Justin, eeeeeee!

Probably because of the stellar singing video below, I had a dream last night with Justin Timberlake, where he was being stalked by paparazzi outside a hotel and I was the only other person in the lobby, and he walked by me and I totally knew who he was but played it cool and offered to help him escape and we did through a totally smart disguise (the details are a little hazy) and in return he offered me anything I wanted and all I wanted to know was, "What was it like to be in a public park with a box on your groin?"

Can't. Stop. Watching.

I <3 Justin Timberlake.



I really like how they throw up their hands every time they get to the chorus.
Also: "Step One: Cut a hole in the box."

Roller coaster

I thought I was doing better today--I took some stuff back to Macy's and managed to find myself the BEST COAT EVAR and it only has to be tailored a wee bit in the sleeve length, but I think it can. It was 360, marked down to 130, and I had the returns that more than covered it and this coat is HAWT.

Oh, and I had a little IUI visit today too. It almost didn't happen, which scared the pants off me worried me greatly. My appointment was supposed to be for 11:45, but when I got home from the grocery store (planning to make Moroccan Chicken with Dried Apricots, yum!) at 10, I heard a message. "Um, hi, Kari? It's Heather, from the Doctor's office. He has an emergency surgery at 11:45, and so..." ACK! They wanted to reschedule my appointment for... 9:45. Uh. Shit.

Doubly shit because if it didn't get done TODAY, this month's clomid and crazy hormone rollercoaster would be for nuthin. Which--awesome.

I called them, though, and was able to get my appointment rescheduled for 10:45 which meant I was hurtling out the door, frantically calling A on his cell phone trying to get him to pick up pick up pick UP! I like having him at these appointments. It feels stronger, less clinical, to have him there. Plus, there's the end of each appointment where the doc tells you to just lie there for fifteen minutes and then we just get to talk, which is comforting and cozy and intimate and almost erases the weirdness that came occurred just before it. But the bastard didn't know the apointment was rescheduled and he chooses NOW to not be surgically attached to his phone? REALLY? I'm the only one who's allowed to be flaky with a cell phone in this family!!!

I managed to call the office, and after spending some time in Voice Response Unit Purgatory, where his extension didn't work and everyone else is out of town for Christmas, I finally got through to Emily, the temp front desk assistant. Here I was, barelling down I-84 (why do all my IUI stories involve me hurtling, barreling, and in general throwing myself at high speeds down major highways?) trying to get A on the line so that he can meet me, and I'm trying to describe him to a temp assistant so she can drag his ass to a phone. "He's tall? With... brown hair? and... uh... " I can't for the life of me remember what he was wearing this morning when I dropped him off at work. "... and he's tall?" Fortunately, Emily The Super Temp manages to find him and wrangle him to one of those new-fangled telly-phones. We agree that if he walks down to Burnside, I can pick him up mostly-sorta on my way to the clinic. Miracle of miracles, this bootstrap planning works out and the appointment goes off takes place painlessly.

Maybe this will be the one. Maybe.

So I manage to drop A back off at work, go to Macy's and find this kick-ass coat (and there's still money left on the giftcard! Shazam!), do a few other errands, make a tasty crockpot dinner, go to a hair appointment...

...and by the time it came to eat said tasty dinner, all the enthusiasm has dribbled out of me left me. Part of it was in response to an email that rubbed me the wrong way, like a lot of things are these past few weeks. Part of it was a discussion with A at dinner that just left me feeling a little sad and a little angry (not at him! it wasn't a fight, it was a discussion about a situation where there's no good solution. I hate those kind of situations. I prefer those situations that have solutions, frankly). And part of it is... maybe it's just that I'm tired.

But now, as I sit here and write the sum total of my day, I find that remembering the quick turnaround on my morning, how much I got done today, all of that, I feel a little better. In fact, I felt better until I got to the part where I tried to explain why I didn't feel enthusiastic anymore and then remembering why I didn't feel enthusiastic drained me again. Does that make sense?

So I guess the upshot point is that I can force myself to keep my spirits up if I focus on the successes and quietly put away the things that make me feel second-best. So maybe, after all, I am doing better. It is, after all, important to keep your sense of humor.

Roller coaster, anyone?

God rest ye merry whatevers.

Um. So, Christmas.

What a freaking total letdown. I know it's another family's customs, but it wasn't MY family customs, and so it felt really... deflated.

And then some family members managed to say and do some INSANELY AWFUL things that just made me glad to be home on Christmas Day. And then to have the trans-atlantic phone call with my family that wasn't awkward AT ALL kind of highlighted how very very much I was missing and how very very much this wasn't Christmas at all for me this year. So I just want it to be over so I can stop dwelling on it.

But--for what was my favorite holiday--to be glad it's over is disheartening.

So I'll just count my blessings, cuddle my dog, smooch my husband, and try to use this week of vacation wisely and get stuff done so that the next three months fly by and it's spring before I know it.

To do list

Remember to pack...

• Cell phone charger
  
• Camera charger
  
• Palm charger
  
• iPod charger
  
• gps
  
• batteries
  

Is anyone as disturbed by that list as I am?

Mt Hood

This is the view of Mount Hood I have on my way to work in the morning. I always think of Mount Hood as sort of the perfect mountain. It's pointy, craggy, snow-covered...there's the shadowed crevices... On mornings where the weather conditions are right, the mountain seems to break through the clouds, untouched and perfect above them. The view is even perfect. In front of me is a long and winding river that seems to go on forever, until I look up and there is Mount Hood. Some mornings--most mornings!--I drive past while the sun is still rising behind the mountain and Mount Hood stands in stark relief, a dark shadow precisely outlined against the early morning sky.

Mornings when I can see Mount Hood, when it's not raining too much or too cloudy or too hazy, seem just a little better, and a little lighter, and a little smoother. They remind me of how much around us is awe-inspiring if we just take the time to notice..

Note that it is also the mountain where rescuers are currently searching for two lost climbers. They would be searching for three, but the third had dislocated his shoulder in the ascent and his compadres left him in a snowcave and went to seek help--and then vanished. He was found dead on Monday.

This has not been a good month to be lost in snow in Oregon.

I wish I could say that this tempers my love for the mountain. It feels callous to the hikers that every time I see Mount Hood I still feel that chord in my center that vibrates out through my extremeties with an almost audible thrum. But there the mountain sits, above any tragic outcomes--not quite unconnected, but still, somehow, untouched.

For later.

I came to a really big realization today, which has really put me at peace about a lot of things.

Of course, this being Week of Crazy, I will probably change my mind about it in two days--while crying and snotting wildly--but for now, I'm at such a better place than I've been in a while.

But it's weird to tell anyone about it right now, so it may have to wait. This is an odd thing to say, just having given you such a lead up to it, but I'll have to tell you about the meat of the realization later. Just now that right now, for today, I don't have that knot in my stomach.

And that's good.

A read

A really good article:
http://altdotlife.com/archives/18

The shopping! Oh, the shopping!

Um. Today--I think--maybe--I might have--finished my Christmas shopping.

Shhh.

Now all I have to do is send them all off.

Ha. Just me and million other people at the post office, paying an arm and a leg because we waited until NOW to send everything.

Ah well. It's wrapped and going, whether we have to miss this month's mortgage payment to send it is another question.

The Trouble I Get Myself Into

So, it's the day before Winter Break and the kids are predictably short-fused, short-attentioned-spanned, and just short in general. Unfortunately, since this semester is a week shorter than usual, I didn't have a choice with my geometry classes--they had a test. Which sucks. I hate being That Teacher, giving a test the day before vacation.

The kids did predictably ass-y.

I had even, the day before? gone over one of the test questions, one of the big show-your-work story problem ones, in detail, in excruciating detail. ONe of the students had said, "Why don't you just tell us?" "I am," I replied. "Right now."

Average score on that problem? 2 out of 8 points. I started giving a point just for drawing a picture, I was that desperate.

(Side note: I don't normally teach to the test. This was--hand to God--an accident. I thought the problem I found in the text book was a really good example of a problem that synthesized everything we'd learned in the chapter. Imagine my surprise when that problem exactly was on the test.)

(So I can only imagine how poorly they would have done if we hadn'tgone over it.)

So, in stats, I decided to cut the over acheivers a break. Besides which, the lessons didn't break easily into a test before the break--I would have had to really shoehorn it in, and I was tired of pushing. I can only push one group of the student body at a time. So I decide to show an episode of Numb3rs, the CBS tv show where, with absolutely no awkwardness at all, and in entirely organic and natural ways, math is used to solve FBI cases!!! Heh.

Last year, I'd done the same with Mythbusters. Great show. Unfortunately, I hadn't carefully pre-screened the episode I was going to show. I figured: Discovery channel! Can't be bad! And then I showed them the episode where the two dudes get absolutely plowed and try to beat a breathalyzer. Since it showed they can't beat the breathalyzer, I suppose it was okay, but still: showing adults getting shwasty in a conservative school? Not the best career plan.

So this year, I'm careful. I watch the Numb3rs episode last night to ensure no one is climbing into or out of bed, no teh gay, nothing bad.

Which was a good plan. If only I'd shown the episode I'd pre-screened.

Instead, I pick one where a witness works. In a nightclub. Called The Bareback. So guess where the next seven minutes of the episode take place? In a strip club.

I rock.

Coming Clean.

I'm trying to get my family's gifts packed up and sent off before they all go abroad for Christmas... why does it feel like they all make that decision, one I've been quietly trying to encourage since, oh, LEE MOVED THERE, the one year A and I finally acknowledge that doing dual family celebrations will give us aneurysms?

