Edgar and I went to see Inception this weekend.
Well done, movie, well done.
It's time
Wow, there I go again, totally not updating my blog regularly as I should be. Not cool, Amanda, not cool.
Life over the past month has just been relatively relaxing and I've been trying not to test the system or muddy the waters or whatever...I like this peace and I would like for it to stay that way for as long as possible before my world explodes into things like labor and a pooping baby and the mangling of nipples in October. NIPPLES. I said it.
The clouds sort of feel like they've been lifted since I no longer have the threat of "My dad is dying from cancer" hanging over my head. It's been replaced with other worries about him, but those worries regarding his recovery seem much smaller now that, you know, he doesn't have a huge fucking tumor growing on his liver anymore. He has been readmitted to the hospital due to some fluid build-up and a persistent lack of appetite that's resulted in him losing a whole lot of weight and a whole lot of muscle mass, but his surgeon has him on a plan for physical rehabilitation (in-patient if his insurance company approves it, at home if not). Recovery from a surgery like the one he had takes months, many months, and now it's just a waiting game to see when he'll turn that corner. But I (and I'm pretty sure he feels the same way) would much rather wait for that corner instead of the drop off the edge of a cliff that we were waiting and fearing before.
Add to that the fact that the June Fucking Gloom is FINALLY gone and life doesn't seem so dark and disturbing.
Plus, Edgar and I made our baby registries this weekend at Target and Babies R Us, and who doesn't love a good registry? There's something about the power of that scanner gun and finding all of the stuff that you need and going "Oooooooooooh, look at this!" and "Awwwwwww, oh my god we have to get him this!" that just makes you melt inside. That melting feeling is good when you need to take the edge off the fact that you just spent over $350 in one shot on baby clothes (but you saved over $120 with the sale that was going on, so that makes it ok, right? Right? RIGHT?). I'm going to look at it this way....the child needs clothes. It's money that had to be spent. And this way we can register for the other essential stuff that we need and don't have to tell people, "Ok, now I need 6 month clothes, buy 6 months clothes. NO! No more 3 month clothes, I don't need 3 month clothes!"
Now the only trick is just getting people to buy off of the registries. I REALLY hate when you make a registry and people don't buy off of it or give you a gift card. The point of the registry is to say "This is what I need/want." It's not to say "Please don't buy me these things and instead buy me what you think I need/want, even though I know better. And also, please definitely don't include a gift receipt so that I have to look like an ungrateful asshole when I ask for it or else suffer in silence because I'm too embarrassed to do so." When we got married, Edgar and I took the time to make two different gift registries. Most people stuck to them; they either bought off the registry or sent us gift cards or money. But some random aunt of Edgar's went out and bought us this ludicrous centerpiece flower/candle combo thing WHICH WE WILL NEVER USE and didn't even give us a receipt to go along with it. I appreciate the gesture of giving a gift, and I don't mean to sound selfish, but COME ON. Come freakin' on. These registries are made for a reason. My mother-in-law doesn't understand my persistence on this point; when I was talking to her the other day regarding my baby shower, I made the point to tell her when she sends out the invitations to include the little inserts that say where I'm registered, and that if her friends ask her for suggestions on what to buy that she tells them to buy off of the registry. And she's all "Well, but....well, if they want to buy something else they should!" and I'm all "No. No. RE-GIS-TRY. Registry. We made them for a point, we are giving a clear guide of what we need. People do not need to waste their money buying something that we don't need or want, because they won't even have the courtesy to give us a receipt. REGISTRY."
I still don't think she gets it. And maybe it makes me sound selfish. But if I'm going to a wedding or going to a baby shower, I would NEVER buy something that the bride/groom or mommy-to-be/daddy-to-be didn't register for. I would buy them a gift off the registry, or get them a gift card to one of the stores that they registered at, or just give them a check or cash. I would NEVER be like "Well, I think I know better than you what you want and/or need so I'm going to ignore the very nice and helpful list that you spent the time creating and get you something totally off-base."
I think it's partially a generational thing as well, because I think that's how most of the people in my age group feel. No offense to anyone in the world intended, but I think that it's mainly the older generation that just doesn't get it or refuses to get it. IF YOU THINK YOU'RE YOUNG ENOUGH TO HAVE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT, YOU'RE YOUNG ENOUGH TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BUY OFF A REGISTRY.
Whew, that rant came out of nowhere.
Moving on. Moving riiiiiight along. Back to what I was talking about before. Oh yes, relaxation.
Right now is the calm before the storm at my job.....the summer months are slow leading up to when August 1st hits and all hell breaks loose, so I'm really trying to enjoy the pace that I'm at right now before everything goes crazy again. Couple that with the fact that I'm officially in my third trimester (HOLY GOD, I'M HAVING A BABY) and that my body is about to turn on me and I'm treasuring these moments while I still have them.
I'm perpetually tired all the time, so I'm taking that as a sign that nature is preparing me for the fact that after October I will not be getting a good night's sleep for, oh, say, EIGHTEEN YEARS. My belly has also officially protruded enough that it is becoming difficult for me to move in some of the ways I used to. And I miss my old center of gravity. I don't think I have a new one yet, so I'm just kind of wobbling and wavering out here. Plus, the only way I'm comfortable when I sleep is on my back. I've talked about it before--I WANT TO SLEEP ON MY BACK. But I'm not allowed to sleep on my back and so I sleep on my side, or, more accurately, I fail to sleep on my side, and it's all a huge mess.
A few weeks ago somebody asked me how my pregnancy has been up to this point, and I was like "You know, I'll dare say pleasant." The universe has struck me down, because the last couple of weeks have brought on the unpleasantness, at least relatively to what I was experiencing before. It's nothing catastrophic....I'm not the co-worker of Edgar's that has been experiencing morning sickness so severe that she can't even smell food without throwing up, I'm not the family friend who is only three months along yet is already leaking from her breasts. Compared to them, I'm totally ok. I'm just getting uncomfortable. And I'm slightly anemic now, which means that I've had to start taking additional iron supplements. And for those of you that have ever taken iron supplements before....I miss pooping like a normal person. Really. It's totally uncool.
So here I am, two trimesters under my belt, one more to go, baby clothes debt piling up around my ankles, starting to freak out just a teensy bit about what I've gotten myself into. In a good way. I would make tomorrow October 11th if I could. Because even though I think it's absolutely ridiculous that the universe is going to let me take a baby home and raise it I TOTALLY CAN'T WAIT.
Envy
How much do I love Dior's Cruise 2011 collection? Oh, If only I had money. *sigh*
And a size 2 frame. *big sigh*
On the other side
I' m back from Indiana. My dad came out of surgery like a champ and is doing excellent by all accounts. I'm not going to go into huge details of the minutiae of his recovery (my sister has a bare-bones chronicle here), except to say that he kicked serious amounts of cancer-ass and I couldn't be prouder of him. It was a highly emotional and physically exhausting week, and I haven't even mentioned the part about where my plane landed in the middle of a FREAKIN' TORNADO. Back home again in Indiana, indeed.
Cancer
It's time to talk about the cancer. This is going to be difficult to write because the fact of the matter is that it makes me so angry every time I think about it that I have to take a step back in order to calm down.
My dad has been feeling sick ever since around Thanksgiving last year. It started with digestive problems. He started to become unable to eat very much without getting severe stomach pains or having to subsequently spend an hour in the bathroom afterwords. This continued for several months without getting better; trips to the doctor did nothing to shed light on the problem. He started losing weight. Lots of weight, very fast, because he could hardly eat anything.
In January, doctors discovered bleeding in his abdomen. The bleeding was caused by what looked like lesions in the lining of his stomach. They pegged that as the problem and put him on medications that were essentially supposed to coat his stomach to help repair the lining.
It did not help. He continued to have problems and continued to lose weight.
In early April, while having extensive blood work done, a doctor noticed that he had an extremely low red count, white count, platelet count....his blood wasn't good. She told him that he had leukemia.
My dad had to make a very harrowing phone call to me to tell me, a phone call that he was scared to make in the first place because we hadn't spoken in months. I had gotten very angry at my dad in February when shortly after I told him that I was pregnant, and emphatically stated that he and my mom were not to tell anyone until I was out of my first trimester, he posted the news of my pregnancy on his Facebook page. I'm 25 and I had to be mad about something that another person had posted on his Facebook page. Junior high much? I was angry. I think I had every right to be angry. But when your father is choking back tears and telling you that he has cancer, things like that go out the window. Things like that are forgiven. If you can't do that you pretty much suck at life and I don't think I would want to be friends with you.
This diagnosis was given early in that week in April. His biopsy was scheduled for that Friday, and he was told that he was going to be starting chemotherapy on Monday. Sounds like they're all pretty sure about that leukemia, right? WRONG. His biopsy results came back negative. No leukemia.
WHAT KIND OF WHACKO NUT JOB BALL LICKER DOCTOR TELLS SOMEONE THAT THEY HAVE CANCER WHEN THEY DO NOT ALREADY HAVE DEFINITIVE PROOF THAT PERSON HAS CANCER?
So now it's not leukemia, but he's still really fucking sick. That's when the doctor notices that, oh, gee, his vitamin B12 level is dangerously low and he has almost no iron in his blood. Let's start you on this round of aggressive daily injections of B12 and iron and see how your blood work looks in a month. That could be the cause of the extreme fatigue and you should start to feel better after your levels go up in a couple of weeks.
Except he didn't feel better. He felt the same. Then worse. And then the blood tests came back and all of his blood count numbers were even lower than before. And the whole time I'm thinking "Shouldn't the fact that someone has such low iron in his blood, which means he's anemic, be pretty evident to anyone who went to med school that looks at his test results? Has it really taken them 6 whole months to come to the conclusion that, oh, look, you need more iron and then this agony can end?" Of course not. Because it can never be that simple.
Someone finally had the brilliant idea to scan his abdomen after his spleen became so enlarged that when he lays down he can see it poking out of his side. That's when they found it. A tumor on his liver about the size of the palm of your hand.
