Obsolescence

So now this is happening.

Now she's wearing her goggles and diving for rocks and it's only a matter of time before she heads off to Australia to go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef and she'll meet a hot blonde surfer-lifeguard-diveguide who plays beach volleyball and who has a motorcycle and tattoos and piercings in weird places and she isn't going to need me any more.

Le sigh.

Brain Dump

Funny thing about vacations: when (if?) you're finally done getting ready to go on vacation -- once everything is planned, packed, and paid for -- you really actually need the vacation, don't you? We're just about finished -- still need to pick my husband's suit and dress shirt from the cleaner, still need to pick out his tie and other accessories, still need to figure out what I'm doing about jewelry, still need to actually get everything into the carry-on bags, that kind of stuff, the little last-minute leftover things that give everyone agita -- and now more than ever I am ready to go sit in the airport with an Ativan or twelve and maybe a drink. I don't care that we don't leave in five days. I just want to go already.

I mean, really: it's in the 70s and sunny in Anaheim right now, with basically no chance of rain for the next ten days, and here it has been raining so much for so long that you can hear the grass growing. We haven't been able to mow the lawn in more than two weeks. It's starting to look like a cornfield. I feel like I'm camping, except I haven't seen any wildlife outside in so long that I am starting to get excited about the prospect of maybe possibly seeing another squirrel again someday. And I hate squirrels. Stupid fuzzy little tree-rats. If the world actually does end tomorrow like those wackjobs keep saying, I don't know how anyone around here would know the difference, because there is basically no sky left to fall any more. Whaaaah! Calgon, take me away!

You're sick of hearing this. I know. So here's what else I've been working on and/or thinking about lately, in between putting off buying Disneyland tickets until this very morning so I could reshuffle funds (ha!) in my checking account.

• I joined a book club. So far, I've gotten to read and review three books, with more coming soon, including one that I have ready to put in my handy red tote to read on the plane. You can read my reviews of Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, Jean Kwok's debut novel Girl in Translation, and A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz over on BlogHer.
• I've been pondering Life's Great Questions with the gang at Prime Parents Club. Like, why don't we make wish lists for the Easter Bunny? And, is Daria Morgendorffer the coolest chick in cartoon history or what? And also, at what point should I stop lying about my age? And most importantly, is it humanly possible for me to be a bigger dork?
• I don't know whether a kid-sized carry-on bag filled with Tastykakes, Oreos, Doritos, cheese popcorn, and random singles is necessarily a good idea for a cross-country flight, but it will certainly make for an interesting social experiment. (Assuming your definition of "interesting" includes the phrase "it all ends in tears.")
• Related to above: I have a terrible fear that my kid is going to turn out to be the infamous "Jeffrey" that Bill Cosby described in his comedy routine many, many years ago. You seriously have no idea how much time I have spent in the past week worrying about this. I have some kids' Benadryl packed, just in case, but I am wondering if it might be more effective to just go the $10 airplane margarita route. (Whether I drink them or Shae does seems irrelevant at this point.)
• Seriously, is the world going to end at 6:00 tomorrow, or what? And if so, do I need to shave my legs and put on clean underwear? Should I even bother getting out of bed? That seems like an awful lot of work only to be subsumed into Heaven or (more likely in my case) banished to Hell for all eternity, you know? Can't I just sit on the couch and watch "Sports Night" on DVD until whatever happens, happens?

Obviously, I need to go away for a while. I'll try to post one more time before we leave -- maybe even two times, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay? -- and I will try to post at least once while we're on the road, but I make no promises. I will be Twittering as much as possible, putting up random cell phone pictures and stuff, so keep an eye on the sidebar or follow me if you don't already for updates on my exploits and shenanigans.

Death by Paper Cuts

Hi there! I'm rockle, and you might remember me as that blogger who used to update more than once every five days, before she kind of hit that pre-vacation wall with a very messy, bloody splat and kind of lost her mind a little bit.

Assuming I ever had one to begin with.

Anyway -- sorry for the virtual radio silence, but HOLY TOMATO do I have a metric butt-load of crap to do before we leave for California in 8 days. We have a lot of stuff ready to go -- like, most of our clothes are organized and just need to get in the suitcases -- but I still have all these little piddly things to do, like filling up the toiletry bags with sunscreen and disposable razors, etc.

