2013 - Year in Review

I lifted this list shamelessly from Hannah a couple of years ago and it's always fun to fill in. As she pointed out, it's targeted at younger folk than us (what isn't these days other than denture cream and incontinence products?), but whatever.

1. What did you do in 2013 that you've never done before? I watched my son hit two home runs in the Little League World Series. I still can't quite believe that happened even while I'm typing it. I also backed full steam behind into a sign and cracked off half my bumper - I've never actually been in a car accident, so I guess for a first that was a lucky one, and I felt like a humongous jackass but the world didn't end. I watched a full season of a show with my son - it was a borderline-inappropriate-for-his-age show about the apocalypse and zombies, but still, it was a fairly moving experience. I also drove a vanful of gigantic volleyball players around the city on a regular basis.

2. Did you keep your resolutions for 2013 and will you make more for next year? I don't make resolutions, not for New Year's anyway. Living with anxiety and being on the self-sabotaging side, it just feels like setting myself up for failure. I have the same resolution I always do: try to be more healthy, more productive, plan meals, get exercise, laugh like an idiot with my family and be a kind, gracious, generous and loving presence in the world. With a touch of snark so people still recognize me.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? After years of baby-drought as my immediate cohort and I watched our children grow and our eggs shrivel, there are babies bustin' out all over. My friend Susanne didn't quite pop in 2013 but she's due any day, and she lives much closer to us now, yay! and Cynthia had Rose, who graces us with her presence on a fairly regular basis, which is cool because her presence ROCKS.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No, but Matt's Grandpa is dying. We visited on the 28th, and I sat beside him and held his hand, and when he muttered "rub my head, would ya" I did. He was wrapped up and small and looked like he could dissolve into sparkling molecules and float out the window. Of course it doesn't happen like that, does it? He's had a long, rich life full of love and people and magnificent experience, but we love him, and we are sad. He kept saying "oh, I have to go", and as much as we want him to stay, we know that it's true.

5. What countries did you visit? None. Oh, duh, the US for the LLWS. And I went to Toronto and Barrie. What people did I visit would be a better question: Zarah, her kids Alex and Sophie, Nicole and Hannah and everybody else at Blissdom Canada, Matt's dad and his brother Jeremy, Matt's other brother Eric and his wife Sarah and their kids Timothy and Fen in Edmonton at Easter, Matt's aunt Kate and Uncle Fraser. Plus I'm leaving for the Dominican tomorrow with my sister and her family and my mom and dad. I'm a horrible traveler, but a great visit-er.

6. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013? Maybe the ability to remember that it's 2014 before September? I don't feel like I lacked for much in 2013. A part-time job would be good, but I'm probably a year off from that yet. The sleep thing isn't solved yet, but whatever, can't have everything.

7. What date(s) from 2013 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? The day Eve and I were visiting Alison and her girls and watching the Canadian Little League Major finals in Glace Bay on the computer, the game that B.C. was supposed to win, and we won instead. The days Angus played baseball in front of thousands of cheering fans and then got mobbed by autograph seekers, and then we watched him get interviewed on tv. Also, the day I smoked pot in a hot tub was pretty cool.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? This wasn't a huge achievement year for me. In the "things normal people would just consider normal" category, my husband says he was pleasantly surprised and admiring of the fact that I handled all the baseball craziness this summer without going insane and dragging the rest of my family along with me. I also got 88% on a Basic Computing exam that I wrote at Algonquin, even though it took me 20 minutes to locate the first part of it online and THEN I realized that the second part was open book, which I hadn't known and so was without the book. AND I did it without disturbing the other exam-takers with either loud sobbing or hysterical giggling. Also, I was just thinking that this year we got decorated for Christmas early in December, I broke out my Christmas music nice and early and got to listen to it a lot, I did as many Christmas cards as I felt like and then stopped without undue guilt, and presents were all bought and wrapped well before December 23rd. I also had fun baking and ended up with just enough stuff. It was a really nice, low-key, low-stress Christmas.

9. What was your biggest failure? Getting myself on a regular sleeping schedule and not succumbing to the temptation to read until 4 a.m. on a regular basis. I started Weight Watchers last January and got into a good routine of meal-preparation, not snacking mindlessly and exercising. I've kept up the exercising, the the meal-prep and not eating crap went out the window around July and hasn't fully come back yet. I lost ten pounds when I probably should have lost at least twenty, and a couple of them have come back. I won't be rocking a new bikini in the Dominican. I will be roasting many vegetables and making meal plans again when we get back. And NOW I've become a big fat stupid cliché by making WEIGHT LOSS one of my biggest FAILURES of the year. I should have stuck to the first one, which could be one of those fake complaints about yourself, like when they ask you your worst quality on a job application and you say "I just CAN'T STOP WORKING, I'm TOO responsible!" I read all night because I love knowledge to an unhealthy degree! This extra weight on my ass is just the weight of existential pondering! Okay, I'll stop.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I got the flu just after our fabulous family staycation downtown at a hotel during Winterlude. I had gotten the flu shot, but either it was a different strain, or it would have been worse without the shot, in which case I think I'd be dead. I did get a fairly amusing blog post out of it. Other than that, my feet, my back and my knee all played up occasionally, but nothing too severe.

11. What was the best thing you bought? A treadmill. We kept putting it off because of the expense and the space concerns. Then I said to my husband that I thought that was kind of stupid - if we'd had a heart attack and the doctor told us we absolutely HAD to get one, we would. I walk and use the gym like crazy in the fall and spring, but in the winter I don't have footwear that doesn't murder my feet or the balance to walk outside and if I get depressed I don't go to the gym. So we sucked up the expense - the end-of-summer sales at Canadian Tire were really good, fortunately - and once we put our minds to it it wasn't even hard to find a good space in the laundry room. I use it three or four times a week and I love it. Angus runs on it every now and then and Eve walks on it sometimes - when she's in the middle of a vacation Doctor Who-a-thon I often make her walk for one episode. I'm SO glad we did it.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? I talk about Eve a lot on this blog, so I hope I get a pass for stuffing this post full of the Little League World Series. Even before they went, I was driving Angus out to visit his teammate Jack and we were talking about how everyone on the team, even when they were being celebrated and interviewed and applauded, was just a really nice kid. When we went to someone's cottage for the afternoon or out for dinner after a game, they've always been polite and considerate. The coach was also amazing - self-deprecating, fair, and more occupied with loving the game than winning. I was so proud of all of them. And just to be fair, Eve was an awesome team little sister. Everyone still talks about her comment after the loss to Chinese Taipei: "just remember - it could have been B.C. here losing that game instead of you."

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Rob Ford springs immediately to mind. Also, The Governor was a complete asshole.

14. Where did most of your money go? To Williamsport, birthplace of Little League baseball. And Loblaws. And the Toyota Collision Centre.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Meeting and squishing Nicole and Hannah in person, then having a blast making fun of Eric Alper, hoovering up snack mix, gossiping in the hot tub and getting silly drunk before partying in our pjs. (I'm not just putting this above Little League World Series stuff to suck up to them, either. 'Excited' isn't really the right word. My status on Facebook after they won the game that meant they were going to Williamsport was: Holy fuck. They won.)