We--A and I--have been getting some tough-to-take news on upcoming expenses and health/fertility issues that are hard to deal with. I've been keeping it inside a long time but have starting "coming out of the closet" so to speak about it with most people. My way of dealing with it has become rather gallows humor. I speak about hemoraging money, blasting sperm, and hormonal fun with a sort of cynical expectation that we will not have luck. My mom, lord love her, is almost too sympathetic. "Oh, honey," she'll say, her voice wavering. "It's not funny..." Actually, in some ways, it is--the lengths we'll go to, that the odds and the industry are stacked against us so exhorbitantly, that we live this sort of dual reality where something that is slowly taking over our lives and absorbing 99.9% of our reality isn't something that can and/or should be discussed with everyone, so we end up not being completely honest with almost anyone. I am coming up with more and more creative ways to excuse my crazy-making doctor's appointments. I am appearing more and more demented as I shoot myself up with hormones. Things are becoming crazier and crazier.

I have to laugh. If I don't, I'll cry and never stop.

Of course, there are days when I do that too. There are days when I'm so angry and that's an emotion I've never dealt with well. I tend to lash out at whoever's nearest when I stub my toe or bite my cheek or turn my ankle. Imagine what it's like to be around me when I'm not just dealing with this, but dealing with it on mega-horse-doses of hormones! Fun for the whole family! It's worse because there's no one to be angry with. God, I suppose, but given the capriciousness of infertility, I really can't blame God. I'm not really a God-blaming kind of person in general anyway. I also don't thank him for touchdowns, though, so it evens out.

The worst part is, it's an incredibly isolating experience. I don't wish it--fertility treatments--on anyone (and apparently, going by the spate of "Ooops, we got pregnant the first time we tried!" pregnancies around me--fuckers--literally--I don't really have to) but it would also be nice to have a friend who's a friend for friend reasons also be someone who's had experience with this. As opposed to making friends with someone just because their plumbing is fucked up too. Just so I could talk about how taking the Clomid on the Clomid days makes me feel, or dreading the trigger shot even though I know it doesn't hurt, or feeling claustrophobic about everything some days.

I have great friends and they are super supportive, but this is an experience I didn't understand until we first met with Dr. Doogie, our baby-making doctor. It'd be comforting to have a friend who'd gone through the same ice-water-in-the-faceness of it all, the same 100% obsession.

So, this is me coming clean about it, internet-wise. I've been afraid of doing so for a while, mostly because it feels like saying "I want a baby so much I'll shoot myself full of synthetic hormones and make everyone around me listen for hours as I talk about LH, HCG, IUI, BBT and DPO until their ears bleed and they stop inviting me places" and that is so not who I want to be. It also feels like jinxing everything. Wishing for something is the surest way to never have it.

But not speaking or writing about all of it also means I can't vent about what's making me crazy (the non-hormonal crazy, more like the "I hate the dry cleaners!" kind of crazy, or "the dumbest shit in the world was my waiter!" kind of crazy, although I'm sure the hormones affect my interpretation of that kind of crazy) WHICH, of course, is the whole point of having the damn blog in the first place. So what I was doing was just not writing at all and that sucked too.

So, yeah. Here's where I am. I just want a baby, our baby, to grow inside me in a way most women take for granted. And I just can't make a sarcastic joke about that.

For your viewing pleasure

Still love this ad (was part of a Thanksgiving conversation)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uyN9y0BEMqc

These still make me grin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-efY2ebXN8Y&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WcnBoGZ2G4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx8e5Io63LY

A day of reckoning

Dear TiVo,

We love you, we really do. And we were there! In the early days! We were on the bleeding edge of your now-can't-live-without-it technology. Seriously, we are two of those people who just can't understand EVER that need for ads. We hate them. And we owe it all to you. Bless you.

But so help me god, if you keep recording Little House on the Prarie instead of Veronica Mars? And Ron Popeil's Juicer instead of CSI? We're about to upgrade your ass right outta the picture.

Yes, you're paid for, and so yes, the recording is free instead of paying a monthly fee, but some things are worth that $10 a month. This is one of them.

Cut it the fuck out, or get out.

Love, me.

Gobble gobble

There are so many things to be thankful for, you have no idea. Or maybe you do. I hope you do. I hope you counted them all. I hope they included your health, your loved ones, your family. I hope you are as blessed as I am, with a family you've created. I hope you laughed as much as we did yesterday, got maybe a little misty-eyed, felt as warm as we did. Because brother, there ain't nothing like it.

xoxo

Conversation

"I really want to call your dog Matilda."

"....okay."

"What's her name?"

"...Matilda."

Blessings counted.

I've had two days of high-powered mega-watt output. I must be due for a crash.

I've been crashing more this fall than I like to admit. I'm afraid of the introspection that might tell me why. I'm afraid to step on the scale. Everything is balanced more delicately than I like to look full in the face.

I'm cool with that on the good days. Today? Today is a good day.

Onramp

I've been tense and unsettled lately, and I have no idea why. My friend Emily calls it "fussy". Or my favorite, more elaborate description, "fussy in the head." I haven't gotten more than five hours of sleep in a night for the last three nights. Keep in mind, it's Sunday right now. That means that Thursday night, Friday night AND Saturday night, I've woken up somewhere between midnight and 3 a.m., with a body and/or brain that had apprently decided it was done sleeping. Which is, y'know, awesome. I've even been taking herbal supplements to try to even out my sleep cycle, and apparently my body is having. None. Of it.

So I'm a little foggy today.

And maybe that explains my overwhelming paranoia that I'm forgetting something important. Like there's imminent doom lurking over my shoulder. During one of my sleepless moments, I stumbled on a scenario that for whatever reason, seemed to capture this overwhelming tension that I'm right on the verge of fucking up.

You know those onramps onto the free way? There's an incredibly short one on my way to work. Overall, I feel like those moments where I'm trying to merge, but there's a car to the left of me, matching my speed. I try to slow down, just as she slows down to let me in. So I speed up, to pass her, but then she does too. And we're matching speeds and the onramp is getting shorter and shorter and shorter and...

...okay maybe that was a sort of sleep-deprived crazy dream/nightmare thing. But the imagery--I can't kick it. I don't know what's twisting me up in knots specifically. I don't know that anything is, really. I have a statistics test to give on Tuesday, and I was stressing out because I thought it was written and it wasn't and I don't know if I'll have enough time to get everything done on Monday so they can take the test on Tuesday and... what? This is not--should not be--as big a deal as it feels. Right? So why do I keep waking up with a buzzing brain that is just not going to be satisfied?

I think I just need to figure out if I'm supposed to be speeding up, or if there's any possible way I can just slow down.

A week in seven paragraphs

Last weekend: best. visit. evar. with my sister. It was like she lived down the street and was just coming over to hang out, which, when you think about it? We don't do enough these days. It's all destination visiting. When you come! We'll go out! And see Mt. Hood and Mt. Tabor and the Pearl District and Twenty Third and we'll eat! At all these cool restaurants! None of that. We got up, hung out in our PJs and did insane crosswordage (speaking of which--where's my crossword book?) and our only Destination Planning was a Farmer's Market that had a guy standing there in his North Face fleece vest and his pants that zip into short while his daughter in a crafty poncho dangled around his knees, and that guy was talking to another couple in his back-of-the-throat surfer Northwest way, "Yaaaa, we're just raaacing... through the farmer's market todaaaay..." while we debated whether we wanted apple cider or not. Lee also got to witness one of my best teaching days ever, so double bonus. Someday I'll write about it. So, yeah. Incredible gift to have Lee here. Plus? Crazy Matilda lurrrrved her.

Monday: drop Lee off at the airport on the way to school, day doesn't end until 9 when I leave the television studios. My geek squad? Was on TV. Heh. I was there to cheer.

Tuesday: Day didn't end until I got home at 9 AGAIN, after doing lines at the volleyball game. Which I love saying, because it totally sounds like I'm doing coke under the bleachers, instead of standing for almost two hours waiting to call in, out or touch with those flight-attendant-like hand motions.

Wednesday. Three words. Parent. Teacher. Conferences. Yes, already. I don't know why, it's not like we've done enough work to actually have a real gradeor anything, but it's nice to meet most of the students' parents. No gnarly or angry ones. No real good stories, in fact. I just kept talking until 6:30. "Yes, hi! Oh, your son/daughter is xxxx. Here's a grade printout, this is their grade, here's where it's broken down into homework and tests..." and then it's choose your own adventure! Does your son or daughter do their homework? Yay! Advance to go, collect 200 dollars! Does your son or daughter not do their homework? Agonizing discussion on why they don't. (Secret--in almost all cases? I don't care. I can't make them do homework, I see them for an hour a day! Exceptions, of course, apply--living with grandma and grandpa because mom took off to Las Vegas etc etc etc? Let's figure something out. Can't put down the videogame controller and/or telephone? Not my problem, and in fact, anything I do will be undermined at home.)

Thursday: first day wherein I get home before 5. Sweet sweet relief. So to celebrate? Wake up at 3:30 a.m. and be unable to get back to sleep. Jackpot!

Friday: Nap from 4 to 7:30. Wake up to go out to dinner. Get home from dinner, go to bed at 10. Sleep until 7.

And this weekend: Mellow, with a side of slow. Did I leave the house yesterday? Yes, I must have, right? I think I did. Hmmm. Ah well, I will today, I have kickball, so in an hour or two I'll force myself to do something. Probably.

