When it rains it pours toxic rain

Update on Li'l Sis: she came through her surgery okay on Friday morning, and that afternoon they discharged her. Then while picking up her prescription at the pharmacy she had a grand mal seizure. Thankfully, her husband caught her before she hit the ground so she didn't get hurt in all the epilepsy. Paramedics came and checked her out, a call to her doctor confirmed that it was most likely the combo of stress and anesthesia that counteracted her anti-seizure meds, and they decided she just needed to go home and sleep it off. All seems headed in the direction of fine. Then yesterday she calls my mom in tears because she can't keep any food or liquids down, husband's gone to work, she's alone with Ash and she's too sick and weak to take care of him. So mom ends up taking her back to the emergency room, where they hook her up to IVs and treat her for dehydration. Last I heard they also added a morphine drip because she was in a lot of pain, and they were getting ready to check her for intestinal blockage. I haven't gotten an update on her yet today.

Pray for my sister, y'all.

In other, happier news... Friday night I hit JC Penney and Target to register for girly things for my bachelorette party. I signed up for a nice mix of sexy & skimpy for Matt and cute & comfy for me, with some flowy & romantic thrown in for good measure. I lucked out when I got to Penney's and discovered that all of their summer dresses were on clearance, so I dug into the honeymoon fund and picked up a couple of party dresses for the cruise, one of which will double nicely as a reception dress. That one's a bit snug and I either need to lose five pounds or get myself a good body shaper to wear underneath, but it's adorable--a white halter Marilyn Monroe dress with sparkly gold flecks all over--and it was on sale for $20, so I didn't let the tightness stop me. Then I got to Target and lucked out again with a clearance sale on summer shoes, and found perfect pairs for both dresses for under $6 each. Score!

Saturday night I dragged Tess along to Hobby Lobby to pick up the supplies to make my own veil, which were ridiculously cheap right down to the tulle and convinced me once and for all that dropping a hundred bucks on a store-bought veil would be the height of idiocy. I might rethink that notion once I actually put time in to trying to make the thing, but from what I can tell it also looks like an easy, beginner-level sewing project, so I kinda don't think I will. Anyway. After that we hit the town to see Batboy: The Musical which... okay. This theater troupe has done this show before, and they used the same lead actor as before (the wondermous Chris Crawford), and it was fabulous. But this time they had a new "visionary" director who re-staged a lot of things and, I gotta say, I didn't quite get his vision. Dressing half the cast as Goths makes a certain kind of sense for this show, but dressing the other half as rodeo clowns--yes, rodeo clowns--is where he lost me. It worked a lot better for me the first time when the characters were presented as real people in normal dress rather than cartoon characters. But Chris as Batboy was fab as ever, and the rest of the cast did a great job acting around their costumes, so I can forgive the oddness. Mostly. I mean, come on. This show is in-your-face-strange enough on its own without having to take extra measures for weirdness.

My wedding invitations continue to be a comedy of errors--or is that a tragedy? It's feeling so tragic that I have to laugh. Friday I went on my lunch break to get stamps. I told the nice postman that I needed 50 regular stamps. Since I didn't bring one along to weigh, he was skeptical that $.39 would cover it, and talked me up to $.63, plus threw in a few sheets of regular stamps for the response cards. I had a major brain fart in which I forgot that a) the response cards point people to my wedding blog where they can RSVP online and b) the invitations were already sealed anyway, so I took them, and walked away with over $63 worth of stamps. Of course, when I got home and weighed the invitations, it turned out I was right the first time, and I only needed the 50 regular stamps.

So Saturday morning I got up and hurried to address all my invitations (at least insofar as the addresses I actually have--there are still a few I need to come by) so I could get to the nearest post office before it closed and try to exchange the stamps I had for the stamps I actually need. Around 11 AM I threw on a tee-shirt and jeans and hauled ass and invites to the PO ... only to find that apparently small podunk town post offices aren't required to be open at all on Saturdays. So I'm still sitting on $63 worth of stamps, and my invitations still have yet to be mailed. Le sigh.

Sunday: a lot of knitting, a lot of napping, a lot of cuddling, and a little bit of Farscape. I wish today could be Sunday, too.

Later today is my dreaded doctor's appointment. Since today--indeed, this week--is threatening to be hella busy, I'm trying to just not think about it. This gyno is also my sister's OB/GYN and has been the one treating her through all of this, so I'm trying to focus on maybe being able to get an update, and to remember that this exam will be a cake-walk compared to what my sis has been through all week, and it's got to be done so there's no use whining about it. Still, I'm a wee scared. I'll be glad to get it over with.

This week, like I said, will be busy-busy, so don't expect a lot in the way of updates. I'll do my best to reply to comments, but I doubt I'll be able to keep up with much of what's going on in the blogosphere. There's a lot to get done today before I take off for the doctor, too, so I'd best sign off and get to it.

Happy Monday, y'all.

So it turns out that Li'l Sis had a tubal pregnancy. She was scheduled for surgery at 6:30 this morning. No word yet on whether she's out of surgery or how she's doing. She was supposed to call back last night with the special number we could call to get hospital staff to tell us how she's doing, but either she forgot or my mom wrote the number someplace where I couldn't find it this morning. I'll give my mom another half-hour to sleep before I call to see if she's heard anything.

