I can't believe it's been two entire months since I updated my blog. No wonder people are shaking their fists at me and making vague threats. Of course this post may not stop that as I have stopped by to say HUMBUG!

It's Christmas again and I can't wait for it to be over. Oh sure, I like having cookies and brownies and other assorted baked goods floating about the office...but it's all that other stuff that gets me down. That shopping stuff. For one thing, I hate crowds. My personal space is a very well defined area extending approximately 18" away from me in all directions. After having my personal no-fly zone violated repeatedly, I find that my elbows start to rise in preparation for jabbing the ribs of the next unfortunate interloper. My lip curls. My brow furrows. I growl. And despite this display of primitive aggression, I am trampled by eager shoppers, to whom I am apparently completely invisible. By the time I leave the (store/mall/bazaar), I have a headache, an ulcer, and ingrown toenails.

And can we talk about Christmas music? I've been hearing it virtually incessantly since early November. BEFORE Thanksgiving. I am so sick of it now that I think I'm going to puke if I hear 'Winter Wonderland' one more time! Exactly how many versions of that song are there, anyway? And what's the deal with that 'Buy my mom these shoes because she's going to DIE and meet Jesus tonight' song??? What kind of fucked-up, manipulative sack-of-shit wrote THAT song? What does it have to do with Christmas? And more importantly, who buys this record?? Arghh. Somehow this is the fault of the Republicans. I'm also sure they are behind the Kenny Rogers song I heard just yesterday that seemed to be put together using some formula: God + USA + Christmas= Huge Record Sales. I am waiting for David Allen Coe or someone to make the perfect Christmas song - 'It was snowing the day I bought my dying mother shoes so she could be pretty for Jesus before I went off to save CHRISTmas from the secular humanists here in the USA!'

All I want for Christmas is to see Bill O'Reilly hanging from the highest Christmas tree.

But back to shopping...have you noticed how many clerks and cashiers are using the phrase, 'Can I help who's next?' I hate that. I want it to be stopped at once. Banned, preferrably. I want it to be illegal and to carry some substantial jail time. The grammar is just all fucked up. How about, 'Can I help the next person?' Or just a simple 'Next?' would work for me. I'm just that kind of girl.

And one more thing...what about when you have to wait an excessive amount of time in some line or another and someone then says to you, 'I'm sorry about your weight'? Oh, I know they mean, 'I'm sorry about your WAIT'...but I always hear it the other way. And I always think, 'YOU'RE sorry? Imagine how I feel?'

So, in conclusion, and not to totally disregard everything I just said...BUT....Happy Holidays everyone!

I think it's possible that the only creatures weirder than boys are kittens. I acquired one of these beasts over the summer, mostly for the purpose of keeping my grown cat company while I'm away. I've long thought that cats and kittens are so different as to almost be two separate species. They metamorphose, as in caterpillar to butterfly. You don't think of a caterpillar as a baby butterfly, and you shouldn't think of a kitten as a baby cat. You should think of it as a baby monster.

For one thing, kittens have a quota of things they have to knock over per day. My particular kitten, a darling little orange thing that I named Munch, has an especially high quota. If she can knock said items over on top of my head...well, that's just a bonus.

Munch loves me. If I am in the apartment, Munch wants to be near me. Or on me. And if I try to walk away from her, she makes it her business to wrap herself around my legs and trip me. And since I do enjoy being adored, I love Munch back...from about 7:30am until 2:00am. It's the wee hours of the morning when I find myself plotting mayhem, murder, and wanton kitten abuse. That's about the time when she gets what my sister calls 'The Rips'. To have 'The Rips' means to have an overwhelming need to barrel through the house, yard, or airport (as the case may be) for no apparent reason and with no specific destination in mind. This results in Munch barreling right across my head repeatedly while I'm trying to sleep. And then when she gets tired of that, she jumps onto the mantle above my bed to get a head start on the day's quota of knocking things over. Onto my head.

I do understand that all of this is typical kitten behavior and I know that she'll grow out of it. What I don't really understand though is why exactly she feels the need to excavate the other cat's feces from the litter box and leave them on the bathroom rug. I can only assume she feels that Allie's waste is fouling HER litter box. She is, after all, the Queen. At the very least she's a Duchess or a Princess.

I think she's going to be a great cat when she grows up. She's very affectionate and I've always wanted a lap cat...but wish us all luck at surviving her kittenhood.