And that was my week in seven paragraphs. Yay. I'm going to try not to stay away for so long again, because if I do, so many stories get bottled up it becomes hard to share any of them.

Evaluate and re-evaluate

Three weeks into the school year--okay, two and a half--and I finally feel ready to evaluate my standing.

This is my second-plus year of teaching. I consider it my third even though my first year of teaching wasn't a full year, but it was two trimesters and it carried all the hell of first year teaching. Some people like to say I'm a second year teacher, and some people scoff at making this a big deal, but both groups really miss the point. Your first year of teaching is hell. Hell hell hell. Balancing everything sucks. You get too involved in your students--meth affected families, eating disorders and teenage pregnancy will pull anyone in but sweet jeebus!--and every test or quiz feels like an evaluation of you as a teacher. You don't know where to focus your energies and you're at school past dark way way waaaaaaay too much (my husband is singing "Amen!" at the top of his lungs). The mere act of surviving that first year, where students can make you cry and parents instill the fear of the apocalypse in you, is a victory of the first order.

Ahem. Slight tangent there. Anyway, here I am in my third year of teaching. It's radically different from my previous years. I have AP students balanced with my entry-level students. And dear gods and goddesses, does it make all the difference. And yet, at the same time, I find myself in the same balancing act of my first year.

So, first, Geometry. I find myself giving these poor kids the short shrift this year. I'm relying a lot on what I did last year in a sort of vague way, where I'm coasting. I have three classes of these kids who run the gamut, from ambitious freshmen to juniors and seniors who are close to lost, either through laziness or ineptitude. But I'm finding tweaking what I did last year truly rewarding. This afternoon I met with another teacher to rework how we were going to teach chapter 4. Note that this is two chapters ahead of where we are now. This kind of collaborative planning blows my mind eight ways from Sunday. This other teacher--Ms. G--and I sat for an hour working and debating how we talked about what we did last year and what needed to happen this year and how we could make it better. And we put that talk into action. How lucky is that?

But even more than that, this AP Statistics class jazzes me up and gets me running like nobody's business. I'm by turns panicked and delighted with this class. They ask me questions that I can't answer, and my response is, "I'll have a better answer for you tomorrow!" Why n-1, Ms. H? "I'll have a better answer for you tomorrow." I have no idea, really. A lot of stats is accepted practice, and that answer is not satisfying for a lot of students, and I feel inadequate, and that's like being a first year teacher again. But at the same time, I'm grading quizzes, like I am tonight, and the insight is blowing me away.

For the past two years, I've come home from school exhausted. Taking a nap from three to five has become my M.O. But since this school year has started, yeah, I'm staying a little later, leaving after 4:00 most days, but I'm not napping. I feel electric. Like I'm doing something cool, connecting. Is it cheesy to say it's a rebirth? Again? How many rebirths can one girl get? Staying after school and working through what I need to do has me alive.

It'll probably change when students start panicking. Our first Geometry quiz is tomorrow, and let's see who fails. And hard chapters are coming up, and last year I regularly had crowds of kids getting help before and after school. That hasn't started yet.

But right now? I feel ten feet tall. And vibrant. Can I bottle this? And take it out in February? Please?

How to Feel Old in One Small Step

Do you realize that every single person who isn't old enough to vote has never lived in a world without The Simpsons on TV?

Advanced Placement in the Looney Bin

Good God. I mean, seriously, Good. God.

I was feeling bad with how apeshit crazy I was feeling about the stats class until I talked to a teacher, a fifteen-year vet, about her year last year, her first teaching AP Psych.

"I was in the principal's office every day in tears, saying I quit, I can't take this!" she said.

Ahhhh, validation.

It's week two, and the class? She is CHAOS. I'm maybe half a day ahead of my kids, every day having to leave class because I forgot this thing, or maybe that thing, or sweet jeebus, something else. Today, there were kids who, instead of working on this chapter, were still finishing the homework that was due yesterday. The homework they have a quiz on tomorrow. Because they couldn't figure out their calculators.

Now, given, the calculators are way more complicated than they were in the Goode Olde Dayes, but I had written out the steps for them along these lines:

If you want to create a list, first push the { key.

Now push the first thing you want in a list.

Now push a comma.

Repeat those last two until you come to the last number you want in your
list.

Now push the } key.

To save the list, push the STORE key.

Type in the name you want to give to your list.

Push ENTER.

This is how complicated the directions were. And people were still, "I couldnt' do the homework last night because it said error!" and when I looked at their calculators, there was all this extra STUFF that they kept typing in. THESE are the kids who plan to take the AP test? Sometimes, my planning just doesn't matter.

It's frustrating because the math isn't hard, and really, the calculator isn't that hard either--because the directions are right there, step for step! What the hell is going to happen when the math does get hard?

I might die. That seriously is what might happen.

Round up

• awesome wedding that broke me into pools and puddles of tears. Multiple times. I love those two.
• School rocks, but I lack the energy to write coherently about it right now. An update will come, I promise, but I can't--I don't know, I guess I won't do it justice just yet.
• Kickball's starting up again, and this time I'm the captain. El capitano. Ha.
• Our house served as a guest house for the first time. I mean, my bro and his wife have come to stay, and another friend and his fiance came to stay, but for some reason this time was different, and it felt awesome. I just felt--glowy--that I could offer that kind of retreat for people I love so very much.
• And right now our house is wrecked. I forget how much school takes it out of me, so I see the dishes from Monday and I'm like, there's no visible mold or insect life, so it can wait another day.
• Was that TMI?
• For your fun and enjoyment, possibly the goofiest yet most fascinating video ever: Ok go, the most adorable hipster-pop goofballs you ever met.

Must. Stay. Awake.

Our brokeassedness is a direct result of piling a whole shit-ton of our money (plus a generous Parental Loan) into the Amazing Holy Heaven of Second Floors. We have a nirvana for a second floor. I couldn't be happier about how gorgeous it is, the potential, once we can afford to maybe shop at garage sales and thrift stores again, those rooms hold to be filled with unique and tasty furniture in an-of-course-impeccable taste.

And yet. I cannot sleep well.

Maybe it's the weirdness of sleeping on the second floor, something I haven't done in a few years. Maybe it's the new matress, a humongous birthday cake confection of engineering miracluatude. Maybe it's that we now face East, or that the air is thinner, or that it's fall, or. What-the-fuck-ever, I'm not goddamned sleeping. And can you tell? I'm sick of it.

First it was not falling asleep, which, well, awesome. But, see, me being a school teacher meant I could cheat on that a little bit, because I had fuck-all to get up for, so, well, I wouldn't. Then it was waking up in the middle of the night, but again, see the phrase above that contains "fuck-all." Oh, and naps rock, and are fun, and easy.

Now, however, my body and brain are uniting to put me through hell. Because, see, I'm a teacher, and it's fall. Which means I have to haul my ass out the front door at, oh, 6:30 or so. That'd be ante meridien. As in ay-mother-fucking-em. So I can't cheat. And now my body and brain are saying, well, self? Even if you manage to fall asleep, we are going to wake up! With perpetual brain motion! At 3:30! And then we'll keep thinking! And thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and... then it'll be 4! And then 4:30! And we won't let you give up hope of falling back asleep until 5:41, at which time you'll realize that even if you fell back asleep, it wouldn't even count as a nap because you need to get up in less than twenty minutes!

And then! Exclamation point! I get to go to work where I had a meeting on the attendance policy and then one on our new technology, and then one on the school internet, and then one on senior projects, and then one on AP classes, and then one on geometry and then! It was 3:00 p.m. and I could go!

I'm determined to stay awake and not nap so that when I go to bed, a dried-up husk of my former self, I will actually fall asleep and then maybe I can stay asleep and then maybe the millions of little tiny worms that are boring tunnels into my brain will leave and I can think without hurting again. Maybe.

Hopey.

I haven't been writing much because most of my entries would have gone like this:

"OhmigodwhatwasIthinking!"

I've been nervous, so so SO nervous, that I've bitten off more than I could chew this year. I'm teaching AP Statistics and dear Lord, there's so much involved with this that my eyes are turning into dizzying little pinpricks. I've been trying not to think about it, because every time I do, I get this Queasy Stomach of Impending Doom. Students come back on Tuesday and I had really anticipated being so much better prepared than I am. I mean, really. I had planned on planning out the entire year this summer.

Instead, I've seen all of season 1 of The Closer, of Grey's Anatomy, and of Battlestar Galactica. Not to mention, kept up entirely with Project Runway and all of the reruns of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

This week, the teachers returned. The first week teachers go back is a week that's half filled with BS anyway. Defining vision statements. Naming goals that will never be revisited. Learning a new attendance policy that will subsequently be ignored. The usual politics. (Hence my original plan to set up my lessons over the summer. Sigh.) And for the past two days, that has been what the days are like. I haven't exactly been focused myself. The time where we are allowed to work on instructional planning, I've been dizzy trying to set up my room, figure out where I am, and I've been so overwhelmed with the start of the new year that it's hard to settle down and finish something through to completion.

I've made lists. Copies To Be Made. Things to Find Out (can students download calculator stuff from school computers? Where can students get free tutoring?). Things I'd Buy For My Classroom If I Had Money. What Lists Do I Need To Make. Where Have I Put All My Lists. That kind of thing. I'm a listomaniac. Listaphiliac. Whatever.

