Newsflash: I did not chicken out.

Book Lovers Bazaar (you know that thing you're sick to death of reading about in here?)  it happened, it's over, and it was great.

I sold some books.  I made some friends.  I went home and slept for three hours.  Huzzah!

A Podcast? Seriously?

Oh yes, noble readers.  I was a guest on a podcast.

I dare not spoil it for you.  If you have a chance, do check out The Nerd Burger Show.

I am episode 70.

It is a vortex of all things nerdy, silly, and wonderful.  I'd like to thank my hosts for being so charming, so funny, and for instantly putting shy and delicate little me (PAH!) at ease for the duration of our chat.

Keep it up, guys.

Photobook

Fear not, noble stalkers.  While I've been off the radar I can assure you that things have been going very well indeed.  Here's a little photobook I made for our most recent vacation over the Memorial Day holiday - remembering the sacrifice by celebrating the soil the sacrifice was made for.  

Click here to view this photo book larger

You'll love award-winning Shutterfly photo books. Start your own today.

Mandela.

Were it not for Johnny Clegg in my teen ears, I'd have known precious little about Mandela.

Or at least, what I learned in High School would not have stuck.

So now, I share with you what I know.

Asimbonanga--------------------(we have not seen him)

Asimbonang' umandela thina-----(we have not seen mandela)

Laph'ekhona--------------------(in the place where he is)

Laph'ehleli khona-------------(in the place where he is kept)

And may the music and dancing lighten your heart.
And may the light in our hearts guide all of our great ones to the next place.
And may we all be lucky enough to achieve a life of triumph over darkness, kindness over wickedness, and sweetness over hatred.
And if it takes us ten years or ninety five years, may we find our own goodness before the waters are crossed.

Fire Safety Video

Many of you are probably (even if barely) aware that Colorado is kindof all ablaze again this year.

For me, it is really hard to watch the coverage because I'm so far from home and a lot of the talking heads are helpless to say much  more then "yup, it's still on fire out here."

When a good piece of information comes along though, I'm encouraged and eager to share it.  Not simply because my brother is in the business of helping make people safe from fires, and not simply because I am heartbroken at the thought of ANYONE losing a home full of treasures and memories.  Those are big parts of it, though.  Damn this bleeding heart, this empathy-addled heart of mine. (not really)

So anyway, yes.  My big brother is the man who educates the folks who live in the mountains about how to keep their homes safer in the event of a wild fire.  There are no guarantees, of course, but there are ways to make it better for you and your home when living in nature's equivalent of a pile of matches in the sun at a fireworks factory.  For instance, fire loves fuel right?  Fuel is trees and dry grass right?  AND fuel is that lovely little juniper bush nestled sweetly next to your front door.  Of your log cabin.  With the un-rained-on kentucky bluegrass out front.  Fire looks at that little scene and goes "oh yummy, kentucky fuelfuel for dinner, juniper-gas-can-cake for desert, and a big fat pine-y-fuel-orgy cabin thereafter!"

Things we, as homeowners do, can interrupt that little thought process.  Cutting wild trees on your property that TOUCH or reach over your home, for instance.  Sure, it's not romantic and woodsy like that... but then neither is a pile of black ash and three years' of insurance haggling.  Using stones to mulch-in path around your house like a moat can interrupt the fire as it gobbles up the dry dry grass.  Xeriscaping ALONE can do wonders.

You know what?  I could talk for days about this.  It's my brother's JOB (he actually gets paid) to do this and his work will never ever EVER be done.

And a picture is worth a thousand words.

So how about I throw a few thousand pictures at you in the form of this little video - which is as informative as it is excellently produced - to help us all learn about what the firemen (and women) go through to save one single house.  One house, by the way, that already has excellent mitigation and fire-safety plans in place on the property.  Five minutes of your time, ladies and gentlemen.  Please take this time as your "Smokey Bear" awareness moment for today.

And if you're in Colorado, keep a weather-eye on the horizon, kids. Stay safe out there!

Saving a Home in a Forest Fire

Look at me! A to Z

The Results Episode

Wow.  April sure went by fast, eh?  And amid all this brain-sharing I was doing I also went to the Smokies with my husband and my sister in law and her boyfriend for an absolutely perfect long weekend in a cabin in the woods.   Also my folks came out to stay with my husband and I for about five days.  And now, utterly spent, I find that my figure is fat with rich food and my mind is bristling with happy memories.

Today, on a day off and the day before I return to my workplace, I am a housecat.  I am sleeping far too much and eating not nearly enough vegetation and am staring into nothing for alarming amounts of time.  Tomorrow will be VERY healthy for me.

And still I am drawn to this little white screen to share my thoughts.

So, kids.  I'll share my thoughts.  Joining up on this little tour of the alphabet was, at first, a fun little challenge to keep my butt squarely in front of my computer screen so that I don't lose track of my other writing goals.  Which are, sadly, numerous and neglected.

Now I see that this was a marvelous outreach tool and for my pithy, self-involved efforts I am rewarded with the strangest and most magnificent collection of new friends I could ever ask for.  Maybe 'friends' is perhaps too strong a word.  I haven't really met any people.  What I have met, however, is their minds.  And what a magical, intimate meeting that is!  We're all misfits, we're all absurdly adapted to our situations and we're all just fingers on a keyboard being hurried along by our greazy eight pounds of thinkmeat.

But those minds, you guys, your minds...  I cannot tell you how honored I am that you share such treasures with me.  Your good days, your bad days, your silly stories and everything thereafter.  Would that I could just wrap you all up in brown paper and open you up every day like christmas morning.  But look!  I get to!  That's what your posts are!  You're real, after all, and you have things to say and do even now.  And in the future, as you continue to share, I hope you'll know that I'm out here too.

