Tonight: Taxes!
Tomorrow: The rest of the shit on the list! *
And just so you know, I never intend to neglect this blog, though I do admit it is often first on the chopping block since I am spending my days clickety-clacking out words in various persuasive and illustrative combinations so as to earn the money to pay the mortgage, buy the toilet paper, etc. Makes the pulling-together-the-words thing a bit less appealing after coming home, cooking/ eating, Bird-ing, bedtime-ing. Seems there is less to write about now, even though there is just as much as ever, and I think it's because I no longer spend hours alone in my car thinking about weird things, encountering fascinating tribes of rural humans, and generally twisting my brain around however I want. Instead, I am flattening it out like a pancake and writing very informative and detailed web sites about technology and services within the healthcare industry. Yes, I know. Maybe I should start smoking again, just to spice things up. Or maybe start drinking. Around noonish.
* Okay. At a minimum, one of the things on the list. And let's be honest, it's probably not going to be "organize photos" or "guest room closet." That is the kind of shit that I am leaving for Bird and any subsequent children to deal with after I pass from this world at a ripe old age, finally tired from my many years of not really organizing anything, ever.
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
23 February 2009
26 January 2009
I'll open with a quote, then there will be eleven things:
mama: Bird, which coat do you want to wear?
bird: My pink coat.
mama: Good choice.
bird: I love this coat, in spite of everything.
1. After the holiday feeding frenzy, A. and I gave up cheese, large portions, and junk food. We gave up laziness and tight pants. We bought a bathroom scale and a pedometer, fired up the ipod and started exercising. It's been about a month and we are still, for the most part, on the wagon. The wagon that is full of sunflower seeds and carrot sticks. The wagon in which we sit and stare wistfully at the other wagon, the one full of feta crumbles and sour cream and stringy, gooey lasagna.
2. I have discovered some super kick-ass vegan cookbooks, and have gotten in over my head on occasion but for the most part have learned that there is life after cheese. And that things actually have a taste when they are not covered in dairy products. I'll stop short of calling myself a vegan because I'm just not ready to be That Girl, but it has been a satisfying road so far. Highly recommend Veganomicon and the Vegan Lunch Box, both of which were available at my local library, and that means FREE for all of you playing along at home.
3. Also, I have started running. First on the elliptical machine at the community center, then on the treadmill at the community center during the commercial breaks on Oprah (walking the rest of the time) and in the last few days, running on the actual sidewalks in the actual neighborhood. It is not graceful, and it sure as shit is not easy. And it hurts like the devil, but I keep doing it.
4. A. is doing great with the running, the bastard.
5. We quit smoking a little over a year ago. WOOT!
6. Who the hell do I think I am, anyway?? 13 months ago, I was gnawing on hunks of cheddar and the only place I was running was into the 4-stop to buy a pack of smokes. And look at me now, with all of this bothersome health crap. Apologies. If it makes you feel any better, I am farting like an aging dog with a belly full of pinto beans. On that topic, we are trying to dissuade Bird from saying "fart." She now says she "has the vapors." Ah yes, much better.
7. Job. I like it. Being a mom. Like that, too. Not as mutually exclusive as I once thought. Either I'm getting better at balance or numb to the guilt and the second-guessing. Both, probably.
8. To the person that told me to clean my cast iron skillet with vegetable oil and coarse kosher salt, avoiding water unless it's a true stuck-on emergency: Thank you, kitchen wizard.
9. I hate playing "school." I get put in Time Out a lot. And then there is a version where there is a "teacher" and a "mama" and we replay a dropping-off-at-preschool scenario until I can't remember my own name. This is Bird's favorite thing to do-- she starts insisting on playing school before we even have our coats hung up in the afternoons.
10. I think it is time for a blog diet to compliment my new healthy eating plan. I have, like, nine thousand jillion blogs on my Google Reader. That link over there to my bloglines? Ancient. I've moved on to the Google Reader, and I will subscribe to anything. Everything. Cooking blogs. Mama blogs. People I Know blogs. And all of this blog checking has become a task, a pain in the ass, and it keeps me from writing here. There are things! Out there! That I haven't read yet! So I'll just read one more!
Mostly it's this: I subscribe to a lot of very beautiful blogs where people take pictures of their morning cups of coffee or write essays about their cherubic children weaving on looms in the wilderness or their gorgeous collection vintage dresses and heirloom quilts and and perfect crafts made in their tranquil, sunlit rooms before they prepare beautiful homemade meals for the family they love so very much, and it is all just such a huge load of bullshit. Obnoxious fiction. But I get sucked in, I scroll through these perfect little fantasies and they cast an ugly little shadow on my real life until I snap out of it and feel disgusted that I've just spent a very real part of my very real life looking at pictures of white curtains and whitewashed floors and reading about peaceful mornings spent playing with blocks in front of the fire or stitching up aprons or other such nonsense. So I am going to unsubscribe to these blogs very, very soon. Or at least put it all in one folder so I can avoid it as if it were cheese.
11. My mom is totally on facebook.
bird: My pink coat.
mama: Good choice.
bird: I love this coat, in spite of everything.
1. After the holiday feeding frenzy, A. and I gave up cheese, large portions, and junk food. We gave up laziness and tight pants. We bought a bathroom scale and a pedometer, fired up the ipod and started exercising. It's been about a month and we are still, for the most part, on the wagon. The wagon that is full of sunflower seeds and carrot sticks. The wagon in which we sit and stare wistfully at the other wagon, the one full of feta crumbles and sour cream and stringy, gooey lasagna.
2. I have discovered some super kick-ass vegan cookbooks, and have gotten in over my head on occasion but for the most part have learned that there is life after cheese. And that things actually have a taste when they are not covered in dairy products. I'll stop short of calling myself a vegan because I'm just not ready to be That Girl, but it has been a satisfying road so far. Highly recommend Veganomicon and the Vegan Lunch Box, both of which were available at my local library, and that means FREE for all of you playing along at home.
