Category Archive

Let me start by saying that this getting up an hour before the kid has been working out pretty well for me, but not so much for my writing habit, which is why I started doing it in the first place. I won’t bore you with reasons why I haven’t been writing, but they are completely legit and have actually provided me with writing material. But for another day, because right now I have some other things to toss around, and I’m falling back on my friend the bullet to help me remember everything.

• My laptop died at the ripe old age of 1 year, 7 months. I know someone in real life who could have fixed it gratis, but his father passed away a few days ago and he has enough on his plate, so I took it to the Ge3k Squad, and here is what happened: I stopped counting charges at $350, and this was before we even discussed the actual cost of repair. So I left and found a guy in the phone book who is going to back up my hard drive (which I had been investigating doing myself for the past few weeks prior to the crash!) for $95, and the manufacturer is going to fix it for nothing, even though it is technically no longer under warranty.
• I am borrowing the laptop I have used at school for the past two years, the exact same one, which I complained about endlessly and called awful names, but which is still working perfectly. Huh.
• Unfortunately, the laptop I am borrowing only connects to the internet via a wireless router, which I do not have, so I either have to use it in a WiFi zone or hold it up above my head on the screened porch and hope it picks up one of my neighbors’ wireless signals. And yes, that is what I’ve been doing.
• I realized in the mountains last week how attached at the hip I am to technology. I can check and send email with my phone, and I can even access the internet, and so both nights I was there I would wait until Mia went to sleep and then I would sit on a trunk by the window in our room and read email and catch up on blogs. Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, we complain as as society about being too connected too much of the time, but I think deep down inside we are all addicted to the connection. I need to think further about this. I’ll get back to you.
• My daughter has a love/hate relationship with our vacuum cleaner. When I get it out she will come sit as close to it as she can get, sometimes ON it, and lightly touch the hoses and compartments while softly mumbling something I can’t make out; but as soon as I fire it up she takes off in the direction that affords her as much distance from the machine as possible. And when she is running away she looks exactly like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow when he is running away from the natives in the second pirate movie. I would try to capture this on video for the sake of comparison, but every time it happens I fall down laughing.
• I might have a new job. Shhhhh. I don’t want to say it too loudly. I believe I have the power to screw it up by feeling TOO optimistic about it. I cannot tell you how nervous the whole thing makes me. I have been working in the same school for 12 years. TWELVE. I have never resigned a position, nor have I had to start fresh in a new one in a long, long time. It’s damn scary. And also exciting–don’t get me wrong. But mostly scary right now.
• I yelled at some pre-pubescent boys in the lazy river at water park yesterday, where Mia and I go almost every afternoon. What IS it with me and lazy rivers? Or maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the real question is this: Do lazy rivers simply attract obnoxious people? Because these boys were having a bumper car rally with their floats, and they were banging into babies. One of them was mine, but it was over the other baby that I lost it. He was much younger than Mia, and his mother seemed unconcerned that these little cretins kept splashing him right in the face. I couldn’t help myself. For all I know they were her kids–she didn’t say a word to me after the incident–but I didn’t care, I morphed into Classroom Manager Mommy before I could stop myself.
• ANd finally–Happy Independence Day, whatever that means to you.

A little over a month ago I purchased a bathing suit for the first time in years–a real, whole bathing suit, not just a tankini top here and a tankini top there from random department store sales that I would wear with shorts because I refused to let anyone see my ass. This was an actual suit, a two-piece tankini set with an attached sarong on the bottom half and a wild summer flower print in funky colors. I was excited, but also a little nervous. For one thing, although the sarong provided a nice visual block, for all intents and purposes people were going to have the opportunity to see my butt in a bathing suit. I had mostly talked myself out of caring about this, because in spite of that little round post-baby tummy that will probably never go away, and in spite of the long list of body issues I’ve been carrying around with me for years (tiny boobs, enormous feet, round bottom), I really don’t have room to complain about my body. Even better, I am finally in a semi-happy place about my body. I wear single digit sizes, I am comfortable in my pre-pregnancy clothes, and I fully believe that when I am ready when I have the time some sweet day I will start exercising regularly again and rediscover my rockin’ muscles. So yeah, putting on an actual bathing suit bottom made me spend a few extra minutes in front of the mirror scrutinizing my parts. But I was far more nervous about another issue.

We (assuming there are no men reading this, and if you are a man–Hi Mike!–you might just want to stop now and walk away, and if you choose not to walk away, don’t say I didn’t warn you) are all familiar with the required grooming that accompanies bathing suit season. Do we shave? Do we wax? Or do we wear shorts over our suit bottoms and forget the whole grooming process altogether? Alas, that’s what I’ve been doing for years, but my bathing suit investment (and I’m using that word literally–have you purchased a bathing suit lately?!) was going to require a change in procedure.

The week before I was planning to debut The Suit at my family reunion on Memorial Day weekend at Lake Hartwell in South Carolina, I decided I’d spring for a wax job. When was a senior in college I worked the front desk of a salon, and I very quickly became the willing salon experiment. If things were slow, one stylist or another, or sometimes a group of them, would suggest that I have something cut, colored, or waxed. It was free and fun, and it taught me three things: 1) hair always grows back; 2) having a different hair color every month is a blast; and 3) although I cannot tolerate wax on my face, my legs and other bodily regions don’t even register the tug. So on the Wednesday before Memorial Day, I left my salon with a pristine bikini line. Great, except that by the weekend I was already touching things up with the tweezers. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to spend that much money to have someone rip my pubes out of my skin, I want them to stay gone longer than three days.

A few weeks later I bought a membership at a local water park so I could take my daughter to the super-cool kiddie pools, and before our first visit I was faced with the grooming problem again. I resorted to shaving, and that is fine in the moment, but we all know the agony of the day after. And that is why I decided to try some nifty bikini line hair remover cream for my four days at the beach.

We arrived at the beach on Tuesday evening, and after the car was unloaded and everything was in its place, I took my little tube of cream and locked myself in the bathroom. I read the directions carefully, noting the bold print (DO NOT LEAVE THIS CREAM ON FOR LONGER THAN 10 MINUTES!), and got to work. I was well into the process, with one side completely finished and the other side still on the clock with about four minutes remaining, when the fire alarm at the resort started screaming and a voice came into our room from a speaker over the door: “An emergency has been reported. Please exit your room through the nearest stairwell and leave the building. Do not use the elevator. Repeat….” Having experienced an actual devastating fire at my place of employment, I wasted no time in hastily removing the remaining cream, pulling on my shorts, gathering up the crew, and jetting down the stairs. Forty-five minutes later we received the green light to re-enter the building.

And 45 minutes later I went back to my hair removal experiment, only to discover with horror and, I must confess, mild fascination, I had not gotten rid of all of the cream in my haste to get out of the building. And apparently while I was milling around outside, the remaining cream sort of…spread. And that is why, when I swiped my bikini line with a wet washcloth, I was left with a bald spot the size of my fist in an area where there should be no bald spots.

And in case you are thinking of trying something similar for your summer grooming needs, you should know that although the hair removal cream worked REALLY, REALLY WELL–TOO well, you might say–I have already had to tweeze and shave just to maintain the effect. Which is why I’m just going to have to suffer the razor for the rest of the summer, or next thing you know I’ll be telling you another story like this one, and I’d prefer to never mention my bikini area on the internet again.

That doesn’t really sound exciting does it? I know, I know. I am pretty much always at home, unless I am at work, and that’s not particularly exciting either. Not nearly as exciting as, “Greetings from the sunny South Carolina coast!” See, now there’s something new and different. Except that I am no longer on the sunny South Carolina coast. I am…at home. You see, I had planned to write at least three of the five mornings I was at the beach, but our “suite” that online appears to have a separate dining room was actually one large room and a bathroom, and the only thing that made the dining room separate was that neither of the beds converted to a table. And since I was sharing a bed with my daughter, who likes to sleep with her face pressed into a corner, and since the bed was not against the wall, thus making me one wall of her corner, I was left with no choice but to lie in bed inhaling my baby’s sweet sleep smells and think about what brilliant things I would write later. Sadly I have forgotten most of them.

So now I am back to my original plan of writing every morning before the kid wakes up—which, according to history, will be in approximately 10 minutes. So there’s no time today for the story of my adventures with bikini line hair remover, or the two total resort evacuations that occurred during our beach stay, or the list of things I learned while on vacation. At least tomorrow I’ll know right where to begin.

