Desire. Ask. Believe. Receive.

Two days in and the depression and futility of the situation already reared its head. I don't want to be stuck in another fucking job like the ones I've had for the past 5 years. It's funny, I really ENJOY doing clerical work, but by definition these jobs always come saddled with crappy co-workers and supervisors with personality disorders. I'd be happy doing data entry for 8 hours a day. Believe it or not I really would. Maybe not for the rest of my life but for a good year or two. But you can't do work like that without bizarre personalities and politics and a world of other crap getting in the way. That's why I was looking forward to the transcription thing working out. Me, typing away on a keyboard for a day's work, all by myself with no right-wing, Christian, narcissistic supervisors fucking it up. But I feel like that's what I have to look forward to now.

I just did a reading, trying to find some clarity about where to re-start the job search so that the end result is different than it's been in the past. I felt pretty energized about the possibility of going back to school and learning some new skills to lead me in a new direction. I got on the phone to talk to John about it though and he made it clear that we don't have the money and what I need to do is get the same kind of crappy jobs I always get. Great.

I just want to cry right now. I'm so frustrated with that life. I was feeling so motivated to make some positive changes for our family but now it's all gone.

Yep, and I just took another one. It's really good, whole-wheat/protein penne, carrots, peppers, zucchini, spinach, cherry tomatoes, and sun-dried tomatoes all tossed together with a good, basily pesto sauce. I love pesto sauce. I could put it on just about anything. I didn't eat it at all for a long time because I thought it was too oily and bad for you--that's when I'd forgotten everything about moderation. Now I happily eat a little of it a few times a week. I'm really hungry and I don't think this pasta salad's gonna cut it. Oh well, I'll go find something new when I finish this. I'm writing for 20 minutes today, even if nothing comes of it but garbage like this.

I want to visit New York City. I haven't been there since 1994 and I think it's changed a lot since then. All the Giuliani clean up happened in the mid-90s I think. I was so scared when I visited last time. I was constantly on edge and afraid that I was going to be shot in the subway or mugged on the street. I don't know if I'd feel that differently now, come to think of it, especially now that there's actually been a terrorist attack in the city. I want to visit the NYC in nice romantic comedy movies--not the gritty, stinky, angry city that I saw when I last visited. Not the city with people peeing on the corner in front of me and pushing me out of the way so that I can't look in all the shop windows. Does the New York I want to visit even exist? Maybe I just visited the wrong part last time. Maybe someday I won't be so scared.

A friend in California just offered me her house if I want to come and visit. I guess it's probably always been offered but she's newly single now and so has a bunch more free time. Maybe next summer. She lives real close to the beach and has been spending tons of time there. I haven't been to a California beach since I was 13. I haven't been to many warm beaches, come to think of it. I was in Ft. Meyers in Florida in 1997 and in the Mediterranean in 1998 but I think that's the extent of my lifelong beachgoing. The beaches here in Washington are beautiful and so full of life but really too cold to do much laying out or swimming except on a really really hot day, which is pretty rare along our coast.

I guess I'm just feeling the travel bug. It probably goes along with all this dis-satisfaction I'm feeling right now. Yesterday I spent most of the day looking for jobs. I filled out a bunch of applications and then at night I woke up and couldn't sleep, panicking about putting Suzie in day care for 10 hours a day. There's just no way I could do that. John had a good suggestion for me this morning though. He thought he could drop her off around 8:30 in the morning, then I could go to her on my lunch break and spend 45 minutes with her and then he could meet with her immediately after and spend his lunch with her so she's get an hour and a half block of family time during the day, then I'd pick her up at 5:30. So that's still around 7 hours of care a day and I'm still not sure I'm ok with that but it's definitely much better then 10 hours of care which I've decided is completely unacceptable.

A perfect situation though would be for me to find a part time job say from 2-7 in the afternoons. She's hang with me at home in the mornings, go to day care from 1:30 to 5 and then John could get off work and pick her up. Now I just need to put some energy into making that happen. I don't want to go back to work in some same old office. I just don't know what I DO want. I need to spend sometime meditating and thinking on this.

Whenever I do those "finding your calling" exercises I always come back to cooking/running a B&B, catering...I know there's something there but I haven't gotten past "finding my calling" into "making money at my calling." I really don't need another book telling me what I already know. I need a book that will tell me how to get past my fear and indecision and start making some cash doing what I love. Is that so much to ask?