16. What songs will always remind you of 2013? None, because I never remember what year a song came out, or what Olympics anyone won anything in, or what year my kids were born, or how to empty the sink trap in my bathroom (oh wait, I've wandered off-topic). Plus, Hannah picked Inner Ninja, so now the only song I can think of in answer to any question involving a song is Inner Ninja.

17. Compared to this time last year you are: Remarkably unfrazzled considering I'm getting up at five (hate getting up early) to go to the airport (hate airports) to check my luggage (always feel like I should just bid the luggage a fond farewell) and then fly (hate flying) to the Dominican (never been, but I probably won't hate it after the first miserable post-travel-trauma day). Christmas and my anxiety meds have been good to me this year, it seems. (Please don't let my luggage get lost).

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? I could say exercising, or writing, or being awake, but really, that's a mug's game, isn't it? I'm wary of wishing to change the past, and you should be too - has A Sound of Thunder taught us NOTHING, people?

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Well, being anxious, but who knows, maybe if I was calmer it would have caused a tornado in Texas or something.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? It was a long, fairly quiet, luxurious stretch of days in this house. My sister and her crew usually come, but since we're going away together so early in January they didn't. A couple of times I wished we had more company, but we hung out with my parents and had our Christmas party with a bunch of friends, and saw Matt's aunt and uncle and grandparents in Brockville, and did a lot of loafing and movie-watching and reading too, which everybody really seemed to need, and it was wonderful. And now we have a warm week with family before heading back to reality. Also, Eve's been taking care of next door's hamster, who is named Stewie after the evil baby in The Family Guy. So, you know, every Christmas is pretty much the best Christmas ever, but really - BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER.

21. Did you fall in love in 2013? No. Wait, when did I get my new fridge? No.

22. How many one-night stands? We're not counting the fridge? Then none.

23. What was your favourite tv program? The Walking Dead. I totally never watch The Vampire Diaries, so that's definitely not a close second.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you don't hate last year? I try really hard not to hate, and my life is blessedly free of things like land theft and genocide so far, so I don't really have cause to.

HA ha, listen to me trying to sound all evolved and Zen. I hate people ALL THE TIME. The asshole driving too slowly in front of me. The parents who don't talk to me at the school barbecue. The dumbasses who run my internet and take sinister delight in making my wireless signal crap out just when I need it most. My husband when he says "is there room in the freezer up here for this, or do I have to put it downstairs" when I'm all the way across the room and he's STANDING BESIDE THE FUCKING FREEZER. I'm a big prickly hate-ball. But not right now.

25. What was the best book you read? You'll have to wait until next week for that. I'll be telling you while fabulously tanned. Feel free to hate me.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? That a bowl and a spoon to bang on it made Rose happy for hours.

27. What did you want and get? A treadmill. A party on my birthday. Angus saying "love you" before bed BEFORE I said it to him. Lots of books. Many hugs. A cheeseburger.

28. What was your favourite film of this year? That would require remembering all the films I saw this year. I need a Goodreads site for films. Is there one? I liked The Life of Pi much more than I thought I would. I just looked at a "50 top movies of 2013" list and I've seen two of them - maybe that's why I'm having trouble. Les Mis was in there, and I loved that, but I'm pretty sure I saw it in 2012, so I feel like it's a cheat, but I'll go with it.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was 43, and we had a party here and there was music and talking and laughing and baby barf and pear margaritas and impromptu ice cream making and my whorehouse glass. It was marvellous.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Look, I keep telling you I don't think it's useful to wish..... oh fuck it. Being able to fall asleep and wake up without it being a whole big thing. Without feeling like waking up is like dying or being born every single day. That would be good.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2013? Dunno. Flowy. And I always wear jewelry now, which is funny. I never used to at all, and now if I leave the house without a necklace and a bracelet on, I feel momentary panic when I realize it. I forgot to wear my good-luck swirly necklace to one of Angus's games in Casselman and I was worried that would jinx them.

Ha.

32. What kept you sane? My friends, in the computer and around the corner. Drugs. My doctor. My husband. My kids (when they weren't driving me the other way).

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Idris Elba. See Hannah's post for further reference.

34. Which political issue stirred you the most? Whichever was happening at the moment. I have a short memory.

35. Who did you miss? Nicole and Hannah after I met them in person and they were infuriatingly awesome. Dammit.

36. Who was the best new person you met? Nicole and Hannah for meeting for real, but the bestest and newest? Rose, duh.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2013? I don't know. Maybe that sometimes you have to let your kids fail big and you can't make it any better for them. They have to find their own way through it. (See: Little League World Series, Canada vs. Panama. Ouch. Right after the game, I asked him if he wanted to punch me, hoping to lighten things up. It didn't work. We told him to go ahead and cry and take the time he needed. The next day I texted him that if he wasn't the kind of person who didn't hate losing, he wouldn't be here. I don't relate to that personally, but if I'm going to be his mother I have to understand it).

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year? I hear every word that you say / Taking it in like an old fairy tale/ Though for better or worse and the promise of verse/ you make it seem real, like it's all here to stay/ But see how the wind it blows/ All the birds scatter and I'm out here alone/ You say I know your favourite song and I'll sing you back home.

Love to all. Four-star books next week!

Written on the Body

Dear Zits,

When I said I wanted the face of a nineteen-year-old again, this is not exactly what I meant, but I understand your confusion.

Apologetically,

Allison

***

Dear Wrinkles,

Surely you're too old to be hanging with zits. It's unseemly. Get some pride.

Helpfully,

Allison

***

Dear Breasts,

Much has been asked of you, I know. Would it be churlish to remind you that there hasn't been a nine-pound iron-gummed nipper hanging off of either of you for a good eight years now? And to ask you to, correspondingly, PERK THE FUCK UP ALREADY?

Exasperatedly,

Allison

***

Dear Stomach and Hips,

I appreciate your steadfastness, but we don't actually have to be perenially ready for a hard winter on the Russian Steppes. Feel free to stand down.

Consolingly,

Allison

***

Dear Lower Back,

Oh, cry me a river. We've all got it tough. Talk to the boobs if you don't believe me.

Bracingly,

Allison

***

Dear Hemorrhoids,

Didn't get the memo on location, location, location, huh?

Mystifiedly,

Allison

***

Dear Right Knee,

You CAN be replaced.

Menacingly,

Allison

***

Dear Toes,

That colour looks fabulous on you. Keep up the good work.