This was about to be one of those sorry introductions about how I haven’t blogged in weeks because this is such a busy time for people in the education field, and how even though I’m not in the classroom anymore I am just not in the mindset to sit down and actually put words on a page. To support this drivel I was going to give you some statistics from previous Mays to prove that I am indeed too emotionally and mentally overwhelmed to blog. But apparently last May I posted 20 times. TWENTY. That’s an average of five posts a week. Sure, in May of 2006 there were only 7 posts, and in May of 2005 only 2 (which doesn’t actually count, since I only started blogging in April of 2005), so I could feasibly argue my original point. But I won’t. Because I don’t really have an excuse, unless you want to go along with my personal belief that upon walking across the University stage on May 17, thus marking the completion of my Master’s degree, the remaining functional brain cells rolling around in my skull went on an indefinite strike and have not been heard from since. But that is not really true, not to mention physically impossible.

So let’s just skip the boring introduction (and for those of you who inevitably read it because who the hell starts with the second paragraph, sorry about that) and move on to what will undeniably be only slightly LESS boring: A Bulleted Rundown of the Last Two Weeks.

• As mentioned, I graduated. Woo-freakin’-hoo. I am so over it that I don’t even have anything else to say about it. I do have some commentary about the photos taken that day, and after reading this, you probably will as well. First, it should be obvious to you after looking at these pictures that I have not been exaggerating all those times I’ve said Little got all the boobs in our family; and in case there was any doubt that I got next to none of the allotment in that department, my University graciously marked the size and location of my own non-boobs on the outside of my robe. Secondly, I tried [unsuccessfully] to avoid uploading any of the photos that showed my feet, because apparently, that is where the Universe chose to give me a surplus. Seriously, my feet look like CLOWN FEET in every single picture. My mom keeps trying to comfort me by assuring me it was just the shoes I was wearing, but I keep insisting, and rightfully so, that the shoes are only as big as my actual feet! It’s not the shoes’ fault my feet are enormous! And finally, do I have a cute kid or WHAT?
• Having completed a Master of Library and Information Science, and having worked for an entire school year as a school media specialist, I regret to announce that I won’t actually be working as a school media specialist next year. Thanks to the ubiquitous Public School Budget Cuts, my position no longer exists. Before you school librarians start hurling curses and shaking your fists at the education gods, I was media specialist number two at my school–the entire program wasn’t cut, just the second position. I was offered two options: a) returning to the classroom as a 9th grade English teacher, or b) a position called “Curriculum Facilitator,” or CF for short. I chose B. Given what longtime readers know about my last few years’ worth of frustration in the classroom, I would have taken a position called “Chief Sidewalk Crack Filler” over potential incarceration, because going back to the classroom would have incited violent behavior on my part, and I don’t think they let girls take their babies to prison. And anyway, don’t you think it’s hilarious that I’m going to be a CF? Am I the only person who thinks that’s a total scream? Someone should invent an education job whose acronym is SNAFU. We could have adjoining offices and take the blame for everything wrong in our school.
• So two weeks ago I had this excruciating pain in my calf. I would have assumed it was a muscular injury of some sort, except I didn’t remember injuring my calf, so I consulted the school athletic trainer, and after some poking he said, “Well, I guess it could be a blood clot.” You know what came next, right? Oh, Dr. Google, I hate you. Because by the end of that day I was a nervous wreck, so nervous that I actually went to the doctor. The short version of this story (because in the long version I would have to type the phrase, “and after a multi-hour wait…” several times, and I think just seeing it that once is enough to give you a picture of the next 48 hours) is that I did not have a blood clot. There was no actual diagnosis, only instructions to take Al.eve twice a day, and so I can only assume I had–wait for it–a muscular injury. Apparently I have reached a whole new level of clumsiness, one that involves painful injury with no memory. Go figure.
• I was flipping through a magazine a few weeks ago and saw this, and I immediately decided my daughter had to have one. My deepest hope is that these lovely little doors will satisfy her door-opening and closing needs. A girl can dream, right? So I used some graduation money from my dad to purchase one from some website I’ve never heard of, because it was the cheapest one I could find. Nearly two weeks later, I still have not received my order, and after several unanswered emails and dead end phone calls, I actually did some fishing around and discovered a review of the site indicating that it is out of business. So far my credit card hasn’t been charged, so I feel pretty fortunate in that department, but mostly I feel annoyed because I really just want the kitchen, and because if you have a retail site but are no longer selling retail, WHY NOT JUST TAKE YOUR SITE DOWN? Gah.
• Mia and I spent Memorial Day Weekend at my aunt’s lake house. Pictures coming soon, but the entire weekend can pretty much be summed up in two words, spoken as questions, over and over and over again: “Butt? Wawa?” (For those of you who need a translation: Boat? Water?) My baby, she loves the water, and if I thought it would improve her napping as much as riding around in my uncle’s pontoon did, I would dig a pond in our yard and put her bed in a canoe.
• I am almost as behind on reading other blogs as I am on writing this one. There are high fives and kudos and good luck wishes and virtual hugs in order, and although I’m not managing to put them into comments they are out there in the Universe, hopefully finding their way to you.
• And finally, just for old times’ sake, there are EIGHT DAYS left of school.

I am tampering with perfecting my blog design. Bear with me.

• I forgot that tonight was “career night” in my library administration class. We were instructed via email to dress professionally, as if we were attending an interview. When I got to class I had a smiley face sticker on my right boob, snot on my left shoulder, and enough cat hair on my black polo shirt to make a kitten. Good thing I already have a job.
• I found out today, due to oblivion, the inability to read, or just plain denial, that the group assignment I’m working on for the aforementioned administration class is due one week earlier than I thought, and that there is ANOTHER assignment, one I didn’t even know about (see previous re: inability to read, etc.), due FOUR. DAYS. BEFORE. GRADUATION. I did not have this assignment on my little Checklist of Sanity, and so it simply did not exist–until a classmate physically showed it to me at the very, very bottom of the syllabus. Still, I kept pointing to my checklist, saying, “But it isn’t on HERE,” and she kept saying, “But it’s here, see,” and I was like, “But look HERE, it’s not HERE on my LIST,” and it went on like that until I crammed the syllabus up her left nostril and ran away. 
• Lately I have spent quite a bit of time in the presence of groups of children whose teachers are trying BY GOD to educate them and learn them how to read stuff in those book things, but mostly it doesn’t go well. Today’s teenagers are accustomed to typing into Google the topic they have been assigned to “research”–for example,The pros and cons of moving large American companies to Latin America–and then writing down, NAY!, copying and pasting into Word, whole chunks of information they have not even read. Never mind that the article, according to its HUGE GIANT BOLD title, is actually about Pros in the American Baseball League who con large moving companies into taking Latin. Or, you know, something else totally unrelated to their topic. My point here is that these children do not know how to read, and until someone figures out a way to Google an actual book, Lord Jesus and Buddha help us all.  I actually witnessed this conversation today during a world history class during which the students were supposed to be researching topics related to terrorism:

Kid: I can’t find anything on my topic.

Teacher: What’s your topic?

Kid: Al Qaeda.

Teacher: I see. What are those things there in your hand?

Kid: I don’t know, books. There’s nothing in them, though. I already looked.

Teacher: What are those books about? See there, on the covers? The titles? What are those books called?

Kid: I’m not sure, Al Somebody. Is he a terrorist?

And recently, during a peer observation of a fairly bright, above average honors 9th grade English class–the kind of class that makes me miss the classroom just a tiny bit–a girl raised her hand after reading William Carlos Williams’s “Danse Russe” and asked, “What’s a kathleen? Is that, like, a name?” Like, I’m totally NOT making any of this up, yo.

• And finally, Feeny specifically requested that I discuss the topic of Mia and tampons, which is listed on my Virtual Sticky Notes. Sorry, E., it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. See, what happens is, when I go into the bathroom for any purpose, Mia follows me and requests “dese, dese, dese,” which is Baby for, “Hand me that object there, Woman, before I fall over and bang my head into the linoleum out of pure boredom!” Sometimes “dese” refers to a makeup brush designated for pretend makeup brushing, and sometimes “dese” refers to a few strands of Mardi Gras beads that live in the bathroom to occupy small bored people, but most of the time “dese” refers to a box of Kot.ex tampons. She likes to take them all out of the box. Then she likes to put them back in. Then she likes to take them all out. Then she likes to put them back in. Then she likes to line them all up on the floor. Then she likes to hand them all to me one at a time. And then she likes to put them all back in the box. And sometimes she likes to put them all in the trash. And that is why “dese” are out in the open all the time, and not just a few days during each month, because I will do whatever it takes to brush my teeth, wash my face, and pee in peace.