My mother is not the most sentimental person ever, and she's generally not the sort who either requires or appreciates the concept of moral support. So I'm not so much irritated that she didn't go to the hospital last night to be with my sister--after all, she was babysitting Ash, and it's probably best that Li'l Sis get a break from mommy duty while she's going through this--but I am PO'd that she didn't tell me that Sis was in the hospital last night so that I could go be there for her. Although, she says she thought she did, and I admit that I could have been too distracted to hear it, so maybe the irritation should be aimed at myself. But still. I didn't find out about it until she called to see if we even knew she was in the hospital, and by then visiting hours were over and they were getting ready to knock her out for the night. And that's just irritating. She had her husband and in-laws there to support her, but still. I feel horrible that none of her family showed up. We completely suck.

Anyway.

I've managed to do Pilates consistently for a week now, and to eat healthy for just as long. I don't think I've lost weight (I'm really too afraid to step on the scales and discover just how much weight I gained in all my stress binging), but my problem areas are gradually becoming somewhat less problematic, so that's good. If I can just keep this up for the next seven weeks, I should be in pretty good shape for the wedding. Better yet, maybe I can actually hang out on some Caribbean beaches without being totally self-conscious.

I have a feeling I'll be working late tonight. That printer I got in a fight with the other day? It was broken (I didn't do it!) and needed a new part. Which is supposed to be installed this morning. Here's hoping it will be, because that machine is totally necessary to produce the thousand or so drawings I'm supposed to send out tonight, and by now there's a whole queue of people needing to use it. I just hope all the competition remembers I'm first in line. Then after work, assuming I have any energy left, even if it's Mt. Dew-manufactured, I need to hit a couple of department stores to try on and register for lingerie for my bachelorette party. I figured, with my girls being kind of hard to fit properly, it'd be easier (and less embarrasing) to just go register for things that do fit instead of giving out my measurements to everybody. Though I might end up rethinking that notion if I end up working too late tonight.

Wistful Sigh

I think it's time to start needling Matt until he agrees that next year we can both go to ComiCon.

Ach! Dummer Drucker! Verdammen Sie Sie!

So much for my burst (burst is maybe too strong a word. More like skip) of energy. After about an hour downstairs fighting with the giant industrial printer to find and clear a paper jam, followed by another half hour or so trying to convince it that yes, I really did find and clear the paper jam so you can stop telling me about it and start printing now, kthx, and verging on a temper tantrum that would have rivaled this kid's, I'm back to exhausted.

I tell ya, it's a good thing we're going on that cruise after the wedding. The promise of a solid week of being waited on hand and foot is what's keeping me going. Yeah yeah, the whole getting to share the rest of my life with my soul mate and best friend, having a special day to declare our love and devotion and promise of committment to each other before God and family--that's lovely, too; but once it's all over, prop me in a deck chair, bring me a mai tai and don't wake me till my sunscreen starts to fail. Seriously.

Thank God I... have no words for this.

Link via Miss Snark

Maybe she should have called it Polygon

Jane E. on titles:

"I wrote an episode which dealt a little bit with a love triangle. I called it "Triangle." Total failure of a title. The love triangle part of the script wasn't highlighted enough to make this work. People still ask me where the heck the triangle was hiding in that episode."

That surprises me. I agree that the title probably isn't the best one she could have come up with for that episode, but I thought it was relevant to plenty of what was going on in the ep. My question was never "where is the love triangle," but rather "which triangle is it referring to?" We had Anya/Xander/Willow competing for equal time with Xander/Anya/Olaf, plus, even though Marc Blucas was gone by that point, there were still lingering traces of Riley/Buffy/Spike. Did the people who gave Jane grief about her title actually pay attention to the episode? Weird.

Anyhoo.

Today I'm actually feeling somewhat clear-headed and slightly more energetic than a three-toed sloth. Again I say: weird. Methinks I need to take advantage of this strange and wondrous not-totally-run-down sensation. It's keen.

I promise to stop being so boring soon. Or at least to make an attempt at it.

Got a solid, blessed 12 hours of sleep yesterday, and it was good. Followed that up with another 7 1/2 hours last night. I could have used another hour or so to finish sleeping off the Nyquil, but other than that and a mild, lingering cough, I'm feeling much better, thanks.

I managed to carve out some time to rest yesterday by asking my mom very nicely if she would mind doing the bulk of my laundry for this week, and by letting the invitations keep for a day. On Saturday Tess came over to help and we got a lot done, but there's still yet a lot to do before they're ready to mail. I should still get them out this week, though. *hope*

I've a feeling it's going to be a hectic week here at work, too. I was warned last week that I'm going to have a humongous project to copy and mail all over creation this week, although supposedly it would be ready today and I'd have all week to work on it. No word on it yet--hopefully they'll still have it ready today. And I'm already stressed out just trying to rent a couple of cars for some teams to use for a field trip. We have one travel "agent" for the entire company, and bless her heart but she's not the most common sensical person I've ever dealt with. One of the team drivers already gave up and decided to just take his own car. I finally got a car for the other team, but only after a lot of back and forth with the agent. It would have been easier and faster if I could have just called the rental places myself. Stress!