3. Also, I have started running. First on the elliptical machine at the community center, then on the treadmill at the community center during the commercial breaks on Oprah (walking the rest of the time) and in the last few days, running on the actual sidewalks in the actual neighborhood. It is not graceful, and it sure as shit is not easy. And it hurts like the devil, but I keep doing it.
4. A. is doing great with the running, the bastard.
5. We quit smoking a little over a year ago. WOOT!
6. Who the hell do I think I am, anyway?? 13 months ago, I was gnawing on hunks of cheddar and the only place I was running was into the 4-stop to buy a pack of smokes. And look at me now, with all of this bothersome health crap. Apologies. If it makes you feel any better, I am farting like an aging dog with a belly full of pinto beans. On that topic, we are trying to dissuade Bird from saying "fart." She now says she "has the vapors." Ah yes, much better.
7. Job. I like it. Being a mom. Like that, too. Not as mutually exclusive as I once thought. Either I'm getting better at balance or numb to the guilt and the second-guessing. Both, probably.
8. To the person that told me to clean my cast iron skillet with vegetable oil and coarse kosher salt, avoiding water unless it's a true stuck-on emergency: Thank you, kitchen wizard.
9. I hate playing "school." I get put in Time Out a lot. And then there is a version where there is a "teacher" and a "mama" and we replay a dropping-off-at-preschool scenario until I can't remember my own name. This is Bird's favorite thing to do-- she starts insisting on playing school before we even have our coats hung up in the afternoons.
10. I think it is time for a blog diet to compliment my new healthy eating plan. I have, like, nine thousand jillion blogs on my Google Reader. That link over there to my bloglines? Ancient. I've moved on to the Google Reader, and I will subscribe to anything. Everything. Cooking blogs. Mama blogs. People I Know blogs. And all of this blog checking has become a task, a pain in the ass, and it keeps me from writing here. There are things! Out there! That I haven't read yet! So I'll just read one more!
Mostly it's this: I subscribe to a lot of very beautiful blogs where people take pictures of their morning cups of coffee or write essays about their cherubic children weaving on looms in the wilderness or their gorgeous collection vintage dresses and heirloom quilts and and perfect crafts made in their tranquil, sunlit rooms before they prepare beautiful homemade meals for the family they love so very much, and it is all just such a huge load of bullshit. Obnoxious fiction. But I get sucked in, I scroll through these perfect little fantasies and they cast an ugly little shadow on my real life until I snap out of it and feel disgusted that I've just spent a very real part of my very real life looking at pictures of white curtains and whitewashed floors and reading about peaceful mornings spent playing with blocks in front of the fire or stitching up aprons or other such nonsense. So I am going to unsubscribe to these blogs very, very soon. Or at least put it all in one folder so I can avoid it as if it were cheese.
11. My mom is totally on facebook.
23 May 2008
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.
+++++
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
Here’s a yard sale story for you:
I grew up in an
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.
13 November 2007
Oh, Tuesday, here you are again.
Remember how I said I moved my blogroll into it's new little blog apartment sometime last week? Well, I think maybe I should delete the whole thing. I've been to the end of the internet and back this afternoon, quite unintentionally, and have burned some remarkably useful hours looking at... I don't even know what. Blogs? Pictures? In any case, burning my eyeballs to raisins, once again. If I'm going to waste time, I have plenty more productive ways to do it, you can be assured of that. Maybe I need to have a No Bloglines Before 4pm policy. But then how would I read all of those stinkin' blogs? THE PRESSURE IS JUST TOO MUCH.
I've decided to adopt a dear friend's "I feel sorry for you that you have to be a butthole" approach to anger-processing here in the workplace. I believe the technique was developed for mothers-in-law, but I'm hoping it will work here, at least to dilute some of my anger about our new... um... "leadership." Some days I feel like running from the building screaming, others I feel like this might still be okay somehow if I just sit tight. It also seems I am incapable of making a plan and sticking to it, distracted by possibilities and what-ifs and bright and shiny objects. And, ultimately, comfort. And the bowl of candy on the admin's desk.
In related news, we are out of money. Not kidding. Maybe we will get some more soon?
I have officially applied to take the exam to become licensed in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. I should start studying, like, yesterday (actually, a month ago), but if you must know the truth I'll wait until I get the go-ahead to schedule the exam and then and only then will I crack a book, closer to the last minute than anyone thought possible. I could pretend otherwise, but the truth is: that's just how I roll.
And lastly, this made me laugh today.
I've decided to adopt a dear friend's "I feel sorry for you that you have to be a butthole" approach to anger-processing here in the workplace. I believe the technique was developed for mothers-in-law, but I'm hoping it will work here, at least to dilute some of my anger about our new... um... "leadership." Some days I feel like running from the building screaming, others I feel like this might still be okay somehow if I just sit tight. It also seems I am incapable of making a plan and sticking to it, distracted by possibilities and what-ifs and bright and shiny objects. And, ultimately, comfort. And the bowl of candy on the admin's desk.
In related news, we are out of money. Not kidding. Maybe we will get some more soon?
I have officially applied to take the exam to become licensed in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. I should start studying, like, yesterday (actually, a month ago), but if you must know the truth I'll wait until I get the go-ahead to schedule the exam and then and only then will I crack a book, closer to the last minute than anyone thought possible. I could pretend otherwise, but the truth is: that's just how I roll.
And lastly, this made me laugh today.
12 September 2007
I can think again, now that the temperature is below 145 degrees in Tennessee
A couple of days ago, I finally met Girl, Corrupted and her sweet Mr. Cooper, live and in person, walking toward me on the Greenway. If you don't already visit her in blogland, you should, because she likes to talk about poop, which automatically makes you a gem of a lady in my book. She reminded me that I have a blog, and I think she may have even shaken a finger at me? Hmmm. In any case. Here I am.
