Brain Fluff Theater

I hope everyone's having a great day, whether you're a fellow United States-ian celebrating the holiday, or simply a nice human looking forward to a pleasant weekend.

I have the day off, and the Kidlet and I are soon off to my lab director's house for a barbeque. I have to throw together a green salad first, though. Other than that, we've been reading and playing with stuffed animals (we concocted quite a tale earlier, between a groundhog, a dalmatian puppy, and a plastic horse. It was unique, to say the least, and involved unrequited love, people standing on their heads, and falling off cliffs, not necessarily in that order.) and generally lounging around eating peanut butter sandwiches. My kind of day, in other words.

I've also been having one of those supremely scattered weeks, where I can't hold a thought in my head for more than half a second before I'm distracted by something shiny. I know I've looked at about a score of journal entries around here that I've intended to leave comments on and haven't because, well, I saw something shiny. So, my task for the evening, after we get home from the barbeque and before my Friday gaming session starts, is to make a ginormous list of everything I need to write, do, and figure out, before I forget it all again. Assuming I can remember in the first place.

Anyhow, I'll retire the rambling now so I can go slice carrots and cucumbers. Happy 4th, everyone! Have some good food, maybe watch some fireworks, and don't blow off any digits with illegal firecrackers, all right?

A while ago, I teased y'all with the promise of my own personal "how I became a gamer" story, primarily to commemorate thirty glorious, creative, imaginative years as a roleplayer and a gamer. I've been thinking about the best way to write it, spending some time reflecting upon the tapestry of my experiences, as rich and as colorful as many of them were. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that 1) with gaming such an integral part of me, and tied intimately with my creative self and my writing, this was a much, much bigger task that I had originally thought, and 2) there were three distinct parts or phases to my particular history, and breaking it up into pieces made it infinitely more manageable in my head. So we will begin, as they say, at the beginning.

Throughout my life, and starting back when I was old enough to string a couple of words together, I've always enjoyed play-acting, role-playing and the tried-and-true "Land of Pretend". Whether it was with dolls, with friends, with games, or simply with written words, I've kept my mind limber creating a vast, intricate network of characters, all of whom have/had distinct personalities. I've had some amazing social interactions with great people of similar creative strengths, and a whole lot of fun at conventions and weekends structured around games or characters that my friends and I loved.

What's that, you say? Roleplaying as a social construct? Gaming as a positive, creative outlet? Oh yes. And if you're of the opinion that all people who play Dungeons and Dragons, online games or similar gaming systems are 1) geeks with a bad case of social retardation, 2) devil worshippers, or 3) weirdos who run around pretending to be things they're not, then I'd advise that you not read further. There'll be nothing for you here. If you'd like to read a little about how gaming can be a fantastic way to expand your mind in imaginative ways, and can help a person connect to other folks of like creativities, or simply read more about how I got to be the way I am (*cough*) then you might find something of interest in what's to follow.

I started off, at age 7, playing Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D) with my cousins and my brother. Of course, the age range we were dealing with here was 10 to 3, so the storylines weren't terribly complicated. My cousin had gotten some of the rulebooks, the DungeonMaster's (DM's) guide, the Monster Manual, and a couple of modules, and so we decided to roll up characters and walk through a campaign. I don't know now how many hours we sat outside, or in my room, slaying dragons, crawling dungeons, or trying to get pertinent information out of the in-game characters run by the DM. There were puzzles and battles and the buying of weapons and the finding of amazing treasure... but of course, the best part about such an endeavor for a cluster of pre-teens was rolling the dice.

I love gaming dice, and I have a whole box of them, of different materials and colors. I had a D20 (20-sided die) that was marbled purple and lavender, with gold painted numbers, and I treated that thing like it was a precious gemstone. It sat in a special red velvet pouch that Mom had given me -- I think it once held one of her more precious necklaces, pearls or something special, but she had an extra -- in the pencil box with my other, more pedestrian, dice. And I'd only use that die if my character's butt was seriously on the line. If she was in battle and about to lose her last hit point, out came the purple D20.  I'd hold my breath while I rolled, believing that if I exhaled too hard I'd blow the die past the number that I'd wanted. And I usually got spectacular rolls with that die, further reason for its royal treatment.

I loved "rolling up" characters, too, and would fill character sheets with people I'd invented, just because I enjoyed it so much. I'd tell my brother, "You never know when we might need a dwarven cleric named Daisy," as he peered over my shoulder, snickering. But even I knew we'd never be able to use them all in our thrown-together, once-in-a-while campaigns. However the fact that I still remember Daisy, and all her stats (str: 17, dex: 15, wis: 11, chr: 10, con: 16, int:12) today should tell you something about how much I loved some of the characters I created.

It was around the same time I started my young career as a table-top gamer that the Atari 2600 console entered the gaming consciousness. My parents got one for my brother and me, though Dad played with us most of the time. It was one of the first of its kind -- a small box with fake wood paneling, like a mini stationwagon or something, that you could hook into your TV and turn into your own arcade game for a little while. I have many, many memories of my brother and I playing games like Space Invaders, Missile Command, Berzerk, Circus Atari and Adventure.  We had a big box full of cartridges with everything from the mindless "level-up" games (Space Invaders), to basic RPGs (Adventure), to educational math games and even how to program in BASIC using the Atari keypad controller. Dad loved him some Pinball, and the Bowling game.

I think that was one of the best parts of the whole experience, too, was that it was a family activity. We went on walks as a family, we played catch as a family, we watched TV as a family and we played our games as a family, and that included video games as well as Monopoly. There're so many folks out there who are anti-video game, but I get that everyone will only draw on their own experiences -- it's all any of us can do, and I'm not judging anyone. Yes, there are people out there who overdo their gaming addiction, but that can be said about any number of past-times, including the "healthy" ones. For my own experiences, I have great memories of my brother and Dad and I playing the Atari and laughing, with Mom watching and bringing us snacks. It was a fun time, and it planted seeds that would sprout into beautiful mindflowers later on.

Next in the series, part 2... "You are now descending into the depths of the Inferno..."

It had been a while since I'd had any sort of a haircut or trim -- three to four months, I think -- and my hair's been driving me bananas for a couple of weeks now. Too long in the front is my common complaint, and while I have and do often trim my bangs myself, I can only do the straight-across Moe-style bangs, which is sometimes fine and sometimes not. I've been doing clips for a while, as I deliberated what to do, and while I've always wanted  to grow my hair out long and flowing and all one length, the very real reality is that I have fine-but-plentiful oily hair. And the longer I grow the top out, the slicker and more lifeless it gets. So, bangs and layers, yay.

So, my lunch hour arrived, last Thursday, and I felt restless. I got in the car and headed for a nearby shopping center when I realized, hey! I can get my hair cut! The hair place in the shopping center where I was headed was new to me, but I figured sometimes, you've just gotta say... what the f...

Sorry. "Risky Business" line.

There was no one in there, which was both troubling in the "Maybe this place sucks and everyone walks out of here with a pink mohawk whether they want one or not" sense, but also a score in the "I only have 50 minutes to get this done and also find food" sense. My sense of scoring and efficiency won out. Besides, I bet you a dollar I could rock a pink mohawk.

Tina seated me at her station, fluffed up my hair, and asked for directions. I told her that I basically wanted the layers shortened, the bangs cut. Nothing major. So she got to work, clucking here and there. "Your hair is so pretty! Who did your highlights?" she asked.

"No one. No highlights."

"Really!? You have about four or five different shades in here... most women would pay $100 a month to have your hair color!"

And not to brag, but this isn't the first time I've heard this. I only mention it, honestly, because it surprises me, each time I do hear it. My hair is a dark blonde, with some brown underneath, some weird strawberry highlights in certain lights, and a whole crapload of silver on the top. Not really that remarkable, but then I'm the one who has to look at it each morning and try to tame it into something I can live with. Sometimes with a crowbar and a bucket of axel grease.

