can.

One is The Princess Bride. I grew up with this movie and didn't realize it was an actual book until I was in middle school. My sister had a copy of it in her room that I adopted when she went to college, and within a few years I'd read it so many times that the book literally fell apart right between chapters 3 and 4. I was devastated, but that didn't stop me from reading it over and over and over again. Finally, I stumbled across a roll of packing tape, hatched a little ingenuity, and had the book more or less in one piece.

Fast forward a few years. I'd moved out of my parent's house for college, and decided that it was high time to replace my ratty, taped, and worn copy of The Princess Bride. I toddled onto Barnes & Nobel's site and found hey, a hardcover version! I bought it, but when the time came to actually read it I couldn't. It didn't feel right. It felt like I'd turned my back on an old and reliable friend for the new hotness. Before long I'd popped it on the shelf and had returned to my ratty, taped, and worn copy. It felt a little like coming home at a time when I wasn't sure where home was. My parents had built a new house shortly after I graduated high school, and that didn't feel like home yet. At the same time I had moved into this charming little apartment, albeit with a psychotic queen of passive-aggressiveness for a roommate and even though I had my room and all my things arranged just so, that didn't feel like home yet either. Something about the way the tape between chapters 3 and 4 cracked, though, that felt like home.

The second book is The Simarillion. I was introduced to that book by someone I dated in high school and while the relationship didn't work out, I am glad it happened because otherwise I never, ever would've read this under my own duress. It's by Tolkien, and it's essentially the mythos of Middle-Earth. It tells all these grand, epic tales of the creation, how the sun and moon came to be, the old gods, ancient wars, tragedies, romances, dragons, good guys, bad guys, so forth and so on. On paper it sounds about as exciting as a tube of toothpaste. Some argue that when you read it, it's like reading a tube of toothpaste. It did take me a little while to get used to the language and the names (oh, the names. I pretty much just cough through them in my head to this day) but it is one book I am glad to say I've read and will continue to read.

I went through sort of the same thing with The Simarillion as I did with The Princess Bride. My copy was getting worn out and the thought of losing it was heart-breaking. I bought a hardcover copy to replace it and have not touched it. Sure, the ink on my paperback is getting a little smudged and the binding is broken, but what does it matter?

There are other books that are starting to show their age - the copy of Pride and Prejudice I found at my grandparent's house and kept on a whim, The Lord of the Rings which I saved for and hemmed and hawed over actually buying, various Harry Potter volumes. I'm really hoping that some day I can pass these books onto my kids and tell them that when I was their age, books had a feeling that wasn't plastic. They had a texture, and a smell, and a sound. They gave you papercuts and took up room in your backpack but you could hold them. They had a soul.

And then I'll probably tell them that I also had to walk to school uphill both ways against the wind with my feet wrapped in barbed-wire for traction in the winter, and to go take out the garbage, and to stop picking on their sister, and to not make me turn this van around...

Knit one, purl two

This weekend I was at my parent's house, helping my mother decorate the nursery and toddler room at my father's church. I'm hesitant to say it, but...oh this hurts...I...I liked the crafting. I liked the painting and lining up of big fabric flowers on the wall and painting flower stems under them (even if my stems were wierd and lumpy and possibly genetically erred) and Heaven help me, I liked using a glue gun. A GLUE GUN. I can hardly sew a button on to a pair of pants and I enjoyed using a GLUE. GUN.

I can't even wrap my head around it. I'm not a crafty person. I'm not an artistic person, or musical. There's a very real and tangible reason why I stick to the written word. If I tried another medium I would probably wind up explaining it to a fire marshal or paramedic. But I think I could do a little crafting. I could glue a magnet on to the back of random household objects and before long, BAM. You too can have a wooden spatula, 4 salt shakers, and the top to an empty box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch stuck to your refrigerator, holding up emails from professors you haven't talked to in 6 years and recipes for cornbread-based taco bakes.