Fondly,

Allison

Birds do it, Bees do it, Fleas are more educated than my kids about it

Remember when Eve and I talked a little about the facts of life and then she didn't want to talk about it any more? Turns out we should have talked about it a little more. Yesterday she was telling me about school. She said that they knew they were having health class and the grade fives in her class (she's in a four-five split) were afraid they were going to talk about where babies come from. (Let me interject that I felt the slightest bit smug about the fact that I thought Eve knew where babies come from, in a gigantic pride-goeth-before-a-fall douchebag moment). It turned out they were actually studying germs. But Eve said one of her classmates said "I know where babies come from. A man and a woman make them." Then EVE said "two women can make a baby".

What now?

I looked up from whatever I was chopping. She said her friend disagreed, but she got someone else to corroborate. I said "were you joking?" (please god, say you were joking). She looked confused.

Shit.

I said "two women can't make a baby."

She looked at me and said "I'm pretty sure they can."

Jesus.

I said "we talked about this. Remember? Sperm comes from him, egg comes from her, you need both?"

She said "but remember those people we met at the New Year's party, and they were lesbians, and they were getting married and they wanted to have the same last name in case they have kids because then they would all have the same last name?"

Ah.

So I said, leaving out the fact that I was probably too drunk to explain effectively at the time, "two women can HAVE a baby, and one of them can carry it and give birth to it, but they need sperm from a man to make it. They need what's called a sperm donor."

She said "THAT must be awkward."

And now I have to write a letter of apology to Eve's teacher and possibly a few parents. Sigh.

How Deep is Your Love? How Full is Your Life? What Colour is Your Parachute?

Nan started the ball rolling by charting her own life against a "The 50 Ways to Live Life to the Full" list from the Daily Mail site; Nicole did it too. I just looked at the actual site and realized I was laboring under a misconception; I thought that some editors or columnists had compiled the list, which reads as incredibly skewed towards privileged, neurotypical, able-bodied (but probably overweight) people. It turns out the list was actually generated from a survey of 2000 adults - presumably mostly privileged, neurotypical, able-bodied mostly overweight adults, but it still lessens my ability to be snarkily contemptuous of whoever wrote the article. And hey, we all know I love a good meme, especially on a baseball night. And what if there's an easy way to live life to the full (is that even grammatically correct? Is that a British-ism? It bugs me) and I'm missing it? That would suck.

1. Stop worrying about money

Okay. Do you think the grocery store takes Pokemon cards?

2. Stop worrying about what other people think

I would. Except for that thing where sometimes I think I'm a worthless pile of monkey-snot and then my friends tell me I'm actually quite nice and fairly intelligent and even fun to have around. Am I just supposed to disregard what other people think if it's bad? Look, if my ass looks huge I want to hear about it. It's not like I can look at my own ass.

3. Take two holidays a year

I go to visit Zarah every fall. I'm going to Toronto to see Book of Mormon in a couple of weeks. I think I'm going to Blissdom next October. I'm nothing BUT holidays, baby.

4. Enjoy little comforts in life

Pam and I picked up warm tortillas from Lone Star today, plus filled her trunk with booze. Also, sometimes I don't buy recycled toilet paper.

5. Experience different cultures

Uh... I love curry. The kids and I learned an aboriginal dance at Turtle Island. Eve did Irish dance, but she said it was "really really boring - you just keep doing the same thing over and over again". I saw a Japanese ballet once and didn't hate it. My husband ate horse sashimi and didn't barf. Actually, he travels all over the world - can I just let him experience the different cultures?

6. Work to live rather than live to work

But what if you love your job? Then working IS living because you're doing what you love. And who the heck works like crazy if they DON'T love their job? Oh, wait, my husband, because I'm a neurotic drain on the family resources. Move along, nothing to see here.

7. Pay off all debts

Uh, how do we do that without worrying about money? We paid off our mortgage early, but that was because we were sitting on a buttload of stock options and decided to invest some in our house when Angus was born instead of getting greedy and hoping they'd go up more. It turned out to be a sound decision (hear the sound of the tech bubble bursting ten-ish years ago? It was right after we paid off our mortgage). 

8. Be true to yourself

And false to everyone else? Seriously, what does this even mean? 

9. Concentrate on what you have instead of what you don't have

This one's not bad. Unless what you don't have is a job. Or a liver. Or a sense of humour. Then concentrate on what you don't have.

10. Use money on experiences rather than saving for a rainy day

This kind of reminds of when I saw Tommy Lee on American Idol, saying in a stupefied monotone "You just hafta decide whether you're gonna go with your heart or your gut, and I always go with my gut", and I thought "Wait, isn't it supposed to be the heart or the HEAD?" If this one had said "use money on experiences rather than stuff", I might have been inclined to agree, but saving for a rainy day, as in "a day when life rains down job loss, car trouble, catastrophic furnace failure or catastrophically bad dental genes" is also crucial.

11. Make time for family and friends

I do. Then again, I don't have a full time job. Maybe if you do, you're perfectly justified in only making time for Patrick Dempsey and Idris Elba in your off hours.

12. Try all types of food

Nah. I'm forty-two. I'm pretty confirmed in what kind of food I find enjoyable. I don't consider having to suppress my gag reflex necessary in living life to the fullest.

13. Find true love

I already mentioned Idris Elba. Oh wait, my husband? Yeah, he's great too.

14. Travel to at least 25 different foreign countries

The U.S., Cuba, Jamaica, England, Germany, France, Morocco. Huh. My husband's been to China, Japan, Singapore and Australia. That's still only eleven! Cripes, what is this, living your life to the fullest while being a fugitive chased by Interpol?

15. Go outside more

Yeah, okay, I guess. I have allergies and walking on the ice hurts my back and my anxiety. I have to sit and watch Eve's team's excruciatingly bad softball games once a week. Feeling like my life is fuller already.

16. Learn a new language

I learned French in school, beginner's German in university, and last year I learned MARC programming. Eve's well on her way: The other day she came in and said "Bongiorno, Maman". Matt said "any more languages you'd like to tack on there?" and she said "Sarcasm?"

17. Be well thought of by family and friends

So, develop the ability to control people's minds? Sounds fun, I'm on it. You love this blog! Tell all your friends!

18. Help a member of your family out when they really need it

My mom can't figure out the library hold system, so I request her books for her, pick them up and deliver them to her. Plus I gave her my kidney that one time. No I didn't. What if they don't really need my help? Am I supposed to precipitate a crisis just so I can leap in and save the day? Oops, sorry I broke your leg. Let me fetch you some tea!

19. Lose a stone in weight

Nicole informs me that a stone in fourteen pounds. This is a pretty specific one. I have, in fact, recently lost almost a stone (twelve pounds). It was indeed an intoxicating experience. In fact, I enjoyed losing that last two pounds so much that I've done it two or three times. But this is sort of oddly specific and kind of sad - obviously everyone shouldn't be losing fourteen pounds, and the notion that losing fourteen pounds would mean living your life to the fullest sounds like a failure of imagination to me.

20. Treat each day like it's your last

So, down a bottle of tequila, kiss my children a tearful goodbye, and track down and force-kiss Eliot from Leverage? I'm not sure this is sound advice. 