And send coffee. Lack of sleep is starting to wear on me.

For L --
Real; Being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verifiable existence.

But I guess it was more the perception of reality I was talking about the other day. The wholly unobjective FEELING that a situation is or isn't actually occurring. And not so much in the way things sometimes feel unreal when you're very stressed, but a more general feeling. Like when you wake from a dream and it seems almost like the dream was more real than the bit where you got up and brushed your teeth and headed out for work. Don't you ever have moments when you know the aliens will be here any minute to tell you that the test is over now, you passed, and you can come home?

If not...well...nevermind. I'll see about getting my medication adjusted and we'll never speak of this again.

By the way, I've changed my 'comment' settings so that you have to do a little word verification thing to leave a comment. Sorry if this is a pain in the ass, but I keep getting these spam comments that I hate, so this should get rid of them.

Thank you for your support.

Keep those donations rolling in!

I decided to post some pictures of the convention I went to Utah to work on. Be sure to click to see the larger versions as you really can't see much in these small versions. It was all for a company called Nuskin, but each of their divisions had it's own separate area and look. This one is the Nuskin product area. We printed all the graphics you see here, banners, signs, etc., and my company designed and built all the structures you see as well.








This next one is for the Big Planet division of Nuskin. Again, my company designed and built all the structures. That big 'b' logo was particularly interesting to try to adhere graphics to. It's nearly 6" thick and made out of several layers of gator foam, routed to shape. The fun part is that there's a motor underneath it and it actually rotates.








This one is of the Pharmanex area. We built the bridge and painted it to look like old wood, and some of the crew actually went to the mountains and brought back the log beside the bridge. And that's real dirt too! The forest graphic along the side of the bridge was printed by yours truly. That was one of the really cool parts about getting to go to Utah -- seeing the graphics that I print actually in the environments they're being used to create.






This is typical of a lot of the graphics we printed. It incorporates the show logo as well as it's slogan "Choose to be a Champion", and we really like making dimensional displays. We rarely use flat graphics when we can build something that stands on it's own. Not only does it look cool, but it saves money on buying or building stands.








And here's something else we made. The stage. We designed and built it. We also handle the lighting, so while it's purple and blue in this pic, at other times it was green or orange. We also provide the video or speaker support that goes on the big screens you see, and often we'll have a producer who is actually calling the show and giving cues and such.








Last but not least, here is a view of Salt Lake from the hotel window of a co-worker of mine. This is why I so wanted to get out of the convention center and into the mountains. Beautiful, isn't it?

I'm going to pose a question that I would really like some responses to -- no matter how weird it might seem.

Have you ever felt like the world we're living in is not the real world?

I had an interesting conversation with Nate the other night (and that would be Nate, my son's pseudonym, not Nate my boss, for those of you who know me) about how he feels sometimes that this isn't the real world - that there's something else he's supposed to be doing or preparing for, and this isn't it. He has this image of himself in a room of ash that both protects him from a flow of lava that surrounds it, and imprisons him within the room. I guess it's sort of a Matrix-ish idea...that he's moving around this world, but that in the real world, he's stuck in a room of ash and needs to get out somehow.

What really interested me about this idea is how many times I've said that I feel sometimes like I'm stuck in a box that I can't get out of. I posted a poem on the subject that's somewhere in the archives of this blog. We both seem to have an idea that there's something else we're supposed to be doing that we can't quite define. He also mentioned that sometimes he thinks he just needs to leave the house and start walking and go out into the world. How many times have I said that very thing?

So...are we both having some kind of malaise and discontent that seems to be genetic? Or does everyone feel like this?

He went on to tell me about a dream he had that seemed very real to him, wherein he felt that he was in the actual REAL world, and was doing what he needed to be doing. There was pain and cold and struggle in the dream, but he knew he was where he belonged. He'd like to get back to that dream. I told him that maybe that dream was teaching him something about what he wants, and how he wants to feel. That he can have that feeling in this world. I confess I was having some concerns about him going off all half-cocked and trying to catch the Hale-Bopp comet or some such. I told him he's searching for something and he needs to keep looking and he'll find it in this world -- this being the one we seem to be in and all. All the same, I know I've had the same feeling before, that there's something else out there...and I wonder if I was telling him the truth. I told him what made sense, but still...I wonder -- probably because I haven't had any success finding the feeling he described, and I know I've searched for it too.

