Tagging myself...
Current mood: quixotic
Category: Life

...because I am just that lame. And because there haven't been any good bloggers' tags lately, which are basically what save me from having to think about what to write about. So I was thrilled to see that Chasing Aimee and Cletus ain't right had done a countdown tag and invited everyone else to do it themselves. So I did. Counting Down!!!

Ten Things I Wish I Could Say to Ten Different People Right Now:
1) I love you like a sister. But there is someone else in your life that is damaging all of your other relationships.
2) I swore I would never, ever say this to another stay-at-home-mom, but: What the Hell do you do all day? Your house is a health hazard, I can smell it on those rare occasions when you crack open a window. Your kids are cute but they smell too and watching them try to run or think makes my heart hurt. Either get help or stop having babies or both. I think you're a really great and interesting person, but come on. You are a grown up. Stop eating candy for breakfast and letting (or making) your kids stay up until midnight and wash a fucking dish now and then.
3) I miss you. Our friendship taught me a lot about how to be a gracious, generous person and I miss that. Unfortunately, I'm in a place right now where the parts of you I don't like outweigh the parts I miss.
 4) Look, assbag: I don't care if you have a really nice car and you like to park in the handicap space because then no one's doors will bump your car. I'm not going to say I've never been tempted to park there, when there are ten empties and I'm in a hurry. But really, unless you forgot to put up your handicapped placard before you got out, I'm going to assume that you're just a selfish, lazy, holier-than-thou slut with a mental retardation issue. Then I'm going to key your little red Infinity.
5) How ya like me now?
6) I'm so incredibly proud of you, and jealous of you. You are an amazing person who sets goals and then actually achieves them. I want to be like you.
7) You're one of my favorite people in the whole world. No one has ever understood me like you do or forgiven me more for being a lazy friend. You kick ass.
8) I probably don't deserve you. Thanks for being tolerant of that fact.
 9) She was wrong, about all of it. I hope you believe that, I hope you look around and see how many people adore and are in awe of you.
10) Get a life.

Nine Things About Myself:
1) I can be incredibly lazy. I've made it an art form.
2) I love school. I would go back to college and get about 5 more degrees if I could.
3) I have very little patience for fucktards.
4) I like my writing, but fear that in reality it's hackish crap that will never be published and I'll spend my life indignantly and ignorantly wondering why the hell I'm not getting published.
5) I really do have good intentions most of the time. They're paving my road to hell…
6) My secret guilty pleasure is watching celebrity news shows and reading People magazine. That's about all my girlfriends and I do on our little getaways.
7) I love animals. To the point that if there's an animal in the immediate vicinity I will stop and watch it and point it out to whomever I'm with.
8) Except spiders. Evil little minions of hell. Squish 'em.
9) I can out-drink almost anyone. Except Becky. (Ain't ya proud, Ma?)

Eight Ways To Win My Heart:
1) Don't talk down to me. Ever.
2) Laugh at me, with me, and at yourself.
3) Leave me the hell alone when I need it, and understand that it's not about you.
4) Play with my hair.
5) Massage. Lots of massage.
6) Love my writing.
7) Love my dogs. Laugh and Awwww at my bunnies.
8) Be nice to everyone, even if they're fucktards.

Seven Things That Cross My Mind a Lot:
1) What the hell?
2) What is my daughter doing right now?
3) Is there something on my face?
4) I should accomplish something…sometime…
5) Do I have enough booze?
6) Is anyone else thinking that daily naps should be federally mandated?
7) Oo! Look! A pigeon!

Six Things I Do Before I Fall Asleep:
1) Watch something brainless on the tube.
2) Shower
3) Brush the choppers
4) Watch the news
5) Snuggle with the man
6) Read

Five People Who Mean a Lot:
1)My family
2) Susan
3) DirtDiva
4) Sara
5) Becky

Four Things You're Wearing Right Now:
1) shirt that hides the pudginess
2) jeans
3) heels
4) my heart on my sleeve.

Three Songs That You Listen to Often:
1) Viva la Vida
2) Everything by Erasure. (That's not a song title. I literally mean everything.)
3) Theme from Barbie as Rapunzel. (not my fault….sort of…)

Two Things You Want to Do Before You Die:
1) See everything there is to see in England and Europe.
2) Spend two weeks in a tiny cabin on the beach all by myself with no contact with the outside world.

 One Confession:
Ugh. I am a very insecure person who tends to freak out and withdraw when I think I've said something really stupid, which is most of the time. I'm afraid people don't like me and yet I can't seem to stop doing or saying the stupid things. I think of my friends often, but am often uncommunicative simply out of fear that I have nothing interesting to say.

Ok, not tagging anyone, but do it if you want.

Currently watching : The Life of Mammals, Vol. 1-4 Release date: 2008-01-22

7:28 PM - 51 Comments - 39 Kudos - Add Comment

I always wanted to be a stripper.
Current mood: cooky/wacky
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

There. I've said it. Secret's out. I feel much, much better now.

Of course, I'm going to qualify that statement by revealing that I wanted to be a stripper based on seeing that classic 80's movie, "Flash Dance" when I was eleven. I mean, come on; what could be more desirable than getting to work a badass job like welding during the day and then after that getting to go put on fancy frilly costumes and do really complicated choreographed dance routines on a stage in front of men who fall in love with you? And then use that valuable experience to gain entry into an exclusive dance company?  How awesome!

And let's not forget the great little Burlesque routines that sometimes would show up on the variety shows in the 70's. Bah-dah-dah, Bah-dah-dah, BOOM-tsh-tsh! BOOM-tsh-tsh! And all they had to do was take off their dress, flip it around and maybe shake their still-brassiered chest. How much fun would that be?

Then someone took me to a strip club.

Never mind.

When I was 19 and still living at home and looking for gainful employment, I perused the want ads one morning over coffee. Well, I say morning, but I was a college student. It was probably more like noonish. Anyway, I see all these ads for "ESCORTS WANTED." Huh. Get paid to go out with men? I'd seen "Pretty Woman", and figured it was probably something like that, without the being a whore part. How hard could it be to wear really nice clothes and escort rich, handsome men to fancy-schmancy cocktail parties and dinners with the mayor? And then, of course, said handsome rich guy would fall hopelessly in love with me, climb up the fire escape and whisk me away to his mansion/penthouse. Done.

"I think I'll be an escort," I say nonchalantly to my mom as I sip my coffee. I think her coffee came out of her nose before she choked out "What? NO! God No! You're not doing that!" I'm sure I rolled my eyes, figuring my totally-uncool mom had it way wrong.