21. Visit all of Britain's historical landmarks

But this is for British people, right? So am I supposed to visit all of Canada's historical landmarks? Enh, Canada's not that old. Shouldn't be hard.

22. Book an impulsive last minute holiday

Ha. This goes along with "live every day like it's your last", right? Because if I booked an impulsive last-minute holiday it WOULD be my last day, because I'd die of anxiety. 

23. Volunteer for a good cause

I'm at my kids' school every second damned day. Do you have any idea how many books would go unshelved if not for me? I spent nine hours on my feet for Word on the Street one year even though I had to CALL someone I didn't actually know on the PHONE in order to volunteer - actually I'm not sure Word on the Street has been held in Ottawa since; hope I wasn't directly responsible. I work the barbecue at baseball tournaments. I keep trying to give blood, but nobody wants mine. 

24. Take up a challenge

I submitted blog posts for Blogging Out Loud Ottawa. Twice. I thought THAT was enough of a challenge, but when they actually went ahead and picked me to then read said posts out loud, in front of people, I did that too. Introvert. Anxiety. You do the math. Hmm, I don't think Lynn is holding Blogging Out Loud this year. Hope I wasn't directly responsible. I think challenging yourself on a fairly regular basis is actually instrumental in living a full life. I think periodically eating ice cream and watching Luther and leaving the challenging stuff to other folks is also instrumental in living a full life.

25. Go on safari

Huh? Pass.

26. Blow a load of money in one shopping trip, just because you can

I was about to storm off in a huff, but then I remembered that when Angus was about six months old and Matt and I hadn't been anywhere for months, we left him with my parents and went downtown to the Rideau Centre. We bought Matt some badly-needed new business clothes and we bought me sexy black boots and a dress which he then made me change into behind our truck in the parking garage. We went out for dinner and our credit card was declined, so we paid with our debit card. When we got home and called the credit card company they said they had just been concerned because of the unusual activity on the card. We burst out laughing, high-fived each other and said "We stole our own credit card!"

27. Learn a new instrument

I learned piano. For me it was great. For some people? Not learning an instrument is just a kindness to the world.

28. Be married for longer than 20 years

Seventeen and counting for me, but way to piss off those single people that are already pissed off with everything being targeted at married people. 

29. Have enough money left for the grandchildren to enjoy

Who says I'm going to have any? Won't I look silly if I have all this money left and no grandchildren? 

30. Start a family

Again, works for me, but not for everybody. 

31. Earn more than your age

Forty-two? Forty-two what? Forty-two dollars? Got that covered by the stuff I've sold to the consignment store, although I guess technically those clothes were paid for by my husband's earnings, so it's not really mine. Forty-two thousand dollars? Pretty sure that even if I get a library tech job, that ain't gonna happen. Forty-two outsized compliments from my children about how beautiful I am, how fabulous at ordering baseball hats online, how marvellous at cooking curried chicken? Now we're talking. 

32. Have a pet

Remember how I killed Eve's fish? And her hermit crab? And her best friend's bird? I don't think any more of God's creatures should have to give their lives so I can live mine more fully. 

33. Drive a really fast car

I did. It sucked.

34. Travel alone

I did. It rocked. 

35. Be able to keep the kids on the straight and narrow

Straight and narrow? Wouldn't it be more badass to set them on the crooked and wide?

36. Meet strangers

I do. Constantly. Strangers love me. I help them find salt. I tell them how to eat a kiwi. I help them work the parking machine. And stuff like this. I agree - being open to meeting and interacting with strangers makes for a fuller life. 

37. Move away from home to an unfamiliar place

Yup.

38. Have a one night stand

Done. Back in university. In a half-hearted, Catholic kind of way. I'm counting it!

39. Pass your driving test

Took me a couple of tries. Goddamn, most of you didn't know that, did you?

40. Get a degree

Got two. Bachelor of Arts and Masters in Comparative Literature. That and four more years of one course at a time of Library and Information Technology might get me a job some day.

41. Rescue someone so that you're a hero for a little while

I rescue someone whenever I'm able. Sometimes I let other people rescue me too. Usually Pam.

42. Date someone exciting but completely wrong for you

I'm trying, but Eliot from Leverage has really good lawyers.

43. Get a promotion

I'll talk to the library tech I volunteer for and see if she'll bump me up to "EXTRA SPECIAL unpaid volunteer".

44. Reach the desired career peak by age 40

Well how do you know my desired career peak WASN'T the kind of job where you can wear yoga pants and have playdough in your hair and as long as all the kids are alive at the end of the day it's a win?

45. Have an all-night drinking session

Okay. They're fun. (Wow, the people who answered this survey don't get out a whole lot, do they?)

46. Perform something on stage in front of others

Blogging out Loud. And in university my girlfriend and I prepared and presented two scenes from Ionesco absurdist plays at an annual French Bistro night. It was really fun. Oh, plus, my other language was in play? Do I get double points?

47. Snog a stranger

In grade thirteen my girlfriend and I somehow got drafted to volunteer to work concession at a Beach Boys concert in Sudbury. Somewhat surprisingly, I had a blast. I wore my sister's navy blue tank top (which if you look at us now would make you HOWL with laughter, or dismay, or something) and a khaki skirt, and I had a bit of a tan, and I felt pretty, and all the male attention I got seemed sort of innocent and sweet rather slobbery and gross. At the end when the concession was closed, we were walking towards the stadium to watch the last bit of the concert, and a group of guys was walking towards us. One of them, as he was walking towards me, said "no, seriously, you and me?" and he grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth and then let me go and kept walking. Many things told me then and tell me now that I should have been outraged and offended, but I wasn't. It just didn't have that feeling to it. Then there was that New Year's Eve in Saskatchewan, but that was less wholesome and let's just leave that be, shall we?

48. Plan a surprise party

Our best surprise party effort was for the same girlfriend I worked concession with. It was her birthday in grade ten or eleven. We switched her locker lock with my other girlfriend's so she wouldn't be able to open her locker and would miss her bus, which left before ours. We told her to come home with us and the other friend's mother would drive her home, then the party was at my friend's house. She was very impressed, and not at all pissed that we had made her think she was insane or amnesic, as, now that I think about it, some people might have been.

49. Embark on adrenaline packed activities such as sky diving or bungee jumping

....or talking to other parents when you pick up your kids at school! Or parking when there isn't a double space available! Whatever. I've gone ziplining. I know what's more adrenaline-packed for me.

50. Spend time with children, even if they're not your own. 

Or especially. Kids usually behave better for people who aren't their parents. Hey, let's all trade kids!

**********************************

So, I score.... call it thirty-one and a half. If my life was any fuller, I'd probably have trouble carrying it. 

So I (still) have a strange relationship with numbers

My husband's in China (on what I just realized is his birthday), four of the five bulbs in my kitchen light fixture are burnt out and we're out of milk. I bought a treadmill this morning and now I can't get it out of the van until my husband comes home. I'm too dispirited to even work up a decent head of surliness, but I did manage to go in and shelve books today, so I'm replaying a post from very early in my blogging days.