So you tell me...is it the family wanderlust coming home to roost (or maybe the family mental disorder), or do you all feel that way too? Are any of you trapped in boxes or rooms of ash? If so, how do we get out?

This is the back of my head. I think it's cute that my ears are all pink and decided to share it. I know, I'm weird.

I flew to Utah last week to work setting up a show my company is producing. We do what's called 'Business Theater'. It's pretty neat, actually, but the most important part of the first sentence there is the 'I FLEW' bit. Because I don't fly. I am terrified of flying. I haven't flown since I was nineteen, having flatly refused to do so. But this has been a really strange year for me, and a lot of things have happened within and without me. It feels that way, anyhow.

For one thing, I experienced a depression so deep that I really thought maybe dying wouldn't altogether suck. And for another, I got back in touch with my inner teenager who was always a daredevil who loved to ride rollercoasters. Maybe those things don't have anything to do with my brand new willingness to get on a plane, but it feels to me like they both relate.

What's scary about flying, for me, is that you absolutely have no control of what happens. If another plane, or a flock of geese, or a flying saucer, suddenly darts in front of the huge hunk of metal you're riding in, you personally cannot grab the steering wheel and swerve out of the way. You have to let go and accept that you're not in control. And maybe that's something that's been happening to me this year...I've been learning that there are many things I'm not in control of, and working on letting go of my need to feel that I am -- which is by no means a done deal. Letting go is not an easy thing for me.

I've been thinking about what it means to value the life that I have, since I don't feel any assurance that I am going to have anything beyond this one life. I do have hopes for something more than this one, but all I have that I can be sure of is right now. I can let that thought cause me to be so afraid that I wrap myself in metaphorical styrofoam and put myself on an equally metaphorical shelf, and maybe that'll protect me and maybe that's a way to value this life...but when you get right down to it, all the styrofoam in the world (metaphorical or otherwise) isn't going to protect me from all the things I can't control. There are going to be earthquakes and lightning and drunk drivers and unexplained MASSes and war and famine and maybe space aliens. Or more likely, something I haven't thought of, can't predict, and therefore can't guard against. So maybe a better way to value this life is to learn to do what makes sense to protect myself (eat oatmeal, wear my seatbelt), and then let go...and FLY.

So...I flew to Salt Lake City. And it was great - other than the whole having to work the whole time I was there bit. But the flying in, that was great. The place is surrounded by mountains, which were covered with green, red, and yellow blotches. I guess 'blotches' is not a very picturesque word, but I can't think of a better one. The green bits were pretty clearly pine trees, but I couldn't tell what the red and yellow were, except that they were very vivid. Someone told me later that the red was maple trees and the yellow was aspen. I very desperately wanted to get up into the mountains before I left, but there just wasn't any time for that at all. I worked every day right into the evening, and then worked on the last day right up until the shuttle left for the airport. I'm going to have to make another trip out there just to see those yellow and red blotches up close.

Probably everyone else flies a lot and knows all about how things look from an airplane, but I was enthralled. Glued to the window most of the time. The first thing I noticed was that everything looks artificial and very clean from the air, and unusually sharp. It looks like little fake houses and buildings. In fact, I probably wasn't even in an airplane. I was probably in a transporter device where they show this fake film on the windows to make you THINK you're flying, and they don't have the budget to actually include any mess at all in the graphics.

The next thing I noticed, as we got higher - and I was continually struck by this, is how much the surface of the planet is affected by human activity. It's all divided into regular rectangles and circles - parcelled and portioned by roads and borders. This bit owned by this person, and that bit owned by another. I couldn't escape the thought that we're like these big termites just chewing up the landscape. We've infested the whole planet.

Except for the Blasted Lands. That's the name I gave to the large areas that looked utterly unihabited and utterly dead. I'm sure if you're closer, there's plenty of life down there, but from the air, it looked like Mars. In fact, it reminded me a lot of an IMax movie I saw that explored the surface of Mars. It was beautiful and desolate.

There were also entire cloudscapes as well. Before we landed in Houston (where I had a layover), I swear I saw a giant dragon in the sky, plunging up through a huge cloud. It's mouth was open and it's teeth were bare. But the most beautiful thing I saw from the air was a mountainous area where the tips of the mountains were poking up through the clouds, and it looked like the clouds were piling up on one side of the mountain and then spilling over the edges like a giant waterfall. Amazing. And something I would never have seen from the safety of the ground.

