We need a montage!

Today feels like a math word-problem kind of day.  As in, "It's 10 am on a Friday, two weeks before Christmas.  Kim's boss left work at 4pm yesterday, and won't be back until Monday.  How much work in the area of corporate finance do you think Kim will accomplish today?"

 

Answer: As little as possible.

 

# # #

 

Today—and maybe all weekend— is Montage Day.  Let's play a little catch up, shall we?

 

On October 11, Calla was born in the wee hours of the morning.  That same day, my best friends had a garage sale.  I went over to help out by keeping an eye on their daughter (my goddaughter, Chava) while they were taking care of business.  As I was running around with Chava in and out of the house and all around, my BFF Cheri was helping a couple of older black ladies carry their purchase, a vacuum cleaner, out to their car.

 

When they got out to their car, one of the ladies asked Cheri, "Is she your Saturday help?"  Cheri didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about, so the older woman clarified, "That nice young black lady: is she your Saturday help?"

 

Cheri, aghast, quickly explained that no, I was her best friend and her daughter's godmother.  The ladies were greatly impressed with how nice she was.  Because she had a black friend.  Ouch.

 

Gotta love livin' in the South.

 

# # #

 

Two of my male cousins, whose girlfriends are knocked up, are now unsure of the babies' paternity.  Apparently, both girls have been exposed as two-timers who were possibly screwing other guys around the time of conception.  Nice.

 

Gotta love livin' in the South (the remix).

 

# # #

 

Chava, who is now 3 ½ years old, has some very funny little-kid speech patterns.  The word "she" doesn't exist in her vocabulary; everything is "her".  As in, "Her went to the store with her mommy".  It's insanely cute.  She also mispronounces some words.  Coca-Cola is Coca-Lola; yellow used to be lellow (but she has yellow down pat now).  Oddly enough, she had no trouble at all saying "La Posada" the other day.  Weird kid.

 

Oh, and she loves coffee, which she'll sneak out of your mug if you leave it unattended.  She even likes her dad's coffee, which is black and unsweetened.  And I hate to say it because it makes us sound like child abusers, but she also likes red wine.  Before you start dialing the number for Child Protective services, the wine she'd had up until last weekend was just sips of communion wine in church… which she likes.  A lot.  As for last weekend, well, several of us were drinking wine at dinner, and Chava grabbed her mom's glass exclaiming, "I like wine!"  After we all snickered for a minute at how funny it was to hear that coming out of 3 year old's mouth, we shared smug glances as we thought about how she WOULDN'T like that wine if she took a sip, as it was a Beaujolais-villages, and not the candy-sweet communion wine.  It was like a silent adult conspiracy: let her take a sip, she'll be disgusted with the flavor, and won't try to steal sips of wine anymore.

 

We were so wrong.  She took a sip, hummed in enjoyment, and started to try to turn the glass up again.  Her mom quickly took her glass back, and we all spent the next five minutes talking about what a strange child she is, the 3 ½ year old who likes coffee and wine.  We decided that she's a 35 year old trapped in the body of a toddler.

 

# # #

 

I'm going to lunch now (it's now almost 12:30), so I guess I'll take up the montage later. I've had so much going on in my head, that I'm almost afraid of how long it will take to catch up!

The old grey mare

I'm breaking my radio silence to bring you a shocking and heartbreaking report. Tonight, while performing some personal grooming, I found a grey/silver hair.

In my pubes.

Just pass me a Geritol martini with a Metamucil chaser, and I'm going to try to forget it happened.

Happy Allhallowmas!

An unkind reflection

When I was about 26 years old, I began to write. Between personal
journals, fan fiction (Anne McCaffrey's Pern, in case you were
wondering), and being an extremely junior contributor on projects
belonging to writer friends, there was scarcely a day that went by
without me setting fingers to a keyboard. It felt so wonderful and
liberating: I was finally writing, something I'd always wanted to do.
I knew my talents fell firmly in the realm of the mediocre, but I was
doing it instead of just dreaming about it.

Writing had always been secret fantasy ever since I was a child. I
loved reading so much that I figured the only thing that could be
better would be if I were a writer, too, and gave others the same kind
of joy I found in books. Granted, my 12-year old thoughts probably
weren't so grandiose, but that was the main gist.

So what was the problem? Fear. I had writer friends who blew me away
with the eloquence of their words, their passionate thoughts; how
could I ever come close to that level of excellence? I could barely
speak in company for fear that something stupid would come out of my
mouth, so why would I think that I could write?

I have had a life-long battle with fear, and the Big F has won more
times than I can count. I've long had a reputation for being a
careful and deliberate person, very practical and mature. But I know,
in my heart of hearts, that a good 75% of that caution is really just
fear. Yes, fear can be a healthy and appropriate response, but not
when it's simply a fear of failure. That is the particular kind of
fear I've long tried to combat. The quote over to the right, near the
top of this page? Yeah, that's not so much something I live, as much
as it is something to which I aspire.

