It has taken me this long to realize that my shitty, made-in-China, combination pencil holder/paperclip holder/ LCD clock with date/day/temperature readout corporate "gift" may not actually be all that accurate. Besides the obvious problem of it saying today is Sunday (it knows it's April 25) and the fact that the time is fast (it's now a full 10 minutes later than the actual time), it only seems to think that it's either 74.3, 77, or 80 degrees in my cubicle. I thought maybe I wasn't glancing at it often enough, but it slowly dawned on me that I have never seen it be any number in between 74 and 77. So now I have a theory that it has some poor, clunky Celsius-to-Fahrenheit problem, but I can't be bothered to do the research to back me up.

This is what occupies my mind, people. Well, that and my garden; the barely-used bike I bought off of Craigslist for $300 cash (this one); the accessories I might buy for said bike; the recent notice I got in the mail that, although I used "in-plan" doctors, I will owe nearly $1,000 for my recent surgery; Junebug's recent hobby of over-grooming her fur; wondering about the new "noodles" place on Main Street; wanting to sell some stuff on eBay; needing to clean the house; needing a trip to IKEA; and the continuing struggle between my philosophy that paying more for a long-lasting, quality item is worth it in the end, and the deeply-ingrained desire to not spend more than a few dollars on anything, ever. (I had been feeling quite flush when I bought the bike ... and then I got the health care notice.)

Seriously, when is the health care revolution going to come? I have pretty good insurance, subsidized by my employer, and it still sucks ass. They ended up paying about 85 percent of the actual costs of the surgery. That won't be enough coverage if I ever end up staying a few nights in the hospital. What the hell am I supposed to do? And I'm one of the lucky ones! I'm insured! If I didn't love spring and summer so much, I'd move to Canada. But I am always mindful of how much outdoors time we get up here: how many months I can comfortably ride my bike to work, how many months of planting I get, how many months of using the porches... I don't want to tip the indoors-to-outdoors month ratio beyond 50/50, you know?

Sorry, I'm a little obsessive. As you may have noticed.

I'm feeling ok, health-wise. No more lady business to report for a while, I suspect. That's good news for me and for you!

I had my three-weeks-after-surgery checkup today. My doctor, in whose skills I am confident, was exercising her most emotionally-distant bedside manner. She told me that I was pretty unlikely to get pregnant without in-vitro fertilization, but that I really should try not to get pregnant anyway, because there's a good chance it would end up a tubal. If my cyst-ish pain started again, I should go on birth control pills. And then she seemed to want to move on to the next patient.

To stop her, I kept asking questions. Is it ok if I exercise? Yes, no restrictions. What about forming adhesions? You already have lots, and you've been living with them for years. What about this pain, could it be due to blah de blah? It could be. [Note: I would prefer a yes it's possible, or a no you're crazy.] And I wanted to see the photos she'd taken with the tiny camera she put into my belly button, which I saw were sitting in my plump patient folder (the folder is plump, not the patient). So then I got to see my viscera. It was really disgusting yet fascinating. The less said the better, but everything looked a lot better than I had imagined (since of course I had looked, through my fingers, online at photos of other women's endometriosis-marked abdomens, and had in my mind that mine would be as bad as theirs). It doesn't look great, what with all of the scar tissue she kept pointing at with remarks like, "that's not supposed to be there; this whole area should be empty; that tube shouldn't be stuck to that thing" and stuff. It's best for me to not think about it. Out of sight, out of mind.

And now I really want to get out of work early and get a beer by the big open window at the Dirty Truth, but I have to work a couple more hours first, and I don't know who's around right after work on a Friday for me to drink with. (My coworkers are all moms.) The weather is too nice to just go home. Text me, peeps, if you want to raise a pint.

Today I met with my ex-aunt's niece (so, my ex-cousin-in-law?) because she's graduating from college this May and is wondering what career she should try out first. First she wanted to know about how a magazine was put together, so I attempted to give her a general overview, which was as garbled and confused and as full of stutters as you might expect. (I don't do so well with the ad-libbing.) Then she asked me an interview question: What do you like best about your job? Which was charming. So I told her, that I get to work on different things every issue, I learn things, I work with good people. She also wondered how much opportunity she'd have, were she to start in the editorial field, to switch over to the art and design side. I had to tell her "almost none" but in a less negative way. I did say, however, that once you have things like a mortgage to worry about, it's hard to switch careers and start over at the bottom of the career ladder. I may have said something like "just one of the fun things about being an adult" which elicited an "aw!" from her. That kind of snapped me out of my old-lady-whose-spirit-is-crushed reverie. It's fine, really, I said, because it is. She is a nice young woman, and is excited about possibly interning in my office, so I must have done an o.k. job in our interview.

In other news, I managed to leave my cell phone -- my only phone -- in Lenox, at CJ's house, this morning. I got up and out of bed before 7:30, so I obviously wasn't thinking clearly. I'm still deciding whether it's worth it (gas, time) to drive an hour each way to pick it up. Of course I get to see CJ, too. But I always end up staying overnight, and driving an hour back home before work is ROUGH. This morning I stopped at the only coffee shop open in Lee at 7:45 on a Monday morning, Juice n' Java. JnJ is always staffed by just one person. One person who mans the register, gets you your coffee drink, toasts the bagels, hand-mixes the flavored cream cheese -- he was mixing up a single-serving's worth of honey walnut for a woman in front of me in line when I walked in -- which makes for a leisurely service experience. Oh Lee, you slay me.

I still made it home in time to shower and ultimately get to work semi-on-time. But the whole routine throws off my game for the day. Not that I have a game. But.

p.s. The take-away from this post: I am phone-less for the time being. It is possible I won't have a phone until late Friday night. Please make a note of it (just not on my voicemail).

Half of doing well at work is knowing when to stick up for what you know is right – and I’m not talking about social justice or anything, I’m talking about tiny design issues and turns of phrase and shit like that – and knowing when to let it go lest you be seen as argumentative and defensive. It’s too bad I was hired right before annual reviews are happening, because I get to skip it this year, and right now everyone’s all impressed and happy with me. A year from now, the bloom will be off the rose, and my review will be full of things like “After a strong start, Debbie grew resistant to change” and “Debbie was eager to learn everything, at first, but we soon noticed that nothing we were attempting to teach her was really sticking.” [Note; nothing like those two phrases have actually appeared in any of my performance reviews.]

Also, apparently my company has switched from a three-step grading system for our reviews (1. You're doing exceptionally well; 2. You're doing an o.k. job; 3. Maybe this job isn't right for you) to a five-step one. Which at first sounded great to all of us, because then we get two whole new shades of gray to fall into. But then the managers were told that there were quotas. And now, out of the entire office of 60 or so people, we're only allowed one or two "1" ratings, and just a few more "2"s, making it pretty much the same kind of deal as before, with the vast majority of us being called Average. Never mind that more than a few of us go "above and beyond" in our jobs, the managers have to grade us all on a curve. It's very discouraging, and the managers are pissed off and dreading doing this. Yet another downside to working in Ginormous MegaCorp. The bureaucracy involved makes me more anarchist by the day.

I seem to be healing just fine. I am even wearing real pants today -- true, they aren't jeans, but then do have a zipper in the front and everything. I have hit the big time.

And, tonight I handed in my big freelance fact-checking project! It is finished! Woo-hoo! I have even been paid. The author is a very nice fellow, a professor and all-around creative smarty-pants. He and his wife fed me each time I went to their beautiful old house in the country to work. After dinner, I went over the suggested fact changes to the manuscript. In the text he had mentioned getting Dictaphone recordings on green plastic discs from his father in the 1950s, and I had discovered that the machine with the green discs was called a SoundScriber -- and as soon as I said the name, he said, "THAT'S IT! Oh my word, I haven't heard that name in years! How did you find that?" Just doing my job, sir. I have powerful Google-fu.

Now I can get back to work on things I want to work on. It's been kind of painful reading my usual crafty blogs without being able to spend any time making stuff myself. No more! Plus, tomorrow it'll be warm enough for me to survey my garden, which I haven't visited since November. I am already planning a bean tepee. Soon I may risk my first bike ride to work of the year, and since I have been entirely sedentary for many weeks, it should be a doozy.

So, yes. I had the surgery. And the doctor says I have a really bad case of endometriosis -- everything in the internal-ladybits area is all stuck together with adhesions. One of my tubes is apparently stuck shut, or nearly shut. If I want to carry a baby, or if I start to have pain again, I need to get this procedure done again, with a reproduction specialist. My doctor was too nervous to start clearing out the adhesions herself. She did get rid of the cyst for me, at least. The worst part of the whole thing -- besides the fact that I may have to do this all over again -- was the two days of nausea. That, and the excruciating pain I had the first night when I tried to pee, which I needed to do every hour since they had pumped me full of fluids because I was so nauseated from the anesthesia ... That was pretty rough. I can't remember the last time I was so much pain I was trembling.

Regardless. It was about two days of hell, one day of not-great-ness, and then today was ok. Not great, but not horrible. I was on Vicodin for about 36 hours, and have been on ultra-ibuprofen since then. I can handle the pain of the incisions and the weird soreness in my shoulder. My belly is still weirdly swollen, but not as swollen as I thought it would be. Actually, during the operation, when they first inflated me my heart rate dropped due to the pressure on my nervous system. So they had to deflate me very quickly and then re-inflate me with about half the normal amount. Also, at one point they had to jolt me with atropene because again my heart was slowing down too much. Both of these things point to "not going to come out of anesthesia without problems."