At any rate, I'm doing better. I still kind of want to crawl into a hole and hide from the world for a while, but the urge isn't as strong as it was last week. I just need to be sure that I eat right, drink plenty of fluids and get myself to bed on time all week. And exercise. It's true that exercise is as good an anti-depressant as anything else. Then maybe I can get back some energy and start to be semi-interesting again.

Looking outside myself

A couple of items from Boing Boing:

First, methinks "heavenly citizen" Dr. Dino missed Jesus' command to pay Caesar his due. Dude. If Jesus could pay his taxes, then so can you.

On a more serious note, this Israeli blogger is making me feel like a selfish prick for carrying on about my little cold and wedding stress and whatall when there are people across the world dealing with things like tsunamis and getting the ever-loving crap blown out of their hometowns. I know we all have our own private apocalypses, and everybody's problems are as big to them at the moment as anybody else's, but it's good to get some perspective once in a while. Perspective leads to gratitude, and gratitude is an essential component of joy and contentment. So I'm going to sit over here in my safe little corner, drink some tea, maybe do a puzzle to while away my lunch hour, taking my rest where I can get it, and stop complaining and just be grateful that I don't have to worry about anybody dropping bombs on my head. At least not today.

*Cough* *Whinge* *Cry*

I'm continuing to feel blechy. Last night I was fairly optimistic that a good night's sleep would be enough to KO this crud right out of me, but then I woke up around 3:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, so now I just feel cruddy + sleepy-tired. With a PMS cherry on top, apparently -- the last two nights, as soon as Matt turned in for the night, I burst into uncontrollable crying jags that lasted about 20-30 minutes each. The first night I just went with it and shut myself up in my mom's swanky bathroom, put my head down on her vanity and sobbed my little heart out. When I started last night I sort of rolled my eyes at myself and tried to fight it and go about my business, which resulted in me sobbing over the sink while giving Fizzgigg a bath. I'm sure to an outside observer it would have looked pretty sitcomical. Ain't it fun being a girl?

I figure the main source of the tears (besides the hormones) is just pure tiredness and frustration over not being able to do anything about it. Here my body is doing its best to force me into rest mode, but there just isn't time right now, and there isn't likely to be time for many weeks to come. Which is an incredibly depressing thought. I try to at least get to bed early enough to make sure I get enough sleep, but lately I haven't been able to sleep through the night, so that's not working for me so much right now.

Despite all of this, after I managed to stop bawling last night, I did some Pilates for the first time in forever. If I can keep at it then I might actually stand a chance of being in decent shape in time for the wedding. I think I had better keep at it, because it turned out to be a pretty good stress reducer, especially when I incorporated a few yoga stretches into the routine.

I'm sure my outlook will improve vastly once my hormones straighten themselves out. Getting the invitations out of the way will also help. Once that's done I can start focusing more on the fun stuff. And tonight, Nyquil is going to be my best friend.

For today, I have filing to catch up on. At least it will make the time pass more quickly.

Wedding Blog Update

Just added bride & groom and bridesmaid bios to the wedding blog.

I've been resisting turning on the word verification dealy-bopper in my comments for fear that adding another step would make y'all even less likely to comment than you already are. But I've gotten enough comments from spambots now to officially qualify as a nuisance. So if you comment, you'll have to verify that you're a human being. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Life just sucks sometimes.

Li'l sis had another miscarriage. She's, needless to say, not doing so good right now. The rest of us are pretty bummed, too.

But life goes on.

I'm not feeling so hot today. My head feels like a bowling ball and there's some nastiness brewing in my lungs. Hopefully it's all allergy-related, but I took some Airborne just in case. I so cannot afford to get sick right now. If this persists then tonight I'll be relaxing with a potent-tasting zinc lozenge/hot toddy cocktail. Yum?

It's almost lunchtime, during which I'm gonna run down the street to Kinko's and see if they have cardstock in the correct shade of teal-blue (and if not then I'll have to high-tail it to the nearest Hobby Lobby), then I'll come back and hopefully still have enough time to (re-re-)print my invitations so that I won't have to stay late tonight and do 'em. This time I have proof-read the copy like a proof-reading mo'fo'. Any mistakes in the printing this time will... actually, quite possibly cause me to go postal, so it's a bit of a risk doing them in the middle of the day, but we'll see what happens. I gotta get them done this week--Tess is coming over on Saturday to help me assemble and prep them for mailing. L'il Sis was also going to help, but it remains to be seen whether she'll feel up to it. Although I suspect she might welcome the distraction.

...

And now it's later. Blogger wouldn't let me publish my post before I went to lunch, so I might as well add to it. In case you were wondering, Kinko's has many shades of blue paper, but no cardstock. So I had to go to Hobby Lobby. But I still managed to get back in time to pop the new cardstock in the printer and produce my correct wedding invitations. Phew! If my co-workers only knew how close they came to seeing me lose my shit today....