Now I can't stop thinking about where else I want to fly off to. There are so many places I want to go and so much I want to see, and I can't help feeling like this whole flying thing has opened up the world for me. I can plan travel now that doesn't have to include days and days of driving. And I can think about going to Europe or Africa as more than a pipe dream. It could really happen.

Wow.

On Lovers:

Bee was the first. She had a luxurious mane of curly chestnut hair that I never got tired of brushing, and exquisitely shaped lips that I was always fantasizing about kissing. I made thousands of drawings of her lips in the margins of notebooks, on scraps of paper...in the phonebook. Everywhere. Twenty-two years later, I can still draw them perfectly.

And then there was L., my first real girlfriend. The night we met, we literally kissed all night long. Dusk to dawn. I'd never slept with a woman in my arms before and even when I started to fall asleep, I couldn't stop kissing her. I didn't want to waste a second. Hey, L., we'll always have Columbus, right?

And She-Ra...whom I loved without reserve. I'd taken her to a motel (a horribly cheap one - I was a mere child and didn't know any better), and she'd showered and come to bed. I looked at her, sitting there with the blanket pulled up to her waist, and I knew at that moment that I'd never forget what she looked like just then. Hair still a little damp from the shower, face flushed with the heat, lips and cheeks pink, and hazel eyes shining. I'd never seen anything so beautiful.

There was another L., as well...soft, supple, sweet, and forbidden. She put lipstick on me that I immediately wasted by kissing her fervently until it was gone.

More later.

I feel like a salmon swimming uphill.

She's some
sexy crazy
cowboy goddess
wearing those wraparound shades
that reflect the sun...
that reflect my face...
looking wan and wrong
and somehow not real
wavery and thin

She's red and orange
and a cacaphony of purple
and blue
Sitting there smiling
being as real as the ground
as the sun
as the water

And leaving me to wonder
if I exist at all in this real world...
or only as a reflection
like a second thought
in her sunglasses


© J.C.W. 2004

Just thought I should stop in and report that I am alive, well, and doing much better these days.

On the other hand, I am extra tired and sleepy this morning and have the very odd feeling that possibly I put my underwear on backwards this morning.

I wonder if that's an omen for how the rest of the day will go.

annie died the other day


never was there such a lay --
whom, among her dollies dad
first ("don't tell your mother") had;
making annie slightly mad
but very wonderful in bed
-- saints and satyrs, go your way


youths and maidens: let us pray


cummings, e. e. "annie died the other day."

Third best nap: I was about six years old and fell asleep on a cow. Really. He was more like a calf, I guess, and being a 'he' would have been a baby bull, not a cow. He was a pet though. My father delivered him from his dying mother and we handfed him and named him Lucky. We had a nap together on a sunny day, with him lying in the grass and me leaning against him.

But that was back when the world was young.

The first best nap was not all that long ago, in the scheme of things. I'd gotten up early to deliver Nate to school, then drove directly to Jadyn's place. It was when we'd first met and neither of us had a job to get to, and PB was in her bed asleep, so we snuggled up on the couch together -- both pleasantly drowsy. Somehow, we ended up soundly asleep, her mostly on top of me, her weight and warmth providing the perfect conditions for a nap. The very best one ever. I can only hope to meet its equal one day.

There was a day when my heart was heavy and my skin was brittle. She sat with me on the sofa and gently took my hand in one of hers, and with the other, began to buff my nails.

She said, 'they're going to be so shiny...see?'

I felt something move inside me. Some broken part shifted closer to its proper position.

I leaned my head against her shoulder. The late afternoon sun shining through the window warmed me while she kept up a steady rhythm with the nail buffer.

And I fell asleep.

Peace.

And that was the second best nap I ever had.

In the immortal words of Roberto Duran, "No mas, no mas."

Or more accurately, no mas mass.

The MASS is gone. I don't know what it was...might never know what it was...but my follow-up MRI showed that it's gone.

Personally, I think maybe it was a trill. Everybody watched Deep Space Nine, right? It was probably just an alien symbiote that decided it really wasn't all that into me after all and beamed back to the mother ship.