But today, I've gotten the feeling that this can happen. Maybe it was finally submitting my first worksheets to the Print Shop. Maybe it was finally getting down on paper my first week's lesson plans. Getting things revved up to go, I feel like--this is happening. And I'll be fine. Or, if not fine, at least unfine for a limited time.

So, if I'm not hopeful, I'm at least hopey. In a conservative, estimated kind of way.

Losing the ability to take a picture

You know those nights where you just have a great night? Where you keep finding things funny? And you want to grab each time you laughed and put it in a jar, so you can take it out in November when you're tired and it's grey outside and you can't remember the last time you laughed so hard your abs hurt?





That was Saturday night.

...and I just can't hide it!

I love giving gifts. I love it. If I were supa dupa rich, I'd buy gifts all the time for friends and family. There are so many times when I see The Perfect Widget and I think, "Oh, Emily would love that!" or "That would make my dad so happy!" That moment when I know I have something that matches up perfectly with where I know someone is at, when I have it wrapped and I get to anticipate their face when they open it, is perfect.

My favorite gift of all time is the gift I gave Andrew the day we got married. To someone else, it might have seemed odd. But what happened was this: Andrew had just started a new assignment with a client. One of his first in a high-rise, a fancy-pantsy high-rise. The kind that comes with art collections. And the art hung across from his cubicle was something he described to me more than once. "I just love to stare at it," he would say. So I called the main switchboard for the company, asked to speak to their art curator or art archivist, whatever they had. When I reached her, I described what Andrew had described to me and asked for her help. She was able to help my find a copy of the print, which I got framed. It hangs in our kitchen right now. He cried when the bridesmaids delivered it.

Sometimes, though, those moments of inspiration don't quite match up to either the occasion--like finding a Christmas gift in March--or they don't match up to my wallet. Like finding a $300 gift for a friend. (Or for anyone, for that matter, right now.)

Which is why I'm so excited about Andrew's birthday this weekend. I think I did it again. I don't think he expects it. And I hid it, really well. I can't wait to give it to him. I really really think he'll like it.

My sister doesn't have a TV. This is Portland, Land of Crunch Granola Lifestyle Livin', and so I probably know another ten or fifteen people who Don't Watch TV (or the next thing to it, Don't Have Cable).

While I embrace all sorts of different lifestyles (don't eat anything with eyes? Good for you! Eat everything organic? Smart! Won't get in a Demon Car? Bike everywhere? Handmake all your clothes? Won't use a telephone? You get ON with your bad self!), to be quite frank? This is not one that I can ever really picture myself sustaining for long term.

There was a time when I lived by myself in Chicago when I didn't get cable, which in Chicago is almost the same as not watching TV. And considering my favorite shows aren't on network TV, I did essentially that. So I know I can. I just don't want to.

Case in point: by some magical stroke of luck, I saw that Netflix had the season premier of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip available. Popped that to the top of my queue and kept it a secret so that when I went to visit Emily, I had a nice little surprise.

Dude, it was way more than that. This TV show--now, given, I'm only going from the first episode--is smart. There are already four characters I intensely care about, one I'm fully prepared to hiss whenever he comes on screen. There are other side characters that I'm excited to see develop. It satisfies the Feminist Rules of Entertainment I read somewhere (1. Is there more than one woman? 2. Do they talk to each other? 3. About something other than men? Think about it--those are great rules. And should be so easy to satisfy. And yet so rarely are.) And Teh Funny! So much of Teh Funny that I get jazzed thinking about it on weekly. Watching it with Emily was awesome because we'd pause it and talk about it and giggle about it and squeeeeee together and I've missed having a show like that.

I can't wait to watch this more. And that is precisely why I couldn't give up my TV.

Have you ever found yourself changing your outfit to go get your haircut out of some desire to impress the hairdresser with how hip you are?

Oh?

Um, yeah, me neither.

Hold Your Breath

They came two weeks before Christmas.

We had a hole in our roof--and no roof at all in some places--almost all of January and February.

Portland city codes required them to do some additional work in the basement because apparently we were missing a load-bearing wall (oops!).

The sinks, which were supposed to be so easy, required specialty drains, which we didn't find out until, oh, the day we were installing them.

And on and on and on and...

Until today. The last day some one is going to ring the doorbell at 8 a.m. I can hear his drill as he's putting in the final outlet cover.

We have lamps. Sinks. A toilet (did you know toilets don't come with toilet seats? Yeah, I didn't know that either. Until, of course, the day we installed our toilet.). Doors. Windows. Walls.

It's done. Eight months later. We have a new bathroom and two new bedrooms.

Dear sweet jeebus. It's done.

Advice for fibroid surgery.

So this is going to be my last post about my myomectomy. Barring unforeseen shit, I guess. But I'm driving, I'm walking straight up and down (rather than in the Crone position), I'm taking stairs, so other than the ban against lifting anything over ten pounds, I'm back. (And that ban? Extremely useful. Think about how many things in your life are more than ten pounds. Like, oh, laundry baskets, grocery bags, text books... Trust me, I'm milking that ban for as long as I can.)

But I want to gether my thoughts in case someone finds this site by googling--and as a reminder to myself if when I get a Caesarian of things I did right, and things I'd do differently.

Good things to do before you get your abdominal myomectomy:

1. Get your ab muscles as strong as you can. Seriously.
2. Get a bikini wax. You don't have to do a Brazilian or a Pamela Anderson Special or The Airplane Runway, just get those top two inches ripped out. Which sounds painful, but is even easier than an eyebrow wax. And SOOOO much better than having to deal with shaved regrowth and chafing. Trust me. Chafing. Bad. Really, really bad.
3. Plan nothing for at least two weeks after your surgery. And I mean nothing. Not a movie, not entertaining friends, nothing. If you're up to it, great, you can schedule it then, but otherwise, you don't know.
4. Get more than one pair of drawstring, super loose pants.
5. Get some granny panties one size too large. Make sure that waistline is within a couple inches of your bellybutton. Trust me, you'll be grateful.
6. In fact, here are things you should have at home:

• Ice packs. Little, about the size of your hand, is fine.
• Gauze pads--lots. Seriously.
• Hydrogen Peroxide and cotton balls.
• Paper medical tape, the kind that doesn't hurt (as much) to pull off
• Lap desk. You are going to be much more awake than your body. Lap desk means you can have your laptop in front of you while you're on the couch/bed.
• Super understanding family member(s) and/or partner.
• An updated Netflix queue.

When you've got the surgery, here's what I learned about What To Bring and Do at the Hospital

1. Don't bother with books. Your attention span won't be long enough to read those things we call words. And paragraphs? BWHAHAHAHA. Magazines with pretty pictures? Excellent choice.
2. Don't bother with makeup, unless it's moisturizer. You won't care what you look like. However, something like those pre-moistened Dove wipes would have rocked. And deodorant. That would have been nice too. And a kerchief for my hair.
3. I loved having my laptop at the hospital, but I really only used it the second day.
4. Cell phone and charger. Good for alarms (when do I get my next dose of morphine?) and the ring on your cell phone is so much less jarring that then ring on the phone in your hotel room.
5. I had a hard time getting my pain meds on time. My mistake? I kept calling the nurse's station. Get your nurse's pager number. Muuuuch more efficient.
6. Appoint a trusted friend as gatekeeper. Let everyone know that you'll be updating her as to when you can/want to have guests. Both Andrew and Em did this, fantastically. (I know, that's two, but considering Andrew was in my room every moment he wasn't at work or at home walking the dog, he wasn't always easy to get ahold of) That way, folks felt like they could call and stop by but didn't have to bother me. And then you only have to update one person if you feel like ass reheated.
7. If you're in doubt--stay one more day at the hospital. I thought I'd stay one, I ended up staying two, and it was the best decision I made.
8. Best thing I brought: I brought slip-on flat clog/mule shoes for leaving the hospital. You can't reach your feet, but sliding on those Uggs made me feel mildly human.

Once you get home...