Now I just have to print the reception invitations. They should be easy--I bought a kit, and it has online templates and everything, and I probably should have just done that in the first place with the wedding invites, but no, I had to get all crafty and make them "special." But they will turn out very pretty, at least, and it's not like there are that many of them to put together. And after this weekend I finally --finally!-- will be able to mark "invitations" and all related items off my To Do list. Hallelujah and amen.

Now let's see if Blogger is feeling better....

I? Am a dumbass.

Stayed late to print invitations again. This time they printed beautifully. And as I sat gazing at my handiwork, preparing to pack up and go home, I noticed one little mistake: I forgot to include the time the wedding starts. D'oh!

Back to the drawing board. After another trip to Hobby Lobby to replenish my paper supply.

Sigh.

"Cheer up, emo kid"

Hope is Emo.

Relatedly, my post header is from one of these bumper stickers.

Links via The Splintered Mind and Boing Boing

Grump.

Hi. Happy Monday. How was your weekend? Mine wasn't quite a total disaster. Saturday wasn't a complete waste of time, effort and money if you ignore the fact that the stylist at my hair salon did about as good a job as my mom could have done for free, or that the two hours I spent on my invitations here at the office ended in a printer glitch that rendered every single one of them completely FUBAR so that I have to buy new paper and start all over, or that the digital camera I got out of layaway at Wal-Mart (always a pain in the derrierre) turned out, upon further inspection once I got it home, to be used--the people who returned it didn't even bother to delete their pictures first.

But let's focus on the positive, shall we? The trip to the salon inspired a side-trip to Sally's for a product overhaul, and between that and the trim my hair is much better now. The dress fitting went well (it looked so pretty once it was all pinned and properly fitted!) and is going to cost much less than I'd anticipated. I found some flowers that I think will be a better choice for my bridesmaids' bouquets than what I picked out for them earlier, plus I picked up some beadery to embellish them with a little sparkle. I found a really cute invitation kit for the big reception party, and as for the wedding invitations, at least I sorted out what I want and what direction the paper goes in the color printer and all that business, so when I'm ready to reprint them I'll know what I'm doing and it shouldn't take nearly as long. Also, I put a video camera in layaway. I won't go on about the little 'tween-age girl who kept squeezing between me and the cameras I was trying to compare so she could fondle the digital cameras and whine incessantly to her mother how much she wanted one, while her mother stood by and watched her get all up in my personal bubble and said not a single word by way of correction, because I'm focusing on the positive. And then I came home to Matt and a nice glass of Merlot and MST3K: The Brain That Wouldn't Die and I felt much better by the end of the evening.

Speaking of bratty, insufferably self-centered, demanding 'tween girls, yesterday in some-or-another department store's Sunday flier I saw tee-shirts for little girls with the following slogans: "Pouting works", "I did it but I'm blaming you", "Buy me stuff and I'll be nice", and "It's all about me. You should know that." Nice. Seriously, any parents who would buy their kids these shirts deserve what they get. Way to train your children up in the way that they should be assholes.

I'm betting the punk-ass young twenty-something chick who preceded me into the office and couldn't be bothered to hold the door open and hand it off to me as I entered right behind her, and then looked back at me with disdain as I grabbed the door before it slammed shut and locked me out, had a shirt like that when she was little. Hell, I bet she's got a shirt or three like that stashed in her closet now. Huzz.

Music Rec

I'm not sure I've ever done one of these before.

Anyway. John Scalzi is pointing his readers to this UK band called Muse (the link is to a free AOL stream of their latest album, Black Holes and Revelations). His description:

...these guys give The Darkness a run for the crown of Most Histrionic Band Since Queen. ...It's all fun, in an unholy 'What if Freddy Mercury mated with Martin Gore while Dave Gilmour watched, and their children knew of the world only what they read in Interzone' sort of way.

I'm giving it a listen, and I can promise you that this band is nowhere near as obnoxious as The Darkness. They're reminding me more of the lovechild of Radiohead and The Killers who's been raised by his crazy Uncle Freddy. Me likey.

Something Happened On the Way to the Falafel

She stood in line at her usual falafel stand when she noticed the paper stuck to her shoe. Reaching down to pull it off, she noticed writing on it, and before she knew it she was reading the story of a girl with her name, who looked very much like her, who had done all the same things that she’d done throughout the day. It stopped when the girl in the story got to the falafel stand and picked a piece of paper off of her shoe. A detached, rational part of her mind observed what a depressingly dull story it was, which shamed her a little, and tempted her to re-examine her life. But there would be time for that after she sorted out just what, exactly, was going on here. Someone must be playing a practical joke—a friend, or the universe, maybe. What bothered her most about that theory was the size of the paper in relation to the story. It was about the size of a business card, not nearly big enough to contain all of the details that it presented, at least not legibly. It was too much to think about. She wadded it up and tossed it in a nearby trash can.

The line moved forward.

Thinking better of it, she went back to the trash can and fished out the paper, just as the girl in the story did, the words forming before her eyes to tell her so. This almost startled her into dropping it again, but she held on. When the paper reported that, too, she stopped reading. She felt frightened, because this was strange and, to her knowledge, impossible. She also wondered how this might be useful to her, because she was human. But she was hungry and she had a job to get back to, so she tucked it into her bag for safekeeping and got back in the falafel line. Life couldn’t stop for strange and scary psychic paper. Even a story as tedious as hers had to play out to its natural conclusion.