So the ego boost that came free with my haircut was a nice bonus. At the end of the cut, she asked, "I'd really like to style it for you. Would you let me play with your hair?"

"Uh. Sure" Again, my usual hairstyle is best described as "Single-Mom-sans-blow-dryer". It's totally wash and wear, and only sees the shiny end of a curling iron when I'm going to a wedding or a party or something. But here was someone excited to doll up my hair, so I figured sometimes, you just gotta say...

Ahem.

Out came the blow-dryer, the gel, the curling iron, the hair spray. Girlfriend even *back-combed* the top a little, which surprised me. The overall result was... fluffy. Not Texas-big, but certainly a lot bigger than I'm used to. She flipped up all the layers, not just the bottom, so I had all these little curls and flips feathering through the sides and making me look all bouncy.

It was, all at once, hilarious and scary and cute, and I both dreaded and looked forward to going back to work, just to see the reactions on everyone's faces. Keep in mind, I work every day in jeans, baggy t-shirts, and a wine-stained lab coat. I've worked harvests with these kids, where we do 12 hours in a small room together, so they routinely see the bags under my eyes, and know how scary I can be at 8am when I haven't had enough coffee. A glamour girl, I ain't. Having Fluffy Girly Hair was going to probably scare the socks off of some of them, and the dark, demented part of me was already laughing about it.

Man, was I right. I walked in, went to my drawer to put my stuff away, and several of my coworkers stared at me, all the way across the room. The expressions were at turns suspicious, intrigued and somewhat confused, like the Universe had just turned the room on them and they weren't sure what happened or why. Most of the comments I got were complimentary, from the men and women alike who gave them.

But the reactions I got the biggest kicks out of were the people who obviously noticed my hair was different -- and really, you'd have had to been blind to miss it -- but said nothing about it. Not that I expected glowing compliments from every single human, because really, I had my doubts about it, too -- I kept wrestling with periodic urges to go in the bathroom and comb it flat, but 1) I liked having the different style for an afternoon, one I'd never do myself and I'd NEVER be able to replicate on my own. That's the First Rule of the Salon -- You're never able to recreate the hairstyle your stylist does for you. I think it's some sort of scientific impossibility on par with the Schrodinger's Cat phenomenon. And 2) as mentioned, the dark side of me was having a sociological field day as my hair toyed with my coworkers. Hey, I'm an Aquarius -- I'm the shock-value queen.

So what I want to know... these people, whose eyes literally flickered all over my hair as I talked to them about work stuff, and then looked me in the face and answered my questions but said nothing about the curls eating my head... did they hate it? Were they afraid to tell me? Did they want to say something, nice or otherwise, and simply not know how to say it? Were they wracking their brains, trying to figure out if I had looked like that all morning and they hadn't noticed? And were then embarrassed by not only not noticing, but forgetting if they had noticed or not?

Anyway, it was gone the next day when I showered, and it's really cute when it's flat, too. So, cookies for Tina, and maybe next time? I'll try the pink mohawk. Can you imagine the reactions I'd get? Just that alone would make it almost worth trying.

Swiped from flutter...

Here’s how you play:

• type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search.
• using only the first page, choose an image.
• copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker over at FD’s image maker.

The questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name.

And... here's mine! What was fun for me was seeing what kinds of pictures came up when I typed in the appropriate word or phrase -- not all of them are intuitive, or direct, but I just picked the picture I liked best. And if you click on the actual mosaic, below, you can see it larger, and the pictures are more clear. They're all really gorgeous, and kudos to the photographers. Anyway. Enjoy!






1. Chapel, Edinburgh Castle, 2. fruit salad, 3. Train Tracks, 4. Purple Euphoria, 5. Brent Spiner, 6. vintage tea set with cupcake, 7. Get to the point, 8. 14th August 2007 / Day 226, 9. Blank Sheet of Paper, 10. One Level Cup of Fire, 11. Hey your new lenses are driving me up the wall, 12. saturncat

Now with 114% more processed cheese-food!

About 20 minutes from one, when I lived in Houston, and that was way too close for me. I'll take earthquakes any day of the week.

more cat


(Actual content coming soon, when I don't feel like freeze-dried crap.)

So, how was my weekend, you ask? Well, let's see... from 2am Saturday morning until about 3pm this afternoon, my child was running a fever of anywhere from 100-102. Which, in the absence of any other symptoms, only means that she's fighting off some weird infection, probably the funk I've been wrestling -- and really, it's kind of a cool, bad-ass way to handle it, if you think about it. "A virus?" Kidlet's immune system queries. "I don't THINK so, Jack. Let's crank up the heat and burn that sucker out. Bring it!"

Ahem. My brain's maybe a little loopy (...ier), for reasons I'll cover in a minute.

So she's wandering around the house kind of hot and crabby, and I don't really want to take her anywhere and expose her to more of what she's already fighting off. My own cold was finally starting to take its claws out of me... until I woke up yesterday morning.

And I couldn't hear.

It wasn't a total deafness, thank heavens, but my right ear was completely blocked up and the left was all cottony and muted like someone had stuffed a pillow in my ear. And also, sometime in the night, my head filled up with cement. Seriously, that's what it felt like. And the pain. Oh, man. Words defy me, though ones like "stabbing" and "throbbing" and "shards of hot glass" come to mind.

I called the advice nurse, and after listening to my litany of symptoms and my description of the last two weeks, there was a pause, and she said, "I can get you in today. You need to come in." I was surprised, because it was Sunday, but my folks came over to watch Kidlet so I could go to the doctor.

The sinus infection diagnosis didn't surprise me, since I'm prone to them. The ear infection did. I mean, not after waking up mostly deaf, but just as a general rule, I don't get them. My brother was the unfortunate soul in the family who had tubes in his ears, had constant ear infections as a kid, had allergies and all that fun ENT stuff. I was the headache girl. I can identify headaches from a half a symptom and a vague pain sensation, like some twisted game of "Name That Tune". But ear problems? Not so much.

And I'm sure this will come as a news flash, but ear infections? Suck. Like, hard. Like, the unmentionable anatomy of sizable violet pack animals. And when you have to spend time out of your weekend looking up terms like "perforated eardrum", not because you're doing research for a new horror story you're writing but because it's applicable to your existence... that's wrong. So wrong, on so many levels. Coupons are perforated. Notebook paper is perforated. Not eardrums, and especially not MINE. Except it is, and therefore the suckage continues.

So, I got a bucket of antibiotics, and I almost got a pain pill prescription to go with it but I refused that one. Ibuprofen's generally plenty, though I can immediately tell when it has worn off. To offset the pain, though, I tend to act goofy, as a distraction, hence my imaginings of Kidlet's protective immune system as some kind of cigar-chewing drill sergeant with an axe to grind and a crate of wood shavings in his shorts.

Now, Kidlet's fever's gone, though she has a little cough, and her voice is kind of raspy and quiet. And Mommy's temporarily deaf. So what we have here, folks, is an Abbott and Costello sketch in the making. Hopefully, these piles of pills I'm on will start to work before Kidlet asks me, "Who's on first?".

A bucket full of spicy cabbage!

... or something.

Appetizer

Do you consider yourself to be an optimist or a pessimist?

Neither, to be perfectly honest. But, of the two options given, I'm definitely a pessimist, by a huge margin. For the sake of accuracy, I went to the online dictionary and checked a couple of definitions, and this is what it said...

Optimism-

Soup

What is your favorite color of ink to write with?

I like a lot of color on a page, so I change it up a lot. In high school and college, when I took a ton of notes, I had a whole bag of pens, in different colors. I also like pencil, but I don't like how it smears and fades over time. At work nowadays, I'm only allowed to use black or blue, so I'll usually alternate days.

Salad

How often do you get a manicure or pedicure?  Do you do them yourself or go to a salon and pay for them?