And speaking of folks who really aren't all that into me after all...Jadyn and I seem to be going our separate ways. I've been really reluctant to post that news because then it seems so real, and I wish it wasn't. I am consoling myself by thinking that if my life was a movie (and isn't it really just one long story, starring me?), I'd have to change partners from time to time. It keeps the story interesting. Adds drama. And in the movies, if it's meant to be, then we'll weather incredible adversity... one or the other of us will be imprisoned in a deep dark place and finally escape; one of us will fight a battle all alone against a superior force; we'll travel through snow and ice; and then, in the end...we'll come back together in a reunion that's so achingly sweet that there won't be a dry eye in the house. And if it doesn't happen that way, no doubt I'm destined to accomplish a great feat...and while I'm off climbing a mountain or painting the ceiling of a chapel, maybe that girl I didn't notice from a few scenes ago will catch my eye at last.

Because if my life is a movie, I'm sure it's not one of those awful sad movies - it's high adventure and emotional derring do. Like Helen Keller said, 'life is a daring adventure, or it's nothing'.

There you go. Two quotes in one post.

Another entry in the 'Weird Boy' column.

For the last two years, I've been driving Jadyn to drop PB off at daycare or kindergarten every morning before work. This has been a generally tedious, sometimes unpleasant task. When the boy is sleepy, his feet disappear. He can't walk. He can't stand. You must carry him. Please refer to my earlier post regarding our adventure with a shopping cart for an approximation of his weight. But generally after we get him in the car and buckled up, he'll finally wake up. That's when he's 'hungwy'...nevermind the breakfast that he declined before we left the apartment. Or he might be chatty, which has generally consisted of repetitions of the word 'chicken' or whatever the new strange noise of the week is.

But the real fun doesn't start until we get to school. The way it works is that a line of cars forms up to the front door of the school. When it's your turn, you pull forward, and some kind staff member will come out and relieve you of your bundle of joy. I've seen other people do this...it seems a fairly straightforward proposition. Pull up. Open door. Extract child. Drive away.

With PB...not so much. He refuses to be hurried. We pull up. The staff member opens the door, greets us, greets PB, and tries to coax him out of the car.

He stretches languidly.

Twice.

He puts on his jacket (fastening every zipper) for the three foot walk to the door.

He remembers something about Godzilla that he simply must tell his mother.

He stretches again.

Languidly.

By the time he's been dragged from the vehicle, the people in line behind us are honking and throwing rotten vegetables at us. And that's on a good day. I've seen him actually clutch the seat belt with both hands and refuse to let go until his little fingers have been pried off one at a time.

But isn't it funny how love will change everything? PB has developed a crush on Miss Andrea, the staff member who usually gets him out of the car in the morning. She's sort of cute in a Pillsbury DoughGirlish sort of way, but he adores her. We first noticed it one day when she got him out of the car (with no delays on his part) and he said to her "your hair STILL looks pretty!" The next day, it was her shirt. Then her pretty pink flip-flops. Yesterday, she got a double: "I like your purple shirt and your necklace!".

This is apparently becoming a part of the day that he looks forward to. I watched him this morning as he was watching her coming out the door for him. He was scanning her up and down, no doubt looking for her next compliment-worthy attribute. He had to fall back on 'shirt' again today, but he didn't neglect to mention something.

As for Miss Andrea, she seems pleased and of course who wouldn't be happy about getting all those compliments from a handsome young gentlemen, but I think ultimately their relationship is probably doomed to be mostly a teacher/student kind of thing. That's what's great about being six though...he won't even mind. And I don't mind either. It's made the morning drop-off routine something for me to look foward to also.

Energy = MASS x the speed of light squared

Force = MASS x acceleration

The coneheads consumed MASS quantities of food and beer.

Those are all examples of ways you wouldn't mind hearing the word 'MASS' in a sentence. It's only when you put the word 'mass' together with words like 'pelvic' and 'MRI' and 'biopsy' that it starts sounding kind of scary and sinister.

Apparently I have some unidentified 'thing' in my pelvis that is going to have to be biopsied in the near future. My doctor has no idea what it is -- it doesn't look like anything she'd typically expect to find in that region. A friend of mine has helpfully pointed out that it's better for her to say that she doesn't know what it looks like than for her to say, 'hey! that looks exactly like a cancerous tumor!'. I have to agree with her on that one.

You know what else is scary? When someone schedules an appointment for you to go over your test results and suggests that you bring your Significant Other along with you. Apparently this is not entirely unusual -- I know because the second time someone said that to me, I asked 'do you say this to everyone?' and was told that yes, they do say that to everyone - which I think they should mention to you right off the bat. Like so: "Now don't freak out because we say this to everyone, but bring someone with you to your appointment."