At least now hers was getting interesting.

Rally for Bamboo the elephant in Seattle this Friday

Now this just pisses me off. Poor Bamboo. I hope this rally makes a difference for her.

In completely unrelated news, faux-deviled eggs with roasted red pepper hummus in place of the yolks are teh yum.

Picking the nit-pickers' nits

Non-errors - I used to be one of those people, the ones who nitpick word usage and insist that the "classic" usage is the only correct one ("nauseous does not mean nauseated, people!" I would declare uselessly, chasing the wind) and made lists of pet peeves that were usually made up mostly of common grammar "errors". Then I took a word origins class, got a grip on the fluidity and constant evolution of the English language, and got over it.* Now I kinda want to marry this article.

*But that doesn't let you off the hook for misusing "literally." Knock that off right now. Literally For serious.

Link via Boing Boing

Bridezillush

Since CAG is busy I agreed to set up some new job subfolders for her in one of her online project folders. It was five minutes till lunch when she asked me, though, so I put it off till after, natch. Once lunchtime ended I got myself all psyched up and comfortable and ready to work, which involved making some blueberry green tea, putting on some tunes, kicking off my shoes and donning my reading glasses, only to pull up the folder in question and discover I don't have write access. And CAG is currently nowhere to be found. And so I blog.

And bitch a little. Lately, for every item I cross off my ginormous wedding to do list I think of at least three more items to add. Stress and woe. And stress some more. Is it any wonder my imbibing of the alcohol has increased? Only to a glass of wine (and the occasional beer) a day, but considering my former tea-totalling-except-for-the-rare-social-occasion habits, that's a pretty big increase. Not enough to make me consider checking into Betty Ford or anything, but I am wondering a little if I should be concerned about my recent inability to relax without it. Man. My tiny, wee-budget wedding with the Inn's wedding coordinator handling all the major details is driving me to drink, people! Imagine the lushy boozehound I'd become if I was trying to throw one of those overinflated, second-mortgage-worthy, monster weddings like those chicks on Bridezilla. Yeesh.

That reminds me: I need to pick up some wine on the way home.

Anyway. Saturday will be a long and arduous day of running wedding-related errands, including finally taking my dress in for a fitting, and getting myself a decent hairstyle for our engagement photos next week (yeah, I know, we're a bit late in the game for those. Stress!). I'll also come by the office and print my invitations, because they said that I could do that as long as I do it on my own time, which is kind of awesome. I may or may not shop for supplies to make my veil, depending on how tired I am. I'm thinking that's a project that can be put off 'til next month. At any rate, by the end of the day I should be able to make quite a few checkmarks on my list. That should facilitate being able to chill out for a while. I hope. If not, there's always good ol' Pinot Grigio.

And now CAG is back and I have access. I'm out of tea now, though. Woe.

"Spam blocker, b!tch!"

I admit, I've never watched the Chappelle Show, mainly for the same reason I never watch South Park anymore--I never remember it's on. Maybe I should start making more of an effort to catch it.

Link via VidiotBox

Good for the moment. So not good for you in the long run.

I've been feeling ridiculously unmotivated and lazy of late. It's really not so much laziness as just feeling tired. I'm not feeling emotionally worn like the last time I said I was tired, at least, but I'm in an energy slump that I can't seem to snap out of, despite my recent attempts to take better care of myself. I suppose they're still too recent--we had another so-bad-for-us chips & beer night as recently as Saturday, and two nights ago I was feeling PMSy so I indulged in a Hostess cupcake. Mmmm, cupcake. But all that sugar and refined starch isn't going to help in the long-term feeling better department, so I have to knock it off. Seriously.

But the point is, I have things to do, but even simply organizing my e-mail feels arduous and taxing and I can't seem to make myself get started. I'm sure it doesn't help that I ran out of ADD supplements and once again didn't think to order more in time to prevent a gap, and I'm in the middle of said gap. So focus isn't exactly my forte right now. Fortunately, there's not much on my To Do list that can't be put off until I both get my pills and give the whole healthy eating and exercise thing a chance to kick in and give me a boost. Barring that, if I still feel this draggy next week I might have to start stocking up on Red Bull.

Have they tried Donkey Kong?

This chimp plays Ms. Pacman. I have a feeling he could totally take me in a two-player game.

via Boing Boing

But I do it anyway, because I'm kinda evil.

I've come up with a plausible plan of attack for the stacks and stacks of boxes of Matt's stuff that have held reign over my humble attic apartment for the last few months. Step one involves making room in every available closet and stashing them there. Yeah, I know. The plan could easily end there. But the trick to this plan is that there is a Step 2, and that step is to haul out one box a week and spend a few minutes each evening going through it, deciding what to toss, and putting the rest away.

Matt thinks we should just skip straight to step 2, which would be great if we would actually do it and not continue to ignore the boxes or accept them as part of the decor, which I know we won't. Plus his version of the plan involves packing back up everything we don't toss and then stashing it all in closets. Mine involves the immediate gratification of getting back my floor space and the ultimate goal of not having closets full of crap we don't use. We're going with my plan. Just as soon as we get the energy to move all those boxes.