Truly exciting to me is the idea that we'll very likely bump into each other in the future.  Perhaps you'll sit next to me on the subway someday.  Perhaps I'll be behind you in the produce section of a quik-e-mart.  But the universe has a way of linking us together now.  So keep your eyes open, because I'm out here and I would love NOTHING more than to shake your hand someday and be utterly, impossibly, socially awkward at you for a few moments.  I don't even have to properly stalk you either.  The universe will take care of the details. It will be totally not creepy.  Well...  considering the elements involved, that is.

As far as the rest of the challenge goes, I'd have loved to leave a big hug and a high five for EVERYONE that I read and bumped into and got told to look at.  My fatal flaw there, however, was that I'm not really ready to manage multiple accounts for every manner of blog-o-matic hoople...  so I resisted leaving a comment in places where membership was necessary.  I'm still there, you just can't see me.

Everything else went swimmingly as far as I can tell.  I met some tremendously powerful writers and a gloriously talented bouquet of goofballs.  Oh how rich I am!

Many thanks, again, to our kind Arlee Bird for getting this machine rolling.

And many more thanks to everyone who makes it such a knockout colorful place to be!

Post Travel

Okay, I hear ya.  It went well.  REALLY well.  So much so that I'm still digesting it and trying to find a way to kindof spell it all out.  A picture, though, is truly worth a thousand words, so let's take a little tour around the ol' hometown and see what we find, eh?

I give you a highlights tour of my own little secrets from Idaho Springs:


SQUIRREL!

 

Nature is, above all, change.

This familiar little slope is pretty much exactly the view from my bedroom window.  The trees are bigger now, and the slope (due to recent upticks in rainfall for the last week) is much greener than I remember, but it's still the same slope of yore.  I know every curve of that slope by heart.  I've watched animals and people cavort across it and seen snow cover it and watch heavy storms saturate it.  It has always been there for me.  It always will be. 

I've never seen with my own eyeballs what's on the other side of that ridge.  I'm not sure I care to.

 Another perfect hillside that anyone from within the watershed will not only recognize but many of whom will have personal stories about scrambling up there to paint their graduation year on the rock face.  Some of the paint remains, if you look closely.  Many a terrific saga was born of this hillside.  It has always been there.  It always will be.

 The Anglican/Catholic Church of Idaho Springs (St Joseph I believe).  Man, what an iconic image this is for me. The red brick building you see on the left there is the elementary school where I spent my entire pre-teen educational career.  Between the two cheese-shaped buildings was a deathtrap of a playground, the old kind with the monkeybars and the hard rubber mats below them.  We all still got our shares of lead splinters and concussions on that war-zone, and we got our itsy bitsy fingers pinched in the chains that held the swings and we choked on the pea-gravel and picked the sharp sand out of our ears and eyes.  The concrete field to the east of the playground and the schoolbuildings was open for games of chase, soccer, kickball, and "olderkids being cool".  When the new playground was built, we all chipped in: parents, kids, businesspeople...  it was awesome.  The lion's share of the empty concrete field was left open. 

We all grew up with this church hovering over us as we played in that concrete area that was blazing hot in the summers and covered in hip-smashingly slick ice in the winter.  It was such an annoyingly perfect building: Italian/Spanish architecture just didn't fit in our hokey pokey little mining town nestled so deeply in the hills of Colorado.  But there it was.  Every year brought new rumors about it: it was haunted, it held living corpses, it was where witches slept at night, (it didn't help that the priest insisted on walking around in his full Priest Attire during the day... we just did NOT understand that...)  and at the end of the day, it just largely scared the hell out of us. 

Well done, Anglicans, well done.  It still scares me, but in a nostalgic way.  I love this building for reasons I cannot explain.  My silly heathen heart holds a very special place for this building.  Perhaps it's the reminder of when the world was simpler for me (which it totally wasn't) or perhaps it is something more complicated...  the nostalgia of my first sensations that the world was far more complicated than I had previously given it credit for.
 

 This is cool too.  It's an arrastra - or in today's terms:  an ancient ore crusher thingamaboo.  No really, check my notes on this one!  It's seriously cool.  You can see it has been restored oodles of times, but the science behind it is still clear:  Ore goes in, rock smasher goes 'round, pulverized ore comes out.  Bada-boom, bada-bing.  Donkey powered, yo.  Totally approved for Y2K.

 

This is my old friend, Charlie Taylor.

He invented my town.  (that's how I remember the story)

We love him for it.

 



Home.  This is what it looks like, y'all.  While it's true that you can't go back again.  It's also true that when you do, there will always be bits and pieces of the place you knew.  They'll be waiting there for you to see them and love them like you used to.  They just want to be looked at.  They want to be remembered.  They don't want anything more, and there is nothing more to give them.  Time moves on and nature moves forward and things change and everything moves on without us.  That's okay. That's the way it should be.

Home.  This really is what it looks like. 
It's what it used to look like and what it's going to look like for a long long time. 

Fourth of July - Posted Late. Waaaaaay late.

I just remembered, I owe you holiday festivities pictuers!  Oh dear oh dear.  Let's fix that right now.

Observe...

Washington Monument Security Checkpoint

We entered where everyone did, at the national mall.  Lo, the Washington Monument!

Jefferson Memorial!

 Then we walked allll the way over to my favorite spot on the tidal basin at the feet of the statue of Mr. Jefferson.  It was HOT out, and I was soaking wet with humidity and sweat and the sweat of a hundred thousand other people gathered at this site for exactly the same reason as I was:  to celebrate the birthday of my country.  It was about as "pilgrimige"y as I'll ever get, I think.  And it was so awesome.  The concrete area we sat on there was allllmost too hot to sit on.  But we toughed it out.  Turns out, they were the best seats ever.   Like, EVER.  For any fireworks show I've been to ever.