Hey, then I met an escort. By chance, while studying at a coffee shop, one of my friends introduced me to her. She looked like about ten miles of bad road (at the age of 20) and had two kids. She proudly showed everyone at the table pictures of her in her "Escort attire" when she was, oh, nine months pregnant. And my illusions were shattered. She told me what really goes down. Uh, including her. No Pretty Woman? No Richard Gere-type rich man falling in love? Nope. More like Dick the garbage man on pay day. Not that there's anything wrong with paying for a little lovin', but, um, no. No. Never mind.

Naïve?

Yes. Yes I am.

I also thought that I could major in Biology just by taking lots of classes in college about science stuff. Like Evolution, Morphology, Bird Care, Astronomy, that kind of thing. Imagine my shock and horror when I finally went to the Biology Department and met with a counselor. Physics? Organic Chemistry? Physics? Calculus? And, um, Physics?

Math is not my friend, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I needed Physics to be a zookeeper, but I gamely tried. Did you know it's really, really hard to learn Physics and Organic Chemistry when the classes are at 7 a.m. and the words are really big? Especially when one has a killer hangover from the Jager Bomb special the night before? Nope. New major!

So, after all that, I learned an important lesson:

Do your research. Don't go through life making big decisions with just half the story or with some crap someone forwarded you on the internet.

And never, EVER, innocently ask an escort how much money she gets for a hummer, especially when her boss is standing nearby. Ass-whupping all over.


So, how about you? Ever have a "dream job" and come to find out it wasn't what you thought?
Is there anything going on in the world right now that, oh, I don't know, you think you should do some research about before forwarding stupid rhetoric-and-hate-filled emails?

Currently reading : Nineteen Minutes By Jodi Picoult

8:07 PM - 58 Comments - 40 Kudos - Add Comment

Quirks, Quarks and Qurap.
Current mood: chipper
Category: Life

So. I dunno if anyone noticed, but I've been a little absent on the myspace scene of late. I know, I know; you all missed me horribly and were worried sick. Don't fret, I'm okay. It's autumn and I do this every autumn, it's just one of my things.

Speaking of "things", I have a thing. More specifically, I have a husband. Whom I love, who loves me, blah blah blah, we're livin' the dream, but really: at what point is it okay to smack someone upside the head and ask "What. The. Fuck?"

We got a new refrigerator. Which, in our household where the general philosophy is to use something until it dies a painful death, is pretty major. We stopped at Sears one night when driving home from the grandparents' house, which is also major because we never go anywhere that might involve shopping, but the husband had some fun money burning a hole in his pocket and was itching to sacrifice it to the Manly God of Craftsman. My husband doesn't do porn, it's all about the garage toys with him. So, the daughter and I left him happily fondling wrenches and other metal manly things and went to find the appliances. The fridge we had came with our tiny little house and was also tiny and had no crisper drawers nor ice maker but did come with annoyingly bendy wire shelves, which I was okay with, I'm no princess and can make my own fucking ice. But still, looking at the shiny new fridges with the adjustable shelves and the humdidity-controlled drawers, well, let's just call that a little bit of housewife-porn, shall we? Ditto on the front-loading washer and steam-cleaning dryers. Oooooohhhhh…..must…have….more….But; we are the people who live simply with what we have until it sends out smoke and bangs, so when I mentioned that I found a really nice fridge ON SALE, I nearly wet myself when he said "Okay." The fridge was delivered, the husband drilled holes in the kitchen tile floor and plumbed that sucker and viola! I am in ice, baby. My gimlets are chilled, mo' fo'. And my lettuce is not wilted, either. It does what I want it to do and I am happy.

He, on the other hand, has spent the last three weeks making minute adjustments to the refrigerator temperature settings with several different measuring devices, including the remotely read hygrometer/thermometer he had to pry off the outside of the house. He's moved that wheely-thingy inside the fridge a hundredth of a millimeter until the temperature holds steady at 34.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is fine, it's just one of those quirks that I've grown accustomed to over the years. My husband gets into something and cannot let it go until he knows every detail, has every aspect exactly where it seems he thinks it should be. Did I mention he's German? Not that I like cultural generalizations, but let's just say he might have made a mistake marrying an Irish girl who could give a rat's ass how something works as long as it does what she needs it to do.

Before, when I said that he said "Okay" to the new fridge? That was after a week of him researching EXACTLY which model would be right for our needs. I would buy the cheapest one that made ice. This fundamental difference between us is quite pervasive: His garage is immaculate with a place for everything and everything in its place, mine has a flattened soccer ball in the middle of the floor that I try not to run over every time, and if you move something on a shelf be prepared to have things fall on you. I can never find my keys or cel phone; his never leave his body unless they are precisely placed on his dresser for the morning ritual.  I don't check voice mail until someone calls back asking if I got their message, he diligently reviews the saved messages every day and repeatedly tells me how many of them are for me. How we don't kill each other, I don't know.

What else….

I finished reading the His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman. Ate them up, actually. Remember the Golden Compass movie that came out last year? These are the reading-thingies that go with that. I'd not seen the movie, although it looked really cool, but I for some reason prefer to wait until something isn't cool anymore before I see it. That's how I roll.

Anyway, I LOVE THESE BOOKS. If you've been to my page, you might have noticed the What the Bleep? graphic posted under my movies. That movie was my religious epiphany. I've never gone into my personal religious convictions in here because, eh, who cares? But here's a hint: I believe that there is no Heaven, there is no Hell, there is only energy and God resides in quarks. So to find a story supporting that, my goodness, I was a happy little bunny. I would recommend these books to anyone who wants to be mad at the church, anyone who thinks physicists are on to something big, and anyone who ever thought it would be really, really cool to have a talking animal accompany you everywhere.

On the personal dilemma news: I'm here, writing. The book is eeking its way out of my head at a pretty darn satisfying rate right now. It might be a pile of crap, but it's mine and it won't be bugging me  all trapped inside my noggin for much longer.

Hope you all are well, sure enjoyed talking with all of you and getting supportive messages while I was mired in a pit of despair and depression…oh, wait….;P

Currently reading : His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) By Philip Pullman Release date: 2003-09-23

3:42 AM - 42 Comments - 33 Kudos - Add Comment

Who is more psychotic: The Joker? Or the parents who let their kids see him?
Current mood: distressed
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

So, the hubby and I went on a date last night. (Thanks DirtDiva and Poppa!) We get the opportunity for such events fairly regularly and usually start out our planning phase all excited about the endless Possibilities for an Evening of Fun. We live in a fairly cultured city (despite the Church's best efforts) and could attend such things as gallery strolls, concerts, plays, the symphony, poetry readings, improv theater, the list is endless for the discerning couple of taste. Except for wine tastings. There are no wine tastings here, which strikes to the center of my soul. What we mostly end up doing on these evenings of freedom is deciding we're too tired to go out and vegging on the futon, watching Seinfeld or MASH dvds.

