Dear 2008,

What a year you've been, 2008, my first year without cigarettes since 1994. I certainly wasn't expecting you to come along when my coping skills were so scratched and raw. Under your watch, I've lost my charming granddad, lost a child I'll never meet, lost a powerfully loving mamaw, lost a dusty old cat. My dad fought cancer and my dog had surgery. You obviously had something to teach me-- that is to say that I prefer to think you weren't just fucking with me.

But I have learned, have let go, have wrinkled, have fattened, have picked myself up (and let myself be picked up) over and over. Sometimes I felt like I was just weathering the crashing waves of you, 2008. And I'd like to think I gave you a run for your money. Finally, the days are getting brighter and longer, and you're on your way out.

But listing it out like that isn't really fair. I don't want us to part this way, me having dragged out the facts to build the case for your good riddance. Let's not have an airing of grievances.

2008, you weren't so unbearable. The guy I voted for won-- about damn time-- and I'm still adjusting to my own optimism. You brought me a career change and a kick in the ass. You gave me time to shake my own expectations about balancing work and life. You gave me another year with my perfect match of a husband and a priceless stretch of time to watch Birdy work on becoming herself. You were my eighth year in this city, knitting me closer into my precious little circle. Indiana seems more like a pleasant place I've been, and this feels more and more like home.

So goodbye, 2008. At the stroke of midnight, I'll you a hug-- and mean it-- and then flip you the bird as you walk out the door.

A word about Pandora

I've been listening to Pandora every day at work. There are times it's like a fortune teller-- the spooky kind that tells you pieces and parts of your past with time-machine accuracy.

Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
This song brought me to my knees today, left me sitting in my gray, boxy office catching my breath. Had to stop working and close my eyes, remember flying along a country road thick on both sides with tall, tall green Indiana forest in a truck with the boys I lived with, tossing seeds out the window, breathing in fresh air and freedom with nowhere to be, 21 years old and so colorful. Feel like I'm going to throw up, maybe cry. Squeeze my eyes tighter.

And then tonight, this song socked me in the stomach for a hundred other reasons.


So, if you are turbo-emotional like me at this particular crossroads of life, and don't have your wits about you enough to navigate your own ipod, I highly recommend the creepy-fabulous fortune teller Pandora for a nice, cleansing cry at a moment when you are less than prepared.

The Bridges of Yard Sale County

First of all, thank God for friends who don’t let you get away with getting all dramatic.

Y’all are right. I’m in the right place at the right time, and really, aren’t we always in the right place, even when it sucks? I’m just a little bored, trying to be okay with the decision to stop helping people as a career, and also little embarrassed by my last post. I kind of feel like the high school girl who stayed up all night writing dark and dramatic poems in her journal and then turned it in to the High School literary magazine in a fit of poor, poor judgment. I also like to call this feeling “Vicious PMS.” You can see more of my work in this medium in such classics as "Late Night Nonsense Argument with Husband," "Ridiculously Rigid Toddler Rules, " and the timeless "OMiGod That Commercial Was SO SAD, Where Are the Tissues."

+++++

I have a twitch in my right thumb. It is driving me crazy, this thumb flicking about on its own.

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YARD SALE LIST! That’s what “YS List” stands for. I was going to make a list of yard sales and drag Bird around town tomorrow morning, buying other people’s castoffs and making promises to refinish/ re cover/ rewire. (That last one is funny, I’ve never rewired anything. But I have promised.) I’m not really going to make a YS list—my parents are coming in from Indiana for the weekend. But at one point I sure thought I was.

Here’s a yard sale story for you:

I grew up in an Indiana town divided right down the middle by two-lane Highway 36, also known as Main Street. Highway 36 will take you all the way to Colorado, eventually, but about an hour or so down the road from my hometown is Rockville, home of the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival. It is also the covered bridge capital OF THE WORLD. In your sappy face, Madison County.

If you have either a Tom Petty song or an REM song in your head after reading that last paragraph, dude, so do I. And we are totally old.