1. Family visiting to help can make all the difference. Remember--they're here for you, not as guests. You should feel free to sleep whenever you need to. If they can't handle it, they shouldn't be there. Have a friend or your partner ready to intervene if it turns out that they are causing more work than they're saving. My parents here kept me sane for those first four days.
2. Remember that updated Netflix queue? Even better if it's something like Season 1 of The Closer. Short, 47-minute intervals, you can come back to it later, perfect.
3. Your body will get way more tired than your brain. We rented a wheelchair, and it was perfect because I could go out for an hour or two--which, let it be noted, would wipe me out, but it was SO much better than the brain rot of the inside of my house.
4. If you're not sleeping well because of the pain, tell your doctor. Get Ambien or Lunestra or whatever. Don't worry about addiction (unless you already have prescription problems). You won't be on it long enough to matter, and seriously? This sleep is the most important sleep you've had in years. Your body needs it.
5. Walk. Stand. Do it in little bits, but as soon as you can. Focus on your posture. The temptation is to start walking bent-over because MY GOD THE PULLING. But if you start doing that, you start healing that way, and it will only hurt more when you DO start standing up straight. Focus on your shoulders back and down, your butt tucked under, a string from the top of your head pulling you up like a marionette. Gently, feel yourself stretch out. It'll hurt, but it'll hurt less every day. You're going to pay WAY more attention to walking and posture than you ever did before, because if you let your subconscious rule, you'll walk like an 80-year-old woman with osteoporosis. If it hurts too much, talk to your doctor and get the pain meds you need to stand up straight. It'll be worth it.
6. Watch your wound. I got a surface infection, I have NO idea how. The signs were redness from hip to hip, it was hot to the touch, and I had a fever. If these start up? Doctor's office. NOW.
7. Then there's the drainage. This may or may not happen to you. So much grossness, but way more scary than actually dangerous or painful. If you start leaking this clearish-bloodyish fluid, that's what it is. If it's pus or cottage-cheesy, that's apparently a worse sign. Just keep the wound clean (that's what the hydrogen peroxide and the million gauze pads are for) and go in for your follow-up appointments.
8. When you go in for your appointments--if you don't know what a word is, ask. Ask ask and ask again. Even the best doctors start using fancy pantsy words that translate really easily to English. "Serosanguineous" is a word Dr. Doogie, my doctor, dropped on me when I was having the gross leaking episode. What's that? Oh, clear bloody fluid. Why couldn't he say that? Because he went to a jillion years of med school. I'm a smart girl, and he started using words like "seroma". What's that mean? Basically, a gap that developed under my incision between the skin and the layer just below the skin. Couldn't he say gap? No, he says seroma.
9. Take it a day at a time. More than that, take it in four-hour chunks. Just make it to the next four hours. Even on the days when you're bored out of your gourd, when it hurts more than you can explain to anyone, when you never want to go anywhere ever again, even on those days remember: tomorrow will be better, and the day after that even better, and the day after that, SO much better. Soon, sitting up won't hurt (much). Soon, you can wear regular clothes. Soon, sleeping won't be a matter of finding the position that hurts the least. Soon, you'll throw out all those amber pill bottles. In the grand scheme of things, it'll all be Soon.
10. Don't be afraid to ask for things you need. Your partner, your friends, your family. One morning last week, I called a friend who works from home. Why? I was out of coffee. I couldn't walk far enough to go buy some, and dear sweet lord did I want some coffee. She was awesome, brought over some for me, and we hung out for twenty minutes. Your friends want to help you out. Let them.

So, that's all I can think of for right now. I may come back and edit this later.

I couldn't have made it through these past two weeks without Andrew, without my parents, without Emily and Nicole and Sarah and Dave and Becca and Eryn. That said? SO much better to be in the world of the walking again.

I just found out that my fourteen days of freedom left are down by two.

I know this gets no sympathy from non-teachers, but I'm freaking out about the end of summer. Some of it is that two weeks of it were sucked up by the non-moving pain, and then more weeks of it were sucked up by the anticipation of the aforementioned pain, but it really seriously feels like I got nothing done this summer. I had all this time! And I did nothing! (Unless you count watching Project Runway like it's ocular crack. This includes reading Tim Gunn's blog and listening to Tim Gunn's podcast.)

So I was freaking out about this--two weeks from today the pre-school (as in before-school, not as in before-kindgergarten) teacher inservice starts up. And then I open my mail and guess what! I have two additional days of inservice! Next week! That I have to go to! Dear god!

(On the plus side--I get paid for that. So that's extra money. So that's good.)

I'm SO not ready, and I'm not even ready to GET ready.

Okay, I'm SO TOTALLY OVER being an invalid.

You hear that, incision? I'm over this shit.

And on the seventh day...

And on the seventh day, the Lord said, and let there be poop.

And there was poop.

And dear sweet baby Jeebus, couldn't the Lord have sent a littler poop?

Andrew is my hero

4:00 a.m. I woke up on fire, and not in the good way. Entering into TMI territory--I'd gone to bed without pants on, just my underwear, hoping that less clothing would, I dunno ease the pain a little, prevent it? Seemed a good idea at bedtime. But at the hour when late night ended and early morning began, every. Single. Touch. was sending shockwave shots of puke-worthy pain straight to my alligator brain. The blankets sliding off? Like sandpaper ground into the most sensitive skin you can imagine. The blankets floating back on? Like a sledgehammer slammed into an open wound.

Maybe a little poetic license, but at 4 in the morning, when one is woken up by pain? I think one is entitled.

I guess I'd thought that by now I'd, sure, maybe not be able to step right back into my Pilates routine (ha!), but be walking around fluidly like the graceful dancer--okay, at least stumbling around like I usually am. I didn't think the very act of sitting down would make me lightheaded and slighly nauseous, much less that standing upright would feel like I was asking my torso to tear horizontally from hipbone to hipbone, leaving me a bloated and rubbery upper half and a scarred and swollen lower half.

I'm trying to take it as gracefully as possible, keeping my whining here and to just before it's time to retake my pain meds. Mostly. (Oh, and by the way? If I haven't been that good or graceful, let me retain that illusion, because I've quite painfully lost my illusion of quick recovery.)

Andrew's been a champ. He's cooked. He's cleaned. He's got a clipboard where he keeps track of my ambien, my ibuprofen, my dilaudid, my reglan, my poop-ability drug (I still, btw, haven't pooped since Wednesday), my iron-replacement drug (which I'm not taking because if I'm not pooping now, the iron would put it off until October), and now my antibiotics. Some are on a 6 hour schedule, some are on an 8 hour schedule, some can't be taken within two hours of eating, and he's kept track of all of it for me. He has kept me fed and kept me drugged. Seriously, what more can I ask for? (Especially since I'm not allowed to ask for sex for another month--yay!)

So he's already my hero.

And then 4 a.m., and everything falls apart. Apparently the Ambien I've been taking has worn off with a vengence. Of course, this is the night I decided to try to make it through the night without waking up to take my narcotics. The fire! And it hurts to roll over because the fire! And it hurts to stay where I am because the fire! And the fire! I'm crying that keening wail I've developed because it involves less sobbing and therefore less torso movement and therefore less feeling like I'm about to rip apart my insides with the power of my own muscles--well, that and because it's a total hot move to pick up guys. Waking Andrew up after I promised him that I wouldn't wake him up or expected him to wake me up for another pill popping session. He tried to help pull the blankets up over me but that just caused the fire.

And here's how he is really and well and truly my hero.

He smoothed my hair back from my face. Held my shoulders, let me grip his arms with the death grip of a dying Jedi knight. He murmured nothings. And then he said in my ear, "C'mon, babe, you've been so strong through all of this. You can make it through this too."

Which was, in short, exactly what I needed to hear. I can make it through this, and for the times when I don't believe it, he does and will remind me.

Parental Debrief.

I just wrote a really whiny entry about my parents leaving tomorrow and how odd our week has been. Yes, they stayed here for a week. Completely drama-free (except for when I cried, but that was always about physical pain and besides, only happened once or twice). I am totally grateful for them. They did things like fix the toilet, deadhead my roses, go grocery shopping--things I literally am not allowed to do for another few days. We watched a great movie and an okay movie, we solved crosswords, we played spades, we hung out with my friends. Right now they're "playing" bridge together on my Dad's computer and they're talking strategy and whatnot and it's the cutest thing in the world.

I spent the past couple weeks being quietly anxious (or not so quiet, so shush, you who is about to call me on my understatement) about having my folks here. The report is: clear weather.

Now if I could just stand up, roll over, or sit down without losing my breath in pain, the world would be a great, great place.

Yay. I can do this. Considering the procedure I had was a lot like having a Caesarian--and as a result, I will probably have to have a Caesarian should I become pregnant--I've been thinking a lot of thoughts like, "How the hell would I go through this recovery if I had an infant as well????" Standing makes me light-headed, I haven't pooped since Wednesday morning, and laughing and/or crying makes me cry--literally, which, as you might imagine, is a bit of a paradoxical problem.

The low point is realizing you can't sit at the dinner table because it hurts so much--but getting up to leave the dinner table hurts too much to move, and you feel the tears start gathering but you don't want to cry because you know it will hurt, and everyone, well meaning, just sits there staring at you stricken because they want to help but don't know how, so you start crying and it just hurts.

But then. I took a shower this morning. It's amazing what washing your hair for the first time since Tuesday can do for your outlook.

I rolled over in my sleep last night and it didn't wake me up.

I can almost stand up straight without crying.

And I haven't even been home twenty four hours yet.

I can totally do this.

We rented a wheelchair yesterday so that I can go out today--just around the neighborhood, there's a fair down the street--because walking is still a slow and agonizing process. I think going out will do a lot for my outlook too.

Plus, Emily has promised to talk loudly in her mommy voice. "Use your words," she says. "Oh, very good!" I promised to gesticulate wildly and perhaps drool a bit. Mom wants to tie balloons to the chair.

We're all going to hell. That part is helping my outlook as well.

I love them, I really do but...

Scene: I've finally gotten situated after waking up from a nap. I hang up the phone.

Dad: "I couldn't understand what you wanted."
Me: "Charcoal?"
Andrew: "Dave and Sarah are coming over at 7:30."
Mom: "We won't have eaten by 7:30."
Dad: "You don't need charcoal."
Mom: "The chicken probably won't even be done by then."
Me: "Well that's what Andrew told me. That's why Mom and Andrew told me to call you."
Dad: "Well, which phone did you call me on?"
Me, who remember, just woke up from a nap on my first day back from the hospital: "Wait a second. When are Dave and Sarah coming over?"
Andrew: "I told them 7:30."
Mom: "We probably won't be done eating."
Me: "I just got up."
Andrew: "Dave said he'd call first. Can't I just return the Netflix later?"
Me: "They're right there, can't you pop them in the mail on your way to... where are you going again?"
Dad: "Which phone did you call me on?"
Andrew: "There's only one movie here, where's the other?"
Me, holding up the regular ol' phone next to me: "This one, but I don't really have the vocal power to push it."
Dad: "No, it was phone staticy... You have charcoal anyway."
Me: "Isn't Ron Burgundy in the basement? Where we watched it?"
Mom: "Are we going to be done with dinner at 7:30? I don't think so. Should they be coming over then?"
Andrew: "Do I have to do this now? Where's the third? I really have to go."
Me: "We've lost the third. I'll pay for it. Please do it. Please call Dave and Sarah, I don't want to have them and dinner overlap. And I don't know what the deal is with the charcoal or the phone. Waaaaaaaaaah!" [tentatively hold fists up to eyes, then peek out from behind them to see if my ploy for sympathy has worked. It hasn't. Put hands back until everyone goes away.]