*I actually heard both of these phrases in casual, normal conversation today. Ah, the language of the South.

I used to brag about how I never get sick, about how I have an immune system straight out of a science lab thanks to my perpetual exposure to teenagers who leave their snot-soaked tissues on the floor and sneeze on the pencil sharpener for fun. I have probably done some such bragging on this very blog, and if I weren’t sick FOR THE SECOND TIME IN THREE MONTHS I would find an example and include a nice link for reference. That’s right. Sore throat, cough, inability to force air through my nostrils. Mia is also sick. Neither of us has a fever, so the doctor won’t even consider seeing us, and while I can at least get high on decongestant and expectorant, my poor baby has to walk around blowing snot bubbles and wiping them on the furniture. It’s like being in the classroom again.

It should go without saying that this is a horrible time for me to be sick*. I am being observed by my professor tomorrow, so there’s no staying home to recuperate, and I have class tomorrow night. I have a paper due Monday (finished!), and a mammoth group project in the works, and my efforts to convince teachers to use the library have finally paid off–we are full all week! Super. If I manage to get through this week (of course I will, I’m just being dramatic), spring break will be waiting for me in all it’s glory: SEVEN straight days of no work. Just the thought of it makes me feel a little better.

Meanwhile, I am pretty much failing daily at this “I’m a writer” thing. I am trying to figure out what to do about that, and I’m sure after I emerge victorious from my final round of grad school I will have more of a handle on my writing self, but I want you to know–you, with the encouraging comments, you with the daily click only to find the same tired post, you with the email and IM, you who are my biggest fans (hi Mom)–I really appreciate the fact that you’re all still around, still reading, still expecting me to write.

*Even as I type this phrase, a phrase I hear people say often, I have to wonder if there’s really an opposite sentiment. I mean, have you EVER heard anyone say, “I have the runs, but it’s okay, this is a great time for me to be sick”?

You can probably guess where I am based on that title. I feel like I talk of little else, as if my entire life exists here in this freezing cold, dark classroom and my only job is to listen to endless lecture about library administration, and yet I am only here once a week. But somehow it is by far the longest part of my week, and it takes me so long to shake it off that I am barely over it when I have to go back. It won’t surprise you to learn, then, that even though February is dead, and even though it was 73 degrees here today, and even though things are not All That Bad, I am still in a February state of mind. Everything, and I do mean everything, like the unraked leaves in my yard and the three baskets of unfolded laundry in my living room and this sudden eruption of zits on my face, feels like the world’s most insurmountable hurdle, and I can’t imagine how I will ever survive it. Even this blog is bugging me, not the blog itself, but the act of blogging. I don’t really feel I have all that much to say, but this is one more example of neglect, one more thing I never get to, one more source of self-imposed guilt. That’s really sad considering the only things I can manage to think about when I do sit down at the computer involve how much I hate graduate school and how addicted I am to cream cheese & chives wheat thins. At least my absence is generally good for you, because if I did write daily about what’s really on my mind (see above re: wheat thins) and one of you actually died or even just passed out from boredom, then I’d really have something to feel guilty about, wouldn’t I?

If wheat thins aren’t your thing and you need something else to ponder, here are some other important battles I’m fighting. I’d love it if you could offer up some insight.

• Why is it that I am 33 years old, engaging in regular combat with flab and eye wrinkles, and I still find myself standing in the skin care aisle at Tar.get looking for something to clear up my ACNE?
• Along those lines, why will Boudreaux’s Butt Paste clear up a diaper rash that looks like the advanced stages of leprosy overnight, but will increase my zits ad infinitum in a matter of hours?
• And finally, how is it that I can drop my bottle of prescription allergy medication into the TOILET with no ill effects on the contents, but rinsing the bottle under the faucet to negate the toilet incident causes a near flood inside the bottle, thereby turning my little white pills into tiny masses of useless mush?

I am not dead. I have not been abducted by aliens. I am not even preoccupied by anything new or exciting (other than the daily antics of this small person I live with who refuses to walk in spite of proven ability but still manages to get into every forbidden realm of my house).  I would love to say this immense stretch of nothingness on my blog has been the result of brilliance and creativity elsewhere, but I’m sorry to report that any novel I might have started in the past three weeks would begin, “She only meant to eat a few Wheat Thins to tide her over until lunch, but the box was empty by noon.” No. It’s just February, and for me that means all of my energy is used up just walking around and breathing, so anything extra, like writing stuff and reading stuff and communicating with people, is not likely to happen.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, though, and it’s not a train this time (it was a train last week, and it was called the Grad School Express, and it flattened me, but I think my recovery is nearly complete). Thankfully, February the Month will fizzle and die in a mere two days, and February the State of My Mind will slowly cross fade into something like springtime and deep breaths and lightness shortly thereafter. And even though I feel sort of trite and whiny talking about my great heaviness when there is so much heavier heaviness in the world, even the part of the world that encompasses some of my dearest reader friends, I am heavy nonetheless, and when I am light again I will have so much to say, and only a small portion of it will involve Wheat Thins.

I began the morning with my usual shower-time meditation about what I expected to accomplish today (read: I talked to myself in the shower a la William Faulkner, rambling and without end or punctuation or even a real point, just talking and talking, to and about myself while the water runs all around, and ideas and tasks and concerns run like the water, and the noise of my thoughts mingle above the noise of the fan, and–wait, what was I saying?). Writing is always on this virtual list, which is either a good sign that I am moving toward this whole writing life thing, or that I am only inspired to write when it is inconvenient to do so (I also think a great deal about writing when I’m behind the wheel). In my typical stream-of-consciousness shower thinking, I pondered what I might write about in the course of the day, but I kept getting distracted by my dry, scaly, sandpapery hands. Seriously, I actually scratched myself on the face with my fingertips. By the time the shower was over I had not gotten very far in my thoughts about writing. It is really hard to think about writing when your brain is consumed by a single thought. No surprise, then, that on my way to work when I started thinking about writing again, I decided to write about dry skin. I know. Brilliant! I hope you are not disappointed, then, to learn that I got busy and distracted and never got around to writing about dry skin and now do not feel very tied to the subject at all. But like most inspiration, the dry skin situation opened up an even greater, deeper well of material. Here’s what happened:

I was chatting with a friend over coffee before school started, and for almost 30 minutes we talked and unconsciously picked at our respective dry hands until she finally asked if I had lotion. “Yes!” I replied, quite enthusiastically, because I have a bottle of scrumptious grapefruit lotion that is not only soothing and moisturizing but also makes people perceive you as much younger than you actually are. I opened my drawer and reached for it, but it was not there. I opened other drawers, moved things around, looked on my desk and computer station, even opened my bag to see if I had dropped it in there by mistake. No lotion. So I reached for the spot on my desk where I keep a pump bottle of lotion for kids to use, but mid-reach I realized that it too was gone.

I would be willing to bet that everyone who reads this has been a victim of office theft. It’s happened to me, and everyone I work with. Most of what disappears from our classroom desks, however, is food-, money-, or battery-related. I’ve had all of the above removed from desk drawers, and yet, even as I type this, all of the above is in my desk: three 2A batteries, 75 cents, a Nestle Crunch bar, some random 100 calorie snacks, and a calculator (with a 3A battery inside). These are the things kids steal, and yet, all I’m missing is two bottles of lotion. When I sat down at my desk this morning I noticed that my computer monitor was askew and my pencil cup had been overturned, and later I discovered a picture and my stapler out of place. But after the discovery of the missing lotion, I started finding, well, lotion. Little drops of grapefruit-scented lotion. It was on my jump drive. It was on my CPU next to a USB port. It was on a CD next to the monitor. It was on the mouse and the tape dispenser. Then I found my lip gloss, which is usually inside my desk, lying behind my computer.  I threw it away immediately, but maybe I should have dusted it for prints. It’s like a little crime scene, only it smells nice and there is no blood. Yet.

Because my poor, cracking dry hands? They are drier now than ever, the driest hands there ever were, and all because someone–can I type this with a straight face?–crept into the school library on a holiday weekend, went through my desk in search of cosmetic products, ignored food and money (not to mention thousands of dollars in electronics and computers! Hello! It’s not called the MEDIA CENTER for nothing!), and stole my lotion.