So never fear, readers (all four of you), I'm alive and well and mostly holding my shit together. My little mental break from/ at work has passed, and I'm back to busting it during the work week. I finished my very last class last weekend and hosted my in-laws for two nights. We traveled to Southern Indiana for Labor Day and attended no fewer than four major family functions/ events, all involving different combinations and permutations of the same group of people wearing different combinations of clothing. And this weekend is the single most big-assed fundraiser for the organization that pays me, A. will be traveling to Indy to play a sloppy drunken mess of songs with members of our old Hoosier college family, and my parents will come into town to visit/ volunteer for the fundraiser/ soak up as much Bird time as they possibly can. I lost my gigantic bundle of keys and discount tags and was made to pay the Honda dealership seven hundred thousand dollars to replace my huge, electronic car key (it has buttons on it. It is complicated.) My large dog seems to be losing his hair and his mind. Bird is getting tall. I cleaned the upstairs bathroom.
So far, September is kicking my ass.
This is just a bonus picture. She's taking a Bird Bath in the sink.
So never fear, readers (all four of you), I'm alive and well and mostly holding my shit together. My little mental break from/ at work has passed, and I'm back to busting it during the work week. I finished my very last class last weekend and hosted my in-laws for two nights. We traveled to Southern Indiana for Labor Day and attended no fewer than four major family functions/ events, all involving different combinations and permutations of the same group of people wearing different combinations of clothing. And this weekend is the single most big-assed fundraiser for the organization that pays me, A. will be traveling to Indy to play a sloppy drunken mess of songs with members of our old Hoosier college family, and my parents will come into town to visit/ volunteer for the fundraiser/ soak up as much Bird time as they possibly can. I lost my gigantic bundle of keys and discount tags and was made to pay the Honda dealership seven hundred thousand dollars to replace my huge, electronic car key (it has buttons on it. It is complicated.) My large dog seems to be losing his hair and his mind. Bird is getting tall. I cleaned the upstairs bathroom.
So far, September is kicking my ass.
This is just a bonus picture. She's taking a Bird Bath in the sink.
30 April 2007
Ronnie James Deodorant
The organization I work for just hosted its first Big Golf Event, complete with country music celebrity and catered lunch that gave me hideous (and hilarious) gas, volunteers with bling worth more than my car, and lots of lazing around in a rocker on the clubhouse porch. And once again I find myself in the Great Summer Deodorant Crisis, also known as the Summer of B.O. So don't be offended, because I'm not hugging ANYONE past eleven in the morning for at least the next four months. This is Tennessee, folks. It's already been in the upper eighties and it's not going to slow down.
::::
Bird has pee-peed in the potty twice in two days. The first time, she stood up in the bath and said "pee pee", so A. yanked her swiftly out of the tub and onto the potty, where she peed. And then we made a big joyful ruckus about the whole thing while she slipped and slid around in the puddle of bath water around the potty. She looked panicked at best. Maybe we should have toned it down a little bit-- two adults and one child is far over capacity in our tiny 1930s bathroom, where you can turn on the tub faucet, close the door, and wash your hands without ever leaving the toilet.
The second time was today, and it included some Easter-candy bribes and less fanfair. It happened while I was running the bath, and I let her run around naked while the tub finished filling. This event also included a poop in the laundry basket in the kitchen, somehow, in the few seconds between the joyous peeing and Bird hitting the bathwater. This is the second box-poop for our little housecat of a toddler, if you're keeping score.
Also, Bird got bit by another kid at daycare yesterday-- an anonymous kid, as the staff are not permitted to share the biter's identity with the bit-kid's mama, for fear that she would call up the biter's mama and give her an earful. At dinner, I was running through my usual battery of questions about Bird's day: Did you play with Jack? Did you play with Julian? Did you color with crayons? etc. (the answer is always "yes!") I asked, "What happened to your arm today?" and she said, "Abby. Bite. No bite, Abby."
So it was Abby, the kid new on the Toddler scene fresh from the nursery. Abby the biter. Birdy the snitch.
::::
My office has become a baby factory lately, with two of four employees pregnant. Which means less working and more talking about babies, which makes me want to dash to my car and go swoop Bird up from daycare, and also makes me want to be pregnant again. Just a little bit.
One of the people I work with has started keeping a blog detailing her pregnancy, and has shared this with the others in the office. And it was announced last week that "we should all get blogs!" and how blogger is free and easy, and all of that. It's like I'm the last person hiding behind the closet door in a grown-up game of hide-and-seek. My cover may be blown very soon. Not that I would especially care if any of these people were readers, but I do enjoy the separation of church and state as it is at present.
I'm off again to Chattanooga in the morning to visit patients, and charging the camera batteries as we speak. You know, just in case.
::::
Bird has pee-peed in the potty twice in two days. The first time, she stood up in the bath and said "pee pee", so A. yanked her swiftly out of the tub and onto the potty, where she peed. And then we made a big joyful ruckus about the whole thing while she slipped and slid around in the puddle of bath water around the potty. She looked panicked at best. Maybe we should have toned it down a little bit-- two adults and one child is far over capacity in our tiny 1930s bathroom, where you can turn on the tub faucet, close the door, and wash your hands without ever leaving the toilet.
The second time was today, and it included some Easter-candy bribes and less fanfair. It happened while I was running the bath, and I let her run around naked while the tub finished filling. This event also included a poop in the laundry basket in the kitchen, somehow, in the few seconds between the joyous peeing and Bird hitting the bathwater. This is the second box-poop for our little housecat of a toddler, if you're keeping score.
Also, Bird got bit by another kid at daycare yesterday-- an anonymous kid, as the staff are not permitted to share the biter's identity with the bit-kid's mama, for fear that she would call up the biter's mama and give her an earful. At dinner, I was running through my usual battery of questions about Bird's day: Did you play with Jack? Did you play with Julian? Did you color with crayons? etc. (the answer is always "yes!") I asked, "What happened to your arm today?" and she said, "Abby. Bite. No bite, Abby."