Recovery. So relaxing.

The world has totally and completely receded in the past forty-eight hours. I have not been outside my room since I was wheeled into it at 6-ish on Wednesday. My major movement? The five feet to the toilet. and back. And that took about a half hour.

Boy, this next week is gonna ROCK.

I feel like a bit of a drama queen, but I want a wheel chair. The problem is that I feel much more awake and aware than my body will let me be. If walking five feet wipes me out, then there's no way I can do ANYTHING except sit on my already-sore ass. But when I sit still, I'm plenty awake. So I'm hoping I can get what my mom calls her "gimp tag" to hang from the rearview mirror and a wheel chair and I'll be able to sit still and show the city to my mom and dad.

For instance--mom and I had a great time shopping online yesterday. And then doing crosswords. So I'm hoping that we can stroll down the sidewalk festival. And by "we" I mean "they and I get pushed".

Okay, this entry? She may be a little disjointed. I've graduated to dilaudid. Another reason why getting pushed everywhere seems like a reeeeeeally good idea.

The sucky that is me.

As long as I don't move, I'm fine. But then, inevitably, I have to pee, and so the moving must commence.

Walking is a slow, laborious chore that involves using my abdomen as little as possible. The very act of getting back in bed--slowly sit down on the edge of the bed, using my leg muscles to lower my torso, using my arms to drag my useless torso back into the bed, begging whoever is in the room to pick up my dead weight of feet and swing them into bed for me--leaves me panting.

But that's not the bad part.

The bad part is that my meds started wearing off ten minutes ago, I called the nurse fifteen minutes ago (in anticipation) and there is still no new meds for me. I am meds-less. Sans meds. Meds-free. And I'm SO not happy about it.

Rivers in Egypt

I might as well have a final paper due on Friday, I'm finding so many distractions. I've reorganized the green room, cleaned the bedroom, sorted my shoes (!), cleaned everything but the toilet, swept the hallway with a handbroom...

It's good to know that the more things change, the more I will clean to distract myself.

Letter

Dear Phil:

It's not you, it's me. And I hate you. You think you can just drop by, hang out for as long as you want, but you always do it without warning. And then you leave a mess behind for me to clean up.

And now you're really messing with our future plans? No way, mon not-so-much ami. I've already tried to kick you out of my life once, but you held on. I put up with that only because I knew there would be bigger guns coming.

This time, I'm putting my foot down. Phil, you fucker, you're gone. You're not going to get another chance. You don't deserve it.

See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya. 48 hours from now, your ass is grass.

The time to have told me was, oh, TWO WEEKS AGO

Andrew is getting invited to more and more of these fancy pantsy shindigs through work or his industry or whatever wherein he agonizes about talking to strangers and I have no fear. One, because hey, I'm just arm-candy! and two, because get a couple glasses of wine in me, and I can talk to anyone. And usually without embarassing myself, these days, so yay me.

Last night we had one of those thingies. The last one we went to, I realized I had nothing remotely grown-up to wear to these. No cocktail dresses, no actual glam trousers, nothing. I, in fact, only had one dress, and it didn't even fit. So the day before the gathering (it was a fundraiser for the contemporary art museum, the kind where they have a silent auction and such, so all sorts of avant-garde movers and shakers) I freaked right the fuck out and went on a shopping rampage, and miracle of miracles, when I needed something, I found it.

THE dress. Sexy, yet adult. Comfortable, yet elegant. And hawt. Like, femme fatale hot. Marilyn Monroe on a steam grate hot (although a little less upside-down-ness), simple, classic, yet DAYUM. And then I found the perfect strappy heels that go with it, and quite simply, I was ready.

I had acheived that heralded place in female-ness. I had the perfect little black dress, ready at a moment's notice, perfect in almost all situations.

So when Andrew had another thing-a-ma-jig, I didn't sweat. I had the perfect dress, the perfect shoes, it would take me twenty minutes to get ready and then I'd be off in the flutter of a hem!

Until he casually calls to me from another room, "Oh, yeah, there's a dress code?"

Excuse me?

"Yeah, there's a dress code? No heels, it's outdoors at a vineyard."

No? Heels?

Now, it's not that I have a problem with not wearing heels--I have several options in my wardrobe. I'm a teacher, for the love of jeebus. It's just that my Perfect Outfit? The one that could go anywhere? I had one pair of shoes that went with this dress, and they were strappy pointy heels. I didn't have other shoes that I could substitute that would look right.

And there are now fifteen minutes until we need to leave. He waited until fifteen minutes to show me the email that has the dress code. "Summer dress attire--dresses or slacks for women. No heels."

No problem, I think, I'll figure something out. In fifteen minutes. No worries.

I just have to replan my entire outfit. And I have no dresses or slacks. Crappity crap crap.

"Oh, yeah, I think Governor Kulongoski is going to be there, too. And Senator Wu." And, in fact, seven other major politicians from the state. Which means other movers and shakers are going to be there.

He tells me this fourteen minutes before we are supposed to leave.

So I now have an entire wardrobe to overhaul from the shoes up, for a social event of an entirely different caliber than I had been expecting. And I had thirteen minutes to do this.

I could have cheerfully killed my husband right there and hid his body in a cool corner of the basement. Until I looked at my (ahem) shoe collection, I didn't realize how many shoes I had that had at least a wee heel. And most of my flat shoes were for teaching and so were much longer on comfort than on looks, unless I was going for grunge.

I was throwing shoes around the room in desperation, swinging wildly from my shoe rack to my closet, trying to find the right dressy-but-not-too outfit for a vinyard. My rumpled brown pants? What the hell happened to my silk pants (oh, yeah, red wine)? Dammit dammit dammit! These shoes? nope, these? Crap!

Thank god I've been obsessed with wedges since they came back in style--and it turned out I had a perfect pair of shoes that I had bought on a whim at the large-size shoe event. See? Whims, they have purpose. (I think, by the way, this will do NOTHING for curbing my shoes obsession.)

I actually ended up feeling really happy about my outfit--slightly funky (I mean, I had on orange t-strap wedges, after all) but still garden-party-ish with a longish floaty skirt, a green t-shirt, and a jacket of sorts. And once I got there, I felt much better--the realization that every single thing I was wearing, except those shoes, had come from either Target or Fred Meyer (including my underwear and my necklace) made me feel like I'd be pointed out as an imposter as soon as I arrived. But considering the number of mom-waisted linen pants, hawaiian shirts, and pleated pants? No one was gonna notice my bargain-basement funk.

That is, they'd notice but only because I was 6'4" in those shoes.

I was pretty grateful, in fact, that I wasn't in my little black dress. I was glad I was more casual. Not to mention--the shoes would have sucked--we were outside, on grass, and those shoes would have aerated like no one's business.

But he still should have given me more than one quarter of an hour to throw my outfit together. Trust me, from now on, I will DEMAND to see the invitation within 24 hours of receipt.

ARG. With a side of FEH.

Being home all day like one is when one is a teacher and it's summer, you realize something you didn't realize with with such immediacy.

Telemarketers even when they "aren't selling anything, honest!" suck big hairy donkey balls.

I just got my SIXTH call from Key Financial Group. That would be the FIFTH after I told them to put me on their Do Not Call List. Each time, they've had a different reason for why the "do not call" command didn't work. First it was because I didn't hear their spiel. I don't care. Put me on the Do Not Call list. This last time it was because I didn't speak to a supervisor. I don't care. Put me on the Do Not Call list.

Even if they were giving away diamonds shat out by a virgin sheep, I wouldn't be interested anymore. Fuckers.

But now I have the supervisor's name. And you, Funky Cold Medina, are now responsible if I get call number 7.

Cupcakes

I don't listen to the radio. More specifically, I don't listen to commercial radio (I am, after all, a giant NPR geek). I hate ads, I hate listening to forty-five minutes of dreck to hear one middling good song, I don't like 80's revival, I hate hate hate that new "I am a murderer" song by whatserface (so just break up with him, you ho bag!) so me and commercial radio just don't get along.

Unfortunately, since our shiny car stereo got stolen and we had to put back in the crap-ass original factory radio with its crap-ass antenna, I don't get OPB in patches. Large patches. Like every time I go around a hill, or in a dip, or behind an SUV. Which is a problem in Oregon. So I occasionally slip and just punch through the crap that is commercial radio here.

Which is when I heard this Partnership for a Drug Free America PSA, it went something like this:

"My friend told me to smoke pot last week. So I did. And today, she told me to shoplift, that everyone is doing it. So now I have a cupcake down my pants. With frosting. And it won't sit still. And now the manager is looking at me..."

Wha-huh?!?!?!?!

A cupcake.

With frosting.

IN HER PANTS.

And it won't sit still.

I wanna be in that development meeting, where a restless be-frosting-ed cupcake down a girl's pants seemed like the ideal choice for keeping kids off the evil weed.

(I have been Googling and Googling every choice I can about cupcakes and shoplifting trying to find some real reference to this. I want to make sure I didn't dream it in some pot-induced stupor.)