I was working in the school library this morning. I do the basic library stuff -- check books in and out, catalogue new books, fix hurt books, but mostly I shelve. it's sort of tedious and repetitive and back-breaking, especially the lower shelves, but after a while it becomes sort of a Zen exercise.

It's kind of interesting seeing the books that go out and come back on a regular basis (Harry Potter and Geronimo Stilton in fiction, fast vehicles and puppy and kitten books in non-fiction), or putting back one that I haven't seen get any play before (in which case I kind of root for it -- is that weird?). Oddly, I find the numbers of the Dewey Decimal System taking on resonances, personalities almost. Not just that I don't like the numbers on the bottom shelf, although that's true. For some reason, some numbers are appealing and some are unsavoury. 398.2 is fairy tales -- three shelves of them, it takes up more room than any other number. 001.9 is a couple of UFO and scary story books that look really cheesy, which makes the number seem sort of appropriate -- it's almost nothing. Not to mention how close it is to the Chicken Soup for the Dippy Happy Marshmallow Mermaid Soul (sorry, is my cynicism showing?).

For some reason I really like 551 and 552 -- natural phenomena and geology, respectively. The numbers seem somehow nicely balanced to me (also, I do like rocks). 567, on the other hand, is a horrid quagmire of dinosaur books, and the shelf seems to have some evil force field around it that actually prevents anyone from being able to put the books in correctly. Don't tell Bonnie, but whenever I get these books, I mash them all together, pick a point on the shelf and just jam them all in -- there's no other way, I swear. 736 through 750 is a series of incredibly skinny or imposingly fat books, about drawing and crafts, which also resist proper ordering, but in a more benign fashion (you know, that flaky artsy vibe -- it's chaotic, but not malicious). 811 is a sort of jolly number which seems utterly appropriate for Shel Silverstein. 597, 8 and 9 are animals in the wild, and they seem to serenely float into the proper place. 636, on the other hand, is pets, and they're much less cooperative. 629.133 is a messy, unwieldy number that shelters a phalanx of flimsy sideways-bound books about airplanes and sports cars, and I find the whole business sort of tiresome.

I adore all of the 900s, and I have no idea why. Today I saw some rare 400s -- they were gleaming new, as if they had never been touched. There seem to be an inordinate number of non-fiction books bearing the letters PAR under the number. I haven't conducted extensive enough research to ascertain whether there are just a disproportionate number of authors whose names start with PAR, or if there's one manic dude out there churning out books on hurricanes, dolphins, backhoes and Van Gogh (he'd be a hit at parties, I guess. Or incredibly pompous and boring. One or the other). There's also a lot of SJO, which makes my brain hurt a little -- no offense to the eastern Europeans, but S and J are two letters that just don't belong together in my book.

I go in at about nine-thirty, then I go get Eve when her SK class finishes at 10:45 and she hangs in the library while I finish. Bonnie lets her put away the picture books, because you only need to know the first letter of the author's last name. I can hear her muttering to herself and singing as she shelves them. I wonder if she's developing her own baby neurosis about the alphabet...(B is awesome! I love B! On the other hand, I really wish L would quit looking at me like that....)

I WOULD LIKE MY BABIES BACK, PLEASE.

Last night my dreams were filled with waves of new-birthed babies and softly rounded toddlers. This morning I am beached and bereft. I want nothing more than to reach down into a crib and gather up an armful of warm, sleepy child, every inch of the plumped body absolutely buzzing with life. I want to wait for a visit from a friend with another small child, and I want to talk and drink tea while we watch the clumsy navigations of unsure hands and unsteady feet. I want to sit in the rocker and feel a warm, befuzzed baby head grazing the delicate skin on the inside of my forearm. I want to experience that moment when you lift a baby under their arms and their head automatically goes just far enough back that you can reach that perfectly kissable spot under their chin.

I miss Angus calling himself A. "A do it!" "The wain was falling on A's head!" I miss the way he called a frying pan a pancake and called beer Dad Juice and ran towards the phone yelling Hi Damma, Hi Damma even when I wasn't talking to Grandma. I miss Eve enthusiastically saying "Nice booby thing, Mommy!" every time she saw me wearing a pretty bra. I miss the naked hug we would do every morning before I got in the shower. I miss the way they would both start yelling "DANCE MOMMY! DANCE! in the last few seconds of Sesame Street, distressed that I might not get out of my chair quickly enough for us to dance while the catchy, syncopated version of the Sesame Street song played over the credits. I miss the way that every single thing was an amazing discovery and a new experience.

We are all conversant with the ways in which parenthood is a parade of small deaths and vestigial mournings.  Sometimes I think it's monstrously unfair that we are bound to experiencing our children in such a relentlessly linear fashion. Wouldn't it be nicer if the chain of days was interspersed with spacers where we could reach into the past - go from six days of algebra and peach-fuzz whiskers and giant shoes back to a few hours of picture books and playing with the garden hose and word pronunciation gone delightfully askew and silky smooth cheeks?

No, of course not. It would be unnatural and wrong. I've read Slaughterhouse Five and The Time Traveler's Wife. Some of my worst nightmares revolve around coming untethered in time. And I know the Monkey's Paw-ishness of this kind of wish. I know there are people who have lost their small children and never get to experience the pleasure and awe of the new people you're supposed to receive in exchange. I know there are people who do have the experience of living with children who don't age, and for many of them it's no cause for celebration.

I love these people I live with. I love that I carried something inside me that now towers over me. I love that they can have thoughts that amaze me. I love that they find strength and confidence in actions and environments that are completely apart from me. I love seeing the ways in which they are like me and the ways in which they are wondrously, vastly different.

But they were of me, and every day they are less so. And some days the throbbing of that absence is a little more noticeable. And today I just feel like letting that pain have a place, and a voice.

ProphylAxis of Evil

************TMI ALERT*****************

So. I've been on the pill until recently even though I'm a couple years past forty. I always had crummy periods off the pill and, aside from the headaches which I hadn't connected with it, it worked well for me in a number of areas, so I just kept taking it. I had a doctor's appointment last week and my doctor said if I have headaches a lot (which I do), this was a good reason (in addition to being past forty) to stop taking it.

Most of the men in our circle of friends had their appointment with Dr. Weiss (yes, that is pronounced 'vice') years ago, shortly after the second or third child; all the couples felt confident that their families were complete. Matt and I remained stubbornly on the fence about a third kid for a long time. At this point, when I confess this, people ask me "are you off the fence now?", with a tone implying "if you aren't, our further friendship and your sanity might be in line for some evaluation". And yeah, we are pretty much off the fence now, although with an everlasting sense of regret, on my part at least.

