We're not in Kansas Anymore, Toto.

Maybe I should have listened to Tina Fey. *

Ho-hey, hi there. Not much to see here, sorry. I just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, like a little blue Dori fish, flapping my little fins trying to keep going. It's been an extended winter, and its APRIL, people, and they are still threatening that snow may fall here on the plain. This is not amusing anymore. 

So yeah, in February I went back to school. It's a weird feeling, to be back on a college campus trying to figure out in which building is your class located, or how to get get a copy key in the library and make copies of a presentation that's due in 15 minutes. The good news, I suppose, is that this campus is well-known for its graduate programs, and so there are very few preppy little coeds with perky boobs bouncing around, at least when I'm there in the evenings, it is mostly old people like me trying to revive the muscle memory of how to study and learn and write papers, while maintaining a full time job and four soccer practices, two music lessons and 2-4 soccer games in any given week, plus feed the dirty little soccer hobbits occasionally, and perhaps even do some laundry. Not that I'm bitter. About the boobs, I mean. 

I may have told my oldest last week to fish his soccer uniform out of the bottom of the hamper and put back it on for a game. I suppose I could have told him to spray it with Febreze or something, but he didn't seem to care.  

But! A light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday I turned in a giant final project from class number one, and am halfway through class number two. It's nice not to have all that hanging over my head, that is a feeling I remember well.  I'll be done with this semester in two more weeks, and then summer classes start May 20th. 

In the meantime, the vertigo has come back a couple of times, enough that my doctor referred me to a neurologist, who sent me for an MRI and another nasty test called an ENG. If you have never heard of an ENG, it is a test where they shoot water into your ears to see if they can activate the vertigo so they can get brain readings off of it. Turns out, it's not IF they can activate the vertigo by shooting water into your ears, its HOW MUCH and HOW BAD. The answer? Very, very much, and worse than I ever imagined. Even though I knew it was coming, which I thought would be a better scenario than when it hits me out of the blue, it was bad. They did it four times, twice in each ear. I haven't felt so vulnerable and overwhelmed and in pain since the last time I had a baby.

At this point, they think the vertigo is actually a form of a migraine, just with the floor falling away from me instead of pain in my head. I'm unsure which is worse. I haven't had migraine headaches in years, other than the one I had this past September which the doctor now says was definitely a migraine, but the vertigo, this is a problem. So that's been fun. What isn't fun is realizing that its only April and I've already used up my medical flexible spending account. 

It is possible that I've got a little too much going on. After all, those are the times when my body tends to fail me in fantastically epic ways. I'm channeling my best Sweet Brown. (I know it's old, but it's still funny. And true.)

So here we are, enjoying a nice rainy night of cancelled soccer practice, eating dinner in our pajamas, avoiding the news, and going to bed early. Take it when you can get it, I say. For tomorrow, life goes on. 

 

*Advice from Tina Fey - "By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life."

Finnegan Begins Again.

I have a thing for 80's romantic comedies - all of the fun banter, less sex and nudity - much more innocent than today. (Not that I'm a prude, but COME ON, Hollywood, tell a story without using sex as a crutch, maybe, huh?) Finnegan Begin Again is one I recall fondly, but admittedly it is the rhyming title for which it is memorable. My absolute favorite movie ever is Max Dugan Returns, starring Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland, and Matthew Broderick, three different generations of my favorite actors in one adorable silly romcom. It also starred Marsha Mason a single mom - a teacher no less - wrangling these three men. It was the first time I noticed a strong female protagonist, a well-developed character - imperfect, but trying hard to walk a moral line, making do with what she had. I began to seek characters like that - women who would serve as my guide into who I wanted to be - in books and in movies, and these have become my favorite characters. From Places in the Heart and Murphy's Romance all the way to Where The Heart Is - women who are on their own struggling to make a life for their family. These are the women I admire. (Yes, Sally Field features prominently in the list. Love her.) 

Notice Gone With the Wind doesn't make my list. I hate the character of Scarlett O'Hara with a red velvet passion. Stop whining about your stupid party, you spoiled brat. My favorite characters aren't perfect, but they have to be likeable. You have to want to root for them. I kind of just wanted her to be kicked. 

Anyway, I eventually found more of these strong women characters in Shakespeare's comedies - thanks to a high school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, which helped me focus in college and led me to my degree in English. Beatrice, Viola, Rosalind are smart and strong but flawed women who fight for what they want, written by a man no less. Brilliant. 

