Flooded Lizard Kingdom

Add to the list that includes six months of nausea, pre-eclampsia, constant stabbing gallbladder and back pain, and various other less savory pregnancy and post-pregnancy issues:

• $620 worth of cavities

I've never heard someone call their cell phone "oppositional defiant" before.

The keys were in a bag of fabric I brought home from my last quilting bee meeting. Isn't that where you keep yours?

I also checked to see if my grey tank top or C-Man's favorite pants were in there, but to no avail. Le sigh.

If you were my keys, and you weren't in a purse, or a jacket pocket, or a pants pocket, or the stroller, or the baby's room, or the refrigerator, or the freezer, or next to my sunglasses, or on the bedside table, then where would you be?

I'm terribly curious.

When I slip on the stairs and fall* halfway down while holding the baby, my instinct is to grab onto him and hold him securely close to my body.

* On my leg and backside, mostly. If I were tumbling down the way they do in movies, obviously it would not have ended with me blogging about it. 'Cause people don't really get up from that.

We here at Flooded Lizard Kingdom pride ourselves on our high journalistic standards. Accordingly, we wish to issue a correction to the post from February 13th.

It is the Xbox that allows online play of Virtua Fighter. The PS3 does not.

(The Xbox, though, makes so much noise that C-Man refers to it as the chipper/shredder.)

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

This one's going to take a bit of backstory, but stick with me.

C-Man plays Virtua Fighter, which is a video game where people beat each other up. He bought a PS3 because it offers online play against other people, which can be more fun than playing against the computer on the XBox.

He also spends a lot of time on an online forum about Virtua Fighter. In this forum, each person can include a tagline at the end of every post.

(Side note: He was talkin' smack one day to people on the forum, like he does, and getting belligerent with folks, and threatening to scan and post his law license so they would RESPECT HIS AUTHORITA. One of the moderators sent him a private message and he was expecting to get a warning about being such a jackass. Instead, he was invited to be a moderator. I was astonished. I've actually told him not to come over to my blog and act the way he acts on that forum, since it would be highly embarrassing to ban my own husband from commenting on my blog.)

Apparently, now that people are playing against each other online, there are a few people who feel the need to explain their lack of prowess at the game. The most popular explanation is something like this: "If you see me online and I'm not doing very well, it's because my little brother is logged into my account."

So C-Man has a new tagline on the forum:

If you see me online and I'm not acting like myself, it's because my five month old baby is KICKING YOUR ASS.

I love that man.

• A dog who is throwing up every day.
• Dog throw-up on the bathroom floor.
• A baby who has learned how to screech.
• A babysitter (a.k.a. C-Man's mom) who is in Dallas taking care of her sick mom (as she should be).
• A sleep debt that will take years to pay off.
• Hair that has not been brushed since yesterday.

(Note: The alternate title for this post is "Don't you want to come visit?")

Eating half a dozen miniature cupcakes doesn't actually make me feel any better.

I'm not usually a meme-r, but a few of the questions from the year-end meme looked interesting. See Grace's blog for a full set of questions.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?


Understood on an emotional level how some people feel threatened by their adopted child's biological parents. I can't imagine someone else having experienced my baby's first few minutes, hours, or days instead of him being with me. (I'm not saying this to judge anyone, just saying I could finally viscerally understand how it might feel.)

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No. Yes. Kind of. A woman at work was my "pregnancy buddy" and we did bond over all the ups and downs. Her son was born about two months after ours. However, I'm not sure she and I would qualify as close. I think we're close the way a lot of men are close to the other men with whom they bond during recreational activities.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

Full meals every day without fear, January through June. (You knew I had to sneak in something bitter about being pregnant!) On a more positive note, a pass to SXSW Interactive and enough time to see all the panels I want.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

January 12th we moved into this house. January 28th I started to feel quite ill. March 17th I left the house for the first time since January 28th to do something other than work or go to the doctor. July 26th through 29th was BlogHer, where I spoke for the second time but was disappointed in how well I did - but it was also the first time since January 28th that I went an entire day without feeling nauseated. September 11th I had the baby. That's about it.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Tie:

For failure in actions, it would be sticking my foot in my mouth with friends and family. I bring up weight with my friends who struggle with body image. When my grandfather complains about being old, I'm fake. I say things to my sister about my mom that put my sister in the middle. Need. To. Stop.

For failure in judgment, it would be getting a four month old puppy while I was pregnant. And I desperately do not need to hear anyone else tell me they agree that it was stupid. Thanks though. I promise that I am paying for it now.