But now here we are. There's no good reason this should be a big deal, and yet I can't help feeling like it's going to turn into a big deal. Should I make the appointment for him? I feel vaguely resentful when I have to make his medical appointments, but if I do at least he goes to medical appointments, whereas if I wait for him to make the appointment the appointment will not be made any time soon. Of course, I'm almost as bad at 1) remembering I need to make the appointment and 2) forcing myself to pick up the phone and make the appointment, so if I do it, it still won't be any time REALLY soon. Then there's the fact that we'll most likely have to tell our kids what's going on, which is fine, but... awkward? Oh wait - we let Eve watch the vasectomy episode of Modern Family the other day. Problem solved - I'll just tell Angus to ask her.

In the meantime, I told Matt he should pick up some condoms. We've pretty much never used condoms because of my aforementioned liking for the pill. So when he said "I think I have some" I gave him a look that contained equal amounts of "wtf?" and "Dude, you got some splainin' to do". He said "remember, after Eve was born you didn't want to go on that low estrogen birth control pill that makes you even more crazy?"

"Hon," I said gently, "Eve was born NINE AND A HALF YEARS AGO." He was dumbstruck at the notion that condoms might have an expiry date. Clearly, if I  left the responsibility for limiting this family to four in his hands, all bets were off.

So today I was in the drugstore anyway, so I figured I'd pick up some condoms.

I hate when we need toothpaste. I hate buying toothpaste. There is a ridiculously high number of kinds of toothpaste available - whitening, brightening, gel, paste, sensitivity-reducing, tartar control..... it makes me dizzy and gives me a headache and makes me think about the decay of civilization in a way I don't really want to in the oral hygiene aisle at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Condoms are worse.

In the end, I pretty much closed my eyes and grabbed a box at random and tossed it into my cart. I got to the checkout, and while I wasn't embarrassed the way I probably would have been twenty years ago, I wasn't looking to broadcast the fact that I was buying condoms. But of course, the goddamned box wouldn't scan, so the cashier slammed it over the scanner a few times and then realized it was open. She gave me a knowing look and said "I bet there aren't twenty in there anymore", which made me snort at some poor broke or bashful teenager's expense. But when I said "I'll just go grab another box" she said "well just let me check" and she pulled the ENTIRE STRIP of condoms out of the box and counted them one by one. And they were all there, so then she shoved them all back in and I paid for them. And then walked out of the store while the rest of the line applauded behind me. And came home and called Dr. Weiss.

Thoughts on People Watching in LaGuardia Airport Ten Days Ago

-The sari is a really good look for travelling. I should try it. Maybe not.

-Blow your nose. For Christ's sake, blow your nose, that's disgusting, didn't your mother teach you anything?

-She's really got that whole casual-hiker thing down. Hair pulled up, vest over shirt, slouchy socks and running shoes, shorts... wow, she must be almost fifty and her legs are really great. Except - wow, her legs are really hairy. Like really, really hairy. It doesn't even grow straight, it's like big clouds of curly hair around her legs. It's like her legs have beards. I thought I was okay with women not shaving their legs but this is really quite disturbing. Look away. Look away. Look away. I can't look away! Oh thank god, she's leaving.

-Wow. Her hair looks like a shiny wave of chocolate fountain. Her shirt is the colour of paprika. Her pants are the colour of cinnamon. And those shoes really shouldn't work, but they totally do. What colour green is that? It's not emerald. It's not mint. It's brighter than mint and lighter than emerald. It's... it's the exact colour green that cantaloupe would be if cantaloupe was green instead of orange. It's possible I need a snack.

-Stop texting while you're walking, you're about to bump into that.... *snort*. Told you.

-That girl is eating again. The one in the faded holey jeans and the v-neck t-shirt with the French writing and the bicycle on it. She's been eating for the last hour and she's thin and gorgeous, okay, don't be bitter and unkind. And she won't just sit down, she keeps shuffling her feet and half-dancing and stretching and I'm glad she's not over here because that would get really..... crap, she's coming over here because I'm beside the garbage can and she's going to peel her orange over the garbage can. And I'm trying to focus on my book but I can't because I can see her feet out of the corner of my eye going step together step apart, step together step apart and oh my god I wish she'd stand still or FUCK OFF OUT OF HERE BEFORE I TAKE HER OUT WITH AN INJURY......

-I'm going to get a snack.

(Embracing the) Surly Thursdays

I am not a good person. Oh, I'm generally nice and polite to everyone, but this is only because I suffer from an unfortunate surfeit of empathy, and if I was mean or rude to anyone I would just have to experience the tiresome effect of being able to vividly imagine how that made them feel, and it's just not worth the effort. And sure, I adore my family and friends and I would do anything to help them out or make them feel better, within reason, right after The Vampire Diaries, but I'd throw them all over for a guaranteed extra two or three good hair days a month.

But I'm not a good person. When I'm alone and driving around, I'm filled with rage and hatred for all the stupid drivers who don't have the good sense to just get the fuck out of my way. And man, there are a lot of stupid drivers. The ones who won't pull up far enough when they're stopped at a red light to let the right-turning people turn right (see, I always pull up far enough, because otherwise I just have to vicariously experience the vein-throbbing head-explosiveness going on in the car behind me). The ones who gaily swerve from lane to lane because look! A rainbow! A cow! The ones who come to a full and complete stop, which hey, I respect, because I've been doing the full and complete stop ever since this post, BUT then after they've stopped, they don't just go. They inch cautiously forward into the intersection as if some purple-motorcycled freak is going to appear out of nowhere and plow into them. Because yes, I do mean when the intersection is COMPLETELY EMPTY.

I had to pick my Dad up at the hospital after his cataract surgery on Monday. I know this is a tired subject but why, oh why, do they make the place you have to go when you're sick, already ill at ease in the world, and prone to disorientation and confusion, so completely baffling and forbidding? I mean, in this situation there was no dire illness or fear of death, and I STILL came out of it feeling like I'd run a marathon through a forest fire.

Tuesday I went to the mall because Wednesday was Angus's grade 6 leaving ceremony (isn't that a weird thing to call it? I respect that they want to get away from the 'graduating from everything' wave, but it makes me think of those science fiction stories where everybody on the planet has to die at the age of sixty or something. If they started putting wreaths of flowers on their heads I was grabbing my kid and getting the eff out of there) and we realized on Monday that, although he had a number of nice, presentable shirts and a roughly equal number of nice, presentable pairs of of shorts, none of said nice, presentable items looked remotely un-idiotic when put together.

I hate the mall. By the time I left there were (I can hardly type it)..... sweat marks on the back of my shirt.

Wednesday was the leaving ceremony. More on that later.

Last night I was reading the paper. There's a column in our paper written by Craig and Mark Kielberger (I'm not googling anything about this for spelling or accuracy, read with extreme skepticism), who have been activists for world peace and justice and clean water in Africa and stuff like that since the age of three or something. For all my snark, we must all agree that these are good, good people. So people write in and ask them stuff about activism and social causes. The letter I read last night was asking if edgy campaigns such as the "I love boobies" bracelets (one of which my son got for his birthday - not from me - and wears proudly_ and the "fuck cancer" t-shirts are effective, or if they put people off. Craig and Mark talked a little bit, in a fairly measured way, about the woman who started the fuck cancer t-shirt campaign. But at the end of their column they said they thought 'messages of hope and inspiration' were the best way to go for social causes.