I have four–FOUR!–drafts saved in WordPress right now. I could be working on any of them.

I have eaten half a bowl of cereal and my coffee is tepid. I could be finishing my breakfast.

Mia is binge-eating Cheerios in the high chair. I could be cleaning up the morning meal disaster area, wiping down the tray, and combing the banana out of my kid’s hair.

Instead I am recovering from a Really Big Cry that, while most likely tied to my Very Frustrating Evening yesterday (one of the drafts in progress), was actually incited by the internet.

I was reading the morning’s headlines and saw the story about the 911 operator who hung up on a 5-year old boy. Have you seen it? The kid had called to get help for his mom, who was unconscious on the floor, and the operator didn’t believe him, so she disconnected. He eventually called back, but the second operator also thought he was kidding and sent police instead of EMS. His mom died. While he was sitting there next to her.

We are listening to Robbie Schaeffer on XMKids online via AOL while I am reading this story, and in my already saddened state I listen as Robbie takes a call from a kid in Kentucky. He always asks his miniature callers what they are doing, and this kid says, “We’re going to pick up my dad.” Robbie jokingly says, “Why? Did he fall down?” and the little girl says, “He’s coming home from Iraq.” I think I could actually hear Robbie Schaeffer’s intake of breath, or maybe that was me, but as I listened to the rest of the conversation I came completely unglued. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Robbie Schaeffer’s voice–whether speaking or singing, his voice is filled with a mellow, gentle kindness. The combination of his kindness and the inherent sadness of this child seeing her dad for the first time in a year and the 911 story was just too much for me. And then the little girl requested, and Robbie Schaeffer played, this:

Can you see me? I am wiping my eyes with a dish towel.

I read somewhere recently that some well-known blogger, I don’t remember which one, walks around all the time in constant “write post” mode, always thinking of how this event or that moment would play out in a blog entry. Do you do that, too? I do. Which might surprise you, since I seem to write so infrequently these days, and not even very well when I do. When I peruse entries from a year or two ago I am often surprised by my own wit. So it is in my head, my virtual unwritten brain blog, which is running almost constantly. I actually get excited about how some description or narrative is shaping up on my mental screen, and I can hardly wait to sit down and put it into print. And then I don’t. Or worse, I do, and it sucks, or, and this is what usually happens, I can’t remember half the turns of phrase I so painstakingly worked out in my head: And then I flicked the mouse turd from my desk. No, I flicked the mouse turd from my desk with a post-it. Wait. The mouse turd rolled from my desk with the flick of a post-it.

Mostly I sit around during every free moment I have during the work day reading other people’s brilliant words and vacillating between these two convictions: 1) It sucks that I am actually sitting here flicking mouse turds off my desk with post-its, instead of honing my craft and freelance writing for hip, literate magazines, and 2) What am I thinking? I could never write like these people. These people are brilliant crafters of language, and I am a certified mouse-pooper-scooper. Okay, not really, but you know what I mean. As much as I believe in education, and as much as I like kids, and as much as I enjoy my new job and all its potential, there is always a little voice, a little miniature me in my head asking me when I am going to get on with my writing dreams. And right next to her is my miniature me’s twin, shaking her head and saying, “Look, you don’t actually write about things. You write about nothing. Why would someone want to read about nothing? You’re wasting your time with these–what did you call them?–dreams. Psh.”

This argument goes on in my head almost constantly, but more so when I’m doing a lot of reading–specifically, reading of good quality writing. Reading makes me feel simultaneously like a brilliant writer and someone who attempts to describe magnificent events with words like “nice” and “um, nicer.” It um, sucks, because it makes me tiredl, keeps me from writing, even about the insignificant stuff. I should be making small steps in the direction of this dream thing; instead I am stepping over and over and over myself, whining and writhing in a heap on the dream path all ”I can’t write like those people, those writer people, they are writers, and I am naaaaaahhhhtt.” I’ve come to a conclusion about this whole ugly cycle: I need to kill the heckler, or at least put her in a nice self-esteem-building class where other imaginary voices tell her how pretty she is.

Actually, that is not the conclusion I’ve come to at all. What I need to do is write, and also to say, “Oh, me? I am a writer. A librarian and a writer. A writer-librarian.” You know, talk the talk or whatever. I don’t have to be any particular kind of writer just yet, but I need to do the writing. I’ve pretend-studied under Natalie Goldberg, and she says writing practice is a must. It has to happen every day. Every. Day. And so I’m going to write every day do the best I can. I’m going to turn up the writer in my head and try to remember what she says, and I’m going to try to write it all down. Here. Even if it’s about nothing. Even if it’s about that time earlier this week when I moved my keyboard a little to the right and found a tiny, plump mouse turd; and after I did a quick mental calculation of all the times I’ve eaten things I’ve dropped on that very desk, I scraped the mouse turd into a post-it note with another post-it note, flicked it into the trash can, and sat down at the computer to tell all of you. Because that’s what writers do, right?

True confession: I am obsessed with Kleenex. Specifically, having them in every room of my house, and having their boxes match said rooms. You might say I’m a tissue snob. It’s not a brand thing–I can buy Puffs, or even a store brand if necessary. It’s all about the matching. Kleenex boxes are admittedly the most stylish, followed closely by Target’s trendy solid colors and occasional hip designs. Puffs brand ranks last on my list solely on the basis of appearance, although they do present a decent box from time to time. Laugh if you want, I don’t care. I firmly believe that if you’re going to have an object sitting around your house, however functional it is, it should blend with its surroundings. And as an allergy sufferer, I’m going to have a lot of tissue boxes sitting around my house. I spend as much time in the paper aisle at the grocery store choosing box decor as I spend in the produce section poking at tomatoes and squeezing oranges. I often move whole sections of boxes to access the good-looking ones in the back. I have, on more than one occasion, knocked a box or two over the top shelf and into the next aisle over. Are you still laughing? I told you, it’s an obsession. It doesn’t have to be sane.

The source of my quantitative tissue obsession is clear in my mind: when I was growing up we didn’t have any. Runny nose? Here’s some toilet paper. No toilet paper? Here’s a paper towel. When I started making my own money I started buying tissue. Lots of it. I never wanted to run out. And when I got my own place and took control of my own aesthetics, I got more selective. Kleenex made it easy. Their designs run the gamut, from Matronly Floral to Geometric Chic. You can get a nice pastoral scene, or you can color coordinate with solids. There are cute boxes, and there are simple boxes. Recently they introduced a box that appears to have been created for my shower curtain. When something so extraordinary occurs I stock up. I mean, stock up. There is a shelf in my hall closet designated exclusively for tissue storage. It is usually full to overflowing. Until this week.

I started getting sick the Thursday after Christmas. It began as a bad case of the sniffles; on Friday it became an annoying case of I-am-thinking-of-sticking-a-tissue-up-my-nose; and by Saturday, as I have already discussed in a previous post, it morphed into The Bronchitis That Nearly Ate My Lungs. By that time I had passed the snot torch to my daughter, and until yesterday when my cough began to subside and my nose started running again, she carried that torch high and proud all by herself. My point, and I do have one, is that we’ve been using a lot of Kleenex.

So much, in fact, that my room allotment is in jeopardy. I always make sure high traffic nose-blowing rooms such as the bathrooms and bedrooms are more fully stocked. The living room and kitchen areas see less action and thus need fewer boxes in the supply area. But when you are a) blowing your own nose several times an hour, and b) wiping a 1-year-old’s nose every 5 minutes or so, that delicate balance begins to crumble. It all began when I ran out of the cheerful, colorful under-the-sea boxes I buy for Mia’s bathroom and bedroom. I had to pull from my own bathroom/bedroom stock. Within two days my happy circle boxes were down to one. Then the neutrals started going. On Thursday when Gayle, who usually pokes fun at my obsession, picked up a new prescription for me at the drugstore, she bought a few boxes and apologized for their appearance. Matronly Floral. At least the tissues themselves were not pink or blue.

And so today, for the first time in a week, we are venturing out into the world, a venture whose sole purpose is the acquisition of tissue. Unless, of course, someone at Kleenex reads this and wants to make me a paid advertiser. I have plenty of experience, and I’ve even got a miniature trainee. We’ll be waiting for your call.

Now with pictures!

