Carcharodonna

A Lift

2009-05-15T20:07:00.003-07:00

I know it has been so very long since I last posted.

I believe I've been suffering from Ongoing-Traumatic-Stress Disorder.

You see, I quit my high paying job in July of last year partly because I was pissed at how they treated me, partly because the high-stress, high-smoking and high-drinking lifestyle wasn't conducive to the tiny pup in my belly and partly because I grew up in a wild and loving huge family and wanted the same for my incoming baby.

So we moved, at GREAT personal cost. We lost so much money, people. Hemorrhaged it. I lost more money that you might actually have at your fingertips, and I don't mean to be condescending, I just need you to know how much money we'd saved, how many stocks we cashed out, and just exactly how hard this move was for us. And then my husband lost his job. And then my severance ran out. And then my parents gave us money. And then we were slowly ticking that away.

I would lie in bed at night and there would be actual physical pain, a neck ache, muscle pains like I'd been in a car accident. My heart would race and my chest would constrict. Maybe this is a panic attack? I'm not dying. I'm just losing. I'm losing and I'm a loser and I forced my husband to move like this and I ruined our lives and we have this beautiful baby and I'm going to ruin her life by my selfish choices and we have lost everything. We lost everything.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the poorhouse. I got my husband back. I got my marriage back. I was gifted with this incredible daughter, and I got to spend five months with her, and it wasn't hard to forget about my life stress while she was awake. Because the joy of this little girl supercedes everything else I've been feeling. And watching my sensitive, articulate husband giggle and smile and play with this little girl, and father her with such love and joy? Oh my god. If I didn't love this man before, I LOVE THIS MAN NOW.

I'm saying all of this now because I have a job. I was offered a really high paying job, in San Francisco, where we both want to live, doing something that I'm interested in, without all the high stress of my previous occupation. And I took it.

I'll be in San Francisco by June 8th. I hope that my husband and daughter are not far behind.

The thought of being without my daughter for even one night is heartbreaking to me, because I live and breathe to see her happy. But she's got a dad who knows all the tricks, bells and whistles, and teaches me new things about her each day.

And I think..... What a lucky little girl, that her dad and mom were there for her every day of her life for the first five months. What a lucky wife, with a partner like this. What a lucky, lucky, lucky blessed family we are. We had a life lesson that didn't break us. Just taught us something really important that we needed to know.

I hope to write more. I've been unable to be very cheerful, and unable to be very snarky, lately. I've been in an extraordinary rut, and I've been unable to do anything except stupid my pain away. And I don't want this to be a blog about motherhood, because there are better ones for you to read than me.

Besides which, my aunt told me I should write a book about motherhood (I send home pictures of my daughter daily to my Ohio family) and I am. I am writing the guide to motherhood fueled with margaritas and a really kick-ass husband. I could do nothing without my husband. He thinks I could, and I think he's wrong, but for a compromise let's just say I'd rather not do anything without him by my side.

Wow, It's Uh, Been a While

2009-03-27T22:33:00.004-07:00

I wish I were more like Alison, but I'm not.

I'm me, and I'm not writing here. And I'm not only not writing here, I'm not really writing anywhere. Actually, that is not true. I am writing. I am writing copiously, I am writing fervently, I am inscribing on my mind and heart the first few months of my darling, glorious, awesome, incredible baby girl.

I have volumes to tell you. I have full novels sprung from a moment, from a single laugh of Auden's. I have learned more than anyone ever tried to teach me. I've laughed more and had my heart soar more in these last three months than ever in my entire life.

I always knew I wanted to be a parent. I grew up an Irish Catholic kid in Toledo, OH. My mom is one of eight. I am one of 38 granchildren (for those of you keeping score at home, that means I have 37 first cousins), and now there are 11 great-grandchildren. There are a lot of us, and not one of us in the family is uncomfortable around kids. In fact, you could say that a predilection towards children is in our very DNA.

But I had no idea how much FUN this would be. I love my daughter, you guys. I ADORE her. There isn't a single part of this that isn't pretty spectacularly awesome. I'm having the time of my life.

Yesterday I was rocking her, she was tired and fussy and doing her fitful "about-to-sleep" thing, and so I bundled her close to me and started rocking her and she calmed down and I looked at her and she was just staring at me intently. She was looking at me like she was memorizing my face, like I was a map she could imprint on her brain and follow somewhere incredible. She stared at me and stared at me and then all of a sudden, completely without warning, she reached up and touched my face. It was the first time she did that. It was the first time I knew she had purposefully reached for something. I was floored, thrilled, bowled over, delighted and shocked, all in an instant. And isn't that parenting?

That's parenting. The awe and wonder.

This is a wondrous endeavor.

I've never felt anything like it. Watching this tiny life flourish and flower in front of me. Despite all of my particulars, this girl is a darling, she is a beauty, she is a joy and she is a PERSON.

I'm awed. I'm humbled. I'm buoyed by my daughter. She is perfect and I'm the creator of something perfect. And if you've never believed in God, she will make you do so. Because there is no way that something this perfect and precious comes to the world without God.

Now, check in with me in 15 years, and I might sing a different tune, but for now:

Isn't she fabulous?

Correspondence File: 2/15/09

2009-02-15T21:55:00.006-08:00

Dear Large Companies Posting Jobs on Monster:

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am overjoyed in this terrible recession economy that you have so much as POSTED a job. These are troubled times. I am troubled. You are troubled and the news tells us that everything is going to hell faster than we can imagine and our representatives in Capitol Hill don't have a clue and are losing their grip on the handbasket. But let's look past that, shall we?

I have a favor to ask: Please don't make me submit my resume and cover letter through your bullshit, bug-ridden employment software. I upload and it auto-fills everything wrong. I cut and paste and painstakingly reformat, and then the goddamn site crashes and I lose everything. Even in these troubled times, if your posting says apply only using our online system, I say Go Fuck Yourself.

I've been sitting here for three days doing this and your site has crashed 17 times. You may attract patient candidates that way, but none of them will have the wherewithal to open a can of corporate whup ass (when necessary, or slightly indicated) the way I do.

I Need to Have Standards, But Don't Hold Me To It,
Salome

I've applied for a few more jobs, and today was a good searching day, in that the available jobs looked interesting. I read the job postings and I thought, Yeah I'd LIKE to do that! Of course, I would have to give up my current job of being suckled on and barfed on and peed on, which would strip me of the benefits of baby smiles, baby laughter and that feeling of a sleeping baby in your arms, but still, some of this stuff I can not only do, but I actually kind of want to.

I am debating on whether or not to post an honest birth story post. I've invited a few more people to read this heretofore anonymous blog (which was being furiously ignored by everyone except four of my friends) and it is making me think twice about writing what I feel like writing. Like gross analogies and swear words.

But do you think Pat Conroy ever dithered about and didn't write something? I think not. He published Beach Music, did he not? I'll give it a shot. I could always remember that there is a save as draft button, so I don't need to vomit words and immediately share them with the internet. Probably won't but could happen.

Resuming

2009-02-12T00:25:00.004-08:00

I have sent out six resumes in the last few days. I am starting to really worry here about how we will provide for our daughter. There is nothing, and I mean, NOTHING out there for my husband at the moment.

There are a ton of property management jobs, but I read the job descriptions and it makes me want to reach for the bourbon. Commercial property management can be so incredibly high stress, and I become such a crappy person, all jangled nerves and irritation. And believe me, added stress to my already irritable nature does horrific things. I don't have much patience anyway, but under duress I actually have negative patience, sucking the calm out of those around me. I even can stress the Pope out, and he's well, pretty mellow, all things considered.

Besides which, if I go to work, I will miss the opportunity to throw this on the kid and take pictures:

Ooh, that reminds me: I have moved the computer. After nearly 5 months of cramming my brain into a too small space, next to the refrigerator and sharing space with the home phone, I have spread out on my old desk, which has been in our bedroom holding cat fur and dirty clothes for the above referenced 5 months.

This is a look at what you'll see in the background from now on. In various states of cleanliness and general upkeep:

Ps, I wore that shirt two days in a row and she threw up on me each day. I forgot from one day to the next. Tonight, when I realized it, I changed into clean pajamas. We've done the cry it out method and she is actually going to sleep in her crib and staying there, asleep!

I miss her.

You know, I really need to get more interesting. I have just sufficiently bored myself. I'm going to go wander the house while I wait for my baby to wake up so I can hold her.

New Parent Smackdown

2009-02-06T00:09:00.004-08:00

While things are getting clearer, and we're both getting more comfortable in our abilities with the baby, I still find that the clocks in the house blitz through the hours, and each night I'm stunned to realize it is night, and the world is again asleep.

I am suffering from some insomnia, made all the more harsh for the early hours my daughter wakes up. Luckily my husband will take her at any hour, even very very early hours. He does so with no protest, and talks to her so lovingly that it melts my heart.

Breastfeeding has not gone well. We supplement with formula and even though I am thankful for some extra hours of sleep or freedom that this affords, I just opened a box and found breastmilk bags in the bottom, items I will never need, because I do not make enough breastmilk to have any extra to store. My throat closed up and the tears started. I can't control the surge of shame and disappointment I feel when my failure as a functioning woman is revealed to me in tiny ways throughout the day.

I will be sending resumes out tomorrow, and I am devastated. What if I get a job, and have to take it??? Because I would have to take it. I didn't want to return to work this early, not when she is learning something new every day, and not when I still have a glimmer of being able to give her some benefit of breastmilk, however little I can. Once I go back to work, there is just no way. She is two months old next week, which seems so old but is really so little. In that odd paradoxical way that babies get so big and yet remain so tiny and unbelievable.

I just remembered that a urine soaked diaper fell facedown on the floor by her changing table, so I'll go clean that up.

Then I'll go to bed so I can lie there, unable to sleep, wired by the joy and the hurt and the worry and the love that shakes my mind awake.

Phoning It In

2009-01-25T00:28:00.005-08:00

I am phoning it in today, because I have spent a great day napping with the baby and now I'm playing Rock Band with my husband. He is playing Medium, I am playing Easy and spending more time updating my hair and outfit than I am playing songs. Every dollar I get, I immediately go and change my hairstyle.

So instead, here are some recent pictures of the baby:

Hello, my name is McScreamy. I don't like that toy, no, not at all.

Top Chef is so prosaic, you know?

Random Thing I Thought Today

2009-01-21T00:39:00.003-08:00

You have to stop crying before you walk into WalMart.

That's TACKY.

Correspondence File: 1/13/09

2009-01-13T02:29:00.003-08:00

Dear Lady at Target with the Open-Mouth-Coughing Kid:

Give me a break, lady! I've got a three week old here! One of the reasons we are at Target right now instead of Walmart is that I can't expose her to that level of degradation yet. And here you are with your kid that is coughing continually, open mouth and all. Just spewing all kinds of illness around everything, like a firehose of germs.

And you're following me!!

Like a homing missile petri dish, just everywhere I go I hear that KOFF KOFF KOFF and see your kid hacking all over everything. We are trying to keep out of your way, but the goddamn stroller turns like a palsied flamenco dancer* and this is our first trip to a store with the baby and we're one big cluster-you-know-what.

But seriously, get out of my baby's airspace or I'm going to full-body tackle you and your typhoid family and slather you with Purell.

In Good Health,
Salome

* turns out the stroller's front wheel was locked and I didn't know. I discovered this halfway through my first walk around our street with Auden. I reached down, fully prepared to bust the wheel in order to make it turn, and realized it had the lock set. Hee.

Musings

2009-01-12T00:01:00.002-08:00

I am hopelessly in love with my daughter.

Every expression on her face.

The way she jerks her head randomly.

The way she does this huge squeak inhale.

The way, when she's getting mad, she pumps one leg rapidly, like trying to start a tiny baby motorcycle. The mad look she gets when we delay getting her food to her. The blinking awake of this tiny life.

I don't know how much of the behavior we're seeing now is an indication of her personality, but this newborn is goofy. She's smart. She's generally good-natured, but possesses a fiery temper. When she gets really furious she cries in a way that sounds like an angry duck. WAH WAH WAH.

I wonder if she'll ever know, 15, 20 or 30 years from now, how I held her in my arms and tried to keep my heart inside my body, tried to keep my emotions from pouring out of my skin and flooding the city I live in. I so incredibly love this little girl, I am so completely and utterly charmed by this person, I almost can't stand it. I look at her sometimes and I'm surprised my husband doesn't hear the pop of my heart as it swells beyond its borders.

And she's not even smiling at us yet!

Her tiny smiles, right now attributed to gas, or urination or the contentment of falling asleep, are enough to achieve world peace, they are enough to quiet my screaming heart. They are enough for me, forever.

They melt me, utterly.

For so long I have examined my life and my decisions with a critical air of disenchantment.

I now look down at my sleeping daughter's face and I feel I've accomplished greatness.

She's Not Sleeping

2009-01-09T01:41:00.003-08:00

She's not sleeping, and it has been five hours.

The Pope isn't feeling well, he retreated to his quiet guest room hours ago.

HOURS AGO and still, she does not sleep.

She is now fed twice, rocked three times, and jiggled in the way she likes many times, too many to count. Diaper changes: two. She's been swaddled, she's been unswaddled, and the whole time she will not stop fussing. She will doze, she will catnap, but she will not sleep.

I am losing it, folks. She needs to sleep, goddamn it.

I will lose my fucking mind in a second.

In all of this, every time my patience just wears out and snaps, I look at my baby girl and love her more than I could possibly express. I roll my eyes, I curse out loud and then I reach down and see her alert eyes, and I kiss her cheek, I kiss the soles of her feet, I whisper to her that I love her so much.

What she does to me!

This kid is killing all the toughness inside of me.

Lucy picked tonight to need me again, after three weeks of being the most perfectly behaved cat I've ever seen. Tonight, she is trailing beside my feet, winding her way in my walking path and yowling at me. I love her dearly, so will not kick her, although the temptation is great. She finally climbed up on the baby blanket and slept beside me.

I can wash the blanket.

I love the cat.

So, how are you doing?