Don't Panic.

Panic would be counterproductive anyway.

And do you know what else I've learned? I'm not sure it's possible to maintain a state of panic or even high anxiety for a very long time. It's exhausting. It's been about a week now since my doctor first discovered the MASS, and I still don't know what it is...but I'd say my anxiety level has steadily dropped -- well, after peaking about an hour before I got my MRI results. I hope I never have a reason to discover whether I'm right in my theory that you can't panic long-term.

I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Wish me luck.

How was my weekend, you ask?

Well, Jadyn and I went out to a local club Saturday night to meet some friends of ours and have a few drinks, and I learned what it actually takes to keep a group of 30ish to 40something lesbians entertained for hours.

Angelina Jolie in a bikini?

Hmm. Nice, but really, that's overkill.

Women's basketball?

Also a perennial favorite, but there just wasn't a court available and no game on tv either.

And nope, we didn't disassemble a car engine and discuss carburetors.

We played The Balloon Game. Now, you may think that involved scantily clad women, but you'd be wrong. It involved a literal balloon, and a table full of lesbians trying to see how long they could keep it up in the air. The scantily clad women were all up on the dance floor, sweating and grinding, but we paid them no attention. It was all about the balloon...for about an hour. Then, just when it was starting to get boring, someone came up with the idea of using these little glow sticks to bat the balloon with, rather than our hands. This added an element of skill to the whole thing and we were off and running for another hour or so.

I'm not sure who won. I did hear someone at some point say, 'that's a point for us' when the balloon hit the floor, but I was never clear on whether I was part of 'us' or 'them'. I just know that when the balloon came my way, if I failed to bat it in a timely manner, I would be reprimanded.

I do hate to be reprimanded.

Another little sidebar to our evening out Saturday was what I like to call The Battle of the Femmes. A friend of mine, who is somewhat of a femmey type, was admiring Jadyn's fingernails. Then Jadyn admired the friend's fingernails...but since Jadyn's were two toned with a design on them and hers were just one color, the friend, needing to make points in The Battle of the Femmes, whipped off her shoe to show off her toenail polish. Jadyn, not to be outdone, tugged her shoe off and attempted to put her foot on the table where her toenail polish could be appropriately admired.

Unfortunately, she didn't quite get her foot ON the table as much as she pushed it INTO the table...which resulted in an entire Long Island Iced Tea crashing into my friend's lap, pretty well drenching her. This ultimately led to the friend ending the evening with her wet underwear in her purse. (I've heard of that happening before, but I think the circumstances are usually a bit different).

But I'd say that Jadyn won the battle, by forfeit if nothing else.

I think next time we go out, I'm going to bring a softball and a couple of gloves to pass the time. Oh, and I'll also remember to wear my raingear.

This blog has been hi-jacked by the Queen of the Ferrari's so I can say.....






I love you
..kytti..

I am a regular visitor to salon.com -- a site I highly recommend. They have an advice column that I read regularly, written by a guy who's advice I sometimes think is spot-on, but other times I think he just enjoys hearing himself talk. Or seeing himself type. Whatever.

Today, in response to a letter from a 40ish guy who has realized that his life is not at all what he wants it to be, he wrote that the guy should make a list of things he wanted and things he would have to do to make those things happen, and the point he kept making was 'don't rule anything out'.

I'm just mulling on that right now. I think I'm going to continue to mull for a bit.

Don't rule anything out.

If you want to read the letter and response, here's the address: http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2005/01/27/failure/index.html. You'll probably have to watch a commercial to get to it, but they're usually brief.

Last night I performed a Difficult Extraction, and I'm not even a dentist.

PB got himself stuck in a shopping cart. Firmly.

First he got bored walking around the store. Then he got bored sitting in the back of the cart. I'm pretty sure that's why he decided to wedge himself into the front of the cart...you know, that place where SMALL children ride while their mothers shop. PB is not a small child. He's only just turning six, but he's big for his age; tall and very solid. I'm not even sure how he managed to lever himself in there in the first place. The leg-holes were barely big enough for him to fit in, but once he got in there, there was no getting him out. The back of the seat was pressed firmly up against his butt and there was no wiggle room in the front either.

First we tried encouraging him to get himself out. He looked like he really wanted to be helpful, but he couldn't manage much more than swinging his legs and wiggling his behind a little -- none of which was effective at all. Then Jadyn tried to lift him out. I'm not sure what he weighs these days (he's not overweight, but he is, as I mentioned, SOLID), but lifting him is akin to trying to heft a small pony.

