How Many Lives Are Living Strange?

Here is a picture of a lovely bird bath.

Tonight I'm still sick, so this post will be pretty short and random. Ready?

1.) With my illness and my tendency to create bizarre scenarios in my head, I decided to do some reading up on the swine flu that's been going around. One of the things they suggested in order to protect yourself against it, was to stay away from people who are coughing or sneezing. If I did that, I'd never go into work. It's like the TB ward in my office all year long.

2.) On Sunday the girls and I went grocery shopping. We only had about $50 to spend until I get paid on the first, so we tried to be careful about what all we got. Sure, I had a credit card to use if we went over, but I really didn't want to have to use it. When the guy rang up all of our groceries, it came to $49.18. The girls and I all cheered and the cashier looked very confused, but laughed just the same. Poor guy.

Here are some pretty little daffodils. Happy Spring!

3.) So, this month two of my gay friends are coming back to Iowa to get married. My woman friend and her girlfriend will be here this Friday and my male friend and his boyfriend are coming on the 15th. They are both double professional incomes with no kids and have been waiting many, many years to legally wed. The way I see it, if California doesn't feel like it needs those kinds of dollars, Iowa will happily grab them up, thank you very much. Plus, now I get to see my wonderful friends again. Double bonus.

4.) On Saturday night, some young boy was talking to me at the bar. After he left, one of the women I was sitting with leaned over and said, "You do know that that guy was totally hitting on you, don't you?" Then jokingly finished, "And he was wearing a crochet headband. How could you say no to that?" I think the more appropriate question is, who would say yes to a guy wearing a crochet headband?

5.) You know how I'm always talking about the fact that my girls have almost totally opposite personalities? Well, here's just another illustration:

Stinky: I can't wait until you leave next year and I can have the room to myself.

Coadster: You'll miss me. You already said you'd miss me...

Stinky: Maybe, but it will be nice not to have you bossing me around all the time.

Coadster: You'll miss me doing all the laundry and folding all of your clothes for you.

Stinky: No I won't. I could care less about that kind of stuff. Normally, I just pick something up off of the floor, shake it, smell it and put it on.

Apparently, Stinky is in dire need of a finishing school.

Wouldn't It be Good If We Could Live Without a Care?

How about some nice graffiti shots for your Friday? I like this one.

Oh, kids. It's been quite a day. A wonderfully, warm sweet, tease of Spring 70 degree day, but quite a day nonetheless.

I hadn't heard from my landlord about resigning the lease yet, and I was starting to worry a little. Normally, he contacts me in February. I worried about Coadster's little party last year. Remember? When I was dating that long-distance guy and went to St Louis for the weekend and Coadster told her dad she was going to a friend's house, but went to my house and had a party instead? Then she went to bed, because she had a show choir competition the next morning and let everyone stay and make noise, and wreak havoc while she slept? Yeah, that. I have no idea what the hell she was thinking. It was like she suddenly forgot how uptight the German grad students are who live above us. Anyway, my landlord has his own teenage daughter and was totally cool about it. It just gave me something to worry about this week, is all.

Since I don't like to worry, I decided to email him and see if we could sign the lease again for next year. He wrote back and said, that would be great. He said he'd have to raise our rent, however. Property taxes have gone up like crazy around here and he hasn't raised our rent even once the whole seven years we've lived here. So, I wasn't surprised, I was just worried, because he was doing so much apologizing about it, that it would be so much that I couldn't afford it. You want to know how much he was raising it a month? $10. Even I can afford that. He also wrote this in his email to me: "

Mrs. Landlady and I feel very fortunate, and blessed, to have had you and the girls as tenants and hope that you don’t find this to offensive, so…..

let me know if you would still be interested and we can get things finalized.

Isn't that sweet? It was just one of the things that made my day today.

This was on a door. I'm not sure if it's really considered graffiti since it's more like a drawing someone glued on the door.