I'll get a salon pedicure every couple of months, because they feel good. I can't wear open-toed shoes in the lab, but I wear sandals at home during the warmer months. While I can easily show off my unpainted toenails and not bat an eyelash, having pretty toes is nice.

Conversely, I'll only get a manicure if I have a wedding to go to or something, because in my line of work, fingernail polish only lasts about 3 minutes. I work with chemicals that, while they're not deadly toxins, they beat the Hell out of my hands, with and without gloves. One of the solvents I use semi-regularly is acetone, which is found in your standard nail polish remover. So, either spending the money or doing it myself is money and time well wasted.

Main Course

Have you ever won anything online?  If so, what was it?

I've won pens, magnets, and a couple of CDs.

Dessert

In which room in your house do you keep your home computer?

The desktop (both of them, for the time being, though only one is connected) is in my bedroom on my desk. I also have a laptop, which goes in whichever room I want. Including the back patio, if I want to write outside, and the kitchen, when I'm using a recipe I've found online. Why waste paper printing it out when I can take it right off the screen?

The radio was on today, at work, as it usually is. The only time it's not, actually, is when we've got clients coming through, or if someone just forgets. Our busy time is always the morning, regardless of sample load, because we're all working to get our instruments calibrated and sometimes we just don't remember to hit the radio on as we bustle by.

Anyway, it was on, and "Careless Whisper" by Wham! came on. I have always loved that song, bless my ballad-loving cheesy-80s heart. What ticked me off, though, was that I couldn't sing to it because this fool cold has given me laryngitis, and I haven't had a voice all week. Not talking to people, I don't mind so much, because I'm an antisocial curmudgeon. (Though, Kidlet has asked me several times over the last couple of days, "Mommy. Why you so quiet? You need to talk louder.") But not being able to sing? Pisses me off.

So, I'm mouthing the words, and my coworkers don't think a thing of it, because they're sweet kids and they love me, and have been making me tea and fetching me soup all week. And as I'm listening to George belt his little heart out at the bridge ("Tonight the music seems so loud/I wish that we could lose this crowd..."), I got a story idea. Well, actually, I got an image, and a separate story idea. What's to follow is the image, because it's cute, and I'm a sap. Yes, really. Oh, hush, I never pretended otherwise. And yes, you can too be a curmudgeon and a sap. Welcome to my world.

And, because I was playing around on YouTube, I found an awesome rendition of my Barenaked Ladies doing "Careless Whisper". My story image is below the video clip.

***

She watched the clear droplets race in rivulets along the smooth, cool side of her glass, only to be absorbed by the thin bar napkin clinging hungrily to the glass's thick bottom, an inadequate paper girdle. She sighed and lifted the glass to her lips, to drain the last of the contents while the flimsy square stuck to the underside. "What is sadder?" she thought to herself. "The fact that I'm here alone, or that I've been here long enough to have 4 drinks and no one's talked to me?"

The bartender stood at the end of the bar, and watched the small blonde woman sigh into her empty glass. Three times, already, he's replaced her drink and each time, he's wanted to say something. He had seen her around occasionally, usually with girlfriends. She was always the designated driver -- she liked her free diet colas with a lime twist, he remembered. Once, she came in with some guy. Looked like a blind date. He'd tried to impress her with his extensive knowledge of alcoholic drinks but when she'd shown some evidence of a vocabulary and a brain of her own, he seemed suddenly uninterested.

She motioned to the bartender, standing at the other end of the bar, ready to just settle her tab and trudge home. To her empty apartment, and her empty life, and her cable television with 900 channels of nothing worth watching. And her hand froze, mid-gesture, as her ears caught the familiar opening to "Careless Whisper". A small intake of breath sounded a petite gasp, and she looked back over her shoulder at the jukebox as her lips started to move quietly with the much-loved lyrics.

"I feel so unsure as I take your hand and lead you to the dance floor.
As the music dies, something in your eyes calls to mind the silver screen
and all its sad good-byes..."

His heart jumped, just a little bit, as her hand started to motion to him, and he took half a step towards her just as she froze, and then he heard what she did. His heart continued its accelerated half-skip. Whether it was manly or not, whether he ever acknowledged it to anyone or not, he loved this song. The images the words painted, the sultry mood... and he could overlook the sad overtones, especially because of the look of rapture, all of a sudden, on her face.

"I'm never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm
though it's easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool.
Should've known better than to cheat a friend and waste the chance that I've been given
so I'm never gonna dance again the way I danced with you..."

Her chest moved in a deep sigh, without realizing, her head still turned as she looked out at the nearly-empty dance floor. A trio of couples were stuck to each other as they staggered around the large square of fake-wood tiles, helped by copious amounts of drink as well as by their raging hormones, and by the emotional vocal stylings of George's croon. She both hated and envied them, of course. "They weren't even alive when this song came out," she thought glumly to herself, raising her glass for another drink before she remembered that it was dry. Except... it wasn't. A healthy swallow of liquid sloshed out of the nearly full glass, sluicing over the back of her hand and dripping onto the lacquered counter top. She gasped slightly and frowned.

"Time can never mend the careless whispers of a good friend
to the heart and mind ignorance is kind there's no comfort in the truth
pain is all you'll find..."

He had just managed to pour her a fresh drink and slip it into place when she suddenly grabbed for it and spilled half of it all over the counter and herself. "Damn it," he cursed himself quietly, wincing and picking up a bar rag. He moved in and started to clean up the spill, as he mentally searched through every resource he had in his head for something intelligent to say. He kept his eyes on the moving rag, though he knew she had shifted her gaze from her glass to him. She was watching him. He redoubled his efforts to mop up every errant drop, even the ones on the back of her hand.

"Tonight the music seems so loud
I wish that we could lose this crowd
Maybe it's better this way
We'd hurt each other with the things we'd want to say
We could have been so good together
We could have lived this dance forever
But no one's gonna dance with me
Please stay..."

She had thought to say something to the nice man trying to clean up her mess. Man, had he always been this cute? Hadn't he worked here for a while? She couldn't remember. She was about to ask him when her favorite part of the song... the part where George pours his heart out in a pool on the dance floor... hit a dramatic fevered pitch over the sound system, and she froze again, letting the song wash over her. She got lost in the music, swam in the lyrics. When the bridge ended, she went to take a sip of her new drink, and found the bartender... holding her hand?

When he had dropped the bar rag, he wasn't sure. He had been trying to towel off her wet hand when... his favorite part of the song started. That bridge, that always got him, right in his throat. He had never known what "all choked up" meant, until he heard this song. Then she moved her hand, and it brought him out of the music, to the reality that he had really gone past the possible small talk topics. His large fingers curved around the edge of her much smaller, much softer, hand. Rag sprawled on the counter. At least her hand was dry... until he started getting clammy. Wouldn't that be romantic?

"And I'm never gonna dance again
guilty feet have got no rhythm
though it's easy to pretend
I know you're not a fool

Should've known better than to cheat a friend
and waste the chance that I've been given
so I'm never gonna dance again
the way I danced with you..."

Her eyes found his through the dark brown shadows of the bar, and while he slowly moved his hand away from hers, she somehow knew that he didn't really want to. She looked at him, probably for the first time. Really looked. And she smiled. "Hi," she said, as the song wailed its end.

At her smile, his heart jumped again, the sensation warm in his chest. "Hi."

***

Sleep, to continue my musings from a previous entry, is currently a chopped up series of fragments, like salad in a bowl, where each piece is all right by itself, all leafy and green and tasty, but no matter how hard you try, you just cannot assemble a whole head of lettuce from it.

And if that makes sense to you? I throw you confetti, and hand you a balloon, because holy smokes is my brain smoking crack.

Of course, neither my sleep habits nor my brain's crack habits have been helped one single iota by this lovely summer cold I've picked up. Allow me to go all TMI on you for a second, if only to say... how much mucus CAN a single human produce? Because honestly, I think my sinuses are gunning for Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Between the heat here and my body's seeming need for an organ wash, I consumed, no joke, between two and three liters of water, just today. Plus herbal tea. And a smoothie packed with so many strawberries that my vitamin C percentage is firmly perched somewhere around 14,000, though I'm aware that that doesn't really count as a fluid.