17 days old

2009-01-05T15:15:00.005-08:00

We're hanging in. I haven't worn clothes other than pajamas in three days and I'm not sure when I last showered. The days blur into the nights, and it seems like I have nothing to show for my hours awake. I'm sleeping fine, but today started crying about a $60 heating bill on our empty house in Seattle. Seems like someone set the thermostat up and left it like that, in our vacant house, with us having no jobs. $60 seemed to unwind me. I am now having a wee glass of white wine, to bolster my Irish heart.

Our daughter is LOVELY. The hugest joy of joys. My darling girl. If you've called, thanks for calling. I'm nowhere near wanting to be talking on the phone right now. It would be awesome if you want to reach me, to email me. The phone ringing right when I'm going down for a nap, or getting her down for her nap, really bothers me. I won't answer if I'm feeding her, and the answer to your question is I'm ALWAYS feeding her.

And now for the photos!!!

Welcome to the World, Pup

2008-12-22T20:03:00.004-08:00

The Pope and I welcomed a baby daughter on Friday, December 19th.

Her real name is Auden.

She was born at 1:13pm. She weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

She is without a doubt the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I can't stop staring at her and telling her I love her.

I have never done anything in my life that made me so instantly and completely happy.

Birthday

2008-12-18T15:46:00.001-08:00

Posting very quickly to say that in four hours we will check into the hospital to have the Pup.

They will be inducing me at 7:00am tomorrow morning.

The next time you hear from me, I will be a mom.

How exciting!!!!!

Love,

Sal, Pope and Pup

Goodbye Seattle

2008-12-12T23:52:00.003-08:00

Our house sold today at 10:45am.

For real, and true this time, we are free of that burden.

I wish I could tell you that I'm whooping and hollering with joy, and dancing around the house like a maniac, but in reality it was pretty anti-climatic. The Pope says it is because the house just pales in comparison with the impending birth of the Pup.

I would like to believe that the birth of the Pup is impending, but I'm actually getting fairly discouraged that it will never happen.

And please don't comment and suggest I have sex because honestly, NO.

I would rather have a root canal than get funky with it at the moment.

I have never been so lumbering and huge.

I know exactly what sex does to the cervix, and all of that, and still, there's absolutely no way unless I was drugged into a coma that anyone will be getting their freak on with me.

And so, having used the last of my hip hop analogies for sex, I will go read my book.

Three Days to Go

2008-12-11T23:36:00.004-08:00

Until I'm officially pissed off that this baby isn't born yet.

I am hurting, y'all. The latest discovery is a shooting pain in my left wrist. Like a sciatic spasm of my carpal tunnel. It has been happening all night.

This is in addition to the true sciatica pain that shoots down my left leg upon occasion, those occasions growing ever frequent these last few days. The pain is so sharp, so intense, it causes me to do a silly John Cleese walk when it happens.

I guess that's all. The baby pains are either not bad, not present or so familiar that they now go unnoticed.

A couple of things I've been thinking about lately:

Memo to everyone: Starbucks is NOT good coffee. I'm coming from Seattle, where they first brewed their burnt version of coffee beans and made the word "latte" common in our vernacular. But they are the WORST coffee roaster in Seattle. They were ubiquitous, on every streetcorner, muscling out the independent roasters and building a huge administrative complex near the sports arenas (football and baseball) with their signature mermaid looking over the city. But the smaller roasting shops were where the truly great coffee was. Where the baristas took the time to talk to you about their life, their dreams, all while making a latte that made your toes curl, with taste and strength. They would draw flowers in the foam on top, and the foam was something you could eat like custard, not the fluffy nothing taste of Starbucks' foam. Once you went indie, you never went back. For me to stop at a Starbucks, I am slumming it. McDonald's has better tasting lattes than Starbucks. It is true! Do a taste test.

At least in Seattle the Starbucks baristas were consistent in their drinks. Down here in Sacramento, you've got essentially teenagers trying to make coffee, and the drinks are all over the place. Some have 1/3 cup of foam on top, some have too much milk, others are lukewarm, others that I've ordered with some seasonal spicing (which is rare for me) have the spicing all down at the bottom, not having been stirred. That's a gross discovery. I got a hot chocolate the other day at a Starbucks inside Safeway, which is still the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, like who needs a huge ass latte while you're grocery shopping? Or who is going to sit at a grocery store and tap away on their laptop? The ambiance is horrendous. Anyway, this hot chocolate was so chocolately that it made my eyes cross. Almost undrinkable. Don't they have standards of how a drink should be prepared and taste? At those indie shops in Seattle you may have waited an extra 3 minutes while someone took care to prepare your drink, but in the end you got something worth waiting for! Down here you get rude service and a poor quality drink. It is disgusting.

Conspicuous Consumption: I will admit to being as bad as everyone else when it comes to shopping. For the last several years, at least 5, I've been in a financial position to buy almost anything I wanted. I've never been wealthy, and my tastes are pretty simple, but I rarely worried about money, never really went without something I wanted, and generally bought something every time I went to a store. Well. That has, shall we say, changed. Now I am shocked at the consumption everywhere. In this time of a serious recession, a man was killed at WalMart so that people could get in to get deals on 50" television sets. This on Black Friday, the biggest Christmas shopping day of the year. But who buys 50" television sets as gifts? These were people buying things for themselves, killing someone to do it. It was shocking.

A side note, about the shooting of the two men at a Toys R' Us in California. The shooting occurred as a result of a fight between the dates of the two men. The women got in a verbal argument, then there was a shoving match, and then both of the men pulled out guns and shot each other dead. I was telling the Pope about this one morning and he said, succinctly, "glad they're out of the gene pool, I suppose."

This is the wild world we bring our baby into, with every intention of raising it to be a good human being. Not many visible examples in the world today.

I was going to rant more, I've had a few things that have been bothering me lately, but my wrists are hurting, and the three nuts I just ate have given me raging heartburn. You'll excuse me while I go sit my lard ass on the couch and cry.

Wish me labor,

Salome

Great Joke Courtesy of Devi

2008-12-08T10:25:00.001-08:00

Why does the shark like to swim in salt water?

Because she's allergic to PEPPER!!!!!

Not Having Baby, Just Lazy

2008-12-02T21:02:00.003-08:00

You know what's good?

Nilla wafers dipped in Nutella. I have eaten almost half a box of Nilla wafers this way.

Except they're not Nilla Wafers TM, they are Safeway (tm) brand Vanilla Wafers.

Real Nutella, though, I found it one day at the Grocery Outlet. I'm sure it was confirmed dosed with botulism in order for me to get it at $1.99, but it is Nutella, so suck it up intestines, here we go.

Well! We are dilated 1 centimeter, which doesn't seem like much since it has taken approximately 3 days of intermittent cramping to get there, our pelvic station is -1, which is good, and we are effaced 50%. Which is unchanged from last week. They tell me not to obsess about that effacement (to which I laugh, because they CLEARLY don't know my OCD with Google) because apparently you can efface to 100% overnight.

The baby is a huge monster, normal for tall people, and totally making me feel better about the whole problem quitting smoking thing I was having there for, oh, 8 months.

Rest assured, guys, I have not had a cigarette in over a month. I've been done. My mom read somewhere that breastmilk of smokers tastes like smoke and when she told me that, I was done. Well, not really. I was done after the Pope was let go and I smoked four packs in seven days. After that powersmoking binge, my vigorous and vibrantly moving baby stilled for two days. I went to the doctor's office in a panic and spent 20 minutes hooked up to fetal monitoring to make sure that the baby was still happy and healthy and thank god it was. THEN I was done. Then I was so, so soooooooo way done.

You know, things got so bad there, so many punches thrown, that by the end we weren't even ducking them. We'd just look down, take the hit and then keep slowly moving, lost in our daze of what else could happen.

Except that I've become a kind of ostrich hydra. Every time some worry rears its head, I say to myself, can't fall apart over that, bury it. Then the next thing, then the next thing. Maybe one day all of these heads are going to look up from the sand and blink at me expectant-like, and I'll have to reckon with them. Or maybe, the mountains I saw will just stay molehills in the dirt behind me, and I'll keep slowly moving.

Speaking of my mom, she predicted the following on 10/14/08 (which oddly would have been my 8th anniversary, had I stayed married to my first husband).

Girl

Born December 6th

8 pounds, 3 ounces

21 inches long

Any predictions from the Carcharodonna readers?

Too Much Information in 3...2...1...

2008-11-20T22:27:00.004-08:00

So, today I received an unpleasant surprise.

It seems that checking your cervix to see how far effaced you are is NOT comfortable.

And when I say it is not comfortable, I mean that I almost slapped my doctor.

Eeyagh.

The baby dropped two days ago. It felt like someone was pushing down on my stomach, these brief but strong feelings, three times in quick succession, and then all of a sudden I could take deep breaths. My heartburn also pretty much stopped.

Let me pause and reflect, "thankyougodthankyougodthankyougodthankyougodthankyougod."

Heartburn sucked. Heartburn sucked in WAVES of suck. Roiling, burning, gigantic waves of suck. I fell asleep one night last week with a Tums in my mouth, and woke up with a trail of pink dried across my cheek.

The trade-off is that I have to pee CONSTANTLY. Two nights ago, I peed five times in 30 minutes. The urge was URGENT. I would hoist my body up, disentangle myself from Lucy, pad over to the restroom and tinkle out about three teaspoons. I do all my tricks, I lean very far forward, I wait a few seconds, I sneeze (this one is a sure-fire squeezer). When I am sure I am done, I stand up and immediately feel the urge to pee again. At one point, in extreme frustration, I mentally decided that I would pee the bed. I would just do it. My husband loves me, and he feels so sorry for me, he won't mind. Well, he will mind, but I will act horrified and disgusted, and I will try to cry and he'll forgive me.

The belly is huge. It has its own zip code. It has its own laws of gravity. Walking around trying to support it and keep my balance now requires the waddle. The other day I was sure I'd flattened the arch in my foot, just by wandering around the house.

We signed another offer on our house today. This is the third.

We are happy, but it is hard to let go of our doubt and frustration. We've been happy and excited two times now. Two times now the deals have fallen through. This deal represents the absolute bottom of our finances. We don't make any money. Before we countered the absolutely absurd* offer we received, we figured out how much we owe on the mortgages, how much the interest will be, how much the commissions will take, closing costs, etc....and countered with a number that allows us to clear all this. That's it.

*Absurd = Offering $300,000 for a house currently listed at $334,950.

I am resurfacing from a couple weeks now of worry, doubt and fear. I will say that the Pope and I are having fun together, and that is so incredibly rewarding. If I have nothing but him, and our baby, and our kitties, then I am still very rich.

We went over to my sister-in-law's house (the Pope's sister) last night for dinner, and we just had a blast. I sat there, surrounded by my husband and his wonderful family, and we were all laughing and laughing, and talking, and marveling at the nieces, who are spectacularly interesting, and I couldn't help but think about how lucky I am. How blessed we are, and how important it is to realize that.

I hope I keep realizing that.

Aaack

2008-11-11T22:10:00.002-08:00

Sometimes I just think things that are so mean. So uncharitable.

I just want to crack my chest open, take out my heart and stomp on it a couple of times.

Dear Baby

2008-11-10T20:48:00.001-08:00

Dearest, darling baby,

Today is Monday and you have been kicking my left ovary all day. Or punching it. It is actually extremely painful, and I wince and shudder every time you do it.

To pay you back for this, when you are a teenager I will tickle you until you pee.

In front of your friends.

Or your prom date.

You're welcome,

Mom

Attempting Normalcy

2008-11-10T20:42:00.002-08:00

In a nod to my husband, who looks super-darling sitting on the couch worrying through a football game, I am eating trail mix the RIGHT way.

I am not:

1. Eating all the M&Ms out.

2. Then eating all the raisins, delighting when I find a brown M&M I missed.

3. Scrounging for and finding the cashews.

4. Eating all the almonds.

5. Walking over to the garbage and throwing out the remaining peanuts, because they are cheap filler nuts and bleccch.

That is all, it has not been a very interesting day and I am suddenly extremely uncomfortable. My belly is huge and it gets in the way of everything I do. I can barely breathe and if I eat something larger than a plum, I feel as if I've gorged in Roman times but been denied the vomitorium.

Weight Loss Secrets - Third Trimester of First Pregnancy

2008-11-07T12:36:00.002-08:00

Yesterday at the doctor's office I found out that I have only gained 9.8 pounds at this stage of my pregnancy. I have 5 weeks until my due date. The baby is fine, the baby is healthy and happy, and my fundal measurements are excellent, perfect for the stage I'm in. There is no cause for concern, I'm told. The nurse actually told me not to tell anyone about this, because pregnant women everywhere will be upset at my genetic tranquility for pregnancy.

So I decided to blog about it, naturally, and tell everyone how I've managed to do this.

1. Overeat immediately upon getting engaged, and rack up the poundage to a terrifying state that gets you enlisted in your local Weight Watchers meeting after an unflattering photo is taken of your alarming lack of chin.

2. Drink heavily for many many many years preceding your weight gain.

3. Exercise only when in fear of death. i.e. Don't run unless you are being chased, get winded and smoke heavily when you attempt to garden, consider lifting the weekly wine purchases to be all the "conditioning" you need.

4. Gain and lose the same 2 pounds for three weeks on Weight Watchers while introducing all kinds of leafy green vegetables into your diet.

5. Get pregnant after almost a year of trying, presumably because the leafy green vegetables hit your ovaries first. They certainly did nothing for your thighs.

6. Negotiate transfers to be closer to family now that you're pregnant. You have stopped drinking immediately, which surprises the hell out of you.

7. Lose your job when the transfer for you doesn't work out. You are still craving and eating lots of green vegetables, although pickles gross you out, inexplicably.

8. Have the sale of your house fall through minutes after the moving company drives away with all your belongings. Pop Tarts subsist you through the move, which you perform alone, four months pregnant, while your husband fulfills his obligations to his idiot company who have no sympathy for your situation. Obligations that he cannot be excused from include Miniature Golf, and last-minute impromptu dinners for "team building."

9. Have the SECOND house sale fall through when the buyer is an incompetent deadbeat who can't really afford the house, with an estranged wife who is taking legal advice from her friend Doofus McIdiot, who is not actually a lawyer.