14. Where did most of your money go?

House. We have paid as much on this house as my initial student loan balance. We now own 20% of it after living in it one year.

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

Gardening.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I can't think of any, which makes me sad. New music used to come into my life regularly, through mix tapes from friends or new boyfriends' CD collections. Then KGSR introduced me to a slew of new artists. Now I hate everything they play, and there are no more boyfriends or mix tapes. (I don't miss the boyfriends, in case you were wondering.)

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

Having painted at least some of the rooms in our house before getting pregnant. They're all ivory, which is better than white, and I don't actually know what colors I would have wanted, but still.

32. What kept you sane?

C-Man taking care of me, and the internet.

35. Who did you miss?

Beth. My sister. Both deeply and painfully. I meant to travel in 2007, after the legislative session ended, but I couldn't except for BlogHer. So I didn't get to see them (until my sister showed up last week).

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

The most important things are often quite tedious.

I have a wicked cold.

The baby has such bad post-nasal drip that his longest sleep of the night is only about two hours. This has been going on for almost a week.

Our dryer died last week and the new one isn't showing up until tomorrow.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

1. Leftover Mexican food from Matt's El Rancho, where we ate last night. The baby came with us, he was quite well-behaved.
2. Dog Two, on her way to the vet to be spayed. They're done already, she's fine, and we're hoping it helps with some of her more annoying behaviors. We don't know why it would, but we can hope.
3. A mouse in a trap in a box, on its way to be released in a field near C-Man's work. I don't know if the same mouse we caught and released last time somehow found its way back, or if it was a new mouse, but either way I've been doing a lot of cleaning. Eccchhh.

1. Peace and justice for everyone!
2. Scientists will create a micro-climate that surrounds my body so I never have to be cold, which means I don't ever have to wear socks unless I just feel like it.
3. Which never happens. So then I can get rid of my large sock collection and have more room in the dresser.

1. C-Man's latest T-Mobile bill
2. Dog Two's leash
3. A piece of bamboo that came in a floral arrangement from C-Man's work when the baby was born
4. Cookbook rack
5. Canvas bag we use to take library books back and forth
6. Ten library books
7. The baby's "first Thanksgiving" card from his fairy godmother
8. Two AA batteries, condition unknown
9. A plastic doorstop wedge that needs to be returned to Home De(s)pot
10. Blue and white porcelain picture frame that we received as a gift last holiday season, still empty

C-Man:

1. He doesn't criticize me, even though I criticize him.
2. He allows me to believe I am the center of the universe, but he doesn't let me walk all over him. (I know it sounds contradictory, but it works.)
3. He cooks.

The Baby (who desperately needs a pseudonym for this blog - any suggestions?):

1. He helps me practice my patience - and I'm saying this seriously, not sarcastically.
2. He is trying to maintain a sleep pattern at night of 4 hours, then 3 hours, then 2 hours, only waking up for 20 minutes in between each shift. (Those of you who have parented infants know how good this is compared to how they start out.)
3. He never critiques my made-up songs, even when they are really quite awful.

My mom:

1. She doesn't hold my adolescence against me, even though I treated her pretty badly.
2. She stayed beside me the entire time I was having the baby, even though she was having painful flashbacks of how scared she was when I was sick as a child.
3. She taught C-Man how to make scrambled eggs the way I like them.

My mother in law:

1. She firmly believes that I need care and support in order to be a good mom, and she is more than happy to provide that care - including taking me to get a massage tomorrow morning.
2. She is a great source of information and ideas about caring for children, all shared without judgment or expectations that what she has done or read about will necessarily work for us and our baby.
3. She has learned where all the dishes and clothes go in our house from doing so many chores here.

My sister:

1. She is one of the funniest people I know, so every time I call her I can be confident I will end up laughing.
2. She took on the role of being excited I was pregnant when all I could perceive was how sick I felt, and sent a box of super-cute baby clothes that arrived within days of me telling her. Those outfits have turned out to be my favorites.
3. She's shorter than I am, so I have something to make fun of her about.

• One of the database servers at C-Man's work crashed and he had to help fix it for several hours tonight and by the time he got done it was really late like 9:30 and I am very tired oh wait that's kind of more than one reason good night I'm going to bed.

1. They have many, many red trucks. They have so many red trucks that I have concluded they operate a rescue organization for abandoned and abused red trucks, giving them the TLC they need to recuperate and then finding loving homes for them.
2. Their wireless network is called PanteraNet. Hee hee!