Or at least make the life I have one that I'm ecstatic about. Starting today. Working out is tantamount, finding a part or possibly even full time job is a close second. I'm not happy doing this stay-at-home thing. It's not that I want to give up my time with Suzie but I need to find a balance. You know that quote "if you want to get a project done give it to a busy person."? Well I feel like I'm the opposite of that lately. I feel like I have so little going on that I'm close to incapable of getting it together to get anything done--and that's got to change. So my first baby step is going to be daily work-outs and daily journaling. I know, I know, I've said it all before and I hope I don't fail and end up back here, saying it again a month or two down the road; but today, in the here and now, I mean to stick to it. So bear with me if that means some pretty boring blog entries for the short (or possibly long) term--I'm diving in without my waterwings and it may get a little messy.

I ran into an old friend on Friday. It was pretty awkward as things didn't end well between us. We'd been best friends our freshman year of college and remained on and off close friends through much of our early 20s. We were both young and selfish though and did some pretty tacky things to each other. At this point I've pretty much blocked most of it but if there's one thing that I do remember it's that this woman has the memory of an elephant. She could probably list every terrible thing I did to her, the date of the occurrence, and what color my nails were painted at the time as well. The things she did to me were...I don't know...Sneakier, smarter, cleverer, and more underhanded, but kind of impossible to pinpoint. It was more just in the way she treated me, the things she expected from me, the ways that she manipulated me. She's a genius. And has Borderline Personality Disorder. She's very, very, very smart. And scary.

Anyway, I've been afraid of running into her for a number of years now. I knew that she was back, living in my smallish town again, and I knew where she worked so I avoided it like the plague--which sucked as it's a great place to work out and take children for fun family time--well this last Friday I arrived at another fun place in our town to take children for a playgroup and she was working the desk. My first instinct was to turn and run out of there, but I could hardly stand up the playgroup and besides, if I did that I could never look her in the eye again. We made eyecontact and smiled and had some polite chit-chat and then she came over to play with Suz and I for a few minutes while she had a break. So it went fine. She didn't threaten me with bodily harm or to destroy my status in the community (well, not that I have one...) and she didn't bring up anything ugly.

I was pretty stunned and awkward and nervous but I guess that's just to be expected and I hope she didn't notice how hard I was working to keep my hands from shaking. She gave me her email address and I need to write her a short email I think about how nice it was to see her, blah blah blah. I do plan on returning to her place of work and want things to be as pleasant as possible. I started to feel like I always do in these situations though, thinking how nice and vivacious and fun she seems and thinking how maybe she's really changed this time, but then I need to remind myself how many times I've thought that about her and how often we've fallen right back into the same old patterns.

Except this time I really do believe that I've changed from what I was then. Is it at all possible that she has as well?

Ooops, Suzie's awake--gotta run.

I didn't work out today. I told myself I had too much work to do and needed to make sure I got a shower in while Suzie's sleeping. Then I didn't do any work. I just sat on the computer and ate Mexican Chicken Casserole. Hmmm... You never know though, it seems the days I give up on getting any work done are the days I'm most productive. But, like I said, I'm real lazy today so I'm not counting on it.

So yeah, it seems like I've been so busy lately, but I have really nothing to report, not much has been going on. Suzie's just been really into nursing lately for long periods of time so I've been stuck browsing the internet for hours on end. When she's not nursing she's signing to me that she's hungry but rejecting everything I offer her. It's pretty frustrating. I'm also concerned that since she knows so few signs that she uses her primary ones (nursing and eating) just to communicate with me, not necessarily to have an actual need met. Maybe we just need to work on more signs.

We had a play date with Sarah and Rain on Monday. I was so happy with how it turned out--I think Suz does much better with kids a little bit older (Rain is 3) as opposed to other one year olds. The young kids just seem bowled over (literally and figuratively) by her exuberance and an older child seemed much more able, physically and emotionally, to tolerate her. Most importantly, for me anyway, it was just soooo nice to have a conversation with a person who I feel really gets it. I mean, we're not twins or anything but I think we tend to share a lot of similarities in our lives and parenting. I just wish we didn't live so far away from each other--it's a nearly 2 hour drive and that's just so far, especially considering that she'll have a newborn in a month and a half or so.

Unfortunately I've got to go with work-out today.

Oh, I watched Wedding Crashers last night. It made so little impression on me that I've already forgotten how it ends.

Especially since moving to the boonies and having this baby; I'm just so isolated. I've always been the type to have one boyfriend and one close friend, but then lots and lots of work/party/downtown friends and acquaintances. Lately though I feel like they've been dropping like flies. They move away or they have jobs that don't work well with my having a toddler on my hip 24/7 (well, maybe 20/6) but anymore there are just fewer and fewer people that I could just call up and suggest coffee or a movie or just to hang out.