It's 9:06 on a Monday. I'm sitting here, blogging about glue guns and tacos, watching the Hallmark Channel (?!), and sewing a hem on a pair of work pants. This is it. It's finally happened.

I'm 27 going on 93.

Yes, yes, Wilford. We can go to Denny's for the Early Bird Special. Just let me get my orthopedic shoes and we can race our Hover Rounds around the parking lot.

Small Corrections

There are three things I remember about my sixteenth birthday. The first was that my dad was in Jerusalem. He called me from the Wailing Wall that day, and bought a hand-made silver and turquoise necklace from a shepardess outside Bethlahem along with a silver ring with my name engraved in it in Hebrew for my birthday. I still have both of them but for the life of me, I cannot figure out which way the script on the ring ring is supposed to face.

The second is that I didn't have my driver's license, nor had I gone through Driver's Ed.

The first two things I remember play a good deal in the third. Since my brother and sister had long since moved out and my dad was halfway around the world, it was just going to be my mom and I. We decided to fly down to Texas to visit my grandparents. They live about an hour west of San Antonio where it's stopped being flat oil fields and starts being a hazy hill country that in November turns brown or purple. They have a cattle ranch and at the time, my grampa still had cows there. Now he rents out the land to a neighbor who grazes his cattle on it. Circle of life.

Since I didn't have my driver's license, I obviously had very little behind-the-wheel experience. By 'little' I mean I wasn't aware of the fact that when you put the car in drive, it goes somewhere. Honestly. The first time I went driving that was a major shock to me. So one morning when my grampa asked if I wanted to drive in to town with him to get the mail, I said sure. We always did it, every time I visited. We'd climb in his old, tan truck with the cracked leather interior that smelled wonderful and trundle on down the long gravel driveway and winding, narrow country roads.

That morning, though, he asked if I wanted to drive. Bear in mind, by now his old tan truck had been replaced with a dark blue diesel leviathan. This truck was the size of New Hampshire. I must've said yes, because the next thing I knew he was talking me through backing it out of the carport without hitting the electric cattle fence, my gramma's car, the house, or the hundred-year-old oak in their front yard. I did it, and managed to drive to the post office without killing either of us. He kept saying 'Small corrections, just make small corrections.' to me, almost as if he knew that any time I played a racing video game I'd treat the steering wheel like a creature that needed its neck wrung. 'The truck will want to go straight by itself, so you don't have to steer hard as long as you make small corrections.' And he was right.

The memory of my normally-gruff grampa, paitently keeping me on the road, has been popping up a lot lately. Not because my driving skills are abysmal, but because I have no patience. When I start a task I want immediate results. When I turn a wheel, something should happen, dang it! None of this waiting nonsense. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that.

I'm trying to start running at the gym in the mornings. I've never been a runner. Never. Put me in the water and I'll go all day but ask me to run a block and I will most likely laugh at you. Hard. I tried it a few months ago, and it worked pretty well but for whatever reason I stopped. I can't remember why (which in itself is funny because I remember what I wore to dinner on my 16th birthday - a grey skirt and sea-green t-shirt. I had no fashion sense, and also chlorine-bleached hair.). I've started it up again though. Something about running, even for a few minutes, seems to set my mind right. I feel organized when I get to work, and less likely to want to take a nap in my car about 1:30.

I am disappointed that I'm not better at it. It seems like some sort of basic human survival trick to get up and run for an undetermined amount of time. If I lived 3000 years ago and was being chased by an invading army of whoever it was that was invading 3000 years ago, you bet I'd be able to run.

I need patience. I need to be able to tell myself that I'm not going to run a marathon next week, nor am I expected to. As much as I may wish it, there is not an invading army of Huns chasing me down with spears and stones and the Black Plague. I am, sadly, only human.

I am only human.

See? Small correction.

What Happens When You Build a Dam Over A Stream of Conciousness?