My daughter got addicted to smoothies when her Aunt Denise was here, because Nisey bought Kidlet and I a Magic Bullet. Denise and her man have one of their own, and they love it for smoothies and any number of other cool recipes.

Now, here's where I step off my storytelling path for a moment to make a confession. When I came home one afternoon and Denise says from the kitchen, "Hey, I got you a Magic Bullet!", I did not immediately think "blender". I blame the girls I work with, largely a group of 20-somethings who talk a lot about body image, boobs, boys and going out to bars. (Hm. "Boobs, Boys and Bars" might be the name of my next book. I'll keep you posted.) Anyway, when she said "Magic Bullet", I thought of this.

(If you don't wish to click, and if you can't quite infer from the previous paragraph, the item I imagined was decidedly more adult in nature than a kitchen appliance, and would probably belong in a woman's beside drawer, with a package of batteries.)

So, for a moment, I'm thinking to myself, "Wow... I've known Denise for a really long time, I know, but I never would have imagined she'd just... go out and buy me one of THOSE! That's really... um... what will I say?" And then I walked in the kitchen, saw the blendery gadget sitting on my counter and mentally thwapped myself upside the head.

Anyway. Haha.

The MB is really incredibly easy to use, so we've been making up just about every concoction we can think of involving fruit, yogurt, juice and sometimes tofu or ice cream or ice. Last week, I bought a 5-pound box of strawberries, a bag of cherries, bags of frozen strawberries and blueberries, and some bananas, and we've just been going nuts. I ditched the ice cream early on, mostly because I couldn't see myself having ice cream every day, even if it's fat-free and loaded with fruit. So I usually do a little bit of non-fat plain yogurt for a creamy base, and then whatever fruit we're in the mood for. It's capital A-awesome.

In fact, one of the best parts of summer, for me, is the fruit. I've always been a lover of fruit, and Mom always talks about how when I was little, and given a choice between an apple and a candy bar, I'd always pick the apple. We always had a bowl of "basic" fruit on the table -- apples, bananas and oranges, with grapes coming into play often, as well as cantaloupe, watermelon and strawberries.

Many of my favorite memories from childhood have to do with fruit, actually -- my whole family walking about a mile up the road to a nearby state park and picking blackberries off the rows of bushes there. It'd usually be twilight, after dinner was over, and we'd fill buckets that Mom sometimes made into cobbler... when we actually brought enough home for that, and didn't eat them all right there at the park.

Or the times that my great-aunt and uncle, who worked in a Central Valley melon packing shed, would come to visit and bring box upon box of ripe cantaloupe, that we'd just hack open with knives and everyone would get a half and a spoon.

Or times when I'd visit my grandparents and they introduced me to pomegranates. I loved those things, and still do. I'd sit out there for an hour, on the wind-cooled back step, my red-stained fingers gingerly extracting the tiny burgundy seeds and placing them in my mouth so that I could suck them dry. They were so sweet and tart, the hard seed in the center so bitter with tannins.

Or the times that Dad would bring home fruit from work. The campus around his company was landscaped, with several fruit trees put in, including blood apples. Those were awesome -- so sweet and juicy, and yet so weird to bite into an apple and see bright red flesh. There were also grapefruits, plums, cherries and oranges. Not bloody, but incredibly tasty.

Even college brought good fruit memories -- Gracie and her boxes of fruit from home. Man, I think we ate peaches for 3 straight weeks, just from one flat, and they were so, so good. And hey StoneGirl... wanna nectarine? *wink*

So of course, I've worked to instill the same love of fruit in my child. I have my own basic fruit bowl, and we're always buying fruit for it. She had a whole banana today, and half of another, and a smoothie with so many blueberries and strawberries in it, I practically had to stand on the lid to get it to screw down. And what'd she tell me after she'd drunk her cup of smoothie? "Mom, I need some more blueberries. There wasn't enough in the smoothie."

Here's another habit I hope she keeps, for life. I know I'm glad for my own lifelong addiction to fruit.

Go here if you want to play along.

Still alive.

Head still intact. Though full of silver badgers and algae-slimed rocks and entire yelling matches from high-rise windows across dark alleys, in languages I don't speak.

No, I haven't been drinking. That above is just an example of how coherent I've been this week. I'm full of pictures, but none of them mean anything, not even to me.

I've done my strength-yoga deal, and now I'm off to play silly computer games in my pajamas, until I feel like sleep. What does sleep feel like, anyway? Squishy? Slick, like glass? Jagged? Spun sugar and rainbows, and little purple unicorns with ribbons in their tails?

When I decide, I'll let you know.

Warning: Graphic. Angry. Pensive. Depressing. Moody.

Carry on.

***


Driving home today, I was behind a car that was, I assume, piloted by a recently graduated high school senior. How did I deduce this? Well, in their back windshield, they had handwritten with that white, paint-looking stuff, "Seniors, '08, Yee! BSC 4 Life!" I know, it's hard to figure that out, but I took a game stab. BSC, I assume, means "best senior class", though it could mean "bobby sox captain" for all I know.

Since this is 2008... subtract, carry the 3... this means I've been out of high school for 19 years now. I am now over twice the age I was when I graduated. Suddenly, I need a cane and a case of prune juice.

I started thinking about what I've accomplished in those 19 years. What have I done with myself? The answer was both "more than I thought" and "not enough", depending on what angle you chose. I've graduated college. Got a teaching credential. Moved to Texas. Moved back. Moved to Ohio. Moved back. Gained a bunch of weight, lost a bunch, gained a bunch, and lost a bunch. Had 10 different jobs. Was a Writer/GameMaster for 8 of those years. Had 5 boyfriends. One husband. One failed marriage. One beautiful, amazing child. Maintained ties and friendships across vast distances. And underwent personal growth unquantifiable by a simple summary.

It was the '4 Life', on that slick plane of glass, that struck a dissonant chord with me, like someone hit a wrong note while playing a concerto and it made me wince. At the risk of sounding like a ripe old grapefruit, the idealism of youth is something that makes me both wistful and glad I'm not that young anymore. Nothing is '4 Life', Sonny. But I ain't going to be the one to point that out to you. Hold on to that fantasy that there is certainty, or some semblance of permanence, in this world, because once it's gone there's no reclaiming it. You can't take the blue pill after you take the red. Once you're awake, it's a screaming death-drop down the turbo-slide. Time pours by like a rushing waterfall, and you can cup your hands under the pounding torrent, but good luck actually capturing anything other than sore fingers and a heavy chest full of panic.

So pull up your pants, and turn down that loud music, will ya?

***

In other fluffy-bunny news, I received my computer today.

This is not a new computer. It's six or seven years old, and for the last two and a half of those years, it's been sitting in Ohio, with my ex, at his parents' house. I've been trying to get this computer, pretty much since I filed for separation. Why it took this long... well, I don't much care anymore, because I have it now.

And why did I even care to begin with? It's just a machine, right? I can get a replacement, right? Yes... and no. See, to a writer, a computer isn't just a machine. It's the receptacle for a body of work. It's the shiny leather cover for a portfolio of stories, poems, gaming sessions, essays, brainstormings, and ideas. Would I have lived, if I had never seen it again? Sure. But it would have made me very sad and angry to lose all that work, all that creativity, all those words I cobbled together that may not mean a flying handshake to anyone else, but they're priceless to me.

So I plugged it in as soon as I could, to verify that it made the trip here all right... and it booted up just like it always did. I poked through the hard drives, and checked on my creative babies, my mindflowers, my memories. All still there. And I nearly wept with relief, finally letting out the breath I had been holding for... two and a half years.