And now I want to bitch-slap Craig and Mark Kielberger.

Not a good person.

This post is about an entirely theoretical couple, NOT US

The Wife is having a fairly non-productive day, fooling around on the computer and trying to clean all the crap off the dining room table, which is really frustrating and depressing because there isn't a good place for all the crap to go, and it only highlights all the other things that still have crap on them, so she gives it up as completely futile and goes out to garden. She starts to put on sunscreen everywhere, then realizes it would make more sense to just put sunscreen on the ridiculous square sunburn she got while watching her daughter horseback riding, to perhaps marginally lessen the freaky embarrassing tan lines for when she goes out tonight.

The Wife is back inside and checking twitter, when The Husband comes home early from work because he was miserable at the office and thought a change of location might make him less ineffectual for the afternoon.

Since she needs to shower off the sunscreen at some point anyway and the husband being home makes watching Luther less fun, The Wife decides she might as well go for a power walk. She tells The Husband this, then walks upstairs to the bedroom and starts stripping to put on walking clothes.

She pauses and thinks, "wait. Need exercise. Husband is home. Kids not due for a couple of hours. Most of clothes already off. When was the last time we..." and yells down the stairs "Hey! Wanna have sex?"

The Husband (who has arrived on the bottom step with admirable speed) says "Uh...well if... are you... is it.... sure!" (which is smart, because sometimes he totally shoots himself in the foot by saying stuff like 'well I thought you were tired' or 'are you sure?' in which case The Wife says 'okay, you're right, never mind').

The Wife gets some exercise and the sunscreen gets showered off. The Husband doesn't get any work done for the afternoon, but is fairly satisfied with how things work out nonetheless.

Life with kids. All romance, all the time. Theoretically. Just what I hear.

Things I'm running out of time to blog about

Eve's dance recital: This is our second year at Tournesol, with Hannah Beach, a woman there really aren't enough superlatives to adequately describe. She doesn't do any of the choreography - the kids do it all. The costumes are dirt-cheap stuff we get on sale at fabric stores or dollar stores. There was one duet that Hannah hadn't even seen before the show. She makes a speech before every recital urging everyone to adjust their concept of 'good' dancers and 'bad' dancers while watching. I could be sappy and insincere and say that they're all wonderful but honestly, it's not one hundred percent possible to suspend those evaluative faculties,  and at odd moments it's impossible not to feel your attention slip, or your eye start to roll, or an ever-so-slightly uncharitable thought about 'good' dancers and 'bad' dancers escape its confines.

But this is all just part of the softening-up process, so you're in a perfect state of susceptible complacency and suddenly a dancer moves a certain way, or freezes in a certain tableau, and the expression on their face and the configuration of their limbs presents such a pure, perfect moment of joyful simplicity that you are struck to the very core. And then you're sobbing like an idiot and remembering that last year you SWORE you weren't going to let this happen again.

One group danced while instrumental music played and Hannah read this poem. I can't even read the poem in my head now without weeping at the part about being outlived by our daughters and sons. One group passed out Lindt truffles and danced the taste of chocolate.

Eve was a tree.

One kid was dirt. It really wasn't your average dance recital.

But that's good, really. She's not your average dancer.

Oh yes - I wore my awesome dress.

Also, no one took a baseball to the chest. It's a little thing, but it's a nice thing.

Very Slightly Surly Thursdays

If I didn't have this weather headache, it would be difficult to work up any degree of surliness at all. It's been a good week. Shelved books at the library, worked out with Pam, laughed myself silly trying to learn how to play The Pink Panther theme song on the piano with Angus, built a barn out of chocolate milk containers with Eve, and yesterday I had a date with Susan, who I'm borrowing from Patti. I met Susan because her daughter dances with Eve and Olivia, Patti's daughter. Susan has tornado/candy floss hair that makes her look like a nature goddess - like all her humour and creativity is constantly exploding out of her through her hair. Sometimes stuff gets caught in it, which I like because I say "something is caught in your hair" and then I get to fondle it on the pretext of taking the fluff out. Susan lives in a fairytale house surrounded by trees - you have to go through a gate in a hedge and I always expect elves to be on the other side. The house is sort of crooked and messy inside, and all the rooms lead to other little spaces, and there are murals and waves and dots painted on the walls, which reminds me that I always thought when I had my own house I would paint words on the walls, and write poems on beautiful paper and glue it up and paint over the edges so it blended in with the paint, and write the line about the silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun around the ceiling, but I never did.

Susan is an artist, and I hadn't seen any of her work before yesterday, and I had no idea what to expect. I think if I thought about it, I expected pictures of flowers, which shows a sad lack of imagination on my part. I don't even know how to describe the actual paintings, except I think they look like some dreams I've had, where the whole world is a swirl of red/yellow/orange or blue/green/indigo/purple, and there are trees in the mist and beasts that can only be half-seen, and forests made of words, and everything is beautiful and mysterious.

This is the kind of visit that makes me feel sad and filled with longing for a little while, as if I'm living the wrong life, as if I lived in a crooked house with secret spaces I would be a painter with dangerous hair too. But I wouldn't. I would be me, living in the wrong house, complaining about the bathrooms, and my husband would roll his eyes and be passive-aggressive every time I tried to paint something on the wall, and my hair would still be difficult and uninspiring. I will just have to try to be me better, and keep visiting Susan.

Last night I picked up a book I've had from the library for weeks because I love the author, but for some reason I couldn't make myself start reading the book. Then when I started I couldn't stop reading it and I stayed up way too late until it was done. There were funny echoes of my day in it - an old house surrounded by trees; the man meets a woman who's an artist and the first time he goes to see her work he suddenly realizes he forgot to worry that it might be awful and he won't know what to say, but it's not awful. I don't know if the book was as riveting as it seemed, I think I might just be in a slightly manic episode; when I finally turned off the light and laid down, my thoughts kept bouncing around in my mind like popcorn.

Both kids have baseball tonight. Tomorrow I will tell you if Eve managed to bat. And also the story of why Eve is now afraid to bat.

Surly Thursdays: grocery store edition

Dear Loblaws:

Just wanted to thank you for another thrill-filled adventure at the self check-out station today. I know, I know - it's my own fault. Every time I go there I tell myself I will never, under any circumstances, use the self check-out station again because saving a few minutes is not worth the resultant blood pressure spike/rage-induced headache/visions of death and destruction. But then the next time, there are barely any cashiers on (why would there be, when you have these marvels of technology to replace them?) and long lineups of cranky people, and, well, it's kind of like childbirth or aerobics; I forget the magnitude of the pain, and I think 'maybe it won't be so bad this time'. Because I'm a fucking moron.

