No posting until the New Year

I've had an incredible holiday season, which I'll write about.

I've found a bit of peace just recently and I think this is something that will stick.

I will come back in the New Year with pictures and the like, but just now I am reveling in the gifts, both material and spiritual.  

And I want some time and space to reflect on them.

Love you guys, check back in a few days.

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

We leave at the crack of dawn for Sacramento and my in-laws for the holidays.
BUT WAIT!

Before you gasp with mock horror at my plight - I LOVE my in-laws.
I'm looking forward to the trip!

And with that cheery news, I leave you the disgruntled residents of our house, who will hold the fort down and shed all over everything these next few days:


And, turn your head, because I'm tired and can't figure out how to straighten it:

A Hundred Different Ways to Say Cold

So, Arctic.

This is what I do. I feel something. Something I can't bitch about, effectively anyway, something I can't ask for help with, something that I'm struggling with.

So I attribute it to something I CAN describe. And then I write it down.

So typically this would be a poem. And it might yet be.
This is me, trying to figure it out. If I can quantify it, I can deal with it.
If I can wrestle it to the ground and name it, then I can overcome it.

I feel like I'm in a snow wasteland.

I'm bundled in snow clothes. I'm slowed down, I move stiffly, and with none of the grace of myself. Everything hurts. The sun on the white expanse burns my eyes. They sting and tear, anyway, because everything is frigid.

A movement is clumsy and doesn't go the way I thought when I moved.
Remember when you were out in the snow, all bundled up, and you were running after someone else, and they moved faster and you just slogged behind?

And you were breathless with the exertion, all muscles screaming and yet chilled, stinging with the exposure?

Trying to catch up.
Everything I say sounds ridiculous. I'm several yards behind and I can't remember where my home is. I can't see my home anymore. I don't know if I'll ever find it again.

There are a hundred ways to say Help. There are a thousand to say I'm sorry.

I can't find the words, I don't know who to say it to and I can't catch up.
Everyone is so far away that I'm not even on the horizon.

And I know this, but the faster I move the more I stand still.
Like when you were a kid, the sledding down the snowy hill was exhilarating, but getting back up was agony, and you wondered why you were outside at all?

And I'm freezing, here.
I don't know what to do.

For the first time in a long time, I don't know what to do.

I am no ski bunny.
I'm a lumbering, growling Yeti and I just want my warm hole with no one around to remind me that I'm a figment of their imagination.

Hey, I'm Fashionable!

I have a tendency to get sucked into really awful reality TV.
One of my current guilts is this absolutely inane show called The Real Housewives of Orange County. This is a reality show that follows very wealthy vapid women in the day to day of their exorbitant lives.

They are Botoxed, Breast-Augmented and tucked into horrifying Barbie dolls.
Frightening, because no matter the expense, you can't rewind time.

So they are falling plastic faces, and huge boobs in tight shirts that look lewd and incongruous. And they are stupidest women! Not sure that they're actually very stupid, but everything that is important to them is so trivial!

There was a whole episode on whether one of them should get false eyelashes. Like eyelash extensions. Unbelievable.

Anyway, they are showing promos for a new horrifying reality show, which is called Millionaire Match-Up or some such crap. There is a very earnest, very wealthy (with requisite botox and silicone) trying to match up horrifyingly stupid rich men with equally atrocious fake and stupid women.

The whole thing, the whole post, is to say that in one scene the matchmaker is wearing a shirt that I have. Unquestionably it is the same shirt.

And that pleases me somewhat. That I have the same shirt as a millionaire matchmaker in Los Angeles.

But what pleases me even more is that I bought the shirt at Nordstrom Rack for $16.00 a year ago.

:)

I'm working on a post, I've been having some hard times for the last few months, and I'm trying to work the whole thing into an image, because that is how I quantify and articulate something is really bothering me.

I can't put this on a boat (as I usually do) I can't put this onto a guy (which is another favorite).

This time it is arctic.

I'll write more later.

Alive Alive O

Yes, dear readers, I survived the plague that befell me.
It took a couple days, and on the first day my cold was a niggling, "uh oh," when I woke up that morning to a noseful of yellow snot.

On the second day of head cold my virus gave to me, deep throaty chest pains, and a noseful of yelll llo snot!

Just kidding. I'll get serious here.

The second day of my cold I parked myself on the couch and watched everything that the TV had to offer. Wasn't much, but thank God for DVRs.

The third day I rushed into work and completed something that needed completing, and then came home and promptly passed out clothed on the couch, under a warm blanket and two very warm cats, sleeping on my back (hated position) with my mouth open.