1. Lack of Internet Access Without Resorting to Measures Like Plugging Keyboard Into PlayStation or Stringing Wires All Over The Downstairs. Hello, I'm a stay at home mom, and hello, it's NaBloPoMo. So the router chooses now to break? It can fuck right off.

2. Bugs. In the bread flour. FOUR POUNDS of bread flour. For one thing, wasteful. For another, I have no toast, because I cannot make bread, because no bread flour. Sucks.

3. No Elves to Put Away the Dishes. I have no idea how we generate so many dishes. Baby doesn't use any dishes. I need more calories because I'm breastfeeding, but it's not like I get them by eating six extra meals a day. So why I am unloading the dishwasher every other day?

4. Dell. Dell F*$king Computers. They can't stop sending mail to my house, no matter how many times I use their online request form or call their CSRs who can't understand what I want them to do. No mail here ever. None. No matter how many old lists you have with names of college students who used to live here.

5. Mosquitos. Just on general principles.

1. Horrible Laceration Of Lower Arm, sustained while falling down a hill. Right before my first wedding, to which she was planning to wear a short-sleeved dress. Lovely.
2. Period of Unconsciousness From Blow To Head, caused by a weed suddenly coming loose. She was standing on a hill (another hill, not the same hill that caused the Arm Laceration) and so when she fell backwards, she kept going. Onto the driveway. No one is sure how long she was out, but she still knew her name and what year it was when she woke up.
3. Broken Leg, acquired while stepping off the deck onto a lurking tree root. Don't ask.
4. GANGRENE. Yes, gangrene. Do you know any other American suburbanite who has contracted gangrene lately? Her doctor was bewildered.

1. The doors. Some drunk-ass motherfucker hung them all crooked, and they don't work. Some let light (and air and bugs) in, some don't close all the way, two have started tearing screws out of the frame by dragging on their hinges, one locked itself. C-Man is working on them as they threaten us, but it's obnoxious.

2. The "air conditioner," by which I mean the inside bit that blows the air and makes all the noise. Some jackass laid out the floor plan for this place and stuck that damn thing right next to the TV room. I don't like having to turn on the English subtitles on an English-language movie so I can simultaneously hear the dialog AND maintain a reasonable room temperature. This one will require a miracle to correct.

3. The paint. Some college students who used to live here decided it would be fun to draw cartoons and graffiti tags on the walls. Then whoever painted the place didn't use enough primer. Is that why we have cans of Kilz primer left over in the garage, and graffiti showing through the ivory paint upstairs? Gee, I wonder.

4. The location. If I could just move it 1/2 mile west... then it would have been at least twice as expensive, and we wouldn't have bought it. So I guess I'll leave that one alone!

• Went on a short honeymoon, half of which I spent sick.
• Worked lots of overtime.
• Thanksgiving.
• Took a week off, during which I found us a house to buy, which pretty much ate the whole week.
• Started a quilt for our new bed.
• Christmas.
• Bought the house.
• Moved into the house.
• Ice storm.
• Unpacked everything during ice storm.
• Came down with the flu. Oh wait, it's not the flu, I'm pregnant!
• Got through 80th Texas Legislative Session at work.
• Continuing horrible nausea and stabbing pain in gallbladder due to pregnancy.
• Started All Access Blogging.
• Adopted Dog Two.
• Spoke at BlogHer.
• Around the beginning of August, finally got some relief from nausea.
• Started an easier quilt for our bed in hopes of finishing it before the baby was born.
• Started developing pre-eclampsia.
• Put on bed rest.
• Induced delivery ending in use of forceps, lots of stitching, and a neck injury (mine, not baby's).
• Definitively established that having a baby around, despite fallout from actual birth, is WAY better than being pregnant.
• Quit job to stay home and enjoy the baby.

The wedding pictures, however, are almost done. I'm just waiting on a few extra ones from C-Man's aunt. Here's one of my favorites. Thanks to I-ROCK for taking it.

I've been married to C-Man for exactly one year today, and it's the most fabulous thing. I'm so glad he was bored in the law school library one day and looking at online personals.

Possible Reason #1: He does not read newspapers or blogs or watch television.

Possible Reason #2: He actually had heard about it, but as a lawyer he was shocked and horrified that a fellow member of that profession could do such a thing, and he repressed the memory.