What we usually do when we do venture out is see a movie. Even though we can't stand the people who crumple their candy wrappers and popcorn bags, send text messages during the feature despite the polite warnings from the screen, and talk talk talk TALK about what's going on in the film during the film, the slackjawed ticket-takers who mumble into their podium when telling us where our movie is located. We go even thought the mildly germophobic husband has to inspect the seat before he sits down and very often there is a Smell that I don't like somewhere nearby.  We go because it's easy, fairly relatively inexpensive (until I buy my giant tub-o'-popcorn with super-extra butter-flavored grease) and entertaining. I like movies. They're a nice little escape.

Last night we saw the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I loves me some Batman, especially now that Christopher Nolan has redeemed the caped crusader from the cheesy capers of Tim Burton. I mean, come on; Christian Bale is never hard to look at, whether encased in rubberized titanium or an Armani tux as Bruce Wayne. Yum-my.

But. At the beginning of the movie I was bothered. By the middle I was upset. And at the end, I was a seething cauldron of righteous anger.

Not about the movie, per se.  I loved this movie. (Spoiler Alert. If you haven't seen the movie, don't read this paragraph. Just read the tirade that follows.)I was not angry because the Joker disturbingly slashed peoples' faces and was eerily realistically portrayed by the doomed Heath Ledger, not because the secondary hero DA Harvey Dent had half of his face melted off to become the psychotic Two-Face, not because at the end Batman sacrificed his own heroic image to save that of  Dent, not because Rachel Dawes was allowed to be blown up for the Greater Good.

No. I was pissed because I was sitting next to a boy who couldn't have been more than six years old. And next to him was his probably nine-year-old sister. On the other side of her were the parents, blithely stuffing their faces with popcorn and occasionally distractedly patting the children on their heads.

Why does this bother me so much? Here's why. Here's what these kids watched last night:

Torture, killings, violence against women, men, children and dogs.

Part of The Joker's make up includes two scars flanking the sides of his mouth.(very creepy)

An impostor Batman is hung from the side of a building (with a noose around his neck) and smashes into a window while a man looks through it.

A man is dropped from a building and we see his legs break, which is accompanied with a crunching noise, in an attempt to torture answers out of him.

The Joker takes 3 or 4 people by the neck and holds a knife to them harshly, ultimately killing one (though off-screen).

A man's head is slammed into a pencil stuck vertically on a desk. This is played for laughs, but it can still be disturbing to some.

There is an intense bank robbery scene at the start of the film.

A man is found to have a bomb surgically implanted into his body; scar is graphic, and you see the bomb's light inside of him.

There are shooting and fight scenes through-out the film.

A man has his face burned and the flesh become charred.

A knife is held in a man's mouth, although the end result is not seen.
The Joker could be disturbing to some viewers by the way he laughs and acts.

The Joker tells fairly graphic stories of how he got his facial scars to two different people, in both cases while holding a knife to their faces.

A man catches on fire, may be disturbing to some. Subsequently the severe damage to one side of his face is seen, in hospital and in a few scenes late in the movie.

There are some hostage situations: several patients and hospital personnel plus a news crew are taken hostage on a bus, one is forced to read a statement to the media, and some of the hostages are later disguised as the Joker's henchmen, to make them targets for police snipers (though they are not shot). As well, several employees in a bank are forced to hold live grenades during a robbery, and there are several scenes involving passengers on two disabled ferries scheduled to blow up together unless the passengers on one decide to blow up the passengers on the other. A woman and two children are threatened by a man with a gun while the husband/father is forced to watch.

The Joker causes massive explosions of a police station and a hospital; The hospital was completely evacuated.

The way Two-Face's face looks may frighten some viewers.

The Joker gives some men pieces of a broken pool cue, on the understanding that they will have to fight to the death for a place in his gang or be killed anyway. (The fight is not seen.)

(These were all directly cut-and-pasted from the IMDB for the movie. Go ahead and report me, I don't care.)

I know this movie is rated PG-13. That means "A PG-13 rating is a sterner warning by the Rating Board to parents to determine whether their children under age 13 should view the motion picture, as some material might not be suited for them." (Taken from the MPAA website ) In order to receive this rating, the editors and director didn't actually show the violent slashing of faces, exploding bodies, fists contacting faces and breaking noses. The camera cut away at the last millisecond, leaving us only with the sound of the violence. Which, apparently, is okay. As long as the kiddies don't actually SEE the disturbing images, they're going to be all right. Right?

But all the same, I kept wanting to put my hands over this boy's eyes and ears. I cringed at every turn. I was disgusted when, upon glancing over at him after a particularly gruesome incident, I saw not fear in his eyes, but the stupefaction akin to a heroin addict after a fix. My fear was not that he would have nightmares, but that he wouldn't.  I was somewhat comforted when his sister kept burying her face in her mother's lap. But the boy made me sick.

I am not a perfect parent. I have worked long and hard to banish judgment from my observations of other people's parenting styles and habits. I accept that even though someone isn't doing it the way I'm doing it, it doesn't make it bad or wrong. Just different. Unless the child is being harmed.

And to me, letting your six-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister watch a movie like The Dark Knight is bordering on harmful.

I know, I know. "Lighten up, it's just a movie." Or some such sage wisdom from those who don't want to bother with a babysitter or with doing research about a PG-13 or R movie before plunking their kids down before it. Here's the thing: kids don't always have the ability to separate fantasy from reality. Ask a first grader about their trip to the moon, they'll tell you in all the realistic glory their minds can conjure, and it really happened. It doesn't matter if the camera pulls away just before the actual blood flows and spurts; they saw the action. It doesn't matter if Heath Ledger's Joker face was created by an elite team of makeup artists; it's still creepy and scary. (You know that playing The Joker was so disturbing to him that he accidentally killed himself trying to escape it? Remember that?) They're not going to remember the moral poignancy of the ferry passengers choosing not to blow each other up at the Joker's whim, or Gordon and Batman deciding to save Dent instead of Rachel because he's a hero the city needs and she's just Bruce Wayne's boner, or Batman becoming a pariah at the movie's close in order to cover up Dent's descent into psychosis, therefore rendering him a hero in death to the public. Nope.