They had to do another scan, called a PET scan, after locating the tumor to make sure it didn't spread to, or had spread from, another location in his body. Primary liver cancer is very rare in someone like my father; it is seen mostly in people that are either HIV positive or who have had hepatitis or cirrhosis. Usually in people like him the cancer has spread from somewhere else. In what seems like the only amount of good news that has come out of any of this, if you could ever consider anything cancer related to be good news if it's not the headline CURE FOR CANCER DISCOVERED, the cancer in his liver was the only cancer found.
Surgery is the only treatment option for liver cancer. His oncologist told him that chemotherapy and radiation treatments had been shown to have very little effect in dealing with this kind of tumor. He was told by the oncologist that he would have a meeting with the surgeon the following Friday, at which time they would schedule a surgery to remove the tumor and the entire left lobe of his liver.
EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THE SURGEON DOES NOT HAVE OFFICE HOURS ON FRIDAYS, BECAUSE GUESS WHAT? SHE'S IN SURGERY. She only meets patients for consults and scheduling two days a week, not Fridays, and nobody bothered to tell my dad that until a day before what he thought would be his appointment. So then he had to wait until later the next week when she would be able to see him. For anyone keeping track, that would make it two weeks between "You have a tumor growing inside of you" to "Hi, I'm your surgeon"+handshake.
So there he is, two weeks later, meeting with the surgeon, and she tells him she doesn't think surgery would be in his best interest at that time. His spleen is huge and swollen, and apparently the spleen and liver kind of work together in there, and the pressure in his spleen is so high that he could stroke out during surgery. Plus his liver physiology of veins and arteries is "not normal", making any surgical procedure on it more difficult. She recommended a 6-8 week course of chemo and radiation to shrink the tumor prior to operating on it, which would also give time for them to address the swelling in his spleen.
But wait, didn't I just say that the oncologist said that chemo and radiation would not work for him? Yes, that is correct. But, according to the surgeon, she specializes in the liver and has seen this type of cancer a lot, and she knows that it can be effective. The oncologist deals with all types of cancers, so liver isn't her specialty and she just has to go with what she's read.
The surgeon told him she would need a few days to consult with her colleagues to see if they would do the same thing and would get back to him. Meanwhile, go get your chemo and radiation scheduled. So now we move to the next week, the next week being last week, where my dad is schedule to start chemo the following Monday (this past Monday, the 7th) and is waiting to hear about when he'll go in to have little radioactive seeds implanted in his tumor. At which point the surgeon emails him and tells him, hey, you know what, I looked at your films again and I don't think it's in your best interest to wait anymore. Let's do the surgery.
For anyone still keeping track, it's been a month and a half between when he was told that he had a tumor on his liver and now. A month and a half where ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING has been done about it. NOTHING has happened to treat him, only to yank him around, to lift his hopes and drop them down. To be faced with "Yes, we're going to cut this cancer out of you and it will be gone" to "Nope, now you have to wait 6-8 weeks" to "Ok, now we're going to operate, even though I thought it was too risky to do in the first place." AND THAT FUCKING TUMOR IS STILL IN HIS BODY. Growing. Possibly spreading.
He's tried to keep a brave front through all of this, boasting that he'll be alive to see my child graduate from high school, but a man can only take so much. Two weeks ago he had to begin taking anti-anxiety medication, anti-depressants, and a sleep aid. BECAUSE HE HAS A FUCKING TUMOR GROWING IN HIS BODY AND THESE MEDICAL 'PROFESSIONALS' CAN'T GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER.
I want to punch every doctor that has seen him in the face. And the balls, if they have balls. And to tell them THAT THEY'RE ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKING DOUCHEBAGS AND ARE A DISGRACE TO THEIR COLLEAGUES. And I mean it. Seriously. So it's November, it's December, it's January, and you have a patient with severe abdominal pain and you can't figure it out. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, would you not order a scan of the patient's abdomen? If this had been done then, seven months ago, they could have seen the tumor then. And taken it out. SEVEN MONTHS AGO. When it was smaller. When his spleen wasn't so swollen that he's at a risk for stroking out on the table. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, would you tell a man and his family that he has leukemia when you don't know for a fact that he has leukemia? WHY, in the name of all that is good and holy, WOULD YOU TELL A MAN THAT HE HAS A TUMOR ON HIS LIVER AND THEN NOT DO ONE FUCKING THING ABOUT IT FOR SIX WEEKS BESIDES SHOVING HIM OFF ON THE NEXT PERSON, OR THE LAST PERSON, OR HOW ABOUT THIS PERSON?
And it's not like he has some shit health insurance. He's got good insurance. These should be good goddamn doctors.
He finally met again with the surgeon today for pre-op appointment. His surgery has been scheduled for next Thursday, June 17th. It's scheduled to last for 5 hours. And it doesn't look good. While no surgery where someone is being put under general anesthesia and being cut open can ever be considered low-risk, his is considered ever more dangerous due to his enlarged spleen and the fact that the tumor is located merely a millimeter away from a major vein. There's a high probability for bleeding. The surgeon thinks that she can get the tumor out though, and since this is his only treatment option there's really no other choice, unless you consider dying a painful and wasting death from liver cancer to be another option. There's a high probability for bleeding, but there will be a transplant surgeon involved as well in case the necessity comes up that he needs repair done to his veins due to trauma during the surgery.
The fact is, this surgery is dangerous. And a whole hell of a lot could go wrong.
And I'm scared.
I'm flying to Indiana this weekend to spend a few days with my dad and my family prior to the surgery. Assuming all goes well I'll be coming back home the following Saturday, a couple of days after the surgery. I have to do this without my husband by my side; it's pretty much impossible for him to take time off of work right now. In the last month his counterpart in the office quit, doubling his workload, and another person got fired, leaving the new guy that was coming in to replace the guy that quit to now be allocated to do the job of the one that was fired, meaning the whole operation falls apart without Edgar. It also will mark our longest separation, since, oh, when we started dating, and it's going to be hard to do this without him holding my hand.
No puking here
I'm not going to spend a lot of time regaling everyone with a week-by-week snapshot of my pregnancy, mainly because the pregnancy itself has been pretty uneventful. Aside from discomfort when I try to sleep, I'd almost venture as far to say that it's been downright pleasant.
I know I'm lucky. I know I'm lucky that I did not have to deal with gut-wrenching morning sickness or swelling to the size of a small county. My mom told me that she did not have morning sickness with any of her three pregnancies, so I guess it's just something that I inherited from her. There were three days in a row around the sixth week where I would get nauseous around midday, but since then I haven't had a problem. My only first trimester problems were typical; my already large boobs seemingly doubled in size and became so sore that I had to smack Edgar in the head any time he so much as looked at them. And I spent several weeks having to pee every 10 minutes.
As far as the crazy pregnant lady cravings go, I haven't really had any. I've only found that foods whose smells I found offensive before being pregnant are even more so now that I am pregnant. And things that smelled good prior to being pregnant now smell even better. I don't ever find myself craving anything in particular, however I've found that I'm much more prone to the powers of suggestion. I smelled reheated pizza the other day at work (you know that smell, that steamy fresh crust smell) and couldn't stop thinking about it until I got home and told Edgar "Forget what we were having for dinner, we're having pizza now."
I'm grateful that I have not had a problem with craving foods that are unhealthy for me because my weight gain is something that I do have to keep my eye on. To date (22 weeks) I've only gained 5 pounds. I was overweight when this pregnancy started, so my weight gain target is much lower than any "normal" weight woman would expect. Considering that the baby has most of its growing left to do, I think I'm at a pretty good point.
My only real beef with pregnancy to this point (besides that whole no-alcohol thing) is sleeping. I'm at the point now where I can't sleep on my stomach or my back, and so I'm stuck sleeping on my sides. But I'm a back sleeper. And I wake up a lot finding myself on my back and having to switch over to my side. Or I find myself lying on my side still awake after being in bed two hours because I CANNOT GET COMFORTABLE. I've already built a fort of pillows in the center of the bed in an attempt to keep me from rolling onto my back in the middle of the night. And it makes me feel bad because I somehow still manage to do it and Edgar is over on his side of the bed clinging to the edge trying desperately not to fall off because his space has been reduced to this little sliver of mattress not being taken up by his pregnant wife and her pillow fort. And one day my kid is going to come home with a C on his math test and I'm going to have to be all I'M SORRY, it's because I accidentally slept on my back when I was pregnant with you. Bad Mommy.
And so it begins
The same day I found out that I was pregnant, I called my doctor as soon as the office opened to schedule an appointment. Rookie move, I now know. I scheduled my appointment for the Friday of the following week, meaning that based on the date of my last period I would only be about six weeks along at the time that I went. I know now that it's really unnecessary to go that early...you're basically just wasting your co-payment money. Then again, it is good if it's the beginning of the year and you have a deductible to meet because DEAR LORD are those lab tests expensive. So you can work on getting that out of the way while you're still in that euphoric state where you aren't thinking about how expensive cribs and travel systems and diapers are.
My first appointment was a nightmare. Actually, let me change that. The first few weeks of this pregnancy were a nightmare. While I didn't feel any different physically, mentally I was a mess. I had made this deal with myself when Edgar and I first started trying to get pregnant that I was going to slow down and breathe. I wasn't going to let things get to me. I was going to be calm. I wasn't going to overreact and freak out and dwell on things that I had no control over. I really truly believe that high strung people have high strung babies. This may not be true for everyone, but I've definitely seen it in myself. I know a couple that are very chill, very go-with-the-flow, and guess what? Their son, who was born last year, is the same way. He doesn't cry that much, and when he does it's not that loud, and other than that he's just happy. Content. Loves his life. Then on the other hand I have a cousin who is so high strung you could pluck her and she would snap, and she's got four kids who were absolute TERRORS as children. I think that kids feed off of the cues that we give them, and I didn't want to give my baby those cues. I wanted him/her to be as healthy and as happy as possible. I'm no biologist, but I know that when you are stressed your body creates stress hormones, and since whatever is in my body is going to my baby as well, I didn't want to create that environment for him.
