On cheating

So I have a personal trainer now. Part of the program is of course an eating plan -- not just to lose weight, but to be healthier -- to make sure I get enough of the right nutrients, etc. It doesn't rule out any food group (well, except sugar, for now); it's a 40/30/30 plan. My calorie intake is based on my resting metabolic rate and all that fancy scientific stuff. However. I am allowed a "Cheat Meal" once a week, where I can eat anything I want within a 2-hour period. I mean, I should probably not down an entire carrot cake, but you know -- I can get a burger, fries, a shake... with no guilt. Or at least, that's the plan.

Because this was my first week on the plan, it was also my first Cheat Meal and I admit it, i was nervous. I couldn't pinpoint why, exactly; I should have been ecstatic, right? I should have been fantasizing about it all week, right? So today was the day, and all the way home from work I was totally stressing out, going back and forth on what I wanted. I was kind of disappointed that I wasn't starving to death (which is, you know, GOOD) and that I wasn't craving anything. Finally, at the last minute, I swerved into Sonic, my old friend, and got an old fave, a combo meal with a sweetheart brownie shake (note to self: not worth the calories). I had a knot in the pit of my stomach the whole time. I got home, ate it, and felt sick for the next hour. But mostly, the guilt. Oh, the guilt. Sooo guilty. I felt like I'd totally erased what I'd done all week, and that's when it hit me; I was nervous about my Cheat Meal because in the past, if I've fallen off the wagon while on a diet, that was my mental signal to give up and just eat whatever and blow off the whole thing. I am a perfectionist in some ways (and only some ways), and as far as diets go, it's always been all or nothing. Which is not realistic and is why I have never succeeded on any of my previous diets. So it was really hard for me and made me really uncomfortable eating "bad" food tonight.

This is something i'll talk to my trainer about on Sunday, because obviously, I have issues. As lame as this sounds, I want to find out if the Cheat Meal is mandatory; I know, I'm totally crazy, right?? It just fucks with my mind to be "allowed" to "cheat", after a week of whole grains and yogurt and exercising. So does this just go to show that I am a person who will always feel guilty about something, even something I'm told is nothing to feel guilty about??

Then again, maybe this whole Cheat Meal philosophy is a sneaky way of ... well... fucking with my mind. I mean, here I am wondering if I **have** to eat it! And I got no enjoyment out of it whatsoever. None. And maybe that's the point -- to take the "magic" out of food. To force me to deal with difficult emotions with something other than food.

so. there's that.

I know, I know.

I know I have been low-profile lately. And it's not for lack of activity; in fact, more has probably happened in the last week than in the last 2 months. But for some reason, I just haven't felt like writing. I guess I'm having that writer's block thing. In any event, I still don't feel inspired, but I do feel guilty, so i'm going to make a list of things going on and maybe I'll elaborate at a later date. I present to you

A List of the Last Week

- My sistah flew into Austin a week ago and stayed with me for the long weekend. It was awesome. I miss her.

- I turned another year older last Saturday night and celebrated with my lovely friends and my visiting sistah.

- The night before, I had a lovely b-day dinner with my entire family in San Antonio.

- I officially hired a personal trainer and began the program on Sunday. Today is day 5. I have to say, I am hungry right now, but in general it's been fine. My biggest problem is eating enough, actually -- since i'm eating all healthy stuff, it's not as yummy and I don't want to eat much.

- Yes, the above bullet is HUGE, but I am drained and don't really want to talk about it right now. I wasn't even sure I was going to tell anyone, but of course I have a big mouth and so here it is, Internet.

- Yesterday I bought a ticket to San Francisco, where I've been meaning to visit my friend Sarah for months! I'm going the third week in March. Yay, something to look forward to! (I have a strict policy of planning something else fantastic right after completing something fantastic -- this helps with the crushing depression...)

That's honestly all I can manage right now, but I just wanted to say Helloooooo, I'm alive!

that is all.

The universe. It is cruel.

Dear Friendly Neighborhood Grocery Store,

Now you know how shy I am whenever I darken your aisles. How I try to get in and out, but end up taking hours because I have no idea what to buy. You know there is nothing that intimidates me more than a wide open grocery store and all its wondrous and fattening possibilities. Yes, you have been wooing me lately, and I was just starting to loosen up a little, but I know that you understand -- for me to buy groceries is an E.V.E.N.T. So please, for the Love of God and all that is Holy, please tell me why, why, why, out of all the grocery bags not to make it back into my basket after checking out, why it had to be the bag with the ice cream??? WHYYYYYYYY?????? Why couldn't it have been the bag of Lean Cuisines? Or the bread -- everyone knows I only ever eat 2 slices and the rest grows mold anyway -- why did it have to be the Ben & Jerry's??????? My precccciousssssssss???

Of course this discovery did not come without humiliation. If the cats could speak, they would describe how after unloading all the groceries, I got a raw look of panic when I realized the ice cream was missing. How I scoured my kitchen for the missing bag. Then went back out to the car to search the trunk. Then back to the kitchen. Then the car. Then the kitchen. Then I retraced my steps from the kitchen all the way back to the car (did I drop the ice cream in the bushes??? better get the flashlight and make sure!!!!!!!) to check the trunk One. More. Time. For good measure I even searched the inside of the car and every room in my house, because SHIT, ice cream doesn't just walk away. The kitties might also mention how I took every. single. thing. out of my freezer just to make sure I didn't pack the creamy goodness somewhere and forget about it. (As if.) Oh, and let's not forget the refrigerator.

After making damn sure that the ice cream was not in my possession, I shakily made the dreaded phone call. You know, the one where I try to explain to the stoic corporate grocery guy that while yes, I paid for the ice cream, and yes, I have a receipt for it, it somehow did not make it into my car or my house with me, and sweet Jesus I swear i'm not lying I am not an ice cream thief I may be a lot of things but not that and -- Well. As soon as I said "I just left your store and I can't find this bag--" the guy replied "Oh, did it have ice cream in it? And Bacardi Mixers?" YESSSSSSSSSSSSS. I forgot about the Bacardi Mixers. Of Course that was the missing bag.

Anyway, they had it and said I could come in any time and pick up my stuff. How freaking anticlimactic. I tried, oh how I tried to just put the Ben & Jerry's out of my mind and be happy with an apple. I would just pick it up on the way home from work tomorrow, yes, that would be fine. I pushed the thoughts away as I watched Tuesday night TV. But by 11pm I couldn't take it anymore. i realized I would not sleep until the ice cream was back in my possession. (and the bacardi mixers) Quite simply, I caved.

and here is where i abruptly end the story because i just glanced over my laptop and noticed the pint of ice cream sitting on my coffee table starting to melt. my precccioussssssssssss.........

All right, all right

So many blogs I've been reading have been circulating this meme, so i'm going to go ahead and do it even though I haven't technically been "tagged." So here goes:

Four jobs I have had:
1. Salesperson at a maternity clothing store
2. Salesperson at Foley's
3. Secretary at my dad's law office
4. Technical writer at National Instruments

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Legends of the Fall
2. Pretty Woman
3. Vanilla Sky
4. Better Off Dead

Four places I have lived:
1. Knoxville, TN
2. Fulda, Germany
3. Ft. Leavenworth, KS
4. San Antonio, TX

Four TV shows I love
1. Gray's Anatomy
2. Law & Order SVU
3. Criminal Minds
4. Without a Trace
(notice the lack of sitcoms...weird)

Four places I have vacationed
1. Paris
2. Germany
3. San Francisco
4. Alaska

Four of my favorite dishes
1. Enchiladas
2. Saag Paneer
3. Chicken-Fried Steak & mashed potatoes
4. Cheeseburger & fries
(hello, fattening carbs)

Five sites I visit daily
1. dooce.com
2. CrazyMomCat.blogspot.com
3. sundrymourning.com
4. amalah.com
5. wethreebitches.com
(there are many many more, all my friends who have blogs -- I visit yours daily too ;)

Four places I would rather be right now
1. bed
2. Paris
3. a cruise
4. Verona, Italy

I am going to tag the requisite 4 people: Steph, Babs, Tamara, and Sarah.

(this is the perfect Monday post b/c my brain is still in recovery from the weekend...)

eyeballs

my eyeballs itch today. nothing new, really -- it's allergy season, after all. however, I have a shiny new allergy med i just started, so hopefully that will help in the long run. but, back to my eyeballs. they itch.

and i noticed a familiar phenomenon, one i've never spoken aloud, so i thought i'd write about it here. don't get too excited, it's not that great...but maybe it is, i dunno. SO. whenever i rub my eyeballs, for as long as i can remember (way back into early childhood), when I really get going, I see shapes. like, my eyes are closed, i'm rubbing-rubbing-rubbing, and i notice (?) gray argyles. yes, my eyelid visions are argyles. i have no idea what that means, and of course if i try to "focus" on it, i can't really, because people, my eyes are CLOSED. it's really weird. so today? i was just rubbing my eyeballs vigorously and i noticed that not only were there argyles, but swirlies. SWIRLIES. like, vertigo-looking. black and white and all.

so my question is: is it just me?

How to diminish my productivity

Step 1: Allow a certain gray cat into my home office.
Step 2: Watch as said gray cat sashays back and forth on top of the desk, dipping his tail into my water glass, swishing it over my girl scout cookies, blocking my computer monitor with his large bottom.
Step 3: Encourage me to lean in close to his face and say "NO" very clearly.
Step 4: Watch as undeterred, he leans right back, touching my face with his juicy nose in a "I love you too" gesture.
Step 5: Allow cat to flop down on top of my keyboard as I type.
Step 6: Listen as exiled gray cat howls and mewls at the office door. Until I give up and let him back in.
Step 7: Repeat every 15 minutes.

If you were to stop by my place for dinner tonight? You'd be getting fried cat flank, that's for sure. Oh, and of course a nice bottle of wine...

Going postal.

I've never gotten into it much on here, but I participate in the "swapping" of unused beauty products. If you're a girl, you'll get it — you too have bottles and tubes of things here and there that you bought or received as a gift, bottles and tubes of things you have a) never used, b) have no intention of ever using and/or c) feel too guilty to just throw it away. So instead, these things accumulate under bathroom counters and in linen closets all across America. They mate and multiply when you're not looking. And then on some quiet Saturday morning, as you innocently open the cabinet to retrieve a new bag of cotton balls, WHAM – it all comes tumbling out. Well there is an entire online community dedicated to the swapping of these items with other beauty-product-plagued women. It's pretty awesome — what is your trash is someone else's treasure, for the mere price of postage. I mean, how awesome is it that someone so craves your Avon wisteria-scented bubble bath that they're willing to trade you a shiny new MAC lipstick???