Unrelatedly, when one refers to Matt's underwear as "man-panties," Matt is unamused.

Mystery pooch

Yesterday evening I got home to find a little brown dog wandering around the driveway in the rain. She was soaking wet and she looked confused, wandering aimlessly with her tongue lolling from her mouth like some kind of cartoon dog. She was between me and the garage door and didn't seem to notice my arrival, so I got out of the van to check her out. She was clearly ancient, and the tongue thing was because she didn't have enough teeth left to keep it in place. She had a big tumor on her belly and, really, I hadn't seen such a pitiful looking pup since I found Fizzgigg.

So the plan was to scoot her out of the way so I could park the van, then go inside to shut the other dogs up in a room and grab a towel to wrap her up in and bring her inside. She had no collar, so I suspect somebody dumped her off in the neighborhood, but I would have held onto her a few days trying to find the owner before taking her to a shelter. But in the time it took me to pull the van in the garage and get back out, she wandered away and I couldn't find her.

We left the garage door cracked open enough for her to get inside out of the rain, but I'm not so sure she had the sense (or the remaining senses) to figure that out. At any rate, I kept checking the garage for her, and she remained a no show.

It got pretty stormy last night. I hope the little doggie made it through okay.

L'il sis just found out she's pregnant again, but she's already having cramps and spotting. If you remember, she had a miscarriage a couple of months ago. Needless to say she's pretty freaked out. For you praying folks on the list, we'd appreciate it if you'd mention her and her bunlet in your prayers.

Bride of C-Man

Firstly, yikes! but it's coming down hard out there. I hope it lets up by quittin' time. I hate driving in the rain. Especially at rush hour.

Anyway, here's the writing exercise. First, here's the prompt:

For this exercise, your character is sorting through some of his/her stuff and finds an old photo album. It belongs to the character, but they'd forgotten about it until now. Pick one of the pictures your character is viewing and flash us back to that time. Then, bring us back to the present.

I cheated, in that this doesn't actually contain a flashback. I thought it best to follow the inspiration instead of fighting it.

A further note: for the record, though this is anchored in personal experience, it is mostly made up, especially the bits about the mother-in-law. I love Mama Bauhaus.

Here's the story.

***
Bride of Cancer Man

The cheerful, childish crayon on the cover of the photo album made Regina smile, in spite of the title: “Mike’s Cancer Adventure.” Good to know he never lost his sense of humor.

“I’ve never seen this before,” she called, picking it off the top of the laundry basket. Three years they’d been married, and she never even knew this tribute to the worst time of his life existed. Of course, that was three years in which they’d never completely unpacked their things. After a marathon of home organization shows last week, Regina felt inspired. Hence the day’s unpacking and decluttering session. “Are you tossing this?”

“Is it in the toss basket?” Mike called from the bedroom.

“Yeah!”

“Then toss it!”

Regina sighed and opened the album. A bald, emaciated man who looked somewhere between twenty and eighty looked out at her with Mike’s beautiful blue eyes. Tubes ran from various parts of his body to destinations unseen. Regina winced. It hurt, seeing him like that. Imagining what he went through was hard enough without the photographic evidence. But it hurt more that she wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of his life then. So she kept looking.

“Cancer Man!” read a caption in doodled lettering beneath the picture. Cancer Man Mike smiled for the camera and offered it a tired thumbs up. A Spider-Man poster hung on the wall behind him, doing its best to brighten up a cheerless, sterile room. She imagined his mom behind the camera, spouting clichés meant to encourage as he forced himself into a cheerful pose, reaching over his own fear and pain to allay hers. Regina turned a few pages to find more of the same brave face. She lowered the book and looked at the fireplace, blinking hard, not acknowledging the ugly stab of hatred she felt for her mother-in-law except to note its complexity—one part anger, one part a perverse sort of jealousy that she’d been there; one part _gratitude_ that she’d been there; and about fifty parts pride in Mike’s ability to stay positive—or at least in his ability to fake it. She wondered, if she’d been there, would he have put on that face for her? Would she have needed him to? Or would she have made it safe for him not to? Could she have handled that?

She wanted to think she would, but she didn’t know. She wished she knew. She knew she had no business resenting Mike’s mom until she knew for certain. But she prayed daily that she would never find out.

It was always there, floating in the back of her mind, that possibility.

He’d been in remission for ten years when she met him. “Ten years is basically cured,” he’d said on their first date, like a reassurance, as if to say, “Don’t worry. This will never be your problem.”

But it was. Five years together, three years married—the scars were hers now as much as his. Not just the stump of what was left of his leg or the knots on his chest and arms where the shunts and tubes had been. It touched her in ways she’d never imagined. His anxiety was a constant, and knowing what he’d been through, she couldn’t fault him for it. It altered her lifestyle—the food she chose, how she cooked it, how she cleaned...even how she did her hair. She did everything she could to wipe out the cancer cooties and ease his fears. And hers. She didn’t let him see it, but it was there. Fear of becoming a young widow. Fear of being the one across from the camera, demanding from him a brave face.