The festival is corny and crafty, and most years I never made it all the way to Rockville to walk around the town square and eat caramel apples and browse the nine hundred varieties of cutesy scarecrows made of straw and burlap. My main event was the drive from my town to Rockville along Highway 36, a long straight country drive in the early fall under a fat blue sky. And what could make that scene more appealing than the rural residents of three Central Indiana Counties dragging their crazy-assed junk to the side of a skinny old highway, ready to haggle over old handmade quilts, ridiculously kitschy furniture, driftwood lamps and broken electronics? And some of them even sold homemade gooseberry pie. I loved it. It was like a holiday to me.

I went year after year, sometimes dragging a college friend along, sometimes my mom, sometimes just me alone. I started to realize that some of the yard-salers were setting the same stuff out, year after year. I developed favorites (the gooseberry pie ladies, for example) and ventured down other county roads for even kookier loot and sometimes spookier people. I found the sweet spots, the hidden treasure, the stacks of embroidered pillowcases and ugly landscape paintings.

One year I took Beardog with me, during the period of his life where he went everywhere I went. We were a stinky, hair-covered team, me blowing down the highway singing at the tops of my lungs in the sunshine with the windows down, Beardog exhibiting the excellent dog quality of not complaining about loud singing, both of us hopping in and out of the car whenever something looked interesting.

I was haggling with a wiry old man in a lawn chair behind a long train of card tables over some old camera or belt buckle or brooch, and I looked down to find my sweet floofy dog freely pissing all over a cardboard box full of For Sale Junk—a $1 your-choice bin sort of thing that was stashed under the table separating me and the man with the overpriced broken radios. Having no idea how many precious $1 items were housed in that box, and being at the end of the day’s cash, I ended our negotiation and walked Beardog swiftly back to our car and drove away. I don’t know if anyone ever noticed the piss-box.

I’ve always felt a little guilty and a little victorious about that.

In closing, let's talk about what happens when you edit that story:

I went to a yard sale.

My dog pissed on a box of junk.

I kept quiet and left in a hurry.

Ten Years

Birdy's current favorite books are a couple of ten-ish year-old photo albums that live on the shelf beside the couch. They are full of photos of A. and I, so young (21!) and so cute, on vacation at the lake and the beach and being rowdy college near-graduates in our run-down house in Bloomington with a young, fat bear dog, not a dime to our names, and not a care in the world. Except maybe who was playing at Second Story and where we were going afterwards.


I watch A. flip through these books with Bird and I think that this is it, finally, that it's happening. That this is what I secretly or maybe even unconsciously wished for back when these pictures were snapped, before marriage, before babies, before Tennessee, that this scene would actually be real after ten years of storing these not-even-that-great photos. That I would be here, watching my husband page through these little books with this amazing little Bird, watching him explain, "that's your mommy. And that's daddy. And that's Bear with a Wheat Thin on his head. That's your uncle Dave. That's mommy in a bikini. That's mommy and daddy on the boat. That was our house in the country. That was our roommate. That was the time your mom made manicotti."

Sometimes I look through these and think, "wow, who knew?"


And then I think, "we did."

Friday is My Day

A bit of housekeeping:
My blogroll has left the nest and now lives in its own page. Link is on the sidebar.


And now, In the spirit of tomorrow's yard sale, I'd like to share with you a couple of things I just can't seem to give up.These are the only black heels I have, and I've had them at least 4 years. These heels are mangled. The soles are thin, the heel is worn at a crazy angle, there are visible nails on the bottom. Part of the seam has split, revealing some shoe-guts, and I touch that part up with a sharpie every now and then and pretend no one is the wiser. I would buy new heels, but I'm constantly telling myself I 'm on my way to a job/ life without heels, so why buy some now? And they stay in rotation another year.