But I couldn't help it. I was scared. As soon as the shock and excitement of seeing that iffy pink line wore off I started filling up with all of these irrational first-time mother fears. My immediate pressing fear was that I was going to miscarry. Since I had been trying to get pregnant, I found out very early on about my pregnancy. Earlier than most women find out, earlier than the ones who aren't trying to get pregnant get over the denial to actually take a test--earlier than that point when your body or nature or whatever is may make that decision that the pregnancy isn't going to stick. Every time I went to the bathroom I steeled myself against it. Every time I felt a slight cramp I expected the worst. I became highly protective of my belly, afraid that if I even slightly bumped into a counter that I could hurt it.
Then came the appointment. I don't think, even if you aren't full of irrational fears, that the first appointment of a pregnancy can ever be very enjoyable. Because what they fail to show you on TV whenever some perky actress is pregnant is that they do not take the first ultrasound to date your pregnancy by a trans-abdominal ultrasound. Nope. Because new babies are teeny-tiny little things and are way to small to be picked up through the layers of your abdomen. Your first ultrasound is done trans-vaginally. Which means that you're naked from the waist down with an ultrasound wand stuck up your vajayjay that the doctor is turning every which way to get a good view of what's going on in your uterus. And you know how on TV the doctor always says "Ok, this might be a little bit cold" when they squeeze the ultrasound goop onto the perky actress's taut stomach? It's a hell of a lot colder when it's up inside your hoohah. So let's recap. Naked from the waist down. Ultrasound wand. Cold goop in the hoohah. UNPLEASANT.
The news from the ultrasound was terrifying as well for someone with the jitters. My doctor "would not commit" to saying that I was pregnant. She could see something on the ultrasound; something that showed that a pregnancy had started. She could see a sac. But she couldn't see anything in it. Rationally, it was just that it could have been way to early in the pregnancy to see anything. In my mind, I immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. She scheduled me for a follow-up appointment a week later.
When I got home I told Edgar what the doctor said. He of course, and thank God, told me that we had nothing to worry about, that it was just too early. He was a champ during that week, talking me up whenever he could tell that I was brooding over what had happened at the last appointment and what would happen at the next one. I know that my own attitude must have been scaring him (he's self proclaimed as knowing "absolutely nothing" about babies) but he knew I needed support and he was there for me and can I just say that I am so lucky to be going through this with him?
Edgar took the afternoon off of work to come to my appointment the next week and to hold my hand through the whole thing. I can't describe the wave of relief that swept over me as soon as the doctor turned the monitor towards us. The difference that one week made was unbelievable. Where there had been nothing the week before, there was this little itty bitty blob with a pulsating heartbeat in the center. That was our baby.
She dated the pregnancy at 6 weeks 5 days and gave a due date of October 11th. We're kind of hoping for one day early. How cool would it be to have a birthday of 10/10/10?
The Thin Pink Line
Edgar and I found out on the morning of Wednesday, February 3rd that we were going to have a baby. And for a couple that had vigorously been trying get pregnant for the last three months, it was somewhat unexpected. I didn't think I was pregnant; a few days before I had peed on a stick on what would have been the first day of my period and it had come back negative.
At least, I thought it had come back negative. And then Edgar, after examining far more closely than I would something that had recently been doused in urine, said "Wait, is this a line? It kind of looks like a line." I grabbed the test from him and after inspecting it under a brighter light saw the faintest of all faint pink lines, a veritable mirage of a pink line that didn't even extend the entire width of the indicator window as one would expect. I immediately dismissed it as a malfunctioning test.
Because, you see, really, there is no such thing as a little bit pregnant, and this test WAS SHRUGGING ITS SHOULDERS AT ME. Am I pregnant? Eh, could be. Try again later.
THIS IS NOT WHAT PREGNANCY TESTS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. They are designed specifically to test for a pregnancy hormone in your pee. Either you have it, and the test is positive, or you don't, and the test is negative, or you do, but in such a small amount that it cannot be sensed by the test, in which case the test is supposed to read negative. This test was saying 'maybe'. IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU MAYBE. THERE IS NOT A 'MAYBE' READING IN THE INSTRUCTIONS. There is a regular pink line that matches the control pink line, and then there is no pink line. There is not an iffy pink line.
But after not starting my period that day, or the day after, I found my always-regular self getting all excited and confused and scared and crazy and could not wait one more day when the alarm went off for Edgar to get ready for work on February 3rd. I rubbed the crust out of my fuzzy eyes and opened up the last pregnancy test that we had and crossed my fingers. Then waited. Three whole minutes. Because I follow the directions, unlike some pregnancy test that's too totally fucking lazy to do its job. And then......
Is that a pink line? It kind of looks like a pink line.
AGAIN.
Once again, we were faced with the control pink line and a maybe-pink line. This maybe-pink line was definitely darker and thicker than the maybe-pink line before, but it wasn't what we were expecting. We called it a win anyways.
And then Edgar had to go to work and I had to go to work, and I was all WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THIS IN THE MORNING BEFORE WORK, REYNAGA? Because walking around the office going "Holy crap, I'm pregnant" in my head and smiling like an idiot and running to the bathroom every 15 minutes to make sure that I really didn't start my period was not a good look for me. All I wanted was to be at home with Edgar celebrating our victory and naming our baby and dreaming about that baby smell--you know, that smell, when they're all warm and snuggly and you're holding them while you give them a bottle and they're making that cute little gurgling noise and you're patting their butts and watching them jerk their arms around like they're conducting an imaginary symphony and OH MY GOD I'M HAVING A BABY.
Bombshells
It's been almost one entire month since I've written a post on this blog. Life has been kind of overwhelming over the last few months and after severely trailing off in my posting habits and fretting to myself about it I decided to give it up for a little bit just to get my head back together guilt-free. So now I'm going to try to pick up where I left off.
Reasons why my head was not together:
1. My father was diagnosed with cancer.
2. I'm pregnant with my first child.
My friend Jessica just read #2 and slammed her forehead into her monitor in disbelief.
The pregnancy is not new news to me anymore. We've known since the beginning of February that I was pregnant. I'll be writing posts specifically dedicated to this pregnancy and catching up on what has happened so far, but this is the quick version. Our plans were to keep the pregnancy a quiet secret to all but close family until my first trimester was up. Just as that milestone was reached, the diagnosis came down about my father, who had been ill for quite some time. There will be more blog posts dedicated specifically to this battle and what he's gone through so far as well. In the mix of all of that, calling up friends to share the good news and writing blog posts about it in light of the bad news just didn't feel right. And all of a sudden here I am over five months into this pregnancy and the only people I've told are my parents (who I relied on to spread the news through the family) and my co-workers in light of the fact that my belly was about to pop and make the news very obvious on its own.
I have a lot of work to do.
Lolz
My brother-in-law is going to the taping of American Idol today. I wish I could say I was joking.
Needing to move
In "this is another reason I need to get the fuck out of California" news:
A man was shot in the back of the head on the street corner opposite my apartment building on Thursday night.
I heard the shot. I thought it was a car backfiring.
On being wrong
We rented Avatar this weekend. I actually kind of liked it. And saying "I actually kind of liked it" is my way of admitting, and the closest I will ever come to saying, I was totally wrong when I adamantly insisted for a very long time that it looked stupid and why would I want to see a movie full of fake looking blue people?
Being wrong sucks.
Censored
When I was in high school, the bane of my summertime existence was the day that the reading lists arrived. I took accelerated English (freshman and sophomore years) and Advanced Placement English (junior and senior years), so summer reading assignments were a sad, inevitable occurrence that I just had to suck up and bear. Kind of like periods.
Junior year was the year that our reading lists exploded, expanding from 2 or 3 books to around 7 or 8. I love to read, I've made that clear before, but there's something about homework over summer vacation that made every indignant bone in my body stand up and say "Hey! No fair! I want to sleep until noon and then watch a movie and then go over to my friend's house and smoke some pot and eat inordinate amounts of Taco Bell!" Healthy, I know.
The summer reading lists were also a big pain in the ass because you never knew which books you were going to study first once school started. What's the point of reading a book in July if you're not even going to get to it in class until after mid-terms when you're just going to have to read it again because you'll have forgotten everything by that point? What was that thing I was saying about no fair?
Now that I live in California, I keep tabs on what's going on in my hometown by checking out Indystar.com every morning, the website for the Indianapolis Star newspaper. When I looked at it this morning, a headline caught my attention: "District pulls book out of students hands." Ignoring the lack of punctuation (copy editors, where?) in the title I clicked in to the story because I was kind of intrigued: was it a specific student that forcibly had a book pulled out of its hands? Was the district being a big bully and knocking books out of nerdy kids' hands in the hallway like in movies and TV shows? Or were they being a big douche and telling students that they couldn't read a certain book? DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER.
My alma mater is censoring Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison from junior AP English class.
People, people, people. Song of Solomon was on our reading list when I took junior AP English, oh, let's see, nine years ago. I THINK I TURNED OUT OK. I don't smoke pot anymore. Apparently some parent got mad that the book has (oh no!) sex and (eek!) violence and (oh, Lawdy, save us!) profanity. Profanity?!?!?!?! WHATEVER SHALL WE DO NOW? Our sad little Puritanical hearts and minds just can't take it!
I'm sure the parent in question has no problem with his/her son or daughter having their own TV and computer with an internet connection in his/her bedroom. Or unlimited text messaging on their cell phone. Guess what, Mom and Dad? Your kid knows what sex is, is probably already doing it, and I dare you to check their text messages because you know what? YOUR KID IS SEXTING.
This is just totally unbelievable to me. What's even more incredible is that this book has been on the reading list for that class for over 12 years (my sister read it when she took that class two years before me), and only now some parent complains. It's nice to see this regression of open-mindedness after over a decade of that book being taught with no problems. Oh wait, it's not nice, it's hugely and thoroughly disappointing and disgusting. If I recall correctly, we read A Catcher in the Rye in the same class. WANT TO JUMP ON THE BANDWAGON AND BAN THAT ONE TOO?