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I am finding it hard to type, what with being jacked up on Albuterol and all. I had heard that phrase before–”jacked up on Albuterol“–and I assumed it was some sort of anti-depressant. Turns out it’s an asthma treatment. Huh. And that’s the end of the story of my bangin’ holiday vacation. Considering that I can actually inhale now, it’s actually a happy ending. Oh! Did I mention? I don’t even have asthma! It’s been quite the series of primarily unfortunate events, with a few sunny moments thrown in. The following, for your entertainment on the last day of 2007, is the story from the top.

Wednesday, December 19: While not technically a part of my vacation, I discovered late Wednesday afternoon that the 60 holiday cards I’d ordered from one of the cheaper online photo places (instead of the more expensive place with the prettier cards, oh no! because that order would have been about 80 bucks) were indeed WRONG. As in, “Our wish for 2007…” You know, the year that’s ENDING in a half hour. My mistake. Turns out, I should have held out a few more wishes for 2007, as you will soon discover. Instead I reordered the cards with the correct year, thus bringing my total payment to Cheap Photo Place to–yup–80 bucks. On the bright side, my mom, Little Sister, Mia and I picked up Middle Sister from the airport, so things seemed to be looking up by the end of the night.

Thursday, December 20: This should have been my last day at work before the holidays, but I took the day off to accompany my mother, aunt, and sisters to my five-months-deceased grandmother’s house to collect what belongings her asswipe husband deigned to share with us after all this time. My father was with me, he who has space to store the furniture my grandmother left me, and we left my house right after he fixed my dryer, which had been broken for over two weeks. I was starting in the black, see. We got there and did what we went to do and we left, and that’s really all I want to say about that particular segment of last Thursday for the time being.

My dad left from my grandmother’s with a truckload of stuff, and I flew home as fast as my car would carry me because from my grandmother’s we were all going to Charlotte to have Christmas at my aunt’s new house. Charlotte is a little over an hour from my house, and my plan was to leave home in time to feed Mia dinner by 7:30, which is pretty much her absolute threshold for the evening meal. I left my driveway at 6:00. At 6:15 as I pulled onto the sideroad that would take me to the interstate, I heard a loud ka-thunk-ka-thunk-ka-thunk sound. At first I thought it was the annoying music coming from the car behind me. It wasn’t, of course. It was coming from my car. Specifically, what used to be the right rear tire of my car. 

I’ll skip most of the details. My roadside assistance service arrived 40 minutes later. In the interim I tried to entertain my kid, who was becoming hungrier by the minute and not at all happy about being stationary in a dark car. The tow truck sound scared her. She cried through the whole spare tire experience. I drove to Gayle’s and she fed Mia while I transferred all my crap to her car. My new goal was to be in Charlotte by 9. Having never been to my aunt’s new house, I set her address on the navigator on my phone and hit the road. At 8:45, a mere 19 miles from my destination, traffic came to a dead stop. I could see red taillights for what seemed like infinity. I called my family to tell them I was stuck in traffic, and it was during that conversation that I discovered the following: earlier in the day while we were still hauling stuff from my grandmother’s to my mom’s, my aunt and my sister Little NOTICED THAT MY TIRE WAS FLAT. BUT FORGOT. TO. TELL. ME. People, when I FINALLY discovered the state of my tire, the wall was completely shredded from the tread. I had to get a new one. There was no repairing the damage. I don’t know about you, but I think Aunt and Little owe me a new tire.

I arrived at my aunt’s house at 11. It was raining. My kid, who had been asleep for most of the traffic stall (apparently caused by some sort of explosion earlier in the evening–seriously, a part of the metal guardrail was melted) turned into the Energizer Bunny as soon as we walked in the door and went to sleep at 2:30 in the next morning. The next day was great; we celebrated Mia’s first birthday with the family and left around 4 that afternoon. At home later that night I remember thinking to myself, “This is good. Now I can relax. NOW my vacation can begin.” Stupid, stupid woman.

Saturday, December 22: I had a long list of things to do–unpacking, cleaning, laundry–and did none of them, opting instead to stay in my jammies all day long and play with my kid, who also stayed in her jammies all day long. Which meant that on…

Sunday, Christmas Eve-Eve: …all the things I didn’t do on Saturday had to be done, plus all the other things I’d planned to do on Sunday in the first place. One of those things was having the dog bathed. Suzanna has been living in the garage since September, when she brought fleas into my house (yet another saga from the past few months I won’t get into now), fleas she got from the stray cat I adopted last year and am now trying to relocate. Cat, anyone? Sweet disposition, updated shots, no uterus. But I digress. I unloaded a large amount of money at National Pet Chain Store to have my poor flea-allergic smelly itchy dog bathed, de-fleaed, un-hot-spotted, and settled into a brand new bed. That night she woke me up four times during the night begging to go back to the garage. And the scratching, good lord, the scratching. The stuff I sprayed on the hot spots made me sneeze, or maybe it was the shampoo, and yet, the scratching never stopped. I decided she was just readjusting to the house, gave her some benadryl, and tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep.

Monday, Christmas Eve: The stuff I didn’t get done on Sunday (do you see a pattern here?) was waiting for me on Monday. I was exhausted from the previous night of no sleep. Mom, Middle, and Little were coming for dinner, a dinner I was making and for which I had no ingredients. This would be a great time to sing the praises of the most wonderful child on the planet. Not one time during anything I have described, nor during anything I will describe in the next several paragraphs, did my daughter lose her cool. No crying (well, except for the tire-changing incident), no fussing, no public outbursts. If not for her, in fact, I would probably still be sitting on the side of the road next to my grotesquely flat tire.

I was halfway through dinner preparation when my family arrived with a moving van full of presents, and we had a nice meal–a ratatouille dish much like the one from the cartoon (laugh if you want, but it was amazing) on a bed of couscous with goat cheese and french bread. Little and I stayed up until 3 a.m. watching Harry Potter 5, and everyone, including my daughter, slept until almost 11 Christmas Day.

Tuesday, Christmas Day: It was wonderful–a bright spot in a series of distressingly eventful days. It is best viewed, not described.

Wednesday, Mia’s Birthday: Mia and I went to my mom’s to help her go through all the stuff we took from my grandmother’s house. Did I mention? I don’t want to talk about that yet. We hung out with my mom and were (I’m afraid) more messy than helpful. We got home just in time for bed, and I was welcomed by a puddle of pee next to the front door. By this time the dog was really starting to wear out her welcome. I didn’t sleep well because my throat was scratchy and my nose was a bit runny and I had a bit of a dry cough. The smell of Suzanna–I’m not sure if it was the hot spot spray or the shampoo from Sunday’s bath or just her own weird smell–permeated my room…and my sinuses.

Thursday, December 27: Mia’s 1 year well baby check-up was at 1:15. She got shots and cried pitifully. Gayle came over and we had lunch and went to Target to buy cute little plates and napkins for Mia’s Saturday birthday party, which was being held at my friend and coworker MJ’s new house (because I wanted to invite more than 5 people, see, and my house is TEENY). Late that afternoon my throat felt really scratchy and I couldn’t stop coughing. I said out loud at one point, “I feel like I’m getting sick.” Mia’s eyes were watery and she had a slight runny nose. I decided that Suzanna could not stay in the house any longer because I was convinced that her weird smell was contributing to our allergic demise. I felt horribly guilty about giving Suzanna the boot, but she seemed okay with the arrangement and I had a party to plan. I bought wine and beer, cake supplies, chips and dips, and ingredients for a baked brie and some spinach rolls I found in a magazine. I was pumped. And I felt like shit.

Friday, December 28: We didn’t leave the house. Mia had a fever; I couldn’t breathe through my nose and my cough had deepened. By dark I was wheezing and Mia was a veritable fountain of snot. I decided that if she had a fever the next morning I would cancel or postpone the party. Still, I stayed up late and made the cake. You know, wishful thinking and all.

Saturday, December 29: If you guessed that my kid still had a fever on Saturday morning, you guessed wrong. She was fine–a bundle of energy and all smiles. Snotty, but smiley. I, on the other hand, was having trouble inhaling. My cough had worsened. The wheezing was audible. My head ached. I seriously considered sending Mia to her party without me. But I didn’t. I went on with it. I hauled all the food and the drink and the kid to MJ’s house (thankfully no presents–Mia has a registry at Heifer.org and has raised almost $500 for the organization in honor of her birthday). 