OH AND LAUNDRY, oh my heavens.

They fixed our roof yesterday, which included painting the walls and ceiling of my bedroom, and my allergies have been really bad all season, so I decided to use a vacation day and spend the night at my parents' with Shae. I brought some wash with me to do -- yes, I am still secretly on some level a college-age mooch when it suits me -- and what I thought would be two quick loads turned out to actually be four.

FOUR LOADS OF LAUNDRY. Gaaah. It's not so much the washing as the folding. My husband has about half a ton of undershirts, and I can't match up any of the socks because it looks like I just grabbed a random assortment. Awesome. I so win at life.

Also, I somehow forgot to take any pictures of anything over the weekend except for my breakfast from Bob Evans on Saturday. Yes, I know. My life is positively riveting.

Hopefully I will have more stuff to tell you about before we leave next Wednesday, but in the meantime I just wanted to let you know am not dead yet. I'm out of Zyrtec and it's raining like the end of days again, which is never a good combination, and I haven't been getting all the sleep I need because I lay in bed at night making and re-making mental to-do lists with 537 items on them, but I am not dead yet. Check in with me in 24 hours, as this is subject to change without notice.

And if you know of a good fluff-n-fold, send me their number.

Technical Difficulties

Hi there! This was supposed to be the first blog post that I wrote on my new birthday iMac, but unfortunately it's still at my friendly neighborhood Apple store because the data transfer from my old computer failed. Because OF COURSE IT DID, since this is me we're talking about. I was going to share the playlist for our upcoming trip to Disneyland -- did you forget about that? it's only been like 20 minutes since I mentioned it -- but none of the iTunes files transferred from the old machine, and I am missing a year's worth of pictures, and all of my scrapbooking stuff. Hopefully tomorrow (possibly even later today) I'll have an update. In the meantime, some free advice: the "one-to-one" service costs extra, but it's COMPLETELY WORTH IT, because if I had to troubleshoot the data transfer myself, someone would have ended up seriously injured. (Probably me.)

Without A Trace

I have done a good deal of searching -- of both the physical and soul varieties -- and I absolutely cannot for the life of me find more than a small handful of my honeymoon pictures.

I am bereft, I tell you. Positively beside myself.

I have approximately eleventy bajillion pictures in this house. Assorted albums, half a hard drive, two giant Longaberger baskets. I found multiple rolls of pictures from vacations, day trips, weddings, funerals even, but I just cannot find pictures of one of the most awesome weeks of my life.

I MEAN, COME ON: I found pictures of no fewer than five ex-boyfriends (no I am not joking), three foreign countries, bridal showers for people have been divorced more than once, birthday parties that I don't remember, birthday parties that I don't WANT to remember, even pictures from when I was in "Li'l Abner" IN THE NINTH GRADE, but the honeymoon pictures I found are not actually identifiable as actual pictures of my honeymoon. I only know that they are because as far as I remember, I've only attempted to take pictures of myself in a hammock that one time.

Where does this stuff go? Have they disappeared to the Land of the Lost with the missing socks that never come back out of the dryer? God, I hope not. I really hope they're not in the basement, because I'll never find them again.

I am an acknowledged, unrepentant pack rat. I still have journals from middle school. I still have receipts from trips that I took a decade ago. I still have a filing cabinet drawer filled with letters and cards and random tchotchkes that people sent me when I was in college. I still have service records and the owner's manual from a car that was totalled in an accident sixteen years ago.

But I can't find the photos of the first trip that we took as husband and wife. Poof. They're gone. Disappeared without a trace.

I am more upset about this than maybe I ought to be, but it's hard to remember without the visuals. It's difficult to make the hard sell for another trip to Disney when I didn't take proper care of the mementos of the last one. I need to find these pictures, so I can convince my husband that it's time we went again.

Saint Anthony, please come around -- something's lost and can't be found.

And bring Saint Jude with you, because this one might be a lost cause.

What Day Is This Anyway?