Summer Flushing, Happened So Faaaast

Before I forget, I have to pass on to you some dude's hilarious flickr sets:

Totally hilarious TV commentary, and touring a thrift store.

My sister sent them to me, and if you're bored, they're worth the funny.

So, summer's rolling along. There's, like, a month left and I'm feeling like I let myself down a little. I had all these great plans, but since we're Brokey McBrokiest right now, ambitious plans (relandscape the backyard! build shit in the basement! travel!) fell by the wayside. Our attic isn't even done being done, and it's been EIGHT FREAKING FRACKING MONTHS. Our big Family Time this weekend was going out and buying lamps and sconces and faucets and toilets.

Seriously, it's hard shit (ha!) buying toilets because jeans? I know how to shop for jeans. Shoes, jackets, even hats. Cars, shopping for cars makes me nervous but I basically know what to do. Houses, even! I can shop for dogs, I can shop for microwaves, but who the hell ever learns how to shop for a toilet? Quick, without googling anything, what do YOU think the average price of a toilet is? You have NO IDEA, do you? Of course not! Now, quick: do you want a one-piece or a two-piece toilet (they come in PIECES???)? Round bowl or elongated bowl? No, wait, there's more choices to make, and these choices only come out once you go to Home Despot or Lowest or whereverthehell you go because you sit there staring and the rows of toilets--and aside from color, because hey, that's ONE choice I can make--you stare slack jawed at dozens and dozens of toilets and think, well, what makes the $100 toilet different from the $500 toilet? And that's without going to the Fancy Pantsy Plumbing Place (you didn't even KNOW they had those, did you?) and learning that those you saw are Baby Toilets! Toilets with Training Wheels! Oh, you could spend a couple GRAND on a toilet, like one that blows warm air on your girlie bits or those ones that look like hatboxes and only belong in Julia Louis-Dreyfus's house in Christmas Vacation right next to the neon-bubble palm tree and so I'd never feel comfortable with that staring at me at 3 a.m. after too much wine.

Ahem.

So, yeah, we bought a toilet. (And FYI: we did it by going to Consumer Reports and saying, "Consumer Reports? Yeah, we'd really like a toilet that (a) flushes everything on one go and (2) won't break very much? Couldja help us out? Thankyeeeewwww!"). And it flushes, and it's white and it took waaaaay too long.

And THAT is how exciting my summer has been, Chez Whole Nother Day.

Go. Now. See.

There have been quite a few movies that have captured me in the past few years. Brokeback Mountain wouldn't leave my thoughts for days after, as I relived the agony and the moments of supreme--well, hotness, to be honest. Amelie enchanted me, and I couldn't stop giggling and glowing after I saw that movie. There have been tons and tons of others that surprised me. Hustle & Flow. Crash. Whale Rider. Documentaries that provoke me, make me think or make me smile. Supersize Me. Spellbound. March of the Penguins. Winged Migration. Murderball. The Fog of War. Born into Brothels.

All of these I'd recommend to friends, and say, "I hope you like them." (A habit I'd like to pickup from a friend who pointed out that saying, "You'll love it!" is totally presumptious and occasionally horribly wrong.) Seriously, if you haven't seen some of those--every single movie up there is one that drew me in and held me clamped in my seat, for whatever reason--and they are all ones that, if you asked "Should I rent this?" I'd say, hey, sure, I liked it!

None of them--none of them--carry the urgency of An Inconvenient Truth. This one, I don't care if you like it or love it or hate it. It's not one I want to wait until you ask me what I thought. It's one that you need to take an afternoon off work to go see. You need to hire a babysitter, you need to drag your husband, your wife, your parents, your boss, or your idiot brother-in-law and go see this damn movie. Then you need to convince anyone you know who hasn't seen it to go see it.

In fact, it should be everyone's job to find one person who thinks Al Gore sucks, who thinks global warming is a farce, and pay them to go see this movie. Seriously, please. Me, Andrew, you, everyone needs to drag one person in who wouldn't go see it otherwise.

I've never felt so immediate, if that makes sense. So desperate to make a difference.

One of those Nother Good Days

I got shit done today. Well, partially done, anyway. I did, like, two and a half loads of laundry (mental note: don't let that half load of laundry sit in the washer until it's stinky like you usually do). (Also: never mind that it took me all day to do that. shush. really.)

And then there was kickball, which, by the way, we rocked. Well, not so much rocked, but we did finally win. And it didn't matter that the rest of the league still isn't showing up to the bar: fuck them. We have fun.

The still unfinished upstairs is looking good, and they're telling us three weeks. Never mind that my surgery is in two weeks. If the only people I need to deal with while recuperating are the electricians, I'm doing okay.

And today, for one day? We didn't worry about money. See? That's a good day.

Dance of the Red Dress

So, when a friend of yours is getting married? and she says, I want you to be my bridesmaid, and you're so honored you say yes yes yes? and then she says, I don't care what you wear as long as it's, say, knee length and red?

Run.

Very far, very fast.

Okay, maybe that's just me.

It seems like it's sweet and open of her to leave it so open, and it would be if I weren't Giganta-girl, five inches, four cup sizes, and 60 pounds of gibbering fat above the norm. Do you know how many red dresses I can buy right now that allow for a bra, much less have a waistline that doesn't sit at my nipples?

None many, that's how many. None many.

No, seriously. YOU look. I don't fit size 14s (I used to, and then I gained those ten pounds back). So YOU search, and find a non-strapless, non-spaghetti strap dress is a red that isn't a hooker dress. Because it really would suck to look more fuckable than the bride on her wedding day.

So. I've been stressing about this, because the wedding? It's in six weeks. I woke up at 5:30 today--I'm on vacation, people--and couldn't go back to sleep.

And I don't have a red dress.

So--I formulated a plan. I'll have one made!

Now. How would YOU go about finding someone who could just whip out a dress for you? Yeah, that's the tough part. I asked around and asked around and asked around and finally called someone who couldn't help me and she gave me some more numbers and they couldn't help me either until FINALLY! this wee little transplant from Mexico City (seriously, I'd trip and squish her ai Dios mio! dead) who said she'd squeeze me into her schedule.

She's going to make me this dress (view A, the one in the orangey-red) and we went and picked out the fabric. While driving to the fabric store, she told me that she won't be able to follow the patterns because my torso, she is too long from shoulder to breast and from breast to waist, she is too long! so she will have to make a new pattern! a separate pattern! and so this dress will be sexy hot, and yet still demure (no hoo hah, no cleave) but it will also cost me an arm, a leg, the name of my first born and all equity in my home.

On the other hand, is my wonderful dressmaker says, this dress, she is so timeless! And chew will be quite sexay!

I ask you...

...how do we lose both our swiffer and our broom?

Normally this wouldn't be a problem and we'd live in our dust-infested crack house without a problem, but right now our dog is apparently determined to go bald or is signalling a deep psychotic problem. She's leaving hair everywhere, like little love notes, like, "help me!" and "my people are abusing me!" and "see what not letting me sleep on the leather couch gets you!"

And since I'm home all summer (yay teaching!) it's sending me around the bend. It's not pretty.

How to charm me.

"ah oo ha me uh hamma?"

You hand me the camera.

"ah oo."

"I was kind of curious what I'd see when I turned around. And I turned around and said, oh look! There's a hamma!"

Dwelly McDwellsALot--that's me.

Dear J.,

I’ve been ranting at you in my head for the past eight hours. I wanted to do something about it—call you, confront you, email you, something. Those communication methods, though, would only lend weight to something that shouldn’t necessarily get it. But then I realized, I’ve got a blog and this is what blogs are for.

You chose to hurl at me what was essentially a big ol’ middle finger and then walk away. I’ve got something to say that I was too hurt, angry and confused to say at the time but has been circling around in my brain ever since.

We started out with what I think is a necessary conversation about where the kickball league is going. It sounds silly when I read that statement aloud because Sweet Jeebus: this is KICKBALL we’re talking about. The fourth grade game for kids who can’t connect with a ball and bat yet. There shouldn’t be debate and issues and confrontation. It’s KICKBALL. And that, at essence, is why I’m displeased with the elitism and clique-ishness that’s developing.

If we can’t be better than fourth graders when it comes to making sure that no one feels like the last kid who gets picked for the team—even after the kid with the clubfoot and the one with the coke-bottle glasses—shouldn’t we be ashamed of ourselves? And yes, I’m saying that because I’ve felt that way these past two seasons. Moreover, I feel bad for the newcomers because if I’ve felt that way in my fourth season where I DO know some of the people in the league, I can only imagine how they are feeling. It’s not enough to say that it’s human nature and let it lie. I don’t dispute that there’s always a side to humans that create an in-crowd. I’m saying that it’s our responsibility to try to fight it, to rise above the instinct, to work at inclusiveness.

This new attitude towards league members is manifesting in ways big and small in the league. A break off league where teams have to be “invited”. Lots of talk about how one night is “better” than the other (which I don’t dispute on athletic grounds, but I think that’s been caused by the break-offs and siphoning). Some teams suddenly not showing up to the bar after games and the rest of us not knowing why (which, whatever, we had a good time, but still.) Almost no one from Thursday night’s teams showing up at the theoretically-whole-league barbeque—because they didn’t know about it, didn’t feel comfortable, or didn’t feel invited.