Every bloom of fireworks reflected beautifully in the water in front of us and our view was utterly unobstructed.  The show was amazing and timed to go with music (pop) that played at full volume from speakers all around the mall and the tidal basin. 

I love this shot.  It is fuzzy.  Like me. 

The show, sadly, was about 15 minutes long.  We all could have sat there for an hour or more (many people had nabbed their spots early in the day and waited through the heat and searing misery of the afternoon for this show.  I can NOT imagine the medical condition I'd have been in if I had tried such a thing.)  By the end of it, though everyone was all friends and brimming with national pride and american joy and brotherly love.

And then it took us about 2 hours to get home. 

So yeah.  that sucked.  BUT the show was awesome and again, the pilgrim-feel of it was...  it was pretty intense.  Fully fully reccommended experience, says I.  Yes Indeedy.

Totally worth it. 

And that most excellent shower after we got home?  and the quiet soft bed waiting for me in my clean, quiet apartment?  and the cool air and the air conditioning and the kitty face waiting for me therein?  OMG magical.  :)

Let's have a little ten o'clock update, eh?

Wowzers what a weekend. 
I'm sure you've heard about the storm front that hit the area on Friday.  Right? The ol' June 29th storm that came after the ol June 28th Heat Wave Of Doom? You know, that local heat wave for the D.C. area? 

hooo boy.  They are not kidding, kids.  It was pretty big.

The storm landed with a woosh and alllll of the trees outside our apartment doing their best lambada and limbo dances to the tune of an 82mph gust of wind.  This gust, of course, preceeded the rain.

The rain, you guys. 

I'm from Colorado.  I'm not used to rain like this.  We get big storms, yeah.  No worries.  It's not like I'm from Death Valley or anything...  but  the rain?  you guys?  This rain stomped through the neighborhood like an insulted eight year old.  It raged around the entire city with fits and torrents and clenched fists and slamming doors and some very very rude language.  I can assure you.  This was an angry storm, you guys.  Not like the wild-rides of light and frenzied H2O-based whoop-ass we get back home where things are presently bursting into flame as we speak.  There was no fun to this storm.  It was all rage.  All fear.  All mad.

The rain hit us like a Mack-truck, kids.  And it did Not. Let. Up.  Not for about 45 minutes... during which the lights flickered, a constant blitz of thunderless lightening sparkled across the turbulent skies, sirens blazed, and at least two of the yugo-style cars parked in the street got shifted around from their original parking location.

STRONG WINDS, is what I'm saying here.  Rain so thick it had nowhere to run off to so it ended up streaming about three inches thick down our generously sloped exit-ramp.  We're on the second floor, so we had no flooding and we're on the far side of the building so our windows barely rattled.  Our power came back on at the end of it all and we finished watching our movie and all was well.

Until morning.

When about 300,000 of my closest neighbors woke up without power.  Or air conditioning.  Or phones.  On a Saturday morning that was destined to reach triple digits before noon. 

Grim, kids.  It was grim out there.  And our friends were out there in it.  My most treasured supergal and her husband, in fact, were stranded and out of gas in a town where even now - sunday night - there are hundreds of useless traffic lights, disfunctional gas stations, and unbelieve-ably "salad" covered city streets which were also otherwise brimming with all sorts of detritus and debris and stumps and stems and fences and whatnot-ery.

So since my most adored supergal is happily gestating, and since 85 degree heat in an apartment full of roughly 10,000% humidity is pretty much not condusive to a great weekend or a healthy night's sleep...  we immediately drove up there with some spare gas and lots of ice.  We reached their apartment with hugs and fresh, cold water, to claim them and bring them to safety.  It was our honor, our pleasure, and our duty to do it.  And It continues to be our honor and our pleasure to keep the spare room open to them through this mess for as long as they need our electricity, our internet service, our viable gas stations, our air conditioning, our hot water, our lovely refrigerator and our cable t.v.   These things, my beloved minions, alongside these most treasured friends of mine, make me the most wealthy person on the planet tonight and I know it down to my last fiber.

We're all four of us quite happy now, well cooled and well fed and well rested.  The rest of the Virginia-to-Maryland area...  rather distinctly less so.  (How can it be that even the pizza place we ordered lunch/dinner from had only JUST finished baking our order when their power went back out again?  I think we all know the answer to this.)  Even supergal's geriatric cat is weathering the storm nicely.  She's left behind, of course, but don't fear for her safety.  That kitty is just adoring her dark, superheated apartment (which at last check hadn't gotten above 85) and we're confident that her arthritic hips and gentle cough have never felt better.  She has lots of fresh water to drink, lots of food to eat, lots of hard flat surfaces to sleep on and she's utterly content with the state of things.  So no worries there.  The bathtub is full of water too, and the bathroom has a spectacular chill to it.

The weekend felt pretty much like an extended vacation for us, actually.  Sleepover, food, games, chit-chat and movies.  Lots of down time at the homestead, you know?  Sure, we can't buy any fresh meat or dairy products for another week or so (stores' refrigerator sections are out for about a forty mile radius) but by the gods we have fruit and veggies and lots of good food in our larders on hand for JUST such an occasion. 

Now, the night before we consider going back to work...  sirens are still hurrying from here to there.  Announcements are going out on t.v. about this or that summer school, this or that cooling center open to the public, this or that level of government or civil service to be reporting for this or that level of duty. 

Tomorrow, ye gods, is going to suck.

The commute (on the train) is going to be dreadful.  Weekend trackwork was surely delayed, and if the trains are on time, it's occupants will be in no condition to enjoy the ride.  Solid bet that the only washing people have done in this heat in the last three days has been in cold water, if any, and rendered useless by about fifteen paces from their home/vehicle.  Laundry won't have been done.  Children won't have been accounted for.  Meals will have been missed or (worse yet) eaten on a hope and a prayer that they got to the food before it spoiled.  People who need to know things won't.  The self-important and constantly informed will be starving for both attention and information.  The shy and lost will fail to find any normalcy into which they can blend and will therefore get into everyone's confused, sweaty way.