So anyway, I mail a lot of packages. I rejoiced at the recent rollout of the self-serve postal machine. Maybe you've seen it — it resides in your local P.O., looks like a giant ATM machine with a scale, and is open 24/hours/day for your mailing pleasure. This invention has saved my life, or at least my lunch hour. So imagine my disappointment the other day when I lugged in an armload of packages only to find an "Out of Order" sign on said machine. Ugh. Since I was already there and the P.O. was still open for business, I took a number. Along with the 500 other people who stopped by to pick up a stamp and now found themselves standing around waiting for two postal workers to eventually call their number. Not fun.

I discovered, during the 40 minutes that I stood around trying not to breathe the contaminated air around me and to ignore the three kids weaving around the patrons playing a rousing game of what I shall call "shrieky tag", that the P.O. is a great place for people watching. IF you're in the mood. And I wasn't. Two people in particular (aside from the shrieking, running children) were bugging me big-time. I heard them before I dared sneak a peek. Or I heard HIM, really. "Him" was a very large (think, massive) guy wearing a t-shirt and flimsy cotton shorts that hit at the flattering level of mid-calf. His socks stretched up his calves, reaching for the shorts, but falling, well, short. The guy was talking geek-speak, which is not at all uncommon in Austin. No big deal. The big deal was his VOICE, people. He was talking/shouting, as if to a deaf person he assumed to be mentally impaired. Only he was talking to a woman sitting right next to him. At first I thought, that POOR WOMAN, she can't get away, why won't he shut up and leave her alone…" But after a few minutes I figured out that they were together. And this woman was very old and kind of shrunken looking. And she had no teeth. BUT she seemed very bright and seemed to understand all the geek speak he was throwing at her. There seemed to be no reason for him to shout, as she was neither deaf nor mentally impaired. In any event, here's a snippet of the conversation I could Not. Get. Away. From.

Big/guy: SO, YOU KNOW IF YOU WANT TO UPGRADE YOUR COMPUTER, I CAN COME OVER AND HELP YOU WITH THAT. I KNOW ALL ABOUT COMPUTERS. YOU REALLY SHOULD GET A BROADBAND CONNECTION. TRUST ME ON THIS. YOU'D BE SURPRISED HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE –

little/lady: oh, thank you big guy, that would be nice, although I only use the Internet for email so I don't think –

Big/guy: NO, REALLY – IT MAKES SUCH A HUGE DIFFERENCE. TRUST ME. IF YOU WANT A WHOLE NEW MACHINE, TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT AND I'LL CALL DELL AND ORDER IT FOR YOU – I KNOW PEOPLE THERE AND CAN GET YOU A GOOD PRICE. TRUST ME, I –

little/lady: oh, well, that's nice, but I really don't think I need –

Big/guy: HEY, WAS THAT YOUR NUMBER THEY JUST CALLED?

I don't know if I've properly conveyed the annoyance of the whole interaction. So there was that, coupled with all the bitter-looking women in rumpled work clothes jingling their keys, and did I mention the shrieking, stomping children?? In any event – it sucked.

Oh, and one more thing: what the HELL requires a 10-15 minute transaction??? Person after person would step up to the counter with one package to mail, and still be there 10 minutes later. Someone stepped up for seven minutes — and walked away with stamps. SEVEN MINUTES it took him to get a book of stamps. I watched in disbelief as the little old lady from above stepped up to the counter — empty-handed. Seems she just had a question. A 15-minute question that apparently required her face-to-face interaction with a postal person, then she finally left — empty handed. Now, why didn't the large, helpful, loud young man tell her ahead of time she could have just gone to the f***ing website??? AAARRGGHH!

Throughout the chaos, the two postal ladies managed to remain calm and even polite. Amazing. But all I kept thinking was how I could NEVER work at a post office or I'd be the one who ended up grabbing a rifle and shooting up the lobby while cackling in maniacal glee.

Guess writing was a much safer career choice for me. Thus far, anyway…

Stop right now...

...if you are at all squeamish about bras and what they contain. Mine in particular. If this thought alarms you, stop reading. Now.

So I've been dreading this particular shopping trip for months, but I really couldn't put it off any longer. I've been busting (haha) out of my bras for a while now, but I have been in denial. Oh, how I miss denial. Denial, it was a warm, quiet, safe place.

But noooooo, I was feeling crappy and depressed when I left work, so I thought, let's just roll with it - go shopping for jeans and bras. Can't get much worse!

Oh intuitive reader, you can already see where this is going, can't you?

At first all was well, in fact I actually found two pairs of jeans I didn't hate -- in less than an hour. So, yay! I took a deep breath and headed across the aisle to the bra section. Now, when I mentioned to a friend recently that I needed to buy bras, she responded with an astounding "Oh, FUN!" I sat in shocked silence, not getting it. Then I got it -- this girl has normal boobs. This girl is not manatee-like. This girl can still buy 'cute little somethings' at Victoria's Secret. Well, THIS girl cannot. And you know, it's really not fair. It used to be that the only positive thing to gaining weight was finally having boobs. Until they kept getting bigger. And bigger. And... yes, bigger. I. Hate. Them. While others may appreciate them, the owner of these boobs does not.

So, with this knowledge I plunged (haha) into the bra department, looking for what size I thought I might be. I figured this out by adding quite a bit onto the last size bra I bought. A good year ago. Ha ha on me.

First of all? If you have big boobs? Forget any cute color. All the reds and pinks and greens only seem to be available in 34As. If you need something crazy, like say, a D CUP, you're looking at hospital white or pancake brown. Oh, and forget about lace. Or anything without a wire. Oh, and? The bras in your size will not only be hidden on the very bottom row, behind all the other bras, but they will not be on sale. So. There I am, on my hands and knees, lumbering down the bra aisles trying to find the proper size. Fast forward 45 minutes, where I emerge from the dressing room with sore boobs and a handful of rejected bras, only to begin Forage #2 for the size I REALLY am. It was almost as traumatic as swimsuit shopping. Almost.

I ended up with a black one (which, hallelujah) and a shockingly white one. Ugh. I am not at all sure they fit "properly" (thank you, Oprah, for instilling this fear), but at least they're a bit more comfortable.

The bottom line? It just adds insult to injury that I have to keep buying fat clothes for my "temporary" size. Well goody, now I can add some fat bras to the future Goodwill collection I am ever so reluctantly acquiring.

That and two pretty cool pairs of jeans.

Less is more

I may be lazy, but even I have minimum beauty standards. Even on the days when I'm running uber-late, I wouldn't dream of leaving the house without washing, applying toner, and moisturizing my face – as well as putting on lipstick. Same thing at night — must remove makeup, tone, moisturize. No compromise.

I guess I totally buy into that philosophy that "your best accessory is great skin" — or else my mom just scared me to death about getting wrinkles starting when I was in middle school. All I know is as far back as I can remember, I have always taken care of my skin. I can count on one hand the number of times I've slept w/all my makeup — and those times I've been drunk, let me assure you. So, must wash face, must wear lipstick.

However, my hair looks like crap if I wash it more than every other day. Thank God my hair is low maintenance, people – it goes up in a hairclip, every day, no matter what. I only use hairspray on the hair at the very center of my forehead, to keep the cowlick from popping loose mid-day.

I think back to the beauty routine I had in high school, even college, and it brings me to a dead stop. WHAT was I THINKING?? I remember getting up Two. Hours. Before. School. in order to curl my hair with a curling iron, just so, and plaster it w/hairspray. Then there was the full-face-of-makeup thing. Ugh. Even in college, when I wore sweats to class, I still had on eyeshadow. It's really hard to imagine now. These days, when I wear makeup, people stop and stare at me in the hallway, mumbling that I look vaguely familiar… it's embarrassing, actually. And at my holiday party? Where I not only wore something other than jeans, but I wore my CONTACTS, did my hair (in a slightly fancier up-do than usual) and wore full makeup — well, let's just say it caused our IT guy to stare at me and say, full of wonder, "Wow. You look REALLLLLLY GOOD without your glasses…". Um, yeah. I also look REALLY GOOD 50 pounds lighter, 10 years younger, and with curlier hair, but such is life.

This has led me to question other people's minimum beauty requirements. For instance, it astounds me that my mom STILL gets up at the ass-crack of dawn and takes the time to curl her hair w/a curling iron and do the whole makeup thing, AND, wear pantyhose and fancy clothes to work. Panty. Hose. Mind blowing. Even my sister, who has 3 kids, always has on makeup. And she's skinnier than me. Really, it's not fair.

I'm curious about other people's beauty minimum. Please, do share if you are so inclined…

My shiny silver alarm clock

I have the most handsome, sleek, shiny, silver alarm clock. While it is fabulously attractive and I lurve it, it IS an alarm clock -- so inherently, it has cons. Even though it's special. I mean, does YOUR alarm clock gently yet insistently nudge you awake every morning between 6:30-7 with a wet nose and crazy whiskers in all your facial orifaces? Does it? Does it purr ever-so-loudly and happily in your ear, as its juicy nose rests on your eardrum? I think NOT.

But I have to give it credit where credit is due; it does NOT let me oversleep. No way. At the risk of personal harm, my alarm clock does. not. give. up. Evah.

Meet my alarm clock:



He is always serene and modest once the task has been accomplished. Well, after the canned catfood is all gone. And he has bathed. Right about the time I'm leaving for work, and he's tripping me on my way out the door....



See? Aren't you jealous? Don't you wish you had one?? Except... on the weekends......... it pretty much sucks.

Recovery

Hello. My name is Lisa and I'm a stressaholic. THERE, I said it. But it has been baaaad, if you didn't get that from my last post. It has been so bad that this weekend I started to freak out about my taxes; I started thinking, oh no, I have received not ONE SINGLE tax form yet and the deadline is in THREE MONTHS, and...and...wait. It's only the 3rd week in January. I've only been back from the holidays for two weeks. OMG. Is that even possible?? How did this happen, this gross error in time-estimation???

In any event, I'm coming down off the big spin. I had a "normal" weekend this weekend, meaning I relaxed more than I have in weeks and even did some fun, social things. AND, today? I went to lunch. Yes, I did. Haven't done that since...before the holidays?