Which meant that every few hours I'd wake up and clack my desert mouth shut.
A mouth without saliva is no fun at all. Similar to a town without pity. Oh, what that can doooooo. Sorry, can't stay on track, because I'm ALL BETTER NOW and that feels just SUPER!

The fourth day I woke up and thought, "no way in hell."
I went back to bed and slept through the entire work day.

I'm better now, went to work this morning and by 3pm felt like myself, which was, bitchy, irritated and going 90 miles per second, even at rest.

Welcome back Salome, the world missed you. How it spun on its axis, we'll never know.

Sick

And, lo, the plague has struck.
After several months of dodging all sick bullets, I am felled by a powerful head cold.
I dropped something today and bent down to pick it up. In seconds, my head filled with such snot and pressure that I'm surprised it didn't pop.

I have what is the stadium wave equivalent of a headache, random and fleeting, and circling around my head. I no sooner blow my nose than my immune system replenishes it.

I just now spread lip balm all over my upper lip, which is raw and cracking, and for good measure, smeared a large quantity under and around my nostrils, which have been ravaged by Kleenex.

I am, in short, miserable.

Update on the Awesome Spontaneous, Exactly the Right Thing To Do Purchase

He's taking it back.
Our close friend owns a computer shop north of us and has promised to build the Pope a supercomputer for the same price.

We trust him implicitly, he has never steered us wrong, so we're taking the Pope's new machine with Vista back in favor of a custom-built PC with XP.

Anyone (and I mean Jonathon here) have any experience or advice about Vista?

I have to bake 90 cookies tonight.

I will need more wine.

Yes It Is

We were at Costco tonight, picking up a birthday cake, present, and the Pope wandered into the computer section.

The Pope is thrifty to the point of near-miserliness.
He has about 10 shirts, 6 pairs of pants, 3 jackets and 2 pairs of shoes.
He typically drives cars that I can run faster than, and much more quietly to boot.

He doesn't buy stuff.

He's had the same computer for the last five years, and ever since I've known him the thing has taken a week to open the Internet Browser, and 13 years to close a file.

It was, as they say, time.

He found one he loved, there was a $150 rebate on it, and after checking the bank balance, we had the money easily and both of us had just received additional large checks to deposit.

I said, "Buy it."
"Maybe," he said.
"Buy it!!" I insisted.

All of a sudden he turned 13 and his eyes lit up with glee.
He asked serious questions of the Costco employee, but the corners of his mouth kept tugging up in the telltale grin that marks an elated Pope.

He put it in the cart and as we walked to the cash register I said,
"This is why you work so hard at a job you hate. This is why EVERYONE works so hard at jobs they hate."

"No," he said, "I work hard like that for us."
"No," I said.

"You work that hard so that you can buy something you want, let alone legitimately need."

Call me crazy, but we live a comfortable life. We've got money for things we need, and mostly we have the money for anything we want. We're not extravagant, we don't have to have the newest, latest gadgets, and once in a while it is prudent, and sane, to buy the first thing you see because you just want to.

TAGGED

The Rules

Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
Share 7 facts about yourself.
Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I am addicted to sparkling water. I drink almost 2 liters of it daily.
2. I can't drive in snow. Or even ride in the car in snow. I freak out, frightened.
3. I sucked my thumb until I was 15.
4. My grandmother died in my arms when I was 24.
5. My dad told me once I have the highest IQ in our family.
6. I used to perform spoken word around Santa Cruz, CA and had a couple people record me.
7. I am allergic to dried apricots. They cause an asthma attack. But not fresh, canned or jellied apricots. Those are fine.

I'm tagging three blogs and then requesting that these people comment with their randoms:
CLP, SKROLL, LAKSHMI and JULIE.

Platypus King
Clan Buchanan
Xela

p.s. SEND ALL MEME TASKS MY WAY. I LOVE THEM.

When the World Is Wet It Smells Like Worms

Did you miss me?
So funny that the month of November tinked by like tiny grains of sand against glass, and then here I am three days into December like I blinked my left eye!

To Recap:

December 1.
The Pope is home from his business trip and Yay!
It snows in Seattle, lovely big flakes that charm and enchant us.
We go to breakfast, braving the snowy roads. We see many accidents but are safe, because the Pope is carefully and thoughtfully driving.

**Note. The reason I hate the Pope's driving is because he is careful and thoughtful. And that does not fit well with my driving skills, honed from my "Bat Out of Hell" manual.**