Anyway. I think the party was a success. I think people had a good time. Mia loved her cupcake, and friends of mine from different circles were mingling and making conversation, and the handful of kids who were there played like the best of friends. But honestly, there are parts of the afternoon I don’t particularly remember. By now my chest was actually hurting, and inhaling deeply was a physical impossibility. I was starting to get a little freaked out. Which is how it came to be that immediately after the party I found myself at an urgent care center near my house. While Mia played with Gayle in the waiting room, I got a shot of steroids in the buttocks and received a 30 minute Albuterol treatment. Comedienne Suzanne Westenhoefer does a bit in one of her old shows about how some Amish people in a community near where she grew up in PA got addicted to crack, and how they must have been speed-quilting and putting up barns single-handedly in mere hours. That’s how I felt after the breathing treatment. Like I could have cleaned my carpet by washing each fiber individually in 15 minutes. My organs were trembling, and I could feel them. My hands and arms seemed to be propelled by forces beyond my control. It was horrible. But not as horrible as not being able to breathe. That part was an improvement. The doctor sent me home with a high-powered expectorant/cough suppressant, a five-day round of steroids, and an asthma inhaler. He didn’t actually diagnose me with asthma but indicated that I could develop a chronic form of it as an adult, or even just have an acute case in the event that my immune system had been compromised for whatever reason. You know, like dead grandmother stuff and sleepless nights and weird dog smells and flat tires and the general stress of the holidays. Or something like that.

Sunday, New Year’s Eve-Eve: The twitches finally wore off after midnight and I slept well for the first night in over a week. I figured out that if I take Tylenol when I use the inhaler, I’m not quite as crawly and my sleep is not as disrupted. Mia is still a little font of snot, but she is undaunted and is equally interested in her birthday balloon (under strictly supervised circumstances, of course) and crawling under the table as she is in playing with her load of new toys. We’ve been playing a lot, and she’s been napping well, which means I’ve been lying around watching lots of movies. It sucks to be sick, but–fingers crossed–the major drama seems to be behind us.

Monday, New Year’s Eve: Actually, according to the TV in the background, it’s no longer New Year’s Eve. I can hear fireworks outside, and the ball just dropped, and I’ve kissed my sleeping daughter on the head. Let’s put ‘07 to bed, people. Here’s to a brilliant new year.

Guess where I spent yesterday? At the courthouse in courtroom 3G. On an actual jury. Deciding the verdict in a personal injury case. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, considering that the day before I reported to perform my civil duty, I actually put in writing that I hoped to sit in the jury room and read and blog all day. What was I thinking?

The karma started early in the day when, in an attempt to read the map on my summons, I drove around the same block 7 times. SEVEN. When I was in college I worked part time as a receptionist in a salon. One of the stylists, Walt, came in one Saturday morning in a frenzy because he had stopped at a drive-through for breakfast and it had gone awry. The restaurant was an octagon shaped building, and Walt claimed that because of the angle of the building and the blinding sun, he couldn’t see the pickup window. He drove around and around and around the restaurant, and finally he stopped at the order pane. Again. When the voice asked if she could help him he screeched, “Where is the pickup window? I am trying to pick up my food!” The woman replied, “Just pull forward slowly and look left, honey; I’ve watched you drive past about seven times.” I have told that story many times, and every time I laugh and laugh at Walt. But yesterday I got mine. It was the start of the business day, and there were manypeople milling around the courthouse. After my fourth or fifth trip around the block some of them waved at me. Oy.

And then, of course, there was my jury experience. I had settled into my corner of the jury holding area with my laptop and a book and a steaming cup of coffee when the court clerk called the first 25 names. I was one of them. You know the rest of the story. I can talk about my case now, but I don’t want to. It’s that boring. Just picture fake injuries and a smarmy lawyer, and you have all the information you need. At least it only lasted one day, unlike my inability to write about interesting things, or to write interestingly about dull things, which seems chronic. Blah blah blah.

I suppose if we are keeping score I would have to admit failure on that whole National Blog Posting Month thing. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. I actually felt productive in the writing department for a few days in November, and I had hoped that the jump start would maintain my creative engine for a while. It didn’t. Now I am feeling blank and wordless again, like when you say a book or movie was great, and someone asks you to describe it, and you suddenly forget everything about it: “Well, there was this girl. And she was…she was uh…white. And she had a baby. The baby was…it was small. And they lived in a city. A house in a city.” Finally you say something along the lines of, “Well, it’s hard to describe. You just need to experience it yourself.” That, in a nutshell, is me, writing about my life.

I’ve said before that my lack of writing does not indicate a lack of subject matter. Realistically, things happen every day. I can talk about those things, sometimes in a humorous or reflective way that is interesting and witty, even when the things themselves are neither humorous, reflective, interesting, nor witty. But sometimes, and by sometimes I mean today, I simply cannot bring myself to write about the flotsam and jetsam floating around in my head. It is just uninteresting. About as uninteresting as jury duty, which I have tomorrow. My plan: to blog on the government’s dime. My hope: that I didn’t just secure a cosmic seat on some bizarre case for planning to use my civic duty as a blogfest.

The following is my contribution for last Thursday.

When I tell you that my father lives in a house with no coffee pot and no internet access, you might be tempted to believe, especially considering his West Virginia zip code, that he and my stepmother reside in a mountainside shanty made of recycled tractor tires and old 8-track tapes. Not so. They just don’t drink coffee, and my brother took the computer when he moved into an apartment across town; so, given the fact that my dad, who is a skilled metal machinist, probably doesn’t know how to turn on a computer, and my stepmother has email at work, the internet is just not a necessity. So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that on Black Friday, I joined nearly every single resident of southern West Virginia on the bustling streets of Beckley and headed to Starbucks. 

I pulled into the parking lot of the shopping center after a particularly roadrageous 3 mile trip that took almost 30 minutes, and as I was getting out of my car a sign caught my eye. Before I go on I should describe the setup of the shopping center, because even though you are going to laugh at me anyway, you should at least do so armed with information and maybe a little sympathy. Imagine, if you will, a glorified strip mall in the shape of a giant block letter C, with an enormous parking area in the middle. Starbucks is situated at the bottom of the C. The sign that caught my eye is at the top of the C, waaaaaaay across the giant parking lot. Far, far away.

So I’m looking at this sign. And looking and looking, trying very hard to figure out if it says what I think it says. It was one of those lighted signs, and it was red, and the lettering was in cursive, so the letters sort of blurred together. But I swear to you on all that is holy, I would have bet my two cups of coffee that the business across the way from Starbucks was called “Disinfectantly Yours.”

It wasn’t, of course. I believe it was actually “Delightfully Yours,” but that is not important. What’s important is the fact that I have either developed Adult Onset Dyslexia, or I really need to get my eyes checked, because I misread signs like that all the time. And even more important than that, why isn’tthere a store called “Disinfectantly Yours”? Because I would be a regular shopper there. And so, I’m betting, would all of you.

And then it ran over me.

You can cease the fast and stop renting your clothing. I’ll be catching up tomorrow. There, there, now you can rest easy.

(Note to self: do not be surprised when your daughter turns out to be a real smartass.)

Today I burned myself while making homemade hot apple cider. On my boob. Yeah, you read that right: I burned my boob making hot cider. I’d love to tell you there was something racy going on involving the cider, but no, I was testing it with a spoon and some splashed onto my hand, causing me to jerk the spoon and quite a bit of cider all over the front of my…chest area. It hurts.

Today I went to the grocery store with a list and a recipe in hand. I told my dad I was bringing a cranberry apple concoction, so I took the recipe so I’d know what I needed to prepare it. Guess what I didn’t get. ANY of the recipe ingredients. Not one. I was focused on the list and forgot about the recipe.

Today I have to do laundry and pack for my Thanksgiving trip to my dad’s. I am leaving at 7:30 in the morning. I have not even started. This is as good as blogging is going to get for me today, and I don’t know if I’ll be blogging from my dad’s over the holidays or not. So happy Thanksgiving, and may you drink your hot cider safely.