And then we'll have to get off the train and sludge into our buildings to see if power has been restored, if the servers are therefore working, and if the systems suffered any lasting damage. 

And then there will be the laundry list of missed calls, unreplied-to emails, annoyed clients and unhappy altercations. 

There will be tears, I'm afraid.

And yet, in the middle of it all - MY home was barely kissed by the storm.  Seriously, my potted gardens on the deck out there warranted hardly a passing glance from the titanic wrath that played out but eight feet beyond our grasp. 

Not only was I lucky enough to come through with power et.al...  I was lucky enough to have the privilege to offer my shelter to two of the most important people I know (two and a half of them). 

I can't explain it.  I won't begin to try.

But I love it so much.  And no matter what tomorrow brings, I'll endeavor to remember how truly lucky I really am... and how before I even wake up tomorrow morning I'll be miles ahead of nearly every other person I run into tomorrow.

Timberdoodles

Let me just tell you the story of four friends who went out for a simple wildlife-viewing evening and ended up saving a car from doom. DOOOM!

So me and the main squeeze, and my supergal and her main squeeze, we go out to this cute little nature preserve and we have it in our heads (thanks to me that put the idea there) that we're going to have a picnic dinner in the sunset and then go look for, and watch Timberdoodles.

And "what" I can hear you asking yourself now, gentle reader, "is a timber doodle?"

Well, for a start, that is.

Some of you might be thinking "that little cutie? that's a woodcock!" and you'd be right to think so. They're one and the same. There are EVEN a few theories out there that this handsome little devil is also the much maligned "Snipe" of the much maligned "snipe hunts" that kids tortured each other with in the olden days of yore. You know, before there were like VCRs and Televisions and electricity and stuff. (that's for you, mom.)

So anyway, we get to the park, our guide is there and happy to welcome us to what will surely be a magical evening and we have about an hour to kill before the tour starts. So what are we to do? it's a gorgeous park, trails galore and lots of lusty, muddy paths of pre-spring, Maryland marshland to explore. Right?

Seems that the hybrid car parked next to us had the same hankering... because as we got back to the parking area to begin our delicious picnic-y repast... this sweet old couple was staring with great dismay at their beloved electric car and the four inch ruts of mud and sod that had piled up on either side of each of the four tires.

Oh dear. Turns out, the parking lot wasn't that broad after all. In fact, it was quite unprepared (especially after last night's rain) to accept ANY kind of weight, much less the delicate kiss of four tires belonging to the cutest electric car you ever saw. Bright red. Awww.

Well, we still had a few neighbors parked around us so what else could we do? We all rolled up our sleeves and started helping out. I jammed big sticks into the wheel-ruts. The boys measured and monitored things from the back of the car and negotiated pushing techniques, and together the six of us got the sweet little car (and pre-geriatric occupants) to shoot backwards about eight feet.

Huzzah!

Right into a ditch. ooooh.

Well, kindof. It was half in, half out, anyway, and the passenger-side half of the car was perched (still on tires, miraculously) on the thinnest roots and remnants of a tree that had just fallen over a few months ago. These roots and remnants, you see, were the only things between the vehicle and about a three foot slump sideways into insurance-claim-land.

Wellsir, we weren't about to be slowed down. We shook the gobs of mud and sod from our hands (and faces and shoulders) and we began to search the woods for more hard stuff. We packed the pit with tree parts, rocks, huge rotting... somethings... and finally had JUUUST enough purchase to try to thrust the car forward again.

Oma put it in Neutral, and the (by now) twelve of us wrestled together for hand-space on the sweet little car and we HEAVED and we WHOOVED and we HURNGHED and we finally got that little red bastard out of trouble.

Thaaaat took about an hour and a half. Our guide was helping too, so it's not like we were gonna' miss the tour!

Hugs and congratulations all around. The couple was relieved to be free of disaster and we all promised each other to never ever park on green grass ever again. We laughed, we shook loose about eight pounds each of chunky mud (and embarrassment) and everyone went their own way.

We bolted our remaining picnic dinner (bread, hummus, oreos and fanta = pure joy) and then drove out of the parking area, following our guide, to the timberdoodle-stalking location.

Halfway there, mind you, we stopped in what I can only describe as a "holler". We rolled down our windows and were greeted with the most wonderful cacophony of one-note froggy voices. The air was positivley thick with them. Seriously. Our eyes all popped. Me and supergal especially. It was stunning.

It sounded fake, actually, like a movie set or something. Just all those little musical notes thrumming and throbbing over each other - clamboring for pitch and volume in a confetti of courtship. It was a timeless noise. It was a noise that doesn't get bothered by shoe-styles or gas prices. It was a choir of business that had absolutely nothing to do with any of us and it was louder than all of us and in the dwindling light of a creamy orange popsicle sunset... oh man... it just doesn't get much better than that.

Moving on, and heads still spinning with what we had just spent the last 2 minutes listening to, we finally landed at the field at which we'd be doing our timberdoodleing.

These birds, you see, are doing their mating displays right now and they only do it in the dwindling light of creamy orange popsicle sunsets. "MEERT" they go, four times. Like muppets, kindof. and then FWOOSH they fly upwards into the air about 200 feet high in a large arc of jumbled, giggling feathers and whiffling noises after which they swoop back silently to the ground like jet fighters with the mute button on. Upon landing, they start their beeping "MYURT" noises again.

One of them, we were close enough to hear his throaty gulping noise that comes before the buzzing beep. "gloomp-MEERT" he went. Like, maybe you remember an old Wild America about the prairie chickens and their sub-sonic gulping noises? That's the sound these dudes make, but it's far less showy.