[Here's the longer story of my after-surgery times, if you care or dare:]
The hospital has a just-out-of-surgery recovery area, where I had a breathing mask on and was much too awake for my preference, probably so I could tell them how much it hurt so they could drug me appropriately (I think I said 6 on a scale of 10). Then there's a secondary recovery area, where your boyfriend (for example) can come visit you. I was in that secondary area a long time. I was fine as long as my head was on the pillow. It was too noisy to really sleep. Every once in a while the nurse would try to get me up. First, sitting on the bed, and then with my legs over the side. After about 30 seconds I'd have to lie down (or else start puking, which I never did). And they'd let me lie down for a while longer. The whole time I had an IV in, with fluid dripping in. Eventually they moved me back to the just-out-of-surgery area (it was unclear why, though they said it was so I'd get more attention -- I figure the nurses in the other area wanted to go home). A very nice nurse there talked to me about getting a real room for me to sleep in -- maybe not overnight, but for a couple of hours, until I felt better. But she also gave me an anti-emetic in my IV, and after some more lying around, I sat up, stood up, and hobbled over to the bathroom (held up by the nurse), where I failed to pee much, due to my urethra being all stuck together from the catheter. And then I had to go back and sit down (the nurse wouldn't let me lie down). CJ ran to bring the car up and the nurse got me into a wheelchair, and I made it home and into my bed without actual heaving. It was close, though. Poor CJ was there through it all... I think I was in the after-surgery recovery place for about 6 hours.

Anyway. If I do this again, maybe they can give me the amount of anesthesia that someone my size needs, and not Average Woman.

So, that thing happened. I was indeed mightily nauseated. And in pain. And I still feel dizzy and weird and typing isn't helping. It wasn't a dermoid, it was the worse thing (endo). More later.

I had my pre-op meeting and blood-draw yesterday. My doctor sensed my interest in Thog, and said she would be able to show me photos afterwards. (Of what, she did not say.) I'm not sure I actually want to look, but maybe she can just describe it to me... Also, she and another doctor disagree about what this thing is, so there's still a chance it's endometriosis. Whatever. Also, I'm not allowed to eat or drink or even take a painkiller after midnight tonight, so I'll be in some pain by the time I show up at the hospital for surgery, which will provide some nice incentive for me.

I tried a Vicodin last night. It was ok. I felt super anxious when I woke up at 5 a.m.; I wasn't in pain, but I was freaked out, worried I was going to barf from the Vicodin. Have I mentioned before that I don't like drugs? I don't. Y'all can have your fun with the recreational drugs, I don't judge, and in fact I wish I had the capacity to enjoy them. But I know that I don't. Anyway, the Vicodin works in that I was able to fall asleep and I wasn't in pain, so I have that going for me. I am feeling really dopey and stupid today at work, however.

It's not the barfing that worries me -- a little vom never hurt anyone -- it's the nausea. My doctor said they'll give me something to eat and drink in recovery, and when I said "what about barfing?" she said that if I felt sick, then obviously they wouldn't give me stuff to eat -- plus, the IV will still be in, and they can give me some anti-nausea medication. Sweet. She also said there would be warmed blankets available -- I had forgotten the crazy chills I felt after my wisdom teeth extraction, and how good it felt when I finally got warm (like an hour later; I was at home by the time I got cold).

Anyway, blah blah blah. Tomorrow it's a fond goodbye to Thog. I'm ok with it. At least, this minute I'm ok.

p.s. One of the sheets in the packet of info they gave me at the hospital says, "Do not make any important decisions for at least 24 hours after your surgery." I'd better block eBay from my laptop, or I could end up owning a used car in Seattle or something...

I scheduled the surgery for Thursday -- this Thursday. I am terrified. From what I've been reading and hearing, as soon as I wake up from the surgery I will be nauseated, and I won't feel un-nauseated for three days. My throat will be plenty sore, since they'll have shoved a breathing tube down into it. I will have gas pains and cramps all over my body for several days. And then of course there's the incisions, for which I will be taking painkillers that make me dizzy and more nauseated. It sounds pretty fucking horrible to me. If anyone out there has had general anesthesia without puking or some other bad thing happening, please let me know.

Of course my cyst -- I've named it "Thog" -- has been making me feel terrible, so I do want it out of my body. I wish it would just go away, somehow become the dissolving type. But no, Thog Want To Live! and so he must be forcibly removed. Sorry, Thog.

Lady problems update: My doctor looked at the ultrasound film and spoke to one of the other doctors. They think it is definitely a dermoid (because it looks like there's stuff other than fluid in it - so fascinating and disgusting!) but they don't think it's related to endometriosis. So I might not have that at all, though they'll take a look once they're in there (if I don't chicken out and decide not to do the surgery, which has not yet been scheduled, still). I asked her why my belly felt bloated and she had to reason; there's no fluid in there. Am I just fatter, suddenly? Too much Easter candy? I never get like this, though, and I haven't changed my diet at all, really. (The cyst itself is only 3 inches across, so that can't be it.) She did say that exercising would not have brought on the pain, so I can at least stay active without too much fear.

Anyway, she told me that she has a patient that has had ten surgeries to remove ten dermoids, but that's super rare, plus that person has four children. And that's one patient in 25 years of practice, so.

Luckily, tonight it's on to New Jersey, where there will be egg-hiding and more candy (oh well) and lots of niece-and-nephew (and pre-teen cousins!) time. A nice distraction.

This one's for all the ladies. Seriously, it's more crap about my lady business, so feel free to skip it.

My little cystic friends have been still hurting me, off and on, and they hurt so badly a couple of days ago that I pondered another visit to the emergency room. Instead I waited, and went to the doctor today to check it all out with the ultrasound machine. Turns out I have a dermoid cyst, which is the kind that sometimes has teeth and hair inside of it (I find this secretly thrilling), and I have endometriosis of the ovaries, which is a major bummer. You know that stuff that forms the uterine lining? Of course, who doesn't. Well, some of that stuff is outside of my uterus. And like a zombie hand that still twitches and moves after it has been sliced from its zombie body, the endometrium that's stuck to my ovaries actually produces period blood every month. Ew, and ouch. Between this and the cyst, it's like my body really wants to make a baby, and I'm not cooperating, so it's just going ahead and making do with whatever scraps it can find. My body would apparently be o.k. with a shambling, crudely-formed golem of a child.

The long story short is, my doctor is recommending laparoscopic surgery. That's the kind with the tiny incisions and the little camera, and you get to go home after it. They also inflate your abdomen with gas, which is alarming, and apparently results in having gas pains in strange locations for a few days after surgery. She says that recovery will take a week. People I know who have had their gall bladders removed with a similar technique say it doesn't take as long. But whatever. The extra exciting part is, once they get inside there, they may decide to remove the entire ovary, so I shall become half a woman. Or, the problem may be bigger and more complicated than they thought, and they'll end up slicing me open like a melon, and I'll end up in the hospital for a couple of nights, and recovering at home for weeks. I am really hoping that neither of those things happen. I have not yet scheduled the surgery, I still have some questions for my doctor, who will call me tomorrow after she studies the film. (By "film" I am assuming she means the ultrasound photos, and not "College Road Trip.")

All of this means that if I want to ever have a baby, it will be very difficult for me to do so. Not so difficult that I can stop using birth control, however. Thanks, universe!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I had a really bad dream last night. It wasn't even funny-bad. I was at H&L's old apartment, at a party, when suddenly an airplane screamed by the window, way too close to the ground. Its engines were wailing and the whine of them kept ascending and descending, like the pilots were trying to keep the plane up but were failing. We all ran out to the porch but it was soon out of view. Then we heard a huge boom. We knew it had crashed, but we were too scared to turn on the TV for a while. Somehow the rumor got around that someone had sabotaged the plane from the inside while someone else on the ground had shot at it with a surface-to-air missile. We were all sickened and terrified and feeling deeply sad. Then I was back on the porch, sitting there with H and a couple of other people. The view from the porch was an Iraq checkpoint. As we watched, a desperate man climbed one of the guard towers, and as he almost reached the top, the guard shot him in the head and the man fell to the pavement below. I started talking about how horrible it was that things like this happen in front of us every day, and what is the world coming to? How can we continue our normal lives amidst this constant violence and death? And H cut me off and said, "Can we not talk politics, please?" Like I was being a total downer.

(OK, that bit is kind of funny.)

There was more that was gross and scary (and not involving any of my friends) but people don't really like hearing other peoples' dreams so I won't share. Plus, it disturbs me to even remember it. So I've been kind of weird all day. I blame the dream, and Daylight Savings Time, which I don't like having while it's nowhere near spring. (How can we "spring forward"? We should be "wintering over" or "frost biting" or "snowplowing through.") I have no idea where the dream came from, or why my brain cast H in the role of asshole. (So random. You could be next, reader!) My stomach must have been a little upset, so my mind blamed it on terrorism.

This whole freelance-after-work thing is no joke. The problem lies in that I spend 8 hours in front of a computer, go home, and then attempt to spend another couple of hours in front of a computer. I worked out with Maya on Monday and I think it might have re-flared my carpal issues, so the extra computer work isn't helping.

Did you all know that we Spring Forward this weekend? Madness!

Anyway. I want to leave the computer now. And have a little cereal (at first I spelled that "serial;" I am losing it) and go to bed.

If you know me in real life (so I can vouch for you) and aren't related to me (sorry, sis) AND you're crafty, I have an opportunity for you to sell kid-friendly craft ideas. Shoot me an email and I'll give you the details. There's nothing better than making something for fun and then getting paid for it.

So, how's work? It's great, so far. It's kind of embarrassing how much I am enjoying it. Even being bored there (because I haven't had much to do) feels better than being bored at home. I guess I'm one of those introverts who actually needs to have people around, at least in the background, so I can talk to them when I feel like it. My new cubicle is by a window that faces the parking lot and a brick wall, so I'm considering making it a little nicer somehow. A paper silhouette of a tree? There is nothing alive in sight, and it's a big-ass window. (I do have an easy view of my ex-boyfriend's apartment window, so that's ... special. It was a short relationship and I have no sadness about him, but it's funny that he's Right. There. And will be, 40 hours a week.)