Dear family: I have not blogged in almost a week, but I am not dead. Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated, mostly by me, because I have strep throat right now and you know what a frickin' drama queen I am. Of course, that doesn't really explain why I didn't write anything on Thursday or Friday of last week, or over the weekend, or yesterday when I had the day off, but the important thing is that I AM NOT DEAD. Even though my throat hurts too much for popsicles right now, and basically the only solid food I've eaten all day has been a grilled cheese sandwich soaked in tomato soup, and I didn't even eat all of it because IT HURTS SO MUCH YOU GUYS. I want my mommy. And some ice cream. And maybe some morphine.

Anyway: I have something lined up for tomorrow. Okay?

Say Anything

Lest you all think I have stuck my head in the oven after the Super Bowl or something -- because I am very very sad that the Steelers lost, moreso even than my husband who is an ACTUAL STEELERS FAN, but on the other hand, I am kind of happy for Aaron Rodgers because now maybe everyone will just SHUT THE EFF UP above Brett Favre, GOD, Rodgers now has as many Super Bowl wins as Favre does so would just cut the guy a small break already? -- but no. I am just, as usual, a slackety-slacker slack ass.

Also, except for the Super Bowl, basically nothing happened last weekend. Swimming classes got cancelled due to an "ice storm" (i.e., a superfine coating of ice on the roads, so fine that it actually cracked when you stepped on it, but WHATEVER PENNSYLVANIA, it's not like any of these fools have ever seen winter weather before or anything since the entire state just recently seceded from the Conch Republic, right?) and Shae was positively bereft and I was all out of sorts because my schedule got screwed up.

BUT! I do have pictures from swimming lessons the week before, which I never took of the camera, so you get them now. (I have been running a bit behind schedule with the swim class pictures anyway, so it's like this is NEW. I think I've been running late for my whole life, which is supremely odd, because I spent half the day thinking today is Wednesday because I forgot to turn my calendar page from Monday. Yeah, I don't know either.)

We finally got bumped up to join the Pike "B" kids and Shae couldn't have possibly been more stoked, unless maybe you told her she could eat nothing but lollipops every day for the rest of her life. She was that excited. And she did wonderfully -- she really is a natural in the water, and everything her teacher asked her to do, she did with relish. We're still dealing with our ongoing listening issues, but we're vastly improving.

I'm not entirely sure of the class schedule, but I think that by the end of this session, she should be able to swim across the pool by herself without any flotation devices. I think if her teacher asks her to, Shae will FLY. She's already talking about joining the swim team. And people are telling her that I was on the swim team when I was four (which I think is incorrect -- I think I didn't start until I was 5 or 6, but many of my friends-and-relations started earlier, but I can't remember because IT WAS A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO AND I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT SOCKS I HAVE ON RIGHT NOW), and so she is ready to go.

"I'm going to be MORE AWESOME THAN YOU, Mommy," she says. She doesn't believe me when I tell her she already is.

What Am I About To Do?

In 12 hours and 50 minutes, I will be chopping off my hair. Well, not all of it, and I won't be cutting it. But I am having my hair cut tomorrow morning, and getting it colored, and I am TERRIFIED.

Every time I get a haircut, I hate it. HATE. Violently hate. And the last time I changed my hair color, I might have kind of gone a little berserk and maybe cried myself to sleep for a week.

But here I go again. Right now my hair goes down to the middle of my back and is a sort of shade that is somewhere on the blonde continuum, with a bunch of random leftover highlights from spending the summer at the pool. The last time I paid someone to color my hair, it was last July, and I do mean LAST July, like 2009 July, just before my sister's wedding. I have had trims since then, but no new style, and my roots are past my ears at this point.

I have some ideas about what haircut I want, and I think I know what I want to do with the color -- a bob, and lowlights in some kind of amber-copper-auburn-red -- but we'll see what I actually decide. If I even go through with it, which is potentially doubtful at this point. If I do what I am thinking about doing, I'm going to be getting about a foot of hair lopped off. I am psyching myself right out, even though I trust my hairdresser and know she would never steer me wrong.

Wish me luck. And Valium. And be prepared to hold me if this all goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Some Kind of Metaphor, Maybe

I haven't had much to say in the past few days, and I apologize. Not that anyone thought I was, but I'm not going anywhere -- just trying to get used to our new schedule. My husband started his new job yesterday -- yippee! -- but after 16 months of him being unemployed, we had gotten ourselves into a routine, and right now I'm having trouble adjusting to a new one.