So it was Abby, the kid new on the Toddler scene fresh from the nursery. Abby the biter. Birdy the snitch.
::::
My office has become a baby factory lately, with two of four employees pregnant. Which means less working and more talking about babies, which makes me want to dash to my car and go swoop Bird up from daycare, and also makes me want to be pregnant again. Just a little bit.
One of the people I work with has started keeping a blog detailing her pregnancy, and has shared this with the others in the office. And it was announced last week that "we should all get blogs!" and how blogger is free and easy, and all of that. It's like I'm the last person hiding behind the closet door in a grown-up game of hide-and-seek. My cover may be blown very soon. Not that I would especially care if any of these people were readers, but I do enjoy the separation of church and state as it is at present.
I'm off again to Chattanooga in the morning to visit patients, and charging the camera batteries as we speak. You know, just in case.
20 April 2007
One Candle
So, this blog is a year old today. Like with the concept of email in the nineties, I was a little blind and slow to warm to the blogiverse, but look at me now. With a one-year-old blog and an eighteen month old baby and a nearly ten-year-old relationship and I'm still talking about pooping. A lot.
And you know what's crazy? The first blog I read belongs to a woman in my neighborhood with a baby Bird's age. She included her blogger link on her listserv signature, and I noticed, and I went there. And I still follow it, as she is a powerhouse of a mama and I feel connected to her since she unknowingly guided me to this public journaling madness that makes me a better writer and a better historian and a better examiner of the goings-on in my little life. And tonight, on my blogiversary, I met her in person at a mama-community event. Well well well. Circles and cycles, indeed.
So thank you for reading, and stick around if you'd like. Because Birdy turns two in about six months and that is going to be a joyful and headache-inducing wild ride. (She's already started to shout "MINE!" at regular intervals, to no one in particular). And I'm going to be easing my little boat into the waters of massage therapy, and probably falling out and banging my shin on the rocks while the whole senior class stands on the shore and laughs at me because my swimsuit bottoms are wedged up my crack. And you may want to be there for that.
And you know what's crazy? The first blog I read belongs to a woman in my neighborhood with a baby Bird's age. She included her blogger link on her listserv signature, and I noticed, and I went there. And I still follow it, as she is a powerhouse of a mama and I feel connected to her since she unknowingly guided me to this public journaling madness that makes me a better writer and a better historian and a better examiner of the goings-on in my little life. And tonight, on my blogiversary, I met her in person at a mama-community event. Well well well. Circles and cycles, indeed.
So thank you for reading, and stick around if you'd like. Because Birdy turns two in about six months and that is going to be a joyful and headache-inducing wild ride. (She's already started to shout "MINE!" at regular intervals, to no one in particular). And I'm going to be easing my little boat into the waters of massage therapy, and probably falling out and banging my shin on the rocks while the whole senior class stands on the shore and laughs at me because my swimsuit bottoms are wedged up my crack. And you may want to be there for that.
10 April 2007
Holy Effing Eff
Did you think I had run off and left? Set my house on fire and run screaming into the street? Did you mistakenly think I am a person capable of keeping a blog afloat?
Well, I am here, just quiet lately and unable to breathe through all the layers and layers of shit going on. Are things out of control? Yes. Always. Am I okay with that? Yes. Because it has kind of always been this way, hasn't it?
So here are six things I felt like talking about tonight. And one more bonus thing right here in the beginning: our smoke detector battery has started its slow, chirping death this evening, and I don't have the right sized batteries or the right sized arms and legs to reach up to replace it, so it chirps about every four minutes or so, which is making my dogs act like a bunch of weenies and try to crowd under the desk together where they absolutely do not fit. They are driving me nuts. And the cat? The cat shits in the house, in a box, because I not only said it was okay to shit in the house, I invited him to shit right there in that box. It is awesome.
One
First of all, if the collective world keeps setting out Easter candy, I'm going to keep eating it, and I will be a big fat slug that waddles around holding her belly and whining about how she feels so siiiiiiiiick. Eat your own candy, everybody. I am here to help you, but do not make me help you eat that shit.
Two
Second of all, living with a toddler is like sharing your home with a severely bipolar midget with bowel and bladder control problems, who talks with her mouth full and throws things from time to time. And sleeps in a big, open-topped cage.
Seriously. She gets funnier and more clever, sweeter and more herself every hour. But with that growth comes independence, opinions, the word "no," and periodic short-circuiting that usually ends in mild to moderate bodily injury for one or more parties and, ultimately, a sweaty, teary little exhausted person.
Daycare was closed yesterday and I had the privilege of spending the whole day with Bird, just me and her, playing and running errands and making lunch and flopping around in the big bed. It made this morning's drop-off 300% harder on both of us.
Three
Next item: School. I think the last I spoke of it, I was getting sort of fucked over by the new schedule at school. The update is that I met with the director and she did not receive my carefully crafted email with the zinger at the end, of which I was so proud. There were reasons for the schedule shift and I get that now, but I still think it was handled shittily. She was willing to wheel and deal a little bit with me, and now I will start intern clinic in May (!!) and graduate in September, which is about 8 months earlier than I'd projected. So yay to that.
And to the person that landed here by Google-searching "Massage School rip-off No Jobs," thanks a bunch for bringing up that encouraging scenario.
Four
Removed. It wasn't very nice. Sorry.
Five
I tried to do our taxes on Turbotax, but when it told me we owed $1500 I was certain I had made a mistake. (We had, in fact, made a mistake-- walking around for 12 months with our heads squarely up our asses not having enough tax withheld and not realizing how much contract income was coming in that is now being taxed). So I went to HR Block for the miracle experts to fix it and get us that fat refund they're always talking about on television.