If I were to ever see Ben Bernanke on the street I can't promise I wouldn't try to hit him with my car or possibly a piece of construction equipment I have no business driving. I don't know if Mr. Bernanke is in any way, shape, or form responsible for the mortgage crisis going on right now but according to the AccuNet Mortgage commercials that I hear on the radio all. The time., he is somehow involved in my not being able to own a home. While the thought of chasing him down in my little 4-banger gleefully cackling out words that I can't repeat here because my mom reads this and then calls me to tell me she's worried about me is appealing, it's not the right answer and I know that.

I've been toying around with the idea of going back to school and getting my MLIS. I went to grad school once. For 6 weeks. I gave it the ol' college try, failed miserably, and have been living with a giant flashing invisible sign on my head that says Beauty School Grad School Dropout ever since.

I don't like failing or deferred sucess or whatever is considered politically correct to call it now. But at the same time, grad school costs money. And time. And look at me make excuses for not going back! What it all boils down to is this: I failed at it once, and I'm afraid I'm going to fail at it again. Failing at something once is appaling. Failing at it twice is downright un-face-up-toable, but is it worse than failing once and never trying again? This is grad school, not skydiving.

In other news, it's 2011 now which in itself is terrifying. What happened to pretty much every year since 1994? Is it still cool to make fun of O.J. Simpson and wear Zoombas? Ugh.

Being an adult is unavoidable and not always fun. You have to do things like make sure you don't go 8,000 miles without an oil change (which I haven't done since 2004, thank you very much) and change the kitchen calendar (which, for those keeping score, is still on May of 2010) and be responsible. I kind of wouldn't mind going back to kindergarden where boys had cooties and it was ok to glue your little history book with the ducks on the cover to your desk accidentally.

Vermicious Knids

What with the end of the year coming and all, I started putting a little thought into New Year's Resolutions. I hesitate to make any resolutions for 2011, mainly because in the past it seems that when I'm unable to keep said resolutions for whateve reason, it usually comes with a harsh life lesson about setting your expectations too high or thinking too much of yourself.

2009 seemed to be the worst in terms of that. My resolution initially was to pay off our credit card and buy a house and obviously lose 20 pounds. By the 15th of January I was unemployed and watching Aretha Franklin's inagural hat domiate the nation in a daze wondering what had happened to my career. By the end of September I was employed again, but also tangled up in a web of indefinite temporary-to-hire work that I'm still in. We still don't have a house. The credit card was paid off, but is sadly no more so.

2010 was a little better. I resolved to keep my indefinite temp-to-hire job and to obviously lose 20 pounds. I did keep my temp-to-hire job, and I did lose (almost) 20 pounds by May. Unfortunately they've come back, and brought some friends. Some people say it's stress. I think I'm just getting ready to go through a cycle of mitosis that, when complete, will finally give the world what it needs: two of me.

I could say that in 2011 I'm going to obviously lose the 20 pounds again and keep it off. I could say that I'm going to keep our apartment the picture of order, comfort, warmth, and welcome no thanks to my Martha Stewart Living subscription. I could say that yes, I will iron every week and water the plants biweekly and cut cupons on a Friday night, read brittle classic literature, and that I will complete all tasks assigned to me at work with a degree of perfection not seen since St. Martha of the Linens herself was born. I get the feeling that if I do that by mid-March I'll wind up under the coffee table surrounded in Hot Pocket sleeves and backissues of Cosmo watching SciFi Original Movies that all star the Lesser Baldwins.

Maybe keeping it simple is key. Alright. For 2011, I resolve to not travel via glass elevators. Very little good ever comes of that.

Redum and Wassail

Before you read too far you should know that this is just an attempt to get my writing wheels flowing again. There was a time when I would write every day, sometimes several times. I'm trying to get back in the habit and it is not like riding a bike. You can forget how to really write.