So I am back and ready to blog again. I am starting to once more have bloggable thoughts, thoughts that are not necessarily related to work. Yay! So, what's been going on? Anyone have any news? The most news I've got at this point isn't even mine, really; but my sister had a worse week than I did last week. Her husband had pneumonia, one of the kids had croup, and to top it all off with cream-cheese icing, the baby (well, 18 mos. old now) fell off the bed and re-fractured the same wrist as last summer -- so he's back in a cast for another two months. Yippee! I hear having a toddler in a cast ROCKS!!! Just kidding. It so does not rock. I'm sorry, sistah -- I hope this week will be better for everyone. Poor little Cooper and his bright green cast.

In other news, tomorrow I am getting my cat ashes. I feel odd about it. I guess I'm apprehensive because um, what does one do with one's cat ashes? I've never had this dilemma before. A co-worker of mine has admitted to having a row of boxes full of his various pet ashes; each box is carefully labeled w/the pet's name and a photograph. For some reason, this seems a little ... much. I mean, where on earth should I put the little box? It's not like I think Megs is still WITH her ashes in the box, it's more that I didn't want her body just discarded with so many others. It just seemed wrong. So did burying her in the backyard. Too "Pet Semetary". Anyway, if you have any ideas, let's hear it... in any event, I'm glad she'll be back home. Gosh, that sounded weird, too.

Ok. Well that's it. Just wanted to say I'm back and hopefully I'll be more diligent about keeping in touch this week. I will certainly try, at least.

useless rant that used up more energy than it was worth to even have the thoughts in the first place

Rant ahead:

Today is one of those days when I've been so crazy busy that I've needed frequent brain breaks in order to keep going. Have you ever felt like on the entire Internet, there's just nothing out there for you anymore? Like you've seen everything interesting, read every blog, all the news, you're up on the weather, you're done shopping? It is so frustrating for me when this occurs because really, that's the only brain break I can think of these days. See, my brain clearly needs a break. And what does it mean when the only entertainment I can fathom is staring at my computer even longer than I am required? WTF? But if I'm not upright looking at a computer, I will be horizontal, snoring on my couch and fucking up my sleep pattern for at least another week. I am dead tired. But it's the twitchy kind of exhausted, where you can't just relax and…well…relax. You're still wound up so tightly that it might be weeks before you calm down. You're bone-tired but you need help to get to sleep at night. However, you would have no problem whatsoever with crawling under your desk at any given time during the day and sleeping for hours.

So that's where I am right now. No, NOT under my desk, silly, but bone tired and unable to relax. I can no longer remember the last time I went to lunch or did anything social, for that matter. And? And? I have another brilliantly timed freelance deadline this Friday. Yes, three days from now. And I have not even begun to think about that project because people, there is simply no space left in my brain.

Rant complete.

a babysitter story

My siblings and I had a lot of babysitters growing up. My parents went out a lot, in retrospect; once a week was "Bible-study night", where we always had a sitter except on the nights it was at our house, which we hated even worse b/c then we were stuck in the back of the house and couldn't even go down the HALL. Also, my dad was an officer in the Army and I guess they attended a lot of events. Also, my mom would often get a babysitter for us during the day so she could go shopping. I never knew what was worse — to be dragged along on her endless shopping trips or to be left with some inept teenager. Or mean old woman (Mrs. Morris — ahh that is a post in itself… remind me if I forget…). But then, for a few years, there was Carol.

She was my Favorite Babysitter Evah. I must have been 5 or 6 when she started babysitting us regularly. We lived in San Antonio, pre-Kansas. I guess she was 18 or 19, but it's hard to judge when you're that little. In any event, she was nice, fair, firm, but loving. I remember being very sad when we had to move away to Kansas and leave Carol behind. As a parting gift, she took me to the mall and told me I could "pick out one thing, ANYthing, and she would buy it for me". O.M.G. Do you know how spectacular that is for a 2nd grader??? It was soooo generous and soooo amazing and sooo exciting! ANYthing? I couldn't believe it. What would I get? After what seemed like hours, but probably wasn't, and after much agonizing, I chose perhaps the ugliest stuffed dog on the face of the Earth. I remember she kept asking me, "Are you SURE? You're SURE? Ok. You're SURE?" I insisted that I was. And how I loved that ugly stuffed dog. You may be wondering how any stuffed dog could be ugly; well I'll tell you. It was white with black ears; it was made cheaply, like a carnival stuffed animal – filled with those little Styrofoam beads, so not even very soft. And the kicker? It had a rubber face. Like a doll's face, only a dog. It was even pink, like a doll face. And its tongue stuck out. I don't know if my description can possibly convey the disturbing nature of this dog, but anyway — that was my Carol dog and I cherished it. (Sidenote: I honestly can't remember if my sister went with us to the mall — seems like she would have, but then again she was only 3 or so…Nicole, do you remember?)

So in 1976(?) we moved to Ft. Leavenworth, KS. It was the first time we had ever lived in a place that got snow, so as kids, we loved it. Also, there were tons of neighborhood kids to play with at any given moment — we lived on base, and it seemed every house had 2-3 children. Life moved on, I started 3rd grade, we began the process of going through a battery of weird babysitters. I don't remember how long we were there before my mom got a phone call one night. I think it was within the first year we lived there. The phone call was from Carol's mother, informing us that Carol had died. Carol was dead. As in, gone forever. My mom told me this, but I didn't grasp it. I didn't know details, only that we were flying back to Texas to attend her funeral. Again, I can't recall if Nicole was there, it may have just been my mom and me.

We went to the "viewing" at the funeral home the day before the service, and I sat there, in a room full of flowers, watching my babysitter, Carol, laying very still in a casket. It was an open casket. She looked puffy and smelled like roses — to this day I can't stand the smell of roses or carnations b/c it takes me back to that funeral home. While my mom and her mom chatted and cried, Carol's little brother tried to entertain me. It was very surreal. I remember watching Carol very closely, waiting, willing her to open her eyes. I really just thought she would sit up at any moment and say, "Hello, I'm back, just sleeping." But she didn't.

Years later when I was 14 or 15, I was doing dishes with my mom one night when the subject of Carol came up. My mom then told me what had really happened, and I felt the shock all over again. Carol had been going to college. She had gone out on a date with a "friend" and had been raped. She got pregnant from this rape. Despite being from a staunch Catholic family, supposedly she was "highly encouraged" by a family member to get an abortion, and she did so, against her own wishes. It appeared that she never recovered from the trauma, because they found her one morning in her apartment, dead, with empty bottles of prescription pills scattered around her bedroom floor. It was determined that she had killed herself.

My whole world shifted that day. Things from the past started falling into place: the guilt that her mother had spoken of that day at the funeral home; the unusual awkwardness I picked up on, even at 7; my mom spending hours comforting the mother, even though they were not close friends. My mind went even further. That explained why Carol looked "puffy". It was macabre and devastating and fascinating all at the same time.

I had not thought about that incident in a long time, until I had a strange conversation with a friend several years ago. We were somehow talking about funerals, and as I told her Carol's story, for the first time I realized how weird it was that a 7-year-old spent the day in the room with her dead babysitter in an open casket. I had already been to lots of funerals by then, which apparently isn't everyone's experience. I guess I had a lot of very old relatives die throughout my childhood, but Carol was the only person I ever knew personally, until my best friend Ann's father died our senior year of HS. But this friend was telling me how she had never been to a funeral until her Grandfather died a few years ago. I was amazed, but have come to realize that perhaps I was the anomaly…

It got me thinking. I'm still not sure what I think. But suffice it to say that there was never another Carol, and I will never forget her extraordinary kindness. The tragedy of her short life still makes me ache when I think about it. Which I'm doing today, for some reason.

PTSD (that's post traumatic stress disorder for you "normal" people out there)

Oh man. I was so right about work this week. And it's not over yet. There's still the weekend. But -- I survived, and am less stressed now than I was 5 days ago, for whatever that's worth.

There were so many times this past week that I've thought to myself "I need to blog about that" -- but of course now that I'm sitting at my computer, my mind is completely blank. Suffice it to say that work has been challenging. And I've been tired. Coming off Christmas vacation is a bitch. This was the longest 4-day workweek in the history of the world.

Anyway. Aside from work, I've done.........hmmm. grocery shopping? BT? laundry? do any of those things really count?

I'm actually sitting at my desktop computer (GASP) for the first time in a long time, because I realized last week that I was getting a crick in my neck from surfing on the couch w/my laptop. Who knew. As I type this, Jess is sitting right in front of me staring at me, his gray leather nose and abundant whiskers about 2 inches from my face. And in the background I can hear some documentary about Bigfoot on TV -- yes this is what I've been reduced to -- Bigfoot on a Friday night. Oh well. What I don't get is I heard (ok, ok, SAW) this guy living in the Everglades who claims to be "protecting" Bigfeet(?) (although he called them something else I can't recall -- swamp something?). Anyway, he sits in this deer blind kinda thing and watches through binoculars 24x7, "protecting" Bigfoot. So they can "continue to live in this area for a long time" -- and I'm thinking, but...you've never, I dunno, SEEN ONE? Do they NEED protection? If there's no concrete proof that they even exist? Don't get me wrong, I believe -- oh, I believe. I'm just sayin...

On that note I really need to end the agony and just go to bed. More this weekend, hopefully -- maybe some of the witty and interesting blog topics I've been thinking of all week will come back to me. We can hope.

Real-Life Eve

sucks. So today was my last day of freedom, and I was going to go to bed early so I can wake up early and be uber-productive at work tomorrow (after I get there ON TIME)... and I just looked at the time and it's already after 1am. I am so. screwed.

I'm wide awake, just as I knew deep down I would be. The key to getting through this (very busy) week is going to be NOT collapsing upon entering my house after work every day. The only bright thing is it's a 4-day week, so the torture will be relatively short.

I did, however, leave the house today. Close your gaping jaw, you're embarrassing me. I went to the mall, which I had been dreading. And it really wasn't that bad. Bad as in crowded. I caught a few sales and then hit Target, buying a few essentials like, oh i dunno, toilet paper, and headed home, exhausted from my long adventure. Long as in 3 hours.

Tomorrow is going to suck, isn't it.