They're going to remember what it looks like to punch someone hard enough to fling them off the side of a building. How to smash someone's head into something. How it sounds when a body hits the sidewalk from a few stories up. What it looks like when the bad guy takes you away from your dad. How powerful it makes a person when they have a gun. They're going to be inundated with images like these:







....and at least 2 more hours of people hurting people. They won't get the plot, but they'll get how powerful a person becomes when they are able to physically hurt another person.

Again, I know: "Lighten Up." The link between children watching violence and children being violent is still a tenuous one that is endlessly debated. Here's what the APA has to say on the metanalysis of studies: The American Psychological Association says there are three major effects of watching violence in the media (i.e.: video games/television) children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, children may be more fearful of the world around them, and children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or hurtful ways toward others.

 ~From AllPsych.com

At six, a child's mind is still plastic. Still forming. Still absorbing and accepting what it's presented with as What The World Is and assimilating that into Who They Are.

I know, I know: "They're going to see it anyway." Really? Where? If you're not directly exposing them to this kind of "entertainment" at a young age how the hell else are they going to see it? Last I checked, Gotham is still a fictional place. Do they really need to be seeing this shit that young? Sure, take them when they're teens, drop them off and let them see it then. Get your free time then. Not when they're still impressionable enough to want to play "Batman" on the playground at school the next day.

Here's what else I know.

My daughter hates playing with little boys "because they're mean. They only want to play weapons and push people down."

She will be dating in ten or so years, despite my and the husband's best efforts to the contrary, I'm sure. I don't want her dating a boy who has no compunction against hitting someone.

I've mentioned that I used to be a special education teacher. I've never really elaborated on that, so I'm sure most of you have images of me singing the ABC song to teenagers wearing helmets and clapping as they board the short bus. But that wasn't my population. I taught (or, more accurately "contained in a room") teenagers with ED, or Emotional Disturbances. I've substituted at the local juvenile detention center, which is overcrowded and contains children as young as nine who have violent criminal backgrounds along with men who killed, raped, tortured and laughed about it by the age of 18. I had many long conversations with boys filled with bravado who bragged about the pain they had caused. With girls who thought nothing of having other girls' faces slashed and genitals mutilated. I'm not exaggerating. At all.

I'm not blaming who they were and what they were on movies, video games, their parents or society. Many of them had problems with organic roots, the impetus for their behaviors seated solely in their inner psyche.

But many of them learned most of what they'd done.

My question is: What did those parents think their children were going to gain by seeing that movie? The only excuse I can come up with for them is that they haven't seen a Batman movie since the nineties and figured it was still rubber nipples and Arnold and Jim Carrey as the goofy villains, and nobody ever gets hurt. These people need to start reading, maybe.

But I think it's time for us, as parents, to maybe take a step back. Then a step forward. Think about it; a movie that is electrifyingly entertaining and mind-blowingly realistic for you leaves your head when you walk out of the theater. For your child, it becomes a brick in the wall of who they are. Do us all a favor. Leave them home. Know what they watch while they're there. Let them be children in the nicest sense of the word, for just a little longer.

4:34 PM - 38 Comments - 31 Kudos - Add Comment

Well, now what?
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

That's it. She's off. First grade. My baby, toting a lunch box and exclaiming that having 3 recesses is the best part of being a first grader.

I've been a stay-at-home mom now for, oh gee, four years. Every day since I kicked my own students out the door on the last day of school and didn't let the door hit me in the arse, I've been The Mom. The Wife. The Domestic Goddess. (note that there is no 'k' in that. Inside joke.)

It's been a busy four years.

I've been on the executive board of the local Moms Offering Moms Support (MOMS) Club, I've shuttled the child to gymnastics lessons, swimming lessons, soccer, tee-ball, countless playdates, preschool, day camps and parks. I've helped her learn to read and write, how to stand up for herself and still have manners, I've glued various parts of my anatomy together in the name of creative and educational crafts, I've played hide-and-seek and red-light-green-light, I've ridden bikes and scooters and  kissed boo-boos when the bikes and scooters were naughty. I've climbed rocks, trees, walls and mountains. I've cooked, cleaned, folded and organized (sort of. Not this week, though.) I've written most of a novel and almost had a short story published and developed a lovely little myspace addiction. I've made wonderful friends, both inside and outside of this box.

I've discovered my nurturing side, my empathetic side, my turbo-bitch side, my needs-meds side and my creative side. I've been good, bad and ugly.

Whew. I am woman, hear me roar. Or bitch and moan. Whatever works.

This morning, I woke up early and realized that I hadn't procured any good kid-type lunch things, nor had I ironed her dress, nor had I signed the "Yay You!" card I bought her to stick her Jamba Juice gift card in. The lunchmeat and bread were frozen solid, as some bimbo was too jazzed on caffeine and creative juice from writers group to remember to take them out last night. You know, it just wouldn't be me if things were easy around here. But we made it. We rode our bikes to school, put her lunch box and satchel in her big-girl locker, greeted her awesome new teacher, hugged, and....I left. I almost didn't cry. I walked out of the school building, confident that she would be okay. I rode my bike home alone to my quiet messy house and...

Now What?

Seems as though the most relevant part of my job description is removed. Six hours a day, I'm not in charge of anyone. Nobody needs me. I can sit here and write, I can start a project and not be interrupted because the Girl can't find her shoes/stuffed rabbit/tiny plastic alligator/tooth. The realization of this fact is both liberating and concurrently panic-inducing. Am I relevant anymore? How do I justify what I do now? Do I....*shudder* go get a real job? Or do I continue to play the "I'm a writer!" card while the faithful and loving husband works his arse off 11 hours a day?

I'm not alone in this quandary. My best friend has also sent her only child off to school full-day and is at a loss. She has a job, but has up to now only worked one evening a week. So lately, our conversations have been peppered with justifications for not working much more so that we can "be there when they get home." Or hang out with each other and drink mojitos all day. Whatever.

So, what do you think, my faithful and indulgent readers? Do I take the next few months as a test-run; see if I can do the full-on housewife/writer thing, finish this silly book of mine and nurture my myspace habit? Or do I *shudders again* go get a simple time-filler job? Am I still relevant, without the kid here all day? Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt irrelevant?

And to my beautiful daughter:

I love you. I miss you. I'm proud of you. Go be yourself, be brilliant and strong and take no crap. Go learn stuff and love life. I'll always be here, no matter what I'm doing. I'm always, always going to be your Momma. That's still my number one job.