On Christmas Eve I was on the couch thinking about the Christmases my husband and I have said since were married...all 3 of them to date, and I realized we're lacking in traditions. Severely. I had several growing up - the tree(s) would go up the day after Thanksgiving, St. Nick would visit a few times during Advent. When I was young, my mom would attack my head with hot rollers while I protested (usually loudly), we'd truck off to Christmas Eve mass with my hair still hurting, and then we'd come home to dinner. For some reason, I keep thinking it was usually something Italian. Either way, after we ate we were allowed to open one gift. One. Uno. The rest would have to wait until the next day. When Christmas Day proper came, it wasn't a free for all of paper and ribbons. The presents would be arranged according to who they went to, a process that was re-done several times over Advent and always done by yours truly, and then we'd always start with the youngest. Christmas always went off without a hitch, due in no small part to my mom's planning skills which, apparently, are not necessarily inherited.

The last few Christmases have acted like the topiaries in The Shining - they get closer when you're not looking and then before you know it your face is being gnawed off by an evergreen rabbit and surprise! it's Christmas. And there's possibly a crazy guy coming after you with a roque mallet.

In other news, I feel like I should give my husband a medal for not chucking me out the door the past few weeks. I've just felt mean. Snappish, short-tempered, what have you. It's completely unacceptable. The project I was involved with at work is done, I'm getting back into a regular routine, and all should be well. I just feel on edge and don't know how to relax. Anyway, Husband Dearest, if you read this, I <3.

Did I mention we ran over Prancer one year on Christmas Eve one year? Well, 'Prancer' at any rate. That may be a story for another time but it could be one heck of a tradition. Anyway, it's 8:15 pm, and I am being old and taking myself to bed.

Clean

I'm on an anti-depressant and have been since February of this past year. I'd been toying with the idea of bringing up depression to my doctor for a long time, but there were 2 events that really flipped the switch from 'Idle' to 'Go'. The first was that my dearest friend told me I seemed weathered, touchy. We don't 'see' each other every day, or every week, but we communicate on a daily basis and if my moodiness and general sourness was evident even through email, something was wrong. The second was when I burst into tears in the middle of a car dealership. Granted, I had been there for 4 hours for what was supposed to be a routine oil change when a service guy came out and said my oil plug had been stripped and it would be $400-something to replace it. That was quickly followed up by me discovering I'd lost my debit card. Normal people can take something like that in stride. I, on the other hand, crumbled into a shiny wet mess which scared the service guy into loaning me a car while we worked something out financially.

My friends know I'm on medication. My mother knows. I don't think anyone else in my family does and I don't know how I feel about that although the fact this is going in a public blog will probably negate that little problem. There's a vein of belief that mood stablizers, anti-depressants, what have you, are cop-outs. Tough it up. Be a (wo)man about it. Let go and let God. I understand that. Honestly. I tried letting go and letting God but is it impossible to think that this was His way of telling me that it's ok to be human and ask for help?

When I did talk to my doctor, she told me something surprising: sometimes a good change can trigger depression. In my case, it was getting married. Don't get me wrong - I am happier beyond words with my husband, with our life together. If I could go back and change anything I wouldn't; not one iota. But it was a big change, going from living on my own to having this whole new entity around all the time. It was a big change, but a good one. It was also quickly followed up by getting laid off, being placed in a temporary (but seemingly eternal) job situation that was also nearly ended abruptly, and an unexpected passing last Christmas. It's apparently enough to nudge anyone.

The reason this is on my mind now is that I'm scared the meds have stopped working. I feel myself falling into the same thought patterns and practices that I had before, feeling the same feelings and it scares me. My doctor was hesitant to wean me off the pills in the winter, as she said most people feel more depressed in the darker winter months anyway. It's fine that she was hesitant; I was outright petrified to stop them. We're going to see how things are in the spring.

There, that wasn't so hard to say now, was it.

Truthily

I don't know if it's the sudden deluge of family time I've had lately, or the fact that I'm rapidly sliding towards my dreaded late-twenties, but I've been thinking a lot about kids.