Still really cool though.

There we were, all of us sweaty and muddy and bathed in the un-light of after-sunset. We were in the middle of some poor farmer's corn field and listening with rapture for "MREET" and "MYURT" and "gloomp-NEEP". Twice we were lucky enough to catch the giggle-dance of the males launching themselves skyward, swooping around the field and then (in one case) finally zooming right back to the ground just a few yards in front of us... his landing was both invisble and impossibly silent. BUT the moment he landed... he announced his presence with a proud and almost thunderous "MREEET"

my cheeks still hurt from all that grinning I did.

We got home at a fiercely reasonable 8:00. We all decompressed a little by watching some bad tv and just hanging out and talking and telling stories.

It was a perfect Saturday outing.

Timberdoodles man.

TIMBERDOODLES.

Because It Is Important

Normally, my skin crawls at the idea of putting my face on my blog. This was important though.

And trust me, it was a lot harder than you might think. It was a HELL of a lot harder than I anticipated!

I don't normally think much about my face, because (as they say) I am behind it. I don't have to look at it all day, you know? but for this, for this Barefaced and Beautiful campaign... well, things just really came together. I'll ess'plain.

Recently, I went out to see some friends and I did put on a little touch of concealer here, a little swipe of powder there, some color on the eyelids, a hint of mascara, you know... the basics. Nothing even remotely noticeable to anyone but me. By the end of the night, and even though I use the most basic, hypoallergenic products I can get my paws on, my face felt hot and itchy and within about three days I had a fresh bloom of horrible red blotches and squidgy red spots all over.

Now, honestly, it wasn't like a highschool level "all over" but for a girl in her thrities, it's CLOSE ENOUGH.

So today was hard. I had to really convince myself that it was okay to go without makeup today. And I did. And it was. Not a soul noticed or said anything. Or if they did notice my blotchy red face, everyone was far too polite to say anything about it. I smiled at people, and they smiled back. I said "good morning" to people, and they said it back. I had lunch in the sun, with two people I had just met (at an INTERVIEW of all things) and we had a lovely time and not a single soul stood before me covering her mouth and pointing at me and screeching "DEAR GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE!"

I was horribly self-aware the whole time. Nobody knew the difference though. And where does that leave me? Even ten years ago, regardless of others' reactions, I'd have felt a flush of shame and guilt. I'd have been laced with nuanced little discussions in my head about how my pathetic skin quality and that horrible, humiliating double chin made me look like a poochy, diseased yokel with bad teeth and stupid squity eyes. I'd have listened to those discussions, too, like recorded tapes in my head. Over and over it would have played.

"Look at all those lines!" it would say, that tape in my head. "Look at those fatty-splatty eye pillows and your stupid soccerball cheeks that make you look more like a swollen appledoll than a normal human person!" it would moan.

And it still plays. And I can still hear it. And it's hard to ignore.

Really, really hard.

It's no surprise to any of you that I've dealt with self confidence issues from just about twenty seconds after the conclusion of my twelfth birthday party.

Doing this today was important to me. Going out in public, warts and all, blotches and curves and backfat and too-long legs and too-short torso and my twee little neck struggling under the weight of the ponderous boulder of cranium that balances precariously above it... taking the entire unmasked sideshow that is yours truly out into the fresh air today was a big deal.

The only cosmetic changes I'd have made, admittedly, would have been miniscule. Would likely not have made a difference. Except to me.

Maybe, for the healthiest of us... emotionally speaking... makeup is just that little white lie we tell ourselves. It's that little "okay, NOW you're good" lie we tell ourselves to get out the door and face those judgements and staring eyes that we KNOW we are imagining all day long.

Most of my friends don't use a lot of cosmetics. I'm so honored to be surrounded by so many strong, powerful women. Not a bad one in the bunch. Not even you crazy ones. Of my friends that do use makeup daily, they're absolutely using it as a means of accentuating their favorite features, and NOT in anyway trying to mask their imagined flaws.

We all hear the tapes in our heads. We all hear that voice that says "you can't cut it, Jack." We all know, on some level, that some day someone is going to find us out for the frauds that we are.

Doing this though, on a red and splotchy day like today... added another voice to the tape. This voice says "so what if you can't cut it, honey? who out there really can?" It says "So you're not a supermodel. Neither is anyone except for the %.000000000002 percent of the human population that IS a supermodel. and even SUPERMODELS don't like the way they look."

It says "so what?" and it took 36 years to hear it. Plus today.

And then right behind that voice is a verrrrrry soft and quiet one.
and it says "I'm proud of you baby."

And I like that voice a lot.

Good News, Everyone!

YAY! My luck is still running strong.

I just heard from my doctor.

They found "nothing".

That means that... I'm fine.

The horrible, horrible procedure of evil was worth it because even though the tissue they hacked away had no evil sprinkles of its own, it was very likely just a few months away from getting them there.

So yay. Huzzah and Hurrah.
It was worth it.

I'm okay. And now, I'm going to go power-nom a bowl of cereal.
therapeutic cereal.

Also - I'm sending out feelers for jobs. So I should be posting about that too.
Like, next. Probably.

Baby Steps

I know I know, I'll stop talking about this any day now. It bears mentioning though, that I do feel much better. Not 100%. Not by a long shot. But the main squeeze and I went out for a long, leisurely walk around the ol' national mall yesterday (it was 60 degrees WTF) and on the whole it was a fantastic and healing day out. We started at Lincoln, made an important stop at Vietnam, Ambled past geese and ducks to Washington, Swung all the way around past my man Jefferson again, and strolled back to the car. It took us about 2 hrs total.

Admitteldy it was ambitious for a first day out. I set myself back a few steps pain-wise but emotionally I am about ten thousand steps forward.