I'm also -- and this is going to sound weird -- feeling a little threatened right now. While he was out of work I was the breadwinner and also the "master scheduler," and now both of these positions are in flux. I don't entirely mind, but I never before realized (or at least never before admitted) how much of a control freak I am. And nothing rattles a "controlist" like wrangling a 3-year-old for school.

Nothing is changing, but at the same time everything is, and it's an adjustment. Exciting and promising, but also a little bit scary, and one that we need to work through. Not major -- dear Lord, my problems are nothing compared to some people's, and I know it -- but still unsettling. We'll get there in time; this, too, shall pass.

Also: I'm on my fourth consecutive day of this tummyache, and I burnt a pot of chili last night, for the first time ever. I've been making chili for 15 years, and this the first time I can recall ever burning it. I've changed the recipe for better and worse, made it without some ingredients and added others and shuffled things up, but I've never burned it. It's still edible -- I've actually gotten a lot of compliments on it, on the unexpected smoky flavor, that isn't really supposed to be there -- but its unwarranted success has me off-kilter.

Which is probably some kind of metaphor or something, maybe. I'm trying to work with mistakes that have been made, adjusting the game plan on the fly, spinning straw into gold as well as I am able, along with other ridiculous idioms that may or may not work in this particular context. Still me, but different, learning from what has happened and trying to prepare for what is yet to come. Feeling the burn, but not letting it ruin everything else.

Or something.

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.

Desperation Samba

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the week before the week before vacation is the worst week of the entire year. I can't put my clothes in the suitcase, because I haven't changed my mind about what I want to pack enough times yet. I can't really switch to autopilot at work, because there are still projects and deadlines that need to be met before I go. And I can't really go grocery shopping, because if I do, and we don't eat every. single. thing. in the house before we leave, then you just know that while we're away we'll have a major electrical storm and my house will be without power for 4 days and the basement will flood and the toilet will overflow and everything in the fridge and the freezer will spoil and we'll get rats and bugs and squatters and looting and our home will be condemned and we'll have to live in our cars or even worse -- WE'LL NEED TO MOVE IN WITH MY MOTHER.

So this week we're doing what I like to call the "desperation samba," a very carefully choreographed dance that involves cleaning out the current provisions and making meals out what basically amounts to random crap in my freezer and cupboards. Mysterious baggies of ground meat. Baked beans of unverifiable provenance. Canned soup out the wazoo. Cereal and PB&J for supper, with sides of creamed corn and freezer-burned lima beans. I mean, yes, we'll go to the store for absolute essentials, like milk and bread and the occasional fruit or vegetable, but my husband is under very strict orders should that unfortunate eventuality occur: quarts of milk only, smallest loaves of bread you can find, only three ears of corn. Our biggest splurge in the last two weeks was buying two pounds on strawberries last Sunday, and we did that only because, hey, we really like strawberries in our house, and I knew they'd get eaten.

I will say this much: doing this? Living like complete savages? It takes a lot of cojones, and confidence in your own cooking abilities. I like to think of myself as a better-than-average home cook, and I pride myself on my ability to make a meal out of basically anything, provided that I have access to basic herbs, spices, and bouillon cubes. But making meals out of scavenged foodstuffs is part skill, part alchemy, part divination, part illusion, and part faith, with a big heaping swig of ballsiness thrown in: "Oh, yes, you WILL eat what I am feeding you."

This is the kind of wackaloony stuff I've served to my actual family this week for dinner:

• Browned loose sweet Italian sausage with chopped onions and canned diced tomatoes, served over elbow macaroni that was tossed with butter and Parmesan cheese
• Thawed package of pre-cooked chicken with a sell-by date of November 2009, with some kind of noodly stuff
• Zucchini gratin -- sliced zucchini sauteed with olive oil and Italian seasoning, with toasted breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese added
• Frosted mini-wheats cereal

I mean, yeah, this is totally a first-world problem -- "oh, poor poor pitiful me, I am serving my family food that we bought maybe two weeks ago but that we had to properly store in the refrigerator or freezer until we got around to using it" -- and it's more than partly my own fault since I'm such a cheapskate, but still. When was the last time you served chicken to your kid that had been in the freezer for 8 months? I just don't want to waste money on stuff that will just sit around while I am laughing it up at the beach, and I don't want to take two chicken breasts if I don't have enough to share with everyone.

