Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Last time I blogged it was Christmas Eve and I said I'd "see you in a few days" which was obviously a LIE because here were are nearly at Valentine's Day and I am just finding time to blog again. I mean, unless your definition of "a few" equals "39," I am a LIAR and my pants are on FIRE.

I mean, COME ON, I don't even think people are on "Survivor" island for 39 whole days, not even if they win. (Although if anyone asks, go right on ahead and tell them that's where I've been, okay? I have a buff. It's a good cover story.)

By the way, I make no excuses for my disappearance. I've been busy, just like everyone else, and if I'd like to keep my head firmly affixed to my person and not all explodey like the Death Star, then I needed to prioritize stuff, and between school and work and child and husband and eating and breathing and occasionally sleeping, unfortunately blogging fell to the bottom of the list. I hope to rectify this situation, but I am taking nine credits this semester, so maybe don't hold your breath?

(Here's how bad it is right now: I originally wrote "I've been busty, just like everyone else" in the previous paragraph, and I ALMOST LEFT IT IN BECAUSE I'M NOT SURE I EVEN HAVE READERS ANY MORE, and I figured if I was going to keep getting weirdo spam comments in my inbox, it might as well be for an interesting reason.)

(Also, before you even ask, smoking falls under either "eating" or "breathing" and I DO NOT WISH TO ENTERTAIN YOUR COMPLAINTS.)

(Sorry about being all shouty already. Long week, and they're calling for another Snowpocalypse or whatever we're calling it this year, and I'm pretty sure I'm not prepared, although we do have a new next-door neighbor with a snowblower, so there's that, at least.)

ANYWAY. Even though I haven't been writing, I have been trying to take photos whenever I can. Mostly they've been cell phone shots (I got a fancy new camera bag for Christmas and I have maybe taken a dozen pictures since because BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSY!) but at least you can see what we've been up to.

It snowed a couple of times. Nothing major, but enough to at least attempt snow angels, anyway.

Andy Reid finally got fired, and so now at least we no longer have the #occupyfireandyreid movement taking up what little of my free time still exists. (I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the #occupyfirechipkelly movement begins.)

We lost some more teeth. And, I mean, this happened so long ago that the permanent are already almost in and knocking some OTHER teeth loose. The Tooth Fairy is going broke.

Swimming lessons started up again, with a new swimsuit to boot. (And we've grown so much ALREADY that this suit almost doesn't fit any more, so thank God for Costco.)

My kid proposed to a boy in her Kindergarten class via crayon drawing on the back of a receipt. He accepted, but they have since called off the engagement. (I think. I'm honestly not sure what's going on there. It's like "Dallas" or "Dynasty" in the classroom. KIDS!)

I discovered that my kid (1) knows what a glockenspiel is, and (2) can play it (sort of). Of course she was the best glockenspielier at the Kindergarten concert (and also the loudest). Apparently next year they learn to start reading music (something that I never really managed to do, even after all those years of chorus and musical theater), and the kids get to start thinking about whether they want to play an instrument.

(Is anyone surprised that my kid wants to learn to play the drums? I didn't think so.)

This Is Your Brain On Grad School

There is no reason for this picture to be here, but I am including it anyway, as a pre-emptive peace offering / distraction so nobody freaks out when I get all whiny afterwards.

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Getting an education is making me dumb, you guys.

I mean, you know what I mean? I'm not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm still one of the smartest people I know, even if it's impolite of me to come right out and say so. I've worked really hard for a really long time to learn as much as I can about the things that interest me, and I am proud of the fact that I can walk into any room and jump right into pretty much any conversation and acquit myself well, provided my neuroses and social anxieties don't get in the way of me walking up to strangers and saying, "Hi!"

(SPOILER ALERT: Booze helps.)

But lately, I just don't know. Here are some actual, real-live stupid things that I have done in the past two weeks that are starting to make me reconsider the level of my own intelligence:

1. Packed a lunch for work that consisted entirely of a bottle of diet green tea and a spoon.
2. Got all the way dressed for work without putting on underpants. (Fortunately discovered before I left the house.)
3. Left the house in two different shoes AND unmatched socks.
4. Spent half an hour trying to remember where I parked before realizing I was looking for a car I hadn't had in seven years.
5. Drained the battery in my car by leaving the headlights on all day.
6. TWICE. In the span of FIVE DAYS.

So I am starting to get a little nervous that maybe I am developing early-onset senility, or perhaps I have a brain tumor, or something. I'd like to think there is a medical explanation for the sudden recurrence of the adolescent flakiness that I thought I had outgrown.

But unfortunately, I think it's stress, and for the time being, there isn't much I can do about it. I'm kind of booked solid for a little while. My classes started in January, and by the end of August I will have finished five grad-level and two undergrad courses. Twenty-one credits. All in the course of only eight months.

I'm tired, you guys. So tired. And I lost my keys again.

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Yeah, sweetheart, I'm a little worried too. But before you know it, this will all be behind us, and it will be worth it. Pinky swear.

(Non)Winter (Non)Weather

I never figured myself for one of those crotchety old windbags who spends all her spare time complaining about the weather, and yet here I am, spending all my spare time complaining about the weather. In large part because the winter we've had has been so weird that I'm not even sure what season it is right now. It's 60°F outside right now. I mean, honestly. All the trees are starting to bud. I can see pollen in the air. I've had a sinus situation going on since August, when Hurricane Irene hit, and there is no foreseeable end in sight, because it hasn't been cold enough for long enough to kill whatever winter mold I'm allergic to, and now I'm getting smacked in the face with the spring stuff that sends me into my own personal circle of hay fever hell.

But that's not why I'm really gretzing.