What makes me even madder is that I owe so much to that AP English class. Because of that class, and others like it, I was able to complete my bachelor's degree in three years instead of four, saving me I don't even know how many thousands of dollars in student loans. I went into college as a sophomore because I had earned so much college credit from those classes. And I got a 5 on that particular AP test, as did a ton of my classmates, because the woman that taught that class, the woman that still teaches that class, was no-nonsense awesome and new how to teach students about literature. I know for a fact that she's not in that classroom sensationalizing sex and violence in a book; she's in there giving those students an education and showing how it illustrates a story of racism and struggle and heartbreak.
I think these parents should be more worried about when their kids get to senior AP English and get that one teacher who only thinks about sex all day every day and relates every single sentence ever written in every work of literature to sex. Why is the knight green in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? BECAUSE IT SYMBOLIZES SEX. What was Chaucer talking about in this part of The Canterbury Tales? SEX. Why is the author of this short story talking about the moon? BECAUSE HE'S HORNY AND WANTS LOTS OF SEX.
Protect your kids from that, you pervert. Oh, and by the way, parents? Ever hear of a library? Your kid can still read that book whenever he or she wants.
Movie critic
Having nothing to do this Saturday, Edgar and I decided to head to Blockbuster and rent a few movies. We ended up with three. Two of them (Pirate Radio and Crazy Heart) were excellent. Phillip Seymour Hoffman rocks my world.
Needing to also fall prey to pop culture phenomenons, when they were out of Avatar we decided to give old New Moon a try. Not because we were expecting a great feat in cinematic marvels, but because we were looking for a laugh and it seemed like a good choice.
And oh boy, did we laugh.
And also kind of gagged a little at the Mormons-hate-gays allegory:
On being a werewolf--
Bella: "Well, why can't you just stop?"
Jacob: "It's not a lifestyle choice!" (read: "Like being gay is!")
Kind of odd since a bunch of guys that look like they spend way too much time in the gym and at the tanning bed spend a lot of the movie running around in tight wet denim shorts. Way to stick to your guns, there, Mormon writer lady! I also like the nice touch that they flew on VIRGIN America airlines. Hello hidden agendas!
Links
The Coolist - Abandoned Places: 10 Creepy, Beautiful Modern Ruins
I love finding features like this. There's just something about abandoned, desolate buildings that make me always want to know more.
As it flashes before my eyes
Edgar and I have sort of developed a routine of going to this awesome Mongolian barbecue restaurant in Manhattan Beach every other Saturday afternoon. This place puts most other restaurants in its genre to shame by the fact that it has a much wider selection of vegetables and meat and it's all-you-can-eat at lunch, when usually lunch is a one time trip at these kinds of places. So basically, you know, AWESOME. Edgar's brother and mother decided to join us this weekend, and that is where all hell breaks loose.
The Toyota Long Beach Grand Prix was happening this weekend, and we live in Long Beach about seven blocks away from part of the track, so put two and two together. No parking. However the street in front of our building has meter parking, but with only a two hour limit, so there are always spaces out front. We had his mother and brother pick us up out front with the plan being that his brother would drive us all to the restaurant; the idea was that neither Edgar or I would have to give up the parking spots that our cars were in and we wouldn't have to search for a space when we got back.
This is the part where Edgar fails to tell me that his brother, who is now 34, barely passed his driving test when he originally got his license.
And apparently failed to ever get better.
And the only time I've ever ridden in a car driven by his brother up to this point was on a trip back from Solvang a few years ago where I was drunk and asleep in the back seat before we ever left the parking lot.
The street in front of our building is one-way. The nearest freeway on-ramp is one block up and several blocks back in the other direction. Our building is also very close to an intersection, the intersection that you would ideally turn left at to head to that block up where the freeway entrance is. So Edgar tells his brother to wait until all of the cars finish going past and then to get all the way over to the left to turn left at the light. And his brother is all "Man, I have to get all the way over to the left?!??" and we're all "Yeah, it's not a big deal."
Except when it is a big deal and someone doesn't bother to check his mirrors to see if any cars are coming before blindly peeling out to cross three lanes of traffic and almost sideswiping three cars in the process. WAY TO GO, BRO. And all of us are like "Oh my god, what are you doing?!" and he's just "Oh, I didn't see them." Because that makes it all right, apparently? So then he takes off to go one more block to catch the left turn, and my god, when he made that left turn I thought I was going to die, because as he turned into the lane he did one of those things where the car is wiggling back and forth like he had no control of it. And I'm all "Uh, excuse me, what is so hard about driving in the middle of your lane?" Same thing at the next left turn. I close my eyes and start taking deep breaths.
Then we're on the freeway. Dear god, the freeway. He drives a Civic. We drive a Civic. I know what "normal" feels like in a Civic. This is not normal. These cars do not fight you to stay in the middle of the lane. You don't have to drive like you're an actor on a TV show and wiggle the steering wheel back and forth. If you do that in one of these cars, you're weaving back and forth across your lane. God, please help me.
And then I start thinking ahead, because I know that the 710/405 interchange is coming up. And I know that this interchange will surely kill me, because 1) it's one of those really circular interchanges where you have to slow way down in order for centrifugal force to not make you fly off the curve and 2) there's hardly any room to merge onto the 405 before you're all of a sudden going back on the 710 in the opposite direction.
And sure enough, we hit that interchange with the posted recommended speed of 25, which means normal people would take it at 35-40, but which my brother-in-law was taking at 60. Where he over-corrected so much that both of the wheels on the right side of the car went over the curb on the shoulder. Every person in the car besides my brother-in-law has grabbed their "Oh shit!" handles (you know, those handles above the door that you can use to help get in or out of the car?), I'm clenching Edgar's thigh, his mother is squealing, and I'm starting to think of all of the things that I wanted to do in life before I died that I'm never going to get to do and how I really don't want the song playing on the radio as I die to be "Sex on Fire" by the Kings of Leon.
All of a sudden we're on the 405, and of course on this Saturday, this part of the 405 has about double the amount of cars and traffic that it normally does for that hour. And his brother then proceeds to wiggle all about his lane for the next 10 miles, never seeming to notice the brake lights in front of him until the last second and at times inexplicably accelerating despite those brake lights.
And I know this whole post makes me sound like I'm one of those drivers, you know the ones, the ones that sit practically on top of their steering wheels and drive 2 miles an hour under the speed limit at all times and accelerate at such a slow pace and brake so far in advance that if you are driving behind them you think your head is going to explode. But I'm totally not. I'm not one of those people. I drive fast and I sometimes follow a lot closer than I should, but I'm a good enough driver to do that without endangering myself and those around me. BUT THIS GUY IS A FUCKING MANIAC. I don't understand how it's possible that he's never been in a car accident.
As we miraculously arrived at the restaurant in one piece, I stumbled out of the car, grabbed my husband's shirt, stared him down, and said "I don't care what excuse you have to use, you will not let him drive us home." Never again. Never ever ever again.
My brother-in-law almost killed me this weekend.
FU FB
Thank you, South Park. I know I'm a little slow in getting this post up, mainly because I'm thanking the show for an episode that it aired almost a week ago, but I have a Tivo, and so I watch things on my own schedule.
Last week's episode took a swing at Facebook, and it didn't disappoint. It hit the nail right on the head and was basically like they took the list of reasons that I have in my head as to why I do not/will not use Facebook and made a whole episode about it. I'll say it outright: I hate Facebook.
Facebook is stupid.
I'll readily admit that when I was in college, what feels like a million years ago, that I had a Facebook page for about six months. Then life got busy and I went a few months without logging into it, and when I finally did again, it had turned into Stalker-Central. There were all of a sudden these news feeds, and so-and-so is now friends with so-and-so which didn't really matter because you had no idea who this other so-and-so was, and people could send you presents and it was all just very confusing and overwhelming and time consuming and it was no longer a good thing. Plus I was sick of getting messages from mouth-breathers saying "You have really pretty eyes, will you go out with me?" No, I will not go out with you. So that was the end of Facebook for me. Deleted.
And then all of a sudden a couple of years ago, Facebook just blew up and now MY GRANDMOTHER HAS A FACEBOOK PAGE. My seventy-three year old grandmother. And my fifty-five year old father. And my sixty-one year old mother-in-law. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? And everyone is so obsessed with it and so concerned about who their friends are and how many friends they have and updating their statuses and playing some stupid farm game WHEN THEY AREN'T EVEN FARMERS and it's just reached this level of ridiculousness and prevalence that is just way too much for me.
I'm too lazy to pick up a phone and call most people that I know, but I don't fake it by being some one's cyber-friend. I'm perfectly okay with what that says about me: I'M TOO LAZY TO CARE ABOUT YOU. Clicking "Accept" to make someone your friend on Facebook does not make them any more your friend than just plain old screening your calls does. It requires no effort.
And newsflash: that person that you haven't spoken to since junior high? THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PICTURES THAT YOU POSTED. THEY'RE NOT EVEN LOOKING.
Never a good thing
You know what is never a good thing? Waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and then as you're stumbling in the dark to put some flip flops on (because the goddamn cat seems to think LITTER PARTY every time the lights go out and then before you know it you're barefoot with cat litter stuck between your toes when all you innocently wanted to do was pee without searing your eyeballs by turning the bathroom light on) deciding that you're thirsty and taking a drink of water out of the bottle that you have next to the bed, because as you start to fall over from losing your balance because that's the kind of thing that you don't have in the middle of the night, you might just sneeze and spray your mouthful of water, along with a nice quantity of snot, all over your pillow.
That? That's never a good thing.
For our eternal souls
As is evident from my last post, Edgar and I participated in his agonizing agreement with his mother on Easter and went to church with her. Good ol' Catholic Church on Easter Sunday for a girl who is in no way Catholic. Who gets nothing out of these services except extreme annoyance at the whole stand-up, sit-down, nah just kidding stand-up again routine that these people have going on.
I'm not joking. Of an hour long service, we spent over 40 minutes on our feet. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE FUCKING PEWS? Get rid of those and you could really pack more people in on the one day of the year when the people who are too fucking lazy and/or really don't care enough to go to church any other day of the year decide that they better take one for the team lest they end up in eternal hellfire. And then promptly forget about it the next day until Easter of the following year.