At the same time I'm feeling satisfied, I also feel the occasional twinge of, "Huh... I'm back here again." Like maybe I let myself down by not completely changing careers, or staying freelance. But I don't need to stay here forever, and in the meantime, it's nice to be getting paid, with paid time off (only three weeks, but still).

I will miss the free, poor-person's, state-provided health insurance, though. Man, that was sweet.

P.S. Still missing Maui, though the two inches of show and then the pouring rain I walked through after work today made those sunny memories fade a little.

P.P.S. I now have FOUR cysts, two on each thingy, but the new doctor says there's nothing to do except wait until they go away, or wait until they hurt so much I decide to get them removed laparoscopically. And I think I am now going to stop discussing my lady bits on here. At least for the near future. So just relax, champ.

I finally put up some photos of my Hawaii trip on Flickr. I think there are 44 of them -- believe me, I have lots more. Anyway, here's the set. You can get a pretty good idea of my trip from them (and the descriptions). I'm currently watching the Oscars at H&L's so I'll hit post now.

P.S. First day of work tomorrow -- it feels like the first day of school. Also, a check-up ultrasound at 1:30, to see how well my cystbaby is growing.

Today we drove all the way around West Maui (counter-clockwise). It looks like this:



(That's a terraced patch of taro in one of the villages around the northern part of west Maui. Bigger image is here.)

But also like this:



(Lava rock and very high surf. This is at the "olivine pools" site, made famous by the Maui Revealed guidebook. Bigger image here.)

Besides being splashed accidentally and walking in the water a little, we haven't gone swimming. We are both still sick. Tomorrow we're hoping to do more. That's my little update for right now.

I've been in San Diego for three days, and tomorrow morning we (me and CJ) fly to Maui. I think we're on Oceanic flight 815 or something? It is warm and sunny here -- sunny in that aggressive southern California way. We wore shorts and sandals to the zoo today, in fact. I am sick with a nasty cold, and I've been trying to take it easy; it would be tragic if I was too sick to go into the ocean in Hawaii. My pessimism is foreseeing tonsilitis and sinus infections and bronchitis. My lady problem feels better, though I've been on ibuprofren non-stop so it's hard to say what the hell's going on in there. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Some small things:

CJ called a stranger "bro" the other day. After a pedestrian waved us through an intersection (we've been driving his dad's enormous SUV), he said, "Thanks, bro" out of the open window. He's returning to his native ways.

His parents really, really want grandchildren and are quite open about it (in a joking way). CJ is the youngest of three and it looks like it's all going to come down to him. They may have to settle for a cyst.

We have eaten great sushi and real Mexican food and a couple of smoothies (one a Jamba Juice, one a Jamba competitor) and have paid for very little of it. This will change once we're on the island.

During my naps, CJ has been catching up on Lost. He's still in the second season, and he just saw the episode where Shannon dies. I was like, "Shannon?" I had forgotten about her. It's hard to not say anything like "Have they met the Tailies yet?" and ruin it all. But I am good with spoilers.

P.S. I got the job I wanted. Hooray for me!

WHO just spent 8 and a half hours in the ER?

I did! I did!

I drove myself there because I have been having some crampy lower GI pain, and when I called my gastroenterologist and described my symptoms, she suggested I go get it checked out. When I arrived at 11:24 a.m. (I had to write down the time on a form) there weren't that many people in the waiting room, so I thought I might be out in a couple of hours. After about 20 minutes my name was called, the nurse took my vital signs, and I returned to the waiting area. A few minutes after that, the insurance-taking person called me in, and we did that part. Then I went back to the waiting area. After a while longer, I was lead to an actual examination room... But it was dirty. So the nurse told another person to clean it out, and I waited in the hallway with other waiting people. After the cleaning person headed out, I just kind of wandered into the room alone, since the nurse was long gone.

A nurse came in (these are all different nurses, by the way, but somewhat interchangeable) and took my vitals (again), drew some blood, and asked me to change into a hospital gown. And then she left, and my real wait began. I had brought my GameBoy, thank god, so I played my game for about 3 hours, slowly getting more bored and hungry. A nurse checked on me and I asked desperately if I could slip on my pants and quickly scamper back to the reception area and vend a snickers or something. She said no, because if I was admitted for surgery, my stomach needed to me empty, and besides, I was third in the doctor's line-up and shouldn't be long now. Then two more hours passed. I had given up on the video game and was just falling asleep when the doctor arrived. She was very young, but she put me at ease and I liked her attitude. She and her assistant were doing a lot of sassing, which I enjoy. She took my history again, and did exam stuff, and ruled out my G.I. theory. Instead, she decided to investigate my lady business. They did a crazy origami/swiss-army-knife thing with the cot, and gave me a pelvic exam (ladies, you know what I'm talking about. Can I get a what-what?). The doctor ordered me up a sonogram and left. Her nurse helper stayed behind to re-create the cot, and I asked her if I would have to cut a bitch in order to get something to eat. But nicer than that. She offered me a chicken or tuna salad sandwich, saltines, graham crackers, and jello. Hard to resist those choices! I picked chicken salad, with a side of apple juice. I ate it like a starving animal and it was totally delicious.

Then I waited a while longer (maybe an hour?) for someone to come and push my cot over to the sonogram place. I told the pusher, "I've never been wheeled around in a hospital before!" Warily, she said, "Well, there's a first time for everything." She totally rained on my parade. The route to the sonogram office was twisty but deserted, seeing as it was now after 6 p.m. The sonogram tech started on me right away. It took like half an hour, and she did the kind with the thing on your stomach, and then the kind with the condom-covered wand stuck up your hoo-hah (ladies? Anyone?). This was my second ultrasound experience, and I secretly love seeing all of my squishy insides in black and white. The tech was very friendly and answered all of my questions. I knew from my previous time that I have a uterus shaped like an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse balloon, and she showed me that more clearly. And she measured my ovaries, and made sure there was no torsion or loss of blood flow. Turns out, both ovaries had big ol' cysts in them. And the one on the right, where I was feeling the crampy pain, had actually hemorrhaged a little. Aha! Success!

Then she wheeled me out to the hallway, where I waited half an hour for someone to come push me back to my ER room. After that, I had a short wait for the doctor to come in and tell me her findings. She told me to come back if the pain got much worse, and gave me a script for Percocet, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. And then I was "discharged."

I know that I only waited so long because the hospital was unusually busy. I could hear the nurses talking about it, wondering if there was a full moon. The hallway area right outside my door was even being used as an exam "room." The first person to come in was a loud drunk, and the first thing he said was, "Hey brother! I just got laid!" so I knew I was about to get some nice in-room entertainment. I think he had a security guard assigned to him, because after drunky (actually, his name was Christopher) would say something especially loud, stern-voiced guy would tell him to knock it off. He was swearing like crazy. "I've fuckin' raped girls, I've fuckin' killed people..." "I'm in the hospital, and I'm fucking hungry, why can't I get a fucking sandwich!" Then, "I swear on my mother's grave, my father's grave, and my brother's grave that I'll stop." "You're my man, you know? You did right by me, so I'll do right by you." The doctor showed up and said, "Tell me what happened today. I heard you passed out at CVS?" Ha. It seemed like he was going to let drunky sleep it off in the hallway, but drunky kept on yelling and carrying on, and the nurses and the guard kept shushing him and saying, "There are elderly people and children here, have some respect." And then, suddenly, a cop showed up -- I'm just going on what I heard here -- and said "Chris, dammit, you can't stay here!" and Chris responded meekly, was handcuffed, and led away.

The second person in the hallway position was a high school guy who had been throwing up but also had headaches and shortness of breath. He seemed fine by the time I was listening to him, and he had two buddies with him, a boy and a girl. They were super talkative and raunchy. One of the boys and the girl were a couple, and the three of them talked about having anal sex ("you just gotta relax!"), going to Taco Bell, and what their perfect girl would be like ("34 D's -- no, double D's; Russian or Brazilian; brown or black hair"). The doctor gave him some meds, told him that because he has asthma as a child he really shouldn't be smoking (idiot!), and sent him away.

The third person was the worst. I came back from the sonogram to hear a new arrival moaning and crying. Someone said, "They didn't give her anything in the ambulance?" so I knew this was bad news and a true emergency. Apparently she was only 20 (and with her mom), had had surgery a few days ago, she'd been throwing up non-stop since one p.m., she felt feverish, and her incisions were hurting a LOT. Ugh. She sounded so horrible. Constant moaning and crying. I was very, very happy to get discharged out of there.

Long story short: My ovaries like to make big cysts for some reason, but I'm fine. That's all.

I have owned my house for a year now. My houseiversary was a week ago. I am still very happy with my purchase, even though paying for it is an increasing source of stress. I just want a job, man. With a salary that can pay for my mortgage. And maybe some heat too.

Speaking of heat, my propane company called me at 7:55 this morning. I don't answer the phone before 8 a.m. as a rule, unless it's a family member (who had better be calling because something bad is happening, otherwise heads will roll) so I didn't listen to the message until 9:30 or so. Apparently, the propane delivery guy finds it difficult to fill my tanks, which are behind a wooden fence slightly taller than the tanks themselves. The tanks have lived behind this fence for many years without incident. But now that happy time is over. "You need to lower your fence," he says.

I called back, and the secretary tried to relay his anti-fence reasoning to me, which just made me get defensive. Seriously, the fence is not coming down. First of all, it's the middle of frickin' winter, you really expect me to be out there all day with a table saw? Second of all, the fence is tall in order to hide the propane tanks. If the fence is shorter, well, it kind of ruins the whole point of the fence, doesn't it. Third of all, why has this not been a problem before? Judging by the age of the fence and the matching paint job on the house, the fence has been up for at least 5 years. Why now? He also complained about nails that point through the fence, and I agree, they're ridiculous. Whoever built the thing used nails that were an inch and a half longer than they needed, and then didn't bother cutting off the extra or even bending them down. Those, I am happy to deal with.