Today, I'm on low-doses of Ibuprofen and I'm not as huddled over as I've been.

Let me repeat this fact for my readers who are freaking themselves out: The LEEP procedure is a smart choice, and a healthy choice, and the RIGHT thing to do for anyone with the same test results that I had. HPV or no. It is a procedure that for most women is honestly no big deal. Honestly.

For me it wasn't. BUT I'm still glad I did it. Precancerous cells is nothing to screw around with and no amount of deep breathing, fish oil or aluminum triangles would have gotten rid of the tissue that was harvested with solid medical science. Prayer, good intentions and a healthy diet move so many people toward happy lives and amazing health-turnarounds. I was at a point, however, where there was nothing to do but get in there, get rid of what was there, and now test the tissue to see what manner of dragon we're dealing with.

Please - if you are faced with the decision to go forward with the LEEP... do so. It's scary, yeah, sure. So is a lot of stuff. So is dying of cancer and leaving your friends and family to wish you had acted differently. If I can get through that - feeling everything for the entire ordeal - you can too. If you want I will hold your hand. In person. Call me. I promise.

If I can do it, you can.

And if women out there can bear children, over and over again, and go back to work and life thereafter... then I can probably survive this business too.

When I get results, I'll share them.

Until then, do me a favor and think twice about skipping your next annual exam.

Never Again

There are so many people, the vast majority I'd wager, for whom this kind of procedure is effectively pain free.

I am in the .0001% for whom it is most absolutely not.

It took 30 minutes. I kicked and holler'ed and shook and had little panic attack style seizures. I cried. I swore and said some very unpleasant things in Norwegian.

Now I'm sore, I hurt, everything hurts, and I feel like crap. On a stick.
A pointy one.

By Odin's beard, mark my words, if this has to be repeated I will be fully sedated or someone is going to get clawed into the blood-transfusion line.

I'm talking, of course, about the LEEP procedure. I'll leave you kids to look it up on your own. My specific deets include the glorious news that I'm HPV negative *huzzah* but still mysteriously manifesting CIS/CIN II and III and enough displasia to put me on the "holy crap let's address this right goddam now" list.

So we did.

And I went in for a "walk in the park" kind of procedure which for 9999 out of 10,000 women is seriously no big deal.

and then I got my guts dragged out over glass, stabbed, burned, sliced to smithereens and then unceremoniously shoved back in.

It hurts, gang. And the only little peg of happy that I can sprinkle on this is that any of the tissue that had been suspicious has been excised, electrocuted, or cauterized beyond recognition so I'm not SUPPOSED to have to do this again.

but as we all know, my minions, "should" and "is" are two different things.

I'm hanging in there, as it were.
Me and my ibuprofen bottle and my chocolate ice cream and my doting beloved husband with his ample supply of soup and applesauce.

I'm hanging. Universe take note - I only summoned the dark powers once during the whole thing and I deliberately left out the working bits so don't count that against me. I was, after all, being ravaged by a nailgun. Well, that's what it felt like. My courage never waivered, as a matter of fact, but my intense hatred of the situation was pretty... um... intense. Outshined only by the pain I was in. So, universe, I'm hanging in there.

I'd really like some good news now, too. Concerning the test results on the harvested tissue too. That'd be super duper.

'Cause that shit? That I am never doing again.

Best Grocery Store Trip EVER!

First post in January? pooh. Well, let me tell you about today.

Today is the day my beloved husband turns 35. Which means, if you remember, that I do too. Not because we share the same birthday but because my mother always said I'd marry a younger man and since I'm actually six months older than him and I can't stand to have her be right on this one, I say that I don't get older until he does. So there, mom. Nyeah.

So yeah, I made him a cake today. Lemon poppy seed with a whippy kind of lemon curd filling and little sprinkle stars on top. Simple this year. Good and simple. And then I thought about dinner. And I thought, "you know what that main squeeze of yours likes for dinner?" and I responded, "Yeah!" and then I said "He likes a big fat salad with all the trimmings for dinner" and I responded "Yeah!" and then I looked at the fridge and was like... booh. Off to the store I go.

So you already know what happens to me when I do mundane things. I either freak out and panic and get all panic-attack-y and start gnawing on the other customers or something - OR I have some perfectly normally mundane experience involving neither braying like a donkey, peeing my pants or swearing at the joghurt display.

So you already know what happens to me. Today, door three happened to me. This is what happens when I go out in public with my brand new little Thor's hammer necklace on. What happens is... is I meet a god.

This is one of those times when the short version just won't cut it. No sir.

So I'm out there, it's like 50 degrees or some kind of nonsense, so I'm dressed kinda lightly and haven't zipped up my jacket or everything and my little Mjollnir can just kinda' hang out and smile and wave at everyone like normal.

Well. I needed salad fixings right? So I'm in the produce section and I SHIT YOU NOT this really tall kinda' good lookin' guy is there. And he's standing all upright and stiff-like... and his hair is all kinda' cropped short and otherwise he looks just like a normal dude buying peppers right?

So he turns around, and DUH I'm kinda' still looking at him and he's like "Oh hello there" like he knew me and I was like WHUNGH? He glanced at my hammer and winked at me and turned around to face me and I SHIT YOU NOT he only had one arm.

And then I died.

So after like, eight million years of me standing there with a handfull of redleaf lettuce in my hand... I nodded my head and said "how do you do?" right? Like some kind of old person, right? but he just pursed his lips, closed his eyes and did that nod thing that guys do when they know that you know something but you're both deciding to keep it a secret.

I was REALLY floundering for something practical, nay, tactical to say at this point - because really? What the hell do you say? So I just said nothing and he went over to the fruit and picked up one of those neon-colored golden delicious apples and he said "hang in there".