However, instead of boundless happiness, which I did sort of feel, I was rudely introduced to an unexpected bout of emotional backlash. Sifting through the documents in my old files, I found evidence of files that weren't mine, that had been conspicuously erased. These old, missing files were named after women -- the women that my ex had met online. There was a time, before I came back out here to California, where my ex had used my computer when I wasn't using it.

Now, seeing all that again, I wanted to throw up. Still do. All those old feelings, of discovering what he was doing behind my back, ripped open every scar, every healing wound, that I had. I wanted... want... to stick my fingers into my forehead and rip my own head in half, just to ease the pain. I want to put in every exercise DVD, one after the other, and work myself until I fall down. I want to crawl into bed and sleep for a year. I want to go in the kitchen and drink all eight bottles of wine sitting on top of the refrigerator.

But I won't. I went to the gym at lunch today, so I'll table the Jillian Sweat Parade until tomorrow. I'll probably go put on my nightgown, get a cold beer out of the fridge, watch one of my Pretender episodes and go to bed. And survive, because that's what I do.

'4 Life', my ass.

This weekend has been a mixed bag, so far. I don't know what planetary disalignment went wrong yesterday, but from the moment I woke up, I felt like lukewarm, reconstituted ass. And not really on a "I think I'm catching a cold" level, because I know what that feels like -- achy and lethargic and just about a half-step behind in everything. And it wasn't really a "I've got a headache hangover", because the heavens know I've been dealing with THAT five pounds of bullcrap all fricking week. This was... more of a metaphysical malady, I suppose. My soul ached and felt faded out, and I was unaccountably low-level pissed at everyone in the world for no discernable reason. Probably, my entire whole self was just agitated and still recovering from my craptastic week. I totally had been borrowing heavily from Peter to pay Paul, and I think Peter finally got het up and decided to bust a cap. Noted, Peter.

A two hour nap, when Kidlet took hers, didn't help, and in fact did weird things to my stomach. Mild exercise (mild due to the stomach thing) didn't help, and in fact gave me another headache. Stretching, gardening, writing, warm showering...every attempt at bettering my situation met with retribution and spiritual and physical recoil. Apparently, some force of the Universe meant me to suffer, and yes, I took it personally. Dad called to say hi, and when I told him of the large, heavy chip on my shoulder towards all things Universal, he suggested a little retail therapy. "You got your tax return... you can fritter a little bit of it on yourself." And actually, that itself was harder than usual... I walked out of the bookstore with *nothing*, which should tell you something. But, the siren song of the music store had me walking back out with this...



That's the soundtrack from season 3 -- each season so far has had its own album, though this is the first soundtrack where there were singers other than Alexz Johnson. It was a nice salve for my bruised psyche, honestly -- the music is heavenly, in my not-so-humble opinion. "Darkness 'Round the Sun" (sung by the talented Damhnait Doyle on the album, though in the context of the show, the song was also sung by Alexz and Lindsay Robins) is a particular favorite.

In fact, one of the many reasons that today is so much better than yesterday is because I'm severely ODing on "Instant Star" reruns, thanks to The N. Tomorrow marks the first episode of the last season, and so they've upped the rotation. In fact, starting at 1am tonight/tomorrow morning, they're playing a huge marathon-block, an event which sorely tempts me to call in sick to work.

I can't say what it is about the show that enchants me -- and I know I've talked about this before -- because it's really a very simple plot formula. A 15 year old girl wins singing contest, gets record contract as prize, hilarity and drama ensues. There's the hot, former-boy-band-bad-boy-turned-producer, there's the cute, fierce best-friend-boy-who's-in-love-with-her, there's the jealous older sister, divorcing parents, music industry politics, et cetera. It's not a new story, the stories are cute and predictable, and I basically catch all levels of crap because, "OMG, you're watching THAT? It's a teen show. You should be watching 'Lost/Survivor/Heroes/some other wildly popular, more commercially acceptable adult show'!"

I... don't know what to say. I love this show, I love the music, I adore the lead character, and I think her hot producer is seriously, well, hot...


Tim Rozon, ladies and gentlemen. Innit he a cute thang?

Alright, before I get goofy (...ier) I'm off to try some more industrious Sunday-at-home-type-things, now that I'm feeling not quite so puny, fortified as I am with cheesy teen tv and copious amounts of coffee. Wish me luck.

This was emailed to me, and I've seen it various places around the web as well. I'm having a(nother) bad week for headaches, so my muse is hiding in the back cave of my brain, waiting for the 'all clear'. Which will hopefully be sounded soon. But until then...


Rules: You highlight the things you can do and you leave in normal type the things you can’t.

1. Give advice that matters in one sentence. (i.e., Take a deep breath and focus.)

As verbose as I usually am, I try to keep advice to friends in need to few words. I find they have more impact that way, than if I go on a lecturous rampage. People's eyes tend to glass.

2. Tell if someone is lying.

This depends on the person. If I'm close to them, the chances are higher that I'll notice, but I'm honestly pretty bad at this sort of thing.

3. Take a photo.

4. Score a baseball game.

It's been a while, but I can probably remember the hang of it.

5. Name a book that matters.

6. Know at least one musical group as well as is possible.

Barenaked Ladies, yo. Those are my guys.

7. Cook meat somewhere other than the grill.

8. Not monopolize the conversation.

I tend to stand at the other end of the spectrum, and not say much in any conversation, unless I know the individuals well.

9. Write a letter.

10. Buy a suit.

11. Swim three different strokes.

12. Show respect without being a suck-up.

It actually isn't that hard to show simple respect, if a person uses their brains a little.

13. Throw a punch.

I can't guarantee that I won't hurt myself, but various male relatives taught me, as a child, how to punch. Keep your knuckles flat, and don't tuck your thumb inside your fist or you'll break it.

14. Chop down a tree.

Uh, I know the theory, here, but with something so dangerous, there has to be something more to the skill than, "Hit tree with axe until tree fall down."

15. Calculate square footage.

16. Tie a bow tie.

Not a skill I've ever picked up. I can't even tie a bow very well, on a gift. Shoelaces are about my only success here.

17. Make one drink, in large batches, very well.

Does coffee, in a 14 cup carafe, count as a large batch? I make those all the time at work.

18. Speak a foreign language.

I can speak enough Spanish where I can hold a passable conversation with a native speaker. I'm not fluent by any stretch, but I can hold my own.

19. Approach a man 'out of her league'.

I used to think there was such a thing, a man who was too good looking, or too smart, or too put-together for me, but I don't think that anymore. Ironically, this realization comes after I've taken myself out of the relationship rat-race. *chuckle*

20. Sew a button.

21. Argue with a European without getting xenophobic or insulting soccer.

22. Give a man an orgasm so that he doesn’t have to ask after it.

23. Be loyal.

24. Know her poison, without standing there, pondering like a dope.

25. Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it.

I will admit that this one made me think of the ribald line in "Real Genius", about driving six inch spikes through boards with a certain part of the male anatomy.

26. Cast a fishing rod without shrieking or sighing or otherwise admitting defeat.

27. Play gin with an old guy.

28. Play go fish with a kid.

29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.

I *love* quantum physics and chemistry, all the theory and ideas involved. It was one of my very favorite classes in college.

30. Feign interest.

31. Make a bed.

32. Describe a glass of wine in one sentence without using the terms nutty, fruity, oaky, finish, or kick.

You're only taking five adjectives out of my repertoire? Ha, I've still got about 43 quadrillion left, suckers. And I work in a wine lab, with people who do sensory analysis for a living. Bring it.

33. Hit a jump shot in pool.

34. Dress a wound.

35. Jump-start a car. Change a flat tire. Change the oil.

I need to practice these, but I can get through it.

36. Make three different bets at a craps table.

37. Shuffle a deck of cards.

38. Tell a joke.

39. Know when to split cards in blackjack.

Dad and Grandpa both used to play cards with me when I was little, including 21, poker and various kinds of rummy. They taught me a lot.

40. Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear.

