Things occurring right now:

Chiggers down there. If you don't know what those are... well, just feel sorry for me.

Ok... so that ended up sounding like some kind of STD. I'll clarify. I took the dogs out in the backyard, and I happen to have a national forest in my backyard, complete with deer, raccoons, etc, and all the bugs that live there too. Chiggers are small red bugs, so small you can barely see them on your skin, that crawl up to the first place that's chafing-- your sock band, your waistband, your armpit, where ever, and burrow in, causing a red, incredibly itchy bump. Well I had on slip on shoes that don't rub and loose shorts, so the first chafing place? The insides of my legs. Nice. 

My dad's birthday is coming up and my little brother wants to go in on a really nice present for him. He's a photographer, and recently he's gotten interested in digitally edited photos, so I might find a nice one of those. Photoshop or something? I don't know. I need to research. 

I had Indian for lunch and Italian for dinner, so my stomach's not exactly happy with me. My taste buds were though. We're lucky to live in a small town with such good restaurants.

I'm sticking my neck out for a new designer I want to use for work. My boss isn't sure about him but I just know he can get the project done right. I'm putting my trust in him. I hope it doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. Because I've been bitten there enough lately....

I'm glad tomorrow is Friday. We're grilling with friends tomorrow night, passing the puppy off Saturday. I'm going to miss her.

1) Another dog, happy and warm and loved, saved from the shelter, and going to live a long life with a good family. Daisy, a small basset hound mix, a lover and snuggler:

2) Clean Sheets

3) Bananas

4) My father-in-law. Today is his birthday. He was my art history professor and advisor while I was in college, so I've known him a couple years longer than I've known my husband. He tells good stories, even if he does ramble some, and he really appreciates having an art-lover for a daughter-in-law, because I actually enjoy his long winded tangents about artists and such.

5) A night to myself, watching my favorite shows, eating brownies and ice cream. Other than the barking dogs, it was very peaceful, and I feel a bit recharged, like I just had a mini-weekend.

Whew

Puppies are WORK. I am so tired. Daisy's finally asleep, in Bub's bed, at the foot of the couch. Bub has passed out on Daisy's towel under my feet. Whatever, as long as they're quiet.

Work has been very, very busy lately, and I'm not quite sure why as nothing has changed. I suppose it's because my boss has started to trust me more with bigger projects. I appreciate that, and I like not being bored, but a little down time isn't a bad thing. Especially when home has been so crazy this week too.

Husband went to the baseball game tonight. The mid-week games are never as exciting since that's when they schedule the small or private college opponents. And the wives hardly ever go to those games either, so I'd be sitting around with a bunch of guys, all wishing I wasn't there so they could bad mouth their women, cuss, spit, scratch, whatever else it is guys like to do when we're not around. So I found a few minutes to make myself a plate of spaghetti and salad, dodging the dogs between my legs the whole time, and now I'm resting in front of the tv. Lost is on, can't miss that. Maybe I'll even go put on some of my tomato and mint face mask later. Totally girl it up.

Well, I spoke too soon. The yorkie puppy across the street just started barking, which caused all my puppies to run to the window barking. It's been so long since I've had an untrained dog around, I don't know, I don't remember, how to get her to stop doing something I don't want her to do. With Bub, I snap my fingers, literally, and he freezes. But Daisy doesn't even know her own name yet, no matter how loudly I scream it. I would love to have another dog some day, but it won't be a puppy. Whew.

I'm still a child myself, so how could I raise one?

As a child, I wanted four kids, two boys and two girls so that everyone had the experience of having both a brother and sister. Mathematically that is the lowest number of children possible for that to work, and yes, as a child, I did the math. This want stemmed more from me being frustrated as a child, wanting a sister more than anything and wanting understanding and feminine companionship, than from actually wanting children, and four of them at that, not that I knew that then. 

Sometime later... was it high school or college? I decided I didn't want kids. No, that's too absolute. I never decided, I never had one coherent I don't want kids revolutionary light bulb. It was a gradual realization that came to me over years of dating unreliable and untrustworthy men, watching parents ruin children, watching this misogynist world ruin girls, and watching us all swirl ourselves and our planet into a garbage-heap of an oblivion. Not to mention not wanting to change my la-de-da ways and actually grow up. I can't remember the first time I thought the whole thought or said it out loud: I don't want children of my own, but there it is now.

It's a weird thought to have, so foreign to the way girls are raised, especially Southern girls, so bizarre. I should want kids. I should want to spread my love and my genes, mix them up with my husbands, shake them up and blow on them for luck, toss them out and hope for a seven. My brothers make me not trust genes, though, as the three of us, all so different, all came from the same place. 

And having a baby, a pod inside me, like a leech, an alien life form, sincerely grosses me out. I know you don't believe me. No one does. Everyone thinks that I'll change my mind, blah blah blah, that one day I'll want my own, that I'll wake up one day and suddenly think Holy crap, I have to fill my house with red and yellow plastic toys and sticky fingers and squealing RIGHT NOW. I'm ok with not having a free moment for an original thought for at least the next 5 years until this thing can take care of itself plus the 15 or so years on top of that of financial and emotional support of someone I might not even like.

I didn't suddenly decide not to have kids on a whim, even though most people think that's the case. It was a studied, deliberate conclusion to which I came after years of thought. I'm leaving the possibility open, in my agnostic trust-nothing believe-nothing way, but I'm about 90% sure I will remain childless, at least children of my own. Adoption is another story, another post.

It scares me, of course it scares me, to think that I'll be old and alone one day, if having lost my husband too early I have no where to go on Christmas because we never had kids. But I can't live my life based on what-ifs. What I know now is that I am happy with the way things are. Having this puppy in the house this week (I'm keeping my parent's new dog until they can get up here to pick her up Saturday) has shown me that. Running around chasing that thing, trying to keep it from picking on the cat, peeing on the carpet, eating my shoes, on and on, I hardly get any rest, forget the chores and work to be done. And that's just a dog. Kids have tons more accoutrement and requirements. The tv shows they watch alone is enough to make me babble. I'm set in my ways, and I'm selfish, but at least I can admit this.

When I turn thirty, in three years, we're reevaluating. I feel like adoption will be the answer, though. I wish there was a way I could convince my friends of this inevitable fact, and my parents... they're another story. My dad's opinion my adopting one day, well, I'm still too angry to post about that.

things learned and remembered on a dreamy Monday morning

I remind myself of Jekyll and Hyde sometimes. One side of my face is photographable, the other is not. I put myself to the left of people when I see a camera pulled out, always, and I find myself turning my head ever so slightly to the right so the lens catches more of the left side than the other. 

Some days I'm sweet, friendly, and some days I'll tell the truth even if you can't take it just because I think you need it. Some days I'll do both. Some days I don't know what I will do either, what I will say, until I say it. I don't find out until I have a conversation, and the words flow out of my mouth, lacking my permission, escaping from the cage in which my brain has tried to lock them. Some days I'm better at keeping them in than others. You could be showered with Southern hospitality, or I could make you avoid me for the rest of the day. 

There's the first me, the left side. The wild me, could be sweet or honest or both, but has unleashed herself on the world, thoughts spewing like lava, no restrictions, no cares, no fear. I wish I could be her more often. I like to see the reaction on friends' and stranger's faces when I am her, when she comes out of nowhere. They're either fearful, taken aback, or amused. Usually the amused are the ones that have seen her before and know that's actually me, that's actually what's in my head, and for some reason I've chosen to be her that day and they're in for a good ride.

But I'm usually the second, the right side. I'm like the first, but strapped in like a tandem skydiver, padded down like a fragile vase in a move, lips locked with a key thrown away. I protect myself, steel myself up, because I'm tender and easy to get to in my other state. A sly word, a hurtful word, spoken in my direction and I clam up, unable to return the favor. I'm incapable of hurting others. The truth hurts, yes, but that's not my fault. Everyone has their own version of a truth I suppose, but I feel the more versions of it you hear, the closer you come to The truth. Maybe that's silly, I don't know, but it makes sense to me.

Neither side of me knows how to debate, though. I'm empathic with everyone and every side, I consider all the options. I'm not easily swayed unless you present to me a view I hadn't considered. I'm open to change in those situations, but usually I just weave the new into the old, allowing it room to move around in my head and push out old notions, alter some, but mostly just exist to the side. It's tiring. I can't be blind, I can't be ignorant, therefore I can't be at peace. Everything to me has worldly implications, everything is connected to something else. My life has meaning because it's connected to others, and those are further connected to everything else. Everything I do makes a difference to you. Everything you do makes a difference to me.

Reeling back in... This weekend was warm and full of new life. I chose to be my true self on Saturday and lived. Screaming at a baseball game, laughing as we piled seven people in a pick-up, dancing in the street. My parents adopted a new dog and I helped pick her out. Last night, I cried before dinner, out with friends, over a stray puppy, starving in the dirt, dying for love. People passed by and say "oh, what a sweet dog, how sad it is that she's alone" and kept going, back to their cars, back to their boxed in lives. How? What is it in people, what evil, allows us to see a suffering creature and move on by? Why are we so apathetic? 

After my small rant, I stood up, walked outside to get her, take her home, get a good meal in her and find her a permanent home, when a young couple who had just eaten picked her up themselves. Oh, I forgot, I thought, and I smiled at them and returned.  Some people do care. Some people are like me. They don't know me, but that choice to help when help was needed affected me more than I remembered possible, and I was a bit shocked by it. We all have two sides, we all have choices to be made. We can be our true selves, come out of our shells and live our lives, connected and open to everyone else, or we can stay holed up in our own cocoons, forgetting how much our actions or inactions can hurt and maim without our permission or knowledge. I'm choosing to try to push myself out there, to live a life examined and whole, without fear, to be myself from now on. 

around and around

Life is so funny sometimes. I've been cruising along lately, conscious only of weeks and not days, time zooming past like race cars on the track. Suddenly it's 80 degrees outside and time to put away the sweaters. I'm a week and a half from being 27 when the last birthday I really remember was... 23? No, 24 was a good one, we were in London. London was three years ago. I'm shaking my head at my keyboard, wondering where in the world the time went and what in the world I've done with it. 

I've driven the same car since my sophomore year of college. My father helped me buy it. It was his idea, and it was too expensive for me, so he helped me out because he wanted me in the safest car available. My aunt, my mom's little sister, who had been born with scoliosis and so spent her life with her head tilted to one side in a constant questioning motion, was killed in a car accident that year. She and I drove the same kind of car, and although what actually killed her was scar tissue breaking off from an earlier spinal surgery and clotting her lungs, my dad freaked out a  little and bought me a BMW with steel side bars and roll-down air bags. Used, but nice, especially back then.

Now I call it the ghetto-W. The windows won't roll down anymore, and sometimes the doors refuse to unlock. I replaced the reverse gear and the coolant system a couple years ago (has it been a couple years really?) for a whopping 3k. Everything on these German cars is more expensive to fix, like 3 and 4 times more. A headlight bulb costs me $25. 

So yesterday, on the way home from work I was sitting at a red light listening to NPR's All Things Considered, some story about Obama and credit cards, and suddenly my car raised and lowered, like I had gone over a bump but was sitting still, and I heard a ka-plunk. And my check engine light came on. I thought for a second the guy behind me had bumped me, but I could still see his bumper in my rear view mirror, so I knew it wasn't him. I immediately called my husband, and we agreed I should turn around and drive it to the one guy in town that works on BMWs. He opened my hood and there was oil everywhere. Awesome.

So we are carless. We borrowed a car so that we could get to work this morning. His car quote was $407 (as I said yesterday, his fan threw a blade into his radiator, so we're replacing both). Who knows what mine will be.

It's enough to make me want to lock myself in the house all weekend. But there are worse things that could happen. If he comes back with another 3k quote, it might be time for a new car. As much as I don't want to take on a payment right now, at least we probably have the resources to do it. Life is all about our reactions to things, isn't it? And my husband and I spent most of the night laughing about this. I just hope I can keep laughing when I hear the news, good or bad.

Edited to add: Husband just told me that as a part of our refinance, there's an extra $1400 in our old escrow account, and they'll be mailing us a check in 30 days. Now I'm shaking my head again, in disbelief this time. I just never know what to expect. Life is a roller coaster, that's for sure. I'm glad I like roller coasters. 

home

Everyone has their place. That place that tugs at their soul, makes them feel calm and complete, happy and peaceful. For some people it's a particular house, known as home. They feel like they're on vacation in their backyard. I've moved too much to call a physical structure my home although the one my husband and I live in now is getting close. For other people it's a city, full of the people and activities they love. Sure, my town is great, but it's a bubble rarely penetrated by the outside world, leaving us stewing in our own ideas and personalities sometimes. Just gotta get out of it on occasion. And there are some big cities near here each with a unique vibe, but none of them hold anything for me. Some people love the mountains, especially around here. They go a little further north every winter and ski, or in the summer they hike, step carefully rock to rock on bubbling streams, and observe nature. It's beautiful up there, but too cold, and dirty, with lots of bugs. I like to camp but it's not a vacation to me, and it's not a place I feel compelled to go.

There's a mile-long stretch of glimmering white powdery sand and blue blue water down in the panhandle that pulls me, begs me, urges me to visit every year. As a child we'd go for a week every July to the same hotel on the same beach, and memories flood me there, from age 6 to 26, good and bad. That crazy bee that stung me, the time I met my friend from Alabama who came every year too, my first bikini-- pink zebra stripes, when my friend's little brother chased us with a bat, my first kiss at 14, taking my ex there and watching him get drunk in front of my parents, going there with my husband and feeling so... whole. I feel like a child and an adult there, remembering those days and recognizing the difference between then and now. Watching the waves roll back and forth, absorbing the blazingly hot sun on my spf 45-slavered skin, savoring the broiled crab claws and the strawberry daiquiris, and spending real time with the ones I love.

I don't know that I'll get to go this year. My parents are taking a long trip to see my aunt, a two-week RV drive, during the time we usually go. I'm not sure my husband and I can afford to go on our own, as much as we'd like to. Maybe we can get some friends together, but it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen.

There's a line connecting my soul to that beach, thrown out like a fishing line over this 350 mile distance, reeling me back to it. I can only fight it for so long until my little fins get tired.

Do you have a place like this? What makes it call out to you?

Grateful Thursday

1) That even though my husband's car's radiator cooling fan broke off a blade that flew into and wedged into his radiator, it didn't cause an accident, he's ok, and that's all it was in the end. We do need a new fan and radiator now, which will be $300 a least (ugh), but we have it, and even if we have to eat cheap for a while, we're fine. It would happen right before my birthday, but I'm looking on the bright side.... I don't need anything anyway.

2) Wildlife. There is an animal eating my birdseed overnight. Yesterday when we went to bed, the birdfeeder was full to the top with seed, and when I sleepily walked through the kitchen this morning, I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't just seeing things-- no, the birdfeeder was completely empty, not a sunflower seed or millet left. When my husband went out to investigate, thinking surely it had malfunctioned and the seed was on the ground, he discovered no seed and a hole dug beneath it as well. Raccoons? Opossums? Really fat birds? I wonder if we'll ever find out.

3) My new conditioner. Between that and putting the blow dryer away, my hair is so much softer lately, even if I am still regularly cutting out split ends. Grow hair grow!

4) It's 80 degrees today and will be 80 and sunny all weekend!!!! And there are three baseball games and an art festival Saturday!

5) My boss. Yesterday was administrators day, (used to be secretary's day I think) so he gave everyone in the office (I guess we all technically work in admin, although since there's only 3 of us other than him, you can't leave someone out. Except the part time girl, she was left-out but she wasn't here) gift certificates for a massage. Nice.

Weird list today. Weird week though.

necessary roughness

Things have been a bit tougher around here lately, not easy going like tomatoes growing in the Southern Spring sun, not like usual. 

The part time worker in the office is destroying the calm friendliness we had going. No one likes her. It's sad, almost, but she asks for it. I'm not the kind to befriend the unfriended, I have to say; it's one of my negative qualities I guess. Part of me thinks that if you have no friends, there's a reason, and I don't like the extra work. I suppose it's selfish. Anyway, she tries too hard to impress the bosses, and in the process puts the rest of us down. She's the newest to the group and so should know her place, and live in it for a while, but instead she seems intent on becoming the boss's best friend by slowly but surely making a fool of his current best friend and our coworker. It's a complicated situation, but suffice it to say my boss sees through this, my coworker sees through this, the rest of us see through her, and as soon as her loud, intrusive, and brash self leaves the office, we tend to congregate in one area with "ugh"s and "finally"s all around. I don't know why she's still here, frankly, other than she has a skill set that we need temporarily for the office, and it's easier to keep her around that perform another job search for a temporary position. She'll be gone in October, fingers crossed. 

I usually avoid confrontation, sometimes at all costs, sometimes even when it's good and will cause positive change. But today I started a fight. Our printing company was very unhelpful today when all I needed was some help. Ever come in contact with someone who's rude and difficult just because they can be? This guy had me reenter our address 30 times (really, 30, no exaggeration) on his website today. We were ordering 10 different sets of cards, and the address was deleted twice from all ten cards-- his website's fault, not mine. In the end, I wrote him a nasty email about how his website had better be efficient for his printers because it certainly wasn't customer-oriented, and apparently I caused quite a stir. All I can hope is that they'll change their ways so that next time I don't waste an hour typing an address he already has on file over and over just because he's too rude to do it himself.

A 21-year-old girl was raped on our town center recently. She was alone at night, and a man pushed her into an alley and forced himself on her. We live in a small town, and our center is always full of people at night as that's where all our restaurants and bars are, so she must have been in a back alley or it must have been very late, after most people had gone home. It's scary nonetheless. The police have no leads. Random acts of violence occasionally occur in this town, like someone getting purse-nabbed in a beauty shop parking lot. That man was caught on his way out of town and was from two states over. That's usually how it happens-- someone passing through. Or family violence, boyfriend on girlfriend violence. I can't think of the last time I was in the center at night alone, but it will be a long time before that happens again.

Any time I think of myself in that situation, I picture myself fighting with all my might, struggling and flailing and aiming for the spots that would hurt, like eyeballs and the throat and that lower area men like to protect. I wouldn't stop, I'd be like a mad woman unleashed. I don't know how much it would help. I'm not the largest or strongest woman. I took a self defense class and know some tricks though, like how to pull my arm away from someone who has grabbed me by pulling towards their thumb and forefinger as that's the weakest part of their grip. Or by folding one knee on top of the other if he's got me on the ground. I was a gender studies minor, so I know too much about rape, too much for my delicate mind, like how most rapists don't actually finish, how 3 in 4 rapes go unreported, how many reported ones are never prosecuted, how rarely the prosecuted are found guilty, and how the guilty on average don't go to prison for more than 6-8 years. All that violence, for just 6 years.

The best thing I learned was to not be afraid of hurting them, not to be afraid of necessary roughness. Women, especially us Southern gentile women, are taught to be polite in all cases, meek in all circumstances, passive and obliging and quiet. Don't make a scene, don't talk back, don't stand up for yourself. No one ever says don't fight a rapist, no, but it somehow melds into that, so that when the police officer said "Ladies, hurt him. Hurt him good. Don't think about it, just fight" a light bulb lit up for me. Fight for your life. And I would. 

Of course, having never been in that situation, how would I know what I'd do? That's the interesting thing about being a human. We never know how we'll react until we have to. 

I've decided to fight back more often. To embrace some conflict and debate. Not too much though. No one likes a brash, loud, intrusive woman, do they?

quick Monday

Things have been really busy around here today. I can tell you that one of my favorite things is Backyard Burger's veggie burger, add cheese and hold the onion please. Yum. Here's some pictures from the weekend.

Bubby loves to have his picture taken.

It rained like crazy on Saturday, but the doves don't mind.

Lizards much prefer the sun, though.

Sunday night, at the big-city bar. Interesting use of Blue Willow...

We preceded to eat entirely too much at dinner, including key lime pie with mango sauce and turtle cheesecake for dessert. Ugh, I still hurt.