   

We had snow back in October, right before Halloween. We were grossly underprepared, as per usual. Shae didn't have snow boots or a new coat or mittens or any of that stuff. She went out to "play" in the snow in her pajamas and galoshes that were a skosh too small. I was mortified, as you can imagine, especially because I had all my Christmas shopping basically done at that point, but I wasn't prepared for winter. The very next weekend, she got two new coats and a pair of snow pants from my mother-in-law, and two pairs of long johns from my parents, and some nice gloves from LL Bean that remind me a bit of my old Freezy Freakies from back in the '80s, and a nice pair of fuzz-lined boots that I deliberately bought a size too big so she could put on two pairs of socks and thermal underwear and still get her boots to close properly.

   

And then ... it basically stopped being winter. These pictures are from almost a month ago, February 12th, the last time it snowed in these parts. The time before that, it was the end of January. The time before that was ... Halloween. That's it. Three snows in one winter, if you define the winter as "whenever it starts snowing to whenever it stops snowing," as they do in Syracuse. I mean, I freaking HATE winter, but even I am like, "The HELL?" Now it's March, and today it's 60°F, and my Weather Channel iPhone app is calling for high temperatures of 60°F or higher for seven of the next ten days, with an average high of 58°F.

   

So why am I complaining, you ask? Aside from this upper respiratory clusterduck that I have going on? BECAUSE THOSE GOSH DARN BRAND-NEW BOOTS DON'T FIT ANY MORE, and she's only worn them TWICE. That's why. Stupid weather.

Blur

You guys, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

I'm really sorry about all the weird lapses in posting but I am not myself these days. I knew that grad school was going to be hard, but what I didn't realize what that it wasn't going to be the classes that would kill me, but the scheduling. At least so far -- I have one class at the moment, and I love it, and I think I'm doing well, so I can't really complain there (although check back with me next week, after my exam tonight).

It's the SCHEDULE, you guys. It's killing me. Two days a week, I have 16-hour days (to which my mother is already saying, "Yeah, AND?"). I am not used to 16-hour days, at not least like this. And yes, it's only two days a week, but by the time I get home I'm usually so hopped up on adrenaline and caffeine and this buzz from learning that I can't get to sleep right away, and then I have homework and whatever on the other nights, and I have these really strange fever dreams and whatnot, so I don't really sleep all that well as a general rule, and so by the time 3:00 rolls around on a Friday afternoon, I am lucky if I am not passed out face-down at my desk, drowning in a puddle of my own drool.

You think I am exaggerating, but I assure you, I am not. Sometime after lunch on Fridays, everything is absolutely HYSTERICAL, to the point where reading a cheese wrapper has me in such giggle fits that I start hyperventilating. You guys, I DON'T EVEN KNOW. My entire life is pretty much a blur, right now.

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Because I know what my audience wants, and it isn't a detailed re-telling of my first-world white-girl problems-of-the-week, here are some pictures of other things that have been going on. I'm sorry these are all Instagrammed cell phone photos, but you're lucky I even have time for this. I just want to spend my weekends either in my bed or eating pie -- or, ideally, both at the same time -- so that I even remember to take my phone with me is basically nothing short of a miracle, right now.

 

Swim lessons are still happening. Shae is doing great, although I think you can see in this picture that she is growing out of all her bathing suits right in front of us. STOP THAT, KID.

   

We found a nearly-13-year-old box of Cream of Wheat in the back of the cupboard. Sadly, this is probably not the oldest food item in my house. I'm pretty sure that I still have canned goods that were part of a gift basket from my bridal shower. Hey, you NEVER KNOW when you're going to need a 30-year-old can of clams to feed the zombies during the end times.

    

They did a chick-hatching project at school, and my husband just rolled his eyes at me when I said I wanted to raise chickens in the back yard. I mean, IT'S LIKE HE DOESN'T EVEN TAKE ME SERIOUSLY ANY MORE.

   

Chewbacca got a hair cut. Hipster child is unimpressed.

   

With under two months to go until Shae's big 0-5 birthday (!!!!!) (?????) (who the hell let THAT happen?!), we finally took the siderail off her bed ... the same day that we put these sort of super-smooth, "microfiber," kind of almost satiny sheets on her bed. It's like we WANTED her to slide right onto the floor or something. But so far she's managed to resist the law of gravity and stay put during the night. Tucking her sheets and comforter under the mattress like some kind of deranged ghetto sleeping bag is probably helping.

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So. There you go. BASICALLY NOTHING IS DIFFERENT, except I'm like 482% more tired, and about 926% more likely to start randomly quoting Jack London stories at you with only the slightest provocation. (Or, in other words: it's a Wednesday, isn't it?)

Good Riddance

I don't know about you, but I am just about ready for this damn year to be over. 2011 hasn't been the worst year ever, but it's not been one of our best, either, and I'm so looking forward to turning the page and starting anew.

I mean, really: this year we had a leaky roof, we had to bail water out of the basement no fewer than 835 times, we had vacatus interruptus when my husband had to come home during Hurricane Irene to make sure the house didn't float away, the Kardashian-Humphries marriage turned out to be a sham (although that one was not much of a surprise), I've been suffering from outdoor mold allergies pretty much constantly since August since it hasn't been dry enough or cold enough for long enough for whatever I am sensitive to die off, the Post Office went practically bankrupt, my kid lost her first tooth, Mondo was totally robbed on his season of Project Runway, there has been all kinds of tomfoolery and shenanigans at work, and my grandfather passed away.

It hasn't been all bad, of course -- just off the top of my head I can think of our trip to Disneyland and getting into graduate school as banner moments, not to mention all the time I get to spend eating my niece and nephew's little faces -- but this has definitely been one of those years where it seems like there was a lot more on the negative side of the scale than there was on the positive.