He put it in his basket and just walked away. I said "thank you" quietly under my breath and sort of curtseyed a little as he turned away and I'm sure my eyebrows were raised clear up to the tippy top of my crainium by then and the lady next to me nudged me and asked "what was that all about?" and I was like "long story!"

And so, my dearest gentle readers, my darling minions, that is the story of how I bumped into Tyr at the grocery store. Apparently, he likes green peppers.

It was one hell of a moment and to anyone else it probably looked like one hell of a flirt-down but I have to tell you... it was nothing of the sort. He wasn't in the rest of the store - not that I went looking for him because EGAD what would I say then other than to grip his hems and weep with gratitude - but I noticed that he was very decidedly NOT THERE when I continued my starstruck shopping trip. You know? Like he was THERE before and then he just wasn't anywhere.

Hell of a thing that.

And you can almost see the sparks flying out of my fingertips right now, my fingertips my ears, my toes - I'm just all bright and twinkly with .... you know... the kind of happy you get when you just bump into someone that most people read about as a third-circle character in comparative mythology textbooks; and then, you know, he winks at you.

Blargh. For I am ded.

But I'm too happy to be ded.

Best. Trip. EVER.

THE SURVEY!

It's the end of the year, gentle reader, and time for another navel-gazing episode of "CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!"

Ha, well no, it's just the entry where I try to summarize my previous year's activity in a simple survey I gleaned from another website long ago and now that I'm in the habit, I kindof dig the ritual. So, here we go, eh?

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Moved to Virginia. That should count for like at least eight new things, right?

2. What about the New Year's Resolutions? How'd that work out?

I do not. Make. Resolutions.

Listed goals for last year, however were as follows:

A) New tires for the car. Thanks to help from my folks, that's finally going to happen, like next month! YAY!

B) Finish the "dead zone" in the back yard with a grape trellis for the grapes. Yup, we finished this, a full two weeks before we moved. And in the interest of full disclosure, our neighbor and new renters finished the landscaping there. Universe 1, Team KJ 1.

C) Prune/Tame the honeysuckle. DONE! YAY!

D) This one was all about growing a pair and getting ready to relocate if the beloved husband found a job someplace exotic. Turns out he did, and we did relocate, and I was barely prepared for it and I'm still totally upended by the whole experience, but LO! I survived! and at the end of the day, it's working out pretty great. So that gets a YAY too. On account of how worked up I was. YAY!

Things I anticipate in the new year, but which I do not consider to be goals, include:

Hmm

A) ISBN for the book-a-roo. It's time. Let's start selling this stuff and see where it takes us. It's already well beyond my original expectations so this is alllll frosting.

B) I need a job. Dear GODS I need to get out of this apartment and get some kind of gainful employ again. Sheesh.

C) I want to keep writing. The universe makes sense when my fingers are flying across the keyboard. The whole world makes sense. Probably not another book, but maybe the outline for one? Hmmm.

D) I'd like to spend one December totally unencumbered by sickness. Seems I got sick last year too.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Holy cow, yes! So many babies born this year! Many more anticipated next year! 2011 was a year for miracles, and you know I don't like saying stuff like that. Torvald, Kenzie, Leon, CJ and too many more to name here... welcome to earth little ones. You are in such good hands.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

um... I'm trying to think now... no. I'm glad to say that I haven't lost anyone in my immediate grasp. However, a lot of great talent was lost this year, and there were a few too many very dangerous accidents that came about, so it's not like it's been far from my thoughts.

5. What countries did you visit?

Sadly, only two foreign locations were visited by me, this year. Exotic though they were/are, they're still wholly American. I went to Tennessee for the first time ever, and now I live in Virginia - which when compared to Colorado is like a foreign country some times except there's no language barrier.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Mostly, I'm going to have to call on the JOB card there. I've been a housewife long enough, and I suck at it. So if I can't be good at this, I better get paid for being good at something else.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Tough question. I'll remember the days we drove from Colorado to Virginia. I'll remember the apartment when I first walked into it and the chirruping burbles that came from kittehpants as we released her from her crate into the wide open space of our new abode. I'll remember how, after a few cheerful steps around the fresh carpet, she came bounding back and planted a solid buffle on the LEASING AGENT and loved her up like she was made of catnip.

I don't know the date, but I hope I'll always remember the night my husband and I spent playing Settlers of Catan with our beloved neighbors in Colorado.

There's so much I remember, and so much I don't want to forget. And so much that I want to go back to. Someday.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?


Moving to Virginia! That took.... it took a lot out of me. Much more than I was prepared for or have ever admitted. It's getting better though.

9. What was your biggest failure?

It's really silly, but I do feel like a failure on some level for my utter inability to maintain a tidy apartment. I mean, look at this place! HONESTLY!

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Sick in December. Lather rinse repeat. Other than that... I think we came out clean. Right?

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Heh, can I cheat and say "renters insurance"? No? Um... okay, well then the day I went shopping at the thrift store with my supergal friend out here in the DC area... and I came home with a whole new wardrobe AND a new kickass leather coat and spent a sassy $50 for the lot... that was pretty awesome.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Oh let's see... there's the MORTGAGE, yeah, that's a biggie, and then hmmm, RENT, that's a new one, and oh yes, MOVING alone was a hammer to our economic kidneys, well... let's just leave it there, shall we?

13. What did you get really excited about?
It seems stupid to say so, but I got really excited (and equally terrified) about the move. Also, I'm so excited about the babies born this year. They were all REALLY important arrivals, every last one, and I'm so proud of all those new (and repeat) moms and dads out there.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Awolnation: You can Jump On My Shoulders

Good travel music. And then the cat. Lo. For she did jump upon the shoulders while we drove. Oh, so dangerous.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? lonlier. No way around that.

– thinner or fatter? NOT fatter! YAY! not exactly skinnier, but let's say "HEALTHIER" and leave it there.
– richer or poorer? Richer, both financially and existentially. Yeah, I like last year's answer. I'mma roll with that again this year.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Laughing.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?