And I hate that I can be counted among those hypocritical people. I do deflect some of the blame from myself, though, since I don't actually go there for the experience of being at church, but because I'm only there because my husband made a bargain with his mom to make her get off his back about how he doesn't go to church. GUESS WHO DOESN'T HOLD UP HER END OF THE BARGAIN? Plus the fact that these rare church-going days occur on the holidays of Easter, Mother's Day, and Christmas Eve, days that we would then spend with his parents anyways, and so I'm pretty much forced into going to church with them because otherwise I would be that anti-social bitch sitting alone for an hour at his parents' house while waiting for them to get back. Plus I don't want Edgar to have to go through it alone.
Forget what anyone else tells you. THAT is love, my friends.
Oh, and this year we were ever-so-lucky that Section 5 Paragragh 2 Line 3 of this church-going agreement came into play, because we had the [mis]fortune for his mother's birthday to fall on a Sunday in January. And apparently when her birthday is on a Sunday, it becomes a church Sunday. GOODY. A Sunday that this year happened to fall two days after the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. SUPER GOODY. Which means that this pro-choicer had to listen to the beginning of a sermon damning the rights of women to have control over their reproductive systems. Luckily Edgar hates listening to things like that as well and was all "Sorry, Mom, we're outta here."
Wow, this post quickly went somewhere I was not intending it to go.
Mistaken identity
While introducing me to a friend at church yesterday, my mother-in-law said that my name was Tammy.
Tammy is the name of an ex-girlfriend of my husband's from over 6 years ago. He's referred to her several times as crazy.
I'm not sure if I should be more concerned about the fact that my mother-in-law (WHO I LIVED WITH FOR NINE MONTHS) is confusing my name with a crazy person's or with what this says about the state of her memory at 61 years old.
Horrors, Indeed
I've managed to pare my early-morning routine down to about a 15-minute block of time each day before work; pee, shower, brush hair, brush teeth, and mouthwash while I get my clothes out of the closet. No blow-dryer or make-up for me anymore, thank you very much. Those are luxuries saved for the weekend. I think I'm doing a good job of preparing myself for when I have kids.
The advantage of getting ready so quickly in the morning is that it offers me the help of getting to sleep a little bit later each day, precious sleep that I so desperately need in order to function like a real human being and not a zombie.
I have no idea what happened to me. When Edgar and I started dating a mere three years and two months ago, we would (ahem) stay up during the week until around 1am and be out of bed at 5:30 before tackling a monstrous commute to work. And it worked. But somewhere over the past two years, I've totally lost my ability to function like a normal person if I don't get over eight hours of sleep each night. I've even found myself going to bed at 10:00 on the weekends. WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?
Anyways, this new version of me in the morning has also built time into my schedule so that after I'm done getting ready I have a few minutes to just sit down, zone out, stare at the TV, and stew in my own thoughts about how much I hate the stupid drivers that all converge on my commute in the morning. JUST BECAUSE THERE ARE A FEW PEDESTRIANS ON THE SIDEWALK NEXT TO YOU AND A STOP LIGHT A BLOCK AHEAD, THAT'S GREEN BY THE WAY, DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO CREEP ALONG IN FRONT OF ME AT 10 MPH DOWN A CITY STREET. Losers. My TV drug of choice in the mornings lately has been TLC programming. Depending on if I have to be to work at 7:30 or 8:00, the shows on around the time that I park myself on the bed in the morning are either A Baby Story or Clean Sweep. Or at least it was Clean Sweep until this week when they started running that abominable clown-car vagina show 19 Kids and Counting in its place. TLC, I will be sending you an angry letter.
Anyways, on Monday, finding myself ready even earlier than I expected, I sat down to catch the last few minutes of A Baby Story before being shockingly, unexpectedly greeted by the Jim-Bob clan in place of Tava and her sorts and her infectious energy and the carpenter who always spreads the paint on the wall with his fingers. The couple on A Baby Story was a Jewish-Italian family (at least I hope after naming their son Giacomo that they were at least part-Italian). The woman was incredibly obnoxious as they filmed her right after labor ("OH MY GAWD, OH MY GAWD, OH MY GAWD, I TOTALLY DID IT! OH MY GAWD!") and I was half tempted to change the channel, but I decided to stick it out for the "life-after-baby" segment that they show in every episode. For this family, their follow-up was 10 days postpartum for the baby's bris.
And then there was grandma. Oh, crazy old Jewish-Italian grandma, with your crazy teased hair and your crazy fingernails and all of your crazy gold jewelry. Way to play into stereotypes. But after opening her mouth, crazy old Jewish-Italian grandma was even crazier than I thought. Because she was holding the baby (not very well by the way...hey crazy old Jewish-Italian grandma, babies that young cannot hold up their heads, so just holding them up by their arms is probably not a good idea) and she was all "Oh, baby, do you want to dance? Ok?" And she started singing to him and kind of convulsively shaking him around to make him dance. But the thing was....ok here's the thing. She was singing, to this sweet little 10 day old baby that was about to have a very unpleasant experience with a knife, "Little shop! Little shop of horrors! Little shop! Little shop of horrors!" like IT WAS THE GREATEST SONG IN THE UNIVERSE.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. You Are My Sunshine. The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Old MacDonald. These are songs you sing to babies. Not Little Shop of Horrors. Not songs about giant people-eating plants and dentists addicted to nitrous oxide. This is the point where if it was my baby story I would tell Grandma it's time to give the baby back and turn to the camera crew and plead with them to please not turn that film over to their producers.
I'll give you a Ring of Fire
People who sit with their car parked at a curb at 6:30 in the morning with the windows down and the bass turned up blaring Johnny Cash (not that there is anything wrong with Johnny Cash at the appropriate time and volume) when normal people are trying to steal their last few minutes of sleep in the morning NEED TO HAVE THEIR FUCKING BALLS CUT OFF.
Coincidence Again
I've written a few times on this site about my reading quest for the year: 52 books in 52 weeks. I've got a huge list of books that I'm trying to slog through. Right now, I'm tackling the books that I actually have in my possession, a collection that has happily grown over the last four months with the opening of a gigantic $1 used bookstore down the street. My current method of finding out "what do I read next?" goes something like this:
Me: Edgar, pick a number between one and a hundred.
Edgar: Forty-seven.
Me: Thanks.
And then I count through the books that I actually have on the list to number 47 and that's the one I read. Lather, rinse, repeat. I find this is an equal opportunity method. It cuts down on me going "Hmmm, not too sure I want to try that author right now....." or "Hmmmm, that one is kind of long, and the last one I read was kind of long, so I should probably skip to a shorter one...." It doesn't leave me with the responsibility of making the decision, and I like it like that.
The most recent pick-a-number experiment landed me on The Lord of the Rings. I know it's a trilogy (or as I have since learned, not really a trilogy but several volumes of the same story broken up into three sections--so as not to offend the Tolkien-ites) but I had it entered as one item on the list because I have a copy of it that is all three books in one volume. But you can be sure that I'll be counting it as three books towards my total when all is said and done. That trilogy racks up to over 1000 pages, and I already read Atlas Shrugged last year, thank you very much, so I've put in my time with these monstrous tomes.
For someone that really likes to read, it's probably surprising that I've never read these before. It seems like one of those things that everyone has read, just not me. I've started The Fellowship of the Ring several times, but I've never been able to get through more than a few chapters before something else has gotten in the way and distracted my attention. So I guess this is the perfect time for me to read it, since this is my project for myself and I'm making a conscious effort to not try reading four different books at the same time before I end up abandoning all four as a lost cause. The nature of the project is going to make me see this through (famous last words, I know).
Anyways, so here I am, reading the book, la la la, and then I saw online that today is like National Tolkien Reading Day. Which is awesome, because now when I'm standing in line at the DMV tomorrow to pay my renewal for our Civic (SINCE SOME STATE THAT SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS, OH WAIT, IT'S CALIFORNIA, DIDN'T SEND THE FORMS TO ME IN THE MAIL AND WON'T 'RESEND' THEM BECAUSE THEY WOULD RATHER I WOULD COME INTO THEIR OVERCROWDED AND UNDERSTAFFED AND STINKY OFFICE THAN HANDLE A SIMPLE TRANSACTION THROUGH THE MAIL*), reading this book to pass the time, some nerd in the know is gonna be all "Oh, hey, it's my compatriot!" And then I'll have to be all "No, you smell."
*Chalk this up to another reason why California is wearing on my last nerve.
Giveth and Taketh Away
So in my last post I was all mopey, all "I hate California and don't want to live here anymore." And I'm still that way, make no mistake. I spend my free time daydreaming and planning the logistics of what it would be like to live somewhere, anywhere, that is not California.
So after all of my whining, I was pleasantly surprised and excited on Saturday when I was trolling the internet for rentals and found a listing on Craigslist for a 3 bedroom house in Torrance that was going for only $12 more a month than what we are paying now. Everything seemed perfect. Utilities were included, so even though the rent was slightly higher we would still be saving monthly because of the utility cost. It had three bedrooms so it would be a place we could stay in for years. It was less than five miles to my office and less than 10 miles to Edgar's office. It had a yard. A BIG HUGE FUCKING YARD.
So I eagerly sent an email off to the poster that I would like to check it out and Edgar and I hopped in the car to drive by the property to get a first glance at it, hoping that the poster would give us a call while were out in the vicinity. The neighborhood was great. Everyone had yards. Everyone had yards they took care of. NO CONCRETE.
We didn't get a call from the poster that day, but he did email me the next morning.
And that's where it all fell sadly, horribly, irreparably apart.
Manuel, that was his name, told me that he would not be able to show us the house because he was living in South Africa, where he had been transferred for work. But the house was available! And his lawyer in South Africa had the keys and the lease, and they would send us the keys after all necessary agreements had been made.
FUCKING CRAIGSLIST SCAMMERS TRYING TO STEAL MY MONEY AND MY SOUL AND ALL OF MY HOPE IN THE WORLD.