Well I lied when I said I'd have something interesting to post "next time". Sorry. The only thing I've got is a nephew story via my sistah. She said the other night, her hubbie was trying to get Claytie (#2) to brush his teeth before bedtime. After a long struggle, D picked my flailing nephew up in some sort of quasi-wrestling hold and said "Son, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way -- but you ARE going to brush your teeth." To which my adorable 3-year-old nephew furrowed his brow and snarled "Then let's do it the HARD WAY."

That's my boy.

blahblahblah

Things have settled down. Wayyyyyy down. So far down. I don't know where the past week went, but i'm freaking out that I only have 3 days left to sleep in before reality and real life sets in again. Ugh. But the sleeping-in thing is messing with the going-to-bed-at-night thing, as you might gather by the time of this post. Both the cats sacked out on my bed about 2 hours ago. They tried to stay awake with me but it was just too hard. But me? I'm wide awake.

Jess and Piper are fine now. Jess got over his grumpy episode and they're buddies again. I still think he's grieving, but there's no sign that he's going to stop eating - ha. When I go into the spare room, where Megs spent her last few weeks, he follows me in and sits quietly with me. He seems a little sad. He's been really clingy, but that's cool because I've been home a lot so he'll just snuggle with me on the couch. Of this whole lazy week, I have accomplished very little. This is how little, yet I am so proud to have accomplished ANYTHING:

-Cleaned my room, a several-hour-long process involving hanging up tons of clean clothes stacked in various places
-Did 5 loads of laundry, clearing my kitchen floor of laundry piles for the first time in months
-Packed up another load of shoes and clothes to go to Goodwill
-Started a list of all the things I need to do in order to get my shit together in 2006.

Doesn't sound like a lot? Well... it's not really -- I basically did it all today. That's right, I only took one nap today, by golly, and look at all I got done.

Next week is really going to suck, isn't it?

I have done very little socializing this week, but i did see my friend Sarah, visiting from San Francisco, a couple of times, and that was very nice. Even though I had to work a tad this week, it still has felt very much like a break, which I needed. I'm so ready for this wretched odd-numbered year to be OVAH. I do better in even-numbered years. See for yourself:

- born - 1970
- H.S. graduation - 1988
- college graduation - 1992
- got married - 1994
- got divorced - 1998
- sister got married - 1998
- first nephew born - 2000
- second nephew born - 2002
- third nephew born - 2004
- quit job I hated, started job I love - 2004

Alternately, check out the odd-numbered years:

- mom had cancer - 1995
- started a long journey to my personal recovery - 1997
- separated from ex-husband - 1997
- got laid off - 2001
- near-fatal car wreck and subsequent health problems - 2003
- Meggie's death - 2005

It's kind of eerie, isn't it? Of course there are good and bad milestones in my life that don't fit the pattern, but generally? I'm all about the even-numbered years.

This might be the lamest post ever. Sorry. I'll try to have something interesting to write about very soon. Should be do-able -- New Year's Eve is tomorrow, and you never know...

the aftermath, part 1

As I was pondering the title for this blog, I realized that referring to what follows as the aftermath is doubly true; meaning, the aftermath of the big buildup that is Christmas, as well as the aftermath of losing Megs.

I'm in a weird mood tonight. (Could part of it be because I've been watching The Learning Channel's (TLC) marathon of heartbreaking birth defects for hours? I just watched "Born Without a Face" and am now engrossed in "Born With Two Heads." Why? Why???). Barring the odd ambience as I type this entry, here's the setup: I am in bed, propped on pillows, typing on my laptop. Jess is curled up at the top of the bed by my pillow. Piper is curled up at the bottom of the bed, a mirror-image of jess. Now, the vet warned that the cats might grieve, even refuse to eat. I knew Piper would be thrilled about the whole thing, and I was right, but I expected something from Jess. After all, he's known Meggie his whole life; when he came to me as a kitten, 10 years ago, she was already well-established in the household and took over "training" this young male cat. I would describe their relationship more as that of siblings, rather than mother/son. I never saw much of a maternal instinct shining through even as Megs would tackle him, hold him down, and roughly bathe his disgusting boy kitten self. You could just see the cartoon bubble above her head saying "BOYS. Gross." So she would clean him, then set him free and ignore him for the next few hours. As you would expect, Jess spent his kittenhood trying to get her to love him. He desperately wanted her to play with him, and she would sometimes. For a while, she always had the upper hand (as Steph witnessed years ago when she came home w/me at lunch to meet Jess, and got to witness Meggie dribbling his little gray head in a moment of sheer frustration). Until. Jess grew up. And ended up weighing twice as much as her. And when he realized this, he took every opportunity to sit on her. To jump on her. He loooovveeeddd jumping on her back and pinning her to the floor, just to hear her complain. She was a good sport about it all. I think she did love Jess a little, but theirs was a complicated relationship. I always thought she was somewhat relieved when I brought Piper home, because then Jess had a younger playmate and he left Megs alone more. Megs had no problem with Piper, it was Piper who hated/feared Megs. But I digress.

ANYWAY, while I expected Jess to react in some way to her death, I knew he would not stop eating. I mean come on. We're talking about Jess the 21-pound cat. He has the same problem as his mom - he eats to medicate stressful emotions. So now, he's been eating more than ever, and can I blame him? No, he has not stopped eating, but he is reacting. He seems to be taking it out on Piper. Ever since I got home last night, if Piper comes near him he growls. She is giving him his space, but I know she's confused and a little hurt. It's almost like he blames her or something. I dunno, it's very possible i'm reading too much into this. I just hope it's a phase and it passes and they become pals again.

I overlap cats on purpose, you see; I never want one of my kitties to be left alone, grieving. I adopted Piper knowing that she would be a companion for Jess when Meggie was gone. They're all 5 years apart. So yes, I'll say it: it has occurred to me to get a 3rd cat at some point, so that the same holds true for Piper when Jess is gone. But right now it's not a consideration. I'm a little too raw, and the cats are too. Jess is ANGRY, people. Oh, the anger. He doesn't just growl at Piper, he growls at me when he wants me to stop petting him, or if he sees me pet Piper. He's just plain mad. So there will be no addition to the Young household for quite some time. I'd say maybe never, but I never say never.

I was going to go into my Christmas recap here, but I'm tired and the next show in the TLC marathon just started: "Little People, Big Dreams." More later...

gone missing.

Today there is one less soul living under my roof. While I can still feel her presence everywhere, and keep turning my head to see her visage out of the corner of my eye, she is gone. It's interesting to find out that there is such a marked, noticable change of energy -- that one little cat had such a presence for so many years.

Those who didn't know Megs very well thought of her as a nice enough cat, however a stereotypical one. It's true, you had to earn her trust before she'd allow you to bestow her with pets -- and then she only liked to be pet a certain way and would get really pissed if you did it wrong. But the people who knew her well knew that when you got to know her, she was one entertaining, opinionated, loud kitty. She had a sense of humor as well as a sense of irony. She had the most expressive kitty face I've ever seen. I could have fun scanning in every photo I have of her and putting a caption with what's she's thinking in each one, because to me it was always so clear. I just might do that someday. But today, I just want to remember her as she was just a few short months ago -- healthy, feisty, and fluffy.

If I had any doubts this morning, when the vet arrived at my house, I overcame them by thinking back to how Megs used to be. She has not been herself lately, and who could blame her -- you could just tell from her eyes that she felt like utter crap. She stopped eating/drinking a few days ago, and that's when I knew it was time to take care of her. While it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, I still feel it was the right one -- even as I type this with tears streaming down my face. I miss her. I missed her the instant she was gone. I want so much for her to jump up on my bed right now and cause Piper to go into a hysterical hissing fit. I keep wanting to go into the spare room where she'd been camped out and sit quietly with her again, talking to her and petting her head just right. But still, no regrets. She depended on me her whole life to keep her safe and healthy, I couldn't let her down now. Sure I probably could have kept her around a while longer, to make myself feel better -- but that was not fair to her. And now I feel strangely alone, even though I'm flanked with two sleeping, fat, healthy cats. I'm wondering when they're going to notice she's gone. I fully expect Piper to dance a little jig and click her heels as she belts out, "ding, dong, the witch is dead...", and I picture Jess being really concerend and worried, looking for her and calling for her. But it hasn't sunk in yet, for any of us.

There is just this hole in my heart. And the emptiness of this house. I know we will fill it up again with more love and memories with my two remaining babies, but it doesn't make it hurt any less. I think Piper will flourish, not just because her arch-nemesis is no longer around to freak her out, but because I can finally really love her without feeling guilty toward Megs, the first lady of the house and my best friend for years. I don't think I realized until tonight how I'd always held myself back just a little bit with Piper. Now I can enjoy her and all her little quirks more fully.

The other thing weighing heavily on my mind tonight is Jess. He is only 5 years younger than Megs, and he is overweight. I'm so conscious now that they can get sick and die in such a short period of time, i'm fighting my urge to take him in and have every blood test done to make sure he's **really** healthy. I'm hoping the urge subsides and I'll stop being paranoid at his every wheeze. I want to take a deep breath.

But for now, I am mourning my fair Meggie. A little piece of my heart, which held a piece of my history, died today. And I am sad. And Christmas is in two days. And I am sad. I'm going to miss seeing my nephews open their presents this year, and I am sad.

Let's hear it for 2006, shall we??

nip it and tuck it away -- FOREVER

While there are many more pressing things to write about today, for the moment all I can handle is this: I am so done with Nip/Tuck. It's OVER. I got hooked on it last season and eagerly rented the DVDs for the 1st season. It was mesmerizing, edgy, sexy, beautiful. Then this year, in the third season? SUCKFEST 2005. I haven't been watching much lately since the first few episodes of this season were so painful to watch, but last night I got suckered in by the 2-hour season finale. It was the absolute WORST piece of television and writing I've seen in a very long time. AWFUL. I am embarrassed that I sat through the entire 2 hours of ridiculous-ness. BAH.

while i'm disappointed that one of my former faves now sucks, luckily there are many new faves just on the horizon. My name is Lisa and I am addicted to silly television. (...silly, but not STUPID.)

and that is all i can manage right now. more soon.

heaven in tin foil - candy review

Obviously I need to write a post regarding the big holiday party Friday night, but first... I have to share the invention of the year and the demise of any sort of self control. I present to you Hershey's Kisses, Limited Edition CHERRY CORDIAL CREME-FILLED.