The other thing happened while I was running today. I was turning onto First Avenue, when I saw some high school track boys walking across the street toward me. Eventually, they started running and passed me. The other boy runners who had already finished the route, were all waiting for the slower runners to clap and urge them along and tell them they did a good job. So, when I ran past, they laughingly did the same for me. Me, being the worst, most horrible mom of teens ever, decided it would be really fun to yell, "Wooooooo!" as I passed them. The whole time I was doing it, I was delightedly imagining the horror on my daughters' faces when I got to relate the story to them at dinner. And let me tell you, I was not disappointed. If you could hear eyes rolling, the sound of it in my house tonight would have been deafening.

See what I mean? It has been quite a day...Quite an awesome day, that is.

It's Another Day for You and Me in Paradise

Here are some purdy flowers to take your mind off of the bitter bile I'm about to spew. Nice.

It must officially be Fall, because the students are back in full force, driving the wrong way on one ways, crossing the street in front of your car when the light turns green and traveling in packs even though they're all on their cell phones talking to other people. If you've never lived in a college town before, it's hard to imagine what happens at the end of August when several thousand people, mostly under the age of 25, invade. It made me cranky when I was still in school, but now I just try to sit back and watch the homeless people and the Emo kids deal with the overpriveledged college students from the North Shore Suburbs of Chicago. Today that one toothless, homeless woman who sits in front of the old Hills Bank, was screaming at all the cars going the wrong way down Washington Street. If I had had any money on me, I would totally have given her some for that.

The other thing Fall means to me, is that at work we have our Fall kick-off retreat at work. Apparently, someone has invested way too much time and money attending motivational seminars and feels like they have to put it to good use. Some of the offices get really into it, but in keeping with our slacker ways and bad attitudes, the people in my office roll our eyes a lot and create really stupid scenarios in our head about how we'll defy the forced cheese.

Last year, we were supposed to do a "getting to know each other" activity. I don't know about you, but the less I know my co-workers, the better. I'm forced to spend eight hours a day with them. Isn't that enough? Anyway, we were supposed to bring items that we felt best represented our interests. Most of the women brought some craft or other they were making. The IT guy brought a remote control for his TV and a controller from his XBox. He joked that they were more important than his newborn son and that's why I think he's so awesome. I suggested that we bring items all of the same theme. You know, to promote team work or some such bullshit. Like, one of us could bring a video camera, someone else could bring hand-cuffs and a riding crop, maybe the ex-nun would want to bring her leather chaps or assless pants - whichever she was most comfortable in, and I could look around and see if I could round up a ball gag.

This year, we're supposed to bring in a picture of us from high school or before. I imagine we'll have to guess who's who, or something equally lame. My co-worker John has threatened to bring in that scary pig photo I had up on my blog a few days ago and say it's his senior picture. I've already double dog dared him, so he pretty much has no choice but to follow through. So, maybe after we get fired at the retreat, the toothless, homeless woman will share her corner and we can help her yell at cars all day.

La La La La La La, When You're Hot, You're Hot

Here is Harry Potter made out of butter and his faithful sidekick, the butter cow - now new and improved with matching glasses.

Man oh man, am I tired. I just spent the last two days being hot and sweaty and grubby. Today I moved stuff and cleaned stuff and organized more stuff. It made me never want to ever have to move again. I can't believe how much crap we cleared out of our apartment, and even worse, how much shit we still have left. The good thing is now I have my own room with a really nice bed and brand new sheets. The bad thing is that I'm too stoopid to put a post together. After yesterday's maturely crafted blog, I'm sure it will come as a relief to you all that I'm making this very short.

It's weird, but after the last very hectic and physically demanding days, the office doesn't seem so bad. When I go back to work next week, I may not even feel the beige cubicle slowly sucking my soul to the sounds of my co-workers bitching about each other and creating bizarre scenarios about bullshit that may or may not happen... Oh wait. Who am I kidding? Even with as tired as I am and as stressful as it was to lift many heavy objects all by myself, (don't worry, I always lifted with my knees) it's still better than being at work.