So during this last week of the year, when I should be making resolutions that I already know I'm not going to keep anyway, instead I am asking for suggestions: what do you do to clear the air and get rid of all the bad mojo going into a new year? Burn some sage? Change your bed linens? Pop Xanaxes like Tic-Tacs? Drink tequila buy the bucketful? Switch to decaf? What? What can I do to say good riddance to 2011 and welcome 2012 with open arms?

Help me, Internet Kenobi. You're my only hope.

Abandonment Issues

Oh, hey, I still have a blog! And despite all evidence to the contrary, I didn't run off and join the circus or anything! Even though I kind of want to! Because there has been a lot of stuff going on! Like finding Christmas presents from last year! And wrapping them! Because other ones went missing! And then there was all that paperwork for graduate school! And calendars to finish! And then nervous breakdowns about finishing calendars and getting grad school paperwork in! And holiday card to make and print and mail! And parties! And more parties! And not enough tequila! And possibly running out of exclamation points!

It hasn't been all bad, just extremely busy. As things tend to be at this time of year.

And somewhere in there when I wasn't paying attention, my niece turned a year old, which just shouldn't be allowed. Babies should be babied forever because I said so. If she's a year older already, then so am I, and I don't think I can take getting much older because DAMN. I am tired.

Makayla's party was a lot of fun, though, even though I am starting to suspect that this kid might possibly not actually be related to me, because she basically wanted NO PART of her birthday cake, not even the adorable little smash cake.

She just wanted to prance around in her pretty little princess dress, although I can't say I blame her, because that dress was gorgeous. But I wanted to get the "money shot," the perfect picture of her tiny little delicious one-year-old first birthday cake-face.

207 shots later, I got something I could work with. Happy birthday, kiddo!

Chew On This

I have bruxism. And apparently it is way worse than I thought.

I just got back from the dentist, and basically I am going to be spending a lot of time in her office over the next six months to a year or so. From grinding my teeth plus overzealous brushing plus drinking soda by the bucketful, I have basically worn almost all the enamel off almost all my teeth. The only tooth in my entire head that appears to be fundamentally unaffected is the one that isn't even "factory equipment" any more -- it's the tooth that had the root canal and now has a crown.

I'm pretty sure this is nothing to be embarrassed about -- this isn't like the last time I went to a new dentist's office, when it had been more than 5 years since my last cleaning. Then I ended up having to have my bottom two wisdom teeth pulled, and I needed a gum debridement, which was maybe the most awful thing ever, mostly because for weeks afterward I needed to use this awful special mouthwash that tasted like black licorice and made everything taste funny.

I am not kidding when I say that black licorice is NOT a good flavor for mouthwash.

I guess I am going to have to have a bunch of teeth bonded, two cavities filled, and eventually I will have the other two wisdom teeth extracted, because basically they aren't doing anything except making it harder for me to keep the rest of my molars. I'll need to change the way I drink my soda -- smaller volumes, use a straw, only at mealtimes -- and then I will need to swish with a flouride rinse immediately afterwards. I have to get prescription toothpaste, too, which is something I didn't even know existed. Oh, and my new toothbrush? Is the same size as the toothbrush my kid uses.

I will say this about the new dentist: she is quite wonderful. She is the same dentist who takes care of Shae, and she is practically an old pro at the office, even though she's only been there twice. I am a complete wuss when it comes to dental work. I know it needs to be done, and I actually think that poor dental hygiene is one of the unforgivable sins, but there is something about getting needles in my mouth that I will never be 100% comfortable with.

I understand that this office also uses nitrous oxide, so maybe I will be okay.

Les Bicyclettes de Belsize

Oh, hey, remember when we were on vacation and the kids spent, like, a day and a half riding their bikes around the garage of the beach house?

Yeah, that doesn't happen so much any more. Ever since we got home, Shae has been extemely bike-adverse, and nobody really knows why. All she'll tell us is that she doesn't want to ride her bike. Her bike that last year she couldn't wait to visit.

It kind of reminds me of some of those old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, where Calvin was afraid to ride his bike because he was convinced that his bike was trying to kill him. She is suddenly very skittish about the whole ordeal, and there is a lot of fussing and fighting.

I totally don't understand it all. I mean, yes, once I learned how to drive a car I stopped riding my bike completely, but when I was a kid I couldn't wait to have a bike. One of the greatest days of my childhood was the day we moved into the neighborhood where my parents still live, where I could ride my pinky Huffy 10-speed to my grandparents' house. Maybe the only day of my extremely misspent youth that was comparable to that was the day I actually got my pink Huffy 10-speed.

But right now it's a struggle to get Shae to ride. She'll beg my mom to bring the bike down from her house, and she'll spend all day with her helmet on, but she'll only ride the bike for, like, ten minutes in my grandparents' driveway, and then she pitches a fit and kicks the bike over, and that's the end of that. Five hundred kids could ride by on their bikes, but Shae wants nothing to do with it. It's really weird.

Kids these days. Humph.

Cool Like Dat

I went to college in Syracuse, New York, which I believe is the coldest and most miserable place on the face of the Earth that does not actively contain any Palins of the non-Michael variety. (What? He was my favorite of the Pythons, and also the very best thing about A Fish Called Wanda, and there are few circumstances that would not be instantly improved by the presence of a certain shopkeeper.)

Anyway, my point is: Syracuse is cold and miserable and clearly inside the Arctic Circle, and I spent four winters there, and for a while I was very smug about the whole thing. Like, look at these tiny fools, pretending to suffer in the cold. (Granted, that post-collegiate-early-twenty-something-punk-ass-itude could have had more than a little to do with it.) I didn't wear a proper coat for quite a long time; I made it work with layers and turtlenecks and flannel and scarves and warm gloves and the occasional Nana Beanie. Gradually, I worked my way back into down vests and polarfleece and preheating my car for at least 10 minutes before I get in it.