Whoa. Do you know what this means?? Do you? It means they have created my fantasy candy. Let me tell you a little story. There was a small girl who had a cool Grandmother who had somehow gotten it in her mind that the small girl loved chocolate-covered cherries. She got said small girl several boxes of these Every. Single. Christmas. But what she didn't know was that the small girl hated any kind of real fruit pieces messing with her chocolate, and that the girl would meticulously suck all the chocolate/goo off the cherry before depositing it back inside the box, then happily consume the chocolate tomb of cherry creme and goo. (This always lead to the unfortunate occurence of someone opening the box of chocolate-covered cherries in excitement only to find a bunch of dried out, sad-looking cherries taking the place of the luscious chocolate candies that were there just 5 minutes ago.)

Anyway. So this candy is awesome because it is the chocolate covered cherry without the cherry. People, it is creme and cherry goo and NO GROSS MARACHINO CHERRY.

Just buy some now because for the love of God, they're LIMITED EDITION.

do the time warp, yeah

This entire week has been nightmarishly long and freakishly exhausting. Is it just me??? I know part of it is due to the season and the fact that OMG CHRISTMAS IS NEXT WEEK. The other part is, of course, my at-home kitty drama. Which is progressing sllllooowwwly -- although Megs has been acting pretty "normal" all things considered. Last night I put the fluffy Ikea rug next to the fireplace and she's been on that a lot, grooving on the heat and pretending the rug is her mama. She has regressed to nursing on the rug. Yes, that's right, "nursing" as in "sucking". It seems she is in a time warp as well, and sucking on the rug takes her to her happy place, where she was a carefree kitten in College Station, TX.

[here is where i would totally post a pic I have of her doing this, but i simply don't have the time... i promise to post it later, since i know you're dying to witness this anomoly...]

Anyway. All day yesterday I thought it was today, and all day today I've thought it was tomorrow -- and OMG our holiday party is tomorrow night and I haven't even thought about what to wear. Craziness! Oh, and I kinda forgot until today that I also have a freelance project due tomorrow. Tomorrow. So there's that. AND I am going to attempt to make the last of my holiday purchases tonight on my way home -- in an attempt to decompress between work work and more work at home. OH, and Without a Trace is on tonight.

So yeah, don't call me tonight; I'll probably be napping ;)

dream a little dream

I have always been a vivid dreamer, and I have lots of recurring dreams. I’ve even had epic dreams before, ones that continue for years, off and on. I’ve had “lucid dreams” – where I’m in the dream and know it and tell myself, “You’re in a dream, hey, kiss Brad Pitt! Do it! It’s a dream!” or, “Shit, that’s a 12-foot spider – wake up, dumbass!”. I have always, always, dreamed in color. I don’t know what any of this means, but I’ve always felt enriched by my active dream life – like I look forward to going to sleep at night, curious to see what life I’ll live in my head for the next 7 hours…and when I have one of those lazy weekends where I nap off and on for two days, or when I’m sick – my dreams will totally shape my mood during that time. That’s why I’m often a little foggy on Mondays. (yeah, good excuse, huh?)

Granted, I have had some weird, disturbing dreams along the way. I thought it might be interesting/scary to make a little list… so here are some of the recurring ones:

• Losing teeth. All my teeth are loose and start falling out and there’s nothing I can do. I totally panic at this one. Or, I look in the mirror and my nice, straight teeth are yellow and crooked.
• Kittens. I dream a lot of kittens, and once or twice I’ve even dreamed of neon-colored kittens. Pretty cool.
• My HS sweetheart. He is a comforting character who shows up from time to time.
• My ex husband. He is a malevolent character who only appears when I’m really stressed out – the dream is always that we’re back together, only I’m who I am now, but I can’t get away from him for some reason. A total trapped, helpless feeling. (hello, Freud?)
• My cats. I dream that they’re running out the front door; as I catch one and put it back inside, another one makes a run for it. Another stress dream.
• There’s this giant, old, rambling mansion I run around in during dreams – it is the setting for random dreams here and there, sometimes good ones and sometimes nightmares.
• Someone is chasing me and I’m trying to run – but it’s like trying to run under water, and I just can’t get going.
• When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream that I was in my parents’ backyard, calling for help, and when I’d see my dad and start toward him –he’d take out a pistol and shoot me. Yes, yes, I’ve covered this one in therapy, and no, my dad has never aimed a gun at me…I truly don’t know what this one is all about, unless it has to do with the time when I was 5-6, and I woke up thirsty in the middle of the night and crept into the kitchen, in the dark, to get a drink; and as I started back, feeling my way through the living room, my dad jumped out from the hallway with a gun, saw it was me, and lectured me to never EVER creep around at night again, because he thought I was a burglar and he could’ve shot me. Yeah, that might have something to do with the gun dream, huh…
• Dreams of being shot – NOT by dad, but by random bad people. The dream is more about feeling the impact, the realization I’ve been shot, then being aware of the wound and how it feels physically to be shot. Interesting because I’ve never been shot … at least not in this lifetime … (cue twilight zone music…)
• Falling/jumping off a cliff or building. The feeling of terror as I’m slipping, then release as I let go, then relief as I wake up and never hit the ground.
• Flying dreams – hooray for these!
• Making-out-with-celebrity dreams – double hooray for these! Seriously, I’ve made out with Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise (before he was a freak), Adam Ant, Matthew McConahicantspellit… oh yeah baby.
• Missing-the-test-in-college dreams – everyone has these, right?

Ok. So a lot of those are stress dreams – maybe that’s why they’re recurring? I have a feeling Freud would have a heyday with me. So, spill it – what recurring dreams to YOU have? And I fully expect some creepy admissions – I told you about the teeth and gun ones, after all…

history lesson

My oldest kitty, Megs, is very sick. I heard from the vet today and her bloodwork showed something seriously wrong with her liver. It will take a sonogram to find exactly what it is, whether it's cancer or liver disease, but either way, it's not looking good for the old girl. So very soon, I will have some big decisions to make about my 15-year companion. Gosh, that's longer than a lot of marriages -- longer than mine, for sure. That's longer than a lot of friendships. Longer than school.

My cat has seen a LOT of my life, literally witnessing every major life change so far -- I got her when I was 20. Before I had even met the guy who would become my ex-husband. And you know, I can look back and see now how I should have paid more attention to her -- she never liked that asshole. heh.

She knows my history, she IS my history. And it freaks me out to think of life without her fluffy self, she who has been the one constant in my life for so long. That is a good word for her: constant. She has slowed down a lot in her old age, but has yet to lose her attitude and spunk. She'll still kick Piper's ass if necessary -- but really all she has to do is give Piper one withering look and the Peeps is dust in the wind. Megs will still come loudly complain if she is unhappy about something -- hunger, thirst, even the litter box. She will come sit next to or beside me and touch my face with her paw, gently at first and then more insistently, until she has my full attention and I give her what she wants. My long-time friend Kelly was my roommate the semester in college when we decided to take on a pet -- she was/is co-mother to Megs. Even after all these years, and considering Kelly and I don't visit but once or twice a year, Meggie remembers her. And she remembers my family members. Oh yes, that cat has a looonnngggg memory. It makes me so sad that all those memories will be lost when she isn't around anymore.

Which brings me to tonight. I'm trying not to get too morbid, since I still don't have all the facts, but my vet basically told me to prepare myself. And I guess I have been, for a while now. As I've wached Megs grow more frail over the past 6 months, I've known deep down that her age was going to catch up with her and I needed to brace myself. But tonight, I am just loving her, giving her my support. Bringng her a plate of canned catfood to the back room where she prefers to sleep, turning on the gas fireplace for her shivering self, even though it's f-ing hot in here (gone is the ice, TX is back) and I had to strip down to my undies to stay in the living room with her. Before I came to bed, where I am writing this in an attempt to purge my heart so I can sleep, I took this small Ikea fake fur rug into her room and laid it on the futon, where she likes to sleep -- since she gets cold. So we'll see what the next days bring. But am I crazy to think she moved a little shower tonight than last night, almost as if she can sense this change of energy in the house? I'm trying to stay normal, but I get sad, you know.

I will sure miss her, but she is not gone yet, and as long as she's here -- and long after -- she's my best girl.

The day that [Austin] froze over

It's true. Last night Austin got its every-3-or-so-years-worth of ice and the city subsequently shut down. Which means, no school! I mean, work! Yay! I was reminded of those days in Kansas, going to bed at night praying for crazy snow and how gratifying it was to wake up and look out the window well (yes, my bedroom was in the basement -- more on that some other time) and see nothing but the white stuff. I. Loved. It. and I still do. It's like a "free day", where you can do nothing and feel no guilt because, hey, the city shut down! School/work is closed! Hooray! Well, I worked, but on my couch. Working in pajamas! Yay! I believe I have made my joy clear and can now move on. But first, here is proof (and I know my sister buried in "real" snow in CO is going to snicker but I don't care):


So I have been trapped inside with the kitties,* who are providing loads of entertainment:


And while the following photo was not taken today, I still think it's relevant to all the cat-anarchy we've had around here lately -- I'm not the only one fed up with the primadonna:


I will leave you on that note. Wherever you are, stay warm.

*Jess isn't really THAT big, it's just an unflattering angle...um, yeah...

Cat disaster

I left work a little early today so I could take my cat(s) to the vet. Piper has been living in the litterbox lately; and Megs, my geriatric cat, is, well, old. The appt. was originally for Megs, but I thought I would try to take them both and kill two birds with one stone. Well, HAHA on me.

I started trying to get Piper into her cat carrier about 20 minutes before I needed to leave because I remembered the last time she went in there it was a painful experience for both of us. She was also a lot smaller than she is now. And not as strong. So very strong. After 30 minutes of physically struggling with a writhing, hissing, angry feline with at least 10 limbs with which to block her insertion into the carrier, it was clear she was not going in there. Evah. So I scooped her up and decided I’d just take her loose in the car and cage only Megs, who loved the cat carrier and would in fact live in there if I’d let her. Probably not the best idea — well in retrospect, a really horrible idea — but I was desperate and didn’t want to miss the vet appt. I kept telling myself it was for her own good, right?

You can probably see where this is going. No sooner had I stepped outside when Piper gave a mighty twist using her back claws in my belly to emphasize her displeasure, and I couldn’t hold onto her any longer — she shot out of my arms and flew around my house and over the fence into my backyard. I was thinking, ok, this could be worse — she’s in the backyard at least. But when I walked into the yard after her, she flipped out, doing her best “I’m dying in excruciating pain” yeowl and streaking past me and back over the fence into the front yard. Only after that she disappeared. I ran after her, but she had a good head start and was nowhere to be found.