I started just now to write out the whole moment-by-moment encounter, but I'm tired and I've told the story a hundred times already because I needed to hear myself tell it, because the whole time I was sitting there I was pretty sure nobody would believe me when I tried to explain. Like the time I went to the psycho mad-scientist dentist and wondered for years (still do) if I dreamed the whole ordeal, with the goggles and the spelunker's headlamp and the shredding of my gums.
The short version (do I ever do a short version?) is that my tax preparer was blind, for the most part-- definitely not drivable and definitely shopping in the audiobook section-- with one eye looking one direction and one eye not really looking anywhere but definitely not the same direction as the other eye. And he spoke in a barely-audible whisper. And he ignored my questions, or maybe he answered them, who knows? Because his voice was the teensiest, mousiest whisper.
I'm all for people with disabilities getting jobs just like anyone else, and when this guy greeted me at the front desk of HR Block, I got all psychosocial rehabby and was really impressed that they'd hired a disabled guy to be the greeter. Until I realized he was going to do my taxes. That he would be there to read the fine print, literally. And I had dashed in to HR Block on my way back to the office after a patient visit, so it wasn't like I had all damn day.
Collectively, A and I had four W-2's between us, two mortgage interest statements, four 1099s and a shitload of daycare and school receipts. And he read each one with a magnifying glass, less than an inch away from his face, and punched the keys on the keyboard one by one, looked back through the magnifying glass, hovered over the keyboard, punched a key, squinted at the screen. Looked through the magnifying glass, hovered over the keyboard, punched a key, squinted at the screen. Lather, rinse, repeat. All of those forms. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
And at the end? After the blind guy read the teensy numbers off of the complicated forms and performed a barely interactive reading of TurboTax? It was going to cost me TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT DOLLARS for the whispering and magnifying and the pecking out of the letters and numbers. On top of the $1500 we do, in fact, owe. The $1500 we don't have immediately available, as we are the definition of paycheck-to-paycheck living.
A blind guy. Did my taxes.
Five and a Half
Visited my in-laws for Easter. Ate yellow foods and brown foods, no green foods. Some small, hard pink and blue foods, also.
Bird hunted Easter eggs in the freezing-ass cold during the day, ate sugary treats in the afternoon, and violently fought sleep Saturday night, forcing us to employ the "cry it out" method which I have used less than five times in the entire almost eighteen months I've been a parent. I just can't see the point in forcing her to fall asleep so lonely and out of control that she collapses in an exhausted heap. That does not feel like a parenting success to me.
While in Indianapolis, I slept in a bed so Downy fresh that I woke up feeling like I'd rubbed a dryer sheet all over the inside of my mouth. Please, if you are having guests, don't double-up on the freshness. Some people just don't like it.
Of course, the only Downy fresh bed I ever sleep in is there at my in-laws' house, and usually we are there for a celebratory occasion and I might be associating waking up in a Downy-fresh bed with waking up with a fierce hangover. In any case, I had little to drink this trip and I can say with certainty that the bed was over-Downied and I stand by my dryer-sheet-in-the-mouth description.
Six
I've been checking Bloglines here and there, though I have not updated my own little corner, thanks to my barely flickering personal life. I find myself getting really jealous of all the crafty blogs- -the women who just decide on a whim to stitch up a sundress or a this or a that or bake homemade bread and take the time to get delighted by this pattern or this thing or this thrift store find or whatever. All with beautiful photos and a true appreciation for little satisfying details. I'm not talking about jealousy like "oh, that's so well done! I love that! Omigah! I'm so jealous!" I'm talking about actual, poisonous jealousy of these bloggers and their fucking awesome crafts. I covet their time and their productive use of it. I have a traffic jam of shit to crank through before I can even speak the words "sewing machine" or even "photoshop" outloud.
But I can say "Fuck!" outloud! Also "Fuck this!" and "Fuck that!" and "For fuck's sake, cat, get out of the fucking sink!" Because I am prim and sweet and I dream of stitching up some aprons.
Well, I am here, just quiet lately and unable to breathe through all the layers and layers of shit going on. Are things out of control? Yes. Always. Am I okay with that? Yes. Because it has kind of always been this way, hasn't it?
So here are six things I felt like talking about tonight. And one more bonus thing right here in the beginning: our smoke detector battery has started its slow, chirping death this evening, and I don't have the right sized batteries or the right sized arms and legs to reach up to replace it, so it chirps about every four minutes or so, which is making my dogs act like a bunch of weenies and try to crowd under the desk together where they absolutely do not fit. They are driving me nuts. And the cat? The cat shits in the house, in a box, because I not only said it was okay to shit in the house, I invited him to shit right there in that box. It is awesome.
One
First of all, if the collective world keeps setting out Easter candy, I'm going to keep eating it, and I will be a big fat slug that waddles around holding her belly and whining about how she feels so siiiiiiiiick. Eat your own candy, everybody. I am here to help you, but do not make me help you eat that shit.
TwoSecond of all, living with a toddler is like sharing your home with a severely bipolar midget with bowel and bladder control problems, who talks with her mouth full and throws things from time to time. And sleeps in a big, open-topped cage.
Seriously. She gets funnier and more clever, sweeter and more herself every hour. But with that growth comes independence, opinions, the word "no," and periodic short-circuiting that usually ends in mild to moderate bodily injury for one or more parties and, ultimately, a sweaty, teary little exhausted person.
Daycare was closed yesterday and I had the privilege of spending the whole day with Bird, just me and her, playing and running errands and making lunch and flopping around in the big bed. It made this morning's drop-off 300% harder on both of us.
Three
Next item: School. I think the last I spoke of it, I was getting sort of fucked over by the new schedule at school. The update is that I met with the director and she did not receive my carefully crafted email with the zinger at the end, of which I was so proud. There were reasons for the schedule shift and I get that now, but I still think it was handled shittily. She was willing to wheel and deal a little bit with me, and now I will start intern clinic in May (!!) and graduate in September, which is about 8 months earlier than I'd projected. So yay to that.