So now I am waiting for mister cranky propane pants to call me back, and we're going to "talk about it." Things I should not say:

Were all of the previous propane filling guys taller than you?

I would get a carpenter in here to tear down and completely rebuild the fence, but all of my "spare" money is currently going towards my propane bill. Sorry.

Thing I am considering saying, but will try not to:

Most of my neighbors use a competing propane company. Perhaps it's time we said our goodbyes. If I'm going to destroy the fence anyway, I might as well take your tanks out of there and get new ones put in while I'm at it.

Thing I will say:

I can make the stone "step" higher so it's easier to get over the fence. I can also be better about keeping it clear from snow and other obstacles. I will also take care of the nail points.

I hope that'll be enough. I am trying to get into a cooperative mood.

Update: I talked to the guy who called originally -- he's the boss of the actual filling guys, it turns out. He seemed reasonable, but who knows. He explained the problem to me, and I get it -- the hose doesn't bend very easily, or whatever -- but I am hoping we can come up with a solution that doesn't entail me cutting the fence. I said as much to him. He's going to stop by later to take a look at it. Gulp.

Update to the update: The guy just left, he was fine. We came to a compromise: they are going to take about four or five inches off of the top of the fence, and THEY will do the work, for free. It will make my tanks more visible, but I will still be able to hide them in the summer with flowerboxes and such. So I feel ok about it. Whew.

I went to the bird blind today. I fed the chickadees, and during the feeding frenzy one of them landed on my head. Cute. Also, for the first time ever I saw a mammal -- a mink! I thought at first it was an otter, but now I think it was a mink, just because its fur looked, well, minky, plus it had a tiny white patch on its chin. And through the magic of the internet, I now know that minks often have little white patches on their chins. It casually galumphed right past the blind, from right to left, just on its way somewhere.

In other news, I woke up at 4 a.m. last night with a splitting headache. I got up and took a couple of ibuprofren and eventually I fell back asleep. I've been having some weird ear congestion for the past few days, so naturally I now think I have a tumor (my headache couldn't have anything to do with the Jack & ginger ale I had with dinner last night, no).

Hey! Hello. Can we just pretend I didn't go almost two weeks without a post? Because the pressure has become too much. I have thought of things to blog over the past few days, but none of them are worth a long post, so instead I posted nothing.

The situation isn't helped by the fact that nothing terribly interesting has happened -- no interesting anecdotes or funny overheard conversations. I went to an excellent party, saw a couple of great movies (Juno and There Will Be Blood)... I did drive down to Brooklyn at the drop of a hat to help out my sister and brother-in-law, who had a sick baby in the hospital. All I really did was pick up the other kid from school, and entertained said kid while the two adults and baby, freshly back from an overnight stay in the hospital, took a nice nap. Baby is now totally fine.

As for the job thing, I handed in my edit test on Weds. Now I wait for the word. In the meantime, I'm now eligible for unemployment, so I need to take concrete steps towards finding a job -- 3 steps every week, to be exact, or I don't get my pittance from the government. Three is easy. Threasy, I call it. So I am not worried.

So, how did it go?

It went OK.


It's very hard to say. Though I now have more interviewing practice, I still get deer-in-the-headlights brain when I'm actually in one. I ramble, I tend to end every answer by restating the question ("... and that's why I like working with magazines."), I just keep talking if I don't have a good answer... It's terrible to look back on.

I got some good things in there too, though. I described myself, and later when I asked them what they were looking for, one of them used the same words I used to describe myself. And I think I did just OK, not spectacularly, on the edit test (which took 1.5 hours, and was hampered by my hurting stomach). Luckily, there's also an extensive, four-part, take-home edit test that I can hopefully wow them with.

I'm feeling a little desperate about the whole thing, to tell the truth. Why can't they see I'm the perfect person for them? I know I can rock their worlds. "Come on baby, please!" I beg. "You don't have to love me, just let me love you! Why are you looking at those other people?? Only look at me! AT ME!!"


Meanwhile, I managed to drive through the FastPass lane by accident (I was stuck behind a semi) for the first time in my life. I called them, which is what the little yellow light at the toll booth says to do, and they were all, "Um... This JUST happened? Wait until you get a warning in the mail!" Apparently I get one free fuck-up, and the second time, I'd get a $50 fine. Now, this toll booth was for exiting the Pike, and my toll was for zero cents (Western Mass gets to use their section of the Pike for free because we were so thoroughly financially raped with the Big Dig. That's been my understanding, at any rate). So I gotta hang on to the ticket and mail it in so I don't get charged the max amount on it (something like $4). It's too bad I didn't use my "freebie" for a toll which would've actually cost me money.

This is terribly exciting reading, I know.

There's a cool sounding show tonight, but I am feeling too lazy and unwashed to go. I am going to veg out for one more night, I think. Good evening to you all.

It's been a week since I posted, but it's going to have to be a little bit more. My Big Interview is tomorrow afternoon and I'm trying to prepare very, very well for it. I am not super confident. Yet.

Happy Birthday, 2008! Mine's been good so far. Me and the fella had lobsters at my house last night. The idea was that this would be cheaper than going out, but each lobster was about $20. Add almost $10 for salad fixin's and a $5 loaf of multi-grain bread, and that's some serious cash. It was all totally worth it. Then we went to the Sierra Grill to see the Steamtrain play, plus dance and drink some wine and kiss and hug our friends.

But that was all so totally last year. Today we made French toast out of the bread, then went snow-shoeing for the first time with our new snow shoes. It was snowing heavily with wet, thick globs that stuck to our clothing. We went on the pathway that goes up through the split rock (it's the area that's off-limits when it's tick season; it's like the tick projects up in there, with way too many ticks for the space, all desperate to mug you for some food) and through the pine forest. Snowshoeing kind of feels like marching. It's all about the big exaggerated steps and big strides. When we got back, we finished up the loaf of bread by making grilled cheese, ate leftover salad, and drank hot cocoa with many mini-marshmallows. And then we played
a nerdy game for a few hours.

Tomorrow the party's over, as are the holidays. I plan on working much more seriously on the whole job search process. I figure all I'll have to do is look at my bank account online every morning, and that'll help me find the motivation I need.

I thought this was Pleasant Street Theater's last weekend of operation, but apparently I missed it. My remaining four passes are now obsolete ephemera. For the saddest message ever, call the theater's info line: 586-0935.

Merry between-Christmas-and-New Year's, y'all! It's the waiting time. I had a good Christmas. Got some snowshoes, a CJ-made necklace, a new Acme Novelty Library that I didn't even know existed, a Little Otsu planner, Weird New England (a book that's been on my list for 3 years), and an unofficial gift certificate for a Flor area rug. And other awesome things too. I am excited.

I also played Guitar Hero while my cousins laughed at my lack of skillz, spent some time with cutie niece T (who can now read and write her name) and smaller cutie nephew N (who can crawl and pull himself up to standing), ate some delicious duck and many cookies, and saw "No Country for Old Men," which was very grim. It is so grim, that when you look up "grim" in the dictionary, it says, "see: No Country for Old Men."

Now it's time to get ready for Two Thousand and Great!

On Monday CJ took advantage of some leftover, soon-to-expire vacation time, and my permanent-vacation situation, and took me on a super secret fun trip. Well, the plan was supposed to be a secret, but once the Sunday storm was being as shitty as the news promised, we had to decide if we still wanted to do it. So he told me the plan: Drive up to Lake George, NY, on Sunday night, stay over at the Great Escape Lodge, and spend Monday whoopin' it up in their INDOOR WATER PARK. We decided that the overnight was going to be impossible -- cars were literally being blown off of the road all day on Sunday -- but that we could drive up for the day.

We got there around 1, and had lunch in their "tavern" which overlooks the water park. We had been warned by the front desk the day before that it might be crowded due to winter break, but the only people we could see, in the entire place, were lifeguards. They were just hanging around, pacing, chatting with each other. Eventually we saw some guests, but I would estimate that they had no more than 20 guests at the park for the entire day -- and that includes us two.

They heat the water park room, and it's super humid in there (and loud: since the place is Six-Flags-related, they have to blast top-40 music as loudly as possible, which mixes poorly with the noisy water sounds). We walked in with our winter coats and sweaters and got blasted with the rainforest-like climate. We couldn't wait to get our heavy clothes off. Let me tell you: It is VERY nice to walk around in your bathing suit while looking out the window at piles and piles of snow. Just being in a huge hot and humid room for a few hours made it all worth it. They have two fun, big tubes that snake outside of the building, and you could feel the slightly-colder air as you were sliding through. We spent a lot of time on the Boogie Bear Surf thing, which is a fake standing wave for boogie boarding. CJ was great at it, and I was pretty good, though I wiped out big-time once. He wiped out a few more times, but that's because he was trying to do some 360s and such. For about half an hour we were the only people at the wave, so we just kept taking turns. Eventually a couple of little daredevil boys came over and did fancy stuff like take running jumps into the wave, and kneeling on the board. They had obviously been there before.

We also floated along the "lazy river" and played basketball in one of the coves. The unspoken rule was: you have to stay on the tube, no touching the ground of the pool. And this explains why my arms and shoulders are still sore today.

We took a break and sat in their "Adirondack" chairs, read the paper, and ate popcorn in our bathing suits. An occasional droplet of water would fall on the page when the giant wooden bucket at the top of the Tall Timbers Tree House would tip over.

Getting dressed in our winter clothes was a major drag.

But! Now I'm home, the snow is pretty, and impressively deep, and it makes my house feel filled with light. (During the day, at least.)

Today's forecast: 8 to 12 inches of snow. I wish I had remembered to buy hot chocolate...