Possible Reason #3: Every weekday he showers, gets dressed, and leaves the house to go sit under a rock for eight hours with his hands over his ears yelling "La la la la!" really loud if anyone tries to tell him what's going on in the world.

(Just google "pants lawsuit" if you don't know.)

Sir,

Whether or not you're selling anything is not the issue. I have two dogs and a baby to manage, and it's just not worth it to me to open the door for a stranger. After I said "No thank you" twice, one would have thought you would take the hint.

Sincerely,
The Princess

I am hungry.

There is a mouse in our kitchen, which may or may not be in the mousetrap.

If I put money into a vending machine, and the item I request gets stuck in the machine, so I leave a note saying please call me if it falls out, and you take it even though there's a note on the machine? That's stealing. Granted, it's 85 cents, but please be under no illusion about what you're doing.

Love,
The Princess

If I eat two donuts and a salad for lunch, doesn't that cancel out?

The Scene: A Denny's near a large airport in Houston, Friday night, around 10:30 p.m.

The Princess: Actually, it's time for me to take my pills. Except I don't think I have any that are already cut up, I was going to do that at Mom's house.

C-Man: I have a knife, hand them over.

(Waitress walks up while C-Man is cutting blue and white pills in half on a plate.)

The Princess: I swear these are legal.

Waitress: Whatever y'all are doing, it's y'all's business.

(Waitress walks away.)

The Princess: I don't think it would have made that any better if I told her I was pregnant.

Take a look at this blog post and imagine how confused I was when my brain was substituting Susanna Hoffs for the name of the person actually being discussed.

Do you really think a state government office building needs a vending machine full of "energy" drinks?

Please stop cc:ing me on that email. You know which one. I can't possibly add any value, and it just makes my head hurt.

Question: What do you get when you cross a black lacquer coffee table with the visor that LeVar Burton wore as Geordi in Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Answer: The Sceptre X42!

This was the next television that came to our home, after the old television was declared unfit and the new television was cast out when it didn't work with the Playstation.

The Sceptre X42 had all the right credentials. It was 1080p High Definition LCD etc. It was tested with the Playstation. It was from Costco. But the picture linked to above does not even begin to convey the ugliness of this object.

I went out into the backyard for about 5 minutes yesterday and found that most of my plants were still alive after being ignored for a month. C-Man watered them for me. Thanks, babe!

This time, the person who stole our car stereo did not break the window or carve up the dashboard with a knife. Thanks, thief!

The first trimester of being pregnant has completely sucked. I have not yet managed to watch C-Man play the new Virtua Fighter. How will I review it?!

At the end of Part 1, we had the new Westinghouse television and the old small television hidden behind it. Life seemed good. C-Man had his big shiny television that did not emit a high-pitched whining noise. I had the emotional security of knowing that my long-time companion was waiting for the day when I regained a room of my own. C-Man made a few speculative comments about selling the Westinghouse on craigslist so he could buy something at Costco due to their superior return policy, and I told him to do whatever he wanted as long as I didn't have to hear about it. Nothing happened. I was fine with that.

At the beginning of the holiday shopping season, the PS3 was released. To make a long story short, C-Man spent about 100 hours engaged in PS3-hunting, and ended up with exactly one (1) PS3, which he was completely unable to sell on craigslist or EBay for a profit, so he kept it. I agreed to accept that as long as it would play my beloved Max Headroom DVDs better than the XBox does, which turned out to be true.

Then my sorrows began.

The thing you must understand about lawyers is this: when they feel like they're being screwed over, they can lawyer up FOR FREE. And it turned out that the Westinghouse and the PS3 didn't talk to each other correctly, so C-Man was feeling very screwed over indeed.

C-Man called Westinghouse. Then he emailed Westinghouse. They argued. He spent an entire evening with boxes stacked on the coffee table and the digital camera perched atop the boxes. He took pictures of the television screen. He took Quicktime movies of the television screen. He emailed them to Westinghouse. He emailed them to Sony. He did internet research. He took the PS3 to Costco to plug it into other televisions. He took it to work to plug it into another monitor. He argued with Westinghouse some more. Westinghouse blamed the PS3. Sony blamed Westinghouse.

He finally decided to return the Westinghouse to Best Buy on the grounds that Westinghouse was refusing to honor the warranty. He had built his evidence file to support his case. He also had the citation for the federal law that allows chargebacks to credit cards for transactions in which the cardholder is not able to resolve a dispute with the merchant, and he was prepared to quote that law to the Best Buy customer service staff.