I also tried to find a tourniquet to help me quit hemorrhaging money this month. Admittedly, some of the spending was my own damn fault, but then there was all that other stuff like school supplies and fees and shoes for the youngins that sucked up all my cash. Stinky just told me that she really wants Guitar Hero for her birthday next month. Coadster is under the impression that if we had it, Stinky would never leave the house. It seems like such a small price to pay to keep a fourteen year old girl out of trouble. Maybe there isn't a strong enough tourniquet in all the world to help me.

And Perspective Pushes Through

Here is Stinky's reflection furtively checking out the anatomically correct Superman made from butter at last year's State Fair.

Well, kids. It's been almost a week since I got dumped, and I still feel like I'm riding the sucker's roller coaster. I don't know how many times I've already said it on here before, but I hate the process. I don't want to feel the things I still feel and I just want to be over it all. Is it easier for people to let go who don't have the same abandonment issues I have?

Luckily, this weekend, I had my friends around to keep my mind off of things. I had a little relapse on Saturday, so I was annoyingly distracted that afternoon when we were at the pool and during dinner at The Hamburg Inn. I got over it that night once I had enough alcohol in me, and Sunday wasn't really all that bad either. I went with my friends to see the movie, Stardust and it was excellent escapism. It was just what I needed.

I was a little on the melancholy side today again. I've been trying to be good and work on my projects. Last Thursday, I did that thing that people do sometimes where they buy things to fill a void. And besides the stress of spending the money, I have to say, it worked pretty well and gave me my two current projects. One of the things I bought was an iPod. I even got the thing to stick in my tape player so I can listen to it in the car. It holds thousands more songs than my phone, so I've been obsessive about transferring, downloading, and ripping songs into my iTunes. I'm also still working on my home cleaning and organizing. I've decided to take a room a day, so I don't get so overwhelmed trying to do it all at once, that I just quit. My kitchen, which is bigger than most living rooms, looks amazing right now. I'm afraid to cook in it, for fear of messing it up again. So, I'll be continuing with that, except for Wednesday, when Stinky and I will meet my family at the State Fair and see things made of butter for a day.

I think I'm done with the "going out" portion of the process for a while. I kind of needed to last week, because I was afraid I'd spend too much time wallowing and dwelling and creating REALLY stupid scenarios in my head, if left to my own devices. Now, though, I need to just start delving into the shit, so I can get over it more quickly. I've got my projects, and plenty of comic books, and soon I'll have my own room where I can hang-out by myself and listen to Amy Winehouse, and start the business of getting over myself. Hell, I might even take Stepping Over the Junk's break-up advice and buy myself some fun, sexy underwear to make myself feel better. Hopefully, one of these days I'll be able to slip into my Levi's Movin' On jeans and just keep movin' on.

Dreaming is Free

The only house we ever owned when I was a kid. (of course, it was government subsidized) I know you're all jealous of it's avocado green color. Guess which year in the early seventies it was built?

I dream about houses a lot. These houses usually get bigger and more complicated as the dream progresses. The rooms lead into other rooms that have strange shapes and odd colors. Sometimes, I have a moment of clarity when I realize that I'm already renting an apartment and couldn't possibly live in the house I'm walking through. Every once in a while, I'm sad that I don't own the house I thought I owned at the beginning of my dream, but usually I'm relieved that I'm not responsible for a home that keeps morphing and becoming more complicated and unmanageable by the minute.

Lately, I've been talking to Mr. Dateman about the possibility of me buying a house. Like my dreams, the conversations can either make me hopeful or stressed out. On the one hand, I love the idea of not throwing money away to a landlord, but I know that it would be hard to afford the kind of house I want in an area where I could comfortably live. I'm spoiled by living so close that I can walk to work and the girls can walk to school. I remember when we first rented our place, Coadster said, "Mom, it's perfect. It's on your running route." I don't know if I should be happy or worried that my girls are so aware of my need for routine. I'm pretty sure that any house I could afford to buy, would mean that I'd have to create a new running route altogether. Of course, I also know that anything I choose to do might involve making a sacrifice for something else, and if that sacrifice would mean I'd actually have my own bedroom, I could probably figure out a way to make it work.