Oversleeping

18. How did you spend Christmas?
With family in Wisconsin, eating delicious sausages and cheeses, and then eating yummy monkeybread in the morning, and then playing settlers of Catan! YAY!

19. What was your favorite TV program?
I'm going to cheat and say I didn't have one this year. Nothing really stood out. BUT we did find a guilty pleasure in Storage Wars, and Ghost Hunters is still impossibly fascinating even though I already KNOW how every episode will pretty much turn out (to the point where I usually fall asleep at one point or another during the show).

20. What were your favorite books of the year?
Neil Gaimann: Neverwhere and American Gods

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Awolnation, Muse, and as a surprising throwback Paul Simon's Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints have absolutely come right back to life again.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

Rare Exports. Best Christmas Movie Ever. Hands Down. EVARRRR!

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I'm proud to say that I am yet one year older this year, than I was last year. My age still suits me right down to the ground and I'm pleased as ever about it.

What did I do on my birthday?

Well, my blog says I was sick (hmmm, every six months? LAME) but that my beloved husband and I had a delicious steak dinner at the Ted's Montana Grill near our house in Colorado. I do remember that - and WOW that was tasty.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

You know, this is a hard one this year because I fully expect myself to start typing "NOT MOVE TO VIRGINIA" but it would be totally false to do so. I'm glad we moved. It's been hard, but what in life isn't? It hasn't been THAT hard, after all, and the new digs are pretty cool.

When it comes to 2011 being immeasurably more satisfying, I think I'd just list how I always feel kinda' down these days, and this depression business is a pain in the nuts and I'd really just like to be all light and fluffy again. Not like I really ever WAS, but frankly getting a job will go a long way toward sorting that all out again. So honestly... I'm just left with a fuzzy grey area... "myeh" is what I'm left with as an answer to this question. and that's where I'll leave it.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
"SUPERGAL! DRESS ME!"

and lo - it worked.

26. What kept you sane?

Lots of quiet time with the main squeeze, my beloved husband. Every time I get near the raggeddy edge, he pulls me back around. So I feed him.

27. A valuable life lesson learned in 2011.


I'm not even kidding you on this one: but the best thing I learned this year was how insanely useful it is to have the laundry on the same floor as the bedroom. OMG, people, just... OMG.

Also, distance matters. But not as much as I'm always afraid it will.

SNERK

I went home for the holidays, specifically to my beloved husband’s home, and it was fantastic! We had so much fun. We ate so much good food. We had so much great family time. Museums, gingerbread houses, shopping and food preparation... it was all just SO grand!

Only thing is, there’s still (as I’ve said before) one thing you can get for free on the airlines these days, and that’s SICK! I got sick. Not airsick, this time. No, I got the “You flew flu”. I got the “welcome aboard ear-nose-n-throat airlines cold”. I got the “this is what happens when you sleep with your mouth open brain-ooze”.

*snerk* alas.

See, I took my meds for to avoid the flying-based vomitations we all dread so fiercely, and all that good meds makes me kind of zombie out. You know? I’m sitting there on the plane just stoned as hell and sleepy like a kitten in the sunshine and I just pass the f… I just pass the heck out. That means my corporeal self is on its own for a few hours and it has got a pretty long leash. That means that it just kind of sits there in the seat, clutching whatever it has been given (like a waterbottle), breathing open-mouth-edly at its neighbors, and leaning aggressively against the inhuman contours of the inner airplane walls. Usually with one or both arms at some kind of awkward angle, you know, like the kind of awkward angle that makes you think of Jim Carrey’s Tyrannosaurus Rex impression.

Ahhh. Grace. I has it.

But hey, it was a smooth flight (both ways) and I didn’t get woozy or barf or anything so I put it in the win column. Until, the next morning, I awoke with that “ouch that hurts” sensation in the back of my mouth where the swallowing muscles do their stuff. I was like, “hey! Body! Lame! Who gargled broken glass while I was out?” and my body is acting like that teenager in the back seat of the car making that three note sound that sounds like “I dunno” and “fuck you”.

Where was I? Oh right, Sick. For Christmas. Luckily my family is very understanding, and patient with my zillions of snerks and hronks and the five-ty-thousand billion Kleenexes I used every two minutes and the ten thousand billion gallons of water and soap I used washing my hands every two-and-a-half minutes. My cuticles have never been crackier, ladies and gentlemen. And lizard skin like this takes a lot of dedication.

I has teh SHEXSHY!

But then again, I was home for Christmas. We go home every Christmas, one year to my family, one year to his. We’ve been together long enough that it’s all just family and it’s always home no matter where we end up. We didn’t see much snow, I slept a helluvalot, and I wasn’t my normal perky-kitten self, but it was (for me at least) a perfect holiday and a wonderful jul, and a fantastic solstice, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Well, I’d just change this one thing about the cold. My GAWD could my mouth be any more gross? No, no it could not. I miss breathing through my nose, gentle reader. I miss sleeping through the night and waking up without having to blow my nose a kajillion times for apparently NO GOOD REASON. I miss smelling anything but carmex. I miss that feeling you get in your ears when you haven’t been snoring like a pug-dog for the last week straight (asleep or no!)

But Mostly, I miss my family. I miss the family in Wisconsin even though I just saw them. I miss the family in Tennessee, even though I saw THAT kickass party too! I miss the family in Colorado. I miss people. I miss MY people.

I miss you guys. I miss all y’all. Gentle readers and slavering minions alike. You’re all a big part of me and my every day life even when I’m so far away. Thanks for at least being out there for me. You’re all so awfully good to me. You’ll never understand what it means to have you out there.

Now please excuse me while I go evacuate my brainz again. Bleh.