Writing that previous post helped kick my ass, a little. I've been doing a lot more, at least, with the crafts and such. And I'm not staring out the window for quite as long as I did before.
This Saturday I took CJ to a Christmas tree farm to harvest a tree (well, really to watch some guy slice our chosen tree down with a chainsaw). This is his first Christian tree experience, and it's the first one I've been in charge of, so I was pretty excited. CJ was too, and he assisted with all manner of tree acquiring and trimming. He seemed to enjoy the whole affair, especially after I entrusted him with the hanging of the lights on the tree. I put on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special soundtrack, and he drank some eggnog, bemoaning the fact that he didn't have a big blue cable-knit sweater to wear. He did claim that he could feel his foreskin growing back on account of all of his Christmasy participation, so I guess the spirit of the season is truly upon us all.

Here is a thumbnail of the tree, with a cameo by two semi-interested cats (they sniffed the tree with great fervor, but so far haven't batted at a single ornament):



Full size image, a close-up of Junebug, and future photos will be added here. I still need a tree topper, which I'm about to go whip up myself. I was tempted to get something shiny and flashy and cheap at Target, but that's not really my thing. At least, it's not my thing when I have this much free time on my hands.

I need to stop thinking I have to make more ornaments, though. The tree is already fairly full of them, most of which were given to me by my grandmother. She'd give me and my sister one new ornament every year, usually purchased at a church fund-raiser, and this will be the first year I don't get one. The ornaments were better some years than others, and I don't have anything close to 34 ornaments from her here... Either I left them at my parents' house so I can see them on their tree when I visit for Christmas, or I left them at my parents' house because I kind of can't bear to have them in my house at all. I'll miss getting them every year, though. I loved picturing my grandmother at her church's craft fair perusing the folding tables full of weird vaguely-holiday-themed things made of yarn, walnuts, felt, and pinecones, looking for just the right ones to give to me and my sister.

I'd love to do something like that for my niece and nephew, but from what I hear from my sister, they already get way too much stuff from the kids' grandparents. My sister has a small apartment that's already packed to the gills. If I had that much stuff, and was gifted with a whole lot more stuff that I didn't need or ask for, I'd start feeling a little crazy. So out of empathy for my sister and brother-in-law, I've only gotten each kid one gift. I am afraid that this will mean I am losing the gifts arms race with the older members of the family, and the kids will like me less as a result, so I'm very conflicted about this. It would be easy for me to buy/make a lot more stuff for them, because they are adorable and I love them. But I also can't bring myself to add to the problem.

If I were my sister I'd like to think I'd do something radical like this: After the gifts have all been opened, have the kids choose their favorite four or five (because they have already gotten DOZENS of gifts from one set of grandparents alone) and donate the rest to a shelter. (I think I got that idea from AskMetafilter, but Metafilter's been down all morning so I can't link to it. Will edit this post once it comes back up and I can find it.) In reality, this would probably lead to a lot of screaming and whining and crying, and the kids would probably be upset too (see what I did there?). But how else can you stop the madness? Cutting off the supply chain seems impossible: Grandparents are notorious for not listening to their children's pleas for moderation in giftery, and that certainly seems to be playing out here. If I ever have kids, I guess I'll find out how difficult it is for myself.

First of all, this is my 1,002nd post. So my 1,000 post was this one. A bit boring, I admit. I am still recovering from my NaBloPoMo hangover.

Actually, I'm not really recovering at all. The thinnest veneer of civility is all that stands between me and the kind of unemployed people who watch Maury all day while eating Cheetos in their pajamas. Yesterday I thought about leaving the house, but then I felt cold and my back hurt, so I laid down on the wood floor next to the propane stove and stared out of the window. It was snowing. I stayed like that, lying on the floor not doing anything, for almost an hour. That's pretty much how my whole day was yesterday. (I did take a walk outside after I become disgusted with myself, and I gathered some greenery so I can create a festive holiday display.)

I seem to have lost my job-searching momentum. I've also started waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxious. I just got another cold sore on my nostril. (Stress brings 'em on. Thanks, herpes!) And though I've got nothing but time, I just can't seem to work on those many artistic projects I have going on. Diagnosis: Joblessness-related depression. Not crippling, but certainly hobbling. I am working on this, but it's hard to see one's way out of a rut like this one. I predict the rut will be painfully clear to me once the holidays are over. Hopefully I'll have gotten good news about a job by then, but then I didn't expect to be drifting into a third month of unemployment, so why would the fourth month be an exception?

What I have been doing instead of the above: Mostly, reading stuff online. Metafilter, Gawker, Jezebel, my blog roll on Google Reader. Also, recently, playing Bogglific (i.e. unlicensed Boggle) via Facebook, both with friends and strangers. It's actually pretty cool to be randomly put into a game that has players from Australia, Korea, and Canada in it. It is also humbling to get beaten by people who are obviously not native English speakers. Still: fun times. And it exercises the brain so you don't get Alzheimer's, so I've got that going for me.

I went to the bird blind today and someone was in it! I think he was the mysterious MP, who writes a lot in the notebook that lives in the blind. (It's not a slambook or anything, it's to record what birds and animals you saw.) Yes, I could have asked him if he was MP, but I prefer to keep it a slight mystery. He had binoculars and a camera bag. He said he had seen a mink earlier that day. Also, the chickadees take the seeds we give them and hide them all over the place, stocking up for the winter. Smart little guys.

A few days ago, CJ and I brought black sunflower seeds to the blind, and I took some photos. Here are two of my hand with bird and seed in palm, taken in macro:





For full resolution, click here and here.

Below is a movie of CJ's arm, with the birds in action. They are very comfortable around people, but I'm still going to call him The Chickadee Whisperer.

I just drove home from CJ's, because he is sick and wanted company, and I am a good girlfriend. Not so good as to do his dishes, but to be fair to myself, he was not so stricken as to be unable to play video games with me for a few hours. Anyway, it is very windy out. Let me tell you: A grouping of dried leaves being blown across the highway looks just like a small animal darting in front of the car, if you're going fast enough and it is dark out. I didn't actually swerve, but a few times I came close. Dead leaves enjoy traveling in packs for some reason. Safety? Fun times?

Say, I guess I don't have to wait until 11:55 to write a post, do I! So here it is.

I thought of another obvious mariachi song: Ring of Fire.

And today was a total waste. I got up late and was too cold to do anything all day except read crap online. Mainly Metafilter, but other things too.

I also got an email from a guy who I had responded to via Craigslist back in June. He responded to my response, we traded introductory emails three or four times... and then he sent me a link to a song he had written and recorded (and sang, and played electric guitar on). The song was SO BAD that at first I thought it was a parody of an over-earnest heavy-metal-ish rock ballad. But his email introducing the link gave no indication that it was a joke, and we hadn't been joking around before. He really thought the song was good. I was so perplexed by it -- he had seemed smart and in touch with reality -- that I sent the link to a couple of close friends to get their take on it, and what I should do. After all, I couldn't write him back without acknowledging the song, and I couldn't acknowledge the song without being rude or sounding snotty. And then I was thinking, do I really want to waste my time with a guy who is so far removed from my world? My world being the one that most people live in, I mean? (It's not like he's a recent Bosnian immigrant or something; he grew up around here.) So, on the advice of my homies, who agreed with my assessment of the song, I never wrote back. Cowardly, I know, but I figured it was kinder than whatever response I'd be able to come up with -- after all, I probably would've at least gone out on a first date with him if not for the song, and there's no way to break that news nicely.

So today I get an email from him in which he's cc:'d 90 other women. That's right, NINETY. (And they're cc:'d, so I can read all of their names and addresses. Nice.) The content of the email basically is, and I am paraphrasing so the text isn't google-able, that I and the other 90 are receiving the email because I was not polite and decent and smart enough to continue emailing with him at some point this past year. In fact, not replying him proves that I am an "average American," only interested in life on the surface and not in true, meaningful communication. I really should get out more, do some traveling (he's very worldly, so he knows these things) to expand my mind, to experience places where people are friendly and have depth and know how to connect with people. I need education, is all. And he enclosed a photo of himself, because he describes himself as attractive and doesn't want all of us to forget it. (From our June exchanges I remember that he also thinks he looks about 10-15 years younger than he is; as you all know, expressing a combination of extreme vanity and a fear of aging is DEFINITELY something you want to do immediately upon meeting a potential romantic partner. You know my feelings on this phenomenon. He's not the specific guy I wrote about in that post, however.)

Well. I immediately felt bad for the guy, because clearly he's still out there looking, and being alone when you don't want to be alone really sucks. And so, like many do, he lashed out in a crazy, obsessive way. I can't imagine how long it took to comb his email archives finding all of the women who dropped contact with him. And after a few minutes feeling kind of sorry for him, I forwarded it to CJ, and then to Jezebel.com
, hoping they'll post it as one of their "Crap Emails From A Dude." I'll let you know if they do.

I didn't post yesterday, it's true. I am aware of it.

Only after listening to my most recent ipod playlist did I realize that three of the songs I'd chosen feature mariachi bands:

"Underdog" by Spoon
"Neon Bible" by Arcade Fire
"Alone Again Or" by Love

This was out of about 20 songs. Are there more examples of recent songs using mariachi band music? Let me know if you think of any.

Tonight I made a delicious winter squash soup. I based it roughly off of this recipe though I didn't add sugar and cream. I had a carnival squash and a package of pre-peeled-and-chopped butternut from Trader's. and I did not pair it with a rosé. I did put crumbles of goat cheese on top of the soup, which was delicious. And we had wheat baguette and a kick-ass salad to round it off. It was a good apres-Thanksgiving meal; kind of light, with a good amount of cleansing fiber, fairly low in fat, but still autumnal.

And with no transition whatsoever, here are two photos of my cats in their Thai bucket thingy.





That last one shows where the bucket is in relation to the propane stove. The cats like the warmth.