Now do you see why I worry about drinking?

I Can Has Cheezburger?

So, here's the thing about being pretty starkly depressed at the moment: I don't much feel like eating. Like, I've only had two full meals in the last three days, and one of those was a grilled cheese sandwich with a "salad" made of croutons and borderline-expired light ranch dressing, so make of that what you will. Hypothetically, I'm hungry, but I don't want to exert the effort of actually consuming the food. Bizarre, I know, especially for me, because I am the girl with the most Tastykakes, but ... eh.

Still, I think maybe the tide is turning, because lots of things are starting to look good right now, even this:

And that is saying something, because I don't really like Burger King very much. I'm fully on board the Five Guys train, now that there's one near my parents', but even still, I was pretty much ruined for your standard East-Coast-fast-food burgers once I experienced the joy and wonder that is In-N-Out.

Shae, on the other hand, LOVES Burger King. She loves cheeseburgers, especially when they come with ketchup and pickles and, apparently, raw onions. I'm more of animal-style gal myself.

We're in agreement about the onion rings, though. I might prefer Wendy's burgers and McDonald's fries and Chick-Fil-A's nuggets, but Burger King has always had and will always have the best onion rings in the business.

(There is no reason for this picture to be here. I am just trying to change the subject away from food.)

Take This Week and SHOVE IT

Yesterday can KISS MY ASS and ROT IN HELL for all I care. Yesterday was entirely an EPIC FAIL. It was like "Castaway," except longer. Like "The English Patient," but without Ralph Fiennes and Sayid from "Lost." If anyone found themselves in the midst of plagues of flies or frogs or locusts or boils, or riots or fires or mudslides or sushi in the mall, that was probably tangential to my problems, because yesterday was just a bad day of Biblical proportions.

Honestly, it was so bad that I don't even want to recap, but it does appear that I my "Litany of Worries" was not entirely fashioned out of whole cloth. Some of these things, I have reason to be worried about, and indeed, some have already come to pass.

Also, I am thinking of maybe changing my name to Job, except I am afraid I will be mistaken for an "Arrested Development" character, and while that could be cool, for right now my sense of humor has gone off on walkabout without me.

Also: I am not yet 800 years old. Or a man. Or particularly interested in being named after a book of the Bible.

So, hey! Quick! Look at these pictures of my kid!

We're starting to let her pick out her own clothes. Well, partly -- she picked out this shirt and we did the rest. I bought the shirt. Circle of life, or something.

Doesn't it look like she's on a photo shoot for America's Next Top Model here? Miss Tyra's "smizing" has nothing on my kid's.

No idea. I try as much as possible to go with the flow. This might be one of those times when she was pretending to be a cat. I don't know. Kids don't make sense.

GLADYS LEIBOWITZ LIVES, BITCHES! My parents got Shae a new bubble mower. We can't figure out how to make it work, but does this kid know how to work it, or what?

Someone Send a Plunger

Someone unexpected told me yesterday that they read this blog, and when I asked them what they thought, their answer was this: "Man, what happened to all your stories?"

And to be honest, I wasn't sure what to think about that, because on the one hand, it's not like I don't write something 4-5 times a week, but on the other hand, yeah I kind of have been boring lately. I'll 'fess up to that. For a while I thought it was just the doldrums, and I still think that is part of it, but really, I think the problem is the potty training.

Because: potty training really, really sucks. And it is making me feel like a bad parent.

If you go and Google "potty training methods," you'll get about 16 million results. There are separate methods for boys and girls, one-month plans, one-week plans, one-weekend plans, one-day plans. There are books and DVD's and audio courses and special diapers and panties and cattle prods or something, I don't even know any more. I am really starting to think that there is such a thing as the "potty-industrial complex," which is on the same level as the "wedding-industrial complex" and the "beauty-industrial complex" and the "daycare-industrial complex" and all those industries exist solely to tell me what I am doing wrong.

And I am starting to believe them.