10. Get your husband's company to let him go three months after you lost everything to fulfill his transfer commitment. It is best if they do this on the last day of the month so that your health insurance expires instantly.

11. Voila. You have only gained 9.8 pounds, yet you manage to have a happy, healthy baby in there.

Baby, I promise you that I will never treat you the way life has treated us while we were waiting for you.

Under Pressure

2008-11-06T12:35:00.003-08:00

I wake up in pain. Every morning, no matter the position I'm in. My back recently, aching. For weeks now, my hips, or one hip, or my knee. My hands have been numb in the morning for months. First just the thumb through middle finger of both hands. Now one entire hand is numb, either hand, each hand, one per morning. Sometimes it is two hours before the feeling comes back.

But every morning, I wake up and feel like a car accident was survived during the night. For a few minutes, I grimace quietly and try to shift appendages, to release the tension and get the pain away. Usually at this time it is just barely light out, the husband and the cats have been sleeping soundly. Lucy is attuned, she knows when I wake up, and her stuttering, crackling purr usually starts up within a minute. Just saying, Hi Mom. If I look over, there are her green eyes, peeking at me over the covers, smiling sleepy at me these first moments.

Sometimes I can't imagine the love I'll feel for this child, because the love that swells and lifts me bodily when I look at Lucy is frightening enough in its intensity.

From the Universe......

2008-11-01T16:33:00.002-07:00

A smackdown of such proportions, I cannot contemplate.
I know that everything will get better, but the fear right now is almost crippling.

I also know that we are not the only ones in this troubled time that are undergoing this type of uncertainty over our future, but I am having trouble figuring out what the lesson here could possibly be.

Idle Chatter

2008-10-25T15:56:00.004-07:00

I have exactly 15 eatable cookies out of the batch I made this morning.
What with the first batch being undercooked (there is a difference between "chewy" and "intestinally inadvisable") the third batch having the oven turned off accidentally (wtf?) and then the makeup baking having been forgotten completely until they were brown as the bottom of my shoes, we didn't come out with many. Which is okay, because I ate the weight of my left boob in batter as I was making them. Why is it that baking cookies sounds like so much fun when you first think about it, and then by the third batch you can't imagine what sounded fun about this, and how big do I have to make them until this $@%$%#! dough runs out, and then, NO I'm not going to scrape the bowl, fuck it, I've been standing here for hours and I just remembered I don't actually LIKE cookies.

What a difference a neighborhood makes! We have a new visitor to the house, a young girl kitten named Thunder, who is enamored with the admittedly handsome Leo and who comes by to hang out, sleep on the patio and make moon faces at him. Leo is alternately irritated, scared or preening. Lucy hated her on sight and spends her time crouched in the house, ready to bitch out should the occasion warrant itself. In our old house we had nothing but butchy feral strays who came by to terrorize, intimidate and pee over everything.

I am currently enthralled (and occasionally, rarely, every once in a while disgusted) with my pregnant body.

Discovering new symptoms and then Googling them is very entertaining and is keeping my mind away from the apocalyptic future that awaits us because we haven't sold the house and tallying up what we've lost makes my heart rip itself to shreds and pound on my ribcage in terror.

Why We Moved Here

2008-10-18T23:18:00.003-07:00

Taken today at a family combo visit to a nearby pumpkin patch.

I've been waiting 6 years to share these moments with my beloved nieces. 6 years ago I would have had absolutely no idea that in 2 years I would meet a man who would introduce me to two new little girls to lose my heart to. Now there are four reasons why, even while almost everything else in our lives has us rending our garments in distress, moving to Northern California was the best thing we've ever done:

Overheard at the Airport Today

2008-10-16T18:09:00.001-07:00

A woman in the check-in line, visibly aggrieved, complaining to her husband about missing the flight in Kansas because they hadn't reset their watches to the local time zone.

The man, obviously long-suffering, saying, "Jesus Christ, that was FIFTEEN years ago!"

"Nasal Snow-belt Honk"

2008-10-03T13:02:00.002-07:00

Title of today's post taken from this great article at Salon.com.

We watched the debates last night and while I was surprised (and a little dismayed) at how well Sarah Palin acquitted herself, I do think the clear winner of the debate was Joe Biden. Now, I'm a Biden supporter, so you can take what I say with a grain of salt, but there isn't much substance in Mrs. Palin, and it was all too clear that when in doubt, she spewed her talking points, and not much else.

I still find her tendency to be sarcastic and snippy alarming. Out of all of the people in this presidential race, she has the biggest glass house. I would really be careful slamming people who can think you into a corner, Palin.

I would also like to comment on this notion that she speaks for Joe-Six Pack and the "average American." I like Joe six-pack, usually, unless he's a bigoted redneck, and I would count myself near the Average American, if not solidly in their midst. But here's my biggest problem. While I like and am a part of Average Americans, I do not want them speaking for me on a global platform. I would rather seasoned, intelligent Harvard grads do that for me. I would rather someone with extensive foreign policy experience meet with the leaders of these hostile countries. Someone who understands the nuances a bit better than me or my friends do.

So Sarah, while you may think you speak for me, the truth is I want you nowhere in a position to voice my concerns, because frankly, I don't think you or John McCain share them. I think you and your ticket is slapping a fresh coat of paint on a dead horse, and you'll see yourselves and your cronies get rich while you continue to make a deadly play for a military stronghold in an oil-rich region. I think you'll destroy the coastlines of your beloved states and you'll be feted on the yachts of big oil and you won't actually do anything you're promising. And I think it is absolutely absurd that you expect middle America to vote for your "everyday Amercian" schtick, when the leader of your ticket is married to an heiress and hasn't had a job outside of the government, EVER.

And I hope the rest of the world was as unimpressed as I was, with your singular shallowness and your inability to extemporize when the opportunity arose. Whether that is your shortfall or the tight reins you're under, either way, you're not fit for the position and you're not to fit to represent the people you're aiming to.

It Keeps Killing Us

2008-10-01T15:39:00.002-07:00

Yesterday we were told that our house had closed, sold, done finito.

They had missed the court's hours in order to record, so that was the final step to happen this morning. We were advised there was a "one in a million" chance of anything happening to stop it at this point, and in a combined 30 years of real estate experience, our agents and his officemates had never seen anything happen.

Well, we should have bought a lottery ticket, so says my wise husband the Pope.

The buyer is apparently estranged from his wife, who was asked to sign a quitclaim deed releasing her from any claims on the property and an acknowledgment that she is not obligated with regards to the loan, and she signed and notarized both documents.

For whatever reason, she had second thoughts last night and called escrow this morning to recant her signing of these documents, which she apparently has the right to do. For whatever fucking reason.

We don't know what she is thinking, or what her problem is, but she is apparently "busy." And no one can get a hold of her to explain that she is not responsible.

I'm having a nervous breakdown.

SOLD

2008-09-30T20:45:00.001-07:00

Tonight at 5pm, our house sold.

Finally, this long excruciating stress is over.

In other news, I took my glucose test today and my sugar has been out of whack all night.

I feel sick and I'm sleepy and I nap and wake up with headaches.

Celebration has to wait until tomorrow.

But thank you god our house has sold.

Leo

2008-09-30T12:31:00.002-07:00

Last night we couldn't find Leo.

He goes outside often, but always comes to the screen door to be let back in.

He usually comes when called. Not quickly, but reliably.

We called and called at 11:00pm and no answer. No sight of him, even. Usually when he is called, we can see him just beyond the fence, not wanting to come in yet, but allowing us to see that he is fine, and close.

But nothing.

We called again at 12:00am and no answer. No sign of him.

The Pope had to go to bed, but I stayed out in the living room, calling every 10 minutes until I went to bed at 2:00am. I had trouble falling asleep, I was worrying.

I left the door open all night, hoping he would return.

Early this morning, the Pope opened the door to the garage to leave for his 7am dentist appointment.

In comes Leo, protesting about the night spent in our hot, boxy garage.

His plaintive wail woke me immediately.

The thought of this good boy being missing, or gone, devastated me.

Welcome back, Leo!! You will never know how much you would be missed if something happened to you, but I promise a lot of catnip tonight to make up for Dad locking you in the garage. You know he didn't do it on purpose.

Oh God

2008-09-27T17:11:00.002-07:00

The Pope and I had a 3D ultrasound done last night, so we have an idea of what the Pup looks like now, which is BEAUTIFUL. I will scan and post soon.

They gave me a diaper bag courtesy of Similac, and inside was a bottle cool pack and some samples. There is a sample for Aquaphor, for the "baby's sensitive skin," and a sample of Preparation H portable wipe, presumably for the mother's ripped apart butt.

God help me.

Will the Cats Love My Baby?

2008-09-26T12:08:00.001-07:00

Or, equally as important, Will the Baby Love My Cats or Will I Need to Release the Baby into the Wild for Wolves to Raise?

I have had a couple of people comment about the cats, and whether I'd get rid of them if for some reason there was a problem with the baby and them, or comment that they'd be interested to see how much spoil the cats once the baby comes. It is something that I think about, so I thought I'd explain myself a bit.

If, when the baby is born, there is a problem with the cats, I will go to every length possible to sort out the issue. I will hire behavioral experts, I will read books, I will do everything I can. And then as a last resort I will keep them separated, and if that still doesn't work, I don't know what my heartbroken self will do.

I have had Lucy since she was 2. She is now 10 years old, and she has been my best friend this whole time. There have been some hard time, some sad times, some times when I went to bed crying every night. For months. There were weekends I didn't leave my bed. There were nights where I drank so much wine, I collapsed sobbing at my computer, writing tortured poems full of self-loathing and shame. Throughout the whole thing, Lucy always cuddled up to me and purred loudly and slept right with me and always ran to see me when I got home, and spent all her time within five feet of me.

Even now, she is sitting at my feet while I type this. She is old now, and not so spry, and she sleeps more than she eats (which was a ratio I'd never thought I'd see). The thought of abandoning her in her senior years is appalling to me. I can't do it. She has given me everything she's had to give all this time. She has been steadfastly devoted to me since the moment I met her.

The way we spoil them, well that is simply routine at this point. I've given my cats wet food for dinner for at least 7 years now. It is as natural as pouring a glass of water for me. The Pope has done the litter for the last several years, so that will stay the same, and the only thing I can think that will change is the attention that they currently get. But as much as we know the baby will take everything, the cats don't actually ask for much. A lap, a leg when we're sleeping, and brushing once in a while if we feel like it.

And they're our friends, our family members, they are as much a part of who we are as anything else I can think of.

We have Comcast cable, which has this great feature called On Demand. They have a pet channel, and I found a brief show called "How to Acclimate Your Cat to a New Baby." I was extremely eager to watch this, and selected it. To my surprise, it was about 4 minutes long. It said that cats are pretty neutral about babies, for the most part, and as long as you make sure not to ignore the cat completely, they generally get along fine with the new addition to the family. And that was it.

Being that Lucy is one of the most constant and loving friends I've ever known, I think we'll be fine.

If not, I will change the baby's name to Romulus. Regardless of sex.

Disgusting Pregnancy Facts

2008-09-22T19:58:00.003-07:00

No one ever tells you that:

1. Pregnancy makes your underwear smell like a petting zoo.

2. Your numerous farts will be disproportionate to ANYTHING you could possibly have eaten. For example: I had an orange earlier today and for the next four hours I farted what had to have been gorgonzola-covered chili beans that sat in the backseat of my car for eight days in direct sunlight.

3. You will be unable to keep your eyes and hands off your own boobs.

4. That might just be me.

Attention All Television Producers

2008-09-22T11:27:00.001-07:00

Michael Phelps is NOT THAT INTERESTING.

Awesome

2008-09-19T12:43:00.003-07:00

Found this fabulous thing here.

Fuck

2008-09-18T23:05:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, the sale of our house was supposed to close.
Wait, no, this is not deja vu. This is not July. This is September, and it the SECOND of our house sales not to close.

For this particular sale, we lost approximately $21k of profit. We are giving the buyer the sweetest goddamn deal of the century here, all with FHA and Nehemiah programs. And still, this fucking bonehead has the audacity to accrue SIXTEEN THOUSAND dollars worth of debt in one month, bringing his personal debt to income ratio to an untenable (for FHA) standard.

This jerk is bringing NOTHING to the table. The Nehemiah program essentially pays his closing costs and downpayment, partially through FHA's reasonable terms, and partially through a generous donation from us, the absolutely screwed sellers who have lost $21k in two months in this sinking market.

But that still isn't good enough, and this idiot racks up even more debt due to "circumstances that couldn't be avoided."
Circumstances as in, you're just too irresponsible and stupid to survive a month with increasing your personal debt? I don't know.

So far, this deal is not dead. It is just......not happening yet. He needs to figure out a way to pay the debt at closing. He is apparently "trying" to do so. Our agent is "trying to find out what can be done to make this deal happen." I have tried very hard to make it clear, but am willing to spell it out exactly, that that only way more money will be given to this deadbeat is from the broker's commissions, I ABSOLUTELY WILL CUT OFF MY GODDAMN NOSE TO SPITE MY FACE.

I will not offer any more of our meager profit to this imbecile.

So, welcome to an active home sale in this market. I have bought two homes now. One a condo and one a house. Both times I was on time with my shit together at closing. No transaction has ever been delayed because of me.

What is the point of being financially responsible anymore? Miscreants and idiots are kings in this housing downturn.

I will be delighted not to own anything anymore. I sincerely hope that day is on the near horizon.

Is It Just Me?

2008-09-14T15:29:00.002-07:00

Or do you think that in every picture of Katie Holmes, she appears as if she is lurching about in her ugly designer shoes, and appears significantly uncomfortable in avant garde designs and fashions that do not flatter her and despite her best efforts refuse to start trends?

These latest series of jeans photos that have hit Just Jared and Perez Hilton are atrocious. I've never considered Katie Holmes as anything other than a mildly interesting up and coming star. Which disappeared, of course, when she married Tom Cruise and pledged her love to Xenu. Now she is annoyingly thrust into center stage, when she has never been captivating enough to hold the attention of audiences on her own.