I don't like the cold any more, is what I am saying. Right now I would be perfectly happy if I could chunk myself up on potatoes and pasta and cheese, crawl into a cave somewhere under an electric blanket turned to "Furnace," and hibernate until at least the middle of April, when most of the danger of snow has passed (unless you are in Syracuse, where it snowed six inches on Mother's Day in 1996, the weekend I graduated from college).

Not my kid, though. She wants to be outside, all the time, no matter the weather. Yesterday we had to clean the sidewalks and dig out my car so I could go into work for some year-end overtime, and she not only volunteered to help -- she insisted.

One second we were snuggled in bed together, she and my husband and I, and she heard me mention that someone (read: HIM) needed to go outside to take care of the snow removal, and she jumped up, ran into her room, and was completely naked and ready to get dressed before I had a chance to figure out what happened.

If only I could figure out a way to get her that excited about cleaning up her room, or her toys, or the sofa after she's been lounging all afternoon. Perhaps I ought to put everything out on the porch.

Happy Good Morning

The good news is: this is one of my husband's nights off, so it won't just be me trying to wrangle Shae tonight, in addition to doing the dishes and giving her a bath. I'll have help this time, and hopefully The Help will also bring me a pizza and some cupcakes and possibly a wine cooler, because DAMN.

The bad news is: that in order to get this picture of them together this morning, that means that I was home before school, and the reason why I was home that late is because of snow. So who knows when I'll get home to eat that pizza and those cupcakes and the wine cooler. DAMN.

Standoff

You might think since it's just the Boo and me at home together at night that I would have plenty of opportunities to take just absolute buttloads of pictures, but if you did think that, then I would accuse you of being an infinitely fortunate naïf who has not done a whole hell of a lot of hard time with a three-and-a-half-year-old lately.

I mean, seriously, people: I am getting ready to get myself some prison tattoos at this point. Well, ok, maybe not prison tattoos (needles, yeuch!), but I am starting to consider maybe thinking about drawing some spider-web-like patterns on my elbows with washable markers, anyway.

Now, my daughter is, by and large, a good kid, really good, but like every preschooler everywhere ever, she is stubborn as a ram. The fact the she is an Aries does not help (although it is definitely fitting). Her routine has been changed, and it seems that she'll be damned before she changes along with it. All of us will.

We are talking knock-down, drag-out, scratching and clawing and kicking and screaming here. Crying and weeping and rending of garments. She fights me leaving school. She fights me over dinner. She fights me over potty. She fights me over bedtime. She hollers and wails for her Daddy, her Nana, her Pop-pop. She tells me she hates me. She tells me she hates SpongeBob.

(My readers who also have small children [or who are My Anonymous Mother] are all like: "Yeah? And?" and also thinking: "Bitch, please." And believe me -- I know. I can feel you practically rolling your eyes out of your heads right now. I KNOW.)

None of this would bother me so much -- because hey, I am not really happy about this either, not yet, even though I completely know these are total First World Problems, like call the whaaaaaaaaaambulance already, GOD -- but she has otherwise been, for everybody else, a perfect little angel.

That little booger.

Sound of Silence

My husband started his new job last night -- well, his new shift at his new job -- and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to start taking sleeping pills and going to bed at 8:00 now, just so I can deal with the soul-crushing quiet. We have a three-year-old in our house, an HDTV, satellite service, multiple computers. So why did I spend the evening washing dishes and folding laundry just to have something to do?

It's been a long time since my husband worked nights, since before Shae and probably years before that, and I'm not used to it any more. I know how weird and codependent and neurotic it makes me sound to say that I don't really like it -- but I don't really like it.

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad he has a job, bonus that it's one he actually likes, and I know this swing-shift business is only temporary. It's not even as inconvenient as it could be, because he works 3pm-2am, four nights a week, Mondays through Thursdays. He's getting up to take Shae to school in the mornings, and he'll be home at night on the weekends, so we can still do our running amok and our visiting and our catching up with all the shows on our TiVo and sitting in the same room on two different computers playing World of Warcraft.

But my house is creepy at night, especially now that it gets dark so early. It's cold and drafty and last night Shae wasn't feeling well so she basically put herself to bed at 6:00 and left me all alone. The cats kind of hang around, but it's just the girls, and they're not particularly noisy. Bossy, yes, when they have a particularly irritating itch that needs to be scratched, or if they're out of food and water. But mostly last night they just followed me around so they could be where I was and ... I don't know, stare at me, I guess.

It made me miss Owen a whole hell of a lot, that's for damn sure.

I made dinner basically in silence. Shae sprawled out on the couch and watched The Sound of Music and didn't move until it was time to eat. When we sat down to supper she just sat there, pathetically staring at her plate, sometimes poking at the scalloped potatoes, occasionally whimpering. No conversations. No negotiations. No noise. Very awkward and Stepford. I packed up the leftovers and put them in the fridge for his lunch tonight and never once had to tell anybody to get their grubby mitts out of the candy jar.

Not even mine. It's no fun to cheat on your diet if nobody is going to catch you.

Once Shae was tucked in, I kind of wandered around the house, trying to motivate myself to do some of the housework that desperately needs to be done because for yet another year I failed to get maid service for Christmas. I washed and dried and put away two full racks of dishes. I scrubbed out the chili pot and scraped the cookie sheets. I rooted through the cupboard and made a menu plan for dinner for the rest of the week. I gathered up the rest of the clothes Shae got for Christmas, removed all the bags and tags and wrappers, and folded all her laundry. I even laid out the clothes that I wore to work today so I could hit the snooze button this morning.