So there are no funny stories lately because there is not a whole lot of funny, because most of the conversations that I am having with my kid can be summed up as follows: me asking, "Shae, do you have to go potty?" followed by 15 minutes of screaming and tantrums and arguments and negotiations. And that's just me. Add in the random noises Shae is making and ... well, it's quite a caterwaul.

I know we'll get through this eventually, or at least I hope we will, and I think it will be sooner than later, but man oh man, right now? Agony. Everybody's mad at everybody else all the time and it's just an unpleasant place to be. She'll tell us when she has to pee, sometimes, but she never tells us when she has to poop, and we are talking split-second precision timing if we want to catch her in the act and get her to the potty on time.

If we get mad, she cries, and if we try to be firm but gentle, she doesn't seem to get it, like it's all a game, and I feel like we're being all overindulgent and blahblahblah and everything that everybody says is wrong with people of my generation who are now parents, with kids who don't have any rules or boundaries or discipline.

Then we whip ourselves up into a froth, where everybody's mad at everybody else and ... well, I already mentioned that it isn't exactly Disneyland.

So that's what happened to my stories. For a little while longer, anyway, they're being flushed.

But hey! Here are some random, entirely out of context pictures to thank you for reading this while big whiny rant.

Snowverload

One last post about the BLIZZARD OF 2010 (So Far) before I put this whole thing behind us. (Haha -- like that's going to happen. We're going to have snow in our front yard until May, probably.)

See? This is the snow mound in front of our house. It's definitely taller than I am, and probably taller than G, who is 6' 2" or so. And it goes on like this up and down the entire block.

It's totally overwhelming. Like, I spent four winters in Syracuse, which is one of the snowiest places I've ever seen, and even there I can't remember seeing anything like this. Maybe because the snow was so ubiquitous there or something? I don't know. But I really don't like it.

And we can't play in it, either, because there's just SO MUCH. We briefly discussed staging a "photo shoot" where we decked Shae out in all her gear and sat her in one of the snow piles, but we were afraid she'd fall through and we'd have to get the Jaws of Life to extract her.

They haven't plowed our street since sometime early Wednesday, before it stopped snowing. Most of the more major roads are fine, but when you cruise down our street it feels like driving a slot car. And I am terrified that our muffler is going to get ripped off by one of the icy snow clumps, because I worry about stuff like that. Have I mentioned that I am a lunatic?

Our walk to the pizza place yesterday did me a world of good, though. I was getting very claustrophobic and having a hell of a time handling Shae, who was absolutely bored to tears with us. We sent her to school today and she couldn't have been happier, I don't think. But just getting out, getting some new air and some new perspective, was refreshing. And I slept like a rock last night, too.

A Daughter of the Snows

I feel kind of petty, bitching about our two feet of snow when there are people I know (or that I know of, anyway) who went without power literally for days after the storm over the weekend. We are fine, really, just claustrophic and perhaps, in at least one case, a little bit premenstrual and melodramatic. (Not naming any names though.)

We have plenty to eat, plenty of power, plenty of recorded shows on the TiVo, and of course we're all together, safe and relatively snug. I mean, I'm wandering around wearing a shawl like the Crazy Cat Lady that I am, but that's mostly for show (and because I'm too cheap to turn the heat any more than is strictly necessary).

It stopped snowing last night around 11:30 or so. G and I were still up, trying to decide what we were going to do about our little vacation that was supposed to start today. Because of course. Look, I am crazy, but I am not stupid: what will make me feel better is pretending, for just a little while, that we're not neck-deep in the white stuff out there. (We've rescheduled for tomorrow, and might skip the aquarium in favor of 2 days in the water park.)

The snow emergency has been lifted and while a lot of schools are closed, a lot of companies are not, so our neighborhood is going about the business of trying to dig out and get back to normal. I wonder where all the snow is going to go, before it eventually melts and ends up in our basement. Always the optimist, me!

And of course if you try to be objective about it, it isn't all bad. Snow can be pretty, although of course I prefer it to come in smaller quantities, with larger gaps in between accumulations. Still, on the morning after, with the sky all clear and blue and the air so crisp and bracing, it's hard not to admire it all. The parts that are on someone else's property, anyway.

