Category Archives: Blah-blah-blah

puppy obsession

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I totally forgot to mention that I had about 4 inches of my hair cut off on Friday. I’m not really sure why, I just got the sudden itch for a change. It’s cute, though – still long enough that I can put it up in a ponytail, and it doesn’t seem to take as long to style in the morning, so that’s good. I’ll have to post photos soon. Kris and I took some pictures at the park on Sunday, but I don’t have access to her camera at the moment.

In other news, I have apparently latched on to the idea of getting a dog – somehow my brain keeps thinking, well I can’t seem to get pregnant, but I can get a puppy! (I know I’m not the only person to have this thought process. See? It is so totally normal. I swear.) Dave seems to think we should wait a while, at least until I get used to the idea of Lucky not being around, to make sure I still really want a dog, and that we aren’t getting a “rebound” dog. It’s probably a good thing that I married someone who isn’t quite as impulsive as I am when it comes to making major decisions such as these.

Besides that, I can’t seem to figure out what type of dog I want. There are several types of dogs that I already knew I liked, but then I’d go look them up and find out that they’re predisposed to some major health problems, or they aren’t good to have around kids because they tend to bite, that kind of thing. It seems that people in our neighborhood tend to have big dogs, which makes sense because it’s the boonies and we all have lots of land. And I like the idea of a big dog because I’d feel safe on the nights when Dave isn’t around (not often, but sometimes he has to travel for work), plus big dogs are good for giving full-body hugs without the fear of crushing them. On the other hand, I tend to gravitate more toward the tiny, foofy dogs because my god, the cuteness, it is overwhelming. If you don’t believe me, go look at Sarcomical’s dogs – seriously, can it get cuter than that? I think not.

So I’ve somewhat narrowed it down to two different breeds – on the big dog side, we have the Australian Shepherd. Easy to train, good around kids, no major health problems. Check. And they’re pretty. Plus, the puppies that I’ve seen are just about the cutest little furballs ever. Although that’s the thing about getting a big dog – we would have to get a puppy so the cats can teach it who’s boss from day one. They tend to freak around dogs, but I think if they were around a puppy – which isn’t a threat because its size isn’t intimidating – they’d probably be ok. Lucky is kind of a big dog (35 pound range), and they were terrified of her the entire time she was here, even though she’s really good with cats because she was raised with Kris’s two kitties.

(Actually, that was funny, because Lucky wanted to play with our cats, but they didn’t know that, so the poor pup got swatted and hissed at on a pretty regular basis. She never seemed to understand why she couldn’t join in their reindeer games. However, Teenie, the one cat who had never met a dog in her life until Lucky, seemed totally unfazed by her and only hissed if Lucky was up in her face for too long. It pretty much cemented my belief that Teenie has delusions of grandeur and probably thinks that she herself is a dog. Which is why she hates the other cats and wasn’t the least bit bothered by Lucky.)

On the tiny dog side, I seem to have become obsessed with the Havanese. I’d never even heard of the breed before, but they’re related to the Bichon Frise, so you know they’re adorable. (Although the first picture on that link is not a good representation. I’m not into show dogs, so if I were to get one, it would have a cute short haircut, like most of these guys.) They seem to have a good temperament, get along with cats and kids, and allegedly can be trained to use a litter box(!). So major bonus points there. Plus, they’re just heart-achingly cute.

I don’t have any idea where this is going to end up, or if we’ll get a dog at all, but feel free to pitch in your opinion on the big dogs versus little dogs debate. I’m going back to searching Petfinder.

anybody wanna take a stab at this? anyone?

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Last night I had a dream where I met a very scary-looking man. He was old, had white hair and a beard, and he was dressed in all denim and leather. He looked sort of like a cross between Santa Claus and a Hell’s Angel. I don’t know why, but I was terrified of him and tried to run away. He caught up with me – or rather, I ran into a room and he was already there waiting for me. (Since this occurred in dreamland, I guess no explanation is needed for how he got there ahead of me. The logic of how fast I can run versus the velocity of some old biker dude doesn’t really apply.) I tried to hide under a table to get away from him.

He told me that he was my father. It occurred to me that this man looked absolutely nothing like my dad, so he must be God. (Naturally.)

When I inquired about that, it turned out that yep, he was God, alright. He said that He had something very important to tell me. I don’t remember anything after that.

An aside: My grandmother died the day after Christmas in 1996. I had just met and moved in with Kris a few weeks prior – right before the semester ended for winter break. Kris needed a roommate, I didn’t want to live on campus, so: perfect, right? Anyway, I moved in with her, then went home and proceeded to have the Worst Christmas Ever.

Soon after the new semester started in January, I started dating this guy who Kris had just broken up with. They had been broken up for maybe a week (tops) when he hit on me, and I totally went for it because I was pathetically lonely and insecure at the time. I dated him behind her back because I knew it was a shitty thing to do.

At some point, my grandmother appeared to me in a dream, and told me to knock it off with that guy, because he was bad news, and because even though I didn’t know her very well yet, Kris was going to end up being one of my closest friends for the rest of my life. And what do you know, she was right on both counts. I don’t know if I really believe that people can appear to us in dreams like that, or if maybe it was just my own conscience that was rearing its head.

So, back to current day: what’s really bothering me is that if God appeared to me in a dream and wanted to tell me something, shouldn’t I remember the part of the dream where He told me some very important bit of information? What does it mean if I can’t recall what He wanted me to know?

The only other part of that dream that I remember is that I had to fly a plane by myself (no passengers, it was just a little crop duster-type plane) and it was crashing. Considering my fear of heights, I think that puts the whole dream firmly in the “nightmare” category. But I’m still confused about the God part.

burn baby burn

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Thank you all for the very kind comments and emails on that last post. Y’all are too sweet, really. I’m feeling a little better this week, so I guess the exercise (and slightly improved eating habits) must be helping.

This past weekend was pretty fun. Saturday night, we had a girls’ night and went dancing. The group was me, Kris, Janet, Linda, and a girl that works in Dave’s office that I don’t know very well. We had a good time – I was designated driver since heaven only knows what’s going on with my ovaries and I’d prefer to be cautious in the meantime. Kris and Linda seem to have really bonded, which is awesome since they’re both single, and since Janet and I (the old married ladies) aren’t always up for nights on the town like they are.

Actually, come to think of it, I thought they bonded, but it could’ve just been that they were both very, very drunk. There were tequila shots involved. It was sort of scary.

But we all had a good time, and hey, dancing is exercise, so bonus! I finally got in bed somewhere around 5 a.m. You know you’re getting old when that kind of thing totally kicks your butt the next day, even though you didn’t have a drop of alcohol the night before.

Sunday, Dave and I got in touch with our inner 14 year-old boys by burning a whole bunch of yard waste that had been lying around for ages. (It was very Beavis: “Fire! Fire! Heh heh heh!”) There was the wood that used to be our old deck; the one that was torn down when Dave’s brother Steve built our new, pretty one. There were also some dead shrubs that we dug up and never replanted, and um, our Christmas tree, which has been in the driveway since sometime in early January. Because apparently besides just being lazy, we also try to make our yard look as white trash as humanly possible. (And we do it well. Trust me.)

So we had a nice little bonfire on Sunday evening. And of course, the whole project was my idea and I told Dave not to worry about it, that I’d take care of all of it, and that I just needed him for two seconds to help me lift something that was stuck in the mud, and then he ended up doing 80% of the work. Because he’s awesome that way. It was actually quite romantic to sit on a little blanket next to an open fire while the sun was setting. The weather was perfect for it, and it was all quite lovely. Until it got chilly and the mosquitoes came out. At which point I hightailed it inside and left Dave to baby-sit the fire alone.

In other news, Kris is moving out this Saturday. She found a nice little apartment that’s pretty close to her office, and she got a really good rent special on it. The only problem is that her house in Memphis won’t close until the middle of next month (still praying that works out), so she doesn’t have the money to move her furniture up yet. In the meantime, I’m lending her the bed in our guest room and some other odds and ends from around the house. One of her co-workers is giving her an old sofa, so she should be relatively well set up.

And I must say, even though I know it means I’ll get out of the house 10 or 15 minutes earlier in the morning, I am really going to miss Lucky when she moves out. I have totally fallen in love with that dog. Although I know Dave and our cats will breathe a collective sigh of relief and wish her a hearty “good riddance.” Oh well.

number 400

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This is my 400th blog post. I’m not sure if that’s worth noting or not, I just thought it was neat.

My friend Leslie flew up to visit this past weekend. She lives in California, so it’s a pretty short flight. I hadn’t seen her in what feels like a long time, but I suppose it’s actually only been a year, since she picked me up from the airport when I flew to Memphis for my bachelorette party (and um, drove me back to the airport when I realized I had left my wallet on the plane and nearly had a stroke; the cleaning people found it, all was well).

Leslie and Kris have been friends since high school, and I know this whole moving transition has been hard on Kris, so I thought it’d help to have Leslie around for a couple of days. Familiar face and all that. I was a little worried about Dave, since the house was going to be pretty much on Estrogen Overload, but he did ok. He and Leslie actually seem to have quite a bit in common, down to watching the same horrible shows on the Sci-Fi channel. (Not that I’ve ever tried to watch them, I just mock in ignorance.)

Luckily, Leslie is one of those mellow kinds of friends that you don’t have to worry about entertaining 24/7. Case in point: before I had my surgery a few years ago, I had to have an endoscopy. Leslie was going to be in Portland visiting another friend of hers, so she came up to Seattle just to drive me home from the hospital and baby-sit my drugged-out self for the afternoon. Isn’t that sweet? I love her.

So, the weekend overall was pretty mellow and nice. Kris and Leslie hung out by themselves on Saturday, because I was tired and lazy and not feeling well. While they were enjoying the Asian Art Museum (which I’ve never been to, because I didn’t know it existed; how’s that for familiarizing myself with the city I’ve lived in for the past 5 years?), I was taking a nap. Which was lovely. I went along with them on Sunday, although there wasn’t much involved in the day’s activities: we went to see an apartment that Kris is considering, we shopped at Trader Joe’s (which Kris had never been to before, so that was fun), and just generally milled around. We had to take Leslie to the airport that afternoon, and I was sort of sad that she had to leave. She’s so easy to be around, I wish she lived closer, but she seems to love Santa Cruz. Oh well.

Other than that, there isn’t much going on. We’ve had a dog trainer come over for the past few Saturdays to help out with Lucky. Not that she has any major behavioral problems, it’s mostly just little things like learning some basic commands and trying to get her better at walking on the leash. That’s been fun – and very educational for me, since I know squat about dogs. Oh, and we learned that Lucky wigs the hell out over a laser pointer, so we’ve been exploiting that for all it’s worth. Rainy days when no one feels like walking the dog? Bust out the laser pointer for about 10 minutes, and watch her literally try to chase the little red dot up the walls. She gets so excited when she’s running around chasing it that she has made our 6′ x 9′ living room rug (with the coffee table still on it) skid all the way across the room. It’s a pretty hilarious sight to witness.

Aaaaand… that’s about it from my world. How are you?

parents, aging, yadda

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My dad turned 70 yesterday. He seemed pretty chipper about it when I talked to him, but my mom told me later that it’s been bothering him a lot. It probably doesn’t help that over the past few years, two of his five golf buddies have died (in all fairness, they were both about ten years older than my dad), and another one was just recently diagnosed with inoperable cancer. So this birthday has bummed him out considerably more than, say, turning 60 did.

But honestly, it’s kind of got me freaked out too. I’m used to my dad being older – when I was a kid, he was the oldest of all of my friends’ dads. (Except one of my friends, whose dad had been married and had a few adult children before remarrying and having one of my classmates. He was kind of a gross dad, though – alcoholic redneck guy – so I never counted him.) But the word “seventy” just sounds so old. I’m used to thinking of my dad as this big, imposing, scary guy. It’s kind of strange to try to transition that mental image to one of “little old man.” That label just doesn’t fit him. Of course, he’s not exactly big or imposing either; he was 5’11” at his tallest, and his posture is so bad that he’s lost a few of those inches over the past couple of decades. I guess that’s just the image of him that I have from my childhood. When you’re three feet tall, 5’11” seems pretty enormous.

It got me thinking that one of the reasons why I’m so motivated to get pregnant right now is because I have a fear that my kids won’t remember their grandfather. It’s not exactly one of the top items on my list of priorities; after all, there’s no reason to think my dad won’t be around for a long time, he’s totally healthy. But it’s there, lingering in the back of my head.

My grandfather (my father’s father) died when I was five years old. I don’t recall much about him. I remember what he looked like, although that might be more from family photos than my own memory. I have a vague memory of sitting on his lap and him laughing. (When I told this to my mom, she said, “Yeah, he thought you were hilarious.” It’s nice to know that I was putting on my little comedy routines for people before I was even out of diapers.) And I have this feeling, not really a memory, but just a sense of being loved, if that makes sense. That makes me the saddest of all, because I wish that he had been around for a few more years so that maybe I could remember more about him. I don’t want my kids to miss out on getting to know their grandfather or feel deprived like that, which is (one of many reasons) why I’d like to hurry up and get on the damn baby bandwagon. (You hear that, ovaries?)

Of course, anytime the subject of an impending-grandparent status comes up in conversation, my dad lectures me about how Dave and I should wait, how we should be more financially stable first, and that he doesn’t want to be a granddad yet because that’ll make him “old.” My mom is pretty sure that he’s going to change his tune the minute he sees (and falls in love with) his grandchild.

So there’s that.

Oh, and right now there are two guys outside of my office talking about childbirth. One guy asked another guy about a local hospital and he said, “yeah, that’s where I had my daughter.” Um, excuse me? I’m just guessing that your wife might’ve had something to do with that particular hospital visit, buddy. Call it a hunch.

the weekend and such

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I’m starting to feel somewhat normal again. Meaning, my sinuses are still whacked out, but I’m not feeling quite so verge-of-death and I’m sleeping through the night, so things have improved about a thousand percent. Oh, and speaking of sleeping? That cough syrup with codeine gives me the weirdest dreams. I only occasionally remember my dreams, but the last few nights have all been very vivid, and I’ve been waking up confused, thinking that whatever was happening in the dream is still happening in real life. I’m honestly not a huge fan of being all disoriented first thing in the morning, but if this is what it takes to get a good night’s sleep, so be it.

Switching abruptly to the topic of trying-to-get-pregnant: I recently ordered this book. (Thanks, Sarcomical!) For whatever reason, our stupid postman was too lazy to bring the box to our doorstep and leave it there (hate him), so instead I got one of those notices in our mailbox that said I had to go to the post office to pick it up. Our post office sucks, every time I’ve had to go there to pick up a package, they’ve never been able to find it. We live in a very small town, so the post office is also small, and you’d think that it would be difficult to lose someone’s mail there. Ha! Last year, one of my friends sent us a wedding present a couple of days before the wedding itself, and it was a few days after the wedding when I was able to go pick it up. By the time I got there, they had actually mailed the package back. So yeah. Hate.

On this particular occasion, the line was out the door of the post office (whose idea is it to have one employee working at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon?), but when I finally got to the front of the line, it only took them a couple of minutes to find my package. Hooray. On my way out, carrying my new book about “taking charge of my fertility” under my arm, I passed a pregnant woman. I hope it was a good omen, because it honestly just kind of pissed me off at the time. But I think I already had a chip on my shoulder about having to go to the stupid post office in the first place.

But this book? Is pretty darn cool. (Although I do need to stop reading it before bed, because again, the dreams, they are a-freaky.) There are all kinds of things about my body that I never knew, and all kinds of very scary diagrams. The thing is, I’m totally fascinated by it, but I’m not allowed to talk about most of it with Dave. Anytime the subject of my cervix comes up, he tends to plug his ears and yell “la-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you-la-la-la!!” And I suppose that’s ok, he doesn’t really need to know the graphic details of how things work “down there”. But it’s made me glad that Kris is around, because at least I have someone with whom I can be all, “hey, did you know such-and-such, etc.?” She seems totally unphased by pretty much anything I tell her, so that’s cool.

Other than that, our weekend wasn’t too terribly eventful. We went to our local sports bar for dinner on Saturday night, and saw the worst band in the history of the world. (And guess what? They have a website! Thanks, Google!) Seriously, they were awful. Classic rock cover band, led by a guy with a horrible voice, who didn’t even seem to know most of the lyrics of the songs they were covering. Case in point: during “Drive” by the Cars, there’s a line that goes: “who’s going to plug their ears when you scream?” This dude said, “who’s going to hold your hands when you scream?” Um, what? I know it shouldn’t matter – their cover would’ve sucked regardless if he knew the words or not, just because they were that bad. But I’m sort of OCD about song lyrics, and it just grated on my nerves when he got them wrong.

Last night, we watched “The Squid and the Whale”. Wow. I don’t know that I have ever disliked Jeff Daniels that much, I just wanted to hit him. That movie is intense, I kept sort of curling into a ball and willing them to just please STOP already. I suppose it was well done and all that, but man, it was depressing. Not sure if I’d recommend it or not.

And now, it’s Monday morning. Back to the grind and all that. Yadda yadda. Whee.

a watched pot never boils

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I have been trying so hard to come up with something funny to blog about, and honestly? I got nothin’. So instead, I’ll share a story of how someone managed to piss me off this weekend.

Saturday night, a couple of girls I don’t know very well (they’re friends of my friend Linda) were having a combined birthday party, and for some unfathomable reason I was invited, so Kris and I went. Dave was supposed to go too, but he had worked all day, and none of his buddies were going to be there, so I let him off the hook. He stayed home and played video games, and was a very happy camper. (I’m such an understanding wife. Really.) The birthday party was at a bowling alley, so obviously these two girls were totally copying Linda and me, but whatever. Only their party was at a different bowling alley in Seattle, which I must say (for lack of a better word) sucked. They were playing 80’s music when we first got there; I heard both Duran Duran and the Eurythmics, and that was cool. About 15 minutes later, they switched to heavy metal. And it wasn’t even fun, silly metal, they played stuff like Black Sabbath and Motorhead, songs that none of us knew, and it was ear-splittingly loud. Kris asked the DJ if he was going to be playing metal all night, he gave her the metal “horns” hand gesture and said “RAAAWWWKKK!!!” (or something to that effect). Right. Kris and I decided that the only person there that we really knew was Linda, and the music sucked, so we bought each of the birthday girls a drink, wished them much fun and merriment, and we took off.

We spent the rest of the evening playing pool and dancing at a gay club in Seattle that I haven’t been to in ages. It was fabulous.

However, at the party, I had this little exchange that lasted maybe 20 or 30 seconds, and it has managed to burn itself into my brain to such a point that I’m still seething about it. (I’m so full of seething-ness that I’m not even sure that last sentence made any sense at all.) One of the birthday girls, Ashley, is someone who I’ve met now maybe two or three times. I definitely wouldn’t say that we’re friends; in fact, I’m not even sure that I like her. And after this last conversation, I’m pretty sure that I don’t. We’ve spoken maybe twenty words to each other in the entire time I’ve known her. To sum up: I hardly know the chick.

So imagine my surprise when out of the blue, she turned to me and said, “So, have you and Dave had any luck getting pregnant yet?” Wow. I don’t know how she even knows that we’re trying, because I sure as hell didn’t tell her. I’m guessing she heard about it from Linda or one of our other mutual friends. And I suppose it’s really no big deal, I’m just very sensitive about that subject because I’ve had five (5!) cycles since I got off birth control, and no, I’m not pregnant. Yet. (I think the “yet” on the end of her sentence bugged me more than anything.) I don’t really talk about my frustration with that to anyone. Of course Dave hears about a lot of my fears and anxieties, but even then, there’s still an awful lot that goes on in my brain that I keep to myself. I can’t explain why, but it’s a touchy subject, and I’m scared to talk about it because I don’t want to jinx the whole damn thing. But honestly, even if I was pregnant, I doubt that I’d be announcing it to people who barely even qualify as acquaintances, you know?

So, back to Ashley. She asked me if I was pregnant (yet), and I said, “Um, no…” and started looking around the room for any kind of imaginable diversion. (In hindsight, I should’ve pointed to my empty cocktail glass and asked her if she really thinks I would’ve just slurped down a vodka and cranberry juice if I was pregnant. Seriously, lady: duh.) Immediately, she followed up with, “You guys have been trying for a while, haven’t you? Have you been to your doctor about that yet?”

Blink. Blink blink.

I didn’t know how to react to that. In all fairness, she’s the mother of a toddler herself, so maybe she just wanted to share some pregnancy/mommy wisdom with me. But at the same time, doesn’t that seem awfully personal? I mean, especially considering that we don’t know each other very well and the fact that I never told her I was trying to get pregnant? I wanted to say back to her, “Ok, (a) what’s with all the yet’s, (b) define ‘a while’, and (c) is my medical care any of your f-ing business?”

But I didn’t. I just said, “Well, I haven’t been to my doctor lately…” Kris and her flawless sense of timing showed up then to ask if any of us needed refills for our drinks. (Thank god.) I excused myself to the ladies’ room and took deep breaths to get my pulse rate back to normal. I still don’t know why that conversation shook me as much as it did. I guess it was because I was caught off guard. But that was around the time that I decided that honestly? A gay dance club sounded pretty darn good.

I mean, if I was pregnant, would I be able to shake my groove thing to a techno remix of “I’m a Slave 4 U” by Britney Spears, surrounded by hot, sweaty, shirtless men and drag queens? I think not.