But I Keep Thinking Something's Bound to Go Wrong

A friend of mine had a little scare today. She called her boyfriend a couple of times last night and his number was busy. She e-mailed him today, and he didn't respond. After his phone was busy again today, she started to worry. It was almost 24 hours without a response. Finally, another friend suggested that there might be a problem with his internet/phone connection. She was absolutely right, and once my friend's boyfriend got his connection back and read some of the frantic e-mails, he called her right away to make sure she knew he was okay. Later, we all joked about the fact that the only reasonable explanation we could think of for him not contacting her, was that he was dead. What else could it be? Both my friend and I have had a worst case scenario happen in our lives, so we have a tendency to assume the worst when given the chance.

The whole incident also got me thinking about my last words with people. Usually, I had no idea I would never speak to that person again. I was ten when my mom died. She woke me up for school and her face was the strangest shade of gray. I remember telling her she didn't look well, and that she should call in sick to work. She told me she didn't have enough sick time left. I have no idea what I said to her after that. Did I tell her I loved her? Did I whine about how much I hated to wake-up? I don't know. She had a stroke on her way to work and I never saw her again.

I think it's the reason I make sure to tell people how I feel about them while they're around. (unless, of course, if I don't like them. Then I try to keep my big yap shut) I don't ever want to have those regrets with anyone else.

The last time I saw my ex-boyfriend Neal, he was sneaking out of his backyard.

"Hey, Neal," I said. He had a bundle of wood under his arm. We had been breaking-up for the last two months and I was moving back to Iowa at the beginning of March.

"Hey. We're having a fire at Charles', and since I didn't see any lights on, I figured it was safe to stop by." He had been staying at his friend Charles' house since he realized he couldn't talk me into staying with him.

"Yeah. My grandma died today. I've been all freaked-out and wandering around the city..." Neal dropped the firewood and gave me a hug.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't stay, though. It's too hard to be around you when I know you're leaving me."

"You've left me plenty of times before, too."

"Yeah, but I always came back. I know you. Once you get your mind set on something, you won't change it."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah, me too." And he picked-up the bundle of wood and went to his party. The next day, he put all of his stuff into his backpack and hitched his way up the Coast to his dad's house in Seattle. That was the last time I really ever spoke to Neal. I was just glad that I used my last words to apologize to him.

Putting Out Fire With Gasoline

Here's me being a lame-ass and still using photos from last year at this time.

I've been in a weird mood lately. It's the kind of space I used to get into a lot when I was younger. I called it "restless" back then, but now I think it's just my ADD flaring-up. I have a hard time sitting still and I'm continually tempted to throw a match on the kerosene soaked rags of any unstable situation in my life. (and with me, that means most of them) I have to try extra special hard to tick-a-lock at work, for fear that I'll start saying what I really think and get myself in a mess of trouble.

This was the same mood that made me think it was a great idea to quit my job at nineteen, and leave all my friends in Iowa. I took a bag full of caffeine pills a friend of mine ordered out of the back of a punk rock magazine for me, some mixed tapes full of Bauhaus, Flipper, and really obscure Velvet Underground songs, and flew to California where I knew absolutely no one.

At least I've become a little smarter about it all - or maybe I just have kids and know I can't fuck things up for me and them. Now, I try to smash all that restlessness into a small, hard ball in my stomach and hope it doesn't start to grow back. I also spend all that energy creating really inappropriate scenarios in my head. It's so much safer. The big problem is trying to remember to keep my brain filter tightly in place, so I don't voice the bizarre shit that is amusing me so much in my tiny, wrinkled brain. Unfortunately for my girls, I'm not quite as careful in the privacy of my own home, where I am comfortable letting my weird out. By now they're used to it, and try to nip it in the bud.

Coadster: So, mom. I wanted to talk to you about dancing at my party on Saturday.

Me: Are you afraid I'm going to dance there? Oh my god. Wouldn't it be funny if I got really drunk, and started 80's dancing, totally off-beat to whatever music we had on? Then lurched off the dance floor and started slurring and hitting on all your male friends...?