Today the whole family (six adults, two young children) decided "what better day than Black Friday to go shopping?" And so we went to Babies R' Us, where the most recent parents in the group eventually (after much deliberation) purchased a car seat and a case of baby food. I took T to ride the coin-op Sesame-Street-character-themed firetruck in the entrance foyer, and after waiting for someone to enter the store so the door would be activated, the rest of the family joined us there. Which meant we were trapped. Instead of waiting for someone to show up and enter the store so we could escape the airlock-like foyer, CJ walked back into the store and out the actual exit so he could activate the door, freeing us. And T has been calling him "hero" ever since. As in, "Hero! Pick me up!" etc. It kind of hurts, the cuteness of everyone.

I also volunteered to take one for the team by taking T to the bathroom at a restaurant today. While she was pooping (let me tell you non-parents out there, holding a small person on a too-big toilet while they shit is AWESOME*), she said something like, "You know what's bad? When someone is peeing or pooping, and another person comes and pees and poops through that other person peeing and pooping." I'm not sure if she's just stating that she's anti-scat, or if it had to do with the fact that it was a multi-stall restroom and some strange woman had just entered the neighboring stall.

*That was sarcasm. I didn't really need to say it was sarcasm, did I? I just wanted to be sure I was not misunderstood.**

** Also, having to wipe the dirty bum of a small uncooperative person is AWESOME.*

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Obviously, we already ate. We (and by "we" I mean my mom) brined the turkey this year, and it did seem more flavorful than usual. She didn't brine it for the suggested 24 hours; it only got about 12 hours in the sauce, but it was still good. We have lots of leftovers. Some of them are out on the deck, because though my parents live alone, their full-size fridge is always packed so tightly as to be a solid wall of food. Mom claims that she cleaned it out recently, but she has a different idea about how long one can keep condiments before deciding they're too old to use. I have a jar of marmalade from January that really needs to go, but I am guessing that my parents would think it was fine, as it is "preserves," after all.

Here I am, slagging on my parents, when they are the ones that made us the chocolate-espresso pecan pie today. That was a heavenly pie. It still is, because there's some left for tomorrow.

I hope all of you out there had delicious food today.

Here I am in NJ, in the land of red mud. My parents' house is getting an addition, and the construction was supposed to be finished last month. Instead, half the house is still in the subflooring and bare drywall stage. It's a bit unsettling, and I don't even live here. My parents are generous enough to be camping out in the unfinished area so that me, my sis, and her kids can be in actual rooms with doors and floors.

And right now I am watching Project Runway and I'm too distracted to blog properly, so I shall bid you all a good night and a happy Thanksgiving.

Today was the first snow of the season! It's still here, too. We got maybe 2 inches. The Laurel Park peons haven't put out the handy buckets of sand yet (nor have they gotten all of the leaves up) so I know this won't last. It's pretty out, though.

In decade quilt news, today I spent about three hours ironing, pinning, and basting together the two flannel sheets so they'd be easier to work with. Now I need to pin and baste the top to them.

And now I am tired and will go to bed. Tomorrow: Driving to parental home in NJ, with CJ. Scary!

Today at a networky lunch, this exchange may have happened:
me: So, I guess I can get your contact info from _____.
potentially career-helping guy: Or I can just contact you through your blog.

The first thing that came into my mind was, Oh shit, my most recent post has the word "cock" in it. (And now here it is again, in this one!) (Which the person might be reading.)

My blog has become post-modern.

Anyway, I went shopping in Hadley today. It was more of a bunch of errands than anything fun, though the problem-solving part of my brain was satisfied with the activity. In Target, I overhead a little boy repeat over and over, "Dad, can we go into the toysssection?" With the drawn-out sounding "s," just like I spelled it. At first I thought, maybe the kid's a little autistic? But then I decided that he was simply saying "toys section." And saying things slightly wrong (or overly-specific) is cute.

I also bought birdseed today, so I can help contribute to the delinquency of the chickadee population in the local wildlife preserve.

Saturday (yesterday) was Bag Day in Northampton. On this very special day, participating stores allow bag-holders to purchase one item at 20% off. You can get the bags in the local newspaper, but a few of the stores have them (though you have to ask around). CJ wanted to look for a jacket, and I thought I'd get a jump on the ol' holiday shopping, so we went. My fair town is never more like a shopping mall than on Bag Day. Tons of people milling around, long lines inside stores, restaurants full of tired and hungry people... The trees along Main Street are again lights-free, and the stupid, irritating "holiday banners" are up, with their anti-festive rectangles of sparse white lights. They depress me. Regardless! I was able to find presents for niece and nephew at the special toy store where everything is made of wood or cotton and has been crafted lovingly by women-owned collectives in Guatemala. No roofies in these toys, no way!

Anyway, outside of Faces was parked a bike with a trailer posted with big
"nopornnorthampton" (.com*) signs on it. I considered buying a giant rubber cock at the "sensuality shop" and gluing it to the seat, but I have better things to do with my money.

CJ and I walked to the bird blind today. Due to the rules-ignoring actions of a couple of my neighbors, the chickadees have learned that people in the blind = free birdseed. So now all one has to do is sit down, extend your cupped hand, and wait a minute, and a cute little chickadee will fly up and perch on your fingers. The chickadee will take a few seconds to assess the situation, maybe pecking a little at the palm of your hand, and when it realizes you were faking them out and in fact have no birdseed, it takes a shit on your arm. Kidding! It just flies away. I need to buy a small bag of seed just so I can get my Snow White on the next time I walk out there.

*You can visit the site if you want, but I'm afraid if I show up on their referral log, I'll get a lot of passive-aggressive emails.

Ok. I finally uploaded my photos from Halloween weekend. Here's my deer costume. I was alternately a revenge-seeking deer (i.e. a deer hunter, ha ha):



...and an injured (see shotgunned chest) and subsequently suicidal deer:



Yeah, I didn't win any prizes this year. The gun was fun, though.

And, I actually finished the top of my decade quilt! Here it is.



It's meant to be an adult-sized quilt; see the scissors for scale. And it's a little rough around the edges, which will disappear once I do the finishing work. I have a couple of flannel sheets I'll use as both the other side of the quilt and the batting. (When I started this, years ago, my plan was to make kind of a light blanket thing instead of a heavy quilt.)

So that's what I've been doing instead of working or getting freelance jobs... Though I only worked about six hours on this during the last week. That's how much work had been done on this already. Damn.

Yeah, I know: I failed to blog yesterday. More TK after I run a few errands.

I finally decided, at 8:30 tonight, to defrost the refrigerator. I have just plugged it back in. Unlike the first time I defrosted it, I had let the ice in the fridge part grow to become, oh, two inches thick or so this time. It has dawned on me that I may not exactly understand how a refrigerator works, since I have no idea where all of that moisture came from. It's not like I'm putting steaming bowls of soup in there every night. Anyway, the glacier had grown to envelop the edge of the top-most wire shelf, and I had to wait for the shelf to be free before I could pry the glacier off. So I set up a space heater to point into the fridge and I waited. And waited, and soaked up the water with many towels, and waited some more, and set up a drip-wicking system to steer some of the water into a pan, and waited, and finally, beautifully, the shelf was yanked free and I was able to pry the slippery melty sheet of stale ice from the back of the fridge. Bliss. Now it's cooling down and I am about to restock my food, which is currently "chilling" (ho ho!) out on the porch.

And, because my sister made me go to all of this trouble of making my friend Rich stop what he was doing and find this image for me, I am going to post it; my favorite LOLGRIM:



I understand if you don't get it. You should be happy if you don't. It is for followers of internet memes. Anyway, Happy A Week From Thanksgiving!

p.s. Rich says "Keep your eyes open for LOLIDAYS!"

Ok, it's blog post time. What to say, what to say... Well, I felt a little better today. I feel terrible right now but that's because it's time to go lie down and sleep It's my mom's 60th birthday today, and I heard she had a delicious Filet to celebrate. I've taken several flash photos of my cats intertwined in the wooden bucket I mentioned, but I haven't uploaded them. I actually put hard-soled shoes on and did some yardwork for about half an hour (raking). And then I had to take a nap. I also did some work on my decade quilt (because at this rate it will take me 10 years to complete it; we're already in year 4, I think).

AND! Project Runway started tonight. Whoo! I love that show. A few ex-coworkers and I are going to wager on the outcome, as we did last season (I didn't win). We each pick a designer and whoever picks the person that stays the longest is the winner. And we are allowed to view the first episode before choosing. I like Kit Pistol, if just for her name. And that's all for today, folks.

My mom's 60th birthday is coming up -- in, oh, half an hour -- and she wants fancy glass marbles. Apparently they're a thing. Anyway, in my searches, I found something even better than marbles: Marebles. You may click on that and think at first, "'Glass ball equine IUDs', huh? 'IUD' must be a horse-related acronym I am unfamiliar with, because it obviously couldn't mean..." But oh yes, it does. It does mean that kind of IUD. If you ask me, a mareble seems much more collectible and rare than a marble, but I'm not selling either kind, so what do I know.

In other news, I left the house today, under my own power! I drove my car to the Stop & Shop around 3 p.m., and yet again entered the land of the Differently-Employed. Because I am still sick and my head is full of fluids, shopping took a very long time. I tried to enjoy and roll with the floaty sensation so as to not have a bad trip. At check-out, the middle-aged, average-sized lady in line in front of me was still packing up her large purse when my items were heading down the chute into the bagging area, where they bumped against her packed shopping bags. She eyed my Kettle brand cheddar-cheese-flavored baked potato chips with surprise and a hint of alarm. "Wow, look at these! May I?" she gestured to pick up the chip bag, looking at me for permission. I granted it. "How many calories are in this? How many per serving? It says 120 calories per serving, and an ounce is a serving, how big is that?" I said that the entire bag was 4 ounces (totally overpriced normally, but it was on sale), so you could just eat a fourth of the bag. "Where did you find these!" I said it was in the health food aisle, and I hadn't tried them yet. Unfortunately my voice crapped out by the end of the sentence so I couldn't really continue the conversation. Plus, it was time to pay, and she was standing (with my potato chips) right in front of the debit card swipe machine. I had to simply wait for her to be done with my chips, and so I did. The chips are good but I wish they were saltier. And not so expensive.