So my sickly, skittish cat, with no front claws, no collar, and no street smarts, was loose in my neighborhood, just as people were starting to come home from work. I pondered the possibilities for all the open garages in which she could hide. Staggering. I called the vet to say the whole thing was a no-go and went looking for Piper. For an hour I drove around and around my subdivision, then walked around calling for her, then sat outside (in the freezing cold, I might add) listening for her, and felt panic every time I heard the distant sound of dogs going apeshit (as in, oh, Piper just became doggie dinner).

Jess was ever so helpful during the search efforts. Concerned, he followed me around the house as I checked under furniture, thinking maybe she’d magically snuck back inside. As I knelt down and tried to look under my couch, he was very good natured about crawling underneath, peering out at me, then crawling back out, as if to say “nope, not there.” I left my backdoor open this whole time, so she could come inside if she found her way back to the house. I watched as Jess walked the perimeter of the backyard, sniffing every blade of grass and rubbing his face on the fence periodically. I then watched in amazement as he took a kitty shit in my backyard — then tried to bury it. For a while. This is notable only because I’ve always laughed that my silly housecats come inside to use the litterbox, then go back outside to frolic. I was proud that he’d finally figured out that outside = ok to shit in. But I digress.

I also called several friends during this time, who were very supportive for their part, considering they were completely helpless. It was starting to get dark and tonight is supposed to be the coldest night so far this year — the PERFECT night for a housecat to be lost outside. Yeah.

As the sun began to set, I walked into my backyard once more, this time going around to the far side of my house, the side I never go on. I noted how the grass on that side was still green, vs. the straw that was the rest of the yard. I noted the neighbor’s vine/weed had grown into my yard and was destroying the fence. I noted the discarded HEB styrofoam ice chest lying on its side, and realized it had been there for at least two years, geez, how lazy WAS I — when all of a sudden a wild animal propelled itself out of the box and careened past me. I thought it was a raccoon, I honestly did. I ran around the corner in time to see Jess sitting on the back porch looking over his shoulder into the house, like “WTF was THAT and did it GO INTO MY HOUSE???” You guessed it, it was the Peeps. She had the presence of mind to hide in her own backyard and to stay quiet as a mouse while I yelled her name all over the neighborhood. Right now she is under my bed, not speaking to me. In fact, if I speak to her at all, she hisses and growls. But she’s inside, Thank God, and safe. Plus, I have set up an appointment for a mobile vet to come to the house tomorrow afternoon. I’m smart like that.

I’m assuming she will forgive me at some point, maybe when she’s hungry?? In the meantime, I’m going to go tend to my bleeding flesh and begin the emotional healing process.

the weekend that wasn't

Oh my, where did the weekend go?? Here are all the things I did NOT do this weekend that I wanted to:

- Christmas shopping (unless you count hitting "send" on an Amazon order I've been building for a week).
-Laundry.
-Decorating/putting up Christmas tree.
-Freelance writing.
-Laundry.

...and on and on. What did I do this weekend? Well I'll tell you:

-Slept.
-Rested.
-Slumbered.
-Relaxed.
-Vegged out.

It was, actually, a divine weekend of lazy debauchery, but still the Guilt, oh the Guilt. At least I managed to do 1 load of towels and unload the dishwasher -- woo hoo!! Now I sit in my old-fashioned, mom-looking, full-length nightgown, given to me by my ex-MIL, and which I wear only when it's cold b/c although thin, it's like a giant tent and holds in my body heat. I sit in this gown under a blanket and two cats, on my couch, in front of my (fake) fire, watching Dr. 90201 and surfing the web. I'm trying to enjoy this because I feel like it's the calm before the storm; tomorrow is December 6, and will mark the beginning of the holiday frenzy. Already I'm going to websites with giant banners that say things like "Only 5 more days for ground shipping before Christmas!" Internet, this freaks me out. I did the majority of my shopping online, but there is still more to be done and I dread going to the mall, any mall, with the holidays fast approaching. So wish me luck. Oh, I'm also annoyed with the Gap; I can't access their website from my Mac!! I get a message that they don't support my browser, which is Safari, which comes standard on Macs and which I was told to use by my work IT guy. Sigh. So I didn't know it was an unsupported, unpopular browser. And I blame the Gap, naturally. Like they're too HIP for Safari, give me a break. grumble grumble.

Ok, so I slipped in the comment on Dr. 90210, but I'll own up to it -- Yes, it's a guilty pleasure. Like most of my t.v. habits. But damn i'm fascinated with those boob jobs, I mean COME ON. It intrigues me that it is perfectly acceptable to show all these giant plastic boobs, as long as the nipple is erased by the magic of technology. I find this much more alarming than an actual nipple, but what do I know. And there's some drama brewing on Dr. Ray's homefront; he wants another baby and his wife just told us how she just got on the pill to "protect herself from an unwanted pregnancy". Yikes. I want to hate her because she's rich and beautiful and looks better than I've ever looked in a bikini after having TWO KIDS, but she's so sweet to put up with Dr. Ray's eccentric crap. Anyway.

Yeah, ramble ramble. I got nothin'. So I guess I should go prepare for another week that I'm sure will fly right by without my noticing, as is the norm these days. I'll try to check in some along the way.

that is all.

On shame

This is shallow. It is silly. And I am ashamed. But it must be said:

I [HEART] Madonna's new CD, Confessions On a Dance Floor.

Go ahead, judge me. Then listen to it and try not to bob your head and shake your booty.
I DARE YOU.

Babies, rainbows, butterflies, and body image

So, my trip to Colorado. It was an amazing and new experience for me, spending that much concentrated time with my nephews, and I feel like we really bonded. When they lived nearby, the most time I ever spent with them was a couple of days, and then not the ENTIRE couple of days. Sometimes just for a couple of hours. But this past week was Total. Nephew. Saturation. And it was Truly Awesome. Yes, it was noisy and sometimes chaotic. Yes, I suffered some mild anxiety at being surrounded by people 24/7 for days at a time – including my parents. Yes, I collapsed into bed every night thinking how crazy my sister is to have, on purpose, three boys under the age of 6, but also acknowledging how very blessed she is, and how very blessed we are to have them in our lives. I was talking to BT about my trip last night, and I found myself getting teary-eyed talking about them, especially the baby, the Coopinator. Somehow I began talking about how I thought by now I would be the one with a family, with kids, and how that may not be in the cards for me after all. To which he gently pointed out, but you have your nephews. Yes, yes I do. And I love them like they’re my own, now more than ever.

But it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Last week I often found myself weirdly uncomfortable. I was very conscious of what and how much I ate. I drank mostly water. I realized at some point that I always kept my arms covered, and even caught myself sucking in my stomach. WTF??? Well, it finally hit me, days later. After being with BT, actually, because I was feeling a bit body conscious, read into that what you will. I realized I was ashamed of my body last week, ashamed in front of my father. I’m sure it would horrify him to know that I picked up on this, because I know he would never intentionally hurt me, but I felt like I was picking up distinct disapproving vibes from him about my weight. In my mind, I could hear him whispering to my mom, “She’d be so pretty if she’d just lose weight…”, or “Why doesn’t she DO something?”, or “I just wish she’d take better care of herself.” I heard all these things in my mind, not because I’m neurotic or paranoid, but because I have heard my father say these very words about other overweight people that have passed through our lives. My whole life, I have heard him speak these words, I have cringed at them, felt anger towards them, protected friends from them, rejected them, and now, felt their unspoken, cosmic force being directed at me. I hesitated to write about this, but it just keeps nagging at me. I realize my dad might read this, but I’m speaking my truth. I felt the disapproval, and it hurt. But what I also realized is that my harshest critic is myself, and it always has been. I could say my body has gained weight over the years rebelling against a certain ex-husband, ex-boyfriends, the status quo, whatever. I have even considered that it happened as a subconscious rebellion against my father, like I’m trying to prove to him that people who are overweight are worthy of love, he MUST love me, no matter what I weigh, so there. But that’s not really the heart of the matter. The truth is, if I was truly comfortable with myself like I pretend to be, if I had truly accepted that fuck it, I’m going to eat what I want, life is too short, blahblahblah, well then I would not sense or even care about such disapproval. He is merely channeling the disgust I feel for myself. I am more disappointed in myself than anyone else could ever be for me. I have let my own body down, I have let it go, I have rebelled in a self-defeating circle resulting in self-loathing. Ok, not “self” loathing, but “body” loathing. I am not my body, I just live inside it. But I am gravely uncomfortable in this body. This is not the way I am supposed to be, and the truth is I will never learn to accept this shape as mine. And by acknowledging this, I am acknowledging that I must do something about it or I will never be totally happy.

But. And this is the important point. But I must do it for me, and only me. Not for the sake of my dad; not for the sake of all the hot guys out there who will want to date me if I’m skinny again – in fact I will just hiss at them if that happens. I must transform my body so that I feel comfortable in my own skin again, so that my outer appearance matches my inner one. And I can only do this when I am good damn and ready, as an old friend used to say. I am getting there, Internet. I can see the healthy me inside there whenever I so much as glance in a mirror, that’s why I can never reconcile what I see with how I feel. I don’t picture myself like this, I picture myself the way I was my whole life until my body started harboring pain and letting it build up and internalizing others’ opinions of me. I need to let go of all that shit and just do what needs to be done, for me.

And for my nephews. I’d like to chase them around in the park someday without feeling like I’m trapped inside someone else’s body.

I’m sure this ‘epiphany’ has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the whole week revolved around FOOD, noooooooo.

Back and better than evah

Top 10 observations from my Thanksgiving in Denver:

1. While I wasn’t too fond of my Refreshing Vanilla Mint toothpaste before the trip, after sharing that baking-soda yak with my parents all week, mine tastes like heaven in a tube.
2. One can have too many baths.
3. Nothing melts the heart like an 18-month-old learning to say your name (“Sa-sa”) AND your favorite trick (SUPAHSTAH).
4. Nothing makes you feel like a SUPAHSTAH quite like your moodiest nephew curling up next to you to watch cartoons.
5. You know you’ve made a breakthrough when you have your two youngest nephews sniffing each and every LUSH item and saying “mmmmmmmmm” with their eyes blissfully closed.
6. My BIL is a better cook than the *BAM* guy.
7. Wrangling babies makes you skinny. And patient. Of which I am neither. (note to self: babysit more)
8. Even my family gets tired of rum by the 9th day.
9. If I lived anywhere near a Nordstrom Rack, I’d be destitute.
and finally…
10. Thanksgiving only comes once a year because if it came more than that, we’d all be obese and grumpy.

more soon...

over and out

I am writing this as I put off packing for my trip. My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 11:20 am -- I suppose that's why I'm not panicking right now. Well, that and the meds. Heh. Anyway, I wanted to post once more before I am possibly Internet-less until next weekend. I'm very excited about my trip!