• I came across this when I logged into AOL today. I am not ashamed to say I have owned, in some form or another, four of these shoe styles. In fact, my Crocs look just like those in the picture, and my Tevas are merely a different color. And even though I would never purport that any of my shoes are “pretty,” I am offended that a pair of Docs is featured on the same list as jellies and those inane sneakers with the 7-inch heels. Does this seem incongruous to anyone else?
• I live in a house that was built in 1987. Pretty much everything on and in my house is original except a few coats of interior paint and my new carpet. Thus, some things do not work as effectively or as efficiently as they once did. Take for example my kitchen sink sprayer. The kitchen sink sprayer in general is one of my favorite inventions. Mine, however, has NEVER worked. Instead, it has consistently leaked a few uninspired streams of pressure-less water whenever the handle was engaged for the past six years. I have taken it apart, cleaned its innards, shaken it, tapped it on the side of the sink, slammed it against the side of the sink–nothing has affected its useless performance. And then yesterday, out of lifelong habit, I pulled it out of its little hidey hole next to the faucet and clicked the sprayer in an effort to power wash the high chair tray, and much to my astonishment, the most powerful burst of water shot out of the nozzle. It actually got me wet, it was so vigorous. I was sure it was some random occurrence, but my sprayer continues to spray. I am confused but pleased. Anyone have a hypothesis about why it took my kitchen sprayer six years to engage?
• If you are not a mom or are not interested in all things baby, you might want just move on to another blog right now, because I’m getting ready to talk about my kid’s poop. 
• About the poop. I mentioned offhandedly in last night’s post that her BMs have been hard lately. Not the process, mind you, just the result. They have also been darker in color, or a combination of light and dark colors, for a few straight days. Today she had one that was exactly half normal poop color and half dark-blackish. She had blueberry applesauce yesterday, so I could just assume that’s the reason, but have you ever known me to just shrug off anything? Here’s the part where you comment and tell me about your kid’s dark poop, or your nephew’s or best friend’s kid’s or neighbor kid’s dark poop. You can follow that by telling me how much or little I ought to worry. Meanwhile, I’m going to investigate a smell that may have a completely normal outcome, thereby negating this part of the post. Or it will follow the abnormal pattern of this morning’s poop, and I will continue to worry and wonder what’s taking you so long, hurry and comment already.

It was no big secret that I was sick and tired of the oppressive and seemingly endless summer that lasted well into October, but fall lasted, oh, four days. Now it is downright cold a lot of the time, except when it is randomly 72 and sunny, and my wardrobe and respiratory system are having a hard time keeping up with the weather. I am either too hot or too cold. My nose is either running or painfully dry. Really, I hate to complain, but can we pick a season and stick with it for at least a few weeks?

Last night was a cold night, so I picked up a bagel and a bowl of chili from Brueg.ger’s and headed to the place where brain cells go to die my cataloguing class. About 30 minutes in, after I’d given up on following the lecture, which involved something about Samuel Johnson’s cat Hodges and oysters, I decided to pass the time by eating my takeout.

I have never been a fan of plastic cutlery. Plastic forks are wimpy and the little tines break off too easily, and I am the kind of person who would unknowingly swallow a plastic fork tine because weird crap like that happens to me. Plastic knives are generally useless for their intended purpose. And plastic spoons are either too flat or too deep–there is no happy medium. Have you ever tried to eat soup with a too-flat plastic spoon? You’re doing well to get enough soup to register a taste. Who has that kind of time? I always end up surreptitiously drinking my soup straight from the bowl when such a spoon is involved. But I’ll take a flat spoon over a miniature bowl-on-a-stick any day. You know what I’m talking about, I know you do. Wendy*s spoons are a perfect example. You are pumped about your Frosty but it hasn’t melted enough to drink through a straw, so you have to use the spoon. You scoop some out and put the spoon in your mouth and–wait, what’s with all that ice cream left in the bottom of the spoon? The human lip is not made to reach that far down into a spoon. You turn it upside down, and that doesn’t work either, so you lick the remains of your spoonful and wait until enough melting allows you to use the straw.Compared to the spoon I received with my chili last night, a Wendy’s spoon is a flat expanse of plastic.

It started out harmlessly enough: I had to sip at first because it was still a little warm. But then I was ready for full-on chili eating, and the spoon was so deeply concave that it CUT MY LIP, people. It CUT me! And the chili was HOT. Not “let this cool down a bit” hot. It was “children I have not yet conceived can feel how hot this is” hot. And by the time I realized my lip was actually lacerated, the spicy hot hotness of the hot chili had made contact with my spoon-induced injury, and for the first time this semester I wanted to cry in cataloguing class for reasons having nothing to do with cataloguing.

When my alarm went off this morning I made the mistake of yawning. Yow. Smiling is painful. My Burt’s lip balm is like fire. And my lips are a little swollen–not bee-sting/right hook/gum surgery swollen. Just slightly puffy, like maybe I had a little injection, applied a little of that plumping cream.  And it only cost me $3.99. Move over, Nip/Tuck.

But I am. In my mind I have these magnificent visions of myself exercising at 5 a.m., biking through my city’s many parks on the weekends with my kid on one of those fancy enclosed trailers, reading on my screened porch by lamplight with a glass of wine after the baby is asleep on weekend nights. And writing. I write and I write–in my mind. Sounds like I am suffering from delusions of grandeur if you ask me.

In Real Life, my “new” bike has been ridden twice since I received it for Christmas in 2005, and I have stashed my ever-deflating exercise ball out on the screened porch where I have only visited recently to remove the oil lamps so I could hang them around my front door entryway to entice trick-or-treaters. This decorating frenzy took place minutes after I carved the pumpkin for the front step, which was about an hour before dark on Halloween night. In the mornings I press snooze on the alarm until I realize I have exactly 50 minutes before I have to leave the house. Evenings find me unprepared to make dinner–I should have thawed this, or I’m out of that–so I often eat cereal. Unless of course I am out of milk. I wait to do laundry until the remaining underwear in the drawer is too big, too small, or dangerously low on elastic. There are several nice dress shirts hanging in my closet that go unworn because they are too wrinkled, and I never take the time to iron them. I believe in living in the moment, but I think that’s probably something different. Me–I’m living in the last minute.

I will give myself this: I had planned to shoot out a few sentences here, something along the lines of “wah, wah, this is hard, I don’t have time,” but look, I’m on paragraph three now. No, this is not my best work, but that little creative voice inside me does manage to make herself heard from time to time, and lately she is saying, “God, woman, put on your watch. Get out your calendar. Get hold of yourself. Time’s a wastin’.”

How do you keep it all together without pissing it away?

I’ve got a draft going that I just can’t give any more thought or energy to tonight. It’s one of those been-churning-for-a-while-now posts that needs to be written but can’t seem to work its way out of my head. I’m hoping a good night’s sleep and a few hours of clear thinking in the morning will help me find the right words.

Meanwhile, a public service announcement: The M&M? It’s gotten fatter. Did you know? I opened up a bag of holiday editon mint M&Ms yesterday and they were at least twice as robust as regular M&Ms. Has anyone else noticed this amazingly wonderful phenomenon?

I have not been too busy to post. Work is not consuming me like it once did. My life is not dull or uneventful. I am just blank. Blank with sadness for my friend, blank with worry over things like lead paint and the MRSA bug. Blank with anxiety over those fires which are a mere five miles away from my baby sister. Blank.

I want to write here. I will soon, as soon as I can shake off the white space.

Current temperature: 67.

That’s more like it. Now about this drought…138 days of water remaining for my city. What does that mean exactly? That if we don’t get considerable rainfall in the next 138 days we will not be allowed to drink, cook or shower?

Please discuss.

It is hot. Record-setting hot. Ninety-three, for those of you who like specifics, or who suspect I might be exaggerating. It is the kind of hot that makes me impatient and irritable. I often find that I’ve been squinting, borderline scowling, for long periods of time, and that my jaws are sore from subconscious clinching. If this heat and drought continue I will no doubt become a prematurely grumpy old woman and sit on my porch in nothing but a bra and a pair of men’s trousers and shoot at things in my yard with a BB gun.

Oh October, where art thou?

Say no if you want, but I’m doing it anyway. I refuse to acknowledge October. Don’t get me wrong–I have nothing against October. I love October. October is my homey. But there is either something seriously wrong with October, or there is something seriously wrong with my calendar, because it is not supposed to be 88 degrees in October. This is the time of year when the leaves start turning gentle shades of yellow and orange before they placidly drift to the ground. There are leaves falling now, but they are shriveled and black and dead. This is the time of year when I pull out my soft sweaters and funky warm socks. I have a sweater at work, but I only put it on when the air conditioner gets too chilly because it’s trying to protect us from the flames of hell that are licking the blazing metal surface of our building. This is the time of year when I revel in cool rainy days. It has not rained here, excepting a sprinkle here and there, in months. It is hot and dry. Initially I preferred this to hot and humid, but now I’m just sick of hot. I am even sick of warm. I would welcome cool, but really, I secretly want cold. I want to wear gloves and scarves. I want my plants to die from natural causes, not from plain thirst (we are no longer allowed to water yards and outdoor plants). I want to dress my daughter in the fall and winter clothes hanging unused in her closet.