I am sick of the writer's strike. What's the thing people do a lot of when they're sick? Watch TV. And yet, I have no new Daily Shows and Colbert Reports to watch. LAME. I did make and enjoy some Jello today (raspberry flavor!), and played a bunch of Star Wars Battlefront II, and watched two episodes of Rome. I didn't even get out of bed until 12:30, because I had a horrible night of barely any sleep. My nose just kept seeping out. I kept thinking I had a nosebleed, but no, just snot. Fluid, watery snot. It's been a rough day. I am just entering the coughing/sore throat stage. I'm about to go to bed and I predict more misery.

I know, whine whine whine. There are children dying and wars happening and I am complaining about a silly cold. But it's my cold, I own it. It owns me, rather. And I have to blog today, so here it is.

It's been a while since I've lost the fight to a cold and I am remembering why and just how much I hate them. This weekend was almost a complete wash, what with the naps and the watching TV and DVDs and playing video games. CJ made me matzo-ball chicken soup tonight, which helped a little, if only mentally.
In other news, Thanksgiving is like a week and a half away. Just let that sink in a little. If CJ hasn't left me by then (having gotten fed up with my sickness-aggravated crankiness), he'll be joining me and the family. It sounds like the two of us will be "camping" in the unfinished addition to my parents' house, which will be totally awesome if I'm still sick. I can't still be sick then, can I?

[Um, it's still Saturday on the west coast.] I've had a very lazy day because of my being under the weather. One significant thing did happen, though: The cats finally discovered the footed wooden bucket-like thing that I bought specifically as a cat bed about a year and a half ago. They have been curled up together in it all day. I could not be prouder.
I also went to Snow Farm for their seconds/samples sale, where I bought nothing, and the Williamsburg general store, where I also bought nothing. CJ cooked me a chicken and heated up some tasty butternut squash soup and a loaf of bread and made a salad. It was very tasty, even though I feel kinda gross at all times due to the cold.
New to this cold: As an experiment, I am going to see if NOT cutting out dairy makes any difference at all. So far it hasn't. I was taught that drinking milk during a cold made you more mucousy, but a few people in the past couple of years have told me that that's bullshit. Please share your thoughts on the matter in the comments below.

I went to the NEW! BIG! Big Y today. It just opened. Well, re-opened. It is now Stop n' Shop sized, and is similar to S&S, except it sells wine and beer and there's a place where you can eat whatever you bought at the pizza bar and deli. And the "natural" foods are all integrated with the other food throughout the store, instead of handily/food-apartheidedly segregated into two aisles all the way over on one side. The prices are not cheaper at Big Y, in fact a few of my staples were noticeably more expensive (and strange: why did they choose to make the almond/flax GoLean Crunch 60 cents more than the regular GoLean Crunch?). However, Big Y does have a very special savings "club" card. Like other cards, it lets you get the sale prices on some items, and they track your purchases for probably=nefarious purposes. But at Big Y, at check-out you get to play a virtual slot machine which might give you a blue, silver, or gold coin. An actual coin, which you can use for future savings. Today they seemed to be giving everyone silver coins (even though my slot machine thing came up without a win). A silver coin can get you a free small coffee in the new cafe, so I have that to look forward to.

And though it was one in the afternoon on a weekday, Biy Y was packed. Lots of elderly people wandering around in wonder and gratitude; apparently they have been waiting a long time for Big Y to come back. I do not know why they like Big Y so much, and why they do not like Stop n' Shop. Big Y has always had a kind of old-fashioned feel to it, with smaller aisles, lots of canned and processed food, ground beef and frozen hash browns in bulk, and very little fresh, all-natural stuff. At least, it did. Today they had a guy grilling chicken teriyaki on a Foreman Grill and giving chunks out as samples. There was an old man there saying to his wife, "I think it's chicken, but it's got some kinda spice on it." "It's teriyaki!" I said helpfully. He just stared at me. Change can be difficult.

In other news, I seem to have a cold. It's been a while since I've been sick, but the petri dish of my sister's apartment was too much for my immune system. I call it a petri dish only because she has two young children who don't know how or care to know how to blow their noses. It was a snotty situation, is all I'm saying.

I woke up this morning to T walking into the living room, sobbing "Grandmaa-aa-aa!" (She really likes my mom. Also, like the rest of my family, she is really cranky when she first wakes up.) Usually it's her job to not-so-gently wake me up so I can relinquish the couch to her, while I go to the back of the apartment to sleep a little longer in S's bed. Today, she walked over to my side, paused for a second, then flung herself despondently on the rocking chair, saying, "Daddy, you wake her up, I don't wanna watch! I don't wanna watch!" Such drama, that one. Later on I got a better send off from her. And now I'm heading out to Thai and Trivia.

Cringe Night was hilarious and awesome. There was a cute guy reading the poems he wrote when he was 14, a pretty woman reading from a short story about meeting Michael Hutchins from INXS (she wrote the story in order to give it to him, to inspire him to contact her and fall in love with her; she did end up throwing a dot-matrix-printed copy of it onstage at one of their concerts), and two or three other random diary-readers. My sister had brought one of her old journals, thinking she might read this lengthy, painfully-sincere, and enthusiastic review of a Sting concert we attended, but she was too intimidated by the quality of the other readings. Maybe next time.
One guy read from a diary he was assigned to keep during his 8th grade year; I had the exact same assignment, and I still have the diary. Blog fodder!
CJ is, right this moment, booking our trip to Maui. It is happening, people. To put my fickle mind at ease, we are paying extra for a pre-nup (i.e. trip insurance). But now I can start dreaming of snorkeling with the manta rays, sunsets on the beach while sipping mai tais, and volcano-exploration.

I'm in Brooklyn, because I am of course still unemployed, so I can go wherever I want during the work week. And my sister really wants to go to Cringe Night tomorrow, so here I am. Once I got here, T, my 3 and 3/4-year-old niece, kept asking me how long I would be staying. Actually, she was more pessimistic about it: "So you're leaving right after dinner, right?" "So you won't be here when I wake up, right?" "So you'll be here tomorrow in the morning, but you'll be gone when I come home from school, right?" She has been slaying me with the cuteness and the cleverness and the funnyness.
Right now the three grownups are in front of three computers. Sk just farted audibly, S said "gross!" and Sk said "YOU'RE gross!" and S said "that's mean!" and I said "BOTH of you are gross!" and S went "Aw!" and Sk went "Ha!"
This is what we do after the kids go to bed.

Oh SHIT, it's NaBloPoMo. And my blog-slacker sister
is doing it, so I really have no excuse. I just reread some old blog posts from 2003, looking for the 7th-grade diary entries I transcribed (they're in February, if you're interested) and man, I used to blog all the time, plus I was so much funnier and more energetic. What the hell happened? It's kind of depressing.
I have lots of things I could talk about, but a lot of it is personal. And I'm the only one of my friends who lays themselves bare on a blog, so I think part of my problem is Fear of People Not Liking Me. This is an ongoing crisis (see: the previous 5 years of this blog) and one I need to work on. But, like most difficult things I "need to work on," there's always tomorrow to start actually working, if you know what I mean.
Anyway. I'll blog every day for this month, even though I took the weekend off. Here, I'll tell you about my weekend in animals:
I met a very pretty, gray, short-haired dog on the street Friday night, before the Sitting Next To Brian CD release show. The show was fantastic, by the way. We were drifting off to sleep by the end of their set (not the band's fault) so we missed Space Captain.
The next night, CJ and I saw The Darjeerling Limited, which was great, though felt similar to The Life Aquatic. A snake has a cameo role.
Yesterday, after a baby shower at Chandler's Tavern, I drove up to Lenox, where CJ and I went for a short walk at the Audubon place. We turned a corner of a path and saw a beaver slip into a tiny pond. We froze, and the beaver slowly swam in a circle and came back to where it had been before, about ten feet away from us. It lumbered up onto a fallen log and started nibbling on dead leaves. Beavers are very noisy chewers, and when they're standing half-submerged in a pool of still water, the vibrations cause tiny ripples to radiate out from their bodies. It stayed there for a while, then took a small branch in its mouth and swam a few feet away to continue chewing, as if to give us the full Beaver Viewing Experience of swimming, eating, and grasping things with hand-like claws.
This morning on my drive home on the Pike, I saw a couple of guys in orange safety vests standing by the jersey barrier in the middle. As soon as I whizzed past, they dragged a deer carcass across the roadway to the shoulder, each of them holding a rear leg, going as quickly as they could. The deer wasn't mangled at all, it was just dead. I spent the next ten minutes daydreaming about calling the local hunting store to find out if I could pay someone to clean and dress a doe I'd hit with my car (if I ever do, god forbid), or would that be a problem, since I didn't have a deer-hunting license?
And now I'm home, and need to do some interview prep work. Which is difficult, and which is why I haven't started (see what I did there? With the tag-back?). The interview is only rhetorical at this point; I expect it'll be scheduled soon. I hope.

[Update: I did send a revised resume, with a short but funny/mildly-self-deprecating email; the guy wrote me back almost immediately saying not to worry, he hadn't read the previous one yet. Sorry for ignoring your advice, commenters; I went with a former co-worker's opinion.]

