May 12, 2010 @ 06:54

So this weekend the boy’s are off to their daddys for the weekend.  And I?  Well, I am going to cook lunch and dinner for about a hundred and fifty of my friends.  With the help of about a half dozen of my best friends.  Because I’ve lost my ever lovin’ mind.  Plus I think it will be fun.  Then next weekend is the wedding of a couple of friends for which I’m catering the dinner and making the cakes.  Last weekend I did some precooking.  Baked cookies and tart shells and brownies, all recipes that freeze nicely, to get a bit ahead of the game.  And for the next week, I’m going to mentally try to figure out how to make the Colosseum in Rome out of sugar . . . 

May 05, 2010 @ 03:12

Live music and a slight head injury! 

Tonight we went to see Bear’s orchestra concert at the high school auditorium.  While talking to another parent outside on the steps, Puppy decided to see if he could do a hand stand.  Classic parenting moment.  Can’t move fast enough to stop it.  He landed forehead down on the edge of a concrete step.  But he’s tough as nails, and hardly cried at all.  Very much like the shovel incident . . .  It looked like a fairly simple scrape. 

So we went in for the concert.  Which was incredible.  It amazes me every time I see Bear play.  He’s gotten this strange shyness about practicing at home.  He won’t practice in front of anyone.  When he’s practicing in his room with the door shut I’ll mute the television or hover in the hallway to listen, but haven’t gotten to really listen to him much at home in the last year.  So seeing him play is huge treat. 

By the time we came out of the auditorium, however, the scrape had become a lump.  Like this . . . 

By the time we were almost home it had almost doubled in size and was turning a pretty ominous blue around the edges.  Well, ominous to me anyway. So off to the ER we went.  Which was surprisingly full of angry people for a non-full moon night.  Including one person who alternated between yelling across the room at the intake staff and walking into the hall to call her bail bondsman.  No . . .  really . . .  Little man mostly just thought he was having an adventure. We made our own Wheel of Fortune wheel drawn on a notebook and made a spinner out of an ink pen and a hair barrette from the bottom of my purse. Amazing how good at the game he is. Cheaty McCheaterson. We played the rhyme game for which Puppy has declared me the ultimate champion for thinking of a rhyme to Bankrupt.  I’m telling you he’s totally into Wheel of Fortune right now.  

Three hours later we saw the doctor.  Pretty good turn around for an ER visit, I gotta say.  No signs of concussion.  I’m now staying awake for the night to make sure he doesn’t begin to vomit and to wake him every three hours.  Which, thankfully, now feels just like a precaution.  The lump is now back to the size it is in the picture here.  And all is well.  He’s gonna have an exciting story to tell at school tomorrow.  Lord help, I don’t want anymore exciting stories this month.  Pretty please . . . 

April 29, 2010 @ 06:57

Let me explain… no, there is too much, lemme sum up.  This past week’s stats: 

1. Number of lawn mowers purchased: 3
2. Number of lawn mowers returned to Walmart: 2
3. Number of loose dogs chased by and chased around my neighborhood:  2
4. Number of small kitchen fires set:  1
5. Number of field trips attended:  1
6. Number of seven year olds at the Museum while we were:  ALL of them 
7. Number of cake requests completely blanked on because I’m so overscheduled I don’t know what month it is:  1
8. Number of trips to the gym:  0
9. Number of pints of ice cream consumed for comforts sake:  3, Oh, hey, there’s why I’m not thin… 
10. Number of loads of laundry done:  I lost count at 14

On Saturday, I went to my local Walmart.  I spoke with a young man in the garden center about a particular lawn mower, he was very nice and helpful.  He answered all my questions and told me that when my shopping was done I could pull up to the garden center to purchase the lawn mower and someone would help me load the purchase.  But before I had finished buying my groceries, the bottom fell out of the sky.  Since there was no way I’d be mowing that day and it would just make all of us end up soaked to the skin to load up a mower into a Honda in that downpour, I decided to come back the next morning.  The woman working in the garden center on Sunday morning was very different than the guy on Saturday.  When I asked if someone could help me load up a lawn mower she told me that it wasn’t that heavy and that I shouldn’t have any trouble with it myself.  She lifted them all the time.  She’d get me a cart. 

Uh, yeah. 