Today was a good day for me -- leisurely, with a long work lunch and a fun assignment to finish up my afternoon. The perfect day-before-vacation. A day that punctuated my fabulous weekend with my friend Steph, who was visiting from Houston. I got to hang out with her and a lot of my other good friends as well -- it was the perfect weekend-before-Thanksgiving, to really appreciate and be thankful for my dear friends. I am truly blessed.

So tonight I still need to um, pack. And leave the usual elaborate note for the petsitter. I have every confidence that something weird will happen with my cats while I'm gone, just like last time -- they seem to be easy and low-maintenance when I'm here, then freak the hell out and fall apart when I'm not. I'm sure it's some sort of cruel punishment for leaving. But I bought them lots of canned catfood, so they won't be THAT angry.

I had hoped to see BT before the holidays, and he did call me tonight, but his car was in the shop and he wanted me to go to his house, and I haven't, um, packed... oh well, something to look forward to upon my return, to counter the crushing depression I'll suffer at leaving my precious nephews behind again.

I truly have no rhyme or reason to this post, and I really am procrastinating. So with that, I guess I'll wrap it up and get to work so I can actually sleep tonight. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and I'll be thinking of warm Texas as I bundle up into a burrito in front of a fire at my sister's house. Au Revoir!

Somebody stop me.

My shopping button was evidently pressed about three weeks ago, beginning with a day trip to the outlet mall, and somehow it got stuck on "GO". I can't stop shopping. I'm obsessed. Maybe it's because I'm gearing up for "Christmas Mode"? But if that was true, wouldn't I be madly buying gifts?? Noooo, I'm buying clothes, and shoes, and makeup... for memememememe. It's insane. AND I'm going to Denver in a few days where we will undoubtedly continue the shopping debauchery. SIGH. Oh well. That's what freelancing is for, right??

Truth be told, until recently I haven't done much shopping since my cruise in August. I am going to admit something here. Something horrible, something physically painful to admit. Y'all, I had a spa treatment on the boat, and that's fine b/c I had planned for that. But what I didn't plan for was being suckered into buying the pricey boat spa PRODUCTS the woman pushed on me while I was still under massage sedation. I refuse to talk actual dollar amounts, because seeing it in writing might kill me. But... I spent more at the spa that day than I did on the entire rest of the trip. Ugh, there it is, the stomach cramps. People, I can't let go of this. I usually don't suffer from shopper's remorse, but this, this has been bothering me for months. So much so that I haven't even USED said products, and am seriously considering selling the damn things on eBay. Then I think, but what idiot would pay $$$ for these stupid boat products??? Detoxify, my ass! I feel toxic just THINKING about them.

Um, yeah. So there's that. Which all came up because I'm sitting here, after 5:00 on a Thursday, pondering whether I want to hit the mall on the way home tonight or just go straight home and crash on my couch. It's a tough call.

I may or may not let you know how it goes.

Shopping without my cell phone

I had no idea how lost I would feel in the dressing room at the mall when I realized I didn't have my cell phone with me. I'd left it charging in my kitchen that morning. And hadn't noticed until now because I'd been at work, near a land-line. But as I stood exposed under the cruel fluorescent lights, in front of the unforgiving 3-way mirror, in the too-tight black pants and gorgeous overpriced sweater, I realized how alone I really was. I felt so desperate and forlorn, not able to call one of my trusty girlfriends to lament about the ill-fitting pants or justify the sweater purchase, that I did the ultimate shopping no-no -- I relied on the saleslady. I know, it's awful. And I came away from the experience with TWO overpriced sweaters, but not the tight pants. I suppose it could've been worse, she wanted to start bringing me jeans -- but that's when I came to my senses and fled. Jeans would have to wait for another day when I was not so... vulnerable.

After the clothing disaster, I decided to brave the bath and body store -- I wanted to smell the new Christmas scents and I had a couple of coupons to use. I figured I'd be okay by myself in there. Oh, I was so, so wrong. I immediately got stuck in front of the new "foody"-smelling lotion display -- helplessly sniffing, aching, wanting, but unable to get a reality check from my trusty phone. I needed practical Hope to remind me I had 32 unused lotions already sitting on my bedside, or Babs to suggest that Christmas was coming up and perhaps I should think in terms of gifts... just as I was about to succumb to the seductive call of the tiramisu-scented body wash, I heard my name. Thank GOD, it was A. from work -- laughing at me because we'd just that afternoon discussed the best kind of face lotion to use for oily skin and I'd directed her to that very store. I was busted. Luckily, our facial-care chat distracted me from the damage I was close to inflicting upon my bank account, and I managed to escape with only the free lipgloss I got w/my coupon -- well, and a modest tube of tiramisu body wash. Ahem. But not the body souffle! Or the matching candle! Or the body scrub! Or, or, or -- knowing I was in a hazardous shopping spot as long as I was phone-less, I cut my financial losses and went home.

The drive was long and lonely without the sound of my sister's voice on the other end of the phone, or a quick chat with Sarah, freshly back from her trip to Japan. I was forced to drive in silence. Well, silence and my iPod. I decided to go with the moment. I opened my moonroof and let in the full-moonlight, felt the rush of the warm, balmy air of Texas in November, and enjoyed the silence. (cue Depeche Mode song here)

This morning, I remembered to grab my phone on my way out the door. WHEW, because I might need to stop for some groceries on the way home tonight...and God forbid I can't call Kelly to complain about how much I hate the grocery store...

Shiny holidays and winter gloom

Wow, where did last week go?? And next week is Thanksgiving -- you have got to be kidding me. And that means, Christmas is... omg, I can't think about this yet. We just had Christmas, didn't we??

Ok, enough of my little "time is flying" rant. My goal this year is to do all my holiday shopping online. This may not be possible, realistically, but I'm sure gonna try -- and I'd better try soon, because when I turn my head and sneeze it will be a month from now and I'll be freaking out. About this time of year is when my college-test stress dreams turn to Christmas-Eve-and-no-gifts stress dreams.

Next Tuesday I'm flying to Denver to visit les bebes for Thanksgiving. My parents will be there too. My mom is all a-twitter with plans to do "all the Christmas shopping" while we're there so she doesn't have to ship anything. Um, not possible. I will tag along on these outings, including a fabulous visit to the Boulder LUSH (Thank You Sistah:) ), but I have no illusions that I'll get much "real" Christmas shopping done.

So it's going to be a landmark for my family: the first holiday spent out of state (besides when we all lived out of state), and not all together -- my brother and his wife won't be making it this year. And Christmas is going to be even harder, b/c as of right now, none of us have plans to travel to Denver -- although there's a part of me that still thinks I might go at the last minute. Who knows. I like to have options. In any event, THAT will be a HUGE landmark for my sis, as they'll have their first Christmas Evah w/out all of us. And that makes me sad. And I know Christmas won't feel the same here, without them. The boys add back that kid-magic that had been missing for years from our holiday gatherings - there's nothing quite like watching a little boy joyfully tear into a package, then seeing his saucer eyes and hearing his "WOW!!!". Makes it fun again. So yeah, we'll miss them this year. [SOB]

I'm feeling again like time is careening out of control. If I think back to last Christmas, and what's different now in my life -- um, not much. Which makes me feel panicky, but I don't know what I'd rather be doing right now, y'know? Well, besides traveling abroad and staying in a slew of 5-star hotels with my rich, fabulous, hottie Italian boyfriend, that is. You know.

Unfortunately, this time of year also brings on those unwanted feelings of loneliness, feelings I honestly don't have the rest of the year. But dammit, it's something about crisp weather and bleak skies that makes me long for... more. I have fantasies of being "trapped" in my house for a day or so, iced in, with nothing but hot chocolate, a warm boyfriend, a fireplace, and of course los gatos magnificos. Because, I have to say it's kind of boring to be iced in by oneself. BUT -- it is MUCH better being iced in by oneself than with someone whose very presence makes you twitch. Ah, those were the days... So if given a choice, I would rather be alone with my cats than alone with my husband.

What would be optimal is if I could go to Europe for two weeks this Christmas -- something I haven't done since 1998. The bleak winter skies just aren't bleak from that side of the ocean, for some reason...

This mood is related to the COLD FRONT supposedly blowing in tomorrow, plunging our balmy Texas weather into WINTER temperatures, finally. Crossing my fingers.....

Peace, joy, bubble bath, and guns.

Last night, the conversation went kinda like this:

“Hello?”

“Lisa, it’s your father.”

“Hi.”

“Sorry to interrupt the game…”

“What game?”

[sigh] “It’s Monday night FOOTBALL.”

“[sigh] Give UP! You know I have no interest in sports, never have.”

[disappointed sigh]
“I have a question to ask you about your Christmas present.”
[pause]
“Would you accept a gun as a gift from me, for self protection?”

“Um, no. No thank you.”

[quickly]
“It would be very safe, very small, you’d just need to load it and leave it in a drawer ---“

“Dad, no thank you. I know you’re being sweet in your own way, and you're concerned about my safety, but I don’t want a gun.”

“Are you SURE?”

“Yes Dad, I’m sure. But thank you. No.”

“Where’s that softball bat I gave you?”

“Under my bed.”

[gruffly] “Ok. Here’s your mother.”

And so goes the phone conversation I had with my Dad last night during Medium. It is important to note that my Dad rarely calls me, he usually just pipes in when I’m talking to my mom ☺. So I know he had given this a lot of thought. And as disturbed as I was at the thought of getting a GUN for Christmas (Peace, Love, Joy?), I really really appreciate him checking with me first. He knew what I would say, but he had to give it a try. I really don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d opened a gift and found a gun. It would have freaked me out, for sure. And there would have been drama. This way was much better.