The rattle of his crutches sounded his approach even on the hallway’s plush carpet. Regina shut the book and dropped it back on the basket. “Hey,” she said, then coughed to clear the catch in her throat.

“Hey.” He paused as he entered the living room, head tilted in concern. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah!” She forced cheer. It never convinced him, but he’d learned to take it as his cue to let things go. “I’m fine.”

He nodded in that way that said he didn’t believe her, but he wouldn’t push. “I’m going after a beer. Want one?”

“No thanks. Maybe later.”

He nodded again and started for the kitchen. She watched him go, admiring the strength in his arms and shoulders, the thickness of his dark hair, the flush in his cheeks from heaving boxes around. Crutches aside, he looked the picture of health. It was hard to imagine he’d ever been so frail as the kid in that photo album. Hard to imagine he could ever look that way again.

“Hey,” she called again as he reached the kitchen door. “Are you sure you want to get rid of that album?”

He looked at her, then at the album on the basket, his expression indifferent. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Maybe because I need it, she thought. “I don’t know,” she said. He wouldn’t get it. He never understood how left out she felt from that part of his life, how she needed to feel that connection. How fifteen years later his cancer still infected her. She felt too tired to explain it to him. He looked too tired to listen. Besides, he was too strong-willed to change his mind. That stubbornness caused a lot of arguments for them, but she didn’t begrudge it. She knew it was probably what saved his life. “No reason. Just wanted to double check.”

He went in the kitchen. Regina went back to the album. She opened it up in the middle, where a monster with a big “C” on its chest had been doodled in the margins, battling a stick-figure in a cape. She smiled. Then chewed her lip, imagining a time he might be less sure. Setting the book aside, she bagged up the rest of the basket’s junk. Then she took the album over to the bookcase, climbed to the top shelf, and nestled it safely behind the other photo albums, the ones filled with happier people and happier times.

In the kitchen, Mike sat at the table, drinking his beer. Regina went over and put her arms around him. She planted a kiss on his cheek. “What was that for?” he asked.

“Just couldn’t help myself.”

He twisted to grab her by the waist and pull her onto his lap. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling, her fears mashed down into their proper place, the healthy place that motivated her to make healthy choices for them both and not the scary place that made her want to cling to him and cry. “I’m glad I married you.” She didn’t say what she really meant. I’m glad you survived to marry me.

He set down his beer and wrapped his arms around her. She reveled in their strength and warmth, put her head on his chest and listened to his strong, steady heartbeat. Healthy. Healthy. Healthy.

“Not as glad as I am, babe,” he said. She didn’t need him to tell her he meant the same thing.

Crazy-stupid me.

Happy Monday.

I'm on a personally productive streak today, so far: I got up fifteen minutes early and put in some time on the eliptical trainer (a pitifully short amount of time that felt like an eternity and was all my out-of-shape lungs and legs could handle) before work; and I spent most of my morning composing another writing exercise response. It's minimized on my Start bar for now. After lunch I'll pull it up and polish it off, then I'll post it here.

Family Circle (which my mom subscribes to and I flip through sometimes while I'm waiting for things to microwave when there's nothing more interesting to read lying around) is holding a fiction writing contest. I'm having trouble finding previous fiction samples from that mag but I'm guessing FC = mainstream. The deadline is in September. I would be crazy-stupid to consider entering a fiction contest while I'm still planning my wedding, especially one in a genre I don't normally write. And yet....

This weekend we finally watched Bubba Ho-tep. This should be required viewing if you're a Bruce Campbell fan. If not, then it's still worth it if only for the "barbecue accident." Hee!

Hmm. I'm listening to the "chill out" channel on Launchcast. Cibo Mato just came on and I'm having bittersweet Naughty Buffy Bronze flashbacks. Sexy dance!

And now I'm going to go eat, because I'm starving and it's that time. I made egg salad, to which I added turkey bacon. Because very few things on this earth can't be improved by adding bacon.

Heat Vision and Jack

I don't have time to watch this now so I'm blogging it for later. And also seeing if I can embed a video without screwing it up...

Edit: Hey cool, look at that!

Walking the Dog

Appropos of nothing, here's another reason to look forward to getting married: never having to hear another lame joke along the lines of "Hey, Cousins, you got cousins? Are your cousins Cousins? Hyuk, hyuk!"

I'm sure Bauhaus holds some fresh new hell, but I don't yet know what that is, other than a constant tendency to mispronounce it and always being asked if Bela Lugosi's dead. But that last one's at least obscure enough to be pretty uncommon.

Anyway.

I'm still too shy to join the workshop group at The Desk Drawer, but I've been perusing the writing exercises and spent all morning coming up with this. Here's the prompt:

For this exercise, take an ordinary event and write it two ways. Make one way a vile, revolting experience, and the other a very pleasant experience. Choose from the ones below or pick your own action.

Lovers’ first kiss
First taste of some kind of food
Putting fuel in your vehicle
Making a sandwich
Receiving a present

Word limit: 1200, 600 each way

Here's my take:


Walking the Dog


The pup picked his way over the grass, stumbling here, sniffing there, taking it all in. He was too new to scamper with confidence, too curious to let a single blade of grass go by uninspected.