This is Big Mama. We've been together 7 years. This might be my favorite-ever thrift find-- I bought it at Southern Thrift shortly after we moved to this city with a coupla hundred dollars and no jobs. The year we couldn't afford the $6 admission to the Willie Nelson Museum and had to peek over the velvet ropes at his exercise bike, the very bike that was taken from him by the IRS.
I am always tempted to find a new heavy bag when winter rolls around and I find myself carrying several more unexplained pounds of unnecessaries, but I always come back to Big Mama. She used to have some inner pockets that have since ripped out, but she has still never failed me.

And you can tell I didn't go to work today, because I'm in such a fantastic mood I'm going to tell you about
Three Things I Love Today:

1. An entire day to myself. Nothing fancy, but it was mine. So refreshing. My application for the NCETMB is completed, including passport photo/ mug shot. 8 months of paystubs and EOBs and oil change receipts have been filed. Two cigarettes have been smoked, Two episodes of This American Life consumed, and much coffee ingested and processed. Felt good.


2. Stereolab. Rediscovered.
Which tends to happen without explanation on the occasion that I have several consecutive daylight hours to myself. Maybe because I started loving stereolab in college, during the year I finally lived alone.



3. Bird saying, "Actually." And using it correctly, and often. As in:

Me: Do you want milk or water?
Bird: Actually, I want juice.

And then there was this, tonight:

A: (to me) Do you want to just order pizza?
Bird: (Before I could answer) Yes, let's have cheese pizza. Thanks for asking."

Abe Says Eff It

My husband has sent me the link to this shirt twice in two days. I finally had to tell him that while it is truly hilarious (and I sincerely mean that), I just couldn't support the idea of him walking into daycare to pick up bird in a shirt like that. You know, with that foul language that offends me so deeply.

O Pish Posh linked to my Granny-ola on the same day that I was planning to link to her play-dough recipe, which is on my list of things to do this weekend. Can't wait-- I remember my mom making this and I'm so glad she posted it. I'll let you know how it goes.

And Velocibadgergirl at Pardon the Egg Salad posted about a camping trip at one of my favorite places in Indiana and maybe the world, Turkey Run State Park. Go see those pics, folks. I spent many a weekend there growing up and her post brought back many, many memories, only a few of them involving fearing for my life in an old school bus trailing a bunch of canoes on a dirt road while being driven to the "put-in." Ah, Turkey Run.


Publish Post

My Gran says "Fridey" instead of Friday.

I had a dream night before last that Queen Latifah was showing me how to operate my dryer. There was a huge knob with a kajillion settings, like something from the Price is Right, and she was explaining that this place on the dial, this one right here, was why my pants would not be dry enough in the morning to be worn to work.

This should explain-- no, more like illustrate-- the bizarre and cracky misfirings lighting up my over-taxed gray matter these days.

And boy, was she right. Those pants were not even close to dry in time for work.

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The stuff I have to get out just because I have to get it out
Here are the things taking up the useful space and time:
(this is boring, feel free to skip ahead)

• Preparing for my little brother's wedding, about which-- don't get me wrong-- I am so thrilled and excited. But there are shoes to be bought, cameras and strollers to pack, and cups to be sewn in to hold the bridesmaid (bridesmatron?) boobies in the right places.

• School. Wish it was taking up more of the useful space and time, but as it is now, it is being squeezed into a corner and I'm going to have to create some sort of body assembly line to complete all of my practicums for the term.

• Freelance job A. Low pay, lots of work. Mindless work. The writing is easy, it's the calling and the interviewing and the endless, endless supply of contractors whose number one selling point is their "attention to detail" and the realtors that "build personal relationships." Glurgh. Just when I think I'm done, I'm not done. Because I am a sucker. A broke sucker.

• Freelance job B. which is almost complete for the local botanical garden. This one was an honestly estimated breeze.

• Freelance job C. just estimated last night, way over my head and with very little structure holding things in place, but doing it right could open the door to the agency relationship I need to reach that job-free goal. And having Thursday afternoons to do what I please? That's my carrot, my little taste of what could be. So I'll take the job if I can get it and I'll fake it. This has always worked in the past.
  