Well, okay, so he could hit the snooze button this morning. He's closer to the alarm clock anyway; that's his job. I didn't get married so I would have to do that kind of thing by myself.

And then I went to bed. All alone. With nobody heckling my ratty T-shirt or my old-lady slipper-socks. There were no random fits of laughter coming from downstairs, from him talking to his friends over Skype while they play video games together. No lights, no footsteps on the stairs, no bathroom sounds. The toilet didn't even run, not once. It was strange to lay there and have to rely on myself to know when to go to sleep, having to act like an actual adult and not someone who plays one on TV. I'm a bedtime reader, and when I get really into a book, I can go for hours, uninterrupted. But if my husband is lying next to me and I have the light on, he grumbles and groans and grouches and makes me settle down, instead of staying up until half-past midnight reading Catching Fire again when I should have been asleep hours earlier.

Don't even get me started on how strange it is to try go to sleep in that bed all by myself. Normally it feels like our queen-size bed is so small, when it's him and me and the cats, trying to get comfortable, staking out a section of our own, clenching the covers so someone else doesn't steal them, fighting over which setting on the electric blanket is the correct one, accidentally kicking each other or elbowing each other in the face. There was no breathing, no random bits of hours-old conversations brought back up to be rehashed, no rude involuntary bodily noises startling us awake as we drift off through the myoclonic jerks.

Instead, it was just me and two cats, and I felt like some kind of crazy spinster with her furry four-legged children sprawled across the afghan, sleeping in the middle of this great big giant queen-sized bed, all by myself. I went to sleep with an itchy back because there was no one there to scratch it for me, just in the right spot, right how I like it, aaaaaaah right there between the shoulder blades.

And I especially missed my kiss goodnight.

When he gets home from work he comes to bed and I'm sure he kisses me, but I'm also sure that I'm three-quarters asleep, grumping about having to move now that I've finally gotten comfortable, so I don't appreciate it. Plus I have my night-time bruxism guard in, so I'm doing goofy things with my mouth, and I always have some kind of sinus cold, so I'm pretty sure my breath is not so very pleasant. It's just not the same as kissing him goodnight with minty-fresh teeth just before we settle into a mutually-soothing breathing rhythm.

Today Shae is feeling better and I expect that it's going to be a completely different scene tonight. We'll fight over how many bites of noodles and sausage and vegetables she needs to eat, whether or not she can have a treat, whether I will let her stay up until the end of the rest of The Sound of Music or if I will make her go to bed right before the part at the convent. We'll wrestle over bath and hair combing and going potty and tooth brushing and saying prayers properly and lights being turned on and toys suddenly appearing in her bed. I'll wash some more dishes, fold some more laundry, diddle around in FarmVille and WoW, and probably stay up too late reading again, because now I'm reading Mockingjay and I can't stop when I get past the good part because the whole book is basically one big good part.

And I still won't get my kiss goodnight. And I don't really like it.

Spent

I've been quiet the last few days, and I'm sorry, but it's been a big roller coaster and I just can't process everything. It's too much, too overwhelming. I really try not to be a whiner, and I really try not to use this blog as free therapy, but sometimes you need a brain dump, you know? And this is one of those times.

The Good News:
My husband finally found a job. After 17 months and a huge deal of wondering and worrying and kind of aimless wandering in the wilderness, and I don't even know how many interviews at I don't even know how many places, he finally found a job. He starts on the 27th. I am happy for him, and excited, but more than anything, I am relieved. We've made do on his unemployment and my paycheck, and we've been as smart and as frugal as we could so we haven't been hurting as much as so many other people have been, so the money was never really the issue. But already I can sense a change in my husband, a subtle and slight regaining of his confidence, and I glad he's getting his groove back, so to speak. I think the job is a restart for him, a basically entry-level job in his field, especially considering his experience, but I also think it's going to be a great opportunity for him, and he's going to be getting out of the house again, which is more fantastic than I can possibly tell you.

The Bad News:
Somebody stole the bistro table and chairs off our front porch overnight. I have absolutely zero idea why anybody would want it -- it's just some cheap little metal set from Wal-Mart that we got ten years ago -- but sometime between my last cigarette yesterday and my first cigarette this morning, someone took our stuff. All things considered, it's no big deal; nobody was hurt, nothing major was taken, nobody broke into our house or keyed our cars or anything like that. It's more of an annoyance than anything else, and I felt like a major tool having to call the police first thing in the morning. The cops were here before it was even fully light out. It's just -- somebody stole our stuff, you know? I would have sold it for next to nothing.

The Worse News:
We were at my parents' for a yard sale today (made $50 selling my kid's outgrown clothes, whoo!) and while we were there my uncle wandered off. My great-uncle, actually, my grandfather's sister's husband. He's 81 and has Alzheimer's, and he's staying at my parents' with his daughter while his wife, my great-aunt, is in the hospital under psychiatric evaluation. Her diagnosis is Lewy body dementia, which I've never head of before now, and I am not sure about the prognosis but I am not sure it's good. Anyway, sometime around lunchtime, my uncle went out for a walk and ... never came back. He was gone for more than hour, and we had four people out looking for him at one point. We called the police and they found him one township and about 5 miles away. Thankfully some nice lady saw him wandering around, lost and confused, and she brought him inside and gave him water and called the police herself. Apparently he decided that he was going to walk to the hospital to visit his wife. God bless his heart. I can't imagine how upsetting all of this must be for both of them. My husband's grandfather was right: getting old ain't for sissies.