October, if you’re out there, we’re waiting for you. Come quickly. Bring rain and lots of it. It’s time for this greedy September to hit the road, and it’s going to take some doing.

My mom visits us every Sunday night on her way home from work. Tonight she inadvertently left her hospital ID badge on my table when she left. What does it say about me that this was my first thought when I found it: “It’s too bad I’m not involved in some sort of heist or secret operation at the hospital, because I could totally use her badge to sneak in, and then I could use a little watch walkie-talkie (like I really have one of those lying around) to alert George Clooney that the coast was clear.”

I really need to get a life.

I was cleaning off my desk today and discovered a piece of computer paper with the following list scratched haphazardly in pencil and ink:

cookies/bakies
HP
2 brothers gored in ass–bulls
Blogger: real name?
tic-tac commercials
baby arms & legs –> crib
sickness
Astelin–taste
book 7, movie 5

I had to read over it a few times to realize that it was a list of things I wanted to blog about. It is a testament to their significance, or lack thereof, that I don’t even remember a few of them. The ass-goring, for example. I think that was a news headline that greeted me one morning; I was amused and thought it deserved some attention. Or not. I think, however, that the remainder of the list is intact somewhere in my brain, particularly the last item, as I am placing full responsibility for my weeks and weeks of silence on the head of Harry Potter. Perhaps I’ll start there.

book 7/movie 5: I started reading HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone in December, a few days after I had Mia. Let me clarify: I started RE-reading it. I believe this was read #5. I finished it sometime in early July. Don’t be alarmed, I am not a slow reader; there was a period of several months when no reading of any kind occurred in my house. I had stopped somewhere around the initial arrival at Hogwarts, and that’s where I started a few weeks ago. I sped through the remaining chapters. I moved on to The Chamber of Secrets. And then to Prisoner of Azkaban (my all-time favorite). And so on. You get the picture. My sleep suffered, as did my eating habits, fashion sense, and, on some days once I hit Order of the Phoenix, my hygiene*. Rest assured, my child did not suffer, unless you count that one day I was reading and forgot to give her the afternoon bottle. In my defense, she didn’t protest–she was in the process of self-adjusting some of her eating habits and had been showing little interest in that particular bottle, but I continued to offer it anyway. But on that day, when I realized that I’d read and she’d played right through a feeding, I freaked out a little. It was the same week of the news story about the couple who allowed their children to starve and be picked up by child services because they were too busy playing online video games. I could just see my own headline plastered on the internet: Mom Forgets to Feed Infant–Too Busy Reading Harry Potter.

Anyway. I mostly read during naps and into the night, and in spite of the 6 months it took me to re-read the first book, I sped through the others. I was preparing myself for the two big premieres. I knew once The Deathly Hallows hit the shelves I would have to read it as soon as possible, but I had read The Half-Blood Prince so fast that I had forgotten a great deal of it–hence my re-read campaign. And like many other Harry geeks, I wanted to re-read OOTP before I saw the movie, something I still have yet to do. When I finished The Deathly Hallows on Sunday it was like coming out of a dream–and in a way, that’s exactly what happened. When I read the Harry Potter books I am truly immersed in the fantasy. I want to have magical abilities, and I want to visit Hogsmeade, and I want (quite desperately, actually) to be able to Apparate and Disapparate. But when I read that final page, the regret I was expecting with the ending of the series didn’t come. I was almost relieved. Don’t get me wrong–nothing has changed, I still love the stories and will most likely read them all again, and probably again. But it was high time I started spending time with the three-dimensional people.

I will reserve my opinions about Book 7 for a later time, because, as I understand it, there are still a few people who haven’t read it yet.

On with my list.

cookies/bakies: Have you seen that commercial? The one where the guy doesn’t understand why cookies are called cookies, because cooking’s really got nothing to do with it? How true. Why ARE they called cookies?

HP: I believe this refers to my above epistle about the Boy Who Lived. I am sure I was going to use it as an excuse for not blogging. Which I have done. Did you notice the title? I feel certain it was not lost on my fellow Harryphiles.

Blogger–real name?: I had to think about this for a while, but then it hit me. Once upon a time, when most of us blogged at Blogger, my posts and comments were always signed hd. Now, suddenly and without any action on my part, my comments on Blogger blogs are signed with my real name. Why is this? Not that it matters, most of you know my real name anyway. It’s just a curious mystery.

tic-tac commercials: Clearly I pay too much attention to television commericals, but is anyone else as irritated as I am by those ads in which the people’s mouths appear to be possessed by something that’s trying very hard to escape? Or that girl juggles tic-tacs with her tongue? I want to throw things at my TV when I see those commericals.

Baby arms & legs –> crib: I have been meaning to seek adivce about this for some time, but since I scribbled that hasty little note I have had to solve this problem on my own. Thanks to mesh and velcro, I am happy to say I have not had to pry my kid’s arms and thighs out of the crib slats for some time. Has that happened to any of you? It’s damn scary. Of course, I always imagine the worst: tiny femurs snapping, limbs being torn from their sockets. See, I had to do something. For crap’s sake, it’s a crib, not a Rottweiler. So thanks to the taut mesh panels that now surround the crib, I haven’t been greeted by this in over a week:

sickness: I was sick. Now I’m not. It sucked, but it hardly seems important to mention now. I’m sure I was going to use it as an excuse for not blogging, but I believe a certain fictional character is shouldering all of that blame just fine, thank you.

Astelin–taste: However, thanks to the aforementioned sickness, which was either a cold or an allergy-induced sinus infection, I convinced my doctor to give me a prescription for Astelin. I was sneezing constantly and uncontrollably, and it was positively miserable, and I was convinced Astelin would solve all my problems. Admittedly, I saw an immediate change in my allergies, and I hardly sneeze at all anymore. But let me just tell you, there is no bold print large enough, no warning dire enough, to prepare you for the taste that is Astelin. Who knew a nose spray could taste so horrible? There are suggestions in the instructions for avoiding swallowing the spray and coming into contact with the taste, but if you manage, as I so often do, to get the stuff anywhere near a tastebud, you will taste nothing else for hours, and everything you eat or drink will be tainted. People, I’m telling you right now, Astelin is what evil tastes like.

And finally, off the list but significant nonetheless, my daughter turned 7 months old last week. Now I am not one but two months behind on my monthly updates. At least she doesn’t suffer the same neglect this blog has been suffering. Here’s proof. Does this look like the face of neglect? I think not.

*I forgot to add this footnote. Lo reminded me. Now I don’t remember what clever thing I was going to say about my neglected hygiene. Is neglected hygiene ever clever? I didn’t think so. I’ll leave it at that.

You know you have been away from your blog too long when your information is no longer saved in the comment area of other people’s blogs and you actually have to log in to Flickr to upload pictures. I think the original date on this post was June 19. I got as far as the title. I had planned a multi-volume series of stories and observations, and it was going to be possible to have multiple volumes because I was going to post at least 4 times a week. Right. At least this is only…what, week 4? There is still time to catch up. Except that I can’t remember the stories and observations meant to make up volume 1. Oh well.

A brief recap of the past few weeks:

• I am happy to report that my sister located a Wee Hairy Beastie at the Ikea near her house in California.
• Mia turned 6 months old. How has half a year already passed?
• My neighbor Robin was in a car accident involving a train two weeks ago. She is in intensive care in Charlotte. Unfortunately that’s all I know–she was flying to Arizona for some sort of detox/retreat and never made it to the airport, but since she is single and has no family around here, the news got back to her local friends and neighbors quite slowly. Another neighbor was planning to visit her this past weekend–I am still waiting for news from her. Please send positive thoughts Robin’s way.
• Mia had her first “vacation” at my friend Nancy’s cottage in the NC mountains. She attended her first square dance, saw her first swan, and put her feet in a real mountain stream for the first time. She also got lots of quality time with Nancy, who was one of my undergraduate professors, and who, for as long as I’ve known her, has always kept her distance from small children. But sinc