Just the same, I'm glad I don't have to dig my car out completely for a few days. I don't go back to work until Tuesday, and it might take me that long to find my tires. Seriously, it looks like a Jack London story out there. Stay safe, everyone!

2009: The Obligatory Navel-Gazing Year In Review

Apparently it's part of the Union Rules for Bloggers to do one of these here look-back post thingies. And so I perused my 2009 archives for something to write about or some way to encapsulate everything that happened, and I basically keep coming back to this line from The Princess Bride: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." Ha ha! Get it? Because I never shut up?

Anyway. Originally I asked my husband to poke through my archives for the past year and pick out one post from each month that he thought was pretty good so I can do up a Year-In-Review-Kind-Of-Something, but that did not work out as I had hoped, which is to say AT ALL, so basically you're stuck with this self-edited list of "My Best of 2009" and as you know if you read my blog every day or at all -- I am not very good at the whole self-editing thing.

• January -- 25 Things
• February -- Snowbird
• March -- Three Little Words 
• April -- (tie) Wordless Wednesday: Hallelujah and Just Like Starting Over
• May -- Sweet Caroline 
• June -- (tie) White Hot Spotlight and A River Runs Through It
• July -- Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves 
• August -- Who-ly McWhat? 
• September -- WTF!? Friday: September Already?
• October -- A Very Merry Un-Birthday 
• November -- A Week of Thanks: Day 7 
• December -- Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings 

So. Sorry that I can't count to 12, but I guess you can count those two extra links as "bonus material" on the special edition DVD that was the past year. That's 2009, in a nutshell. Our year didn't suck as much as it did for many other people -- in fact, it was pretty damned good. The adoption was final, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary, and I somehow managed to turn 35 without having myself committed over it. Sure, we had our share of crud, like my husband losing his job and being out of work for 6+ months and the ongoing intermittent bouts of self-doubt, but really, we are luckier than a whole lot of people, because we have each other. And if you don't have each other, what's the point, really?

Coming up in 2010: The First Family Wedding Of The New Decade! More Pictures! A Kind Of Hybrid Project 365 Kind Of Thing If I Ever Get Around To Starting It! Still More Pictures! Possibly A Book Club Which Might End Up Related To My Hybrid Project365 Thing That I Haven't Decided Whether Or Not I'm Going To Start! Even More Pictures! Naps! And Yet More Pictures!

Please stay tuned.

Making A List, Checking It Twice (Or Maybe For The 30th Time In Case Something Got Done For You By The Christmas Fairies While You Weren't Looking)

(Insert "Waaaaaaaambulance" sound effects here.)

So at this point there are 11 days left until Christmas, only 10 more shopping days, and I am starting to think that maybe I am screwed, because my "To-Do" list is getting longer and longer every day, and at this point I think I've come back around again to leftover holiday tasks from 2008 that didn't get completed. I just can't tell any more -- it's all so hectic and stressful and at 8:00 in the morning I kind of already need a good stiff drink, and maybe an Ativan.

I manage to freak myself out every year, to the point where now it's kind of a running gag in my house. When I get home from work I half expect G to ask me, "So what did you forget to do today?" I complained about this last year, and I'll probably complain about it next year, too (but I am not made of magic so I can't link to a future post that hasn't been written yet). "Bitching about Christmas chores" is one of the Universal Constancies, right up there with "The Princess Bride will always be funny" and "Perkin'ses are always the same everywhere."

It's just -- I look at this list and I kind of want to run away and join the circus. The bulk of my shopping is done, in the sense of "the most expensive presents," but I still have about eleventy thousand little piddling gifts to get, and larger stuff I put off until my next paycheck tomorrow. Things for cousins and friends' kids and co-workers, and also G's "big" gift, and most of the gifts for my mother-in-law. Stocking stuffers for one of my sisters and her husband. The cards need to be finished. And I haven't even had time to think about whether I'm going to bake and make candy or not.

Yeah, it's going about this well.