I just gathered the plates from the cats' latest wet food encounter. They get wet food every night, because I'm a sucker. They don't get the same wet food two nights in a row. I know what they like and I buy what they like. I know, I know. But they're my babies!!!!! Whatever little thing I can do to make them happy, you know.....

So anyway, they had flaked tuna last night. I picked up the plates this morning and they have backbones in them!!! The cats licked all the meat from the bones, and there are distinct backbones and other bony remnants in the dish. Gross! Out of all the things I feed them, I have to say I hate the fish ones the most. They stink up everything, especially the trash (the old can) and the dishwasher (the plates until I rinse them). Barf.

The only worse thing was when Finny was a kitten and lamb made him fart. THAT was unpleasant, to say the least.

Don't You Wish

2008-09-11T00:25:00.002-07:00

That a side effect of heartburn would be to actually breathe flames?

I wouldn't mind it so much then.

Forecast: Annoyance

2008-09-10T18:03:00.003-07:00

Note to CNN, MSNBC, and all the television news storms: Not every goddamn storm needs to be the top story. I realize that no one wants to drop the ball, Katrina-style again, but honestly. Do we need every website to scream that there's a potential disaster behind every tropical storm? Its going to be a long season.

I'm also calling out to all the media everywhere, STOP. You're waay too caught up in your own perceived importance. You believe you're critical so that we get every nuance of every comment ever spoken. This latest Obama-Lipsticked-Pig brouhaha is a completely manufactured shitstorm. Sometimes, folks, an analogy is just an analogy.

The cats are hungry, but babies, you're going to have to wait. Mama's on a roll.

I am also incredibly disgusted by the property manager of our house. He's a complete tool. I've not spoken of this much, since this blog is read by mostly close friends who knew this, but at the time I quit my job I had been managing over half a million square feet of biotech laboratory space. I had been managing this much space for over four years. My portfolio had an annual income of $21M. I was constantly overworked, it was some of the most incredible stress I've ever experienced, and every day brought an avalanche of new issues and challenges. Yet still, I ran circles around the rinky dink property manager who manages our home. He talks a good game, but never responds to any request, and has a litany of excuses as to why he doesn't return phone calls or come by to make repairs. I am seriously thinking about starting my own residential property management firm once the baby is born, because if it is this easy to charge this much for a house, I would be rich in a year.

But I digress (and yes babies, I'm coming, just one more second)....

I am absolutely horrified by the state of America's intelligence today. I have been performing an in-depth study of human evolution over the last two weeks by watching every People's Court iteration on television. And I've come to the conclusion that the rate by which America's intelligence is decreasing is alarming. I'm having tshirts made, and as soon as they are done I'm starting a revolution. If you would like to join my revolution against stupid people, you will be asked to sign something, because that is the most common thread (aside from appalling grammar) that I am seeing in our decline.

What is refreshing is that some of the judges, Judge Judy, Judge Marilyn Milian (who I love) and Judge Joe Brown, are as disgusted by today's idiocy as I am. You can see it in their derisive comments. Judge Judy doesn't play games, she called a woman an idiot this morning. I agreed with her wholeheartedly. I plan on recruiting them shortly.

Okay, they're circling me like hawks now, I'm on call for wet cat food supply. Gutentag.

I Should Have Been A Model

2008-09-04T13:35:00.001-07:00

I was watching project runway last night thinking that being a model would be so cool. Not for the clothes or never eating, or the coke addiction or any of that fun stuff, but for the simple fact that every time you do your job someone brushes your hair first.

I love having my hair brushed, it is probably the single thing I enjoy the most in the whole world. Except perhaps for falling asleep or watching Lucy sleep in a patch of sunlight.

Wow

2008-09-03T20:47:00.002-07:00

Sarah Palin's a real bitch.

And the Republicans apparently don't care about uplifting the country, they only care about attacking people.
And if I hear one more thing about McCain's POW experiences, I'm gonna barf.

Stop Now, Media, You Need to Stop Now!!

2008-09-01T12:17:00.004-07:00

After the initial shock that was Gov. Sarah Palin's appointment as the VP candidate for John McCain, the media is out in full force, speculating that she pretended to give birth to her 5th child, Trig, in order to assume the child of her teenage daughter. Now the news that her daughter Bristol is indeed pregnant at the age of 17 is being vultured by the assorted media, along with the reports of her husband's DWI. I am appalled by today's media. It has long past reached a crescendo of absurdity. No one has a private life anymore, no one is judged on the basis of their political activities only. I'm sick of it!

If Sarah Palin pretended to give birth to her first grandchild, so be it. They made that decision as a family, and we should respect it. If true, it isn't the first time this has happened in the world, and save this young girl and her mother the nitpicking into it. Judge Sarah Palin on her statements, on her political record, and on her merits alone.

I couldn't watch the Democratic National Convention. The media commentary was unbearable. Same with the Olympics, the announcers would NOT shut up during the events, so that the television audience could barely concentrate on watching these athletes perform. What has happened to media everywhere is an abomination. We are left no room to speculate on our own, we need quasi-qualified announcers to shove their every inane thought down our throats until there is no room left in our heads for our own opinions and thoughts.

I could go on and on, and I might just do that, but my blood boils now.

At Devi's Request....

2008-08-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

Belly Pictures!! I am 25 weeks pregnant today!

Discourse for the Modern Age

2008-08-29T15:19:00.002-07:00

Although I am still amazed by Facebook, the novelty has worn off and I see it for what it is, a modern day communication system. People communicate by reading each other's typically one-line status updates, or by poking each other, sending gifts, etc. In this MTV era, where our concentration can only last past the next 3.2 seconds, this is a perfect medium. And I don't mean to slam it, because I've reconnected with so many college era friends that I was wondering about. I was able to gather more details about friends and some family through this, so that's nice. And I like that you can update at your leisure, you're not forced to have a correspondence with someone when you don't feel like it, which has always been the death of my friendships. Because I rarely feel like talking. I'm not sure why that is. I love to hear what's going on with people, but the retelling of my life stories has always bored me.

Right now, I spend my days in near silence. I talk to Lucy, or sometimes I'll turn on the TV to hear people talk, or if I'm out I'll talk to salespeople, but for the most part, I don't talk to anyone. I would have thought that would be perfect, but it is actually pretty stifling. So when the Pope gets off work, I chatter at him endlessly, until he gets irritated with me, barks at me, and leaves me crying all the way home from the store. And doesn't even notice.

I found a blog from an old boyfriend, who is in a polyamorous, open relationship. I have met his wife, who is an awesome person, a truly beautiful person, inside and out. I saw them a few times when I lived in Seattle and they lived in Portland. But I read his blog, and found entries of heartbreaks from broken side-relationships and it makes me wonder why anyone who has found a soul mate (because his reflections on his wife, child and their life sound very harmonious and special) would freely offer themselves up for the heartache and pain that encompass dating. I can't imagine the person that would date someone who is married with a child, whether or not the spouse approves. I suppose there are people out there that don't want the attachment of a mate, who just want a relationship of other determinations, and I should preface this entire comment by saying I have no idea the structure of my friend's open relationship, or what kind of relationships they each are involved in. I just remember how heartbreaking dating was, and how empty and unworthy my experiences within it left me feeling, and I can't imagine opting to continue that cycle. Even for someone who would be interested in talking to me.

Maybe that's the reason they seek outside company, to keep finding people that are interested in their old stories and observations, to make them feel beautiful and mysterious again.

The main thing I notice about my old college friends is that for the most part, they stayed in the area I knew them in, and they seem happy. And although I am happy about the upcoming baby, there isn't a whole lot else about my life that makes me happy at this point. Although I like our house and love the fact that family is close by, Sacramento is not the place for me. I don't like not working, but the thought of going back into commercial property management again at the end of this makes me a little sick to my stomach, I truly do not want to do that anymore. There were things I was interested in at one point. And out of most of my friends, it seems like only I have abandoned them entirely for stability, money and god knows what else I abandoned my dreams for. Influence of others? Probably, as ashamed as I am to admit that.

Faceous

2008-08-26T11:40:00.002-07:00

I joined Facebook yesterday morning and subsequently sucked the whole day dry of any potential.
I sat on that damned site all morning long looking up random people from my life and.....I FOUND THEM. Totally odd weird people that I would never expect to be hooked up to an internet friend site. Bizarre. I was also found by people, within an HOUR of logging into the system, high school friends found me and asked me to be their friends. Wonderful feeling.

Today I am going to be productive.

Just as soon as I get done posting this and drinking my coffee. ;)

Hot Time In the Old Town Tonight!

2008-08-23T12:22:00.002-07:00

It is 12:22pm in the Sacramento Area and the temperature is 75 degrees.
For the last three weeks, there has been an endless blue sky and shining, hot sun.

What a change from just over one month ago when all we had to look forward to was perhaps a few hours or a weekend of sun from our rainy home.

Today is Saturday, August 23 and I am 34 years old today.
My husband, the Pope, has turned 37 today.

A shared birthday makes for somewhat odd bedfellows. I recognize so many of my own traits in my husband's decisions, outbursts and general way of life. Luckily, we are also very different, he is far more temperate than I am, and not as prone to anger or anxiety as I am.

He is usually depressed about getting older and grouchy on his birthday, while I am generally happy and content on mine. My twenties were no great shake, I have no desire to hold onto youth, and I am (so far) welcoming crows feet (because it shows I laugh) and creaks and groans (because it makes me slow down a bit) that accompany getting older.

We also received some other good news this morning. For the last week we've been negotiating on a new offer on our house.
The last go-round of the counter offer was accepted and we have a deal.

Although we are elated to have the pressure of this house off our backs, we have lost a significant amount of money on this deal. We will walk away with a small amount of money, but overall lost almost all of our equity and down payment. Down here in Sacramento, however, most people are living in houses which in the last year have lost over $100k in equity. The market in Sacramento was hit harder than any other area in the nation (to believe the newspapers and homeowners). I believe them. There are hundreds of new developments, most neighborhoods sitting empty or being overrun by renters. Beautiful, brand new homes turned into rentals for more than one couple. We rented in a nice, more expensive neighborhood to avoid this trend.

We spent more money so that we could see things like we saw last night: A woman walking with her just barely toddling daughter. We waved and she waved back. The neighbors next door that we haven't met have a tiny baby inside, as evidenced by that tiny baby cry we hear.

So things are good, and looking up on the start of this 34th year of my life. We have a new baby coming in four months, which we're delighted about. We have a nice house with friends and family very near by. We have plans tonight with a couple that we love to see.

I am feeling good.

Better

2008-08-16T08:40:00.002-07:00

Yesterday we got internet and cable. Today we get our washer and dryer.
I am slowly climbing back into humanity, it feels.

My mom arrived yesterday and the sight of her lifted my heart like you wouldn't believe.
It is impossible to be unhappy with my mother around you.

She is just joy encapsulated.

So she is here, and Sears for some damn reason called me at 7:26am to confirm the delivery of our washer and dryer, so I am up drinking a cup of coffee and watching Women's Gymnastics recaps on Comcast's On Demand feature.

I love television.

I love internet and I love my Mac.

I'm BACK.
And I'm retired, so I'll try to blog every day. And hey, I'll start trying to make them interesting again! Woo.

Sort of Back

2008-08-11T20:13:00.002-07:00

I'm sort of back.
That is, I can get online after my husband is done working for the day.
But by that time I feel as if I've missed the day.

I've been tired the last two days and my dreams are still full of anxiety.
I wake up feeling worse than I did when I went to sleep.

My mom has booked a ticket to come out to see me this weekend.
At the age of 33, nearing 34, and expecting my first baby, I can safely say that I need my mom.

Tomorrow I'm off to babysit my darling nieces, who always cheer me up.
I'm lonely and stressed and tired. I'm very very tired.

The heat in Sacramento is unending. It saps the very soul right out of you.
As much as I wished for no rain, I did not wish to be fried everytime I walked outside. We've let the cats out and they usually come right back in. They are obviously still Seattle cats.

Although Lucy senses that something is wrong with me. She doesn't leave my side, and spends every available moment clinging to a part of me, purring and squeaking at me. I think she's trying to tell me that everything will be okay.

I certainly hope so. It is time for some things to start being okay.

Maybe once the baby is born I won't feel so desperately lonely.

Battered

2008-07-25T17:29:00.002-07:00

Writing to you from Sacramento, where our world has fallen apart.
A week ago, more than that, Tuesday the 15th of July, three days before closing, my agent called me to tell me that the buyer was backing out. WHAT? I said.

The buyer officially backed out the next day. We were leaving on Saturday with the house unsold, vacant, and now we are two states away.

I can't even get into this. I can't think about it too long without bursting into tears. How do we rent a place down here when we still carry the mortgage payment on our house in Seattle? How will we ever find another buyer when all the news is full of banks closing, stocks dropping, economy sucking???

I am not even on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I'm in the middle of one as we speak. I'm deep in the throes of my private little nervous breakdown. With that one phone call, everything we hoped for busted right out from under us.

Out! Done! Woo!

2008-07-12T16:31:00.002-07:00

My last day of work was yesterday.
Everyone expected me to feel poignant and sad.

But did I? Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The joy I felt threatened to blossom over into hysterical giggling by 2:40pm.
By the time I drove out of the garage for the LAST TIME IN MY LIFE, I was laughing.

Goodbye and good luck to you. I'm off to be happy again.

And pack, dear god, we are moving in 5 DAYS!

Hello triple digit heat with family.
Hellooooo Hellooooo Hellloooooooooo!!!

A Special Message

2008-07-06T12:47:00.001-07:00

XELA!

You wrote me the greatest email, and I am going to write you back.
I wish I could sit down with wine and do it, but alas.

Although I've heard there's great non-alcoholic wine, JLohr actually makes one, called Ariel.
Maybe I'll get a bottle of that and sit down this week.

I will write you back, love you for sending me such an awesome letter.

Scattered

2008-07-05T19:02:00.001-07:00

We are packing!
We have procrastinated beyond all procrastinating and now we are really doing it.
Packing always reminds me of things I've wanted to do with little bits and bobs that I've been keeping.

So I pack, find bits and do things with them.
Like tiny corners torn off of cards I've received in the mail. Addresses I wanted to keep somewhere.
I just entered them all into my computer.

I am so organized.
And this is how packing starts.