• This pig sty of a house we live in. Seriously. Birdy ate a pretzel ("Batzool!") off the floor yesterday that could not be traced back to any particular date or time. Mystery Batzools and dog hair tumbleweeds. No, you can't come over.
  

• Preparing and eating food. Plan, buy, prepare, eat, store leftovers, stand in front of the fridge and glaze over. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Sometimes cooking/ eating is a comforting ritual that makes me feel grounded, other times it is a pain in the ass and I wish for some kind of food patch that I could apply to my arm and forget about for 24 hours, relieving me of the burden of eating and preparing to eat.
  

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A Dental Story
I went to the dentist yesterday morning for a cleaning, and while the hygenist was about elbow-deep in my mouth, she started talking about how I might want to look into teeth whitening and how it probably isn't covered by my insurance but would I like to hear about their easy payment plans?

I don't know about you, but I feel a little bit unnerved about being upsold on my health care-- maybe that's just me? I don't mind being upsold on my cell phone plan, or within a wine list, but at the dentist? Mnyah.

But that's not what this story is about. The hygenist was talking about whitening, and she said, "If you decide to do it, you'll have to get that filling on your front tooth changed out, because whitening won't affect it." I said, "Int hagga fling, nev haggah fling," ("I don't have any fillings, I've never had a filling.")

She withdrew her hands from my mouth. I protested again. I don't have any fillings. It's a body fact about which I am proud-- no cavities, ever, and very naturally straight, strong teeth.
The hygenist backpedaled about how, "then you have a crack on this side of your front tooth that looks just like a filling." And she moved on to shining the light directly in my eyes and changed the subject.

Later in the cleaning, while she was smooshing the polish all over my superstraight, super healthy teeth, I remembered that, holy shit, I DO have a filling in my front tooth. And I stopped her work with the polish (with my index finger pointed to the ceiling, in some kind of Eureka moment) to tell her she was right, I have a filling.

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A Dental Story, Chapter 2
And this is how it came to be: I was in college, at a living room party on New Year's Eve. It was the year I made myself a fixture in the GLBT crowd, which was fairly small but thriving at Indiana University, as you might imagine. I was drinking champagne from the bottle, and this gangly, howdy-doody looking kid that was all knees and elbows danced his olecranon process (hello, I am learning about the body! That is your elbow!) right into the bottle which went right into my front chopper. The resulting chip/ split in my tooth required filling. So my advice to you: Keep a safe distance from the gay boys when they're dancin'.

So there you have it-- a secret from my past, kept secret even from me until yesterday.

:::

The Bird Report
So, my little sweet peach has been in Time Out a couple of times lately, which is a process I continue to muddle thorough and make up as I go along. We are not heavy on the Time Out at our house, but things that will land you there include whacking the gentle doggies on the head with the remote control, twice, after Mama says NO.

Here is how Time Out goes/ has gone: Sit in the totally boring hallway on the little blue chair for a minute and a half. Mama will not look directly at you or give you attention. If you get up from the little blue chair, Mama will put you back in it, firmly, but no talking. This is not attention time. It is meant to be a somber experience and a time to think about the poor doggies' heads and the connection between this boring and grave ninety seconds and your behavior.

But to Bird, it's hilarious. Getting out of the chair and being put back? Guffaw! Now THAT is comedy! Do it again!

And for her next trick, Bird has been dragging that little blue chair into the hallway and sitting in it, facing the wall, and laughing all by herself. Trying to catch my eye while she slides off the seat and climbs back on. Because I have created the most fun game, ever.

A Few Words on Anxiety

Let me preface this post by disclosing that I've been drinking wine. Beginning with after-work drinks with my boss and coworker, which turned out to be quite an enjoyable outing, despite the lengthy discussions of small dogs, housekeepers, and landscapers-- none of which I forsee becoming familiar with any time in the near or distant future. But they have taught me how to forge friendships with people so unlike me, and for that I am grateful. And I had a genuinely nice time.