41. Speak to a waiter so he will hear.

I find kindness and common courtesy will go far. I wish it was like that in all aspects of life.

42. Talk to a dog so it will hear.

I don't talk to dogs, since I am afraid of them. Mostly, I avoid dogs, and I let their owners talk to them.

43. Install: a disposal, an electronic thermostat, or a lighting fixture without asking for help.

I can install just about anything, including delicate fittings and parts for scientific instrumentation, if I have adequate directions. I love manuals, for this reason.

44. Ask for help.

45. Break a man’s grip on my wrist.

Another thing Grandpa and Dad taught me -- as you can tell, my family don't raise no sissies. (Grammar butchered for effect -- don't try this at home, kids.)

46. Tell a woman’s dress size.

47. Recite one poem from memory.

"Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, thanks to my 5th grade teacher. There were others she had us memorize, but this one was my favorite and it's been with me now for almost 30 years.

48. Remove a stain.

One of many events in life where chemistry knowledge is your friend.

49. Say no.

50. Fry an egg sunny-side up.

I can do it, even though it grosses me out.

51. Build a campfire.

Thank you, Girl Scouts of America.

52. Step into a job no one wants to do.

Pft, I do this all the damn time.

53. Sometimes, kick some ass.

Ditto, my comment from #52.

54. Break up a fight.

Two words: fire hose.

55. Point to the north at any time.

I was born without a sense of direction. Seriously. The only way I'd have a half-decent chance at this is if I'm outside and the sun's out.

56. Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.

57. Explain what a light-year is.

58. Avoid boredom.

Hate being bored, so I always make sure there's little chance of it happening.

59. Write a thank-you note.

60. Be brand loyal to at least one product.

Best Foods Mayonnaise. I don't eat much, but when I do, it has to be Best Foods.

61. Cook bacon.

On the stove and in the microwave.

62. Hold a baby.

63. Deliver a eulogy.

65. Throw a baseball over-hand with some snap.

66. Throw a football in a tight spiral.

Thread the needle, baby.

67. Shoot a 12-foot jump shot reliably.

68. Find your way out of the woods if lost.

69. Tie a knot.

70. Shake hands.

71. Iron a shirt.

72. Stock an emergency bag for the car.

73. Caress a man’s neck.

74. Know some birds.

75. Negotiate a better price.

I'm one of those lifelong-learner sorts of people, so I'm always looking for answers, and new questions, and more answers. And this lovely, long Memorial Day weekend, I learned...

... that the best way to wake up is as follows:

Kidlet's face appears next to mine, and as my tired eyeballs crack open with audible sandy-rasping sounds, I can tell from the way her face is tilted towards mine, she wants a kiss on the cheek.

I kiss her, and she giggles. "Mommy, I love kisses!"

"Me, too, baby."

"Mommy, I love you!"

"I love you, too."

"Let's have waffles! With strawberries!"

"Okay."

***

... that a whole-grain waffle, with peanut butter and fresh strawberries, is one amazing kind of breakfast.

... that gardening is addictive. (Okay, that one hinges on the plants staying alive. But it was a nice way to be outside.)

... that it's okay to laugh like a goon at a product called "Big Mama Pickled Sausage".

... that "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is a whole lot of fun, with great, funny lines, lots of fights and action and swinging from rafters and stuff, and some awesome shout-outs to the earlier movies.

And I also learned that this movie was NOT to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" as Episode I was to the original "Star Wars" -- meaning, "Crystal Skull" decidedly did NOT suck, and it maybe made me forgive George Lucas a little bit for creating a character like Jar-Jar Binks. In fact, seeing the names George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg and Harrison Ford rolling through the opening credits, one after the other? Created a Zen-like state of happiness in my chest, that all was right with the world.

... "Return of the Jedi" is one of those movies that, if I find it on cable while channel-surfing for suitable background noise while I game, I have to stop. Really. Physically, I could not change the channel, like the button suddenly had a little Death-Star-like deflector shield over it.

But honestly? What kind of perfect gaming ambience is that, "Return of the Jedi"? Perfectly perfect, that's what kind. Why would I want to change the channel?

... I can recite virtually every line of dialogue from "Jedi". With inflection. While concentrating on writing a 10-line gaming passage. Yes, I do scare myself sometimes, actually.

... that I really miss the show "The Pretender". Have y'all found Hulu yet? I started watching "The Pretender" last week through the site, and I'm re-hooked. I fell in love with Michael T. Weiss when I was in junior high, and he was on "Days of Our Lives". Hey, I never claimed to have high-brow TV tastes -- in fact, I'm quite unapologetic about the fact that I love cheese-TV.

For the record, I don't watch soaps anymore... but Mom does. She tapes and watches "All My Children", "One Life To Live" and "General Hospital", every day. And I know enough about the shows and the characters, still, to have a coherent conversation with her about them. I also watched, and loved, "Falcon Crest" and "Beverly Hills 90210". Heck, as mentioned before, the shows I watch now are Canadian teen dramas -- "Instant Star" and "Degrassi -- The Next Generation". You can roll your eyes all you want... I love me some cheesy shows, so just pass the crackers and the salami, okay?

Anyway... Pretender. Michael. Loving. And Ms. Parker is my heroine. What an iron-clad bitch... and yet, with dimension.

... that spending three out of four nights in a row gaming, and only getting about 5 hours of sleep a night, can leave me honestly energized because of how the creative energy lifts me up.

... that my full-push-up number has increased to 10. I never thought I'd ever be able to do 10 standard push-ups, in my whole life.

... that my kid is one of the funniest, sweetest people I know.

And on that note, I hope you had a great weekend. And I hope you learned something fun, interesting and/or important.

Disclaimer: This is me, venting, and not at anyone in particular. This journal is not now, and never will be, a passive-aggressive tool where I take something a friend said to me, turn it into a "random phrase I overheard at the grocery store", and then turn the post into an unveiled bitch-fest. That’s not me and that’s not what I do. Chances are, if you’re reading this, none of this entry is about you, specifically. If I do use something you said to me, I’ll note that directly.


I’ve hesitated to write this entry, for quite a while now. When I first started writing in online journals, now going on five or so years ago, I had always intended them to be more like funny "isn’t that weird or stupid?" repositories for the strange things I’ve seen or done, and less like actual "Dear Diary – My heart, let me show you it." emotional angst-y-ness. I had seen a ton of journals, by 17-year-old girls with their OMG’s and their LOLs and their overblown teenage drama laid bare, and by 20-year-old college students with their "Dude, I got SO DRUNK last night, slept with this other dude… I think… and failed calc. for the 8th semester in a row because of it" stories – all pinned out on the internet clothesline for the world see and read and be roundly unimpressed by their horrific spelling issues. And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with inflicting that level of confession on innocent strangers.

Then, as the world of journaling started to change, and my own life changed dramatically, and the emailing I had always done to extract some of my more personal thorns became undoable, for reasons I won’t go into here, I started to release more heartfelt details into the 8-bit aether  as a way to maintain my mental health. I’ve since discovered a whole vein of well-written journals where the authors talk about themselves and their personal life journeys, and don’t embarrass themselves in the process. Or if they do, it’s part of the fun, and done well. And, while I don’t ever think I’ll be one of those people who can just toss out a handful of intimate details about my life like someone would fling breadcrumbs out into a duck-filled lake, there will probably be an increasing number of posts that can be filed under, "Life, Figuring Out Of". And this is one of those.

The seeds for this post were planted a while ago, by a variety of different, uh, farmers, if you want to carry the metaphor out that far. I’ve been living the life of a single mother for almost two and a half years now, and while I’d never wish the horror of an unexpected divorce  -- the kind where you think things are fine and happy one day, and then you find out the next day that you’ve been betrayed and that the betrayer really isn’t all that sorry about hurting you – on anyone, it’s certainly been a fertile field (look, more planting comparisons!) for thought and learning about the world. Namely, that divorce is one of those things that, even if you’ve been through it, you still may not really understand what another divorced person has to go through in order to put on their pants, leave the house, and get through the day. I read, in one of the many tomes floating around my house, that unexpected divorce is one of the most traumatic and difficult to recover from experiences anyone in this day and age can face. More difficult, according to these authors, than dealing with the death of a parent or the death of a spouse.