I don't like them. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, really. I've said it before. Unless I'm related to them, I do not care for children. They're loud, they smell wierd, excrete unspeakable things, you can't even try to reason with them, they hardly do what they're told, and they have trains of thought that are just mind-boggling. They're completely foreign to me, and always have been. But it seems like everywhere I turn, they're popping out left right and center.

There hasn't necessarily been a lot of pressure to have one from the family, which is nice, but it also means that whatever pressure is there exists more in my head than anything. Really, brain? You're really going to add this to the seemingly endless list of 'To-dos' plodding around up there? Where exactly should 'Kids' be listed? Before or after 'Buying a bedroom set that A) matches and B) isn't made of compressed woodchips'? Before or after 'Plump up the savings account for a house we'll never get a mortgage for'? Before or after 'Drop that last 10 20 30 pounds so I'll stop feeling like a beached landwhale every time I leave the apartment'? Is it really a good idea to bring an entirely separate entity that would completely depend on my deplorable parenting skills?

Then there's the other side. There's a large community of 'Mommy bloggers' out there who document the everyday trials and joys of having children. I'll admit to having read them, and while it shows the (sometimes very) bad with the good, part of my brain just keeps saying 'Well, if it were you it'd be different. It wouldn't be hard at all'. That part of my brain is about to get lobotomized with a grapefruit spoon, if I'm going to be truthy here. It's the part that starts showing me pictures of the perfect house where somehow, we've managed to work it so I can be a stay-at-home mom to perfectly behaved children that have nevertheless inhereted my vocabulary and my husband's tongue, who get straight A's and are popular without being Popular (there's a difference there, y'know.) That just couldn't happen. Or wouldn't.

I don't know what's right or not. Is it selfish to not want to hop on the baby wagon? Is it selfish to want to wait until we could give them everything they deserve?

Loss

It was raining when I was 13, much like it is today. It was the kind of rain where yeah, it messed up our hair and made walking to the bus station dismal but we were so glad it wasn't snow we didn't care. The first thing that would ring odd with me (later though; always later) was that the vice-principal came to our usual lunch table and asked us all our names. He told us it was for a survey.

After lunch they took our grade down to the library. We thought ti was to kick off our month-long research project on Australia. A filmstrip or something like that. The principal was there and I remember he was either crying or trying not to cry. He told us after a few minutes what had happened; that my best friend and our classmate was gone. I don't remember what else he said because I don't think I heard it. I don't remember a lot of the rest of the day, except calling my mom at work and almost not being able to tell her, getting a ride home, and trying to distract myself by looking over the program from the play I'd gone with my mom to see the night before. I wanted to watch the news but my dad turned it off and said he didn't think I'd really want to see what they were showing. He was probably right. I tried to eat dinner, just rice, but couldn't get past the first bite. To this day I can't put into words what was in my head that day, or for many days after except the fact that I wanted to call her and tell her everything that'd happened. I remembered her phone number all the way through high school. I remember the sound of her voice. I just wish I could remember the last thing she said to me.

A few weeks back my dad and I were discussing the possibility of needing a funeral home for a family member. It was premature, as it turns out, but he said thinking about it was bringing back what happened to her very clearly. I wanted to tell him it never went away.

Eloquence

This past Sunday I was watching Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel not because I hold any particular belief in the paranormal, but because the three 'investigators' are so completely ridiculous I can't believe they ever figured out how to put their pants on in the morning, much less get their own cable show. Each episode can be summed up thusly:

[Scene]

The setting: some totally rad-awesome place where Something Bad may have happened anywhere from the dawn of time up to last year. Usually an abandoned warehouse, extra-dusty, an abandoned sanitarium/hospital, a mid-renovation hotel, or a bar. Our 3 Dudes arrive and set up camp.

Dude 1: DUDE. Bro.

Dude 2: Brah?

Dude 3: Like, dude.