The Worst News Of All:
The closed my grandparents' pool today, and we were not expecting it. We thought we had until next weekend. We packed our suits and everything, and were planning to go swimming this afternoon after the yard sale was over. I didn't even get to stick my feet in the water one last time. All day I was feeling this weird, vague sadness about the whole thing, and I just now realized why it bothers me so much: we might not get to go in that pool again. Ever again. I've been swimming in that pool for like 25 years, and last weekend might have been the last time I got a chance to do that. My grandparents are getting older every day, and their health is getting worse, and every time I see them, it might be for the last time. Probably I shouldn't say that, but the facts are what they are. They are old, and they are ill, and there is no way to know how much time they have left. I am not prepared for this, for what this means. I don't have many pictures of Shae with my grandparents, and we forgot the camera today. What if next weekend ... I don't want to think about it, and I know I have to, and I just can't. Right now I have pictures in my photostream that are ready to be posted, and I don't want to put them up, because I can't bear the thought that those could be the last pictures of my daughter in that pool. It's not just the pool, of course, but that is the only concrete thing I can wrap my head around. The pool might not be opened next summer, because. Because. Because of things that are entirely possible but just too horrible to think about. And now, after only a couple of nights of really relaxed sleep in 17 months (see: "The Good News"), I am going to go back to not sleeping at all again, and I am just so tired. I am an hour away, I only see my family for one day on the weekends, it already makes me crazy because I feel like there is more that needs to be done and I just can't do it, and I feel so guilty all the time, and ... I just can't. I'm exhausted. I'm spent. And tomorrow it will start all over again.

Somewhere, A Key Lime Pie Is Dying Of Loneliness

I am not 100% sure about this, but I think that the calorie restrictions from my diet are causing starvation-related brain damage, because for the last few days I have been seriously entertaining the notion of joining a gym.

And that, Gentle Readers, is CRAZY TALK.

I'll be the first person to tell you that a good 50% of the reason why I look like I do is because I am pretty much violently opposed to exercise of any sort. I hate sweating. It's gross, stinky, and there's really no way to look dignified while you're doing it -- at least, there isn't for me.

Which is funny, because literally half a lifetime ago, I was an athlete. Not exactly a world-class one, hardly even decent, but passable most days. My sport of choice? Swimming. Specifically, distance swimming. I used to swim the 500-yard race for my high school team, and I trained for the mile (1500m) event for the Y.

And let me tell you something: even you are not a particularly good distance swimmer, you train just the same as everyone else. You swim many, many miles a week, up and down the pool, over and over again, flip turn after flip turn, there and back again, lather rinse repeat, every day, sometimes twice, for two or more hours at a time. When I was in the most "intense" part of my training, I was swimming anywhere between 3-4 miles a day, and about 12-15 miles a week.

I know people who are in pretty darned good shape who don't RUN that much every week.

But that was the rub, of course. Swimming is a pretty solitary sport, and practices get boring and lonely fast. I would say that's doubly true when you train for long races. You get your program for the day and you do it, and while you're in a lane with other swimmers, you don't really interact with them much. There isn't time. You do your sets and you take your 45 seconds between 100's and during that 45 seconds you're trying to catch your breath. Everybody is competition, trying to beat you, to take your place on the leaderboard. You don't socialize, even if you wanted to. Your hips and knees and shoulders are jello and your brain turns to mush and all you want to do is be done so you can get out of the pool and throw up and then die on the floor in the locker room. Only to start all over again the next day.

I was not a good enough swimmer to earn a swimming scholarship, so when I got to college and found myself not on a team for a change, I allowed myself to enjoy the lack of routine. I didn't have to arrange my classes around a practice schedule. I kept saying that I would get in the pool to get some exercise, once I got settled in. Once I got a handle on all my classwork. Once I made a few more friends. Once I knew what my major was going to be. Once I memorized the calendar of free movies and plays and parties. Once I felt like I needed some exercise.

That day never came. I spent four years at Syracuse, and I never once saw the inside of the natatorium. I am not entirely sure that Syracuse actually has one.

Fast-forward 18 years in the future, to now -- and here we are. In the last half of my life, I have joined a gym three different times. Each time, I went a handful of times, and then got bored with the routine and frustrated with the changes I needed to make to my schedule. I don't like to be put out. I don't like to sacrifice. My time is mine, and I want to spend it doing something fun. Like watching "Phineas & Ferb." Or putting off doing laundry. Or bathing the cats.

Now I'm working really hard at losing weight. It's true what they say: it doesn't get any easier when you get older. But try telling that to any 18-year-old, and they'll laugh in your face. That's what I did when people tried to warn me. My "freshman 15" was more like a "freshman 50," what with stopping swimming and eating nothing but carbs in the dining hall and living for several semesters on ramen noodles, Pringles, microwave popcorn, and Mountain Dew. Since my freshman year, I've added another 50 pounds, and then some. Eighteen years of excess weight. And I want to lose that weight by next Labor Day.

Thus far, I've been doing fine with the calorie restrictions that my Lose It plan are setting for me, but I'm starting to feel like I should do more. I'm down more than a pant size, but not quite two, which is pretty awesome -- people are starting to notice. But instead of feeling better about myself by degrees, I am starting to get more critical. Around my middle, where my chunk used to be smooth and solid, I am looking lumpy and jiggly. Smaller, but jigglier. I am starting to feel self-conscious about my flappy old-lady chicken arms. If I want to attempt to put on a bikini next summer (and in the back of my mind, this is one of my goals), then I am going to have to do more than starve.