The original packaging for the television, however, was missing. Disposed of by someone who shall remain nameless (who is not C-Man and me and not The Dog). Even assuming that Best Buy would accept the return of a television over six months after purchase, the restocking fee would be 15% of the purchase price. C-Man announced his intention to hold the disposer accountable for the sum we would forfeit due to lack of packaging.

We bundled the television into the back seat, restrained it with a seat belt, and cushioned it with blankets. C-Man put together his evidence file, and we set off for the Best Buy in Georgetown. Since the television had been charged on my credit card, I had to go. My plan was to dissociate from the entire experience, because I've seen the look on this man's face when he's angrily typing a retort to someone on a message board about copyright issues and I didn't want to see how bad this was going to get.

We parked in the loading area and carried the television to the customer service desk, then C-Man went to move the car. A customer service person approached me.

Customer Service Person: So what's going on with this television?
The Princess: I am not talking to you about this. He is talking to you about this. He is moving the car out of the loading zone.
Customer Service Person (backing away slowly): OK, sounds good.

As soon as C-Man came in, I put my credit card on the counter and ran away to hide between the rows of refrigerators.

Not long after, C-Man appeared.

He was smiling.

It was scary.

I figured he'd killed that nice boy at the customer service desk.

While I waited for the alarms to go off and security to appear, I thought I would make conversation.

The Princess (backing away slowly): So, what happened?
C-Man: They took it back.
The Princes: Um...what?
C-Man: I'm really glad you have a digital camera.

Yes, it's true, the photographic evidence brandished by my dear husband had been enough to convince the customer service person that the television just did not work. No law citations were needed, no annotated warranty and paper trail of customer service interactions. Just a printed photograph of some squiggly silver lines on a television screen. And they had been apologetic that they had to give us store credit because it had been too long to do a credit card rebate. They didn't even charge us the restocking fee.

As we left, C-Man started to veer towards the television section.

I said "You told me to remind you that you're only allowed to buy cutting-edge electronics at Costco."

So we left.

(To be concluded in Part 3....)

In 1995, I lived in Minnesota. I was working in a stockroom behind a retail store in the Mall of America for $6.25 per hour. Somehow, I managed to buy a television. I had lived through most of my first two years of college without watching television regularly. In fact, I can't remember watching much television at all during those years, except for a cramped dorm-room group viewing of the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But dammit, I was working now, and I was going to buy a television. So I did. And for the next 11 years, that television kept me company. Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, Earth2, Highlander, The Tick, Deep Space Nine, the X-Files, Buffy, Farscape, and many more - plus hundreds of movies - played on its screen while I ironed, sewed, filed papers, studied for the math section of the GRE, recovered from various illnesses, or sometimes just sat there and watched. We had a good relationship.

Then C-Man became a regular in my apartment. "Can't you hear it?" he said. By which he meant a high-pitched whine that the television allegedly emitted when turned on. "My god, it's awful," he said. (Actually there was also some profanity involved too, but I won't bore you with the details.) After a while I had to admit that I could hear it if I concentrated, but even without concentrating I could hear C-Man whining and that was getting really annoying. So after much discussion, I told him to buy a television.

He looked on Craigslist for a replacement with similar characteristics, minus the whine. But since he is a geek boy, he was pretty much going to buy a new shiny toy. So he began to research. Over the next few months, I heard more than I ever wanted to know about LCD, plasma, projection, 1080p, and various other terms that I don't remember because OH MY GOD I DID NOT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT TELEVISIONS. I just wanted him to make a recommendation based on our household's needs and desires. He finally did, after much boredom on my part.

The television he selected was made by Westinghouse, and it was on sale at Best Buy for some ridiculously good price, so we drove up there (about 35 minutes) and got one. It didn't look very big at the store. I knew we were eventually going to have a house, and we'd be sitting further away from the television, and I didn't want to buy another one at that point to fit whatever that new space would be, so I was worried.

We brought it home. It dwarfed the old television. It was like I had a miniature television for 11 years and didn't know it. It turns out that if you put a 37 inch television next to 55 inch televisions, it looks like a tiny wisp. If you put a 37 inch television in front of a 27 inch television, you obliterate all evidence that the latter exists.

We had agreed I would put the old television on Freecycle, so I dutifully typed up an offer. When someone agreed to pick it up, I gave her directions. Then I started crying. Inconsolably. For over an hour. Did you see the list of television shows up there? For years, they and many others were my friends. Significant chunks of my life were spent tangled up in those characters' imaginary lives, and for someone with a deep need for narrative this is a big deal. I just could not get over the idea of separating from that television, despite the silliness of keeping 2 televisions in a 500 square foot apartment.

I don't know what C-Man made of it. My guess is that it boiled down to "girl crying, must fix." This is the man who bragged that he had never bought a television. In fact, the according to the FCC, anything without a tuner is a monitor, not a television, and the Westinghouse did not have a tuner of its own and thus was not actually a television. C-Man found this very pleasing, because he regards television programming as more dangerous than heroin. Don't ask me to explain how that coexists in his head with massive consumption of box sets of Buffy, Babylon 5, and Farscape. I don't know.

But he loves me, so he agreed I could keep the old television. I retracted the Freecycle offer (sorry!), and the old television waited contentedly behind the new television for the day when it would once again tell me stories.

To Be Continued...

Today we are moving into our new house. Isn't it lovely?

Thanks to Ironic Sans for taking such a beautiful photo.

Oh my god would you please stop losing yourselves! It's very stressful!

Thanks!

Last year I made resolutions in October and March. I did pretty well. I finished up all nine of my major unfinished sewing projects between October 2005 and January 2006, except for one which was completed and donated in December of this year. I made 3 more kid quilts and delivered them across the country. Then the March "resolutions" were actually just a list of areas in my life that had gone bonk and that I needed to fix. I got most of those cleared up as well. Notably, I did a good job giving The Dog at least a short walk every day.

Now we're buying a house. We've been packing this weekend, even though we haven't heard back on the appraisal yet. I'm just not going to be superstitious anymore. Our realtor is a consummate professional. The inspector and C-Man's architect dad thought it was in fabulous shape. Our financing has already cleared. The house was already bought by someone else who backed out, and he was going to pay more than we're paying. The house is not going to unexpectedly appraise for dramatically less than the value everyone thinks it has.

Part of my brain is convinced Everything Will Be Different when we move into a house. We will cook more, eat better, play with The Dog more, have friends over more often. We shall see.

However, I know it will change our Ecological Footprint. Living in a small apartment without a car, I was at about 1.9 planets to support my lifestyle. I didn't want to retake the quiz once I bought the car; we use it for errands so often. I really don't want to re-take it now that we're moving from 625 square feet to 1740+ square feet. C-Man's drive to work will be shorter, but we'll still need to focus and crank our resource usage down to compensate for the house.

So, my first New Year's Resolution is to reduce our newly enlarged footprint. The foremost decision is that we are committing to buy pre-owned furniture and decorative items. (Details of other ideas for implementation are at the end of this post, so I can keep track throughout the year. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.)

On my to do list, what does "tbl pick" mean?

Desire #1: Fewer Attacks of Vertigo Than Last Week. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be my fate. And my appointment with the specialist isn't until Monday. And then I'll probably get assigned some physical therapy. It's like the universe looked at my efforts to have a better perspective on how much time I have and decided to see how well that perspective would hold up with a little less time.

Desire #2: Fewer Hours of Overtime. I think this might turn out well. I may stay at work tomorrow evening for a few extra hours to catch up, but I'm not going in significantly before 7:00 a.m. this week like I did last week.

Desire #3: A Pantry. Since we don't own a house and apartment building owners frown on tenant-initiated remodeling, I don't think I'm going to make much headway here. Ah well.

Tonight, I drove myself to the Quilt Guild meeting. I did what I needed to do there, then I didn't want to be there anymore. So I got in my car and drove myself home. When I walked in, C-Man was glad to see me, because he stayed at home while I was driving my car to the meeting.

The End

She keeps a giant bottle of ibuprofen on her desk, and we can go into her office and take some any time we want.

Hey Jackass,

That binder full of CDs? THEY'RE ALL BURNED! Worth nothing. And it wasn't even zipped up, so it shouldn't have taken you that long to figure it out.

Also, if you're going to steal car stereos, take 10 minutes and learn how to get them out so you don't have to destroy the dashboard.

Or you could also GET A JOB.

Fuckhead.

-The Princess

I have finally admitted that my body's sleep clock is once again sproing. Since the beginning of April we have done much with the travel and I have done less with the rigorous bedtime and waketime schedule. Now I am paying the price.

I am in what I like to call the bargaining stage of recovery, which is the part where I spend a lot of time saying "Oh god it's 8:00 p.m. I am so tired can I please go to bed?" The implied other end of the bargin is that if I am granted permission to go to bed at 8, or 7, or 4:30, then I will not die. But C-Man always says that I can if I am willing to live with the consequences, and then I have to make good decisions. Mostly. If I don't want to feel this way forever.

So it's bedtime at 9:30 p.m. (forget doing anything fun in the evening), get up with the alarm between 6:00 and 6:15 a.m. (forget leisurely weekends), and most of all No Naps (really). Contrary to what we were taught as children, naps are not always benign. They can Fuck Your Shit Up if you are me. Once every six months, if you are crying because the level of tired is causing you physical pain, you are allowed to nap. But then you will start waking up again almost hourly all night long and will curse the nap.

At least right now I sleep for 3-4 hours before I start waking up over and over. It's just that last part that turns my brain into glue. Blogging will undoubtedly be somewhat trivial until morale improves.

C-Man and I have exchanged quite a few emails lately with the subject line "Hope you avoided the cops."

The maintenance person from my property management company called me ahead of time to schedule his visit, as per my request, since I wanted to gate The Dog in the bedroom to avoid the possibility of an escape attempt. He arrived and fixed everything except for the issue I'd described incorrectly. When he saw I was home from work and he was still on the property, he knocked on my door to check and make sure everything was o.k. Which it is, since there is no longer a hole in my front door, a gap in my window screen, or a faucet in my apartment that I cannot turn off completely.

Somehow it has happened that I am working four-day weeks four times in a row. The week after that I am going to what I think will be a very interesting training on Thursday and Friday. I like my job quite a lot, but one must admit that this is pretty cool.

Last week, I was considering buying plane tickets to Amarillo for a family reunion and found out that Southwest will reprice your tickets if fares drop on your flight in the future. So I bought them instead of waiting, and I put it on my calendar to check weekly just in case. Fares for our flights have jumped $50 apiece since then. I didn't want to pay as much as I did to visit Amarillo, but I'm sure glad I didn't pay $100 more.

When C-Man opened his birthday present today, it really was what I ordered. Since I hadn't bothered to open the box it arrived in, it would have been awkward if it didn't turn out to be the Akira Kurosawa Criterion Collection Box Set. Which I got on sale.

I am sure the gnats in my apartment will be dead very soon.

I spent all weekend working on a web project, but the Internet got full of glue and then my database server crashed and I was going to finish it tonight but I was at work until after 7:00 and then we had to go to the grocery store and by then it was 8:30 and I'm too tired to look at code and I didn't realize how much work I still have to do before I can put it up but I'm leaving for New York on Friday and I wanted to be DONE.

Gah.

Can I have a cookie?

When January rolled around this year, I was still working on my end of October resolutions to finish up all of those quilts. Sometime in February I was stuck somewhere with only a pen and paper to amuse myself, and the quilts were done, so I came up with a new list of resolutions.

I halfheartedly tried to make it a short list, because part of me knew that something was going wrong with my life. Part of me knew that feeling tired and angry and hopelessly stressed all the time was not sustainable, and that part of me realized that adding a bunch of tasks onto the top of that was not going to help. So I tried to make a short list, and then then shoved it in a file folder and went on about my business. Not my usual behavior with lists.

Earlier this month, the other half of me realized that just trying to work harder wasn't making me feel any better. C-Man challenged me to come up with a list of what sucks for me right now. It goes like this:

• I don't feel like I have any time.
• I spend most of that time doing chores.
• And yet the apartment is always messy.
• I'm always tired.
• I hardly ever sew.
• I hate all my shoes.
• I lost my watch.
• I don't have enough comfortable clothing.
• C-Man's preferred sleep/activity schedule is different than mine and I feel oppressed.
• I feel guilty because The Dog doesn't get enough exercise or playtime.

I usually approach resolutions as an opportunity to accomplish more. Send more birthday cards, exercise, walk The Dog, etc. But this year I noticed a huge disconnect between my draft resolutions and the list of things that suck.

I've already gotten a few items done off the resolutions list. I've switched my IRA to a company that offers socially responsible mutual funds and I've started to buy more organic food. Bully for me. Do those changes assuage my guilt for leading a high consumption (e.g. American) lifestyle and align my actions better with my values? Yes. Do they make me happier? Not really. They are value-adds, but they don't fix the underlying issues.

So I have recycled the original list and instead I am addressing the "suck" list.

I'm starting with the stuff that's easy to figure out. I have no idea how to resolve my perpetual wardrobe dilemma. I have no idea what to do with C-Man liking to sleep 4-5 hours longer than I do on weekend mornings, which knocks out my prime cleaning and bustling around time. When I try to be quiet and sit around reading or whatnot for 4-5 hours after I wake up, I am a zombie for the rest of the day. How to compromise? Don't know yet.

But I know how to feel more rested, so I'm back to sleeping on a set schedule. And it's no more difficult to walk The Dog for 15 minutes in the morning than to take her out 2 or 3 times in between shower and breakfast, etc., so I just started doing that one day and have kept it up. We walk further than we would in 2-3 short trips, she gets more outside time and exercise, I get a little exercise, all is well.

That gets at two of the "suck" items without putting more items on a checklist for me to churn through every day when I already feel like I don't have any time. Not more to do, just do it differently.

(And we are currently trying out a new dog in our home so The Dog will have some additional companionship, which I know adds more work in terms of training, walks,etc. But that is a price I am willing to pay - in addition to keeping up the morning walks - for getting right with The Dog and getting that guilt off my "suck" list.)

I'm not giving up my task orientation or my enjoyment of lists. That's who I am. I'm not going to be chilled-out-in-a-meadow girl this lifetime. But I'm going to get some sleep, and I'm going to mix it up a little so that every night isn't a parade of "must get done." Two weeks ago I took an entire week off, did not much more than go to work and make sure everyone got fed and we had clean dishes. It helped. I wanted it to help more than it did, because I always want instant gratification from my efforts to catch up on sleep, but it did help.

So that's where I am. In case anyone asks.

Yes, I have neglected my blog in the last few months. I have also neglected my quilting, despite my clearing-up of old projects. I just can't seem to get in gear on creative projects right now. Right now for the last year. At least. I feel like I'm always busy, always short of time, and yet I'm rarely engaged in doing the things I like.

I'm going to take some baby steps on fixing that in the next week or so and see how it goes.

Currently, though, I am sick, and entertained by these two searches that led to my blog: "does lizards lose teeth often" and "selling toothpaste to a lizard." I'm stealing that idea.

Also, "wicked sexy websites," "wooly mammoth bedspread," and "sample speech my groceries bag" lead to me. Who'd have thought?

This year was very much about getting rid of stuff. I have a very small apartment, and a strong aversion to clutter, so I went on a tear and Freecycled, Goodwilled, Half Priced, Half.com-ed, donated, or otherwise removed a large number of objects from my home.

During the sorting process, I realized I was keeping a number of objects because of the sentimental value attached to them, not because I actually wanted the objects. So I figured out a plan. Digital camera + blog = memory preservation without storage headaches.

I have yoghurt, dates, walnuts, carrots and apples with peanut butter, and cheerios (as a snack, no milk.)

Where would the fork come in handy?

My friend John and his wife Laura recently had twins.

YOU MUST GO LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF THE BABIES!

I just don't know how I'm not on a plane to Chicago right now to snuggle them all up.

Dear The People In Cars,

We need to talk.

I really, really appreciate that you want to stop and let me cross the street. I imagine that it must be frustrating for you when I refuse to cross and wave you along.

But honestly, and I say this with love, do you think I can trust you?

You don't use turn signals when you don't think any other cars are around. So I end up waiting to cross streets only to find out that you're going the other way, or starting to cross only to discover that you're going straight through where I was going to walk. Many of you wait until about 5 feet before the intersection to brake, and then pull up into the crosswalk. You're unpredictable, and you don't always see me because I'm not a 3000+ pound metal cage with some plastic bits and colored enamel on the outside.

The fact that you've stopped at an intersection gives me no confidence that your next move won't involve cracking some of my bones, and not in that Eddie Izzard chiropractor sort of way. I'm sorry this hurts your feelings, but it's true. I'd rather wait.

Also, you might want to calm down at the intersection of 49th and Burnet. When I walk down the hill, I'm not the hillfolk coming to beat on your car with a stick, I'm catching a bus. It's coming down the street behind you. Have a little less coffee.

Love,
The Princess

Huzzah!

Dear That Guy In That Truck,

It's called a stop line for a reason. I shouldn't have to walk out IN THE MIDDLE of a busy intersection because you parked in the crosswalk to wait for the light to change.

Do it again and you're going to be sorry that I know how to throw a javelin.

Sincerely,
The Princess