Which brings me back to where I am now, beginning again, back at school myself. It is fun, it isn't as hard as I thought it might be workload wise, I now realize I probably could have taken more than one class at a time but I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew and have to drop one. I'll be smarter in future semesters. But I'm learning a lot - mostly about the difference between what I already know and what I don't, and what kind of classes I would like to teach. I know I want to be a specialist, and I probably want to stay in technology, or maybe STEM. Despite my lack of decent math and science skills personally, STEM is really about innovation in cross-platform education, and that fascinates me. 

(If you're interested in innovative education topics, Edutopia is a good place to start.)

I'm having a good time getting focused on what I want to be when I grow up. I guess it's about time, now that I'm approaching my 41st birthday. I am strong, I am flawed, but I'm doing the best that I can. I'm trying to be that woman. 

Of course, I've also always liked The Yellow Wallpaper, too. Maybe being strong is just about fighting off the descent into madness? Some days are better than others. It would help if it would STOP SNOWING, but maybe that's just me. 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch, who watches over you?

So yeah, here we are. I know I know, it took me long enough, but in the end I just didn't want that last post to be the end of the line here, so I paid up and for the time being, will continue to post, however sporadically it comes to mind. 

We had a great Christmas vacation, we surprised the kids with a trip to Disney World in Florida. Turns out all that traveling for work my husband does has its benefits, namely free airplane tickets and free hotel for a week. Which is good, because the cost of themepark tickets in Orlando will take your breathe away. Regardless, we had a wonderful time. My kids are both adrenaline junkies, so of course we rode every roller coast imaginable, even waiting in the specific line to be in the front row. I went with them, as I too love roller coasters. Weird, I know, seeing that I am such a control freak that I would love roller coasters, but I do. My body doesn't love them as much, my neck and back seized up on me several times. The spirit is willing but the body is weak, and by the 4th day I was willing to accept the leering smirks of the teenage park employees as I waited in line with my boys and then gently stepped off to the side as they boarded and strapped into their doom. I kid, I never worried about them for a second. 

What did concern me? Handrails. The handrails of the labrynthian waiting stockyards for roller coaster rides. STOP TOUCHING THAT OH MY GOD I just watched that girl sneeze all over it. Here, drink some Purell. 

Anyway, now that the holidays are over my mood seems to be lifting, and I don't know if its just the natural progression of a depression freeing me or if the holidays are in fact to blame for my lack of joy. I'll admit Christmas is stressful, what with the extended family visits and the expectations of gift giving (as in, making sure I spend the right amount on this person who may spend much more or much less on me...) and the plethora of comforting winter foods filled with starches and sugar and carbs that I try to avoid, and so forth. I would very much like for Christmas to just be about the birth of a very special baby than about the frenzy of merchandising and whether or not you splurge to pay someone to put lights around the roofline of your home. But I can't seem to convince anyone else of this.  

I liked not being home on Christmas, God help me, I really did. I would have liked it even better if we could have skipped the tree and the decorations and the gift giving part completely. I understand now those people who go on cruises or to the Carribean over Christmas vacation - stress free. 

But at least now its over, and the decorations are back in storage, the laundry is almost done, tomorrow we go back to school. And in a few weeks, I go back to school, literally. I'm going to get my teacher certification, and probably work toward a masters. I've always wanted to do it, I've always said "when I retire, I want to retire from teaching." I've said it before, I should have done it years ago. But I don't regret the career experience with which I ended up, it's made me richer in spirit overall. But if I plan to stay in education, it might help if I have the degree to back it up.

It won't take me long, two years, maybe a little more. We'll see how hard it is to juggle two active boys (scouts, soccer, baseball, music lessons,) a husband who travels a lot and a night class or two. When its all said and done, I'll be certified to teach middle school social studies, which admittedly is only interesting to me because it is the shortest distance to certification, given my bachelor's degree minor in history. From there, who knows where I'll end up. Maybe someday I really will be teaching Shakespeare in Pop Culture at the college level (my stated goal 20 years ago.) 

But for now, I'm just plugging away at my life, one day at a time. Listening to music that makes me happy, trying to read more, eating well, and keeping the banshees at bay. I'm watching out for myself - my own soul. It's all good. And I promise I'll try to get back to posting stupid and irreverent junk more often. Welcome to 2013 my friends. 

 

 

The difference a year makes.

Its September again - school has begun, the heat is backing off, the mulberry tree behind our house is shitting yellow leaves all over the deck instead of mulberries - these are all the regular signs of fall. The normal signs of Deja Vu are here, with some slight variations.

Tuesday afternoon as I was driving to pick up the 12 year old and friends at soccer practice, I hit a yellow light with too much time to spare, and so I slammed on my brakes not wanting to run the inevitable red light. As I came screeching to a stop, my right arm involuntarily flew out to protect the person sitting in the passenger seat, but she wasn't there. It has been a year since my grandmother died, and well over that since she rode in my car as I substituted for my mother on one of her many doctor appointments and yet, the instinct still kicks in. It doesn't feel good to put all of this together. 

But sometimes things are better. Also this week I realized the decision to move my 4th grader to the school where I am teaching has turned out to be maybe the best decision we ever made for him, maybe even better than the decision to begin medication to help treat the ADHD. Because here we are, three full weeks into the school year and that boy has yet to see the inside of the principal's office. To say that his year so far is going well is an understatement. Yes, we still have some organizational trouble with homework, and he still loses his temper at home. But despite my warnings to his teachers about his Puss In Boots style eyes that kill you when you're trying to reprimand him, they all report they have yet to see that particular look, because - get this - he hasn't done anything wrong. He spaces out and we may need to revisit his medicine dose to keep him on track, but otherwise, he's a sweet boy who seems to be happy in class. Color me thrilled.

And still other things that are happening feel familiar, but are slightly different from the past few years of rinsing and repeating. Today, for the first time in probably 12 years, I had a headache that felt kind of like the migraines I had regularly many years ago. I'm not sure I would really qualify it that way, as I didn't have an aura and I could function quietly in my classroom with the lights half off, and a rotation of Advil and Tylenol. But nonetheless, it is a headache the like of which I haven't seen in many a moon. A headache that is probably a combination of my neck being out of whack and the cold front that brought rain today. A headache that sent me flying out of a school assembly this morning when the kids began screaming and into the bathroom to cry for a few minutes. 

I had these headaches all through high school and college, weekly, sometimes daily. I generally refer to them as migraines but the doctor that couldn't do anything for me called them "Cluster headaches."  I say he couldn't do anything for me because his only suggestion was to put me on a medication called a Beta Blocker, which is for high blood pressure, and when I reminded him that I have low blood pressure already, he said, "Well, you might have to get used to fainting a lot." Um, no. Goodbye. 

I stopped having the headaches after I had babies. I guess they were mostly hormonal, and tied to my cycle, and once I had a child my hormonal makeup changed. I don't know. I don't even have valid prescriptions for the pain of that kind of headache anymore. I guess we will see if this become a regular occurance before I go to the doctor about it, which for me is defined as "the next time it happens, period." Because I cannot live through that on a daily basis without pharmaceuticals. This, I know is true. 

Ah, September. It's always something with you. 

 

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

Do you remember this book? Drew loved it when he was in kindergarten. We read it all the time. Almost as much as we had read Tumble Bumble when he was a toddler. But Alexander and his little pity party have been running through my head all week, as at each turn something else seems to happen which makes me feel like going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head. That or drinking heavily. Which I never seem to have time for, now that I'm old and I require more time to recuperate. 

Binge drinking options aside, mostly I just run a hot bath and snuggle up in my bed. Right now I'm snuggled up in bed with the dog at my feet and my nine year old snoring next to me, noticing how badly he needs a haircut. Oh well.

But this week. THIS WEEK. People, it is sort of ridiculous what friends and family have been going through. Here's a short list:

• a friend had a stroke, and remains hospitalized, in a coma. She is a wonderful dear sweet thing and we are all devastated for her.
• a child had a seizure at school, at dismissal time, in front of all the other kids. He is fine now, but it was terrifying.
• A friend said goodnight one last time to her dog and lost her wedding ring within the last week. 
• My poor dad got a trojan on his computer so nasty it ate everything on his hard drive. I could do nothing to clean it except try and save the backup drive, but he's lost all his emails going back probably a year. I tried for an hour and couldn't get around it, leaving me feeling impotent in my IT skills. 
• This morning I backed out of the garage a little to close to the side, and tore the side mirror off the passenger side of the car. The new car, that just this week we've had for one year. 

There's more, but it's much more personal and health related regarding people I've promised not to discuss here. But it's scary and we're helpless and it just pushes us closer to "Really? How much more can we take" territory. I try not to ask that question aloud, as I fear the response is more suckage.

But tomorrow is Friday. The weekend should be nice, and Monday is a holiday, no school. A little extra time to recuperate and take some deep breaths, maybe peek out from under the covers. Hopefully we can all emerge Monday from our pity party and start anew. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to expect when you're expecting to turn 40.

File under: Things they never told me; Things we don't discuss around women of childbearing years.

(Warning: This is not a shiny, happy teaching/education/funny kid stories, share with the guys kind of post. So you can click away now, dad.)

Back in November, I stopped taking my birth control pills. I don't need them anymore for, you know, birth control (see also: husband, snipped), so I guess I was mainly hanging on to them for habit's sake. I always felt like I needed to have that control over my hormones, to force my body to do what I wanted every 28 days. Without that, what my body really wanted to do was have no set cycle schedule and create cysts on my ovaries which grow and explode and HURT, just for fun. In short, the pill kept my body from trying to kill me, and it allowed me to know with certainty that it would be okay to wear white pants.

I found this useful for many years.

But this fall, I decided enough is enough. So I quit taking it.

Meanwhile, and mostly unrelated, the tremors in my hands have been getting worse. My handwriting is horrible, especially if I have to go slowly, or trace something. Not only can I not hold a camera or decorate cookies, I can't tweeze my own eyebrows. I can barely put on makeup, and to do that I have to be leaning over the sink looking into a stationary mirror, I can't hold a compact mirror with one hand and apply mascara with the other. On most days, this is simply annoying. It is also part of the excuse I use for putting on my makeup while driving in the car, at red lights. Mostly.

But back to December. One morning I went into the urgent care clinic at my doctor's office thinking I had a UTI. This is not abnormal, I get bladder infections 2-4 times per year. Who knows why. But this time, I saw a different doctor in the rotation, one I had never seen. One who apparently read my chart, unlike anyone else in that office recently. And so she knocked and came into the little room and sat down and said, "You don't have a bladder infection."

"Oh, yes I do," I countered, because I am That Patient, The One Who Always Knows Better.

"No, actually you don't," she said. "And you haven't really had one since 2009."

"No," I'm still in charge of this conversation, lady. "I get them a couple of times a year. I know what it feels like. I just need an antibiotic."

She cleared her throat.

"Let me be clear. You do not have a UTI. You haven't had one in two years. I've looked through your chart. The last 5 times you've come in here and peed in a cup, it hasn't actually grown any bacteria. So there's no infection." (note: they do a quick pH dip in the office, and then they send it off for a five day culture. Apparently nobody was following up.)

Shut. The. Front. Door.

And so she sent me to see a urologist, for the weird, painful bloating and the having to run to the bathroom suddenly, ALL THE DAMN TIME.

Finally, this week I had a CT scan and a visit with the urologist. (Who, for the record, is younger than me. DO NOT WANT.) He diagnosed me with Overactive Bladder and sent me home with a new prescription.

So. Let's tally it all up, shall we? I gave up the birth control prescription of my youth, and traded it for something to keep me from peeing my pants when I sneeze and running for the bathroom every five minutes. I may, in the near future, also have to start taking a prescription to help me deal with the shaking, for it is driving me crazy. Youthful Bountiful Girl: 0; Shriveled up and Damaged Old Woman: 2. I went straight from preventing a baby to trying to avoid being like one.

A woman's body does strange things, things men don't have to deal with. It's not just the Bringing Forth New Life miracle, either, although I suppose it's connected. Your body never fully recovers from forcing a watermelon through the eye of a needle, and I don't think it matters if you have one or twenty. Things just don't quite fall back into place correctly. Nobody tells you this, when you're young. Nobody tells you, look, that getting up in the night to pee thing? That's not just to prepare you for what it's like having a snuggly little screamer around at 2am. It never goes back. I guess if they did, nobody would want to have children anymore and then we'd die off as a society. 

My point is, and I know you've been waiting patiently: 40 Sucks. I hadn't really worried a whole lot about it, it's just another birthday. But now I think turning 40 is like having a car with a 60,000 mile warranty. Once you hit 60,001 things starting falling apart.

And apparently, I just clicked over.

 

 

 

I.am.still.here.

Whew. Well, that was an interesting fall.

School's out for winter break. Tomorrow we officially move into winter. I have enough candy and chocolate gifts from students to send me into diabetic shock (Thank you for them all.) I have enough wine to get me to Sunday, so I figure I'm all set to make it through Smowmaggedon, should it actually manifest itself.

Merry Christmas. See you on the other side, kids. Here's hoping that 2012 sucks a little bit less for my family, and perhaps even seeing the return of my writing mojo.

 

 

 

Remember Jackie, what I told you.

My parents are those odd people who like to look around in cemeteries. Sometimes they are looking for ancestors as my mom is very into genealogy, and sometimes they just like to putter around in quaint little cemeteries in forgotten little towns. Recently, my dad came across a tombstone in one of these little places that intrigued him. Hell, it intrigues me. It was a tombstone of a woman, and under the name and the dates was inscribed: 

Remember Jackie, what I told you.

Now I don't know about you, but that is the kind of thing that blows my mind. The randomness of it - who is Jackie? What did she tell her? Why did Jackie need to be reminded of something so much that this woman had it engraved on a tombstone? Think about it - she needed Jackie to remember. Was it tangible, like - here's where the money is hidden? Or was it more emotional, like -Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get?

Did Jackie even ever see it?

I bet she did. And I bet she remembered. I bet it was stamped on her brain, just like it was stamped on that piece of granite. Never, ever forget. It was that important.

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

My grandmother died last night, after 10 days at Hospice House of Kansas City, an amazing facility, with amazing nurses and caring people. 

This past June, a week before I left for San Diego, she was diagnosed with tumors in her lungs, a recurrence of the breast cancer that had metastasized. She'd had mammagrams every six months for the last eleven years, and they all came back clean. Suddenly one day she can't catch her breath very well, and it's because there's no space to pull air into the lung, a tumor is in the way. She didn't want to fight it. She was a nurse, after all, she knew better than any of us that at 94, the treatment would kill her anyway, and rob her of what she had left. No.

Eleven years ago, as I was about to deliver my first child, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 83. She'd found a lump, which turned out to be a swollen lymph node, which was surgically removed and then she did radiation for six weeks, "as a precaution" the doctors said. Really nothing major.

While she was going through radiation therapy, her husband (my grandfather) was dying in hospice. She'd been nursing him herself until she couldn't lift him, and then hospice came in. And then she was diagnosed with cancer herself, and he had to be moved to a hospital against his will so that she could come to Kansas City and be treated. It was rough.

Anyway, he was dying, she was taking radiation, and come that July, I had a brand new baby I didn't know what to do with. Everybody needed a lot of attention.  It was a very stressful time for my mom and dad. But my mom had a solution. So for that first week I was home by myself after my husband went back to work, my mother would deliver grandma to my house after her radiation treatments, and she would hang out with me and the baby for a few hours. I needed the company, she needed to feel needed, and my mom needed a break for a while. Everybody wins!

Together, my grandmother and I were like one whole person caring for this tiny baby. I had lost a lot of blood in delivery and was severely anemic, barely able to move from one room to the next without sitting down to rest. She was tired and weak from the radiation therapy. But together, we could make it work. We sat and talked, we took turns feeding and burping him, and she helped me smear vaseline on all his various parts that needed it. We giggled about how hard it was for either of us to even lift him out of his crib. We were silly together. It was really a nice time.

When Drew was three weeks old, my grandfather died. At the graveside, she sat in her little folding chair with her head held high while the preacher talked. At the end, my dad said quietly, "Mom, are you ready to go?" She said, "I've taken him as far as I could take him. I've done what I promised I would do. I believe I'm ready to go now."

She spent a few more years living alone in the house they built with their retirement money down at Truman Lake, outside of Warsaw. But then she had a bad fall, and nobody could hear her crying out for help. It scared us all. After she recovered from (miraculously) just a couple of  broken ribs and collarbone, she decided it was time to move to the city and be near my parents. She moved to an assisted living complex in Leawood, and instantly made new friends, played bridge three times a week and got her hair and nails done regularly. In short, she loved it.

Last year when she fell (she was totally pushed) and broke her shoulder, I got to spend time with her again while she stayed a a rehab nursing facility near my house. Nearly every morning I stopped by to visit on my way to work, even if it was just for a few minutes. I treasured those minutes, and so did she. It was a chance for me to step out of how crazy and busy my life was, and just visit pleasantly about the weather, the kids, whatever. It was a chance for me to catch my breath before going onto the next thing. For her, it was attention and company she needed, and someone who could help her with difficult things like putting new batteries in her hearing aides and fitting them into her ear that she couldn't reach. We needed each other then, again.

She doesn't need me anymore. She doesn't need anything. She's got her husband back.

She told me, back when we were caring for that tiny baby who is now my middle schooler, "Do you ever get blue? It's okay to feel blue, lots of new moms do. You need to know that it's okay to feel that way, and that it goes away."

She needed me to know that. She had felt it herself. Here she was, sick and weak and missing out on her husband's decline, and she was worried about me. She was probably feeling it then, so helpless and out of control of all these different situations. But it was tangible, how important it was to her that I know that feeling depressed was part of the post-partem process, and that if I felt down enough to be bothered by it, I could talk to her about it. It was stamped on my brain. She understood, and it would all be okay.

I still remember what she told me. I always will.

 

 

 

Everything he needed to know he learned from The Simpsons.

Last week my ten year old was hovering around my bathroom vanity waiting for me to finish brushing my teeth so we could head out to cub scout day camp. Suddenly he became very interested in my pack of birth control pills.

"Mom, what are these for?"

"Uh...they help me control my hormones."

"What are hormones?"

"Welllllll, that's how our bodies change during puberty, girls start having their menstrual cycle, and...didn't they tell you about this at school? About girls have periods?"

"Uh, no? What's a period?"

(shiiiitttttt)

(Deep breath) "a period is when a girl's reproductive system..."

"Wait! These are pills that make you NOT have babies, right? Like on The Simpsons!"

"Yes...wait, wha? You know this from The Simpsons?"

"Yeah! There's an episode where Bart stole Marge's's pills to make her have a baby because he wanted what Lisa had, a little sister - he wanted a little brother."

"And he thought just stealing his moms pills would make that happen?"

"Right!"

"..."

"Mom? I don't want any more little brothers."

"Don't worry. You're not getting any, dude. I can't believe you learned about this from The Simpsons."

"Well I don't think they'd be talking about it on Food Network, mom."

 

 

How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out...

I left my job yesterday. I've never left a job I loved so deeply, but I've also never before had a job which brought forth such a range of emotional or spiritual depth. It feels more final that in is, because I wil still be there on Easter morning, one more time, doing what I've always done the past two and a half years. But it's done. I am less elated and more devasted than I thought I would be. Walking out the door was easy. Realizing that I'm not going back was hard.

It hit me last night, in the car, on the way to soccer practice. I nearly began to cry driving down the highway in the misty rain, with the boys in the backseat, thankfully wearing headphones and more engaged in their DS videogames than on me and my sniffling nose, wet eyes, and suddenly full of saliva mouth. I held it together for a few more hours, and then last night I cried myself to sleep.

I thought I was done. But this morning I went to yoga with The Old Christine, knowing full well that I might lose it again, once relaxed and stretched. There is something about the exercise, mindful breathing and letting go of a yoga practice that sometimes gets you, and I was already vulnerable. After the class was over I made it back to my car, again, my safe place even though it's not even my car it's a rental (that's an entirely different story, for another day,) but it's big and comfy and warm. And then I Ugly Cried.

I pulled myself together, made my weekly trip to the store along with all the crazy people who are off work for Good Friday and apparently have no idea how shopping at Costco works. (Here's a summary: you go down the aisles on the left to the Wall of Meat in the back, turn right and navigate through fresh produce, and back up the right aisles to the checkout. It's not hard. You do not swim upstream or stop suddenly to look at the fucking flower pots, unless you want to get rammed from behind.)

I returned home, put away groceries, and then debated between a hot bath, or lining up shots of vodka. The bath won. I'm a Pisces, after all. Plus, I got rid of all the stolen  accidently taken home from bars in college shot glasses in the last garage sale.

Monday I start anew. I am excited, but I'm also fighting back this horrible feeling that it's all a big mistake, I'd like to rewind back to April Fool's Day, please if you don't mind.

No? Well fine then. Away we go.

http://youtu.be/OOgpT5rEKIU

Video won't embed. Probably because Alanis is nekkid. It's an amazing metaphor, the nudity, given the lyrics anyway.