I spent Sunday in bed curled in a ball under the blankets.
Bummed
I've been feeling really low today. A lot of it is probably that I'm really tired and therefore really cranky, but I'm also being gnawed at by an issue that I've thought about many times but that seems to be staring at me down a barrel of a gun lately.
I feel like I'm never going to be able to live anywhere in California but a one bedroom apartment.
I don't understand how people here live in houses. I don't understand how two income families can live in a two bedroom apartment. I don't understand how it's affordable at all. Oh, that's right, it's not. HELLO CALIFORNIA, LAND OF THE MIGHTY FORECLOSURE.
Edgar and I have recently had this idea floating around that we would like to be able to move into a house this year. Nothing fancy, just a two bedroom rental house somewhere in the Redondo Beach area, which is a convenient location for both of us near our jobs. Our original plan had been to live in our current one bedroom apartment through November of 2011. Our thought process was that even when we have a baby, since we have the loft space, that we would have plenty of room to live through that time with a child under one year old. But I just have really strong objections, that I'm hesitant to voice, about raising a child in an apartment.
I don't say that to disparage anyone that has children and lives in an apartment. My brother has children and lives in an apartment. But I just look back at my own childhood, where I always lived in a house. A house with a yard. And if I was living in an apartment with a child in Indiana, where I grew up, I would probably have no problem with this, because in Indiana, apartment complexes have grass and playgrounds and for not that much money at all, you can live in a place where you're not worried about gangs and bad schools and if the people in the apartment below you are smoking crack. You know what California has? CONCRETE. And dirt. And gangs. And middle income families being priced out of rentals in safe suburbs.
And forget about buying a house unless you win the lottery or work in the entertainment industry. I just don't understand how people that make the same amount of money that Edgar and I do can afford $800k for a 1200 square foot house with no yard and no privacy and still have any income left to pay for other important things, like, you know, groceries.
Part of me just wants to say fuck it, pack it all up, and move back to Indiana where life is affordable and a down payment on a nice house doesn't cost two years worth of salary. But I can't do that. I can't ask my husband to pack up his life, find a job in another state, and leave his family and friends behind. He doesn't have that much family here that he sees, only his parents and his brother, but since we're the only potential for grandchildren in his family we can't just leave his parents. I say this in the most loving way as possible, but meeting Edgar and falling in love with him really fucked up my plans. When I moved to California, I figured in the back of my mind that I was only doing it for the life experience, that I would live out here for a few years and then go back to Indiana where life as a whole is affordable. But that went out the window with meeting Edgar (and don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my husband for a chance to move back to Indiana).
But as I look parenthood squarely in the face, California just becomes uglier and uglier and uglier for me. I hate the concrete. I hate the fact that people here don't live in neighborhoods, just rows and rows of streets where houses are interspersed with broken down businesses and the crime incidence link of the residential/business mix that I learned in criminal theory in college won't get out of my head. I hate the traffic. I hate the bars on the windows. I hate the stupidity. I even hate the weather. WHAT I WOULDN'T GIVE FOR A GODDAMN THUNDERSTORM, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
So I feel stuck. And sad. And hopeless. It wouldn't matter if we didn't have a car payment and a few credit card bills a month, because even if we had those to put towards rent for a house, we would still live in a shithole house.
I apologize for what has been an entirely self-indulgent post of me being a whiny mess.
City of Trembling Angels
Here in Southern California we sure love our earthquakes. An earthquake happens, even the most minor tremblor possible to still be classified as an earthquake, and it's like a damn nuclear bomb went off. BREAKING NEWS.
There was a 4.4-magnitude earthquake this morning (at 4:04 am to be exact, you can't make that kind of symmetry up, natch) that was centered less than 10 miles away from where we live. It likely would have gone unnoticed by me had I not been up a few minutes earlier to go to the bathroom. Edgar woke up near the end of it looking confused, and after a "Earthquake. It's over. Go back to sleep" from me he was out like a light in promptly 4.4 seconds. HOW EASY WAS THAT?
But you would think by the media coverage that the ubiquitous Big One had just hit. Now, I grew up in the Mid-West, so earthquakes were new to me when I moved to California. My very first earthquake happened in the middle of the night, and garnered the same response from Edgar to me as I gave to him this morning. I've gotten used to them over time and now they're no big deal to me, even though I do get that little thrill every time the earth just magically starts shaking and rumbling underneath my feet. I'm sure I would feel differently if I was driving and a freeway bridge collapsed or my home tumbled down around my head, but that has never happened so I'm a-okay with earthquakes to this point.
This is Southern California. There are earthquakes. But people are all OH MY GOD AN EARTHQUAKE WITH ALL OF THE SHAKING WHATEVER SHALL WE DO, I THINK I BETTER CALL THE NEWS BECAUSE HOW ON EARTH WILL THEY EVER KNOW ABOUT THE EARTHQUAKE. WITH ALL OF THE SHAKING. Seriously, that's what it's like. On a local news station's website this morning, they mentioned in their story that they received calls from locations "all over the Southland" of people reporting shaking, and then listing the wide array of cities that people called in from. BECAUSE ALL OF THAT SHAKING HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. I just don't get it. The earthquake happened this morning and I was all "geez, I really hope that no fire trucks or ambulances get called from the station near our apartment because I'd really like to go back to sleep now." At no time did it ever cross my mind "I really need to call ABC7 right now because there is obviously no way that they know about this and I really hope they get the scoop over KTLA."
They're the news, people. They know. They're going to talk to the USGS anyways. They don't need you.
Around this time last year there was a mild earthquake, like a 3.0, that was centered out near San Bernardino. Edgar and I were watching TV at the time. The earthquake was literally so slight that I thought it was just Edgar tapping his leg against the edge of the bed. But oh, no, not so. The show were were watching was cut into by BREAKING NEWS, where they proceeded to show the obligatory shot of the seismograph from the USGS shaking it's pen all over the paper while taking a call live from a woman in Fontana. "And I looked at my closet--my closet door was open--and I saw my clothes, and they were just shaking!" And she was so serious that you'd think the Osama Bin Laden himself had broken into her house and staged the worst terrorist attack since 9/11 on her walk-in. And the newscasters were trying to make it a much bigger story than it was, like "Oh, do you have any damages?" And she's all "no, but my neighbor's dog is barking a lot now."
This is Southern California. We have gangs and drugs and paparazzi and Britney Spears not driving all crazy through the streets of Beverly Hills anymore and the Lakers and the Kardashians and wildfires and traffic and pedestrians getting run over on PCH without the drivers of the cars even stopping, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU CONSIDER NEWS? A BARKING DOG? SERIOUSLY, CALIFORNIA? My Caps Lock button shames you.
Poopy Squirrels
Edgar recently celebrated his 34th birthday, and in between counting his gray hairs and rubbing Ben-Gay on his aching old joints, we managed to squeeze in some time to go over to his parents for a belated birthday lunch on Sunday. It was uncharacteristically cold inside of their house (probably my system being in shock from "it has central air conditioning" now being an accurate description of "his parent's house") so we settled into some plastic chairs in the sunshine on their back patio.
Gazing absently into space during a lull in the conversation, I noticed some movement in the fronds of a palm tree out of the corner of my eye. Which is when I discovered them: the Mission: Impossible Squirrels. Or Cirque du Soleil Squirrels, whichever fits your fancy.
There was a squirrel just chilling, hanging off of this palm tree frond upside down and eating berries off of another tree. And every once in a while, he would just casually move to another frond with all of the grace of those acrobatic people that do those routines in the big huge ribbons that hang down from the ceiling. And all the while he was upside down, looking like he was about to dive bomb us at any moment from his position. As he would move up and down the fronds in this position, we began to softly serenade him with the Mission: Impossible theme music, because, you know....seemed appropriate.
So little faux-Ethan Hunt squirrel amused us heartily, even more so when he scampered back into the heart of the palm tree and began fighting with another squirrel that was in there. What happened next can only be described as a Three Stooges movie enacted by the squirrels. They began chasing each other in circles around the outside of the trunk of the palm tree, scooting around the outside trying to stay out of sight of the other. And one of the squirrels, the one that I suspect was the one delighting us with his crazy acrobatics before that, kept himself in this upside down, downward slant the entire time, even when he was trying to keep away from the other squirrel.
Eventually they tired of their chase, and the angry squirrel that was doing the chasing settled on a power line that ran right next to the palm tree. Acrobatic squirrel stayed in downward facing dog pose lower down on the trunk. We had gone back to our conversation, when, during a happenstance glance at the squirrels, I noticed a little black something drop from the squirrel on top and land on the other squirrel.
"Guys."
"What?"
"The one squirrel just pooped on the other squirrel's head."
"NO WAY!!!!"
And in unison, three heads whip around to stare at the squirrels, both as still as statues. Just as another little pellet of poop drops from the one squirrel and whizzes within an inch of the other. And then a third little poo-poo nugget dropped out and landed straight on it's head. THIS IS MOTHER NATURE AT ITS FINEST, PEOPLE. I feel sorry for anyone that has not had the pleasure of seeing a squirrel poop on his little squirrel friend. And I think this is something that is specific only to squirrels, because I have no desire to see a dog poop on another dog or a cat poop on another cat. But there is something that is just too damn funny about watching two squirrels chase each other round and round round and then watch the one poop on the other like "THIS IS WHY I WANTED TO CATCH YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE."
And I emailed my husband three times at work today with an email that said nothing but "POOPY SQUIRRELS!"
Miracle on the 105
I had a dream last night that I was on a plane. And the plane had just taken off but it all of a sudden had to make an emergency landing on the 105 freeway. Except the 105 freeway was in Detroit. And the plane was piloted by the "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot. And I was all "But we have to make it to Indiana for Christmas!" so we had to rent a car in Detroit.
And then I woke up and in those few incoherent moments where your mind is trying to throw off the cobwebs of sleep I was all I CAN'T BELIEVE I NEVER WROTE ON MY BLOG ABOUT THAT ONE TIME I WAS ON A PLANE THAT HAD TO LAND ON THE FREEWAY!