Currently reading : The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) By Philip Pullman Release date: 2003-09-09

3:01 PM - 50 Comments - 44 Kudos - Add Comment

Of Squishy Sneezes and Apathy
Current mood: apathetic
Category: Life

Bleh.

Ever have one of Those Days? Where you just can't for the life of you get off your ass and do something? Do anything?

I'm having one of those weeks. My living room is dusty and scattered with houserabbit debris (not poo...I did sweep those up...just the cardboard box they decided to shred has waaaaayyyy to many pieces scattered about on the floor. I don't know where to start picking that up.), my laundry pile isn't done and the futon still needs to be dehaired from Phoebe's vacation on it while we were gone. I think something died in my car under a pile of stuff. The dog stinks.

There's a raisin on the floor next to my foot. I keep stepping on it and it sticks and I flick it off with the other foot, but I'll be frigged if I can bend over and pick it up and throw it away.

Bleh.

On the upside, my mom just sent me one of the morally responsible emails with pictures of starving children and oppressed masses in third world countries, admonishing me to think about how good I have it....great...now I have guilt about being apathetic. But I'm too apathetic to even forward it.


And I have a cold. Thanks to the inconsiderate a-hole in seat 36D on the airplane who came on the plane with a shirt full of B.O. and a nose full of snot. He sneezed, quite squishily, without the protectiveness of a hanky nor even a cupped hand, the whole flight home while leaning forward to peek between the seats in front of him so he could see the movie. And scatter droplets of virus-infested phlegm on seats 35 D and C every few minutes. And he wore his leather jacket, rendering the B.O. with superpowers. Hey, guess who was in seat 35C? Wishing she had a giant bottle of Lysol to aim in his general direction?

So, it's a beautiful breezy day here in the SLC, and the daughter is at a playdate (Thanks Susan, I sure hope she doesn't give you and yours the squishy sneezes), and I'm....sitting here....pretty much just doing this. With more guilt because I should be spending quality time with the girl who is going to start first grade on Tuesday and I have so very few full days of momhood left. But no.  I've sent a few snarky-graphic-type comments, but that was a lot of effort so I think maybe three actually went out. I proofread the last chapter I wrote and started a new one and got all of a page and a half pounded out. Whow. Look out. Author on a roll.

 I had one phone conversation, and it was a good one, someone that I've wanted to chat with for quite some time, and that got me all happy...for a minute. I almost picked up the raisin.

If this keeps up, this phone friend of mine pointed out, my husband might feel the need to hire a housekeeper. Fine with me. As long as I get to pick them. And his name is Antonio the Houseboy. No problem there. He can pick up the raisin. I'll scatter raisins everywhere. Oops, there goes another one now.

Is it a bad idea to drink wine when one is in a soporific state of apathetic blechiness? Anyone have any recommendations as to getting out of the blahs?

Have a great weekend everyone! Wow. That exclamation point nearly put me over the edge into a coma. I need to go lie down....

Currently reading : Running with Scissors: A Memoir By Augusten Burroughs

9:26 PM - 48 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment

Eastern impressions...
Current mood: blissful
Category: Travel and Places

I've never been quite content with where I am. Have always been tugged, pulled, called to places opposite from what I've known.

I've always lived in the high desert, west of the Rockies proper; stifled (in my way of thinking) by a cowboy mindset and brown dead grassland. I yearn for green, cool, quiet places where one can discover tiny mosses and lush undergrowth or a cedar-shingled barn about to tip over in the shade of giant trees. Or a rocky shore where the ocean smashes into the land and smells like peace. Or a big city, where one can see smelly freaks freely wandering and beautiful wealthy people doing whatever it is that they do with impunity, imposing architecture embellished with interesting flourishes in concrete, where the wildlife carve out bizarre niches in the metal and marble cave of a train station.

So, instead of regaling you with a blow-by-blow of our family vacay back East, I've decided to just let you peek into my travel journal and my little brain's first impressions of a world that seems so foreign to my own.

Manhattan:
Hot! Sticky! Large. Both cutting-edge fashion and timeless character. Beautiful people, comfortable with where they are yet wanting to be more, wanting to be worthy of this lithic jungle of monumental engineering.

New Yorkers are blunt, hard-edged and cut off from one another and the surrounding environs. But, sometimes, a visitor smiles at them with that "Whoa. I'm in NEW YORK! Hi!" smile, or a child expresses that unabashed glee only they can have over a sandwich or a city squirrel, and the shell might crack. The edges might soften, for a moment. Their faces loosen and the New Yorker smiles indulgently, their shoulders dropping and footsteps slowing. Put them in a crisis-- a power outage in the subway or someone hurt on the train, or crazy fanatics destroying symbols of freedom and power--they not only soften, they come together and form an identity to protect and help each other and are New Yorkers in a whole other way.

It is the very concrete symbol of the American way; people come here from anywhere--the Dominican Republic to drive an illegal taxi to support his five kids, or from Nigeria to pull a rikshaw full of tourists and their incredibly heavy luggage to Grand Central Station in the middle of a rainstorm to make forty bucks, say-- and they make a life like they could make nowhere else. And the Lady looks outward, welcoming more of them in. Welcoming us all in. Including the bat who lives in and flutters through Grand Central Station.






Connecticut
Green. Lush. Cool, Sweet. Same imagery as money, which is steeped in its heritage and society. Idyllic winding shady streets, fat silky squirrels and chubby wild rabbits on the lawns and fireflies emerging obediently at dusk to charm children from the west where fireflies are simply in one's imagination.
It is lovely here. Genteel. Quiet. Where the cry of a baby isn't as bothersome, somehow. Where the embrace of an old friend is warm and watching our children play as if they've never been apart is as satisfying as the vodka gimlets.




Maine
Quaint. Old-fashioned. Slow.
Forests that crowd the highways, block the views that would be spectacular and that shelter secret ancient rock walls. Forest that reclaimed land once taken for the use of those who first crossed the sea to get here.
Little villages sprinkled he'ah and the'ah; each with a seafood stand that has "Maine's Best Clam Chowdah and Lobstah rolls" and a fancy antique shop covered in doilies and with a dusty barn full of junk (both of which carry the same old treasures), the fence made of old pier pylons hung with lobster buoys, at least one lobster boat parked on someone's lawn. They're sweet, simple homey places, and all the same, really.
How many times can a person climb a hill and reach the crest and say "Wow. Look at that view!" or spend countless hours hunched over, scanning the sand and stone shore, searching for those elusive and jewel-like treasures from the sea? How much seafood can a person consume in one weekend? I dunno; I've only been there three times. I'll let you know.