And to the person that landed here by Google-searching "Massage School rip-off No Jobs," thanks a bunch for bringing up that encouraging scenario.
Four
Removed. It wasn't very nice. Sorry.
Five
I tried to do our taxes on Turbotax, but when it told me we owed $1500 I was certain I had made a mistake. (We had, in fact, made a mistake-- walking around for 12 months with our heads squarely up our asses not having enough tax withheld and not realizing how much contract income was coming in that is now being taxed). So I went to HR Block for the miracle experts to fix it and get us that fat refund they're always talking about on television.
I started just now to write out the whole moment-by-moment encounter, but I'm tired and I've told the story a hundred times already because I needed to hear myself tell it, because the whole time I was sitting there I was pretty sure nobody would believe me when I tried to explain. Like the time I went to the psycho mad-scientist dentist and wondered for years (still do) if I dreamed the whole ordeal, with the goggles and the spelunker's headlamp and the shredding of my gums.
The short version (do I ever do a short version?) is that my tax preparer was blind, for the most part-- definitely not drivable and definitely shopping in the audiobook section-- with one eye looking one direction and one eye not really looking anywhere but definitely not the same direction as the other eye. And he spoke in a barely-audible whisper. And he ignored my questions, or maybe he answered them, who knows? Because his voice was the teensiest, mousiest whisper.
I'm all for people with disabilities getting jobs just like anyone else, and when this guy greeted me at the front desk of HR Block, I got all psychosocial rehabby and was really impressed that they'd hired a disabled guy to be the greeter. Until I realized he was going to do my taxes. That he would be there to read the fine print, literally. And I had dashed in to HR Block on my way back to the office after a patient visit, so it wasn't like I had all damn day.
Collectively, A and I had four W-2's between us, two mortgage interest statements, four 1099s and a shitload of daycare and school receipts. And he read each one with a magnifying glass, less than an inch away from his face, and punched the keys on the keyboard one by one, looked back through the magnifying glass, hovered over the keyboard, punched a key, squinted at the screen. Looked through the magnifying glass, hovered over the keyboard, punched a key, squinted at the screen. Lather, rinse, repeat. All of those forms. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
And at the end? After the blind guy read the teensy numbers off of the complicated forms and performed a barely interactive reading of TurboTax? It was going to cost me TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT DOLLARS for the whispering and magnifying and the pecking out of the letters and numbers. On top of the $1500 we do, in fact, owe. The $1500 we don't have immediately available, as we are the definition of paycheck-to-paycheck living.
A blind guy. Did my taxes.
Five and a Half
Visited my in-laws for Easter. Ate yellow foods and brown foods, no green foods. Some small, hard pink and blue foods, also.
Bird hunted Easter eggs in the freezing-ass cold during the day, ate sugary treats in the afternoon, and violently fought sleep Saturday night, forcing us to employ the "cry it out" method which I have used less than five times in the entire almost eighteen months I've been a parent. I just can't see the point in forcing her to fall asleep so lonely and out of control that she collapses in an exhausted heap. That does not feel like a parenting success to me.
While in Indianapolis, I slept in a bed so Downy fresh that I woke up feeling like I'd rubbed a dryer sheet all over the inside of my mouth. Please, if you are having guests, don't double-up on the freshness. Some people just don't like it.
Of course, the only Downy fresh bed I ever sleep in is there at my in-laws' house, and usually we are there for a celebratory occasion and I might be associating waking up in a Downy-fresh bed with waking up with a fierce hangover. In any case, I had little to drink this trip and I can say with certainty that the bed was over-Downied and I stand by my dryer-sheet-in-the-mouth description.
Six
I've been checking Bloglines here and there, though I have not updated my own little corner, thanks to my barely flickering personal life. I find myself getting really jealous of all the crafty blogs- -the women who just decide on a whim to stitch up a sundress or a this or a that or bake homemade bread and take the time to get delighted by this pattern or this thing or this thrift store find or whatever. All with beautiful photos and a true appreciation for little satisfying details. I'm not talking about jealousy like "oh, that's so well done! I love that! Omigah! I'm so jealous!" I'm talking about actual, poisonous jealousy of these bloggers and their fucking awesome crafts. I covet their time and their productive use of it. I have a traffic jam of shit to crank through before I can even speak the words "sewing machine" or even "photoshop" outloud.
But I can say "Fuck!" outloud! Also "Fuck this!" and "Fuck that!" and "For fuck's sake, cat, get out of the fucking sink!" Because I am prim and sweet and I dream of stitching up some aprons.
28 February 2007
After I saw the spaceship, I came back down the mountain
- Bullet Points are for Cheaters who Can't Pull Together a Cohesive Post
- Saturday night, Bird did not sleep much. After much up and down and rocking and patting, we snuggled up together on the couch, which was mildly successful. She was beyond snuggly-- reaching a point of clinginess so clingy she would have happily crawled into my mouth, if she could fit, just to get a little bit closer. A sure sign she's getting sick. Within the tossing and turning and gut-kicking and head-butting there were sweet moments, like when she laid her head next to mine on the pillow and gave me a little smooch, and said "eye beegk!" ( "Hi, Pig!") and giggled like the comedian she is.
- Sure enough, Sunday afternoon, a friend was standing in our kitchen, trying to convince us to pack up the wagon and head out for Las Maracas (recently renamed due to health-department, uh, issues) and eat us some beans and refried things. Once reasonably convinced, A. asked Bird if she'd like to go eat some beans? Yeah? How 'bout it? and she promptly puked all over his shoulder/ back/ arm. Raincheck.