Oh, Amanda.
Overheard
Edgar: Your parents sent me a Best Buy gift card for my birthday. I don't know what I'm going to use it for, there's not really anything I can think of that I need.
Me: It's Best Buy and you're a guy. I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Things I think I think
1. Don't you hate it when people blatantly disrespect your wishes after you make it very clear to them that you would really appreciate it if they would just keep their damn mouths shut about the information that you just shared with them?
2. We've completed 9 weeks of 2010 and I've read 10 books. So far I'm on track to hit my goal of 52.
3. The Oscars are on Sunday and I've only seen 5 of the 10 Best Picture Nominees. I failed in my quest.
4. Don't you hate it when that stupid motherfucker in your parking lot at work purposefully comes to work early SO AS TO STEAL YOUR PARKING SPOT?
5. I need to get a haircut.
6. I hope Edgar likes his birthday presents.
7. I'm out of my favorite juice and I really don't want to go to Wal-Mart to get it...but Wal-Mart sells it almost two dollars cheaper than everywhere else so they are forcing my hand.
8. I hope I win the lottery tonight.
9. We're driving to Simi Valley tomorrow and there are supposed to be torrential rains. Dear Weatherman-in-the-Sky, please save your torrential rains until after we get there because California drivers are stupid and I can't take the stress.
10. Strawberry Pop-Tarts rock my world.
Smooth sailing at last
I've written before about how my car has a mind of it's own. Like when I press on the accelerator and the car does not speed up at an equivalent rate as to how much I'm pushing my foot down, how it groans and sputters as I try to urge it to go after sitting idle for a while. How it sometimes forces me to look death right in the face because I've turned on red and now all of a sudden it won't accelerate past 10 miles an hour and if it had been behaving normally I would be so far away from the intersection by now and not bugging anyone but now OH HOLY GOD I'M GOING TO DIE.
Like that.
Driving home on Thursday of last week, the check engine light came on in my car right as I left work and experienced one of those "Go, car, go you fucker!" moments. Probably not good, right? I noticed it sputtering more than usual the entire way home, which was disconcerting because that behavior normally stops after a few minutes once the car is sufficiently warmed up. Which is still ridiculous because me? I live in California. IT'S ALREADY FUCKING WARM. So what did I do? I made Edgar drive the car on Friday because it was my day off and I had errands to run and if I don't leave the parking garage where we park the Neon by a certain time in the morning we would have to pay $12 to get it out. And do you really want me to have to make multiple trips to that parking garage to lug back all of the groceries and YOUR BIRTHDAY PRESENTS THAT I'M BUYING TODAY? Good luck on the 405, buddy.
We were going to take the car to have it looked at on Saturday, but the skies decided to open up on Friday night and Edgar left the window in the loft open and the couch got completely soaked by the water coming in, so we had other pressing matters to deal with on Saturday and the car got shunted to the side. Plus it continued to rain throughout the day on Saturday and that never seems like a good time to go to a mechanic.
We set out on Sunday to finally get to the bottom of the engine light issue. The original plan was to take it to the Midas a few blocks away, but when we got there, it was closed. What is wrong with this world that a car repair place is closed on a Sunday? You'd think Saturdays and Sundays would be these peoples' bread and butter from walk-ins that were too lazy to take care of the problem on the day that it presented itself and does that sound like anyone you know?! So I had the brilliant idea that we should go to Auto-Zone. The Auto-Zone doesn't have a garage, but a few years ago when I had an engine light come on I was able to go to one and use an On Board Diagnostic scanner for free to find out what the problem was. So after waiting in line for 20 minutes at Auto-Zone, they tell me that they can no longer lend their scanner out because someone sued them about it, but do I want to buy one of my very own for $60? Goodbye, Auto-Zone. The guy suggested that we give Aamco a try. Guess who else is closed on Sundays? AAMCO. So we double back and try out a Napa Auto Parts. Nope, they don't have a scanner. How about you try Kragen? So we go there, and after listening to this crazy lady yell at her son to Put down that damn bottle, if you touch anything in here that doesn't have your name on it one more time I'm gonna drop kick you (lucky his name wasn't Armorall, huh?) we finally, FINALLY are told after visiting all of those places that the law has been changed and no one can lend out an OBD scanner. THANK YOU ALL OF THOSE OTHER PLACES THAT COULD HAVE JUST TOLD ME IN THE FIRST PLACE THAT IT'S NOW AGAINST THE LAW AND NOT SUGGEST THAT I TRY THIS PLACE. AND THEN HOW ABOUT THIS PLACE. Motherfuckers.
While searching out all of these auto-parts stores, we happened to spot this filthy garage that I normally would never have gone near. I'm usually a believe in if my brother can't fix it, I need to go to one of those places that's definitely on the up and up and has those huge vehicle bays and stacks of tires and smells like rubber and interior cleaner and is attached to a huge store that peddles shiny hubcaps and special towels to wash your car with. This place was in a dilapidated-looking building with a surrounding lot crammed full of cars that looked like they hadn't been moved in years.
This place was my savior.
It was run by a Filipino guy who had a garage dog with bug-eyes named Princess. We told him what was going on and he was like "Oh, no problem, let me check it out for you." He used his scanner to check it out FREE OF CHARGE. Then he popped the hood, pulled out a spark plug wire, and said "This is your problem." All we had to do was buy a new set of spark plug wires, and he replaced them on the spot for $25.00. No waiting.
BLESS YOU, FILIPINO MAN. My car now runs incredibly smoothly. Turns out the problem all along was that the spark plug wire was messed up and misfiring, and that was what was causing the car to stutter and sputter and be an all around asshole.
But what pisses me off, is that the last time I took this car for a tune-up at one of those fancy-schmancy garages, they told me that "Oh, it's fine, that sputtering is just caused by the age of the car. This tune-up will fix it." The car that is only now seven years old. And it didn't fix it. Dirty grubbing money stealers.
All is well in the world again. Except that the windows are open in the apartment and it's apparently going to rain and now the couch is going to be all wet again.
Count me out
If all of the US Census workers are like the one that came to interview us on Thursday night....well, then, I think they should all just sit down and stop now, because AIN'T NO GOOD GONNA COME OF THIS.
We got selected for the special part of the Census, the part where besides just counting you and getting your ethnicity you get asked all sorts of socio-economic questions about the prior year. The point is that they follow-up with you a year or two later to watch how the picture evolves. We represented 2,500 households. So I'll just say now, please discount 1 out of every 2,500 people when the data actually comes out because ours will be all wrong.
First, the guy was hardly computer literate, and the whole thing is done by computers. He asks, we answer, he enters it on the computer, next questions please. Except he was having a really hard time entering it on the computer. There was one point where we sat in silence for over twenty minutes because he couldn't figure out how to get it to go to the next questions. That's a really good sign, no?
Then there was the part where he kept entering the wrong information. Like the part where he entered Edgar's mother's name as 'Diaz.' Let's think, Census guy. Have you ever met any woman by the name of 'Diaz'? Or any man, for that matter. We had clearly told him that her name was Elena, then he clearly spelled out her last name, of which 'Diaz' is only a part of it. But then he kept asking questions like "Did Diaz work for pay in 2009?" and "Where was Diaz born?" And it wasn't like he was just calling her by her last name (because just Diaz isn't her last name) because he correctly called Edgar's dad Jose the entire time with all of his questions about him.
Then there was the part where he couldn't keep our assets separate. The interview questions aren't structured well, or at least he wasn't very good at asking them, but he would ask a question that would just pertain to Edgar but look at us like he expected the answer to be for both of us. The questions were asking about our assets and our debts, and when he was asking about our cars, to Edgar, I clearly told the guy "The cars are not in his name. Do you still want the information? Because they're not his so they're not his assets." He was all, oh, only the stuff in his name, and so we were like no cars for Edgar, but then because we had already mentioned the cars he wanted it then. And we were all "These aren't Edgar's." And then he took it anyways. And the same when it got to my part of the interview. Because I was like "You already counted the cars for him. It's not a joint asset, they're individual." So he took them again. So according to the US Census we have four cars. Same with our savings account (my name only). Same with our credit card debts (our cards are individual). So basically, EVERYTHING WAS WRONG.
The packet of information he gave us included a copy of a letter from Congress to the President in 2007 urging him to not cut funding for this part of the Census because it's vital for them to get a good understanding of the economic picture in the country. But I have to say, if all of the Census workers were like this guy, and by 'like this guy' I mean that they're all idiots, then I might have to retroactively agree with Bush on this one, because IT'S A BIG FUCKING WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.
I live in Long Beach, I can learn how to throw down
I think that a parking lot war is about to begin at work. I feel it in my bones.
I've written before about the unwritten rules of parking etiquette at work. The jist of the notion is that most people, even when not assigned a parking spot, find a comfortable spot that they like to park in every day when they go to work and then park in said space every day. It's a habit. A routine action. All of my co-workers do it. Tell me who you're looking for, and I will tell you what spot they park in. There are tons of other cars in the lot that I don't know who their drivers are, but I know that they park in the same spot every day.
But, BUT, there is some jackass that is totally messing up my parking routine. I have been parking in the same spot for six months. When I first started working this job, I would bounce around the parking lot, trying out a new spot every day until I found the one that worked for me. And once I found it, I stuck with it, and I park there all the time. I didn't steal anyone else's spot. There's nothing special about this parking spot. But that is not the point. Who can say why people choose to park in the same spot every day? I don't know, it must be a chemical thing. You don't park in your neighbor's garage, do you?
For the past two weeks, there has been some loser in an old-model silver Honda CRV that has been trying to take my spot. And every day that they don't get it, they park in the spot on the driver's side of my car. And every time they do that, they keep moving further and further across the double white line separating the parking spaces making it harder and harder every day for me to get in my car. It's as if they're taunting me, saying "How long you gonna take it, huh? Give me the damn spot now and this all can be over!"