Coadster: Mom. Mom! Stop. I was just trying to say that some of the kids might be dancing...You know, kind of close.

Me: Oh, like bumping and grinding?

Coadster: Yeah. Whatever. It's just how we dance now.

Me: I know that. I was in high school once too. I'll just tell you, that I'll put a stop to the bumping and the grinding, the minute I see any parts exposed.

Coadster: Okay. I think we're done now.

Tell It to Me Slowly

I took this almost exactly a year ago today on the railroad bridge behind the Union. I couldn't bear to post a snowy picture on the first day of Spring, so I had to steal from some back files.

Even though the breezy, thinner air has made it feel more like Fall the last two days, it is indeed the first day of Spring. Woo hoo! It's like someone flipped a switch and things both inside and outside of my scary brain, are rapidly changing to accomodate the new season.

Both girls have started their Spring sports. Coadster has soccer practice everyday after school and Stinky's doing track. It means that soon I will be frequently watching sporting events and catching up on the gossip with the other parents, while we remind each other to pay attention enough to see our kids do their things.

My head is burning up with Spring fever. It makes me so stoooopid. I'll be in the middle of a task, and suddenly forget what the hell I was doing. I can't tell you how many times I've caught myself thinking, "Uh, wait. What?" It's as if my stoner roommate from college is couch surfing in my brain.

I have that early spring conundrum where I'm just starting to shed the Winter pelt, but I still have a ways to go, and I also want to wear my cute, warm weather skirts. I keep trying them on and telling myself, "Next month. This will look so much better on me in just a few weeks."

On Monday night, I went to my friend K.'s house to plan out the garden we plant in her backyard every year. We did talk about at least one related topic, like how we'd just buy peppers from her neighbor who works at the Co-op and apprentices at an organic farm where he grows tons of them. It will be less seedlings taking up my kitchen table and her shelves. Most of the night, we forgot about why I was really there, and talked a bunch of shit instead. We'll figure out all the garden stuff as we go, I'm sure.

You know how I'm super immature with my potty brain, and my extreme love of the double entendre? Yeah? Well, that is even worse in the Spring. I keep misreading words or hearing things wrong at work, so that it seems as if everyone is being completely inappropriate in a supposedly professional environment. I've even accidently typoed my real name twice this week, once as Tata and the other time as Tarta on work related e-mails. It was hilarious...to me, anyway.

Those Who Came Before Me, Lived Through Their Vocations

Here is a picture of a windmill. I happen to really like windmills, almost as much as I like fire escapes.

The woman who sits in the cubicle next to me at work is really great. She almost makes up for some of the less desirables in my office. She used to be a nun, and left the church for reasons she has never disclosed. She still goes to Abbeys in the area and keeps up with sisters in her old order. At work, when I get bored, I do things, like remind her to make a wish at 11:11 o'clock and ask her all kinds of annoying questions. She is an amazingly patient woman who deserves to be cannonized after sitting next to me for so long. Here's an example of why:

Me: Hey, if you could get off work at noon today, how would you spend the rest of the day?

Her: I'd probably drive to the Abbey and spend the rest of the day there.

Me: So, when you were Christ's bride, did he ever leave his socks all over the house for you to pick up?

Her: (humoring me) I've never seen him wear socks, have you?

Me: No. I guess he's always barefoot or wearing sandals. Did you and the other nuns ever get jealous of each other? You know, like in The Bachelor or Flavor of Love where all those women are always fighting and calling each other names?

Her: I don't know what you're talking about. Are those TV shows or something? And no, we didn't fight. We all knew what we were getting into.

Me: What was the divorce settlement like when you left? I'm assuming you didn't get to keep the house, but did you get some kind of alimony?

Her: No. And I had to buy a whole new wardrobe. I should have shelled-out for a better lawyer.

Me: Could you ever see yourself and Jesus getting back together? Like, if he started coming by and bringing you flowers and taking you out on real dates again?

Her: I would actually love to be a nun again, but they don't accept any after a certain age anymore. You know, I think I'm done with the question and answer portion of the workday. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to ask me more ridiculous questions.

Me: Oh, sorry. I'll just sit here quietly and work on some new ones for tomorrow.

Apparently, even saints have their limits.

Has She Got Control of Me

Since Blogger has been so tempermental at night lately, (emphasis on the mental) I just decided to download a photo after Stinky's basketball game, and come back and write my post after the girls go to bed, as usual. Here is a picture of Stinky at the ice skating rink. As you can see, she wears her sunglasses at night.

On Friday I was crabby. I know, I know, I say that every Friday...Or maybe every day. Last Friday, I was even more crabby than usual, because after I went running, I put a pizza in the oven and thought I'd be able to eat, (and you know how much I love to eat) but Stinky called and said her bus was about five minutes away from school and that I should come and get her right away. I gave Coadster instructions about how and when to remove the pizza from the oven, which made her very nervous because she's afraid of burning herself, and then I took off to get the great, Stinky one.

They were not five minutes away from school. We live at least a fifteen minute drive from the junior high and I sat for another fifteen after I got there. I wasn't feeling very patient anyway, and then there was that pizza to obsess about too.

When the bus finally did pull in, I saw the coach stand-up and lecture the girls for another few little whiles. I had a sudden urge to just lay on the horn and let up for a second and honk again for as long as it took. Then, because I love to imagine completely inappropriate scenarios in my head, I had a wonderful thought. What if I spent one entire day behaving like the most vile thirteen year old in the world? How satisftying would that be?

In my Freaky Friday Fantasy, when my daughters' tried to wake me up in the morning, I could roll over and say, "@!#$%*&^%$!" and try to go back to sleep until they told me that if I didn't get up and go to work, I wouldn't have enough money to go to the movies and ball games and ice skating with my friends every week. So, after I finally dragged myself out of bed, I'd go to the bathroom where I would make a horrible mess with make-up and hair straighteners and curling irons and barretts and headbands, until I was dangerously late for work and then I'd give up and look exactly the same as I did before I started. I'd try to get away with leaving my house with my butt crack and too much cleavage showing and when my daughters caught me and made me go back and change, I'd stamp my foot and say, "God! You think this is bad? You should see the other girls at my job, they all look like total prostitutes." And I would be so envious of all those other girls.

At work, I would sit at my desk and instant message my friends all day and obsessively check my Facebook, calling out, "Wooohooo! I have 297 friends now!" anytime someone accepted my new friend request. And if anyone dared to call and ask for assistance from me, I would sigh heavily before and after I picked-up and make the fingers-closing-on-and-off-my-thumb, talky-talky sign with my hand the whole time they were blabbing.

"Can you tell me who I would need to talk to about changing my major?" They might ask.

"Uh, how am I supposed to know! Who really friggin' cares?"

"I'm sorry. Am I calling the right number?"

"Duh! Does this sound like the right number? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now, go find someone else to bug. I'm busy." I would hang-up and sigh again. Then I would say loudly to no one in particular, "Oh my god! This is so boring! Seriously, I could lay down and die right now, I am that bored."

Luckily, my Fergalicious Def ringtone would go off and I'd have to use up all my minutes texting and talking to my friends on my cell phone until lunch. The afternoon would go pretty much the same, but I would chew gum very loudly while I was being rude to customers on the phone and anytime my boss gave me a project to work on, I'd say, "Whatever," and roll my eyes before I did it.

When I got home from work, I'd go straight to the television or the interenet radio station and instantly change it from whatever the girls were listening to without asking.

"What's for dinner?" I might ask my girls and then I'd say, "Gross. Ew." To whatever they answered me with. Until the girls got dinner on the table, I'd be on the computer to instant message while talking to the same friend on the phone. I'd ask each person I spoke to who they liked and then they'd tell me and ask who I liked and then we'd tell each other how ugly and weird we thought the other's crush was.

By the time I went to bed, I would be so exhausted and full of self-loathing, I'd finally be able to sleep a full eight hours and I'd never complain about my life, ever again and I would understand so much better the hell my daughters are living, that I'd spend all my waking hours cutting them slack.