It tells me to put my re-usable bags on the platform, so I do. It says press DONE when I'm, you know, done, so I do. Then it tells me that the large item I'm trying to scan needs to be scanned by the cashier. Except I didn't try to scan a large item. The cashier comes over and says maybe my bags on the platform set off the scale. You know, the bags the disembodied robotic bitch just told me to put there.

Anyway. I proceed with scanning items. There's the usual bullshit with the disembodied robotic bitch telling me to remove the last item placed in the bag and scan it when I ALREADY BLOODY SCANNED IT, and the disembodied robotic bitch taking her sweet damned time scanning stuff, like she's off deciding what colour she'd paint her robotic fingernails if she had a body, and then the out-of-the-blue, Kafkaesque demand to 'see the attendant'. The attendant - who stand at the center of the bank of self-checkout stations, ostensibly to monitor things and help out as needed - is, of course, busy chatting with two other cashiers, who I have clearly been mistakenly feeling sympathy for, being replaced by those evil machines and everything, because here they still are. So I push the button that says "Call Attendant". And the Attendant immediately fixes me with a vicious stare and hollers "Don't EVER push that button! All it does it jam everything up!"

Huh?

Right. Of course. I'M the asshole for pushing a button that says CALL ATTENDANT, in order to... um.... call the attendant. I make questioning noises. She says "Well I don't know! I'm not a software engineer. They make a lot more money than I do." I suggest that maybe she could make a nice low-tech sign that says 'don't use CALL ATTENDANT button to call attendant, because if they don't make a sign and the button stays there, people will probably keep pressing it when they want to call the attendant. People can be douchey like that.

I've worked a lot of retail. I've dealt with a lot of bitchy customers. Normally I'm not one of the bitchy customers. I'm nice. I'm sympathetic. I'm ready to be on your side. If she had said "I know. They're idiotic. I hate them", she and I would have been TOTALLY COOL. We could have high-fived and gone out for margaritas. But no - she's drunk disembodied robotic bitch's kool-aid. She's one of THEM now.

And yes, I do realize I started this out as a snarky letter and that device kind of fell apart halfway through. I should have just gone with this:

Dear Allison: Don't ever ever use the self-checkout station again. It's worse than childbirth. And you can't even use stories of the pain to guilt it into bringing you cupcakes later on.

Weeknesses

Oh look, one pitiful post this week - possibly a new low?

It's been a strange week. Matt was in China (that was not the strange part. That was fairly normal, which suddenly seems a little strange, but whatever). Monday was beautiful and sunny. Pam and I went down to Dow's Lake to walk around looking at tulips and saying things like 'ooh, nice tulips'. Then Pam took a picture of me that made it obvious that 1) I've gained some weight over the past year or so and 2) When I try to suck in my gut it makes it look like I'm trying to stick out my boobs, possibly in two different directions. On the up side, my hair wasn't bad.

Monday night Eve had baseball (they won) but she was already starting to get sniffly and Tuesday she stayed home from school with a bad cold. Her nose was running, but the worst cold symptom she gets is that her eyes tear up horribly. When she was young this was terrible, because she didn't understand that it was just happening because she was sick - she thought that if tears were coming out of her eyes she must be sad. Now she just finds it annoying.

The week was going to be a welter of tortuous logistics, with Matt away, Eve's Tuesday dance class and Thursday dance performance (at school for the art display night), four baseball games between the two kids and Angus getting braces. But Eve was sick, which meant she didn't go to dance class on Tuesday night, and Angus's first baseball game got rained out. This should have made me more relaxed. But Tuesday, I felt so exhausted and crappy that after Angus left for school, I got Eve breakfast and went back to bed, I let Angus play video games for too long in the evening, and by Wednesday morning I felt like I was lying at the bottom of a deep, dark hole with something heavy and immovable on top of me.

I sat at the computer while Eve lay on the couch all morning. I tapped keys aimlessly. I tried to breathe. Breathing felt really hard. I tried not to cry because I didn't want Eve to worry. I was kind of glad she was here because it felt like being alone would have been worse. I thought about asking Twitter for help, but then I felt like I'd been doing too much of that lately and it didn't see possible that it would help, which means I was further down than I've been for a long time. I felt the future disappearing.

But I had to take Angus to get his braces on. So I dropped Eve off at my Mom's and picked up Angus and acted normal. And Angus was funny and goofy and sweet and it wasn't morning any more (I'm starting to think that I'm 'not a morning person' in a slightly more intense and unfortunate sense than the usual one). And I started to feel better.

Thursday I got up and went to the gym and got on the treadmill, where I always listen to my ipod but still look up at the bank of televisions. I was hoping for I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant, because we all know how an unearned sense of superiority crushes the last of a depressive episode, but all I saw were sappy shows about children getting home makeover experts to built a garden for their recovering-from-cancer single Mom. I am not a sentimental person. Well, I am, but I have an overactive snark gland that always takes over before I can get too far down any sentimental path. So I was confused when water started dripping off my face when I didn't think I was sweating that much, and then I realized with utter horror that I WAS CRYING. ON THE TREADMILL. AT A SHOW ON THE LEARNING CHANNEL.

I took a deep breath and looked away from the offending show. Directly at a clip of a soldier returning from Afghanistan, who was crouched down while his six-year-old son with cerebral palsy who doctors had said would never walk WALKED ACROSS THE ROOM TO HIS FATHER, JESUS CHRIST THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL ME. I looked away from the televisions and tried to concentrate on the music.

This song.

This song.

Oh for fuck's sake. I probably would have cried if it was this song. I started laughing, which just made me feel even more like I was completely losing my shit. I took deep breaths and stared directly ahead of me. At the defibrillator.

Today was sunny again, and I was fine. I never used to be that big a fan of the sun - it was, I don't know, too bright. Too obvious. Now I practically need a goddamned prescription for it. Pam and I tracked down Suzy Q. Holy mother of fuck, Suzy Q makes a MAPLE BACON doughnut. And one with FROOT LOOPS on it. And they all taste exactly like a sunny Friday when you've been Horribly Depressed and aren't any more - no, really, that's objective, I'm almost sure of it. And then we went bathing suit shopping and even THAT didn't bring me down. Plus, Pam was in a total badass mood. My overly polite and deferential BFF, the woman who watches people not scoop up their dog's crap and then says good morning to them anyway, DID NOT let people merge several times - it's true, I witnessed it personally. Also, there was a group of teenagers, some of whom butted obnoxiously in front of us to get on the escalator, so while I stood demurely to the right as we rode up, she parked herself solidly on the left so none of the others could get around us. Also, she drove my van so I didn't have to because sometimes I'm too anxious to drive.

It's stuff like this that makes me happy to pay for her doughnuts every now and then.

Now it's Friday night. My husband is home. My son is at a sleepover. My daughter is asleep, having first explained to me in vivid detail this fabulous new movie she's just discovered called The Parent Trap which is Sick And Awesome. And did I mention I got to watch my daughter dance to Kung Fu Fighting while wearing a duct tape belt? Here's a blurry photo or two as proof.

I'm happy.

It's been a strange week.