Last Thursday, I drove CJ to a CVS to get eye drops and much-needed pain reliever for an eye thing he was going through. I could tell it really hurt because he was kind of trembling and not-talking. While cruising through the parking lot, a big old sedan in front of me suddenly stopped. So, I pulled into the open spot he had just passed, and parked. As CJ and I searched the car for his pain-killing prescription (with increasing distress), a very angry man suddenly knocked at the window. "Do you do that a lot, stealing people's parking spaces!?" I opened the door to be polite and asked him to repeat himself. He did. I said, "Oh, were you going to back into it or something? I didn't know." (By the way, there were plenty of parking spaces. Plenty. And the dick didn't have his blinkers on.) He said something angry to me back, about being careful or something, and how I should watch out and pay attention (I didn't pay attention). He was so furious, so furious at ME. I suddenly got angry, and as he walked away, I said to his back, "You don't have to be an asshole about it." He immediately turned and rushed up to the car saying, "Excuse me? Did I use bad language with you??" I glanced over at CJ, still wincing and fumbling around in the dark for the prescription, and I said, "No, fine, you're right. Have a good night" -- that last bit said with sweetness and only a tiny hint of sarcasm.

After he walked away and the adrenaline rush subsided, I felt like crying. We decided the prescription was not in the car; this was bad, and meant he'd have to just use Advil. As I walked a blind CJ to the CVS, I had to excuse my bad behavior to CJ: see, I used to just turn meek and yielding when confronted with jerks, but now I stand up for myself, maybe a little too much, when I should really be polite but firm. Plus, because CJ had his eyes closed, I felt I had to convince him that I hadn't actually knowingly cut the guy off. (He doesn't know me well enough yet to know I don't pull that crap.) But replaying what had just happened made me feel worse and less-together. I nearly fell apart in the freakin' CVS, and I think it all happened because I'm unemployed.

Here's why: My ego has taken a big hit, which I didn't really expect from being laid off; I don't feel it consciously. I know I'm good at what I do (or used to do). But I am definitely more insecure than I have been in a long time. It's not a good feeling. Nobody's more critical of me than I am. I don't know how to counteract this, except to just be aware of it. I hope I don't end up stripping for cash just to feel better about myself. If you catch me on the pole, please pull me off of it.

Inside CVS, CJ sat in the waiting area while I collected the other stuff he needed. As he occasionally blotted at his teary, shut eyes, and I held his hand and tried to distract him from the pain, I thought I saw the angry guy walking up the aisle. I hoped he saw me, and I hoped he felt guilty.

Shit. I just noticed that I made a typo in my resume -- you know, the resume says I'm detail-oriented and have excellent proofreading skills. The error: I wrote "saavy" instead of "savvy" (neither looks correct to me, to be truthful, but the dictionary says savvy). I sent this resume to my previous workplace, for a job I am desperate to get. So, now the question is, what do I do about it? Hope they don't notice, or send a charming/funny/impressively-brave email fessing up to the mistake? Help me, people.

Why haven't I been blogging? I don't know. Time keeps slipping away. This is my month of Sundays, after all, and I have been living the life of a leisurely retiree (in that I don't go to work, but I try to spend as little as I can). I'm almost done refinishing the bench thing (just need to put on the actual stain/finish); I've been cooking, going on hikes, doing laundry, planning projects, making new earrings for Dandie, and not cleaning the house. Plus, spending time with CJ, which takes away from my productive time. From the above list, we do the hiking and cooking together, but none of the other things, but we go to see shows and we watch DVDs and occasionally shop for eyeglasses. Also, we drive to and from our homes. He lives an hour away, but it's a scenic hour.

We've been dating for 2 months (in fact, it might be exactly 2 months today, from the first face-to-face date) but are planning a trip to Hawaii in February. This is terrifying to me on several levels, the worst one being my lack of income. Even on a good, well-employed day I'd be worried about spending the money, but throw my unemployed state into the mix and it's super freak-out time. And that's not even considering the commitment involved in planning a trip 4 months out with a new relationship. (We have already discussed trip insurance and the like. It's the single person's version of a pre-nup.) This is one of my many problems: Most people would be focusing on the Hawaii part, with the beautiful sand and flowers and snorkeling and sushi, where I only see the dark looming clouds of "what if?" Sometimes I really hate my brain.

Warning: This post really could have been multiple Twitters, but I don't want to overload their system.

I'm getting into an unemployed groove over here. Get out of bed at 9:15 or so, eat breakfast in front of the computer, do some job search stuff, eat lunch, then work on refinishing my table (see below) until I can't, read crap online and work on other minor projects, play Turok, make dinner, eat with radio, then upstairs for TV/Turok/more computer time, or out for singing/a show/etc. In bed by midnight. That's the semi-productive life I've been leading.

For lunch yesterday I made an egg sandwich, a mug of tea, and a glass of watered-down unsweetened organic cranberry juice, to which I accidentally added a generous dose of milk. Normally I stop myself before actually pouring the milk into the wrong container, but this time I just filled my glass of juice to the brim with creamy goodness. I might be starting to lose it.

Yesterday was also day two of my furniture stripping project. I'm working on a rough-hewn-looking coffee table that I bought for $20 via Craigslist. It appears to be a knock-off of a fancier, pedigreed table that Pbup had (and probably still has). I'm using a water-soluble stripper, which means it doesn't work all that well, but I don't need to use a ventilator.I also have to scrub the stuff off, hard, so I also get exercise, kind of.

If you've ever wondered where everyone who doesn't work a regular 9-to-5 job goes during the day, I can tell you: WalMart. Twice I've had to go to the dreaded WalMart to get more supplies; the second time, I rode my bike there, and with my messed-up hair and work clothes, I fit right in. I didn't even bother unrolling my right pant leg. I still hate it in there, and their selection is shit, but it is about a mile and a half closer to my house than Foster-Farrar. And if I can't justify going to the cheapest possible store while I'm unemployed, when can I justify it?

I've been reading about salary requirements, and how to handle requests for them, and I just want to point out that the word salary is really weird. If you see it used frequently, it ceases to have any meaning. Salary. Salary salary salary. It's like a salad, and celery, together. I feel it would be better if it were spelled salery.

Doing all of these little projects, and cooking real food, is time-consuming. And I am starting to feel stressed about my lack of income. I am torn between wanting to continue enjoying myself (while still looking for work) and just taking any job at all in order to stretch out my severance pay for as long as I can. And by "any job at all" I mean soul-withering work like temping and data entry. But jeez, I don't really need to be that person, do I? I haven't had to do that kind of work for 12 years. Universe, please give me permission to not be that person. I will repay you by doing the crafty things I've been putting off: finishing my quilt (started, oh, 4 years ago or so) and completing the new scarves and opening an Etsy shop and writing the pitch for that magazine. Amen.

This week has been all about choices.
I could get up and out of bed when my alarm first goes off in the morning. Or I can stay in semi-consciousness for an hour or so, enjoying the warmth of my bed and the cats lying on me.
I could clean the bits of raw chicken out of the kitchen sink strainer, or I could leave them there and let the cats eat them during the night.
I could work on the various art projects I want to create, or I could play Turok: Evolution.
I could get angry at the two loser assholes who won my eBay auctions and then never responded or paid me, or I could shrug it off and get the auctions canceled so I can just redo them.
I could fall into the trap I commonly lay for myself at this stage in a relationship -- where I start saying critical things without thinking, subconsciously trying to push them away and/or test their devotion to me -- or I can try really, really hard to not do that.

This week, I've been choosing the second options.

New guy CJ (note: not his real initials) and I walked up to the doorway of number 118, where a couple of young men stood smoking outside. "You play Halo?" one of them asked. Yes, yes we do. "Upstairs to the left."

Yeah, we know a guy. A guy who has two huge TVs, two XBox 360s, 2 copies of Halo 3, and enough controllers and leather sofas to accommodate 8 players simultaneously. We hadn't actually played Halo before, but CJ once had a serious XBox addiction (he kicked it) and I've done my time on the Quake and the Unreal. We set up our characters (him: mad hatter; me: pretty pony), learned the controller basics of moving around and shooting, and went to multi-player slaughter-town. We played against a bunch of guys who had obviously spent a lot of time playing: They knew all of the game board maps, which guns were best, where those guns were stored... Meanwhile, my character kept looking up when I meant to look down, I had to stop moving in order to remember how to switch weapons, and I frequently spent several minutes "firing" at people while not noticing I was out of ammo. Still, I managed to kill a few people.

I was playing with 7 men, ages ranging from, let's say, 22-40, and I really, really didn't want to be treated differently because I was a woman. But the patriarchy is a funny thing. It gets into you guys, way deep inside where you don't see it, and you do things like think you're doing me a favor by letting me kill you. Please: Fire away; I know I'm going to get killed again and again, I'm a big girl, I won't cry. Do it, and don't patronize me. I know you think you're being nice and considerate, and are letting me kill you because you think I'll get too discouraged otherwise. But I'm not a child. In fact, I am likely older than you. CJ was doing almost as poorly as I was, and you didn't go out and find him, stand in front of him, and let him wale away on you until you died. And then say something like, "Well, I was getting you pretty hard, so..."

Why is that?

Still, I'd play again. I didn't get mad or even irritated, because I understand where it was coming from. I can handle a little mild sexism and I'm not surprised when I find it in places where normally only boys roam. I wish I could practice on my own so I'd be ready for next time... But I'd rather keep the $400 and whatever carpal tunnel health I currently have.

Unemployment update: So far, not-working is as awesome as you had always feared it might be. It's gorgeous outside, so I might go take a walk around Fitzgerald Lake. Or maybe I'll stay here and read a book. I already sent out a resume today, so I feel like I'm covered. I was advised that I should indulge my need for sleep by not forcing myself to get out of bed at 8 in the morning (I go to bed at midnight), just because I Can, and Why Not? Except I haven't worked on anything arty yet, and I need to. Luckily I have all of tomorrow and Friday free. (And next week, and the week after...)

Anyway, my point is: no panic, no vomiting, no sobbing. And yes, I do think I'll take that walk now, thanks.