That said, are you ready for a story?

My junior year of college, I lived in a modified and run-down house managed by a dysfunctional alcoholic who lived in his office next door after his wife booted him from the family home. Our little house housed all of Us, a pack of six young dysfunctional folks and our cast of friends and acquaintances. Three boys, three girls, two kitchens, two bathrooms, all connected. We had adventures, and I wish I could remember more of them.

We hung out at the Vid, a downtown bar about two miles from home. The Vid was so smoky it impaired our vision, and it entertained us with cheap, strong drinks and a band of friendly redneck locals and general hipsters from the University. It was where the bands hung out. It was hipster before we understood what hipster was. It was a good place to play pool, or pretend to be interested in playing pool, in my case. It was a dive. It's where I learned to love Vodka. It was the first thing my husband and I had in common.

The Vid closed at 3am, and my house often opened to the public shortly afterward. This particular night, though, we only had my future husband and his roommate as visitors (they were regulars), and we sat peacefully smoking joints and continuing our beverage marathon in my roommate D's bedroom. He was the only one with a television. Most of the house was sleeping, including my roommate Virginia.

Before I met her, Virginia had dated a true asshole. A guy who continued to circle lower and lower around the loser drain after she broke it off. It had been a couple of years, and she hadn't heard much from him.

So there we sat, probably making up clever nicknames for people we hardly knew, winding down.

The phone rang several times at about 4am. It was the guy Virginia had dumped, demanding to speak to her. And my roommate D. told the guy over and over that she was in bed and that he'd have to call back in the morning.

And someone came in the back door. Which was unlocked, because we were friendly and dumb like that.

That someone was Virginia's old boyfriend and his idiot friend in plaid pants. And they had a gun.

They were fucked up on some kind of something. Our house held many illegal and unsavory substances a lot of the time, but none were as tweaky or ravaging as whatever this guy had gotten into. They both looked like shit. Like dangerous, threatening shit.

They walked into my house, threatening all of us and demanding to speak to Virginia.

These are the sentinal events that happened next: I slipped into the other kitchen and called the police. And my future husband and his roommate, my heroes, kicked the guy's ass in the big kitchen while his plaid-pants friend stood in the hallway, pointing his gun right at them. A. says they never saw the gun. It seemed like it took for-fucking-ever. And I remember all of them in a big ball of arms and legs and yelling, colliding with the refrigerator, knocking over all of the cereal boxes and bottles of wine that lived on top.

Okay, let's pause.

First, I am not the type of girl that hangs out with dangerous-type people. I am, at my core, a goody two-shoes, safety freak, can't-we-all-just-get-along type. We weren't mixed up with the "wrong crowd." I'm sure we became the "wrong crowd" for some people in different ways, but we never, ever thought we knew people that were so capable of violence. We never saw bar fights. We never. And my husband? He's not a fighter. He's just not. He once broke up a fight by getting totally naked and standing between the arguing parties, saying, "If you want to fight, you'll have to touch a naked guy to make that happen".* I am not making that up. But he and his roommate kicked this guy's ass proper that night in my kitchen, and I am not making that up, either.

The police came, and by that time the gun-toting tweakers were running from our house, after I proclaimed at the top of my lungs that I'd just called the cops. They were taken into custody, and it made the local paper the next morning. I filled out the police report on my front porch in green crayon, because one roommate was an Art Education major and that's what was available. We all filed restraining orders.

Fast forward to tonight, and every night that I sit on my couch alone while A. is out being the gregarious and social being that he is. I mute the television at every noise. I peek through the curtains every time the dogs stir. I can't really rest.

And I ask myself-- what am I so afraid of? And when I really and truly answer that question, I'm thinking about what would happen if someone came bursting through my front door. I'm always ready. I keep my cell phone next to me, because it's the phone (and my husband / hero) that saved all of our asses that night when I called Bloomington's finest.