I WILL NOT TAKE THIS PARKING SPOT BULLYING! I wish I knew who it was. It's not one of my co-workers, but we are in a fairly small office suite in a four story building. And it irks me as I sit at my desk every day that somewhere in that same building is a motherfucker that doesn't understand parking spot etiquette.
STOP TRYING TO STEAL MY SPACE LEST MY KEYS MAGICALLY SCRAPE YOUR DOOR.
Skate to the heart
Sometimes, the universe makes me laugh. Because I'm the type of person that takes pleasure in seeing people get what's coming to them. Does that make me a bad person? No. THAT MAKES ME ENTERTAINED.
Take, for example, this video:
Arrogant jackass, no?
Now read this article:
Blunder costs skater a gold
The universe just PWNED you. And I laughed.
Observations
1. Why do people who ride bicycles insist on riding them in the street when there is a perfectly good sidewalk right next to it? I mean, I comend you for doing your part to ease traffic congestion and be green, or to lead a healthier lifestyle by getting more exercise, or for finding a cheaper alternative after your car got repo-ed, but seriously.....GET OUT OF MY WAY.
2. Someone in my apartment building is unabashedly smoking the sticky-icky green stuff every day. Whenever I approach the buildling from the parking garage I'm all WHOA. CONTACT BUZZ.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah....Iran
I've mentioned before that when I was in high school I was a part of the institution so lovingly known as show choir. Glee it was not. We had competitions every year in the winter, and if there was one thing that you absolutely did not forget to bring to competitions, it was this: BIG HAIR.
I have very disagreeable hair. I have a ton of hair, but it's very fine in texture, and therefore very limp. It won't hold style, and it is generally content to lie flat against my head with no volume whatsoever. I've tried all the gels, all the mousses, all the different hairbrushes, but it's all for nothing. FLAT HAIR. Not big hair.
This lack of big hair therefore required some serious attention going into these competitions. While the other girls could all slap some hot rollers in their hair an hour before going on stage, apply a generous amount of hairspray, and then be good to go for both performances in the general round and then in the finals, I had no such luck. Competition time required that I borrow perm rollers from my cousin that owned her own hair salon and weigh my head down with said rollers for over 12 hours.
It would work like this: Competitions were on Saturdays. On Fridays after school, we would have a several-hours-long rehearsal, then run through our program for friends and families that came to watch. We would all eat dinner together, and then everyone would go home to get some rest before getting up at the ass crack of dawn the next morning to head off to the competition. After parting ways for the evening, I would go home, take a shower, and then roll my wet hair up into those perm rollers. And I had really long hair, so that was A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT OF PERM ROLLERS. My friend Jessica would often come over to help me get my head all done up.
During my senior year in high school, the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City. Jessica and I were working on my hair while we watched the opening ceremonies one Friday evening. If you watched the opening ceremonies in Vancouver this weekend, you may have noticed that it is tradition that the country's names are read during the March of Nations first in French and then in English. And you may have also noticed that while some names are very similar in both French and English that some are wildly different. And while watching that, I had a flashback to that night during my senior year, hair full of perm rollers, watching TV with Jessica, and that announcer's voice saying "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.....Iran."
It's Iran. Two syllables. And it was blah blah blah blah blah blah blah in French. COME ON, FRENCH PEOPLE, HOW COMPLICATED IS THIS?
Jessica and I laughed for about ten minutes straight that night at the absurdity of the fact that the name for Iran in French was so ridiculously long. And I know it's totally silly, and that you totally had to be there, but you know those moments? The moments that eight years later you stll remember and laugh at? Those are the best. Thanks, Olympics.
And just as a side note: my hair was MAGNIFICENT.
Up in the air
Edgar and I made the decision a few weeks ago that we would fly to Indiana this year for Christmas. I saw my parents at Thanksgiving last year, but other than that, I haven't seen any of my family, with the exception of my aunt, uncle, and cousin that live here in California, since Edgar and I got married in September 2008. So by the time we get out there for Christmas 2010 it will have been over 2 years since the last time I saw my brother, my sister, my two adorable nieces, and my dogs. Yes, even though I haven't lived with my parents for five years, I still consider their dogs to be my dogs.
Except now, I'm just concerned about even getting to Indiana in the first place. Flight information recently became available for the dates that we are going to be flying, and I'm convinced that the universe is trying to kill us. There is ONE non-stop flight between LAX and the Indianapolis airport on the dates in questions. That is a red-eye. I've taken that flight before. The memory of the screaming children and the busted air-conditioning is enough to make me swear off night flights for the rest of my life. Except that every single other one-stop flight has a layover in either Chicago (and who the hell would ever intentionally go anywhere near the airport in Chicago at Christmas time without a gun to their head) or Cleveland (also risking lots of winter storms and frightening delays). But the worst part, the ABSOLUTE WORST PART, is that every connecting flight is on either a tiny Embraer plane or on a Turbo-prop.
That's right, a plane with PROPELLERS.
I guess I should probably take a moment here to say that I am terrified of flying. I don't know why. I never used to be. But as I've gotten older, the excitement of flying just went away and now I'm just really concerned with the possibility of the plane that I'm on just falling out of the sky.
I know that I'm being unreasonable. I know that there are laws of physics that keep the thing in the air. So I shouldn't be worried. Because laws are unbreakable, RIGHT? Oh, except all of those times when they are broken, so you might as well call your laws of physics "Oh, that physics thing that my great-uncle Albert kept talking about, but we all thought he was crazy because of his wacky hair" thing.
So, you can imagine the heavy knot of fear that fills up my stomach whenever I look at airfares and see that the only way to get to my family is by strapping myself into a tiny little death tube with 36 other people and hoping that a slight gust of wind doesn't spell t-h-e e-n-d for me. The flights between Chicago and Indianapolis and Cleveland and Indianapolis are so short that they are essentially comprised of just the take off followed by "we'll shortly be beginning our descent into Indianapolis" but that does nothing to allay my fears. Because I might be on a plane with PROPELLERS. That's right, PROPELLERS. The exact same model of plan that crashed in New York last year because the cold, icy weather was just too much for it and the pilot didn't know how to respond to it's safety features in the event of a stalled engine. WITH PROPELLERS.
And even if there weren't propellers, there would still be Chicago, and the fact that the hour and half layover that most of these flights offered would not be nearly enough since it's pretty much impossible to catch a connecting flight out of that airport on time during the holiday rush.
So the universe either wants me to die or for Edgar and I to spend Christmas alone with the cat. Not fair.
Smog Check This
Trying to take initiative last night to get my shit done and not wait until the last minute for everything, I finally got around to opening the registration renewal form for my Dodge Neon last night. It's not due until the beginning of March, but I wanted to be responsible and do the right thing. Also known as not waiting until the week before it's due and then being forced to go the DMV in order to get my new tag in time.
So there I am, responsibly writing my check, la la la la la, putting it in an envelope with my change of address information filled in, licking the envelope, adding a stamp, la la la la la, look at me being a responsible adult, when I unfold another insert that had been sent with it. THIS page said that I had to submit a Smog Check Certification this year.
Um, what?
When I registered this car in California two years ago, I had a Smog Check certification done the day before I went to the DMV, because I had been told by everyone that I knew to have it done before I went because I would need it and they would require it. And so I was at the DMV, DOING THE RESPONSIBLE THING AND REGISTERING MY CAR, and I was all "Hi, DMV lady, here's my Smog Check Certification," and she was all "OH, I DON'T NEED THAT." The Smog Check Certification that I had spent over $60 bucks on the day before, she DID NOT NEED IT.
And now, all of a sudden, two years later, they're all "Oh, oops, we need a Smog Check Certification!" GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, YOU CALIFORNIA DMV MOTHERFUCKERS.
Because I'm pretty sure that my two year old Smog Check Certification will no longer be accepted, even though those things are good for like five years, and it is all their fault. NOT MINE, THEIRS! I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I don't care how cliched it is: I hate the DMV.
Sad face
Dear Indianapolis Colts,
Thanks for losing yesterday and ruining my Sunday. Not even the commercials were funny this year, so your loss compounded on top of that equals WORST SUPER BOWL SUNDAY EVER.
Love,
A Really Really Really Really Times Infinity Disappointed Fan
Shut up, gato
Ever since the friend that was staying with Edgar and I moved out with his cat, I think that Fiyero has been feeling lonely being in the apartment all day by himself. He's just not used to living alone anymore. When I first got him in October of 2006, I lived with roommates; pets outnumbered humans in the house, two cats and two dogs against three adults. Edgar moved in May of 2007 to finally even the score. So that was the life for Fiyero until September of 2007, when Edgar and I moved out into our own place. So the cat knows how to be alone. He had to find ways to amuse himself without the aid of others for well over a year, until December of 2008 when we had to move in with Edgar's parents.
Living with Grandma and Grandpa was a totally different experience. His dad might as well have built an altar in his honor and sacrificed mice at his feet what with all of the love and adoration that he gave that cat. His mom was home with him during the day once Edgar and I were back at work, and she would spend all day talking to him.
When we moved back out on our own in September of 2009, Fiyero had two months by himself again before our friend moved in to stay with us. Now after three months of having attention all day, he's back by himself, and HE IS PISSED. Every day when I get home he spends about ten minutes following me everywhere I go and meowing at the top of his lungs as if to say "YOU! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL DAY?! DO YOU KNOW HOW LONELY I AM WHEN I HAVE TO SLEEP ALL BY MYSELF?!" Because that's all he does during the day. Sleep. I've seen it. He spends all afternoon sleeping, regardless of whether anybody is home or not. Then he gets all riled up around 5:00, then spends the rest of the evening being all chilled out and cat-nappy, and then as soon as he sees you wash your face and pick up your toothbrush he's all THE CREEPY NEIGHBOR JUST GAVE ME CRACK AND I LIKED IT AND LET'S RUN AND PLAY AND JUMP AND MEOW!
So I don't understand why he's just so pissed off (because you can tell he's all pissed off) whenever we come home from work, because it's not like he did anything all day that required the presence of another person. If I would have been home, he would have ignored me.
I guess this is preparing me for parenthood, right?