Packing ends with me up in arms, sick of all my crap and piling things into random boxes, sure I'll never open it again.

And typically, I don't. And about four years later, on some other move, I'll discard that stuff.

But for now, those things are the priceless artifacts of my life. Required so I remember who I was and where I've come.

Freedom

2008-07-04T11:30:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, I lost my job. I didn't get fired, they just accepted my pseudo-resignation. I had tried to move with them to Northern California, but they didn't have anything for me there, so they said that and then there were these long pauses. They were willing to keep me on in Seattle, but the Pope needs to get to Northern California as soon as possible, so that wasn't an option for us.

So, effective next Friday, I am no longer an employee of the company I have worked at for 9 years.

I feel ELATED.
I feel like I was just paroled. I have been so unhappy for so many years, and then the February Scotland explosion burned me to a crisp.

And with that brief update, I am going to pack.
Because my new life is waiting for me.

Waiting for the Pope, waiting for the Pup and waiting for a happy Salome to come down and remember that life shouldn't have to be so hard, and you shouldn't have to work yourself into a chronic hive condition in order to live.

Happy Independence Day.

Wow

2008-06-23T20:14:00.002-07:00

SK and Julie, you guys are too cute. By the way, you live near each other. :)
I don't actually CARE what anyone thinks about the names. I just kinda wanted to see them in print.

But I am bowing to the stated advice of you guys and taking down that post.

:)

I guess everyone hated them, because no one said they liked them!

I'm not entirely sure, myself. We like them, but I'm not 100% when I see them in writing.

I will NOT keep you posted on this. Hee Hee.

People Fucking Bug Me

2008-06-20T21:26:00.002-07:00

Do you ever have days when the only thing that can be counted on is that people are idiots who screw things up and do a half-assed job ALL OF THE TIME?

I can't even tell you the number of times I'm faced with someone being a complete dipshit.
Brick walls don't give, I swear that I'm surrounded by the thickest, least sharp tools in the shed.

I'm trying with 3/4 of my brain tied behind my back and I still outperform you.

That is so sad, and you're gonna be completely screwed when I leave.

Oh, and THIS

2008-06-19T21:44:00.003-07:00

Good Enough

2008-06-19T21:06:00.004-07:00

My daily efforts are a study in Good Enoughs.
Appearance in the morning? I shrug and say, Good Enough.
My reaction to work stress? Couple my already irritable nature with some serious hormones and if I don't cry, if I don't burst blood vessels in my eyes and if I don't break out into a furious sweat? Good Enough.

Work product.....well, I've been doing "good enoughs" for many a year now. What is astounding to me is that no one has noticed (not so they'd comment, at least) on the fact that I care so much less these days and I go above and beyond just about not at all anymore.

I got rebuked about my absence from posting, so obviously that is not good enough.

My (in)ability to quit smoking? Not good enough.
Exercising consisting of walking to the refrigerator or snack drawer? Not good enough.

I haven't packed - closing date is July 18th, we have a signed agreement, yah!!
I don't know where we're going, the escrow papers asked for a forwarding address today and it sent me into a panic.
What's the abbreviation for 1265 Nowhere To Go Street, Hyperventilating, CA?

I'm reading books like they're blood transfusions. I need to swarm my thoughts with the polished prose of others, calm me down. I don't do anything because the very act of starting something makes my throat constrict and my chest start to heave, because where do I start? How will I ever finish, where am I going to go? How do you fix a leaking instahot and how are we going to drive three cats for two days down to California when Lucy screams in the car unless I let her on my lap.

I remember moving from San Diego to Los Angeles. My ex-husband wouldn't let Lucy sit on my lap, and she cried and the drugs made her third eyelid stay permanently halfway over the surface of her eyes. She stumbled and fell, drugged but frantic, trying to get to me. I finally snapped at him, as he pulled her wailing away from me to just let go of her. Take your hands off of her. He let her go and she curled on my lap and passed out, exhausted. She didn't make a peep for the three hour drive. Because have you ever noticed that unless it is 2 in the morning, the trip from San Diego to LA takes forever and the traffic is miserable?

I found a photo album of my first year in college when I was home in Ohio this past weekend. I had forgotten so much about that year, but what I felt when I looked at the pictures was the PROMISE I felt that whole year. The sun and the ocean and the music and the people and the youth!

And inevitably I screwed up opportunities, I chose poorly and boxed myself into places that make my skin itch and my histamines freak, and now here I am, four months pregnant and nowhere to go and not sure if I'll have a job in a month.

Because being pregnant for the first time wasn't enough to think about. Not nearly enough to worry about.

Forgive Me

2008-06-08T11:51:00.003-07:00

I sit down almost daily to write something to you, but I agonize over what I would say.

There is a lot going on, and I'm nervous and stressed out, although all of it is joyful.

We are going home to my family's house in Ohio next week. That always brings forth great stories.

If I can break this strangling writer's block sooner, I will tell you how I feel about:

1. The offer that we signed on our house. Once they accept, we will leave on July 18th.
2. The widget that continually shows me my baby looks like a baby, we're having a baby, oh my god I am so unprepared!!
3. Finally leaving the job that has made me miserable for over three years. The joy that threatens to pour out of me sometimes is incalculable.
4. My recent distaste with the pretentiousness that is NPR. That is Celebrity Gossip, that is almost everything around me.
5. How much I hate Hillary and wish she would go away and never come back. As a side note to that, how much I resent being lumped in to her supporters, just by being a woman. She does not speak for me. She never carried my vote.
6. The fact that making a list seems to have helped my writer's block. Hmm. Interesting stuff.

Now, off to make breakfast and pounce on my sleeping, darling husband!!!!

For Your Consideration

2008-06-05T16:23:00.001-07:00

I have eaten almost one loaf of sourdough wheat bread in three days.

Toasted.

Hello, my name is Salome and I am a sourdoughaholic. With Hummus.

Gag

2008-06-05T16:13:00.002-07:00

I had a wretched moment of GAG this morning.
I was barreling down the street, merrily barreling, as you do, when I saw a crow plucking at something. I figured it was some of the fast food trash that the fast living trash in the neighborhood eats and then promptly throws on the ground, preventing good upstanding citizens like the Pope and myself from SELLING THE GODDAMNED HOUSE, so I didn't think much of it at first.

As I drew closer, however, I realized that the crow was beak-plucking the dessicated, destroyed, bloody area where the head of a now dead mouse had been.

A crow was eating the head of a dead mouse.

I haven't previously thought much of crows, I find them to be thuggish and ugly, and their caw sounds too much like arrogant bitching for me to find it charming on a Saturday afternoon. But THIS. THIS is a reason to buy a BB gun.

Who knows when they will graduate from mouse to cat? And when that happens? War will be declared between Salome and Crows.

I will murder them in murders.
Mwah.

LOOKIT

2008-05-27T19:39:00.004-07:00

How PERFECT is this??? On sale at Fred Meyer today!

Also on sale, and conveniently, because that is EXACTLY what I stopped for:

Ask the Pope, we totally stopped for Milk Duds!!!

10 am

2008-05-26T10:59:00.003-07:00

I wake up at 10am regularly now (on the weekends).

If my life were a movie, this time would be a portentous sign that something truly awful had happened at this time, and only I can find out what it was.

But alas, the only ominous thing about 10 am appears to be that it is time to pee and I need to eat something.

In other news, I'm dreaming again. I haven't been dreaming since I found out I was pregnant. I'll spare you the details of my dream, but suffice it to say that if I ever find myself with my closest friends in a sex club/casino, I will feel a strong sense of deja vu. Oh, and I will know exactly what promotional material from Lindsay Lohan's early career will make great collectors items.

I bought a toaster yesterday. It has been approximately 5 years since I have had one. I'm serious! You can ask SK and CLP, who made toast for 7 using a baking sheet in the oven!!! I finally got tired of flipping bread and standing by the oven while it broiled. I bought it yesterday and today, I have toasted and it is everything I remembered and more. Watch my bread intake skyrocket and remind me why I haven't had one in years.

We have located many many areas that were peed on by the errant cat. We discovered who it was, too. A feral boy in the neighborhood apparently decreed that this was his house, came in through cat door one work day and sprayed several places in every room. You can mostly find them by scooting along like a bloodhound and sniffing corners, or objects with corners. We are enzyming them as we see them, to eradicate the smell. Even outside, where he marked the actual house. Hoo. I tell you, if I get my hands on him, I'm going to ensure that little fucker never pees again. If you know what I mean.

This spring we have experienced a weed explosion the likes of which I've never seen. Every spring dawns anew with weeds, but this year it is exponentially worse. I think back on our first year here and how I wanted natural remedies to everything.....because mah kitties were going to be outside and I needed to protect their delicateness!! Mah babies!

This year I am so tired and there are so many more that I find myself online looking for residential-grade napalm. I bought concentrated Round-Up and mixed it in a deck sprayer and sprayed areas vigorously. I don't even care if PLANTS DIE, because I get tired of them, mostly, after I plant them. I should be a landscape designer, because I love to select and plant them, and then wait one year to their next active stage (i.e. flowering) and then ......I'm done. Ready to change it about.

Tired

2008-05-19T23:17:00.002-07:00

I'm very tired.

Not tired enough to get off the couch where I obsessively watch episodes of Bridezilla (who ARE these people who act like this? I fear Middle America will eat itself) or Jon & Kate Plus 8. I now know all the kids by sight, or voice. I think they're adorable. Cara, Leah and Aaden are my favorites.

I'm too tired to do anything at work. Or is it ennui? Probably a serious case of pregnancy ennui with regards to work. I'm having a baby, so I don't care that the locker rooms are out of towels or that you lost your third quarter in a row in the tampon dispensers and now you are so pissed that you are going to send me a snotty email, railing about a building that has the temerity to charge 25 cents for low-quality tampons that should be free. Hey, try remembering to carry some in your purse! That's what I would do.

And let me let you in on a tiiiiiiny secret. The building is made of concrete and steel. It doesn't think, it doesn't feel, and it doesn't go out of its way to make your existence miserable. But I do, so be careful about the tone of the emails you send to me.

Well, we had some banner weather in Seattle over the weekend. 88 degrees on Saturday! Woo! No air-conditioning and a resident who hates all noise and general sounds of other people's joy....not so woo.

I had to walk to pick up the ever-failing car. It was probably just under a mile from our house, mostly downhill. I stepped outside the house and immediately had to pee. I went back into the house, peed and then retraced my steps. I got about halfway out of our street before I had to pee again. Sure it was just the phantom pregnancy urge, I kept walking. I was almost in tears by the time I got to the auto-dealership, every step threatened to force me onto the side of the road with a small weed for privacy and a couple of poison-ivy leaves as toilet paper.

I have now been stone sober for over two months. I have just one thing to say: it is seriously overrated.

URGENT LETTER

2008-05-10T22:13:00.005-07:00

DEAR GODDAMNED CATS:

Now is NOT the time to start marking the bedspread and bedskirt.

And somewhere in the living room, although we do not know exactly where.

For fuck's sake, we ARE TRYING TO SELL THE HOUSE!

Urine in the proper place is appreciated during this important time.

I swear to God, when I find out who is doing this, I am going to take you into the backyard and pee all over you.

YOU THINK I WON'T?

Mom

Letters Letters Letters

2008-05-06T22:08:00.002-07:00

Dear People Who Are Looking At Our House,

Buy our house. Please? Please buy our house.

All the neighbors are being quiet. Nice of them. Of course, I'll egg their house if they aren't, but in general, everyone is behaving themselves. Like they do, you know, until you buy the house, move in and find that they blast their oldies rock station over the sound their lawnmower and/or bitch at you the first day you're moving in because you parked in front of the mailbox. Because the moving truck was in your driveway. And it was a Sunday. And you're right that I could block the mailman. Who delivers on a Sunday. In an alternate universe. Take a chill pill, Terry, fergodsake.

Anyhoo, where were we? Oh Yes! Buy our house. Please? Please buy our house.

I am Tired of Making the Bed,

Salome

Dear Constipation,

Ohhh my gosh you are killing me. KILLING ME. You will be the death of me. In a relatively easy early pregnancy, the fact that I cannot go to the bathroom is making me want to lie down on the floor and cry. Metamucil (tastes like Tang!) doesn't seem to work. The Feast, which I once memorably blogged about, also doesn't work. Nothing works. I've been warned not to strain, for fear of the grapes, but it is hard not to! When you finally lose your patience after 5 straight days of ABSOLUTELY NO ACTION HAPPENING and you feel like you've eaten two beachballs for dinner when in reality you ate the spiciest thing you could find in the hopes of manufacturing Montezuma's revenge, sometimes you have to just sit there and strain and make all kinds of Cinemax noises and finally pass something that looks like an inch of concrete. And it makes your whole day.

Chronically Over-sharing,

Salome

Dear Library Books,

Please take yourselves back, you weren't any good.

Disdainfully,

Salome

Boobs, Glorious Boobs

2008-04-29T20:06:00.002-07:00

A couple people have asked how I'm feeling.
I'm actually feeling pretty much fine. I experienced early nausea, which prompted us buying the test, which gave us the news, which caused me to feel every first trimester symptom in a matter of three days. And then I came to my senses and realized that I feel mostly fine.

By all accounts I am in my 6th week.
I have low to mid-grade nausea, exacerbated if I don't eat frequently.
And if I skip breakfast for any ill-advised reason, the nausea swells up and lasts throughout the day.

Vernor's soda is my friend.
I need to eat frequently. Tiny portions, because I feel full almost instantly.
My boobs, which have been the bane of my existence, are now these gorgeous globes.
They are also about 92 degrees each, they weigh 7 pounds each and they are so exquisitely sensitive that if anyone but me touches them, I'm liable to smack the person. Taking off my bra at the end of the day causes me to wince. Rolling over onto my boobs causes me to wince. Hugging someone causes me to wince. Forget about the cats climbing all over me, the agony would be impenetrable.

I am easily distracted, if I get mad I get rushingly, staggeringly mad, with crescendos of blood pounding in my ears and the precipice of tears rushes on me suddenly. I haven't gotten sad, but if I'm touched or heartwarmed over something, I could just about sob about it. I watched a Baby Story on TLC this afternoon and welled up with tears over how cute a couple's four year old son looked, sleeping. It is goofy and silly.