If I had two minutes with the asshole that decided, on a whim, to walk into my peaceful home and threaten the sweet, imperfect souls that lived there, I'd say this:

You motherfucker. You may think you terrified me once, but you do it over and over again in the back of my brain where I can't see it or hear it, but it's there. Ten years later. You. Motherfucker.




*Another popular post-Vid destination: The Fountian Square Apartments swimming pool. None of us lived there, but the fence was low. So we climbed over and skinny-dipped in the summers. Beer cans float in the pool, did you know that? One small guy challenged one bigger guy about something dumb, like a Simpsons episode, and it started to get ugly. So A. got naked and got in the middle. Crisis averted. The end.

Oppa Bubba!

Loosely translated, it means "Up above the" as in "Up above the world so high," and it's Bird's cue that it's time to sing "Twinkle Twinkle" OR ELSE. Or else she will keep putting her arms up in the air and shouting "Oppa Bubba!" which, let's be honest, is pretty damn cute.

The Bird has been a little under the weather this week, thanks to the mingling of the Middle Tennessee germs with the Northern Indiana ones at the Christmas shindig last weekend. She's been sleeping in crazy late, and I keep thinking I'll stay home from work and we'll watch videos and snuggle up on the couch until she gets better, so I postpone my shower and do domestic things like fold laundry while she's sleeping until 8. But then she wakes up perky and mostly fine save for the snot, and we race around trying to get ready to leave the house. Trickster.

Snapshot of a Marriage, part something-something
Last night, I asked A. if the Christmas Tree needed water. He answered from the next room, "I took care of it." But what I heard was, "Ask Gary about it."
Which launched into a scenario about Gary Coleman's Tree Watering Service, where a customer would call up and ask, "Do you think my tree needs more water?" And Gary Coleman would answer, "Whatchoo talkin' bout, Mama Snee?"

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Christmas episodes of the Simpsons, where at the end of the episode Homer and Gary Coleman and Bart are standing around a pile of burning Funzos, and Gary Coleman comes over for Christmas dinner and delivers the sweet and sentimental holiday line to tie it all up: "Whatchoo talkin 'bout everybody."

You Totally Don't Want to Know This
Yesterday, I farted and it smelled totally not like a fart, but exactly like an old lady's house-- like musty furniture and chicken broth. And I've been eating neither!

It's, um, due to eating ONLY chocolate covered pretzels yesterday, out of the office stash. Didn't even eat my sandwich. Terrible gas. Don't try this at home, because your home will smell like knee-high pantyhose and twenty-year-old issues of Reader's Digest.

LOST
We've been renting it. Maybe I've told you that. But it's got me by the balls, for real. God bless DVDs and God bless Netflix. It's the only way I can watch a series of shows, and I can watch them every single night, so I don't have to retain much from one episode to the next.

Mental Health Memory Lane
One of my patients was standing in the parking lot in the torrential rain, waiting for her ride home from the center. Another staff person ran out and brought her back into my office to dry off and wait for her ride. She was about sixty years old at the time (and one of my all-time favorites), wearing no bra, thin polyester shirt, soaking freaking wet. She wanted to go back outside and smoke a cigarette on the covered porch, but I told her she looked like she'd been in a wet t-shirt contest and that she'd be giving everyone a show. She responded with, "OOooh! Can they see my furburger?" Furburger. From a sixty-year old woman who could crochet an afghan in two minutes flat.

In Two Days
My in-laws descend upon us. There will be many, many bags of chips.

In One Day
S. and her delightful husband and two fabulous boys arrive in our fair city, all the way from Freezing Ass Cold Spokane. Could not be more excited.

Mine Mine Mine
How do you other bloggers set up that "copyright 2006" business at the bottom of your blogs? Do you have to apply/ pay for that, or do you just throw it out there like some prospector gold-rush jig-dancer staking a claim? Please advise. Because you know there are people lurking out there just waiting to claim my old-lady-house farts as their own. Bastards.