So a gym it is, then, right? But how can I justify the expense when my husband is still out of work? The local Y costs more than $80 a month for a family plan, and more than $50 if it's just me. That's a really lot of money, especially because I'd only be using the pool and the weight room. They have eleventy million different classes, all kinds of stuff I'd love to do, but everything is at 9:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, and I can't leave work for a bellydance fitness class. I was thinking about a gym chain with locations right near home and on my way to and from work, with a pool and a gym and conveniently-scheduled yoga and Pilates classes, and that's only $9 a week. But I've seen the people coming in and out of that gym, and they're already young and fit and out of my league, and I don't want to be judged by strangers in bicycle shorts.

Plus, I really, really hate exercise. Really hate it. I don't want to do it. I know I should, because it's only a matter of time before I am down to only 1,200 calories a day, and nobody wants to live like that, plus I don't want to be thin but unfit. I want to look good. I want to have nice toned arms and strong legs and a cute booty. I'll never have six-pack abs and I'll probably always have a little pooch in the tummy, but I want to be flexible. And confident. Which I've really never been in my entire adult life.

But mostly, I want to be able to eat key lime pie without eating nothing but carrots for three days.

Does This Mai-Tai Make My Butt Look Big?

I was having a bit of a freak-out this morning because it occurred to me, later than perhaps it should have, that I won't be able to spend my entire vacation sitting around drinking blue stuff in giant vats with paper umbrellas while I'm on vacation because (1) we'll be there with small impressionable children, and (2) I understand the service at public beaches is terrible, and also (3) I kind of don't want my diet to go completely off the rails at this point.

Don't worry, this isn't going to become a full-time "listen to rockle whine about her diet" blog. Because I am not unhappy with it, or anything. No sir: I just had blueberry waffles and sausage and actual real-live syrup for breakfast, BECAUSE I CAN. But what I can't do is pretend to be a total sloppy lush while I'm away for a week, unless I plan on eating nothing but grapes and pistachios the rest of the time, because of all the calories in my delicious beloved rum drinks.

I mean, I could do that, I suppose, but why would I want to? There is a Ben & Jerry's in Beach Haven, and I can already hear it calling my name.

So I'm trying to set things up for myself so I can enjoy myself, and enjoy enjoying myself, without feeling the least bit guilty about it. And after I scoured the Intarwebtubes for recipes (there are more than I thought there would be, but many involve weird ingredients that I have never heard of before) it occurred to me that I had the answer right in front of me the whole time.

SPOILER ALERT: I'll be drinking diet Cuba Libres -- rum and Diet Coke with Lime. (And fresh lime wedges, of course, because I think I'm all fawncey.) It's kind of absolutely hysterical, because why is Diet Coke with Lime my favorite kind of Diet Coke in the whole wide world and all of the Heavens above, amen? Because it already tastes like a Cuba Libre.

But I might also try this thing called a "Bikini Blueberry," which sounds like a nice little fruity concoction, and only about 115 calories or so per drink, plus a piece of fruit!

Bikini Blueberry
1¼ oz. pineapple vodka
3 oz. diet blueberry juice
1½ oz. club soda (or flavored diet seltzer)
pineapple chunk for garnish

Who's going to try it with me? Cocktails on the back deck in 9 days.

Ta-Tas Schma-Tas

Yesterday I almost drove my car into the back of someone else's because I followed them most of the way home from work on Rt. 422 and by the time I got off the road I was completely enraged by their stupid-ass bumper stickers.

And let me just tell you this -- we are not talking "McCain/Palin '08" stickers or even those lame "Coexist" things that are pretty much everywhere because hipsters think it's totally cool to be all about "tolerance, dude!" while they're drinking their imported light beers and cracking jokes about uglies and fat people.

Nope, what got me all het up was that the entire back of this person's car was covered with different variations and permutations of those suddenly-ubiquitous-but-no-less-ridiculous "Save the Ta-Tas" bumper stickers. "Save the Ta-Tas." "I ♥ My Ta-Tas." "Honk if You ♥ Ta-Tas."

Oh, give me just a small break, would you?

Listen, I know people who have these bumper stickers, and the keychains, and the T-shirts and the sun visors and the little tanks with the glittery words all over them. My sister has one on her car. They're all over the parking lot at work. Babies are wearing onesies that say "Be Vewy Vewy Quiet, I'm Hunting Ta-Tas." Seriously.

And I am sick of it. This is a more-than-potentially controversial position, no doubt, but I'm going to come right out and say it: I think this entire "Save the Ta-Tas" movement is really, really dumb. I know what the point of the campaign is supposed to be, and that it's supposed to be humorous and all, but I find the language and the "wink-wink-nudge"-iness to be really, really insulting.

WTF?! Friday PLUS Trivia: Bookworm

Now that all our vacation plans have been readjusted and reconfigured, it's time to start planning what I consider to be the most important part of any well-spent vacation: the Reading List. I mean, we're staying in a place with a washer and dryer, so basically I don't need to pack much in terms of "essentials" -- couple pairs of shorts, couple shirts, couple pairs of underpants, couple bras, toothbrush, shampoo, sunscreen. If I do it right, I can fit all that stuff in a gallon-size Ziploc bag. That leaves plenty of room in our trunk for books.

On one of the best vacations we ever had (when we went to Acapulco and found a scorpion in the bathtub), I read 10 books in 6 days. I am not making this up. The resort was mostly deserted, the pineapple and mango were fresh-cut every day, the rum drinks were stellar, the pool was perfectly situated within stumbling distance of the ocean, and so we basically sat around reading. It was divine. I am not the only person going on this trip who feels that a nice supply of books is a necessary ingredient of a delicious vacation.

Not counting the book I am reading righthisecond, which will definitely be finished before the end of the month (and probably by the end of the weekend, actually), I have three books in my queue. I'm going to run out of inventory before we leave, and will need to replenish the supply. Sometimes I ask Amazon to suggest some stuff for me based on what it already knows I like (because Amazon owns my soul), but sometimes ... well, let's just say that I tried to like The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, but things just didn't work out between us.