It’s not my intention, either, to try and one-up anyone, and insist that, lo, my misery is greater than yours. In fact, people who do that and people who prioritize different levels of personal tragedy are a long-time pet peeve of mine. Really, the only reason I bring up the comparison here and now is because I am constantly amazed at the sheer number of people who give me grief because I haven’t "gotten over my ex yet". And when I assure them that I have, they don’t believe me. "Then why aren’t you dating? If you were really over him, you’d be with someone. It’s past time." Excuse me, but who are you, to judge whether an appropriate amount of time has elapsed for someone to find peace with a world-altering personal event? If my ex had died suddenly, instead, would it then be more acceptable that I’m still single?, I’ve asked some of these "ass-vice" givers. And the answer’s usually yes, because, "Everyone gets divorced. Just move on." And then my head explodes, because the lack of logic has sucked all the air out of the room.

Nor do I want to have everyone think that I consider all opinions the same, or unwanted. This is not even a little bit true. In a recent discussion with the awesome StoneGirl, I was relating a tale of how random strangers seem to walk thousands of miles over hot coals just for the sole purpose of (oh, man… walking over hot coals… sole… I slay me! Ahem, anyway…) finding me to tell me how I’m totally doing my life wrong, and her response was something along the lines of, "But they mean well, probably, and you don’t actually TELL them to jump off a cliff… do you?" No, I really don’t. I listen, I nod, I smile, I usually come up with some bland ‘thanks for your opinion’ words… because I DO know that, regardless of their delivery, they think they’re helping. And I appreciate that, I do.

And that, my friends, is what journals, online and paper, are for – after smiling and nodding and thanking the 4000th individual who happens to have some whacked-out opinion of how I should be handling my emotions and my life (I think my favorite is still, "Just keep having sex with random strangers until you can no longer remember your ex’s name!" Delivered in complete seriousness, no less.) – I’ve GOT to have someplace I can come where I can throw around my WTF?!s and verbally stomp around in my pointy angry shoes. You lucky people get to see what goes on when the wizard steps out from behind the shiny curtain and is just a crazy little woman with a sometimes blinding need to punch someone in the head for their stupidity.

What I cherish are the thoughtful opinions. Going back to StoneGirl again, she commented on one of my posts a while back something along the lines of, "Maybe you don’t want to hear my opinion because I’m happily married, and I should shut up." I’ve never felt that way – not in the past, and not now, and I can’t see where I will ever assign merit to someone’s words based on whether they’re in the same boat as me. No, and no some more. I always listen to SG’s words, because she gives thoughtful opinions, she knows me, and, most of the time, she gets me. Thoughtfulness and understanding are what gives words weight with me, not whether they come from someone who is divorced or a mother or blonde or a scientist, or whatever.

And valued opinions don’t all have to be supportive and sympathetic, either, though those are certainly nice. I’m the first to admit that I need to be reality-checked now and then – but it’s the delivery that’s key. This is a recurring issue in my life, because I take reflexive, swift offense to anyone who tries to bludgeon me with their opinions, whether it’s about my religious or political choices, how I raise my kid, or the state of my love life. Unless I choose to share information with you about the above topics? None of your business, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand how some people can just pick a philosophical fight with someone over whether breast feeding babies is better than formula feeding, for example, for the single-minded purpose of cramming their own opinion down someone else’s throat.

So, for the record… I’m happily single. And that’s the truth. I don’t mean, "Biding my time until a half-decent guy comes along" single, or "Really unhappy, but I’m going to force a smile and pretend that I’m happy" single, or "The harsh, black twists of the world have turned me into a gnarled prune who is incapable of love or recognizing the beauty in anyone else, ever again, wah" single. Happily. Single. The kind that brings with it an amazing freedom – which is also due to having Kidlet in my life, if we’re going to be perfectly honest, and so I don’t feel that need to get married or find a boyfriend so that I can fulfill my lifelong dreams of motherhood. While it’s not optimal, the way things turned out, and it’s not the way I envisioned it, I’ve made it work so far, this single parent deal, and I believe part of the karmic balance for the death of my marriage is that I don’t feel compelled like I once did to seek a partner so that I can have a baby.  I’ve done that, and while I had always imagined I’d have more than one child, I’m content with the Universe’s choice, and I’m elated with the baby I’ve got.

Yes, I know, she’s going to be 4 in October, but she’s STILL my baby. When she’s 40, she’ll STILL be my baby.

So, with that once-driving need removed… why should I disrupt this peace I’ve created for myself, by bringing someone else into the equation? And I mean that, peace… at a level I’ve not known, well, my whole life, really. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I’m one of those people who should just not be in relationships, because they’re just too stress-inducing. I never could bring myself to actually date – the few guys I’ve had in my life, including my ex, were either friends that suddenly morphed into romance, or people I met through gaming online. Just the thought of dating, and I feel a panic attack coming on. When I was in relationships, I spent many, many nights awake, stressing, panicking, worrying. I was on anti-depressants, off and on. I cried a lot, for no apparent reason. And, on the surface, the relationships seemed happy. They felt happy. But at night, and in quiet moments, I was a nervous wreck. I’ve had more than one therapist tell me that I’ve got hyper-developed senses – meaning that, subconsciously, I was picking up on little signs that my boyfriend or husband was unhappy with something, or was fixing to leave, even though on the surface, everything seemed normal and happy. Which is weird to contemplate, but could be true, I suppose, especially since every time I was in a relationship, I couldn’t cram a moment of quiet into my brain edgewise even if I had a pile driver and a wedge.

But now? The calmness is actually frightening, especially since I’ve never experienced anything at this level before. I feel no need for pills, of any sort. That’s not to say that I don’t have worries, or bad days, because I certainly do – I have kid and money worries, mostly, and random, passing worries about living alone and slipping in the bathtub, what if I break my leg? That kind of stuff. But they’re at *normal* levels. Not the whirring, buzzing, constantly-freaking-out-for-weeks-on-end-variety that I had lived with for YEARS, during my marriage and long before. And I can trace almost all of the peaceful calmness back to the fact that I no longer have to worry about whether I should be calling some guy, or waiting for him to call, or washing his socks, or whether he’s judging me or my choices or the shape of my ass. If I plan to go to the grocery store on a Saturday at 10am, I don’t have to worry about someone else waking up and saying, "No, let’s stay home and watch basketball. But, come here, so we can have crazy monkey sex first!" Gah.

And it’s not that I’m anti-man or anti-basketball or anti-sock-washing or anti-monkey-sex. It’s about having control, over the flow of my day, my time, my path. Maybe it comes from all those years of pleasing everyone else instead of myself, of being the quiet, agreeable one, of being willing to compromise to the point of ridiculousness, for the sake of keeping everyone happy. Except myself, of course. But if everyone else was happy, I was happy, right? Right?

Not so much, it turns out. And it took 35+ years on this planet and an earth-shattering divorce for me to realize that… I’m allowed to be happy, and the best way to do that is be single. Isn’t that worth something? Isn’t that important to figure out? Because when I say that to people, I swear it’s like I’ve just told them that I want to shave my head and join Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid cult. People laugh, and think I’m joking, or they shake their head with that annoying "tolerant parent" (tm Gilmore 4 crew) look on their face like I’m a silly, silly child who doesn’t know how the world works. While I understand that it’s the cultural norm in this country to pair off and form a familial unit, there are a million deviations from that model that are perfectly viable. We don’t all have to walk the same path, people. I once thought that I had to walk that path. Hell, I *wanted* to walk that path. I wanted the husband and the kids and the house in the country and the picket fence. And now that I realize that I’m much happier without it, it’s positively staggering, some of the reactions I get, when I voice my intentions to walk a different path.