My mid-twenties were my breaking-out point. That time period was when
I finally began to know myself, to express myself, and to stop letting
fear win all the time. I tried my hand at writing, and loved it even
if I sucked. I discovered that my voice trends heavily to the
comedic, and it's very hard for me to be serious or grim when writing
non-journal type stuff. I guess it makes sense that one of my
all-time favorite writers is Terry Pratchett.

I let people other than my showerhead (yes, my showerhead is sentient;
he says he loves me and will never think my ass is too big) hear me
singing, and became known in my group as having a good voice. That
actually led to me doing vocals for a musician friend: yep, my voice
is recorded for posterity on a record, and I've even performed it in
concert. Even though that was a short little episode of my life, it
let me relive and remember the thrill of music and performance (I was
a symphony dork in school, playing flute, various clarinets, and
Elizabethan recorder).

I got past the feeling of being the fat-girl sidekick of the hot
chick, and just let myself be ME around people (especially the
male-type people)… and I discovered that I actually can be witty and
vivacious despite carrying major poundage, and that there are
male-type people who can see more than a dress size when they look at
a woman.

I began to walk with a confidence previously unknown to me. When I
entered a room, rather than trying to slink unnoticed into a corner, I
smiled and greeted and laughed. I didn't try to be an obnoxious
center of attention, but I wasn't afraid to be seen. I finally knew
beyond a doubt that I had worth as a person, and that I merited the
air I breathed. I had finally figured out that all I had to do was
just be myself, and I would be fairly happy. It sounds really simple,
doesn't it? "Be yourself." Believe me, that tiny statement is
fraught with more danger than a stretch of land in Cambodia, but I did
an okay job for a long time.

These days, I'm not so much myself. Or at least, I'm not the "myself"
that I used to be. But then again, I'm NOT the same person. I have
experienced soul-crushing grief for the first time; an emotional wound
that, while easier to handle everyday, still brings me to tears at odd
moments. I can honestly say that not a single day has passed that I
do not think of It. Not a single day, regardless of what I may
pretend. My miscarriage was more than just the loss of a baby. It
was the loss of a family, of a love, of a self-identity, of a future.
And now I feel like I am directionless, and I just don't know how to
find my way anymore.

While I've been overweight since puberty, my weight had been fairly
stable for ages and I had long been in a place of self-acceptance and
self-love. As Chris Rock crudely expressed while speaking for
confident chubsters, "Yeah, I have a gut, and there's some goooood
pussy under that gut!" But I've put on a lot of weight since
you-know-when. For the first time in over a decade, I do not like
myself. I do not like looking in the mirror. The person I see in
there is a gross stranger, and I don't want to know her. I have no
confidence, no sass, no pizzazz.

So I haven't been writing as much lately, and now I know why. While
part of it, in truth, is because I have little to report on the TTC
front and that I feel I am very boring, it is mostly because of
everything that is messed up in my head. For me, writing is a thing
of empowerment; even when I was sad and writing was a catharsis, I was
still in a place of "I am woman, hear me roar!" But now I am more
like the mouse than the lion, having emotionally regressed over a
decade.

I try to remember how I used to be, but that person seems like a
strange fantasy. I don't quite remember how to be her, how she felt,
how she acted. What made her think she was so great, anyway? I don't
know. I just wish I could remember.

2001: A Space Onion

I can't freaking believe I just discovered "The Onion" on Youtube. I now have a new comedic addiction. Here's a little somethin' for you.

Twilight is coming!

In all the crazy, non-stop drama that has been my life, I completely missed the release of the final Twilight book in early August. I picked it up almost a month late, but have read it cover to cover almost a half-dozen times since. I really like this series, and am sad it's over. I managed to get a extra mini-fix by downloading the partial draft of "Midnight Sun", but alas, it's over now.

But wait! There's even more proof that I've been living under a rock: I didn't know about the upcoming movie until about a week after I got the last book. And yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, but I gotta say that I've been laughing my ass off at some of the parodies I've found on Youtube. So of course I have to share! If you haven't read at least the first book, these won't make any sense, but if you have, I hope you bust a gut as much I have. Out of the billion I've watched, I like these two the best.

Nasty heifers...

… are in my office everyday.  For the second time this week (and come on, it's only Wednesday), I've been in the toilet and heard someone leave their stall, and walk out without washing their hands.  I just wished that I hadn't gone into a stall yet, so I could see just who the women are that leave with pee-hands.  That way I'd know whose little homemade treats to avoid, know what I mean?  People are always bringing in muffins or cookies or things to share with the office, and I shudder to think of eating pee-cookies.

 

Okay, yeah, the pee ladies at least get a squirt of hand-sanitizer (there's a dispenser just as you walk out of the toilet and it makes a distinct sound), but I still feel icked out about people not washing their hands after using the facilities.  I think of the sanitizer as an added bonus for paranoid people like me, not as a substitute for kindergarten-level hygiene.

 

And people wonder why I get so weird about things like washing up before preparing food (and then washing again after touching different types of food), or not letting people use my phone, or things like that. Some people are gross!