My feelings about guns are complicated. I grew up in a house full of guns; my father was in the Army and also a hunter. I used to watch in fascination as he carefully cleaned his guns every weekend. From an early age I was taught to respect a gun and not to EVER touch one, with the understanding that “when I got old enough” he would take me to the shooting range and teach me how to shoot one. I knew he and my mother both had loaded pistols in their bedside tables, and I knew not to ever go in there. Well, by the time I was “old enough” to learn how to shoot, I had no interest, then I went off to college, then married another type of man who loved guns.

He loved hunting as my dad did, but mostly, he loved killing. Sure, he’d eat the meat, but his joy was in the kill. And I grew to hate it, hate hunting, hate guns, hate everything associated with the cruelty I associated with him. I grew to hate him for having that mean streak. My dad hunted for sport, and always either ate the meat or gave it away. He followed hunting seasons, got proper permits, etc, and was never purposefully cruel to an animal. My ex, on the other hand, shot anything that got in his path, just to see it die. I once watched him shoot a squirrel with a(n) (illegal) crossbow from his mother’s balcony. When the squirrel fell, still alive, to the porch below, I watched in numb horror from her kitchen as he took a hammer outside and beat it to death with a grin on his face from ear to ear. I saw the evil glint in his eye, and that smile, and for the first time, felt I had glimpsed his soul – and it was a scary, dark, awful place. While he beat the squirrel, I stood frozen in the kitchen, nauseous and horrified. I remember how sick I felt, and then I remember feeling the shiny engagement ring on my finger. I then remember consciously pushing that feeling away, with all my might, tucking it carefully beneath the numbness. I turned away and put it out of my mind. I did not even recall this event until years later, when I was in counseling after my divorce. I now think of it as the pivotal moment I saw my ex for who he really was, and the moment I made a choice, for whatever naïve reason, to marry him anyway. It took me a long time to reconcile what I had seen that day with the choice I had made. But that’s neither here nor there, now, is it?

Today I am just pondering why I have absolutely no interest in ever having a gun in my possession, under my roof. Just thinking about it brings back that sick feeling and all the sadness and disappointment I felt as I squashed down my feelings of horror that day. If this all sounds rather melodramatic to you, keep in mind that’s how I feel about it. I told it that way on purpose. Also keep in mind how serious I am when I tell you that if someday, I were to find out that my ex had committed some crime against a person? I would not be surprised. I would be sad, and numb, and nauseated. But not surprised.

So I have very personal reasons for why I’d rather have bubble bath than a gun for Christmas. But thanks for checking…

envy

As I sit in bed on the eve of another Monday, laptop on lap, I find myself wildly procrastinating on doing some work I wanted to get done this weekend. This means I am scanning all my favorite blogs and catching up on people's lives that always somehow sound more interesting than mine. There seems to be a trend of people adding ads to their personal blogs. Lately, both dooce and finslippy have written long, apologetic blog entries explaining why they've "sold out" and decided to try and make money doing something they thoroughly enjoy, something that entertains people. They are living my DREAM. This notion of ad = bad, I don't get it. Blogging is FUN, and most people who have blogs, I assume, enjoy writing. So in my mind, more power to the people who can do what they love and earn a living. I am seriously having some blog-envy, people.

So I was sitting here feeling all unsatisfied; like, there's this yearning inside of me for so many things. Things I want to accomplish, places I want to go, experiences I want to have. I have been very fortunate to have spent my career as a writer, always writing something, whether personally stimulating or not. This blog is my outlet, as well as my personal experiment to see if I can build discipline into my life, discipline about writing. Which I love to do, but often feel so drained after a long day at the office that I can't bring myself to pour any more of myself out onto the Internet. I am addicted to all these other blogs, but I find it hard to dedicate energy lately to blogging myself. I'm going to try and change that. I may be writing short or insipid (or both) entries for a while, but I need to get back in the habit of spilling my thoughts on virtual paper, for me, if for no one else.

The point is, despite my current Sunday-night melancholy, I felt a glimmer of hope thinking about the future of blogging, in general. It really is a phenomenon, that people who want so desperately to be heard now have a voice. People who yearn to be published no longer have to depend on someone else's subjective opinion to get their work out there. So taking that a step further, and being able to actually make money blogging, well that fills my imagination with all sorts of fodder. And no, I'm not leading up to a big announcement that I'm going to put ads on here --- puh-leeze, I shan't flatter myself at this point. At this point. But who knows what the future holds? Who knows?? When I have 40K+ daily hits, we'll revisit this topic... heh.

In other, less philosophical, news (and in an attempt to put off working just a tad longer), I actually had a rather eventful weekend. Ok, close your gaping jaws, you're making me feel like a loser. But really. Yesterday I had a girly day and spent it shopping for hours and hours with a friend - and those are two of my favorite things to do. Friends and shopping. I even managed to get a little (tiny) bit of holiday shopping done, but I am not going to pretend that I was not mostly shopping for me, me, me! I had some luck in the clothing department, which is a relief more than anything. Do you ever gaze into your closet in the morning, still foggy and crusty from sleep, and realize that you have Nothing. To. Wear. Do you? I have three closets full of clothes and I hate all of them. BUT not anymore, I found a few items that I don't hate, and that makes it a productive weekend. That and the fact that I did laundry today, cleaned up around the place a bit, AND did the dishes.

oh stop it, you're embarrassing me.

crooked thoughts

On days like today, I find my mind wandering to the "what ifs" of my life.

["days like today" being days when I'm sick, tired, and somewhat melancholy.]

This might be a day for the record books, because for once I am thinking of some of the nice memories I have of my ex-husband. There was a time when I couldn't come up with any even if I scoured my brain.

So as odd as it feels, I'm going to roll with it. Here are some of the silly reasons I liked him in the first place.

- the day we were picking up our checks at Foley's and he was dressed in ratty jeans, a muddy t-shirt, and a do-rag, singing "Ice Ice Baby" – totally shattering my image of him as a preppy, Ralph Lauren guy. He WAS indeed that, but this was my first glimpse of his "other" side, the side that liked to rough it and hunt and dig holes in the mud and such. I was intrigued.
- before we were quite dating, the time I showed up at a bar where his band was playing and he walked up to me with his best friend and put his hand on the curve of my waist and said, "I am a lucky man" – even though he was hammered, it was sweet.
- Wow. I can't think of any more – the really annoying ones are taking over again...

But it's a start, right?? Yes, I acknowledge those are lame reasons to like someone, but please keep in mind I was only 20 when we met… and also that we're divorced now. Cut me some slack, 'k?

It makes me feel a little weird that I have more palpable fond memories and a definite soft spot for Chris, my H.S. sweetheart, than any memories that don't suck of my ex-husband. Hm.

On that note…

Shameless product plug

Afrin®.

That's all I'm gonna say.

Well, that and

[hear me breathe deeply out of my nose ... revel in the sound... feel my joy.....]

Halloween postmortem

Actual conversation from earlier this morning:

D: So, did you have lots of trick-or-treaters?
Me: I don't know, I didn't answer my door.
D; [**shocked**} Why not???
Me: I don't get into Halloween. I just hid in the back of my house w/the lights off and watched tv.
D: [in wonder] Why don't you like Halloween??
Me: I dunno.
D: Well, you should just get into it; you should try to scare them, yeah, be scary and mean...
Me: I thought that's what I was conveying by turning out all my lights and not answering the door.

Good times.

final weekend observation

I need to add one more observation from my weekend, which occurred after my last post.

- can there be a "worst" place from which to observe your cat projectile vomit the canned fish/rice catfood she just ingested, from your bathroom sink to the bathmat below?
- yes. i truly believe the worst place from which to observe such a thing is from your position of relaxation in your just-drawn, just LUSH-d, candlelit bath.

that is all.

thinking

so as I've been surfing/watching tv tonight, I have been getting increasingly annoyed when I check my favorite blogs repeatedly and they HAVEN'T UPDATED, HOW DARE THEY??? Then it occurred to me that I haven't either. Oh. Yeah. So rather than continue to feel hypocritical, I thought i'd write something, even if it's not riveting or entertaining.

So. My observations from the weekend, perhaps? Hey, it's something.

- candy corn is only good for the first 5 minutes, then it just makes you sick.
- there is such thing as "too much pizza"
- and "too much sleep"
- I still have that cold from two weeks ago, the one I was all proud of kicking with Zicam; so i'm back on the zicam, even though logically it doesn't make sense since it didn't technically work the first time...
- I LOVE Grey's Anatomy. It is officially my favorite show this season, over Nip/Tuck, ER, everything.

That's about it. Although this weekend wasn't a complete bust; Friday night I had a visit from BT, wherein we made out like bandits and ate pizza and watched the last half of the third Excorist movie, which sucked (the movie. the movie sucked.). And as Babs said, that's better than my typical Friday night...heh. Then last night I went to dinner with the Alaska gang, then we went **bowling** -- which, two times in a week? I think I'm done for another 10 years or so! Oh so here's my final weekend observation:

- the minute you begin to think you don't suck at bowling is the minute you begin rolling gutter balls.

Hmm.

On patheticism...

(I don't care if it's a word - it works here)

How sad is it, really, that two days after bowling for all of two hours, my body is sore in weird places?

What's in a name?

Today I only have time for a silly blog post, but it'll have to do. I was pondering my sizable gray cat this morning as he tripped me in the kitchen on my way out. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that his name is Jess, and he is the "Jessie" to my "girl". So as I cursed him, it started me thinking of all the different names I call him, and wondered, is this normal? or does everyone give their pets different "pet names"? (get it? get it? oh, wait... is that where that came from?)

Anyway, I have called, or others have called, Jess all of these things at some point in his 9 years of Jess-ness. Some are obvious, some...not so much.
Obvious::
-Jess
-Jessie
-Jesstifer
-Jessito
-Jester

Not so much:
-RatCat
-Rodent
-Whiskerfish
-Violin face
-My handsome
-Buster Gray
-Pumpkin spice
-Little gray man
-My boyfriend

Piper can also be Peeps, Peeper, Peeper-leeper, Pretty girl, Silly girl or Scaredy-cat. Meggie is also Megs, Meggers, Megster, Meggie-Lee, Megorama, Gorgeous girl, The Good Cat or Geriatric cat.

And of course, any of them can be Dammit, MOVE!, STOP!, Knock it off!, GET DOWN NOW or SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssssssss.

Entertaining, no? If you're not asleep yet, feel free to share some of your pet names...