Dude 1: Dude. Duuuuuuuudebrah. Look at me yell at ghosts. [note: The last line will come out as 'Bro dude dude $(#% brah']

Dudes 2&3: Brooooo.

Dustbunny: Rah.

Dudes 1-3: WAAAAUUUUGGGGH DUDE BRO BRO DUDE BRAH $%! BRAAAH DUUUDE!!!! [They run in terror to either a like-minded paranormal investigation team or a priest. The like-minded paranormal investigation team will inevitably tell them at the the drafts, dust bunnies, and their own shadows are like, totally for sure ghosts. Dude. The priest will sigh and tell them to go back to Bakersfield and see if they can get their jobs at Pac Sun back.]

Dude 1: Bro. Dude.

[SCENE]

Sad as it is, it's still better than American Idol or Kate Gosselin's dancing. Combined.

Acrobatics

One of the first things my husband and I did after we returned from our honeymoon (our first joint purchase, for future note) was to buy a bookcase for our living room. He loves putting things together; I love pretending our living room is about to be showcased in Better Homes & Gardens, so what better way to spend a Saturday than to go down to Target as moony-eyed newleyweds and make a our third joint purchase: A 7-foot-tall espresso-colored pressed fiberboard bookshelf that would look entirely too large in our living room? It seemed like a great idea, until we got it into the parking lot and to our second joint purchase: my husband's car. Chalk it up to the naivete of youth or just poor foresight, but cramming this 7-foot-tall espresso-colored pressed fiberboard bookshelf into a Mazda 3 with two full-grown adults was going to prove to be something of a Tetris championship of spacial management. We did it though. We popped open the trunk, laid down the back seat, wiggled the yet-to-be-assembled bookshelf in, and scooted the passenger seat up until we could close aforementioned trunk.

The only problem with this was that there was an occupant in the passenger seat: me. I am not short, nor am I particularly flexible, but I was determined to have this too-large bookshelf in our living room by noon, so help me God. By the time all was said and done, all the doors closed (mostly), the trunk closed (mostly), and I got to spend the mercifully short 8-10 mile drive home with my face mashed against the windshield hoping that we didn't run into any state troopers because if I'd have tried to put on my seatbelt I would've strangled myself. Of course, if we'd been hit nothing in that car would've moved. At all.

My point in saying all this is this: we're revamping our efforts to swap out some older, worn hand-me-down furniture and we still don't have a car capable of transporting it. I drive a Corolla that so far, knock on wood, has not tried to kill me by random acceleration. My husband's still got his Mazda. All I can hear right now is my parents telling me that we should really get a car that we can transport stuff in so there's really no need to say 'I told you so!' Mom and/or Dad. My car is recently paid off and I'm trying to think ahead as to what I'd like to replace it with Someday. Someday, by the way, gets a capital S because we've got a lot hedging on it. We're going to get a house Someday, we're going to have kids Someday, I'm going to remember that I don't like raddishes before I eat one Someday, but I digress. What's good out there in terms of a mid-sized car or smaller SUV? I don't need a Land Rover or tank (although that would certainly take the headache out of my commute), just something I can Someday put a headboard and new dresser in.

Airing out

I love order. I love organizing, cleaning, putting piles of things away, and right angles. Hardcore love on the right angles. From looking around my home right now, though, it'd be hard to see that. There are dishes on the counter, in the sink, the kitchen floor needs to be swept, and I won't even begin to describe the chaos that is the fridge, pantry, or state of our bedding. It's ok though, because what I love most about order, organizing, and cleaning is blitzing our house (apartment, really. But I call it a house sometimes. Freudian slip.). There's something about going rather haywire on a mess that eases tension and makes me feel copacetic.


If I had a therapist they would probably say I like to do that because it's something I have complete control over. I can't control the state of my job. I can't control the traffic on my commute into the city, or the fact that I have not and will not get a raise at work. I can't control the economy, or the weather (yet), or other peoples' minds (again, yet). So I clean.

And it makes things a little easier.