- Did I mention my in-laws were in town this past weekend? Friday night to Sunday morning. They let me cook for them-- more than once, even-- which may seem minor, but was a huge honor for me. And I think they actually liked most of it. It was a good visit, all-around. My father-in-law left no fewer than three rosaries in my house and car.
- Saturday, I started to get sick. I sincerely thought at first that I might be allergic to my scented in-laws, as the same kind of uncontrollable sneezing and headache happened at their house at Christmas. But nope, as of Monday afternoon I was fevery and chilly and achy and spent the next twenty-four hours parenting half-assedly and forcing my child to nap so that I could catch a few winks. And did I mention Bird was sent home sick with the diarrhea cha-cha-cha?
- Or that she had a gnarly eye infection the week before that made her look like an infectious stray cat?
- Anyone want to hazard a guess at how much work I've missed lately?
- Last week when my Bird was oozing from the eyeballs and the daycare called to tell me to come get her or else and don't bring her back for a good long while, I called my mom and wondered aloud how in the holy fuck I'm supposed to keep a job. And who do you think was at my doorstep at 9:30 the next morning? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after her five hour drive from
- (Turns out it was an eye/ear infection combo.)
- And living closer to Bird's Granny sure doesn't sound so bad sometimes.
- I am so happy to be caught up on LOST, watching it with the general public, once a week. (tonight!) Watching nearly every night on DVD for the past few months--while delightfully commercial-free-- was becoming quite an obligation, and now that we're caught up I just don't know what to do with myself after Bird goes to bed. Talk to my husband, maybe. About LOST.
- I got my bridesmaid's dress in the mail for my brother's wedding, which happens in about 3 weeks. I was measured for it months ago, and let's just say that things can change in a couple of months. Let's just hope they can change back in three weeks.
- I listen to NPR at work, and in my town that means classical format from 9am-3pm. Which beats the hell out of the temp's "Wailing In the Glen" Celtic Screeching CDs. And I'm starting to recognize a lot of the pieces they play. Why? Because they are on the Baby Einstein DVDs. I'm all "oooh, it's the giraffe song!"
- Some people that you are supposed to love make it very, very hard to love them. It is a tall order to love the compulsively miserable.
- I went to
- At the McDonald's (hey, my choices were severely limited and I was severely hungry) in one of the Bumfuck Nowheres, I ordered my standard fast-food fare: cheese-only sandwich, fries, and apple pie, and the total was 6.66. So I ordered another apple pie. And I ate that second apple pie right then and there, because I do not want to tempt the DEBBIL.
- I wonder why my bridesmaid's dress is tight?
Blogging Tip:
Hey, are you on Blogger? Because if you are, don't ever, ever touch the "bullet points" button on the toolbar, unless you want to totally lose control of your post. I figured it out, finally. Okay, maybe it's me, but it doesn't work like it does in Word, just be aware.
04 January 2007
Welcome, 2007! So far, so Barf.
Here's our New Year's story:
Visited my family and grandparents in Southern Indiana, had a lovely time, Bird picked a dilly of a day to practice her "cry it out" techniques at bedtime in a hotel room, went to a bridal shower for my almost-sister in law. Everything lovely. Flying by at rapid pace, but lovely. Got a tour of all of the cheeses in my grandmother's refrigerator. There were many.
On our last Hoosier night, A. became very, violently, run-to-the-bathroom, column-of-barf sick. The barfing portion of the illness was relatively swift, but the lingering soreness and overall puniness lasted a few days, and we spent New Year's eve like this: Stopped in briefly to a gathering, back home and A. in bed by 9:30, me falling asleep on the couch at about 10 watching a taped episode of NOVA. Yep, you read that right.
I'm hoping this week isn't a preview of our new year, because if it is, we're going to be doing a lot of barfing and a lot of wallowing around and showing up to places disheveled and unprepared. Also a lot of nerdy activities, like watching taped episodes of NOVA.
Doing
It really is amazing how quickly I slip here at work, as I started out this morning like gangbusters and then checked bloglines and it has been a quick tumble downhill on the productivity scale this afternoon.
The Infirmed
Went out! on Tuesday! to see an old friend/ roommate play her super-great songs at a nice little club near downtown. And I am not kidding you, right as she took the stage, my phone rang, and it was A., and apparently Bird was barfing her guts up all over the place. So I went home, after one song. Poor Birdy. So scared of the barfing. It was heart-wrenching.
Also, it passed quite quickly, much like A's mystery illness, for which I am thankful.
Two Wishes
Another pretending to be a SAHM day yesterday, as school has not started and working part time means I have some time away from work, until it is filled up with school. Met S. and her boys at the park, a party planned due to its limited physical contact due to the recent barfing. I can't stop thinking about how that's what I'm supposed to be doing. (SAHMing, not barfing.) You should've (and would've, if I'd remembered the camera) seen my little Bird running around out there.
Speaking of cameras, I have an aging digital snapshot camera that is a decent machine except for the four-minute delay between the time you push the button and the time the photo is taken, and its tough stance on not taking clear photos of anything that is not lit by bright, clear daylight, save for the flash that makes every subject look like the cops have just busted down the front door and are shining a spotlight in their face and yelling at them to GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR! I know, I bitch a lot. At least I have a camera. But I would really like a nice fancy camera to take some keepers of my Bird. **sigh**
Frontbutt
My husband watches a little football, but not in a "hold on don't talk to me I have to see this
play" kind of way. And I am fortunate that he is the kind of guy who is not so into his sports that he can't tolerate my babbling and question-asking, like "Why do they do that?" "Did the referee just say that was to legit to quit?" and, from last night, "Did that guy just eat a Cheeto?"
Above all, though, my favorite thing to spot in a football game is the frontbutt. It's an occupational hazard of being a sideline coach guy. Every time I see it, I throw my arms up in the air like it's a touchdown, and I say "Yesssssss! Frontbutt!" And my husband still thinks that's funny. I am a lucky, lucky girl, folks.