So, where have you been that is completely different from where you are? Do you enjoy it or long for the familiar?

Currently listening : The Story By Brandi Carlile Release date: 2007-04-03

4:27 AM - 39 Comments - 33 Kudos - Add Comment

Oh, BALLS!
Current mood: sore
Category: Life

I'm 36. And almost a half. I don't have a problem with that, seeing as how most days I still feel like I'm at the emotional maturity level of a prepubescent emu. But, as stated in a previous blog, I've been lamenting the loss of the prepubescent (well, the pre-childbirth) bod.

So I've hit the gym!

And it hit back.

I have an off again/on again relationship with the gym; over the years I've had runs where I'll be one of those really really intense worker-outers, hitting the treadmill, pounding the weights, crunching some abs.

Then I'll have those blissful periods of potato-ness. The times where the most exercise I get is flipping the pages of a book or typing dorky blogs or hitting the remote buttons. Sure, sure, keeping up with the child is exercise, but she's mostly self-sufficient. "Play with me Momma," is usually followed up with "Ok, let's have a nice quiet card game, shall we?"

But now I'm back to the pump-me-up thing. I was a personal trainer for a brief period, so I figure I know what I'm doing. Or I did 13 years ago. The technology has all changed. Now there's all this new equipment, and moves where you use multiple body areas and tone everything at once while getting some cardio (read: suck air til you think you're going to upchuck) at the same time. And then, there's this little gem:



The Pilates Ball. Or as I like to call it: The Squishy Sphere of Torture.

Now, I have a ball. My dear mum gave me one, complete with how-to DVD. And I was all excited to do it. Then I watched the DVD. The SST is now deflated in the closet. I could cite space concerns, lack of a DVD player, blah blah blah, but let's be honest: I looked really hard, man.

But in the big gym world, they don't look so bad. Sitting there, quietly and squishily in the corner of the weight room and in their pvc-pipe racks in the aerobics room, just waiting for some sap to fall for the allure of what they can do for one's abs. I watched a class once, and the fog of memory was telling me "hey, you can do this! Jump on!"

So, silly me, I did. I started with this move:



stretching out and then crunching up. Yeah! Feel the burn! Every little muscle betwixt my ribs and down my sides were screaming for more! (Or for mercy, I dunno. The music was on pretty loud in there.) And then suddenly, as I'm crunching, the ball makes a dastardly move:

It went shooting out from under me. And I landed on my ass.

There were looks. There might have been sympathetic smiles. My best friend, who was on the old-fashioned ab board at the time, snorted and chuckled before pretending to be concerned.
 "You okay?" *chuckle snort*
"Yuup! No problem! Meant to do that! Fancy dismount! Ta-da!" *mumble mumble* "fucking ball" I surreptitiously rubbed my now-bruised tailbone as I shuffled across the room to retrieve the Squishy. And lay down on the floor, prepared for my next move:



Except I added a little something-somethin. I put my legs out straight, ball between my ankles, and raised them up to the sky and grabbed the ball with my outstretched hands, then moved it over my head, lowered it back down while again raising the legs again skyward to put the ball back between my ankles and lower it to the floor. I'd seen a personal trainer forcing some poor woman to do this once. Looked easy enough, if a bit like a retarded fire brigade.

So here we go! Up, grab, raise, lower, legs up, pass the ball…..miss completely. The ball shot between my legs and skittered, again, across the room, where it bumped into a running treadmill and was shot the other way, landing on top of a woman doing the chest-press. She was not amused. The best friend was. She got a better ab workout just from the laughing. I finally wrangled the ball "Sorry, lady," *mumble mumble*"fucking BALL" and got out of there, pride and tailbone wounded.

What have I learned? Well, I've learned I can't bend over today without sucking air. I've learned I am possibly the second-least coordinated person on the planet. I've learned that sticking with the old-school might just be the way to go for my personal fitness routine.
Dumbell, anyone?

Sharsies! Anyone have any less-than-flattering workout events?

☺

Currently reading : Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Made Easy) By William Shakespeare

11:36 PM - 35 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment

For your amusement....
Current mood: enlightened
Category: Life

...which would be...what? No, really, what do you like to do for fun?

Because I'm having what could possibly be a crisis of taste.

I've always considered myself a somewhat "cultured" person; I read a lot, I enjoy waxing philosophic on a myriad of subjects, I have two college degrees, I like the symphony. So other than those golden moments of drinking one too many martinis and being convinced to do a shot of tequila and subsequently dancing on the bar or going on stage to sing with the band and a half-dozen other sloshed bimbos, yeah, I'm a classy chick.

But I love amusement parks. Love them. And I didn't realize that this might land me somewhere in the land on the Edge of the Trailer Park, until yesterday.

Yesterday was the husband's birthday, which is always a good day because now I am no longer 2 numerical years older than he, something that he lords over me for 3 months. For the big day, he decided he wanted to go to that bastion of family fun, Lagoon . It is located about a half hour north of our fair city, and has gone from being a slightly seedy, sticky-grounded, smelly-bathroom, rickety-is-this-seatbelt-supposed-to-be-frayed, vomit-encrusted, only slightly-better-than-the-county-fair amusement park twenty years ago to what looks like a pretty cool theme-type park. Big new rides, fancy water fountains, a water park, a genuine pioneer village. Big new rides being what attracts me.

Love the roller coasters. Being catapulted down an elevated track whilst strapped into a contraption resembling a hybrid between a go-cart and a dungeon implement and screaming my head off upside down...now that's what I call fun. Feeling like I'm about to be shot over the edge or driven face-first into the pavement, now that's a good time. My throat hurts from the screaming and laughing giddily. This is my new favorite ride of all time:




Yeah, baby. Straight up, propelled by giant super-magnets, then straight the fuck down to the very ground and then roundandroundand round. More fun than the night before, when I had the hubby all to myself for a few hours. (Mom, pretend you didn't read that, k?) I'm all a-quiver. Woo! There's another one.

The food isn't bad, either. Not Disneyland, where they can literally make me expand three sizes over a three-day-pass with the yumminess, but still not too bad. We, being budget-concious, usually bring a cooler full of lunch stuff, and get there right when the gates open in order to join the elbow-laden rush to get  a good table in a pavilion in the shade, where we can go throughout the day to reconnoiter, refresh, re-sunscreen and rest. Like a little base camp.