And maybe that’s what you like about the league, J.. Maybe you, like me, were never one of the in-crowd kids, and now you’re getting your in-crowd chance. Maybe that’s why you groove on it, defend it, excuse it. If that’s the case, own it. I personally took my unpopular past (and present, to be honest—I have a small group of friends that I feel blessed to have, but I’m no social butterfly, I’m not the go-to girl for social whirl, and I’m more than okay with that) and use it as a reason to try NOT to be that kind of person. I don’t always succeed, but the honor is in the striving. So if you are digging the chance to be The Guy Everyone Knows, the in-demand guy, I will still have a problem with what the league’s becoming, I will still argue with you about it, but at least you’ll be honest about where you’re coming from.

So that’s what we were discussing. It was actually really interesting, because I had a chance to voice to someone from another team something I’d noticed about the league, and get honest input back. The suddenly, you turned it around. You asked whether it was because of the you leaving the team that I felt that way.

“Is this about me leaving the team?” you asked.

Which, by the way, I never answered. No. No, J., it’s not about you leaving the team. I would have felt this way if you stayed on the team. In fact, I felt this way before you left the team.

But in the shock of the abrupt turn of topic, I let myself get distracted. Because I answered a different question than you asked.

The question you asked: “Was I mad about you leaving the team?”

Was I mad about you leaving the team? No. I’m not mad you left the team. I wasn’t mad at the time, I’m not mad now. I understand why you left, and it makes sense, and I bet you’re happier now, and that’s great. You weren’t the first, you weren’t even the last, even my husband left the team (for a time). Leaving happens. Yay leaving!

The question I answered: “Was I mad about the way you left the team?”

Because yes. I was. How Andrew left the team: “I don’t think I’m signing up next season.” How Beth and BD and Dan and Juice left the team: “Yeah, this didn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be. It’s not for us.” How Jane left the team: “Yeah, Jane’s not coming back. She didn’t like it.” How even T and N left the team: “Hey guys, we’re joining another team, and here’s why…”

How you left the team: “J., are you signing up with us? J.? J.? J.?” while you tried to shrink into your pint glass. The night before signups closed. And you’d already signed up with another team. And despite the previous comments you’d made with us about “Next season we should…” or “Next season we could…”

So was I mad about that? Yes. It was cowardly and dishonest, and most of all, it was laaaaaame. It put us in a tight spot. You’d let us count on you, encouraged it even, and then fled without a warning. That is what I was mad about.

But I never got a chance to say all that, J., because with that hard look on your face, you hissed at me about how hard the decision was and what a bitch I was to hold it against you. Note that if you hadn’t taken a wussy way out on leaving the team, you could have had a chance to tell us all that and I could have said, “Yeah, I understand, but I bet this is the best choice for you—you’ve got more friends on that other team, and you spend more time socializing with them than your own team anyway. Go for it!”

But I didn’t get a chance to say all that—neither when you left in the spring, nor last night—because your next comment was just mean. Your face was stone-cold hard. Your jaw was clenched, as if you were forcing deeply-buried words out through unwilling teeth. Your voice was raspy when you said:

“You never liked me anyway. I never felt like you liked me at all.”

Well, that certainly makes that hug I gave you when I saw you yesterday morning awkward in retrospect, huh?

I feel like shit for ever giving you that impression, because until last night, I never disliked you. I was mad, sure, but that doesn’t mean I discounted anything about you. You’re J., you are what you are, which is quirky, different, someone I don’t entirely get, but I’m okay with that and never disliked you for it. Do I have to get you to like you? I never thought so, but maybe you were looking for the getting to know that I liked you, and that’s why you thought I didn’t like you.

Why does this bother me so much? Why did I know that, with bottom-of-my-gut sureness, I had to get away from everyone before I started crying? (I hate hate HATE that I cry at the drop of a hat, by the way.) Andrew doesn’t understand why I’m so upset by this either, and that—at its heart—is why I’m writing this letter I’ll never send to you. Because I want to know why that upset me so much too. So let me try to spell it out.

I’d hate to be the reason someone left the team. I hate that you felt that way, and I didn’t know it. I hate that you’re using some emotion I don’t even feel to justify anything you did or didn’t do, but especially such an ugly one. I hate that someone thinks I’m capable of being so ugly. And most of all, I hate that you never gave me a chance to tell you it’s so far from true.

So there, J.. That’s how I wished I’d been able to finish the conversation. I'm a little pissed you'd say those things to me and never give me a chance to respond to them, but maybe that makes you feel better. Whatever.

In retrospect, it’s pretty stupid to be wound up in a ball about, “J. doesn’t think I like him!” and I guess I can only blame the drinking or latent insecurity or the moon or something. But hell, I feel what I feel what I feel, and what I feel right now is pissed and depressed and tired. And if I feel that way over someone I still barely know thinking I dislike him, then maybe this fourth-grader’s "sport" is more appropriate for me than I’d thought.

Sincerely,
K

Vocabulary from a day of rafting.

Personal Floatation Device: What the rest of the entire world calls a "life vest", Andrew calls a "PFD". If you can explain this, let me know.

Chicken dance: no, not the wedding dance. A odd clapping chirping dance that only Bruce can do. That other people--especially Kevin--asked for.

Yard sale: what you shout when you notice assorted items--hats, coolers, beers, coozies--floating downstream from a (presumably) overturned raft upstream.

Hat: what you really really need because otherwise your face burns.

Neon fire: what you gather 'round after the Saturday Night Dance Party (yes, this is hardcore camping here, people). Our group took their neon necklaces from the SNDP (they were handed out like this was an ecstasy-free rave) and tossed them in the middle of the ring of camping chairs (the kind with drink holders and footrests--hardcore, here!). So there it was, this pile of pink and yellow and green neon stringy plasticy cheap things, glowing at our feet. Suddenly Andrew got up, and without a word re-arranged them. Like a modern-day picasso, these unrelated glowing lines suddenly took shape. Of boobies.

The Silent Artist: what everybody called Andrew after that.

360: what Andrew made our raft do, what I really didn't like.

Poop: what you REALLY don't want to do for about 2 days. Because the options are limited and stanky.



Flotilla: linking up with any number of other rafts. That way you can take the widdle baby wapids without paddling--as long as you're okay with having no control, you'll make it fine. (Most of the time--Bruce only washed overboard once, but that was a freak occurrence).

Peace: what you really feel as you're drifting downstream on a sunny day, a cold beer in your hand, friends up and downstream ready to pull over with you, have some lunch, and keep on floating. 

Holy crap. It's happening.

We almost have a 2nd floor.

I'm not sure I really believed this would happen. Seriously, it's a little insane. I don't feel grown up enough to have contractors tramping through my house, all evidence to the contrary. But here it almost is.

And it's gor-hor-hor-HORgeous.

Take two.

This is me, attempting a return to blogging. I've taken the last seven months off*, but I find I keep re-composing blog postings in my head. Maybe it's seeing Mount St. Helens in the distance and the sort of giggly feeling it still gives me on those rare hyper-clear days, even after almost four years in Portland. Maybe it's the start of summer vacation. Maybe it's a fight on an airplane, the upstairs of our house, my dog, the newspaper. Maybe it's the weird weightless conversation I had with an ex-boyfriend and his insane wife (coincidentally, my ex-roommate). I want to write about it, start to think about the words I'd use, and then I remember, oh, yeah, I don't have that blog anymore. Maybe I needed to miss it in order to try again.

So here I am, back again. ("Shady's back... tell a friend...") And I thought, I really want to write about last night... but I don't have a... well, hell, all I can do is start a new blog.

I had a great night last night with Em and Dan, sitting on the front porch, drinking a shade too much wine (who doesn't have to work tomorrow??? ME, that's who!), smoking a cigarette or two, talking about the origin of the phrase "I'm Marc-hungry" and telling stories about ex-boyfriends and insane-o wives (a WAY involved story for another day) and in general having the kind of night that you always want but don't always get. The weather was breezy but the right temperature for sitting outside as long as you had a jacket on, the wine was of the cheap-but-good variety (and totally held up our Screw Top Theory), I upheld my reputation as The Baby Whisperer with the little man babbled himself to sleep in five minutes after I put him down... in short, a perfect night.

Right now it's 12:30 on a Thursday and I should motivate--I really really should motivate to do something, but it's my first REAL day of vacation and I'm thinking that I might actually be okay with getting nothing on my to-do list done today. I read a great book ("The History of Love"), I made an omelette for breakfast, and I think I may read the paper and then take a nap in front of the TV. That sounds like a much better to-do list than Mow Lawn, Organize Pictures and Clean Dining Room, which was my to-do list.

Ah hell, summer vacation is two-plus months long, and I deserve it, at least for today. House Hunters, Law and Order, and maybe even Battlestar Galactica, you've been warned. I will find you. Soon. Once I motivate to the TV.

Welcome back, me. I'll see how this goes.

-----
*I've started a couple blogs and then--I dunno. I stopped my big one in November when a whole bunch of crap made me want to roll into a ball like a cartoon hedge hog. You'd think that'd be when a blog would come into the most use, venting and exhuming and purifying. You'd be wrong. Some things are so sticky, so drown-inducing, that just typing them into a box on a screen drags you under. And the pseudo-eternity of blog posts means that those potholes are just there, waiting to suck you in again. Somehow the infamy of complaining about my dog, my students, my non-weightloss doesn't bother me, but something really personal--when it really matters--does. I tried starting one in May that was about some hardcore stuff I was going through, but I wasn't really comfortable with that. Then I started another one a little later, but I forgot and dropped off. Now? Maybe I'll forget again. Or. Maybe I won't.