Today I put on an empire waist blouse and turned to leave the bedroom. I caught myself in the mirror and had to change, it would have given me away completely. Funny how when your uterus expands to the size of a plum, all that excess fat I've been snuggling it with makes me look like I'm 4 months pregnant.

I am most definitely pregnant with the Pope's child, because I crave chocolate, I salivate over chocolate, and as many of you know me well will remember, I'm not actually all that crazy about chocolate, but it is the Pope's favorite sweet.

So far the only thing making me feel sick is the damn candle in the bedroom. I need to throw that thing out.

I wake up like clockwork at 3am to pee. I am a frequent pee-er, but I have almost always slept through the night about it.
I am actually noticing a fair decrease in my trips to the restroom to pee.

So that is how I'm feeling.
And then I'm feeling the other things, harder to describe. Like I want to hold this baby tomorrow! I want to meet this baby in 5 minutes. I want to tell it how much I love it already. How much we hoped for it, how happy its dad and I are that it decided to come to us. How much fun we're going to have, what laughter, love and joy we want to show it, how excited we are to meet this little person created out of the best things of both of us.

At least we hope it gets the best of both of us. I flunked the genetic roulette with my parents, getting none of my mother's slender limbs, lightning metabolism and placid demeanor, getting most of my father's ass, bad skin and frighteningly nasty temper.

Dear pup, please concentrate on the chromosomes carrying your father's calm demeanor. Please get his long, skinny legs, and his thick curly hair. But I hope you reserve some of your mom's for a chance at blue eyes and the ability to raise some serious hell when and if life warrants it.

Cat Saga (Part Boring of 1 Trillion Parts)

2008-04-22T20:51:00.003-07:00

Leo has definitely sensed that there's a little kitty in the oven. He is very attentive. Must be on my lap. Must snuggle lovingly whenever I sit down. Stray, (she who was named Cleo but is now called Sheba) stomps flatfooted around the house. She stands, and I swear she is duck-footed. The CUTEST. It is just the cutest. She chirps and squeaks at us throatily. She's a DARLING.

Lucy missed all indicators, then must have suddenly felt left out. Now she's dragging her baby (a ripped up stuffed rainbow mouse-thing whose sticker eyes are hanging on by a thread, she has had it since I adopted her, 8 years ago) around the house and mournfully calls us to it. This mouse she alternately bites, places gently by her bed, leaves next to the food bowl, and once, memorably and instantly washed, in the litterbox.

Wasn't as funny as the time Finny dragged a magazine into the litter box, then looked up startled, while I gasped with laughter in the doorway, but still, touching that Lucy wanted to teach her baby good manners.

All she really wants you to do (I think) is come up to her and ask her how her baby is. She will look up at you with these sad eyes and if you pet the baby then she seems to be ok. She will happily come with you and curl into your legs to sleep.

I find myself most mornings with at least one of the cats snuggled up to me.
This is different in no way than usual, I'm a cat magnet while sleeping, but I'm more touched when I wake up.

The Pope says I'm way more mellow, too. I hope to keep that with me. He says I'm definitely driving differently, although I reached over him and honked in frustration while he was driving today, and that is way not mellow. ;)

It is early to tell anyone yet, but I would sit down to blog with this huge, happy elephant hanging over me, and everything else just paled in comparison to what I want to talk about.

A Baby Shark is Called a Pup

2008-04-19T11:32:00.004-07:00

As some of you may know, the Pope and I long for a child.
We have been trying, on and off, since January 2007.

We have both long held fears and suspicions that some vital part of our bodies wasn't working.
We've spent our lives being afraid of contraception failing, fear of unplanned parenthood.

Then you try to get pregnant and you realize that there are only about 3 days a month that it is likely.
And even then, you could try for months and months and months and months without ignite.

So much to our wondrous relief, much to our teary heart's desires, it is with great joy and pleasure that we announce the existence of our little Pup, due December 15th of this year.

Thank you God and all our loved ones in the heavens, for allowing this miracle to happen for us.

Love,
MamaSal and DaddyPope

He Was So Proud

2008-04-13T22:35:00.002-07:00

This weekend the Pope bought himself a straight razor.
He tried it out Saturday morning:

He walked out of the back of the house to where I was on the phone with ScaredMamaBear and asked how he looked.

He looked like he'd been on the receiving end of a weedwhacker kiss.
For the rest of the day he said people looked at him funny.
He would say, "you should see the CAT!"

This man cracks me up. I love him to bits.

ScaredMamaBear doesn't write very often (she's got two wee boys) but when she does, it is worth reading. Check her out when you have the time.

By the way.......I am to call Santa Fe at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and I've got two more calls tomorrow regarding what San Jose can offer me. Or what I can offer them.

Believe me when I say that all our prayers got stuck in a queue somewhere.
They're being answered, one by one by one by one.

Unbelievable

2008-04-08T14:16:00.002-07:00

I have suffered from chronic hives for over a year. A powerful prescription antihistamine taken every night keeps them in check, but I have been very frustrated, wondering what was making my body crazy.

I AM ALLERGIC TO CATS.

AND DOGS.

AND DUST MITES. (like really seriously allergic, my arm wealed up in linear welts at the dust mite test).

AND GRASS.

AND WEEDS.

AND......slightly......to peanuts and shellfish.

I have been lying about being allergic to shellfish ever since I was a kid, because I hate the taste of it. But now it has been confirmed.

I was in an impotent itching furiousness, waiting for little dots of oil pricked into my skin to show some action. Then four did, and the itching started. Then six more picked up. Then the dust mites exploded in welts and weals all over my arm.

They had told me to stop taking my RX at least three days before my appointment, so I was primed for a fit anyway. The tests got my arms itching, which made my right shin itch, which made my right armpit, side of the next, inner ear and left palm itch, and from there, my whole body inflamed.

That is what a fit of chronic hives feels like. And if you scratch any of these above itches, they all of a sudden feel like bees stinging you, they itch so furiously.

Sigh.

I have a new prescription and some tips to keep the allergens at bay in my house.

Lucy not supposed to sleep with me at night, but she makes me so happy when she does that, I don't have the heart to stop her.

We'll have to get used to taking these pills.

You Have To Understand The Way I Am

2008-04-05T23:58:00.003-07:00

We went and saw Cabaret tonight. MY SECOND FAVORITE MUSICAL EVER.

First is Evita. Thank my parents for playing showtunes when I was a kid.

We are a theatre loving family.

Except maybe my brother, but he has good taste in music, so we let him stay.

I once saw my very reserved brother sing along to Grease with a wooden spatula as a mic.

He was very good. It was Greased Lightning, in case you were wondering.

We heard today from our broker that the people that toured our house today are interested and with a few questions answered, will most likely make an offer.

And that's great, but with so much in arms, where will we go?

We also: bought a $400 vacuum. We are thrilled beyond measure, and thus our decline into boring adults has been consummated. AARP membership, NEXT! Woo. Deals at Denny and our own special menu. This one is a DYSON. It is the ANIMAL model. Made for us.

We found a breakfast place today that reminded me of Sacramento.

But without my family, it was no match. :(

Plus my potatoes were cold and not thoroughly cooked and the hollandaise sauce wasn't lemony enough. Or buttery enough. If you screw up both, it is basically just yellow gravy, isn't it?

Tomorrow I'm going to see that psychic that last year told me I am God's best friend. She told me that my friends considered me to be like Gandhi or Mother Teresa. And, have you ever met me?

Obviously she's insane, but there's something about her that tells me she knows something.

And there's something about the current level of unsettledness in my life that tells me I'll go to anyone, I'll pay them anything.....

Just tell me what I should do.

Postmodern Life

2008-04-02T22:52:00.002-07:00

There was this band I followed during college. They were called Headcase O'Matic.
They were absolutely fantastic. One of their band members played various metal pieces against chainsaws and different instruments, throwing showers of sparks out over the crowds. But it was music, too. The screech and wail of the instrument fit with the songs. Truly they were awesome. You can't find their music online, but if you can, definitely let me know.

One of their members formed a band called The Dont's. They're a SF band, and they have two albums out, both of which are on iTunes. They are also awesome, and I'm a fan.

This is a short post. I'm meeting quota, and telling you what I'm listening to.

April One

2008-04-01T18:26:00.003-07:00

Well, I've decided to try and post the entire month of April.

I got word from that awesome, awesome lady CLP that she gets sad when I don 't post, and so.....actually, hang on a second. I'm going to go call CLP back!

Okay, CLP, you were not answering. It is, after all, almost 10pm and you're a BANKER. So probably you are asleep like good bankers are.

I have a letter, one in mind. I've been working it these last few days, wondering to myself who I would most like to write a letter to.

But. I am on Weight Watchers and I have had a cosmo. So I am drunk. Because apparently, a pack of brussel sprouts and an orange aren't enough food to stave off 4 one-thousand counts of vodka, regardless of how much mix you put in them. Hee.

I'm in a good mood. I think this might just work out. If an opportunity comes along, sobeit.

If one does not, perhaps the intended recipient of my soon-to-be-written letter might come along. If not, devastation, but perhaps an MFA in creative writing would be in order. I've always wanted one, you know.

No, you probably don't. You probably don't know that I've been seriously considering going back to school for a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. But I have.

Just for me.

But perhaps all my unhappy troubles would go away if I were engaged in something that mattered to me. Perhaps.

'Til Tomorrow,

Salome

Don't You Ever

2008-03-31T18:19:00.002-07:00

Today one of the banes of my existence tried to sympathize with me about the last 8 career-flaming months I've just had.

The concern on her face so pronounced that my stomach flipped.

How are you? she wanted to know.

I said I'm fine, how are you?

I'm great, she said, but I just feel so sorrrrrrrrry for you.

Listen. I don't need your sympathy.

Don't you ever fucking feel sorry for me. Don't you fucking dare.

You are about as deep as a puddle on the street and I'm a fucking ocean over here.

I've got life forms no one's ever seen before and I will fucking DROWN you.

At the end of the day, little miss, I'm absolutely fucking amazing, and you are who you are. SO. DON'T. YOU. EVER. FEEL. SORRY. FOR. ME.

Woah. I Like Me.

2008-03-31T18:14:00.001-07:00

You are Strength

Courage, strength, fortitude. Power not arrested in the act of judgement, but passing on to further action, sometimes obstinacy.

This is a card of courage and energy. It represents both the Lion's hot, roaring energy, and the Maiden's steadfast will. The innocent Maiden is unafraid, undaunted, and indomitable. In some cards she opens the lion's mouth, in others she shuts it. Either way, she proves that inner strength is more powerful than raw physical strength. That forces can be controlled and used to score a victory is very close to the message of the Chariot, which might be why, in some decks, it is Justice that is card 8 instead of Strength. With strength you can control not only the situation, but yourself. It is a card about anger and impulse management, about creative answers, leadership and maintaining one's personal honor. It can also stand for a steadfast friend.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Getting an Early Start

2008-03-30T19:32:00.005-07:00

April, as I've mentioned, has decided to be themed - Letters.

Well. I think I've just seen the Holy Grail.

I've been known to write a few letters. If you come across a post that is labeled LETTERS, you can click on it and it will show you everything I've ever labeled that way.

Now, to flex my correspondence skills, I will write to someone who has an apology coming his way....

Dear Leo,

Oh, my boy. Oh, little buddha bear. We are so so sorry that you've got such a burdened life. We both know that the only thing you need is your dad to hold you, and your mom to remember to give you the wet food every night. That and the top of a couch in the sun is all you've ever asked for in life. And then we introduce you to Lucy, and boy, are we sorry about that. If cats could go to therapy, we know Lucy would be a test case for aggression. She's a raving lunatic, and this we know, and we apologize for bringing her into your life. Mom is sorry, because I'm sure you know that Lucy goes wherever Mom goes.

Then we get you the Prozac. We did this because you were peeing in the dirty laundry, and do not think that it escaped Mom's notice that you never peed in the clean. There was that one time you peed on the bathmat, but I think the exits were blocked and I can't tell you how much I loved you for your sensitivity and your highly developed sense of what is easily laundered. You are a champ. You make do with what you have, and you try not to be a bother.

And you're such a good boy with the Prozac. You take the pills like a champ, you eschewed the chicken-flavored liquid, but even in that you were a gentleman. You did not swing your head side-to-side while making a noise like something dying, which is what Lucy did. Did you see her with full claws a-blazing, shredding mom and dad while she sprayed us with chicken-flavored liquid Prozac?

I'm sure you didn't, honey. You would have been aghast.

What I want to apologize for, dear boy, is that your dad and I have been forgetting who is supposed to be giving you the Prozac, now that we have the treats we can slip the pills into. And as a result, we've determined that you were double-dosed at least three times last week. And still, you are alive and there was no drooling.

We celebrate the fact of you, Leo. We love you dearly, we love you within an inch of your hyperesthetic life, and we would be lost without you. Your dad named you from a Shakespeare play, Leontes, and you are the gentleman he was imagining.

Peace and much affection,

Mom

Don't Get Me Started

2008-03-28T20:45:00.003-07:00

Buoyant, joyous, knocking 'em out and dragging 'em home today.

Might have been that wee double latte I had while doing some training early this morning. God, I love Lattes. Life just wasn't full without them.

I was FLYING after that. Chewed 1/2 a pack of gum and learned how to snap it, all by myself. Then I annoyed myself with it, and stopped.

HEY SANTA FE, GIVE ME A CALL.

As much as I love talking to your person, and hearing her tell me what an EXCELLENT chance I have, I get increasingly worried when the phone log shows just the usual players. No weird numbers. And we all know what happens when I get worried, don't we?

I GET PISSED.

But I promise not to get pissed. Because I'm jovial and flexible and totally a good sport and all that other bullshit that I will tell you about myself until you get me in there and I show you the charming, funny, total hard-ass that I am.

I drove by a statuary today. I love statues, my yard would be indecent with them if I wasn't so decently inclined. I might be Greek in a past life. This particular stone work was a flat facade of the head of a lion, roaring with wide open mouth and luxurious swirls of mane. I drove past the statuary and then proceeded to plan a garden around just that very piece of stone. Something orange, red and yellow. Different blooming times and different textures. Something to make it look like the lion was always breathing fire.

Wow, I just made a cosmo but with gin because we're out of vodka and this is delightful. And I am HAMMERED.

Who is reading this anyway? Tell me who you are. Do you know me or do you just like reading this? De-lurk, please.

Sprang Sprung

2008-03-25T19:46:00.004-07:00

Shockingly, startlingly, the weather in Seattle is awful right now.

Weathermen are cheerfully predicting some light snow this week. I want to take their good cheer and drive it like a stake through their undead hearts.

Rain, rain and more rain. And after that? Light showers. Or downpours. Or both, in the space of the same frigid hour.

I did some ass-busting on Monday and decoratively barked the back yard. It took four huge bags of bark (which were back-busting, I'll have you know) to do so.

I'll take a picture once it clears up.

Best this yard has ever looked.

Excuse me a second, I just busted up laughing reading my own last sentence. If I wait until the weather clears, I'll be a hundred and eighty seven before I get those shots. I'm a little downgraded, as I'm sure you can tell, about the weather. It wears on you. And then it wears through you, and then it just keeps on going until it chews your heart into sludge and saps the energy right the smack right out of you.

I got new contacts and suddenly I'm all over the details of the leaves on the trees. I'm freaking with joy over the finely edged blades of grass that are vibrantly green and showy on the side of these gray, soaked streets. I'm also realizing that I have an alarming tendency to get so close to my work monitor that if I announced we were secretly dating, no one would be surprised.

I had lunch with an old friend from a visiting office today. This woman is WONDERFUL. Spending time with her is like spending time with someone who crawled out of my soul and still will talk to me. She makes me laugh like I don't remember when. She just comes out with these sayings, and she's boisterous, and she's funny, and she's like a good mood just metamorphosed into a human being and then gave me a hug. I can't even relate them to you, because they wouldn't seem funny, but they were so perfectly said, right at the perfect time, and they were hysterical. I don't have a nickname for her because none of the words I have in my repertoire do her justice. She defies description. I honestly feel like I'm in the presence of a movie star when I hang out with her, she is just THAT charismatic and vibrant. I'm so lucky that we clicked. Because I didn't even know I was missing her until I met her.

April posting month is themed LETTERS. Oh, I think I might just be able to come up with one or two. I haven't written a letter in a long time and I think the world may just be sliding off its axis about that.

Love,

Salome

OK Spring, we were totally just fucking with you

2008-03-19T19:17:00.001-07:00

We are not spring yet.

We are not, thank you driving rain and chilly temps JUST IMMEDIATELY after I was walking to and from a work appointment.

Thank you for pouring AFTER I returned to the office.

That actually was very nice.

So, guys, the KIDS said no.

The CONSORTIUM hasn't responded.

But SANTA FE called today.

Probably not qualified, but they don't know that.

And if they're the right people, they won't care.

You don't leave jobs to horizontally move.

You leave them to make a vertical leap.

You leave them so that you can jump off the cliff of comfort, throw your bra to the wind and say, GODDAMNIT LIFE, I'm ready for more.

Do you have more for me, Life?

Did You Get a Good Lawyer?

2008-03-18T22:10:00.003-07:00

After the vagaries of last winter, spring arrived with a burst.

All of a sudden, cherry blossoms exploded.

Literally one day they were not there and the next, BAM.

Lovely, everywhere you looked.

This year, it is different.

Cherry blossom buds are creeping slowly open.

Like they are tentative. The skies clear intermittently, with storms on all fronts, everywhere you look. I want to encourage them, tell them it is okay.

It is okay. Nobody's going to Scotland. Everyone still hates their job. It is okay.

The cycle of hope has been extinguished. There is nothing to shout about, anyhow.

Big fight with the cats today. And even in this, I'm resigned. They'll get it.

Everyone will just get over whatever it is they need to get over, anyhow.

Funny how the world works.

How the world plays.

I'm cleaning. Reorganizing. I am GAINING ACCEPTANCE with those things I cannot change. And you know what? That isn't much. There isn't much I can't choose to change. Myself. My life. What I want.

You can get to a point where you care too much.

Then you work yourself to death, exhausting all your possibilities, and STILL no one rewards you for it. And then you decide one day, after bad things happen and rude things happen and inconsiderate things happen, and some unavoidable things happen, but you might still sit on your front porch one day and think, "I am the person that no one feels the need to say SORRY to."

And I'm out there, but what is the best way to say to someone,

"I'm the best goddamn thing that's ever walked in your door. You've never met anyone quite like me before, and you aren't likely to again."

"You should absolutely hire me, because I can do all the things you need done, and then I'll do more. And then I'll be charming, and I'll be fun, and I'll work harder than anyone you've ever met, and there won't be a single goddamn thing you throw to me that I can't catch."

How do you say that in a half hour interview?

And I write to Santa Fe, and I write to the Bay Area, and I write, write write so that someone picks up the phone and calls me. And then that someone calls me in for an interview. And then that someone looks past my natural dork and hires me.

So.

Listing the house.

He says we're grounded now, but I've never been grounded.

I don't even know what that means.

I'm always a half-second from flying away. I'm always a hairsbreath from jumping from the earth just to taste all the potential that might be.

I'm in love and I'm secure and all these changes aren't bothering me.

For the first time in a long time I am hungry again. I am positively drunk with all the possibility and I only lie awake at night to make sure that I've effectively covered my back.

For the first time in a long time, I'm growing up to my full height. And the people that try to get me down are just noise. They're all just noise, and none of them will be remembered past the time it takes me to say goodbye.

Quiet now, hush.

I have things to do.

Medicated Cats

2008-03-11T22:28:00.002-07:00

It turns out that the stray, who is the sickest cat I've ever met, does not have ASTHMA, which we thought this weekend. And to which I am still incredulous, because for fuck's sake, what would she be allergic to?

She has some sort of infection in her lungs, which requires antibiotics. Okay.

She is also supposed to be getting prednisone 2x daily, which is a steroid I've taken a whole bunch of times because I have asthma.

I speed all the way to the vet's office to get there by 6pm and pick up the antibiotic. I beg the vet and he assures me it is a liquid.

We now have 2 cats on Prozac (when we can forcibly get a pill down Lucy's throat, the raving bitch) and one cat on prednisone pills 2x daily + antibiotic fluid 2x daily. Lovely.

I am on Weight Watchers and am not supposed to drink wine, and I quit smoking three weeks ago and the Pope is on a business trip.

So I buy some Pill Pockets to sneak the pills into chicken-flavored dough packets to get these goddamn cats their medicine so that everyone can live happily ever after.

The stray, who we've spent so much money on that I will just call her the DAUGHTER, the Cleo, the wallet drain that is really pretty cute, walks out of her room and whuffs at me, squeakily. It is darling and my heart melts.

So, of course, I stuff a pill pocket with the steroid pill and set it in front of her. She sniffs at it and looks up at squeaks at me. I nudge her, like, go on, I spent $10 on these things, just to fool you, EAT it! :) Big Grin, Happy Mom, Everything's OK, just eat the little chicken thing. HMMMMM?

She won't eat it, but is real cute about that.

No wine, no cigarettes, money leaking out of my wallet and I just drove like crazy to make it to the goddamn vet's office to get you this crap because you have ASTHMA or something and you are a CAT. SO EAT IT.

YOU HAVE TO.

YOUUUUUUUUU HAAAAAAAAAVE TOOOOOOOOOOO! I scream and stomp around the kitchen, which causes all three cats to run under the bed for the next hour and a half, and forces me to open a bottle of wine.

I am at my wit's end. At this point I want to lock them all out of the house and call the coyotes.

Boing Boing

2008-03-11T20:27:00.001-07:00

Last week, at Weight Watchers, I looked down the row of seats I was in.

Three pairs of black clogs, in a row.

Welcome to Seattle, folks.

Caution

2008-03-09T23:20:00.003-07:00

*Supposed to be posting daily for the month of March. Whoops.

*Supposed to be on Weight Watchers, but fucked off all this weekend. Dammit.

*Should be passed out right now, what with the bottle of wine I just drank.

*I broke something just now. It felt good.

That fucking thing was asking to be broken.

I should have broken it MONTHS ago.

I am unhappy.

I lie in bed and think, where did my life go?

Why am I so stuck and so poised on the edge of unhappiness all the time?

How did I get so stuck?

What I want to do is QUIT.

I want to SELL.

I want safeguard my three dear kitties with someone who will love them.

I want to throw all my possessions into a large body of water, take a baseball bat to some, and then join the Peace Corps. Or the circus. Or something that matters more to me than this fucking empty rat-fucking-race of life.

Is there any way to get unstuck?

Or do you find yourself in your thirties, do you just find yourself there and then, there is where you are?

I hate this.

I'm going to bed.

I have to.

I must remember that I need to get up in the morning, to go to that place I hate and do that job I despise, for people I no longer respect.

I'm Bringing Sexy Back

2008-02-26T21:03:00.005-08:00

This was before I joined Weight Watchers (last Tuesday) and quit smoking (also last Tuesday). A full week on both. And boy, am I grumpy!

And when I use a cute little term like "grumpy," rest assured that what I really mean is that I could deforest Alaska with my mood.

I should have posted this picture months ago, so I could see the low I had fallen to. When you pass out reading "King Leopold's Ghost" after eating 1/2 a box of Mike & Ike's, it is time for an intervention.

No, I think what did it for me, finally, was waking up and feeling like I'd inhaled knives overnight, and then getting winded just looking at the skin between my chin and where air should be.

In other news, we're probably going to list our house for sale soon.

In hopeful news, we'll pull some equity out because we got a steal, and since we bought so safely and STILL have enough money to eat out every night (see lack of graceful neck..above) we are going to throw some more of our money into a home where perhaps our next door neighbor doesn't blast an oldies rock station every weekend day, all day long.

In fact, as a tangent, I believe he recorded 10 solid hours of the radio one day and plays that constantly instead. I could practically TELL you that Paint It Black is going to come right after Tom Sawyer. Bet me if you think I'll be wrong.

It doesn't matter that we can't hear ourselves think in our tiny and spider-infested house, no, the music has to be loud enough for him to hear over his riding mower. Yes, he plays music loud enough so he can hear it over the sound of a lawnmower. And it has been two years without an assault from me, so generally, I think I've mellowed.

But perhaps that would be okay, if not for the family that moved in during the nights last week and proceeded to throw two parties on both days of the weekend, where 8 cars came screaming down our lane and they burned meat for several hours straight, having conveniently placed their hibachi so that great plumes of charred meat smoke billowed past the back windows of our house.

Cross your fingers and wish us luck.

Movie Star

2008-02-21T18:40:00.003-08:00

I was once in a movie.
College Film.

I came across the link today, idly Googling everyone I've ever met, including myself.

Go HERE to see it. Download it, it may take a bit. It is a trailer for the film.

I make myself cringe.

And We're Off!

2008-02-15T13:25:00.003-08:00

Going to California this weekend, to see our families.

Couldn't be better timing.

Nieces

Mothers

Fathers

GRANDMOTHERS!

Oh, the joy.

I had an appointment with a placement service this morning.

They said I'm overqualified for their standard level placements.

The guy said, and I QUOTE "You are going to be snapped up very quickly in the open market."

That felt nice.

Loved One

2008-02-13T19:18:00.004-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: CLP

(unless she asks me to remove this picture)

And trust me, she is not the attendant in a ladies bathroom, as much as the tux and row of sinks may mislead you:

I post this to show you one of the people on my personal top 5 most beautiful people list.

Stuck Pig

2008-02-13T18:36:00.002-08:00

I'm not as much now, but was spiraling.

Making myself indispensable now so that I really screw 'em when I go.

You will miss me when I'm gone.

Perma-smile.

My face aches. My heart leaps and screams, several times a day.

Lunges against the bars of its cage, yelling and spitting.

You will miss me when I'm gone.

Or you won't, and you know what? Fuck you.

There are millions of people that would miss me when I'm gone.

There are at least five.

So now, not spiraling, but still. Exhausted.

Look at job postings and know I could do it, but do I want to?

I was never meant to be in business.

I am arrogant. Saw stupid people above me, doing things I could do.

So I did them. So I stood in front of those who needed and said, you need ME.

I can do this.

But what I always wanted to do was be whacked out, writing.

Writing from the very lining of my soul, writing when my mind left me and all I had was talent that came from nowhere and shocked me, words that thrilled me and a narrative voice that satisfied the very wild and dangerous soul of me.

I did all this, almost as if on a dare.

Never wanted to. Never set out to.

Just had the ability and so flexed it.

So here I am, crossroads between should and want.

I want to choose a life that rewards me. One that nourishes my soul and my fiercely competitive nature. But means something in this world of financial statements and profit margins, things which I've never cared much about. Take your FFO and ssssssmoke it.

It is about the purpose.

It used to be about the art.

I was a wondering, docile baby.

I was an awkward, curious kid.

I was a voracious reader, quiet, lost in my books, never spoke, never had friends.

I was an angry, stifled teenager.

I was a wild and recklessly daring young adult.

I wanted. I wanted.

I frightened people with it.

I have been an intensely irritable adult.

I missed something.

I listened when I should have ignored, I followed when I should have struck out alone.

If there is ever a time to make amends, this is it.

I finally listened to my heart and married the embodiment of my desires.

Now I have a man who lives like I've always wanted to, and yet I try to mold us both into a perception of what SHOULD BE. Where we should be, what we should have.

I repeat to myself: Choose life, take a chance, do it do it do it do it.

I drive to and from the thing I detest and I think: Choose life, decide to be happy.

Someone doesn't yield and I honk briefly, then forget about it.

Stop being afraid. Walk away from the money that comes with being unhappy and choose your own life.

Do it.

Do it do it do it do it do it.

Waiting Game

2008-02-12T20:59:00.002-08:00

I'm not a good chess player.

I don't strategize.

I've never been good at thinking ahead, making plans and setting players into precise locations, to be available for the next worst thing.

What I do well is react.

I am a strong personality, I land on my feet, usually.