So no luck lifting him out the front.

I tried parking the cart against a wall and dragging him out from behind. No go. Then I tried lifting him from the front, which I knew was going to be futile because I'd seen Jadyn try it already. No surprise there -- still no go.

I asked him to get himself out again. Uh huh.

I tried pulling him out the front again.

I was just about to call for the Jaws of Life when Jadyn suggested that I just tip the whole cart over.

I reassured PB that I wasn't going to drop him and told him to hang on to me while I started lowering the cart onto its side. Poor kid clutched onto me so hard that he nearly succeeded in ripping the front of my shirt open, but through the sheer force of my amazing strength, I managed to lower the cart until it was on the ground, and PB slithered out.

And that's why I rock.

Also, I beat my phone at chess again.

Speaking of primates...

I spent nearly three hours last night grooming my mate. I removed a couple hundred microbraids from Jadyn's hair. It was tedious, yet strangely gratifying. I had to take scissors and snip off the ends of the braids, then unravel them with a hairpin, and finally pull the 'Not Jadyn's Hair' out from betwixt the real hair and throw it in a trash can. My hands were aching by the time I was done.

We started off with me on the coffee table and Jadyn sitting in the floor in front of me, taking the ones in front out herself, but then my back started to hurt so we relocated to the couch, with her head in my lap. I think I would have happily carried on with the process most of the night if not for the fact that I finished up by 10:30 or so and there just wasn't any more grooming to be done. It was very relaxing. Jadyn commented later on how slow and steady my breathing had become while I was working on her.

All in all, it was very companionable and somewhat intimate.

It's good to be a primate.

So...earlier today I was on this planet somewhere in the vicinity of the Orion Nebula with some of my friends, and we were having a rumble with this other guy and some of his friends...an important rumble. The fate of the planet was hanging in the balance.

Now, I'm trying to sneak up on this guy (let's call him Bruce), but he's got his twitchy little friend Percy standing lookout, and his other friend Hoss between me and him. I know Bruce is a wimp, but I'm a little nervous about Percy and Hoss ganging up on me. What I need is for Hoss to go for a walk, and to block Percy's view of Bruce...so I come with this great idea...what I'll do is send my buddy Jimmy Liverpool out to distract Percy, and then I'll get my friend Rocky to lure Hoss outside. It wasn't a great plan because Rocky was almost definitely going to get killed, and Jimmy Liverpool didn't really stand a chance against Percy if Percy realized what he was doing.

What happened was this: Jimmy Liverpool goes out and starts jumping up and down making so much noise that I'm sure Percy's going to run right over him, but instead, Percy just stands there laughing. And then -- get this--Hoss goes off to take a whiz!! Right at the critical moment! Which is great because then Rocky doesn't have to go under fire, and then a couple more of my friends, Beulah and Dave gang up on Bruce while Percy's distracted and Hoss is off draining the lizard...and Bruce just gives up! Surrenders. He knows no matter where he goes, we got him.

And that's how me and my buddies saved the planet earlier today.

Ok, ok....it was actually about chess, but I figured everyone might be tired of hearing about chess.

A truly amazing thing happened last night. I beat my phone at chess! And it wasn't even set on 'VERY EASY', it was on plain old 'EASY'! I guess all I needed to do to win was blog about how I can't beat my phone at chess. It was like magic.

Maybe now I should start blogging about all the other things I can't do...like win the lottery, or look like Angelina Jolie, or be appointed President by the Supreme Court.

I'll let you know if all those things happen by tomorrow morning.

You know I'd make a great President.

I am obsessed with chess. I wonder where it's been all my life. I'm 40 years old, and have just recently discovered how much fun this game is -- how intricate, how many possibilities there are for ways things can play out.

At first, I sucked. I mean truly sucked. I sucked with the sound of a thousand suckings. I lost EVERY game that I played, even against others who sucked. My main problem is that I tend to focus too intently on whatever nefarious plot I'm hatching against my opponent's king. Or queen. Or rook. Or whatever other piece seems to be in my way. (I know, I know...the only piece that really matters is the king!). But I get so focused on carrying out what I'm doing that I forget to watch what my opponent is doing. For example, maybe I'm thinking that if I could just get my bishop to spot A, then my queen on spot C can move to spot E and THEN I'll GET 'EM! Only problem is that while I was trying to get my bishop to spot A, my queen got captured on spot C, and not only that, it got captured WITH the thing I was trying to clobber on spot E, which is now sitting over there on spot C! But hey...I got my bishop to spot A, and that's...something...to be...proud of? sigh.