What Have You Been Doing Today, Mama Snee?

Well, I'll tell you. I've been sitting on my ass, staring at this computer screen. Accomplishing nothing. Moving only to go to the kitchenette to get more cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels. I feel like shit. Sugar-coated, chocolate shit.

So, Velocibadgergirl has corrected me, and rightfully so: Rapeseed Oil is a real thing, AKA Canola Oil, which is a good save on the nomenclature, because who wants to go to the grocery and ask where to find the Rapeseed Oil?

How about another food mix-up story?
This one happened when I was probably about 8 years old, at the beginning of the time my brain stood up for itself and started freaking out any time I encountered a meaty dish on my plate. At the time of my budding vegetarianism.

At my grandmother's house in the summer, my cousins were all hopping around the freezer as she pulled out some ice cream drumsticks. They were from the Schwann Man, who brought frozen meats and treats to all of Southern Indiana on a weekly basis. I was unfamiliar with the Schwann Company, as we barely had two nickels to rub together and we sure as shit were not leisurely paging through a catalog having our bulk frozen foods delivered.

So my cousins were all hopping around, all knees and elbows, yammering about "Schwann Drumsticks! Schwann Drumsticks!" Because, you know, the kids do like the ice cream.

But I heard "Swan Drumsticks! The legs of giant white birds! We are so excited to eat the legs of beautiful, giant white birds!"

When my grandmother presented me with my very own ice cream treat, I couldn't eat it, even though it looked like ice cream with chocolate and nuts. I clamped my lips together and just shook my head. NO. I will not be eating nasty swan legs stuffed in an ice cream cone and covered in ice cream and chocolate. just. NO. You people are disgusting.

Familia Husbandia
So, just returned a couple of days ago from the giant family shin-dig hootenanny that is my husband's extended family Christmas gathering. This year, many cabins were rented in an Indiana state park, as the family is bursting at the seams with new spouses and new children.

It was truly delightful, with a big dinner in the lodge and gift exchange on Saturday night, a chance for Bird to play with other little ones and run, I swear, about eight full miles around the dining room and down the hallways. A. and some cousins took the kids for a hike. The weather was a spooky-warm seventy degrees.

Despite a few dark behavioral clouds (the adults, not the kiddos), we had a really, really great time. Bird became so attached to a 10-year old cousin that she wouldn't give me the time of day. A. stayed up until morning jabbering with his cousins two nights in a row. I connected with a few cousins in a different and deeper way, now that I'm a part of the mama's club. One thing I can always say about this family is that they truly love being together, and it shows. I'm quite lucky to have joined them.

Story Time

A. just reminded me of this story that happened a couple of years ago.

A new pizza place had just opened in our neighborhood. I was at my friend B's house, drinking Miller Lites and smoking lovely, lovely cigarettes in his kitchen. A. was on his way back from some practice or something. I'd promised A. I'd pick up a pizza on my way back across town, and that we would meet up in cheesy goodness at home base.

I called this place from B's and ordered a large half-cheese half-pepperoni. The guy told me twenty minutes until pickup.

Fifteen minutes after I called, I was on my way home and reasonably close to the place when I got a call back from the pizza guy, demanding to know where I was. I told him I was about 10 minutes away and he exploded with rage. He said I was taking too long.

He wanted to change the plans and deliver the pizza instead of me picking it up. I told him nobody was home to pay him. He wanted to know how fast I could get there. I told him ten minutes, and he didn't like it one bit.

After much back and forth, he kind of softened with defeat. He said quietly, in a thick Middle Eastern accent, "But I just want you pizza to be as most delicious as possible."

The guy was just lookin' out for my pizza. And he got all worked up into a wad over it.

We will be dining on their fabulous carry out this evening, and A. will be phoning in the order from the Baby Wipes aisle at the grocery store. Let's hope he doesn't get hung up in traffic.