This time, I noticed a sign in the cute little pink pavilion that is our favorite. "Ask about Lagoon's Catering Service!" Oooooo....they cater? They make food? And serve it to you after you've had your tummy thoroughly inverted? Mmmmm..... "Hey honey," I say, "your company should have its summer barbecue here! That would be awesome!"
He looked at me for a moment. "Yeah, hon. I think that might be a little, um, white trash for Big Corporate Giant Co." (Not the real company name, but close enough. Most of you may not realize it, but the corporation my husband works for actually owns and runs most of the world. It doesn't really matter who you vote for in the coming election; this bank owns your ass. You're welcome.)

White trash?

Lagoon?

Whaaaaah?

And then I looked around. Crowded into the other surrounding pavilions were.....well, lets just call them "Culturally deficient." Or, "High-class Impaired." Lots of bad hair, facial and otherwise. Clothes that didn't fit. Some muffin-top action and cleavage spillage. Stains. And tatoos. Lots and lots of reaallly reaaaaaaaalllllyyyyyy bad tatoos. One guy even conveniently spelled out "White" and "Trash" on the backs of his upper arms, finalizing it for me. Two chicks and a guy got into a screaming fist fight, in front of their kids.

Yup. I was in the land of weedy lawns and cars on blocks. Pit bulls on chains and "From my cold dead hands" bumper stickers. Nattie Light in a can and Funyuns. Taking your five kids with you to the Sit n' Smoke Station. Kids that look and smell like they have only a passing acquaintance with the bath tub. Forgot to brush their tooth. That kind of thing. Very few bankers. More of the Check-n-go and pawn shop financial plan crowd.

Oh. My. Gawd.

No! It can't be! This oasis of chuckles, this childhood memory preserve....tainted? Am I guilty of being a redneck-by-association? What does it say about me that I LOVE this place? That I would happily fork over a hundred bucks for a season pass? That I, too, might have yelled "Fuckin-A!" at the apex of the ancient wooden roller-coaster?

I think I'll sit quietly and read Shakespeare today. Putter in my English-style garden. Make fresh pesto and foccacia bread for an appetizer before an entree of roasted asparagus and fingerling potatoes to compliment the grilled $6 a pound ribeye steaks for dinner. ANYTHING to make me feel like I don't really belong to that group of troglydytes. Not that I'm being judgemental or anything, really. I just. Well. I'm BETTER than that, aren't I?

But......at the top of the Wicked, glorying in the freedom of speed and g-forces, I am a happy little trailer-trash girl.




So, how about you? Am I alone in this, or do you, my edumacated and classy readers, have any low-class secret pastimes you revel in regularly?

Currently listening : White Trash By White Trash Release date: 1991-06-17

8:30 AM - 39 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

The Poop Story.
Current mood: amused
Category: Life

The following account is true. Although it did not happen to me; my life is not this interesting, thank God. Names have been (somewhat) changed to protect the innocent.

So, my son Paul wakes up Monday with diarrhea. And puking. It was a big weekend, full of hot dogs, ice cream and roller coasters and very little sleep. Poop and puke happens. I didn't think he was actually sick, but being the responsible parent that I am, I took him to the doctor. What with the poop floating rampant in the swimming pools, the doctor wanted to be sure he didn't have a bug.
"Get a stool sample," he says and hands me a cup.
"I'm sure he's fine, really, he's just tired," I say, trying to not have to take home a cup and make my five-year-old son poop into it. But, again, being the responsible parent that I am, I take the cup home. I show Paulie the cup, telling him that the next time he has to poo to try to get it into the cup. The cup sits sentinel on the back of the toilet.

My son only normally poops every three days or so. It's an event. So Wednesday, I'm sitting downstairs on the computer spending some quality time with YouTube when the neighbor girl walks in.
"Here," she says, holding out the sacred poo cup. It's full. Of a perfectly formed, swirly-topped little turd. It looks like the Big Boy's hair. Thank God they remembered the lid.
"Oh, well, uh, thanks," I say and gingerly take it from her, not really wanting to know why she has it.

Now what? It's late afternoon, the doctor's office is across town and tomorrow is a holiday {Editor's note: In Utah, we get to spend the 24th of July memorializing the Mormons' entry into Zion. Everything is closed and there are parades. End of editorial note. Like you care. }, and I reaallly don't want a container of poo in the fridge over the weekend.
So, being the good parent that I am, I get into the thousand-degree car, poo safely tucked into my purse, and head across town, only momentarily wistfully thinking about taking the wrong freeway exit that would take me away away away...to somewhere with no poo in cups that I am solely responsible for.

I get to the doctor's office and march up to the front desk, poo in hand.
"I, uh, have a sample? For the son? Uh, from my son?"
"Oh, geez, back--back there!" The horrified nurse waves me through to the back of the office. I wander through the halls like a rat in a maze to the very back, where I see a lab-type desk. I set the poo on the counter.
"I have a sample I need..uh...checked?"
More horror from the nurse. "THAT needs to go to the lab. Back that way and take a right." She might have been making waving motions and holding her breath. Gawd. There's a LID on it.

I finally find the lab. There's no one behind the desk, but there are lots of pretty people with scabs scattered uncomfortably close together in the chairs, some looking like they were dug up to make it there. I sign the clipboard, stow the poo back in my purse and sit down with my book. Good thing I brought my book. No one talks to the chick with a book.

A little man bounds up the hall, carrying various sample-gathering-type implements. He checks the clipboard and calls my name.
"You here for a drug test?" He's chirpy. Too happy for someone who spends their day drawing court-ordered blood from addicts who swear they're clean and, well, doing anything with other people's poo.
"Uh, no. I have a, uh, stool sample? My son was sick and they want to check it."
He peers into my purse, as if expecting to find the poop riding shotgun without benefit of restraint. I hold up the cup.
"They gave you that to put it in?" He shakes his head, which does not bode well for me. "No, I can't use that. You need to get it in these." And he proceeds to line up five, count 'em FIVE, little tiny cups on the counter. I look at the cups. I look at him.
"I need to get it in there? Are you shitting me?"
He smiles vaguely. "Yeah. There's spoons." Or maybe he used a more technical term than "spoons". The surreal feeling of the moment might have blocked my short-term memory. "There's a private bathroom up on the fourth floor if you want." Hm. Do I really want to walk through the office again, onto an elevator and through another floor, carrying poop and cups. No. No I do not.