So I kept losing. EVERY game. But I kept at it. I was playing two or three games a day, every day, and reading up on everything I could find about chess and chess strategy in the meantime. Now I only lose a little over half of the games I play (which pretty much means that if you suck, I can beat you -- if you're any good, you can distract me by dangling your queen in front of my nose and I'll totally go after it and let you checkmate me while I'm not looking).

Jadyn beats me most of the time. I give her all the credit for getting me interested, and teaching me enough that it got to be fun. And she keeps me humble too. No one is better at dangling a pretty little queen in front of my face than she is. (She's also pretty good at dangling other things too, but that's a subject for a different post).

My PHONE beats me ALL the time. I downloaded a chess program for it and I play it whenever I'm waiting for Jadyn to come out of a store -- you have no idea how much time I spend waiting for Jadyn to come out of stores. I can't beat it. Not even when I set it to 'VERY EASY'. My phone scoffs at me. It has no respect me for whatsoever. My goal now is to beat my phone. Just once. On 'VERY EASY'.

But I don't want you to think it's all about winning, because it's really not. I enjoy playing even when I lose - especially when I learn something. I am almost always thinking about some chess game that I've played recently, running through different scenarios. It's what I'm thinking about when I'm falling asleep. It's akin to the post-coital analysis I tend to want to do whenever the sex was really good. 'Hey...you really seemed to like it when I did that one thing...and my god, what were YOU doing when I made that noise'? Only now it's 'Hey...did you know what I was doing with my knight when I took that pawn? And wow...the way you brought your bishop into play! Amazing!'

I am, in fact, in the middle of a game right this second - which I seem to be losing...so I'm going to concentrate on that for a while. And I'll let you know when I beat my phone.

If anyone is interested, I'm usually on yahoo games at lunchtime, under the name charlotteredman. Come play with me.

I got rid of the chapters from my novel. I don't really think anyone was reading them anyway and they just took up too much space. If there is someone out there in the vast, murky, internet landscape who actually was interested, drop me a line and I'll send you the rest of the story. For the most part, I think anyone who wanders through here knows me already and has likely already read it.

We should probably catch up. I was offered a new job recently (bigger company, a little more money) and turned it down at the last possible moment to remain here in the basement. The new place wasn't going to allow me to have coffee at my desk. That was a deal-breaker for me. There were other factors as well, but suffice to say that the grass isn't always greener, and I've gained a new appreciation for what I have here.

Jadyn has been very up and down lately with the MS. Mostly down these last few weeks. The new doctor has turned out to be pretty great, though, so that's a good thing. Jadyn finished up a course of steroids right before Christmas that was supposed to allay the symptoms she'd been having, but it doesn't seem to have had an effect so far. Maybe it will yet. In the meantime, she's in the process of getting approval from her insurance company to be her doctor's first patient to get the new wonder-drug for MS. I have high hopes that it will be helpful for Jadyn, and also some fears because it's such a new thing.

I love Jadyn.

I worry for her. I hate that I don't own a magic wand so I could get rid of the MS.

It sucks.

What else is going on? Nate worked at Toys-R-Us over Christmas and they're keeping him on full-time. He'll do that until he gets something arranged as far as school. He seems to be making friends and finding lots to keep him busy up here in the frozen northland, but he still misses his friends and girlfriend in the south and is planning a trip in the near future. I think it's likely he'll end up going to school down there.

And speaking of school, PB has had a whole host of problems with kindergarten this year. It's a long story, but the upshot is that the local public school system is failing him and his mother has contacted a lawyer. In the meantime, he's switched schools for the remainder of the year. The thing that sucks most about all of this is that he was SO excited about starting kindergarten and so eager to learn. He's a very bright kid, but he's learning not to like school. I think I'll write more about this, maybe tomorrow, because like I said, it's a long story, but maybe one worth hashing out here in blogland.

So that's my rambling for the New Year. My resolutions? To help Jadyn stay on schedule with her MS medicine, to buy groceries instead of eating out all the time (bad for the budget, bad for the size of my ass), and to be more the strong woman that I know I am.

Oh...and to blog more often. :)

Anyone else make any good ones?