If for some reason my landing is unsteady, I am quick study and very very soon acclimate to new climates and experiences.

Despite what many of you may think, either from my posts or from knowing me personally, I can withstand a lot. I may seem overly testy, but I can bide time and make the best of matters with the best of them.

Better than the rest, actually. My last eight years have proved that without a shadow of a doubt.

But now, it is time to leave.

And I'm terrified, and I'm discouraged, and I'm down.

And yet, I'm hopeful, confident, assertive and fairly pissed.

This last one struck down to the very iron of my being.

And to withstand and submit now would be impossible.

Full disclosure, I promise. Soon. I made a vow not to write about work, and I'll honor that, unless in the most oblique terms possible.

But hear ye this. I'm done.

I've flexed all I am capable of flexing. I've had all I can stands.

I can't stands no more.

I am not your fall guy. I will never be your fall guy again.

Salome's Mix

2008-02-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

A few of you have asked for the names of the artists and songs on my mix tape. I purposefully didn't include these, so that you would be forced to listen to all of the songs, without prejudice.

So here they are, in order, but first!
A couple of shout-outs:

Julie! I hope you are recovering from your car accident and come back to us. Maybe Mars is in Venus? Or stuck dead-on into my heart, because the world is throwing curve balls at the moment. Get well soon.

Alex and Carlo - big congrats on the wedding date: 8808. Verra Nice.

Jonathon! Congrats on your new family, I'm delighted for you both, and for me as well, because your personal blog posts are even more rich and entertaining.
Here are the song titles:

1. Clumsy - Fergie
2. Umbrella - Rihanna
3. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
4. Over and Over - Hot Chip
5. The Con - Tegan & Sara
6. Polythene Pam - The Beatles
7. Stronger than Me - Amy Winehouse
8. This is Everything - Tegan & Sara
9. Fidelity - Regina Spektor
10. Where Does the Good Go - Tegan & Sara
11. Myriad Harbour - The New Pornographers
12. Notice - Gomez
13. Between Love & Hate - The Strokes
14. Back to Black - Amy Winehouse
15. Dark Come Soon - Tegan and Sara
16. A Rush of Blood to the Head - Coldplay
17. Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard
18. Think Too Much(B) - Paul Simon
19. 9 Crimes - Damien Rice
20. Breathe Me - Sia

I'm back!

2008-02-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

Hello, I'm back.

Did you miss me?

I went to Scotland for a week, and some of it was lovely, while most of it was awful.

No fault of the gorgeous Scottish countryside and folk, though.

No, it was my folk that made it miserable.

I cried a bit, on the plane home, after lowering my defenses with many, too many glasses of wine.

Why did I cry?

Because that is the last time I'll see Scotland for a long time, unless I travel there myself.

More later, and full disclosure of what is going on will come in probably a few months.

Warning: The Water is Filthy with Tangents

2008-01-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

As you can probably tell by my most recent posts, I am in need of some serenity.
Serenity isn't something that comes naturally to me, unless I am here, like this, right now, writing everything down, but couching it, making it some type of story. Quantifying it, wrestling it to the ground, attributing it to something else, writing a letter to someone that bothered me, or generally, to someTHING that has annoyed me.

Or touched me, moved me, but those are rarer.

I have always been an angry person. Several therapists have tried to determine from whence this rage comes, all have failed. I have failed, myself, to articulate it to anyone.

I don't know where it comes from. I know I place high expectations on myself, I place them on others, I am an impossible friend, I am a frighteningly intense wife.

I am only being the person I know how to be.
But there are things that I do not say, there are things that get overshadowed by the aggression, that get flattened in the hurricane-force winds of my purpose and drive.

And I'm forgetting how to feel them and it is scaring me to death.

....and, truth be told, making me pretty angry.

Breaking the Waves

2008-01-28T17:19:00.000-08:00

No sleep last night, and that's a first for me.
Typically I toss and turn until about an hour before my alarm goes off, and then I fall into a dead slumber, where hordes of (herds of?) elephants can come thundering over me and I won't wake up. Not at all, until I've overslept far too late to pass it off as traffic, a bridge or needing gas.

There are some times you wake up so late that you have to go into work and say, OHMIGOD I just totally overslept! I guess I didn't set my alarm (lie)! or my personal favorite, My husband must have hit my alarm by mistake (TOTAL lie). But I can do exasperated and comically frazzled like a pro, and I typically leave 'em laughing when I'm through.

So, hey, I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted and I just got done working a 9 hour day.
By the time I was done, I was so focused on what I was doing that I was practically drooling.

But I had a couple of cool, brain-wiggy thoughts today and I'm going to share them.

1. When it is really cold outside, really really cold, you can tell, just by looking out the window. That blows me away. Like the whole world and everything in it just hunches in on itself, to withstand.

2. I think a pair of crows on my street are dating. They were just strolling down the street, screeching amicably to each other. It was cute for a second and then I remembered that the crow is like the pigeon's drug-addict thug older brother. And so I honked at them.

And now a couple of letters gathered from over the weekend.

Dear Lady Who Freaked Out on Saturday When I Parked Too Close To Her Car,

Let's establish a few things. ONE: I am not the lady you EVER want to piss off, by being a snivelly and coddling little puss about her Audi. Listen bitch, if I had wanted or tried to hit your car, you'd be driving a Matchbox right now. I have that kind of anger. As it was, you picked a really shitty time to confront me. I've got rage upon rage boiling here, and nowhere to unleash it. I'm hurt, and I'm pissed, and I feel used and hosed and like no one has any idea what I've gone through so that EVERYTHING is perfect for them. And I mean the world, and I mean my cats and I mean my hair and I mean EVERY GODDAMN THING IN MY LIFE IS ASKING TOO MUCH RIGHT NOW AND I JUST NEED A FUCKING HUG OR A THANK YOU OR SOME GODDAMN THING. So when you moaned about your car and berated me for getting too close, when you knelt down and caressed and nearly cried over your untarnished grille, I snapped.
I shouted you up the street, I screamed at you to STOP FREAKING OUT, all the time losing my shit in a manner I am pretty sure you are unaccustomed to.

Which leads me to TWO: I didn't hit your car. I parked too close (an inch between) and moved it out of courtesy. I can't even look at this in retrospect and calm down about it, I am THAT grateful for the outlet to scream and strain my elbow flipping you off and making threatening motions like I was going to run after you and kick your ass. Don't take it personally, you just had the wrong lady, on the wrong day of the wrong year of the wrong life.

My inevitable bail fund can be found at: Shedeservedit.com,
Salome

Dear Tiny-Sized Ladies Who REPEATEDLY put your hot little numbers in my XXL racks,

I swear to god, the next time I see one of you do this I'm going to grab the slinky little size 4 number and beat you to death with it on on the escalator landing of Macy's downtown. Or I might run screaming all the way to Arby's and order one of everything they have.

Or just break down and cry,
Salome

Insomnia

2008-01-28T01:38:00.000-08:00

I lie awake.
Doubling up on sleep-aids, I am impervious to their effects.

I like awake, thinking.
Fretting, worrying, remembering.

I need to sleep, I know.
I worry. I never get enough sleep during the week, because I lie awake, stressing about lying awake.

Aesthetically Pleasing

2008-01-24T20:16:00.000-08:00

Greetings!

The First-Annual
CARCHARODONNA
All-Time Favorite and 2007 Greatest Hits Album

Has Arrived!

Email me at carcharodonna@mac.com to request a copy!
Include your mailing address
because
while not omnipotent, I am known to be testy.

Do Not Expect Fancy Packaging Or a Label
Because I Could Not Get the !@&$*&@! Thing To Work

One interesting thing I learned last Friday:
A twenty foot great white shark is typically EIGHT FEET WIDE and SIX FEET DEEP.

That is a monstrous thing of beauty.

Postscript

2008-01-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

Second Notice:

Dear Pet Products Store Catered to Soft Hearts Like Me,

You have not replied to my recent letter.

I find this troubling on many levels, not the least of which is that I have bought so many useless things from you and your horrid, spawning retail chains that I probably financed the new store in Frozen'roid, North Dakota.

I am compelled to send you another urgent missive. I am quite upset and find you guilty as about to be charged.

When you charge $42** for the pheromone things YOU NEED TO PUT A DIRECTIONAL ON THEM SO THAT I DON'T PLUG THEM IN UPSIDE DOWN AND THEN ALLOW THE OIL TO DRIP THROUGH THE APPARENTLY GOLD-FUCKING PLATED INNARDS AND CAUSE THE HOUSE TO SMELL LIKE BURNING PLASTIC WHICH MAKES ME REMOVE THEM SO THAT THEY DON'T SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE WHEN I'M AT WORK AND BURN MY PSYCHOTIC CATS TO DEATH.

Which doesn't sound all that bad, come to think of it.

It was expensive and they are ruined and it is all because I'm an idiot and wasn't thinking and to be honest with you, THAT NEEDS TO BE SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT this time.

Kindly respond and tell me who I can scream at,

Salome

**EACH!!

Deliberately Cryptic, in Other Words FLY

2008-01-22T19:23:00.000-08:00

;) CLP is the only one who that title may resonate with.

CLP, you called me! I did not answer because

WELCOME TO
SALOME'S RUINED WEEKEND
OF EMOTIONAL TORMENT.

I can't talk about it.

My time, she is a-biding.

Sometimes when the worst thing happens

the world just opens up

like the throat of an opera singer

then the hope pours out

So here's to hope

and here's to the fat lady

sharpening her teeth.

Correspondence File: 1/11/08

2008-01-11T20:38:00.001-08:00

Dear Coat Manufacturers (Everywhere):

For the love of Pete, will you please make coats with well-sewn buttons? I mean, honestly.
Listen, I know you can't possibly imagine how many times a person can get out of their car and actually HOOK the button on the inside of the driver's door, nor could you anticipate when someone (such as myself) might buy a coat that just(barely)fits and wear the goddamn thing anyway, because you feel funky and cool in it, even though the simple act of taking a sip of coffee some morning might snap the back buttoned thing off in its tracks, but fergodsake, I am a repellent to buttons over here, and if the 2 year old in your sweatshop can't sew a button tightly you should imprison her whole family.

Because I never remember where I put them for safekeeping,
Salome

p.s. When I die, I will be remembered as the lady that had "many random buttons in schizophrenic proliferation among personal belongings." And it will be all your fault. Please call Larry King and explain my life.

Dear Unfathomable Multi-Locale Breakout,

We've already been through this. Listen, sebum glands. I've had it. If you freak the fuck out three days before an important meeting ONE MORE TIME.....I'm going to plunge my face into a bath of pure glycol. I KNOW it is an important meeting. I was up until 3am last night, wasn't I? I'm well aware of the general all-purpose FREAKOUT going on in my brain. I would expect YOU of all body processes to give me some support. You must be friends with the Sudden-Unexplained-Alarming-Bloat. I hope you're proud of yourself. Big Important Meeting meets Fat Teenager with Lack of Sleep Twitch. Nice.

Alarmingly Using The CAPS LOCK,
Salome

Dear Pet Products Store Catered to Soft Hearts Like Me,

Do you really have to be so expensive? Listen, I'm not so infatuated that I don't know that all the products I buy are because I think a domesticated animal is a human family member. But listen, they are, she is, and I CARE. If they need me, I AM HERE. Even though I have the most pampered and coddled cats since Egypt, I still look for ways to liquidate my savings. But $42 EACH for the pheromone thing that MIGHT make Lucy stop stalking everything in the house and Leo stop peeing on my dirty laundry? That is outrageous. The new brush I bought because their old brush is, well, old? Highway Robbery. $10 a month per cat for the Prozac that will allow these freakazoids to just FUCKING CHILL FOR A MOMENT WITH ALL THE DRAMA, COULD WE PLEASE? Unbelievable. You are sucking me dry.

When I Die, I Want to Come Back As My Cat,
Salome

Dear Finny,

My dear. My darling boy. You are still gone. I know you're not coming back. And I can just about type this without breaking open like the fury and pain of the sea when it hits the shore with intent to kill and spatters into mist. Just about. I am profound with the lack of you. I was at Petco tonight, honey. At the place where the cats who need homes are, my heart raced and my spirits soared, if only just to find you. If only just to see you now, seven long and heartbreaking months, and scoop you up and say FINALLY. Finally, honey you're home, and everything that happened we will laugh about, at night when you and I curl up in bed and we are mom and boy. Today I gave your favorite toy to the stray that my heart wouldn't let me hold out on. She liked it, but not like you did. She won't bring me the felt lightning bolt with the bell I painstakingly sewed on it, drop it in my lap to say, "Here. Throw this, I feel like playing. I feel like chasing this and bringing it back to you so you can throw it again and then we'll be having fun together." I cried about you on New Year's Eve. I had cold medicine and then tequila and then champagne and all of a sudden I was all red-face and snot, crying to Lakshmi about you. You are just a cat, I know, but I am just a human, and you brought my life so much light. When you left, or died, or were taken, joy just stopped for me. I am trying to coax it back, but this house is filthy with memories of you. I can't go in the garden, it breaks my heart. I can't stop stopping in my tracks when something reminds me of you, and it is like you just went missing. I can't let you go, little man, my heart won't let me.

Be Safe and Please Don't Ever Forget That I Love You, That I Always Did and Always Will,
Mom

Cacaphony

2008-01-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

While getting older isn't the worst thing that has ever happened to a person, I quite like the tiny wrinkles around my eyes when I smile, I am increasingly annoyed at my stomach's decision to form a second set of cleavage just under my boobs.

I am devastated at my body's inability to recover from drinking three or four too many. What used to take hours to get over now takes days. Days that I remember the next time. Who ever thought I'd be wary or cautious?

What is cool, at the moment, are the cracks that my body is doing. I'm sure they're a harbinger of some serious arthritis medication in my future, but for now I'll revel in them.

Elbow crack - so satisfying when I do the sweeping circular arm-movement to elicit them.
Ankle cracks - loud pops that feel so good.
Knee cracks, or wait, kind of more like grinding, which is really not an appealing sound.

Neck cracks that sound like they MEAN something.

I'm going to take this old thing one day at a time. And right now I'm just going to shut up and listen to the symphony.