Send in the Clowns

(NOTE: This is long and overwrought and very emo, and possibly upsetting. This was a big ol' stream of consciousness thing that I wrote. You can skip it if you want -- the pictures aren't that great anyway. I almost didn't publish this, but I decided to anyway, for two reasons: (1) these are real feelings, and (2) I feel better for having gotten it out, which is kind of the reason why I started this blog in the first place. I'm fine. I'll be fine. I have to be, and I want to be. You can worry, but know that I have this stuff on the radar, and I am monitoring myself, and I won't actually GET out of control. I just FEEL out of control, sometimes. YMMV, and QED, and etc.)

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This time last year, I was was practically swimming in bliss, what with my team winning the World Series and my guy winning the election and things just generally going much more my way than things are right at this particular moment in time. I'm not exactly talking myself off the ledge, not quite, but ...

... well, let me put it this way: did you ever have one of those days when you have, like, tunnel vision, and all you can see is what's going on right in front of you, and that's probably okay anyway because what's happening off to the side there sounds a little bit terrifying, but anyway you're staring straight ahead trying to concentrate and then all of the sudden you notice that there is a very weighty darkness rapidly closing in around you and you feel this moist hot sulfurous breath on the back of your neck and then you blink and when you open your eyes all you can see is this pinpoint of light on the horizon and suddenly the panting is getting heavier behind you?

No? Just me?

G is still out of work, and right now I am the breadwinner in our family, and let me tell you something about that: my (not-so) inner feminist is at full-on DEFCON-5. It's one thing to be the moneymaker when you want to, when you and he are separate-but-equal-partners, when your marriage is new and you are both young and strong. But when you have to? When there are kids and pets and mortgage payments? When you've been constantly working for 10+ years without breaks except for the obligatory occasional week of vacation and you're old and tired? Whole 'nother ballgame, buster. This is quidditch on the moon.

The fact that there are only 40-something days until Christmas and I have barely started my shopping, barely even started thinking about my shopping, barely even started considering thinking about my shopping, probably gives away how bad things are getting, in my head at least. How can I worry about Christmas presents when I am busy worrying about how we're going to make two car payments and a mortgage payment and a daycare payment with only one job? It's come to this: I am having a hard time justifying spoiling my own child, the child we wanted so long and worked so hard for, because I just can't make the cost-benefit analysis work. Even as I say it myself, it's the saddest and stupidest thing I've ever heard.

And then I think, "If it's this bad for us, how bad must it be for others? The ones with no jobs, no severance, no unemployment, no nothing? How bad must it be for them?" And I can do something for them, I know I can, if I am willing to sacrifice some of the little bit we still have, but ... then again. Then again. They just did a round of layoffs where I work. I know I am lucky to have a job right now. I have survivor's guilt, I guess. I am becoming overwhelmed with all of it. Sometimes I worry myself right into nausea. I need to out my head between my knees. I can't hardly sleep.

I mean, maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but I am starting to hit panic mode right now and I'm not sure how to keep the sky from swirling over me while the earth spins out of control underneath my feet in this maelstrom of my own making. I am starting to crack under the pressure and I wonder sometimes if we're going to make it, G and I, our little family. I feel like I'm going looneypants. Some days I am sad, and some days I am angry, and some days it's a struggle to get out of bed, and some days I am so consumed with so many emotions at once that I force myself to feel absolutely nothing in self-defense. Fuck off, world! Die in a fire.

This is depression, probably a big one, and I know this. I can feel it like a giant octopus or a big hairy spider, twisting its legs around my ribs and squeezing until I can't run and can't move and can't breathe and can't scream. But I can't be bothered with this, I can't, I just can't be depressed right now, not with him depressed and people around me depressed and the whole damn world depressed. I'm the positive one. I'm the cockeyed optimist. I'm Little Miss Sunshine. I'm the Little Engine That Could.

And here I am, standing in the tunnel, and it's getting darker and darker and that panting behind me is getting louder and louder and that tiny point of light is getting farther and farther away and now I'm starting to hear calliope music, which means here come the horrible flesh-eating clowns, and I think it's going to be getting a lot worse before it gets better, and I'm barely hanging on to this high wire here already. Please, send help. And a flashlight.

WTF!? Friday: September Already?

I can't believe that this weekend is Labor Day Weekend.

The unofficial end of summer.

Wasn't it just Memorial Day, like, a week ago?

Where has the time gone?

I am not prepared for this.

Better try to get in one last gasp, before it is all gone.