What else can I do? I checked out some of the titles on NPR's summer booklist, but as spectacularly nerdulent as I am, not many of these books sound very ... er, exciting? Just based on the titles alone, the list is a little too highbrow for me. And I should have remembered that I only ever got one good book recommendation from NPR anyway: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, which I read last year. Loved that, and the sequel. The rest? Eh.

(Don't even get me started on Oprah's book club selections. I've read two, and that was probably two too many, not counting the actual classics that I read in college anyway.)

All of this is a long was of saying: I have a lot of book shopping to do in the coming weeks. And while I do that, let me get into this week's trivia, which is all about books.

(Oh, and by the way, I realize that my "trivia" is really more like a game of "Scattergories" or "Stump the Schwab" or something, but too bad.)

Can you answer the following?

1. Three mystery authors
2. Three romance authors
3. Three horror or thriller authors
4. Three nonfiction or memoir writers
5. Three sci-fi, fantasy, or "occult" writers
6. Three books about the beach or set at the seashore
7. Three books about stuff that happens to someone on vacation or while traveling
8. Three books about places to visit
9. Three books that were made into movies
10. Three books that were mentioned or appeared in the TV show "Lost"

Standard trivia rules apply. My answers will be posted in comments late on Monday (after 5pm). Your answers might become suggestions for me, so make them good ones. Good luck!

Things Fall Apart / Back To Good

Oh, hey, remember all that stuff I said about going camping this summer? Um, yeah, not going to happen. Conflicts and crises arose and new jobs affected vacation requests and ... well, things fell apart.

But because you are exceedingly quick and clever -- and did I mention that those pants make your ass look fantastic? -- you might have successfully parsed from my post on Tuesday that some other shenanigans were afoot, that some new ill shizz was going dizzown, as it generally always is when I am involved.

After doing a lot of scrambling, screaming, tugging of hair, rending of garments, and Google-fu, we were able to procure a rental property on Long Beach Island for a week. It's a different week than we were planning to go, and a different state, and a different kind of vacation, really, but still and all, we hope it will be the family vacation that we wanted. Mostly immediate family, and not the whole big giant shebang we originally had planned, but still.

This house is on the bay side of LBI, but still only a block from the beach, and right across the street from a park. We get Internet included in the deal. There is an amusement park right up the road. If the kids are bored, there is no hope at all for the future of humanity, really.

I love the beach, and I can't lie about it. I look forward to sinking my toes in the sand for a week, reading trashy paperback books, slathering on the Banana Boat, defending my kingdom my the invading armies of seagulls, going to back to the places where we had so much fun last year, in so short a time, with fresh eyes and fresh perspective and fresh companions.

It has been a REALLY LONG TIME since I went on vacation with my whole family, and I am really looking forward to it.

List-o-matic

Things I Don't Like:
3. Asparagus
2. Sun poison
1. Change

Thinks I Like Even Less Than Change:
3. Spiders
2. My neighbors
1. Changing summer vacation plans in the middle of the summer

People I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up:
3. Wonder Woman
2. Valerie Bertinelli
1. Eloise

People I Never Thought I Would Turn Into But I Have Anyway:
3. My Anonymous Mother
2. Dorothy Zbornak
1. Julie McCoy, Your Cruise Director

What We Are Looking For In A Jersey Shore Beach Rental:
3. Location
2. Location
1. Cheap

What I Am Afraid We Are Going To End Up With Instead:
3. Sun poison
2. Eight adults and 2 children in a studio apartment 7 blocks from the beach
1. Snooki

(Practically) Death By (Teeny Weeny Little) Splinter

One of the things that you can never be fully prepared for, as a parent, is the sound of your child screaming and shouting incomprehensibly while fully caught in the grip of sheer, abject terror.

And of course it's only made worse when you're the one who's got your kid terrified -- or, more precisely, the tweezers in your hand. Which you are trying to use to remove a splinter that is starting to get scary-looking.

It's quite something to discover that your fearless little rascal, who likes to fling herself down sliding boards face-first and who likes the swings to go practically all the way upside down and who likes to throw herself on the couch so she can see how high she bounces -- it's quite something to discover that this kid is scared to death of being pinched.

And I am not kidding about the "being scared" bit, either: she was screaming hysterically, so loudly, for so long, that I thought for sure that our neighbors were going to call the cops. In an ordinary neighborhood, they might have.

It was like Noriega with the heavy metal music, is what I am saying.

Apparently the splinter came from pulling weeds at my grandmother's over the weekend, and that (plus the killer mystery poison that makes you want to scratch all your skin off) is exactly why I don't do yard work.

But oh my lands -- we bribed her with everything we could think of. Candy. Money. Clothes. Shoes. At one point I might have promised to buy her a bike. Anything, if she would just calm down and be quiet for two seconds so we could pluck that splinter right out. It wasn't very deep, or very big, just on her left hand, right under her pinky finger, but it was red and she was complaining that it was sore, so it needed to come out.

It should have taken ten seconds, max. It ended up being an ordeal that went on for literally more than an hour. She would tense up and make tiny little fists and kick and scream and wail and throw punches and ... well, we ended up not getting the stinking splinter after all.

Until we were in the tub, when it came out on its own, confirmed after another wrestling match to just look at her boo-boo.

Oh and by the way? That kid is strong. Even soaking wet and naked.

She insisted on a unicorn bandaid and some "cream" afterwards, which is really neosporin ointment but she calls it cream because it looks like A&D to her, and then everything was fine.

Except I still have this ringing in my ears, and I think I've run out of nerve pills.

And I don't have the heart to tell my husband that this is nothing compared to what the first break-up is going to be like.