Are you kidding me?  You don’t know me.  I could have just had my spleen removed.  I could be a secret shopper from corporate head quarters.  I could be your boss’ wife.  Instead I went and got my own cart and wrestled it out to my car alone.  That afternoon, Bear and I assembled the few loose parts to the mower, followed the instructions for the oil and gas and then attempted to mow the lawn.  The mower worked for about 45 seconds before the engine made a terrible wracking noise and the engine locked up.  I took apart the push handle, loaded it all back into my car and returned to the store.  I am told that the “lawn mower guy” will not be in until Tuesday, but if I’d like I can exchange it.  In hopes that this was just a fluke I made the exchange for another model of the exact same mower.  I returned home.  We go through every step again.  With the exact same results.  Right down to the mower functioning for approximately 45 seconds and then locking up.  I return to the store.  As I arrive a young man is collecting carts in the parking lot.  I ask if I may have a cart for a large return and he offers to help me load the item.  Imagine my surprise.  My surprise however quickly turns to disgust (not with the helpful kid but with Walmart) when the young man informs me that this is the seventh or eighth time he’s seen someone returning this brand of lawn mower in recent days.  I give up on hoping to make this purchase work and get my money back.  (These were Weed Eater brand mowers, by the way, if you are in the market for one, I’d skip this brand.) So, I go to Lowe’s.  I buy a mower.  I buy a service plan with it, too.  I return home with it and Bear begins to put together the loose parts.  It’s getting closer to dusk so I go into the house to start dinner.  I am just getting ready to pan sear a mess of fish (enough for leftovers, so I’ve got two skillets heating up olive oil to about face of the sun hot) when Bear calls in the back door that he can’t figure out something.  I walk out the back door to see.  Unfortunately, I get so engrossed I don’t realize how long I’ve been away from the stove.  It does occur to me, though, so I send Bear into the house to turn off the burners until I can figure out why the mower’s pull cord won’t pull.  About three seconds later I hear Bear yelling from the house, “FIRE!”  I run in to see a pretty healthy column of flames, about ceiling high rising up from the back burner of the stove, thankfully the front burner pan’s contents have not yet ignited.  There is a heavy layer of smoke in the room.  I make Bear leave the house immediately.  Puppy has been on the back patio during this whole process, so thankfully he missed it all.  I get the fire put out.  Then look around.  That heavy layer of smoke is throughout the entire house.  There are swirling streaks of smokey soot up the side of the cabinet that sits above the vent-a-hood and up the wall beside the stove all the way to the ceiling.  The sink, where I managed to get rid of the fire, (it was probably entirely stupid to carry that flaming pan to the sink and I’m probably lucky to not have been burned) is covered in a layer of soot that looks like black greasy cornmeal.  I felt like an exhausted idiot. 

I get Charlie tucked away in the back bedroom and prop open the front and back doors with every fan I can to clear out the house.  I know that cooking dinner now is a lost cause.  I make sure all is well on the back patio with Bear, take his drive thru dinner order, and Puppy and I head over a few blocks to the nearest fast food.  As I pull up to our drive way, I realize that Bear is standing in the front yard, feet spread wide, arms out like an airplane, facing off two sturdy (I’d guess about 40 pounds each) Bassett Hounds.  They are circling back and forth from the street to our front yard, barking furiously.  I park in our driveway and put Bear in the car with his brother and go across the street to see if they know the dogs.  I learn that the happy hippy love your neighbor community center across the street couldn’t care less about their neighbors as they slam the door in my face and leave me to deal with the loose dogs alone.  The next hour is filled with a combination of chasing and being chased.  Nearly getting hit by a car and nearly seeing the loose dogs get hit more than once.  Sitting on the front steps after the local police department cruisers took over circle the neighborhood with spotlights searching for the escapees with no luck.  Monday I took a vacation day and continued airing out the house, laundered all the comforters and curtains and every scrap of fabric that I could, washed down the walls of the kitchen and dining room, learned to love the Magic Eraser, and got the house back to working order.  Tuesday I played catch up at work.  Wednesday I attended a field trip to the Discovery Museum with Puppy and about 120 other first graders.  And today?  I just want a nap . . .  Maybe I’ll get one on Saturday. 
 

March 08, 2010 @ 06:37

Work is kicking my butt.  The gym is, too, without the benefit of any measurable results.  Boo.  But I am still finding myself in a very happy place.  Perhaps it is finding out that you have handy friends who are happy to come and replace the eaves on your house that turns out rotted because, no, Sara, the magical air conditioner didn’t just stop needing to drain out that mysterious little pipe on the front porch.  Or fix the deadbolt on the back door that, no, Sara, you should not have repaired with that leftover tile grout.  And cut a proper hole in the side of the house and venting the dryer as it should’ve been when you moved into the house . . .  seven years ago, because no, Sara, out the window of the sun porch was really really tacky.  And there’s a laundry list of things that Spring is making happen at my house and I’m over the moon happy for it.  Because I am not good at that sort of thing.  At.  All.  I pride myself on being a far from girly girl.  But this, I gotta admit, I don’t got.  Now, this Sarah?  She does.  She is handy and girly and I am jealous.  She’s the kind of woman that could serve high tea if needed, more likely to make you Jell-O shots for your birthday, who owns kitten heels but also owns a tractor.  She is also the supplier of this past week’s quote for the quote challenge.  “It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.” – Judith Martin (also known as Miss Manners) And this was hard.  Hard enough that I just flat didn’t get it done.  And I am sad at me for that.  And glad for Sarah’s patience (oh and also for her not feeling it so much either . . .  and Cormac . . .  only Kat really rose to the occasion).  Perhaps my response to the quote directly could just be a quick thought . . . 

Wouldn’t it be fun if you won the lottery and didn’t tell anybody?  Just started delivering fantastical things to people’s doors anonymously?  A few years ago when I was in a very bad place financially, I came home to find an envelope on my back door with the exact dollar amount that I needed to pay a looming bill.  Now obviously it was someone I knew because of the dollar amount, but to this day, I don’t know who.  It had a lovely note inside with a poem about the bill and how much they liked me.  What a great day, huh?  I am still moved to tears and so grateful whenever I think of that day.  So what would you do if you suddenly had the means to be Secret Santa everyday?  That would be a great good quality to keep under your hat . . . 

March 01, 2010 @ 13:29

“There’s a sort of greatness to your lateness.” Fi

“Thanks.  It’s not achieved without real suffering.”  Charles, Four Weddings and a Funeral

I completely flaked on my own quote.  But not for lack of things to say.  I’m afraid I was slapped in the face last week by something.  And I let it get me down.  But I’m back up again.  Thanks.  I’ve always been jealous of those people who are not slightened by the idea that “not everyone can like you”.  Those people who walk around all casually secure and firmly seated in their uniqueness and not bothered one bit by what wagging tongues may be saying about them.  Suppose it is somewhat related to what I had to say.  And here it is . . . 

The quote:  “Never put a sock in a toaster.”  Eddie Izzard

Puppy is becoming more and more of his own little man every day.  He mostly seems to be sailing along about two scant years behind his peers in social maturity.  Some days he is a tight little ball of uncontrolled boy.  Sometimes that is happy boy.  Sometimes it is something more like a cornered animal.  Not very often, but it’s there.  But what I am finding is that he is, even when he is out of sorts, happy.  There are things that set him off.  But they are no more frequent than those of a typical child.  He is however, a mystery to those who don’t know him.  What sets him to spinning is not typical. 

Being interrupted, whether it’s while arranging a line of trains or something less fun, like homework.  He just won’t process what you have to say to him until you let him finish the train.  Or his sentence.  Or his drawing.  He’s like a little computer.  If you ask him to run too many programs at once, his processes will be compromised. 

The way loud noises frighten him, even when he knows they are coming, causing him sometimes to double over cringeing, hands cupped over his ears, as if in physical pain. 

The way he will walk into a room and address its occupants as if they were only staged there, like a set in a play, awaiting his entrance for all action to begin. 

And none of these actions are contrived.  No bids for attention.  No manipulation.  No passive aggression.  He is a blank slate in those areas.  He is innocent of those drives.  He is guileless.  He is actually happier with no audience at all.  He will play alone for hours.  Content.  And this is where my mind has trouble adjusting.  Where I am afraid he is lonely, he seems to be complete in himself, with little need for companionship.  Although I am grateful for the way he does seem to love me, Bear, and a handful of our friends and family.  I am coming to understand that love, for him, is very different than others might define it.  Emotionally we are so different.  Where I may be filled with emotion during a hiking trip, over the beauty of it all, he is more likely counting the steps it takes to reach the path’s end.  While I may be excited over the first ripe peaches of the season, he is annoyed to be pulled away from his projects and made to eat.  Where we may be emotional, he is factual.  So we struggle with how to raise him to be healthy and happy when we are still figuring out how he defines his happy.  Healthy, however, we are getting better at. 

I had a friend who used to tell me all the time that there was nothing wrong with him.  In that tone.  You know, that tone that says, “There’s nothing wrong with that boy that a whippin’ wouldn’t fix.  You are just a bad mother.  If he was mine . . .  “  The woman was right.  And also dead wrong.  There IS, in fact, NOTHING WRONG with my boy.  But there is definitely something different.  This is our daily challenge right now.  That we are different.  And that our educational system does not embrace different, not as a general rule . . .  You know how they want all of our kids to be neatly sliced white bread.  But sorry, my kid is a sock . . .  So when all of that is the norm, and we are not.  And all of the classes and schedules and programs are built around making toast, here we are with a sock.  I am so very grateful to the school district we live in.  They have gone above my expectations, and even my hopes, for what public school was going to be like for Puppy.  We have teachers that are engaged.  Who are not put out at being asked to work a sock into all the toast.  We are coming towards the end of our second year.  Another year of social blunders and embarassing stories.  But at the end of the day, maybe they aren’t embarassing.  Because why would a sock feel judged in all his socky glory about not being good at becoming toast? 

February 22, 2010 @ 06:04

But happy nonetheless.  Thank you Cormac for the challenge.  And I particularly enjoyed what you had to say about last week’s quote. 

I joined a gym last week.  With a couple of friends, another to join soon.  It’s been very nice so far.  But I’m still smack in the middle of my plateau.  Worked out six out of the last seven days and lost not one pound.  Miles:  12, Hours of other fitness pursuits:  4, Pounds lost:  0?  hmmm . . .   No matter.  I do, at the least, feel good. 

So this week, for the quote challenge, I’m throwing out this one.  For fun . . .  or existentiality . . .  or all seriousness . . .  or fun . . . 

“Never put a sock in a toaster.”
 Eddie Izzard

 And I tag, Sarah. 

February 19, 2010 @ 06:22

For this weeks quote challenge, Cormac give us this . . .  “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness” Terry Pratchet. 

It’s funny that just last week Bear was telling me something about Discworld and looking at me with disbelief that I had no idea what he was talking about.  So my first thoughts on this are not colored in any way by having read Terry Pratchet.  I am curious now about the quote’s context, but for today . . . let’s just wallow for a minute, k?  

I have a favorite song for tough times.  At first it may seem angry, but it’s not.  It’s about shaking off what is wasteful, or hurtful, what is unproductive, what is toxic.  Sometimes that’s as simple as “Girl!  Do not buy those pants.  I don’t care if they are on sale for five dollah.”  Or it might be giving up caffiene, sugar, cigarettes.  Tough.  But what about when it is the very painful necessity of ending a relationship?  And you aren’t going to be the only one that is hurt.  Maybe you know you can’t go on the way you have in the past.  But you do love that person.  But you can’t be what they need.  And you continually find yourself in that viscious cycle.  Of caving in to their needs.  Of loving them so much that you don’t know how to tell them no.  Of watching them fall again and again and being there for them when they reach up their hand and ask for help up.  And hating yourself for it.  Because what they need is more than you have to give.  And what they get from you is just a patch, not a real solution.  Or finding yourself continually lost in the image that someone has of the girl they believe you to be.  Maybe you helped them form that idea.  Maybe not.  But you know that they don’t know you at all.  Not really.  And you can find yourself stuck in those relationships.  Out of guilt.  Out of a genuine desire to be there for someone.  Out of comfort.  Laziness.  Fear. 

That’s no good for anyone.  And what can you do when you realize that you are part of the problem.  Laying there in the darkness and wishing things were better but never knowing what could make it better?  So sometimes you have to just walk away.  And that doesn’t mean that the minute your back is turned that you are done.  You still love them.  You still want the best for them.  But you know that what is best for them is not you.  And you know that the right thing to do is keep walking.  No matter how much it hurts.  Them.  Or you.  You burn it down.  So that when the hurting is over the healing can begin.  And if you are really lucky, you remember that the next time around. 

February 01, 2010 @ 06:12

My contribution to the quote challenge . . .  from Judith Viorst . . . 

I’ll have no trumpets, triumphs, trails of glory.
It seems the woman I’ve turned out to be
Is not the heroine of some grand story.
But I have learned to find the poetry
In what my hands can touch, my eyes can see.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.

First of all, I have to tell you what happened when I googled my quote.  It was just a big fat kick in the ironical throat.  I love Judith Viorst.  Thinking that this poem was from the book “It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty”, and wanting to make sure I didn’t misquote, I googled it.  As I typed . . .  It’s. Hard. To. Be . . . .  and so on, you know the way google tries to predict what you want and cut your work short for you?  Well, I’m so damned old - and my favorite quotes are so damned older than that - they never once came up.  Apparently nowadays, it’s just hard to be hip hop . . .  

This past Christmas I went shopping for a little something for my niece, who will very soon be the dreaded thirteen.  As I wandered about the stores I realized that in the last few years, as I’ve retreated further and further into my obscure-artist-filled iTunes playlists and crazy hobbies and odd books, the current trends have passed me by.  I did get another hint there.  While talking with a younger friend (college aged) not too long ago, I said something about the magic song.  To which he replied, “Huh?”  You know, the magic song.  Just like that episode of Friends, (and there’s another clue - Friends is so last decade) that episode with the magic story about backpacking across Europe, the magic story you tell when you want to have sex.  My friend informed me that there is now a new magic song.  And I don’t even know who the artist is.  Never heard of them.  And well, I’ve got just enough pride left to not tell you what the magic song USED to be, and not enough powers of recollection to tell you what the magic song is NOW.  *sigh*  Tell me this!  How will I know if some dreamy guy with an acoustic guitar is trying to seduce me now?  I mean really?  I suppose a dreamy guy with a guitar for me is so last decade, as well. 

I’m really not bemoaning my age, or the woman I’ve become.  Inside my head, I still feel nineteen and confused by boys and not quite sure of what the future holds and fresh as a daisy, just like when I was actually nineteen.  But side by side with all of that girlish confusion lies confidence.  A sure and steady belief in what matters and what does not.  When I look in the mirror, the woman I see is far more appealing to me than that daisy girl.  Lines and all.  I like her.  Alot.  I haven’t written a novel.  I haven’t finished college.  I haven’t made millions.  I haven’t won too many hearts.  But I haven’t scarred too many either.  I don’t believe that I have screwed up too badly.  And what I have gathered around me, in place of dreams of authoring great novels and stealing the hearts of millions and being rich and at my leisure, is a life that is full.  Satisfying.  Every day I get a little bit better at not being a reactionary.  At being a patient mother.  At giving up on grudges and misconceptions, even when they are about me.  I’ve been trying my best to remember that what I know about others is almost never the whole story.  I’m working hard at believing in the best in people instead of the worst.  I’m getting better at it, but there’s still far to go.  And, largely because of some of the amazing women that I’m lucky enough to call friends, I’ve gotten some glimpses of a world far bigger than I could imagine when I was just nineteen.  I realize how lucky I am that my worries center around helping one small boy navigate the big big world and one not so small boy launch himself into it.  I never really worry about where tomorrow’s breakfast will come from.  I can work.  I never really worry about shelter.  If our house crumbled into the dirt tomorrow, well, we’d just find another one.  We live in a place where poverty is rarely marked by starvation.  We are the lucky ones.  We have it good here.  And here I am, at an age where I could buy into that sad sad American thing and seriously start worrying about what little nips and tucks I might could pursue to knock some mileage off my face.  But I just can’t drum up any little bit of caring for jockeying for position in a race that doesn’t matter.  My friend Natalie and I were talking about shopping one day.  She said, “Hey have you noticed the clothes at Walmart look better these days?”  To which I said, “No, sugar, it’s just different now that we are paying for them.  Now the dollars measure up differently.”  I can remember a time when a pair of $200 jeans might have impressed me.  But now, you wanna prove to me that you a woman to be reckoned with?  Show me some denim on your butt that you snagged down at the consignment shop for two dollars on your way home from volunteering at a soup kitchen.  Show me a woman who would rather by mesquito nets, or a case of Plumpynut or a box of bees or a whole water buffalo!, than designer fashion and I’ll show you a woman who knows of true beauty.  And if I can pass along that knowledge to my two boys, then I’ve made more contribution to the world than any other kind of success I could have chased after. 

I think back to how frightened I was when I divorced.  And now, inside my head, I tell myself relax sugar, you got this thing.  Just keep focusing on the things that matter.  Be a good mom.  Raise some healthy kids.  The rest is gravy . . .  or drivel.  There is nothing sweeter than being able to look around at the people in your world and being totally in love with them.  And I certainly am.  I mean really, have you looked at you guys? 

Oh, and just in case you are wondering, I’m sure this strange streak of narcissism/navel gazing will die down soon and I’ll post some more cake and cute kid pictures . . .  but not today.  ;)  And Kat?  Tag, you’re it. 

The Pleasures of Ordinary Life 
 
I’ve had my share of necessary losses,
Of dreams I know no longer can come true.
I’m done now with the whys and the becauses.
It’s time to make things good, not just make do.
It’s time to stop complaining and pursue
The pleasures of an ordinary life.

I used to rail against my compromises.
I yearned for the wild music, the swift race.
But happiness arrived in new disguises:
Sun lighting a child’s hair. A friend’s embrace.
Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.

I’ll have no trumpets, triumphs, trails of glory.
It seems the woman I’ve turned out to be
Is not the heroine of some grand story.
But I have learned to find the poetry
In what my hands can touch, my eyes can see.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.

Young fantasies of magic and of mystery
Are over. But they really can’t compete
With all we’ve built together: A long history.
Connections that help render us complete.
Ties that hold and heal us. And the sweet,
Sweet pleasures of an ordinary life. 

Judith Viorst

January 28, 2010 @ 06:42

I’ve got this funny thing that I do.  I pretend to myself and to others that I’m not girlie.  This is born of my great need to be in control.  It’s a security blanket that makes me feel safe, strong, secure.  I’m not a lady and don’t you dare call me one.  I’m a tough cookie.  A lot of my friends buy into this.  Or play along.  If the truth is that they are just humoring me?  I’m okay with that.  Just so long as they keep doing it.  On that whole idea of being a lady?  I’m actually just a weeping, swearing, cookie baking, hockey watching bundle of contradictions.  My best guy friend always asks what I’m doing first thing when I answer the phone.  Usually because it’s always something hilariously strange like . . .  flipping back and forth between the Godfather and a hockey game . . .  or baking cookies and installing a new deadbolt.  It’s never an all girl kinda picture that I paint.  I just don’t relax into a lot of things that typical girls do.  And instead of languishing over it, I have actually come around to reveling in it a bit.  To the point that it drives a few of my friends nuts.  So here I am, unfit for stereotypical girlie ways.  I don’t think all babies are pretty.  Precious, yes, pretty?  Heck no.  I hate to shop.  I like shoes like men like lingerie.  I think they are props.  The shoes I walk around in every day?  More than likely they can go from office to paddock with no problem.  I think sex is a team sport.  Almost all my exes are still friends.  I’m a home owner.  If something is wrong, with the car or the house or the whatever, I fix it or competently hire someone else to fix it (not sayin’ I couldn’t use a seminar in carpentry though, Heather has cringed over some of my DIYs).  I’m a single mom, so I never get to be the good cop.  I’m all bad cop all the time.  But I do get to read the bedtime stories and make the birthday cakes.  I’m not complaining.  It’s not all hard.  But I’ve got this life that has made me choose not to give in to soft.   

Except that . . .  I am.  Soft. Very.  Like a marshmallow.  Even though I love to watch old, and frequently cheesy, action movies, dammit I cry every time Stan saves the train driver in Volcano.  I really do sit with a lap full of embroidery and scream things like “Put the puck in the damn net!” at the television.  But I can also make a soufflé.  If I cook dinner for you, it’s probably going to make you forget how good your momma could cook.  But it’s most definitely not an invitation to date exclusively.  Sarah had to tell me what commitment food was.  That’s how little I participate in the game.  It’s not that I wouldn’t be capable of flirting across a candlelit dinner table, I’ve just been too busy. 

As much as I love pedicures, I love hockey more.  Beer over wine.  Godfather over Casablanca.  I’m just not in possession of one half ounce of princess-ness anymore.  It atrophied.  And I think that’s why I never get treated like one, because I don’t demand it.  Subliminally or otherwise.  And I like that about me.  And all of my friends who’ve got that same thing going on.  But I would sure as hell put on high heels and cook dinner for a man who brought me flowers. Enjoy your heaping helping of contradictions for the day. 

January 25, 2010 @ 20:35 

I spent a really good weekend with my best girl.  Which was also surreal in ways I cannot begin to explain.  But the highlights were . . .  lots of laughter, tinfoil hats, and little to no drama.  How did we manage to have tinfoil hats and no drama? I can’t explain that either.   

I did however turn my three day weekend into a four day weekend in a not fun way.  Food poisoning is so not how I wanted to spend my last day of being forty.  And tomorrow I’ll be forty-one.