At any rate, this post is now officially rambling and huge, and tell me if you’ve read through the whole thing so I can send you a cookie. I’m sure the topic will be revisited off and on, as I try and wiggle into these pants called ‘Life’. Sometimes they’re tight and uncomfortable, and you can’t zip them up, but other times, they’re like your favorite jeans and make your butt look *gorgeous*. I’m wearing sweats right now – sort of undefined in shape, but comfy.

I’ll take ‘em.

Happy, happy Mother's Day, to all of you moms out there!

I don't know about you, but it's been one of those non-stop, something's-going-on weekends, where I've had a chain of things to look forward to. As soon as one cool thing ends, another's on the horizon.

The first event was a surprise. Friday morning, I'm at work and Mom calls. Through one circumstance and then another, she ended up with four free tickets to a local concert -- the kids' band Milkshake.






So, with my long-time friend SJ and her 5-year-old son, Kidlet and I suddenly had a 6:30p date for Friday night, and Kidlet's first concert, no less. I didn't know much about the band, other than the one song whose video I had seen on Noggin, which is the same song as in the video above. But the band was cute, very audience interactive, and both Kidlet and SJ's son had fun clapping and jumping around. SJ's son got so into one of the more rockin' songs towards the end, he was even headbanging, and there's really not much that's funnier than a kindergartner flopping his hair around and very nearly throwing the goat.

Then, once I got my little varmint in bed Friday night, I had my standing date with Meridian for our gaming/interactive storytelling session. I love the direction that the storyline is taking, and it's really just so much fun lately that it's criminal. She and I stayed up until an eye-crossing 3am, simply because we were so wrapped up in the tale we were telling that we lost all track of time.

The next morning, I was a little bleary, but some coffee fixed me up pretty well, and I dug in to clean and do some of the usual weekend stuff. Around 5p that evening, my parents came over, as did StoneGirl and her Sweetie... and it was SG's birthday! The six of us piled into two cars and headed to a nearby restaurant for dinner, where we had a great time catching up and telling stories. SG's Sweetie and I share an affinity for cats, and so therefore we find icanhascheezburger.com to be utterly hilarious. My folks insisted on paying, since they consider SG to be part theirs, and when SG's Sweetie tried to get the bill from Mom, claiming that he had told SG he was going to take her out to dinner for her birthday, Mom smiled and said, "She was ours first." We may not have known her the longest of everyone in her world, but we've got about 15 years on Sweetie, heh. It was just so good to see her, and doubly special that it was her birthday as well.

Then, this morning, I had to get up and make a grocery store run, and then head right on over to the parents' house for Mother's Day lunch, with my folks and my brother and my child. I got a card and a huge, gorgeous bouquet of lilies and snapdragons from my Kidlet (with some help from a couple of grandp... I mean, fairies.), and my folks got me a pretty Mother's bracelet, lavender body wash and a sun-catcher for the patio. I got Mom a bag full of stuff she likes -- wine and lotion and Kidlet picked out a teddy bear for her. For the lunch, Mom set out home-made guacamole with chips, and brie and crackers, while Dad made steak with mushrooms, mashed potatoes, salad, steamed broccoli, and for dessert, we had dark-chocolate-dipped strawberries. Oh, man, were those things GOOD. I ate way, way too much, but I did balance it out with a Jillian Cardio Kick-box session so I don't feel quite so gluttonous.

Finally, after a quiet afternoon back home, I got a napless Kidlet into bed about 45 minutes ago, and now I'm watching Star Wars and sitting on the couch, tapping this out on the laptop. Action packed, but full of good stuff. Let's hope this weekend will be a launching pad into a good week.

Alright. I should have been in bed hours ago, because I had quite a day at work, where nothing went right and I was on my feet for decades, when I wasn't wrestling to the ground a recalcitrant instrument that insisted on skipping random sample tubes and generally making an unorchestrated mockery of my attempts to reverse entropy and squeeze a little bit of logic out of what I'll call here an Unfortunate Quirk. Gleeful, this mechanical beast was. Relentless. And if it screwed up the run I put on right as I left at the end of the day, I'm going to turn it into a pile of crooked paper clips tomorrow morning, with my sledgehammer made out of lava and righteous justice.

Ahem. I'm tired.

But I've had a bee in my bonnet (...Potter) (Sorry, couldn't resist.) for a while, and I keep thinking about it and mind-writing about it, so I need to just spit it out and spew the fluff up into the cosmos so that I can go the frack to sleep, already.

Let me set this up. Several times, over the last few weeks, I've heard snippets of conversation similar to this:

Person A: "Hey, Mother's Day is coming up. Are you and your kids doing something nice for your wife?"

Person B: "*snort* The kids can, but I'm not. She's not MY mother."

***

Okay. Can we please, please, pretty please, do away with this... transgression? This attitude? The day is "Mother's Day". It means "Day of the Mother" or "Day of All Mothers". It's not "My Mother's Day". It is a day where we acknowledge motherhood, and everything that goes with it. No, I'm not taking issue with this because I happen to be a mother -- I've also heard, over the last few years, "He's not MY father" (Fathers' Day) and "They're not MY grandparents" (Grandparents' Day).

What I take issue with is this seeming reluctance to give anyone respect or acknowledgment. No, she may not be your mother, Person B, but she's the mother of your children. And, you, sir, are an ass, so I suppose if we had a "She-Who-Lives-With-A-Jackass Day", you'd be forced to get on board with that one, eh?

From what I've gathered, some people use this tactic to get out of buying presents and cards for the honorees of whatever holiday we're experiencing. And, while I'm already up, can we please kill the phrase "Hallmark holiday"? Especially if coupled with a dismissive or disdainful tone of voice, like, "Oh. Valentine's Day is SUCH a Hallmark holiday." Hate! Because you know what? Just because someone puts a product out on the market, catering to a specific season or holiday... doesn't mean you have to buy it. Really. It's true. Unless you've been possessed by the ghost of the spendy person who happens to haunt your house, or you've been taken over by the pod people, last I checked, people in this country have free will. Which means... you don't have to spend your money on things you don't want to.

What's that? You're expected to buy the cards and the candy and the flowers and blah blah blah? Perhaps, then, you need to have a bit of communication with whoever it is that's doing the expecting. Perhaps you only think that they expect these things, but really all they'd like is a home-made card and a visit. Perhaps, if your girlfriend demands piles of presents for Valentine's Day, and that's not the kind of person you are, then you need to talk about that. Perhaps you don't need to put yourself in debt by buying your kids hundreds of dollars in Christmas presents, so that they'll think you're the cool parent(s), or whatever other reasons drive such avarice. Just sayin'.

Also, the whole, "I love and respect my mom/dad/grandparents/significant other every day, why should I take one special day to tell them that" argument really makes me scratch my head. It seems to me that, while you tell your girlfriend or your grandma that you love her on a regular basis, why turn down or downplay a chance to really express yourself? Holiday comes from "holy day", and it's meant to be a day of reflection and expression. Whether you want to give your mom a diamond necklace on Sunday, or a card, or a phone call, you're taking the time to say, "Hey, Mom/Person who is a Mom, you're really cool. Thanks for being a/my mom!" The society we live in is not very conducive to taking time out to make the acknowledgments and the little gestures that can really make a big difference in someone else's day, so if there's a day set aside for it? Why let it pass you by? You don't have to make a big production out of it, if that's not your style, or if you're not close to your mom/the mothers in your life. But don't swing the other way and act like the very idea of appreciating someone is repulsive to you.

Okay, I think I've vented my spleen enough that I can sleep. Thanks for listening.

And for the record, I didn't ask for anything for Mother's Day, because I already have what I want. She's about 41 inches tall, has long, blonde, wavy hair, big blue eyes, and her nose squinches up when she laughs. She answers to the name of Kidlet, when she feels like it, and she means the world to me. Why would I want anything else?