Charlie sighed, checked his watch, and chose patience. Nothing else he could do, really; Sara was already attached. And dammit, so was he.

The puppy tripped over a stray twig, rolled, bounded to his feet and came up barking. Charlie found himself grinning. He wasn’t made of stone; he could only resist that level of cuteness for so long. Sara had given him a week before he melted under the pup’s—Gizmo, he corrected himself. Might as well use his name—under Gizmo’s charms. It had only taken three days, truth be told, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Sara.

He glanced respectfully away as Gizmo finally did his business. Gazing down the street, Charlie appreciated the softness of the early sun as it lit up the neighbors’ lawns, enjoyed the breeze that cooled his face and made the summer morning bearable. Soon he’d climb into his car and spend an hour negotiating traffic; then the next eight cooped up in a stale office. But for now it was just him, the dog and the smell of cut grass. He could get used to this new morning routine.

Not that he’d tell Sara.

Thinking back to the fight they’d had when she brought Gizmo home, he felt a little abashed. He’d had plenty reason to be irritated: she hadn’t discussed it with him. She’d picked out a _toy_ breed, for crying out loud. A frou-frou, yappy, high maintenance thing. If she’d brought home a _real_ dog, a lab or a German shepherd or something _useful_, he might not have been so annoyed. But the real reason for his reaction was the real reason she’d decided to get a puppy in the first place: to convince him to want a baby.

Charlie didn’t tolerate small children well, but babies terrified him. He’d made that clear to Sara when they started dating, and plenty of times since. At first she’d agreed. But ever since she became an aunt last year she’d been gradually changing her mind. Now she was trying to change his. “Let’s try this,” she’d said, shoving a wiggly Gizmo into his arms. “They say having a dog can be a lot like having a toddler.”

“Yeah?” said Charlie. “Show me a dog that’s ever had a thirty-minute screaming fit in the middle of Wal-Mart. Besides, dogs don’t wear diapers.”

“You still have to clean up after them.”

“I’d rather scoop up poop in a baggie than wipe it off a kid’s ass any day.”

He considered that sentiment as he looked down at Gizmo, who sat proudly beside his stool and barked up at Charlie. “Yeah, yeah. Good boy,” he said, laughing in spite of himself. He pulled a bag out of his pocket and did his duty as a dog-walker. Then he scooped up the teensy pup, scratching him behind the ears. His reward was an excited face washing. “All right!” he said, holding Gizmo out at arm’s length. “Cool it.” The puppy wagged his tale. Charlie considered him, trying to imagine a tiny human being looking at him with that kind of adoration. His heart warmed a little. He coughed, tucked Gizmo in the crook of his arm, and headed back to the house.

“Might have to start calling you ‘Successful Ploy’,” he said as he went. “But let’s not tell your mom that yet.”

***

The dog took his own sweet time, as usual. Sara gave the leash a small tug. “Do your thing already, Giz.” With her free hand she swatted at a mosquito, then lifted her hair off the back of her neck to give it some air. Then let it go again to swat another mosquito.

They’d had Gizmo for a few weeks now. He hadn’t gotten much bigger, nor would he. Sara marveled at how such a tiny thing could produce so much crap in the course of a single day. She followed the housetraining books to a tee, rushing him outside every time he started to go on the carpet, but he still wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t getting any more patient, or any less sick and tired of cleaning up after him. Catching him right as he started, she always expected to bring him outside and get it over with, but somehow he always needed several minutes to work up to going again.

She rubbed her tired feet. Her long day had gotten longer when she’d arrived home to discover tiny teeth marks all over her favorite pair of Kenneth Coles and a dump on her bedroom floor. In the bathroom, she’d found Gizmo surrounded by shredded toilet paper about to hike his leg on the bath mat. So she’d snatched him up and brought him outside, scolding him along the way.

Now he only wanted to eat grass. She only wanted to sit down.

Fed up, Sara started to reel the puppy in. He started to heave, and before she knew it he emptied his stomach onto the lawn.

She considered leaving it and hoping for rain. Then she considered hosing it off. Finally she sighed and squatted to pick up what she could of the mess with her baggie. The sight and smell of the vomit was enough to activate her gag reflex. The texture through the bag was even worse. She shuddered. As she rose and tied off the bag, she realized that Gizmo was leaving another pile nearby.

Sara stared at the fresh dog doo, wondering whether to use the bag in her hand or go get another one. She thought of the other pile still waiting to be cleaned up in her bedroom. Suddenly she pictured herself cleaning up various forms of shit and vomit every day for the rest of her life—or at least for the rest of her youth—and wanted nothing more than to run inside, curl into a ball, and cry.

She loved her dog. But deep down she knew she wouldn’t put up much of a fight if Charlie wanted to give him away. She also knew at that moment that she wasn’t cut out to do this on a larger scale.

Sara realized she was holding her breath. She let it out, then straightened up and smiled. For the first time since she’d met Charlie, she felt grateful that he didn’t want kids. She crouched again to scratch the puppy’s chest, feeling a million pounds lighter. “Good boy,” she said. “I think you just saved my marriage.”

Superman Returns

Spoilers ahoy!

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