So I lock myself in the tiny bathroom across the hall. The druggies will have to tie a knot. I line up the tiny cups, take off their tiny lids and regard their tiny spoons. Each one is the size of my pinky fingernail. The cups have liquid in them and Lupe has informed me that I need to get enough "sample" in each to make the liquid hit the top. Great. No problem. I'm a mom, I've dealt with poo before, right?
Then I took off the lid. And sent a text to my husband on the cell phone. "I'm filling cups with our son's poop. I don't get paid enough for this!!" To which he replies, "But will you be home in time for me to leave for class?" His support and empathy are astounding.

Trying my best not to breathe, I manage to get four of the cups implanted with their miniature dollop of poo. Doing good. Almost done. The fifth tiny cup decides to bail out and hit the floor. Pre-poop-dollop, thank God. But now I have to go ask Lupe for a new cup. The druggies are now curious what the funny lady is doing, asking for more poo cups.
"I don't get paid enough for this!" Is my triumphant announcement as I finally manage to get the fifth cup full and line 'em up on the counter for Lupe.
"There. There you go. Can I go now? Do you have the poop?"
Lupe signs in the poo and I'm free to go. Go home to my now not-in-the-least diarrhetic son. And my best friend's mojitos. And I didn't even think about that freeway exit.

--As told to me by my very best friend, confidante, challenger and mojito mamma, Sara.

Currently reading : Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume By Jennifer O'Connell

6:57 PM - 36 Comments - 35 Kudos - Add Comment

More answers to life’s big questions...
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: Life

Whew! What a crazy weekend. So many things to see, do, people to hang out with and impress with my brilliance...or just make them laugh at the dorkiness that is me...

So without further ado-whacka-do, here are the answers to the questions posed to me by my thoughtful friends.

1.  From Lavender Roses: What is your greatest accomplishment in life?
    Easy. I've done a few things in my life, mostly because I never could figure out what the hell I was supposed to do or wanted to do. I was supposed to be a marine biologist, but met a boy and stayed in Utah. So then I was supposed to be a zoologist, but couldn't manage the two years of Calculus and Physics to get that degree. So I dropped out and decided to be a personal trainer, but hated trying to sell memberships to the gym to people who really only wanted to sit on their asses and watch tv, so I became a dog trainer but hated my boss, so I got a degree in Psychology and a teaching certificate and became a teacher. Which I really mostly liked when I didn't have to deal with administration or parents. So, I was going to be a teacher and fix broken kids whom everyone else had given up on.  That was going to be my life, my challenge, my acheivement.
    Uh, then the stick turned blue. And I couldn't stand the thought of putting my baby in daycare. So, turns out I'm a full-time mom.
    And SHE is my greatest accomplishment, at least now before I screw her up and she needs years of therapy. She's funny, she's smart, she's sassy and friendly, healthy and beautiful. She's a little too much like her mother.  I love her and am proud to be her mom, every day.

2.  From the deep and shining Art and Soul: IF...you can go back in time to change any part of history ...what would it be?
    Look out; I'm gonna get all philosophical and feminist.
    Human society has certainly never been perfect. From the day we stood up straight and grabbed a rock and hurled it at another humanoid and grew a prefrontal lobe, we've been messing up each other and the planet.
    But I think if we could go back to the Paleolithic/Neolithic eras and continue the Goddess worship culture, in which women were revered, women were the leaders, women were ALWAYS RIGHT, and never have given our families and homes and lives over to the machinations of men who created war, poverty, territorialism, terrorism and rape, maybe things would be a little better for us now. Maybe there wouldn't be any nuclear war, biological weapons, fanatical tussling over a patch of sand. Maybe there would be; the Amazons and the Celts were some bad-ass warrior women who weren't afraid to beat the crap out of someone unfriendly. But it seems like, looking back through history, that when we turned things over to the guys was when the "Me" mentality took over and we forgot to be respectful of our original Mother, that we started hurting each other, that we stopped being benign nomads and settled into cities of pain.
    I think things would be different, definitely.

3.  From my new friend Sandy: What inspires you to write, what particularly makes the words really flow and sparkle for you? Is there an author, event or place that triggers your creativity? And what time of day do you write - morning, late night, or during random moments throughout the day?
    I have a love/hate relationship with writing. I love to write, I've always written; journals, poems (those really bad melodramatic ones that high school girls tend toward), stories in my head. But I very often will sit down to write what's in my head and just freeze, fearful that what is going to be put out there isn't going to be what I want it to be. I'm not really a perfectionist, as anyone who has been to my house can see, but I need these words to be right.
    So, I've had to force myself a lot. Especially on this novel. I'll go months without a word, then I'll make myself sit down and type and *sound of angels singing* There It Is. Actually, sadly, I find that I come up with my best stuff when I've either had a few drinks or when I'm just dropping off to sleep. When the filters of self-doubt shut down, the words come.
    I only have about six chapters left of this story, and I'm going to use every opportunity I can to get it done. It's got to be done. Now if I could just stop writing the blogs that feed my little ego, maybe it'd get done!

4: From my fellow Wannabe-Wild-Housewife, TINA: What happened on the wildest night you ever had?
    Finally! A non-thinker question. Now if I could just remember the answer.
    But, I'm pretty sure this year's trip to Tahoe is right up there. See the pics of me onstage singing with the band, at the gambling table, on horseback. I don't think I've ever danced as much as I did that weekend. I also got hit on by a very cute 27-year-old boy, which was nice for the ego. Don't worry, I was a good girl and sent him packing. But, it was a good time!

5: From Debra, Queen of Sisterhood: Joseph Campbell said, "Follow your bliss". Can you describe what your bliss is, let us know if you are truly following it and if not what is standing in your way?
    Dammit. Just when I thought I could stop delving into my psyche.
    Ok, the thing is, my bliss is pretty dull. And elusive. I've not known for a long time what would make me happy. I should be happy right now; I've got a pretty good gig going on here. But there's always been a part of my brain that insists that whatever is going on in my life just....isn't.....quite.....it. I think to really be in bliss, I need to simply appreciate every moment for what it is. Be grateful for what I have and where I am. I think as long as I have people who love me, people whom I love, a happy child, a few moments every day to sit and stare and write, I'm okay. Throw in a glass of good wine and so much the better.

Welp. That's it. The Wisdom of The Domestic Goddess, such as it is. Thanks to everyone who asked questions, thanks to those who read this drivel, you're all tops in my book!

Currently listening : Remixed By Sarah McLachlan Release date: 2003-12-16

9:27 AM - 39 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

You want the truth? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
Current mood: content
Category: