My anxiety is so bad, ya'll

I'm trying to keep busy. I really am.

I've noticed that the days when I have made plans to meet an actual human being are the days when I feel the most calm.

So Friday I met a co-worker for a cocktail while I waited for a girl date with a woman I met on Craigslist, who is also looking for friends in the area. It was a fun hang, and the bartenders were interesting. One of the servers is actually from Thief River Falls, MN which I've heard of, but am not sure why. Everyone was worried about me meeting a stranger from Craigslist and were pretty sure I was going to end up dead in a gutter or missing my kidneys, but I assured them I'd watched Craigslist Joe the night before, so I knew how to survive. And maybe even get a movie deal out of it.

Then I met the woman - we'll call her Sunny - and we had another beer (well, she just had 1/2 a beer, but I'll forgive her because she was too beautiful to judge) and some gastropub food, and we talked about how we ended up in So Cal. She's from NYC and has been here two and a half years, but met her serious boyfriend early into that stint, and therefore has neglected her female social circle. I'm hoping we hang out again sometime. Preferably after I'm medicated again.

I wasn't ready to go home after she left, so the co-worker was kind enough to come back and we watched a bunch of drunk people bounce around on the dance floor. I also met a gaggle of gay men who were very very young, very very pretty, and very very drunk. One of them looked exactly like Neil Patrick Harris (minus 20 years). I got a couple of their numbers, but am quite sure that A) they don't remember me and B) they are too young to provide a satisfying hang should I even get the chance to try. The servers were all very glad to see that I'd survived my incredibly dangerous encounter with a mid-twenties IT professional. I just shrugged and flexed my biceps to show them how I'd managed it.

We walked to a couple more bars, but it was late enough that everyone was obnoxious instead of charming. I was interested to see a taco stand outside the back door of one bar - good idea for selling 2 a.m. tacos to people trying to sober up enough to drive. The co-worker bough some food, and while he was in line, I ended up talking to some other very young, stoned surfer types.

It's universally true that Californians believe their state is superior. Everyone insists I will never want to leave now that I'm here. Which is funny because there hasn't been a moment in the last month that I haven't wanted to run screaming back to Minnesota. The only things holding me back are the rent I've already paid for August and September, the psychic reading that told me I'd feel this way for the first two months, and the fact that I haven't eaten at In N Out yet.

Oh, and August in MN means that it's almost September, which may as well be December for all the summer that's left.

I was telling the stoned surfers that I've been attending some outings with groups I found on Meetup.com and one of them was all, "Dude, my mom totally loves that website. All her friends are from there." I think he meant to convey that Meetup.com is really awesome for some people, but what he actually conveyed was that I'm a hell of a lot older than him. I'm in the category of women he associates with his mother.

Yesterday I woke up with a hangover-style headache which was weird because I wasn't drunk at any point the night before, but I rolled with it and slept most of the day. Then I started another marathon of The United States of Tara on Netflix, a show about psychiatric disorders which helps me to feel a little less crazy. I also decided to treat myself to lunch and a movie, but none of the movies looked good, so I wasted several dollars in the book store instead. I looked for books about dealing with anxiety, but those invariably make me want to murder small children. I don't want to meditate when I'm focusing on keeping my stomach away from my tonsils.

Today I met an acquaintance for lunch and hated every second of it. I'm not sure if it's the guy I don't like, or the fact that my stomach has become permanently lodged in my throat and is a signal that I might freak the fuck out and enter Full Blown Panic mode at any moment. Outside the restaurant, a large group of flamboyantly dressed Latin folks congregated, and we eventually learned that it's some kind of holiday in Bolivia today. They were preparing to parade around the outdoor outlet mall. I've never seen so many long braids in one place, and I kind of wanted to cut one off and take it with me. I'm going to avoid introspection about that desire. I think that's for the best.

Finally I remembered that a friend recommended vitamin B6 for anxiety, so I ran to the world's most Hispanic-packed Wal-Mart and bought some. Hopefully it will tide me over until my psychiatrist appointment on Friday, because for a few minutes today, I found myself wondering if I was going to end up in the hospital again.

Then Scary ate one of the ear pieces on my ear buds and I spent ten minutes trying to fish the cheese grater looking piece out of her mouth.

So aside from the crippling anxiety, it was a pretty good weekend.

Home sweet nope

Because I didn't want to live with my dad and stepmother upon my arrival to California, I arranged my living situation while I was still in Minnesota. 

This means that I moved into a house in Orange County, sight unseen. A house, I later learned from almost everyone I've talked to, is in a Bad City. Dangerous City. City full of Asians, Hispanics, and doughnut shops. Those three things alone don't seem bad - Shakopee, MN is like the Little Mexico of the Midwest. But apparently the area is still up and coming, so it's shady to be walking around after dark. 

The stop sign in front of the place is tagged with graffiti, front and back.

But I've got pepper spray and a seriously dangerous tongue. So that doesn't bother me much. Really, the problem is that it's a house with four men.

Four. Men.

Having lived in a house with four adults for a couple of years, I figured it would be a cinch. But I forgot that either the man/woman ratio has been even, or there has been an abundance of vaginas in every case. 

Did ya'll know that men are weird?

There’s Mr. Hispanic, the retired guy. He’s going to school to get re-certified in automotive smog testing and state certification. That’s something new to me – Either Minnesota doesn’t give a fuck about having clean air, or California’s air is just *that* much worse. Or the broke government in CA just wants additional revenue from drivers getting smog certification testing. Mr. Hispanic walks around shirtless all day long, but is never without a blue tooth in his ear. He just took in two teacup chihuahuas, and he spends most of his time trying to get them to poop outside.

Then there’s the nameless black guy. I say that because no one in the house knows his name. Literally no one. I introduced myself once when we met in the hallway, and he turned around, went into his bedroom and shut the door. He has tall hair and makes frequent, righteously indignant phone calls while pacing the property.

There’s also John, the uber religious guy who works two jobs and goes to school and also, at some point, was an aspiring model. Or is one, I'm not sure. I just know I saw his head shots and he could totally be a model. Tall with eyelashes nearly as tall as he is. He’s the one who contacted me about the room being available. The landlady was going to try to find a disabled tenant, and John felt this would make the living situation awkward. Or something, I wasn't really listening after I saw his pictures.

The fourth guy was originally thin white kid (also didn't catch his name), but he moved out (and - we think - in with a maybe pregnant girlfriend), so then Mr. Hispanic's also-Hispanic brother moved in. The brother is very nice, but is painfully shy – the other day, I was walking into the garage and he was walking towards the bathroom. Startled to see me, he apologized (for existing?) and practically ran back the way he’d come. 

Then there’s Filipino the landlady. She lives in the home. Kind of. I’ve never met her. I guess she does in-home health care and is rarely at her own house, so Mr. Hispanic is kind of in charge in her absence. 

Actually, I guess The Rules are in charge. 

There are pieces of paper posted to the walls in nearly every room of the house. Coming from my house in Minnesota – that I own – this has been quite a shock to the system. Also made me wonder why I never thought to post house rules in my own home, seeing as I have two tenants at any given time. 

Then again - aside from last year's Zebra Cakes tenant, I’ve never run into problems.

But the landlady is very serious about her rules, some of which are such basic courtesy that it makes me scared to live here. My favorite is that you must spray air freshener after using the bathroom. She says there are 4 scents to choose from, but you'll notice that the note was dated May 2012, so now we're down to only 1. 

Actually, I bought one scent myself but it mysteriously disappeared around the time when think white kid moved out. I'm guessing he needed it to mask the smell of his pregnant girlfriend.

Between the penis and the rules, after owning my own place for so long, I'm really not feeling at home here, so after a little less than a month, I've decided I'm moving the fuck out.

I found another room nearby in a house with a young couple, their two daughters, and another female tenant. It feels more like home than this place, and it's a little cheaper. Scary hates it there because they have three other EXTREMELY hyper dogs, however Scary is old and does nothing but lay around in my bedroom. I'm sure I can run interference if necessary.

If not? 

Well, I can always move again.

It's been a few minutes and a few hundred miles

When last we spoke, I was pacing my living room in Shakopee, Minnesota, filled with righteous indignation and full blow panic over my doctor's refusal to refill a medication that was supposed to keep me calm.

Right now, I'm laying in a stranger's bed in my rented room in a primarily Asian neighborhood of Santa Ana, California, riding out the (hopefully) last few days of an ear infection, and the only medication I'm on is Amoxicillin.

It's been a weird month wherein I accepted a transfer to my employer's So Cal office, purposefully went off my medication, packed myself and Scary up and moved to California. My step-grandmother just died, Daylow is desperate for me to come back to Minnesota, and I've been sick for a week with no hearing in my left ear. 

I feel incredibly out of place here, but I'm sure that will pass given longer than a couple weeks. I'm hoping this move will kick the winter SAD right in the ass, but for the time being, I'm alone and lonely. I'm hoping the change of scenery will inspire me to be healthier and happier, but for now I'm just sick. I'm hoping I'll make new friends and meet new people, and that is starting to happen - and will likely continue - after I feel better and start going to meetup groups again. I'm hoping I'll start writing again, but at the moment this feels very forced and fake.

But you have to start somewhere, huh? Any where better to start than a zip code in Orange County.

Ironically, the cable here doesn't include Bravo, so I can't watch The Real Housewives of the OC.

All kinds of disturbing

When tearing out the hideous landscaping rock, I dug up giant clumps of roots that were halting our shovels' progress. I may have screamed at them, "I don't know what you think you are, plant, but I didn't give you permission to grow here so you've GOT TO GO."

We left a big bunch of them growing by the deck because they weren't hurting anything there and I was curious what they were. Turns out I killed a bunch of bleeding hearts. Threw them away. In the garbage. With a smile on my face.

We bought a new TV (OUR VERY FIRST FLAT SCREEN!) from a friend who is moving and didn't need this one in his bedroom anymore. I just realized I should have dunked it in Purell. Don't tell Gray.

Did I mention it's a 46" flat screen? And that we have it? In our house? Cause we do!

Things are just starting to grow here.

If you're lucky enough to live in a state in which spring began prior to May 7th, then I fucking hate you.

Kylie and I garage-saled our asses off on Saturday. She made me stop buying when there was no longer room in my car for another item. She wouldn't let me tie her to the hood. I love Kylie, but she can be really selfish sometimes. You should have seen how crowded my trunk hostages were.

I don't know what this thing is, but I want one for my very own self.

I haven't had a pedicure in a long time, but I wanted to wear open-toed shoes this morning, so I'm such a genius that my solution what to paint a non-matching color over the existing, comically-grown out polish. The result was a horrible mash up that part melted crayon, part gangrene. It didn't occur to me that I could, oh, you know, REMOVE THE GODDAMN POLISH FROM THE TIP OF MY BIG TOE.

And then I realized you can see my non-painted third toes, anyway.

Here's a word of advice to all you ass hats on Facebook whose only photos are of themselves posing shirtless in front of a builder-grade bathroom mirror with their camera phones: Not only do we not wish to see fourteen *slightly* varied poses of your jaw line, but next time you might want to include a friend in your photo. So we think you have friends. Hell, even a stuffed abominable snowman is better that what you've got.

And oh yeah: I have shingles.

Don't the graphics make them look like more fun? Because in reality, they feel like a semi ran over my shoulder, then it backed up over the other side of my shoulder, and also the semi's eighteen wheels were made from rubberized spider poison and the hounds of hell.

And because I've only read of youngish people getting shingles, and because I don't have the time/inclination to make my very own Shingle Tribute video, may I present to you Heather's:

SHINGLES! from dooce on Vimeo.

Dirty girl

I've had a woody all weekend long and no, it wasn't on account of Gray's slimming waistline.

It was finally warm enough to do some yard work.

Did you hear me? I GOT TO WORK IN MY YARD FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME SINCE I BOUGHT THE HOUSE. With yard tools and chemicals and a bandanna and everything.

First, I started with a general clean-up. Dogs poop a lot, see, and while Gray and I typically snatch up the shit with a little plastic bag, when it's 40 below outside, you can bet your sweet canine ass we send the pups out to fend for themselves in the snow.

On the up side, all of the lingering poo was fossilized for easy pick-up.

There was also a ton of garbage on the front curb and in the back alley. Stuff we don't eat or drink or throw away. I'm blaming the hooligans, and also the wind, because more than once our garbage can was sent careening over a snowbank (THANK YOU CITY PLOWS) and into a pile on the alley floor. I'm sure we weren't the only ones.

Then I grabbed my trusty snipper clipper thingy. I don't know what it's called, it's some kind of ratcheting shrub pruner something-or-other, and I obliterated all of the start-up trees and shrubs taking over the yard and threatening to allow even more rodents to call our place Home.

When we bought the house, we discovered a large chain link dog kennel folded up on the side of the garage. It's probably 8' tall and god only knows how big. We don't use those things because our dogs are strictly indoors (unless we're out there with them on a leash).

I want to sell the fucker.

Unfortunately, one of said start-up trees had grown its way up through the chain links, twisting here and there all willy-nilly, and effectively pinning the damn cage both to the ground and to the side of the garage. It was awfully difficult to get the pruners to work in such tight quarters (did I mention I had to squeeze myself between layers of the fence to get close enough to reach the limbs?) but finally I got enough of the cursed tree snipped to allow for the kennel to...lean against a tree instead of the garage.

Yeah, I'm THAT bad ass.

Turns out it's too heavy for me to move alone, so Gray will be enlisted post-haste.

Then there's the landscape rock. The horrible, awful, pink-brown landscape rock that some prior owner thought would be FUCKING FABULOUS all over the property. There aren't any shrubs or bulbs inside the stone borders, but BY CHRIST THERE'S LANDSCAPE ROCK.

I don't know about you, but I found that rock is heavy.

What are the muscles that connect your shoulders to you boobs? Apparently those are the muscles that does 90% of the heavy lifting when shoveling landscape rock into a pile on the driveway, and holy shit. My shoulder-boob muscles hurt.

The rock is in the front of the house, a huge section on the east side of the house, and all along the back of the house. I started in front because there are two "rose" bushes that are so covered in thorns and daggers and, I'm pretty sure, rusty narcotic needles, that I cannot wait to slaughter them entirely. They don't produce many leaves and almost no flowers, but BY GOD if they're aren't sharper than the entire staff of Yale, and I've decided a big rope and the trailer hitch on Gray's truck ought to be their demise.

I'm probably going to burn them, too. Just for fun. But I'm going to wear protective eye wear because I'd be shocked if the flaming thorns didn't hurl themselves directly in my direction.

I also began slaughtering the hoards and legions of box elder bugs that inhabit our garage and sun porch. When I woke up on Sunday, one whole wall of the garage was black, and I was like, "Dude, did the stoned brother in the next block explode on our garage or what?" and then I realized it was thousands of bugs.

And so I killed them.

When the storms rolled in, I retreated to my basement workshop and planted all of my seedlings to get an early start on gardening: 3 kinds of hot peppers (overkill? not when heat is the only "taste" I have left), asparagus beans (some kind of hybrid that I squealed over and cannot wait to check out), a mix of sweet peppers, tons of basil, rosemary and chives, cherry tomatoes and big fat regular tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and...oddly...marigolds. I don't plan on eating those, though.

The scary thing about these vegetables I'm growing is that I don't exactly have room for all of the plants, so I'll have to get creative. Can anyone say rooftop pepper mill?!?!?!

I have been waiting to cram dirt under my fingernails and organize my garage and just fucking GET OUTSIDE for over six months now.

It's like I've died and gone to a southern state (minus the bigots and bolo ties).

Birth Announcement. Kind of.

Introducing Roger “Matilda” Woodyson

Born 5:45 p.m. on February 23rd, 2011

Delivered in the company of two men and one very buff woman.

As you can see from the photos, this baby was breech.

 

1,000,000 lbs 2 oz,

8' 25” long,

Mother and baby are doing just fine. Send nipple cream.

Cannot get the motherfucking pictures to ROTATE. Broke my tailbone just trying to make that happen.

Anyway, this beautiful baby is the table I bought from Meighan back in September. My intention was to refinish it and use it as a stunningly rustic dining room table because it's got that "harvest table" look without the multi-hundreds of dollars price tag. This thing is HEW-MUNG-GO and can easily seat ten dinner guests, which was kind of the reason I fell in love with the dining room at our new place: It's big enough to serve people NOT on their laps.

Unfortunately because of my brain pain, I didn't get a chance to start on this project before Jesus smote us with the coldest fucking weather in the history of Biblical plagues, so Gray purchased a couple of heating towers so that I could work on the table in the garage and not lose my nipples to frostbite.

Also unfortunate is our inherited, crazy-ass electrical wiring in the garage because when Gray plugged in the heaters, the circuit blew and we've been unable to get the power back on. No lights, no garage doors, no heater = effectively NO GARAGE.

But folks: I am TIRED of eating dinner on the couch and I am TIRED of not inviting dinner guests because I'm embarrassed to feed them on the blue folding card table that I stole from someones garbage in south Minneapolis (sorry Jeanne)((that's the name written on it, anyway)) and I decided the only way to Make! Table! Happen! was to plan a big dinner party (i.e. implement a deadline) so last night, Gray got his minions to move the damn table into our front porch.

Now I can sand to my little heart's content and I can hem and haw (because the past five months of doing so hasn't yielded a solution) regarding whether I should stain the table, oil the table, paint the table, paint and then distress the paint on the table, or just poly the fuck out of it and leave the weathered finish (which is what I'm leaning towards because of the overall style I'm going for)((rusty-vintage-chic)).

I am so beyond excited that this table thing is finally happening because now I am motivated to pick up some paint for the living and dining rooms (DONE!) and start recovering chair cushions (DONE!) and HOT DAMN my dining room is going to be pretty when I'm with the wall of mirrors, which has to be soon, because I've got hungry guests descending in a month.

It's going to be perfect. Just as I imagined it all these months.

Only...my brawny she-friend Red brought up a good point: If I'm going to dance on that table, I'm going to need a different chandelier. The existing, dangly thing is another head injury waiting to happen.

More of me. Just what the world fucking needs, eh?

So I'm obsessed with making babies.

This is a perfect example of how I go from "meh" about something to "every waking moment of my existence will be spent thinking/planning/day dreaming about this." I am not a patient person (which probably points to a problem I might encounter with parenthood) and when I decide I want something, am ready for something, or shouldn't have something...that's the very instant I MUST HAVE THAT SOMETHING.

Doesn't matter what it is, really. A dog. A house. A cocktail. Hell, even Gray. It took less than a month for me to go from, "He would make someone an amazing husband," to "GET IN MY PANTS, MAMMOTH DICK." I still think he's trying to figure out what the fuck happened that month. There he was: single and semi-obsessed with my sister. Then BAM. He's living with me and has a ring on his finger. He's going to figure it out eventually, which explains the hefty life insurance policy I took out.

So this baby thing isn't a new obsession for me. A couple months after I got into Gray's pants, I drank a liter of wine and told him that I wanted to have babies. HIS babies. Like, yesterday. Proving how disoriented he was (and how much of his blood was partying in his penis), he agreed with me and said I had a green light to make his babies.

Taken slightly aback, I decided we'd better wait until, you know, my divorce was final. And stuff.

We made a baby in 2008 but we lost him at eleven weeks, so the baby making obsession has been on the back burner for a few years while I pulled my head out of the oven and did some maturity regression techniques, like this blog. And like chopping off all of my hair. And like getting married.

Okay, I guess that last one doesn't fit the bill.

Anyway, we'd planned to begin Operation: Baby Making back in the fall after the dust from our wedding and honeymoon had settled, but then we bought a house and decided to wait until the end of the year so we could get moved in. Little did we know I was going to DIVE HEAD FIRST from the basement stairs (helpful hint: just because the basement floor is painted blue doesn't mean the cement is soft like water) and was put on a medication that prevented us from trying to get pregnant, unless we wanted to inflict our kid with spina bifida, in which case we would have been golden.

I stopped taking that medication two months early because (SEE FIRST PARAGRAPH) and now we're waiting the final months until its icky fingers are out of my system.

My OBGYN (best doctor in the fucking universe) wanted me to gain a little weight...BAM! Thank you lethargy and Dots!

My cycle needed to return to normal after years of suppressing my period and a couple of non-cycling months due to the head injury, and WHAMMIE: I'm bleeding all over my underwear RIGHT THIS MOMENT.

I'm using a website to track my monthly cycle and describe the viscosity of my ::gulp:: cervical mucus. Gray and I are back to playing our "text each other random baby names all day long" and the good ones make it onto my Excel spreadsheet of baby names (which uses the data filter tool to mix and match middle name candidates with the first name candidates to verify that the initials don't stand for something awesome, but sadly, inappropriate).

Every time I see a baby, a picture of a baby, a small-sized animal, or the tiny Mickey Mouse t-shirt in my bra drawer, my eggs come squirting out of me and shoot all over the damn place.

You don't want to borrow my keyboard, believe me.

I'm frantically planning the last of our pre-incubation social gatherings, including our first grown up dinner party. I'm finishing the big painting projects around the house (as quickly as I can gather free paint to do so). It's going to be like living in Sesame Street once I'm done, and HOW PERFECT FOR BABIES IS THAT?

And also, I'm kegeling. I'm kegeling like fucking mad. My abdominal floor muscles can kick your abdominal floor muscles' asses.

And don't even get me started on how long I can hold my pee.

One More Purchase.

We need window treatments.

Let's just say that watching porn at a 45 degree angle to your bedroom window while hiding under the covers and muttering, "Hurry up, vibrator, the neighbors could look over at any minute" is not exactly the pinnacle of eroticism.

And then dropping to the floor, army-crawling across the room (so as not to be glimpsed by the old guy across the street), and throwing a shoe at the power button on the TV kind of ruins the glow, you know what I'm sayin'?

Change of Address

Well, I've finally crawled out from beneath the pile of cardboard, packing tape, foam peanuts, pizza delivery boxes, cobwebs and DUST! Holy fuck, enough already with the DUST! I haven't stopped sneezing for two weeks and it's really starting to harsh my mellow, ya'll.

Moving is dirty. And also? It sucks.

Did you know that your shin bones are natural Hard Surface Testers? Especially in the dark of night, in an unfamiliar house, after you've slipped down four stairs in your socks and stood up full-tilt into the ceiling beam above the handrail and you can't tell if those stars circling your head are actually there or if you're just stoned again. That is the exact time your shin bones will encounter something of the most extravagant hardness, and also stationary-ness, that your brain will actually explode and for a second you won't even care that the dog is eating your eyeball off the floor.

Of course I also bang my shins any time a metal bed frame is involved. And I do mean ANY time.

We bought a second hand (eew, I know) bed from a woman on Craig's List because my grandmother is coming to stay later this month and I decided not to make her sleep on the floor after all. When we arrived, we realized that the bed was not dismantled and waiting for us in her garage, but instead was fully assembled on the second floor of her townhouse.

Since I know my history of shin-to-bed frame interaction, I promised the bed woman that although it was certain that I would injure myself while taking apart the bed frame, I promised not to get blood on anything. After I'd successfully whapped my poor right shin with the metal cross bar of the bed frame, I hurried downstairs to show bed woman the bleeding cut on my palm and to brag that I hadn't smeared it on the walls or anything.

I could tell she was very impressed.

Fast forward to a scene of Gray and I struggling to force a decidedly too big, non-bendy, queen-sized box spring up our very tiny, also non-bendy, Barbie-sized staircase, and witness my brilliant decision to place my already-lacerated palm between the corner of the box spring and the wall just as Gray decided to heave his entire body weight and all the righteousness of the heavens into his end of the box spring, and hear the resulting crunch, POP!

That was the sound of my thumb crumpling. And also, the staples from the corner of the frame entering the juicy meat of my hand.

Suddenly I'm hungry for pork tenderloin.

Anyway, so I'm still alive, although my shins would like to argue the contrary, and we are starting to get settled into the new house (which means A) that I can find my underwear now and B) that Gray has thoroughly tested the toilet's abilities) so hopefully I'll be here much more frequently henceforth.


That's the dining room back there. Can't you tell by the ceiling-high stack of mis-matched chairs?



Moving is hard work.

And also, I need some kind of self-exclusion form for Craig's List so that if I try to log onto the website, armed guards will show up and escort me (gently but with authority) back to Google where I belong.

A ninety-five-year-old house can only accommodate so many couches, you know?

We'll Name Him Thomas.

We close on our house tomorrow. Like. TOMORROW.

Can I just take a moment here to scream IT'S ABOUT MOTHERFUCKING TIME, UNIVERSE!

Because wow, houses are hard to buy, ya'll. Did you know that?

The first time I bought a house, I seem to remember it going something like, "Hmm so you want a house? Okay, here are the keys. Don't forget to pay your mortgage." Although when I stop and throw my mind back to several dozens of cases of wine ago, I remember that it wasn't that simple because the house was about to go to police auction and the sellers were an estranged couple who couldn't agree on anything and my ex was "self-employed" and we had to move out of our rental house on June 1st whether we had somewhere to live or not because our landlord hated our guts (might it have been the two illicit dogs we owned?) so buying my first house was quite a stressful experience, but the impression it left in my memory was only that of HAVING.MY.HOUSE. which, ironically, is how Gray and I met in the first place because he lived next door.

So I guess I can expect to meet my future husband tomorrow.

But also, it leads me to believe that buying a house must be a lot like having a baby (stay with me here, moms...) in that it's a stressful time, but exciting, and full of scary, life-changing decisions, and it's expensive like whoa, and then after it's over they send you off with a key and this massive responsibility, like, here, go ahead and take care of this thing and if you need any help don't call us, just google it, oh and try not to drop it, and you're stumbling around with bleary eyes and bruised shins and possibly a vagina full of stitches, and your first night at home there are all these weird sounds and you're afraid your house is suffocating in its crib, but then morning comes and you realize, "Holy shit, Gray, we DID it. We bought this house and it's OURS. Look, it has your eyes."

And then pretty soon you forget the stress and the pain and all you're left with is a hemorrhaging wallet and the pride of knowing that you've done gone and did something for your family.

Tomorrow.

P.E.C. for Short*

We dog-sat over the weekend for Flute Randi, whom I've decided to just call "Flute" from now on because I'm tired of typing her entire name, and really, how many penis-free "Randi"s do you know?

Flute went to New Ulm to get fucking blitzed on good ole' Minnesota beer at the Schellabration, that lucky bitch, and left with us her giant mattress spring wrapped in a buffalo muscle French terrier named Mac. Since I'm busy packing for our move, I thought it would be a good idea to have MORE fur in my house. I'm going to use it first as dog-scented packing material and then weave it into a fine wool and sell it on Craig's List.

Dis dog. He can haz adorablenezz.

Bampa hates having other dogs in the house, especially BOY dogs, and I think it has something to do with the fact that Bamps pisses like a girl, but it may also be because it means he has to share the treats. These two have met before, with mixed results, and I say "mixed" when I mean "hmmm maybe we should clamp Bampa's jaws shut with a rubber band like he's a giant, furry lobster".

Which is what we ended up doing, except with a Gentle Leader instead of a rubber band, but I can assure you if a rubber band of an appropriate size had presented itself, I would have used it instead. If I can put one in my hair, he can have one on his face.

The primary effect of the Gentle Leader was that Bampa spent the next 24 hours rubbing his face on every available surface, which was really very cute (unless it involved Gray's crotch) and which meant he was distracted enough not to notice when Mac moved in on his chick:

You can't see it, but my pretty pink lipstick is riiiiiight down there...

The red shirt in the photo is Kylie, and she's very clearly giving Mac the romantic signals (note the placement of one hand on his broad shoulders and the other in her crotch), and we were not surprised when this exchange resulted in a VERY! ENTHUSIASTIC! LIPSTICK! EMERGENCE! and we spent a short while discussing the implications of such a reaction.

I realized that if my virtuous, motherly touch ever provokes such excitement in Bampa, I will promptly chop off his lipstick with the nearest available weapon and teach him once and for all that incest is the work of the devil.

Or I'll take consecutive showers. I'm still undecided.

I have always been fascinated by the idea of the lipstick, though, and I believe my first eye-witness of the phenomenon was driving by a field in which an incredibly virile horse was grazing. I was very concerned for the health of that poor animal's private parts, which appeared to have been flipped inside out and then blown up like an unformed balloon animal. I was educated in the matter soon after, however, when I had the occasion to help a small Dotson get his rocks off.

Since I'm loathe to do any actual research, I must assume that the lipstick (aka Penile Extension Cord) was invented to accommodate the semi-long-distance mating rituals of the large-boned and multi-ton-weighing animals, and of course this line of reasoning  leads me to suspect that incredibly overweight people may also have a form of penile extension cord, or are in the process of evolving such, at the very least.

Having only reached a moderate level of chunkiness myself, I've decided that the answer to my question lies in only one place: Fattie fetish porn.

Stay tuned.

PS - He weally weally missed his mama. And also, his penis touched the chair, but Gray assured me that since he was "not lippy" at the time, there was no harm done.

PPS - I'm not even entirely sure that Bampa HAS a penis, such is the girth of his old man flaps and fatty tumors on his undercarriage.

*OMFG I just realized where the word "PEC-ker" came from!!!

Eleventh Hour Cluster Frick

Oh, ya'll.

This whole Buying A House thing is a fuckload of work and stress and ulcers and migraines and diarrhea. As of 2:38 pm yesterday, everything was lined up for a smooth closing on September 30th and I was happily stealing furniture from alleys all over my neighborhood in preparation of furnishing an entire house with exactly fourteen dollars and thirty-one cents.

Then at 2:39 (O, CURSED HOUR!) I got a phone call that threw the entire works into a tizzy and a big fat jam which resulted in Afternoon Consumption of Red Wine and Lots of Ice Cream From the Carton, and the entire problem revolves around the lack of ONE SIGNATURE on ONE PIECE OF PAPER out of the billions and jillions of pieces of paper involved in the purchasing of a house and the borrowing of the money to do so.

This is when I'm really regretting my decision not to enter a life of crime. Forged documentation would really come in handy right now.

Fortunately, Gray became Prestige-d (apparently it's a verb in Loser Language) on his Modern Warfare game this weekend, so there's that bit of good news. If you know what it means to become Prestige-d, then you're a giant loser.

But also, I'm kind of serious when I said it's good news because Pristige-d Gray was playing that very game last night when another loser playing with him spoke into Gray's loser-y headset and gave him a brilliant idea with which to extricate ourselves from the EMERGENCY LACK OF SIGNATURE we are suffering, and the fact that Gray was playing his 24th consecutive hour of video games may ironically end up being the reason we are able to purchase this house after all.

Which means I owe Gray about a thousand blow jobs RE: the bet we made RE: the usefulness of his playing video games. ALL. THE. TIME. EVERY. DAY.

I fucking hate/love it when he's right.

In Which I Delay Doing Anything Useful. *UPDATED

I just wrote an entire paragraph here and then I deleted it because IT FUCKING SUCKED. You'll have to forgive me, I haven't had a drink yet this morning and the thunder kept me awake all night, and no, that is not a euphamism for Gray's schlong, although if he asks you, tell him it is. You'll never have to buy him another birthday gift, although he may ask you to put it in writing first.

Speaking of putting things into writing, I just realized that today is my submission deadline for my October column so I should probably get around to, you know, WRITING IT, and stuff. I can always count on a deadline for school to strink sudden inspiration into my blog life, and a blog deadline to inspire in me a expansive/pointless craft project and the threat of a looming deadline like, oh I don't know, HAVING TO PACK OUR ENTIRE HOUSE SO WE CAN MOVE IN FIFTEEN DAYS, to make me realize that I haven't been doing nearly enough sock drawer organizing lately.

It's bizarre, living in the mind of an anal-retentive procrastinator, because I want everything to be exactly perfect all the time, but I don't want it to be exactly perfect right now, tomorrow should be soon enough, except that in the meantime I'd like to develop ulcers over that pile of unwashed laundry in the corner that I'll have plenty of time to do next weekend.

I have decorated every square inch of our new home in my head - it's keeping me up at night - literally down to the new house numbers on the new mailbox, but I haven't yet joined one cardboard box with one crumpled newspaper with one piece of our worldy possessions. This seat-of-my-pants packing schedule makes me realize that a part of me must believe A) all my shit will magically appear at the new place and put itself away like this is some kind of episode of Sleeping Beauty except my fairy godmothers are all red-headed and well-accessorized and B) that upon arrival at the new place, all said shit will magically transform itself into a bunch of shiny NEW shit that coordinates with each other and gives the illusion that I'm this masterful decorator, yet all the while I'll be dancing naked around my house singing the soundtracke to Anne into an empty chapagne bottle and stopping only to make ill-advised, online furniture purchases.

In other words, it's probably not going to be all that different after all.

*Go here. Then it will seem like I did something.*

Perfect Time To Have Kids, No?

I'm considering a return to talk therapy, and holy christ, I was unprepared for how awkward that sentence would sound out loud: the verbal equivalent of that couple who walks around with their hands in each other's rear pants pockets, regardless of how impractical that may be when they're also, oh I don't know, trying to cross the street while making out and talking on a cell phone.

I know I stood up Dr. Crazy Socks last time, but I'm pretty sure he (meaning his wallet) will welcome me back into the crazy-fold with lots of, "So how have you been"s and "How did that make you feel"s.

I've been feeling really good, actually, considering the stress I've been under (and yes, I realize it's mostly self-induced stress, fuck you very much), but I'm still just a little big ::off:: somehow. Anxiety is slowly creeping into my brain, and as Gray pointed out last night, winter is approaching, and we all know how the onslaught of 6 dark months tend to = me in a corner with a spoon pressed perilously close to my eyeball, humming Edelweiss and stroking my stuffed lobster toy.

Also, I'm trying to figure out why I feel the need to be incessantly, exhaustively over-scheduled. I tell myself I LIKE DOWN TIME and I'm pretty sure I mean that when I say it, except when I look at my calendar for the next two months, I feel like I'm trying to emulate Barack Obama, granted with fewer black tie events and more dog poop, but I'm fucking booked solid, is what I'm trying to say, and all of these things I have going on are voluntary (besides my full-time, necessary for continued survival-type job and my part-time, why dear god am still doing this to myself college classes), and I can't figure out why I seem unable to just sit the fuck down already.

After work today, I'll be driving to the St. Paul campus (for the second time this week, and regardless that all my fall classes are online) to pick up and distribute the September issue of The Metropolitan newspaper. Then I'll hustle home to go for a walk with my dog and shovel down some dinner before biking over to my doggy client's house to take her for a walk. Then it's home to read Don Quixote for my Lit class for as long as I can keep my eyes open.

I don't even have time to drink during the week anymore. If that's not a cry for help, I don't know what is.

I'm supposed to meet my mortgage broker one of these nights to sign some documents in preparation for closing on our house on September 30th, which means I also need to start packing because HOLY SHIT WE ARE MOVING AGAIN IN ONE MONTH, but I should start packing until I've finished writing our thank you cards from the wedding, and I can't forget the writing deadlines, and then Kylie arrives to crash with us (meaning I'll want to do nothing but to paint her toenails and talk her ears right out of the room. Over several glasses cases of wine.) Regardless of this ridiculous time schedule, I find myself scanning the domestic "gigs" listed on Craigslist, searching for part-time cleaning jobs to make a little extra money because I have fifteen spare minutes every other Tuesday evening and I'll be damned if I spend that time enjoying myself. Plus, two people have told me I'm "crazy" since yesterday. Maybe I should look into that.

I think this post was a way of convincing myself I need therapy. I just don't have time to make an appointment.

House. Also, Poor.

So. We bought a house.

That's what we've been up to. Gray and I have been searching for the perfect property since March, and this is the third time we found "it," the difference being that this time, the buyer agreed with us.

I was thinking our life would slow down after the wedding, but I was wronger than wrong, because now we'll be packing and moving (did I mention this marks the fifth time I've moved in three years?), and Kylie is moving in with us at Longfellow Deeds for a couple of weeks before she leaves to spend her autumn months with her hot boyfriend in Europe (I know, FUCK YOU KYLIE, is right) and I'm starting over with The Month of Ramen coming up this Wednesday. I thought we were broke before, and now we're exactly $House Amount of Dollars more poor than before. Lucky for us, Top Ramen doesn't discriminate. And also, we own all our porn.