Blogoshere
So, the fabulous k is a kindhearted lady, and said some nice things about this blog over at hers. Really, that was so kind of her. Go visit. The night I started this blog up, I set all of my settings and controlled all of my controls, and then started hitting the "next blog" button at the top of the page. I landed at Out, Out Damn Spot and I've been a reader ever since, including the two months before I discovered bloglines and literally checked her blog about 59 times every day.
Also go visit the Kim Family Auction. I have added several new crafty blogs to my blogroll after finding the beautiful wares and their creators there. Beautiful little things, really.
Visited my family and grandparents in Southern Indiana, had a lovely time, Bird picked a dilly of a day to practice her "cry it out" techniques at bedtime in a hotel room, went to a bridal shower for my almost-sister in law. Everything lovely. Flying by at rapid pace, but lovely. Got a tour of all of the cheeses in my grandmother's refrigerator. There were many.
On our last Hoosier night, A. became very, violently, run-to-the-bathroom, column-of-barf sick. The barfing portion of the illness was relatively swift, but the lingering soreness and overall puniness lasted a few days, and we spent New Year's eve like this: Stopped in briefly to a gathering, back home and A. in bed by 9:30, me falling asleep on the couch at about 10 watching a taped episode of NOVA. Yep, you read that right.
I'm hoping this week isn't a preview of our new year, because if it is, we're going to be doing a lot of barfing and a lot of wallowing around and showing up to places disheveled and unprepared. Also a lot of nerdy activities, like watching taped episodes of NOVA.
Doing
It really is amazing how quickly I slip here at work, as I started out this morning like gangbusters and then checked bloglines and it has been a quick tumble downhill on the productivity scale this afternoon.
The Infirmed
Went out! on Tuesday! to see an old friend/ roommate play her super-great songs at a nice little club near downtown. And I am not kidding you, right as she took the stage, my phone rang, and it was A., and apparently Bird was barfing her guts up all over the place. So I went home, after one song. Poor Birdy. So scared of the barfing. It was heart-wrenching.
Also, it passed quite quickly, much like A's mystery illness, for which I am thankful.
Two Wishes
Another pretending to be a SAHM day yesterday, as school has not started and working part time means I have some time away from work, until it is filled up with school. Met S. and her boys at the park, a party planned due to its limited physical contact due to the recent barfing. I can't stop thinking about how that's what I'm supposed to be doing. (SAHMing, not barfing.) You should've (and would've, if I'd remembered the camera) seen my little Bird running around out there.
Speaking of cameras, I have an aging digital snapshot camera that is a decent machine except for the four-minute delay between the time you push the button and the time the photo is taken, and its tough stance on not taking clear photos of anything that is not lit by bright, clear daylight, save for the flash that makes every subject look like the cops have just busted down the front door and are shining a spotlight in their face and yelling at them to GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR! I know, I bitch a lot. At least I have a camera. But I would really like a nice fancy camera to take some keepers of my Bird. **sigh**
Frontbutt
My husband watches a little football, but not in a "hold on don't talk to me I have to see this
play" kind of way. And I am fortunate that he is the kind of guy who is not so into his sports that he can't tolerate my babbling and question-asking, like "Why do they do that?" "Did the referee just say that was to legit to quit?" and, from last night, "Did that guy just eat a Cheeto?"Above all, though, my favorite thing to spot in a football game is the frontbutt. It's an occupational hazard of being a sideline coach guy. Every time I see it, I throw my arms up in the air like it's a touchdown, and I say "Yesssssss! Frontbutt!" And my husband still thinks that's funny. I am a lucky, lucky girl, folks.
Blogoshere
So, the fabulous k is a kindhearted lady, and said some nice things about this blog over at hers. Really, that was so kind of her. Go visit. The night I started this blog up, I set all of my settings and controlled all of my controls, and then started hitting the "next blog" button at the top of the page. I landed at Out, Out Damn Spot and I've been a reader ever since, including the two months before I discovered bloglines and literally checked her blog about 59 times every day.
Also go visit the Kim Family Auction. I have added several new crafty blogs to my blogroll after finding the beautiful wares and their creators there. Beautiful little things, really.
10 November 2006
Snapshot of a Marriage, II
Mama Snee: I think our microwave is pooping out.
A: Oh?
MS: I was defrosting some vegetables for Birdy, and this WHITE LASER came down and sparked in the dish and totally charred this one little piece of corn, and I think it might have been on fire for a second. The rest of the vegetables were still frozen.
A: **Blink. Blink.**
MS: So I think the microwave is pooping out.
A: What gave you that idea?
I saw the other side, and the grass really is greener
I came to a point where I'd kind of had it with Blogger. Losing my posts and what have you. So I switched over to Wordpress yesterday. See for yourself. I liked that it had its own stat tracking dealie, more interesting templates, easier this, slicker that. But then I realized that when I imported everything, a lot of my pictures didn't make it, and there's not really anything I can do about that now. And the pictures are important to me. And then I realized that when I swapped the template to one I liked better anyway, my photos were back, good as new.
We are in a period of transition, maybe.
A: Oh?
MS: I was defrosting some vegetables for Birdy, and this WHITE LASER came down and sparked in the dish and totally charred this one little piece of corn, and I think it might have been on fire for a second. The rest of the vegetables were still frozen.
A: **Blink. Blink.**
MS: So I think the microwave is pooping out.
A: What gave you that idea?
I saw the other side, and the grass really is greener
I came to a point where I'd kind of had it with Blogger. Losing my posts and what have you. So I switched over to Wordpress yesterday. See for yourself. I liked that it had its own stat tracking dealie, more interesting templates, easier this, slicker that. But then I realized that when I imported everything, a lot of my pictures didn't make it, and there's not really anything I can do about that now. And the pictures are important to me. And then I realized that when I swapped the template to one I liked better anyway, my photos were back, good as new.
We are in a period of transition, maybe.
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