I've been spending a bit of time getting to know some local moms through an attachment parenting message board I frequent but even still, cultivating new friendships takes a lot of time and energy. It's not overnight that people become close enough to just drop in on or call for childcare while you run to the grocery or something. Like with playgroups, I'd love to have a standing group to be part of once a week or so; currently this group of moms is trying to set something up but the most we can ever make happen is once a month. You know, it's like if one person is busy we try for another day and if someone else is busy that day we try for another day. Before you know it, it's a month later before everyone can make it. Does everyone need to make it to every playgroup? I think not.

I was part of a pretty cool group, they met weekly, drank wine, and watched each others kids while we all hung out and cooked and ate. I don't know what happened though, either it fizzled or I did something wrong and wasn't invited back. I suppose I should just call the group "leader" and find out if it's still meeting, but if it is and I'm not invited then I'm afraid to hear it. I don't know what I would have done though, so I think I'm probably overreacting and maybe they lost my number or something. In any case, I'm afraid to call. I wish I had her email address...

Maybe once Suzie's a bit older and we can get involved with groups in the community it will get better. I love my house and my lake and my view, but I sure wish it didn't take people 1/2 and hour to get here. I drive into town everyday and it's not really a big deal but when I ask people to come out here I feel like they think I'm suggesting the drive across the state.

I'm starving.

Suzie's on an eating strike--she's nursing a ton but not interested in much food these days. It's a little frustrating as a cracker or orange has been a panacea to just about everything the past couple of months--I've gotten a lot done while she happily munches away by my side. This week though she just wants "up up up" which is fine, once I get my head back to what's important, but I'm getting less done.

Oh, yeah, I'm also getting less done as for the past week I've devoted her nap time to working out! It's so exciting to be back into my body again. After only 5 days I've got less pain in my back, can hold this 20 pound toddler for longer periods of time, and just feel all around happier. Yea for exercise! I'm sick to death of not fitting in the majority of my clothes so I'm kicking it into high gear this month.

That's about it for now. Yeah, slow post but I told myself I wanted to at least sit down at the keyboard once per weekday and I missed yesterday so that's that.

Ok, weird girl-talk alert.

As a woman with larger than average legs, I've struggled my entire life with the irritating experience of chafed inner-thighs when I wear skirts or dresses without nylons or tights underneath. I'm sure you can imagine how much this sucks in the summertime. I've compensated all my life by wearing bike shorts under my skirts. It solves the problem, but it's not exactly sexy if I'm on a date or if my skirt flies up flirtatiously in the wind or anything. So last summer I began seeing these ads for Monistat Soothing Care, this powder/gel/lotion that you rub on your thighs and it miraculously keeps them from sticking to one another. I bought a tube and loved it to death--it really works! The only problem is that you kind of have to keep re-applying it throughout the day, but whatever, it still beats bike shorts and chafed thighs.

So then summer ended and I through it in a box containing all kinds of good stuff like hemorrhoid cream and cranberry tablets for urinary tract infections. Yep, my bathroom is so organized that I have a box just especially for ointments and pills pertaining to the area between my navel and my knees. And then I completely forgot about it.

So a few months back I was at my friend's house and she'd just gotten a jar of Smashbox's makeup primer. My friend is a makeup maniac. She's got AT LEAST 40 tubes of Lancome lipgloss, and nearly every palate of Dior's eyeshadow, plus an entire shelf of other luxury cosmetics. Mostly I'm cool just to visit her house and play with all her stuff--it's like I'm 10 again and raiding my mom's cosmetics drawer. But I'd been really coveting this primer. The bottle was so pretty and I loved the idea behind it but at $40/oz there was just no way I could justify buying it for myself.

But then I was playing it with it the other night and I remembered the texture was incredibly familiar. I couldn't place it all that night but when I got home it hit me. You guessed it, it felt exactly the same as the Monistat stuff. So I went online and looked at the ingredients and while they're not exactly the same, they're pretty damn close. I guess they're both essentially a gel-like silicone that makes a little barrier on your skin, except the Monistat costs only about $6/oz. My friend doesn't agree with me, but I've been using the Monistat now for a little less than a month and my makeup has been flawless. You absolutely have to wash your face at night though (with either of them) or you'll wake up with some killer new acne.

Nope. I've tried and tried. I kept searching for the good stuff, the stuff that would finally make me come around and realize how childish and provincial I've been all my life. So so so so so many times people have told me "oh no, that's not good sushi, try this!" or "nothing compares to homemade sushi--my mom makes the best--try this!" I always believed them. I always tried it--again. And I never, never, never liked it. So last night my friend and I went out to a really good dinner at a restaurant that I absolutely trust. It's a seafood restaurant, not a sushi restaurant, but they had an appetizer that really sounded good. Little jewels of ginger-marinated sashimi grade ahi tuna, served on crisp little taro chips, drizzl
2ed with a wasabi cream sauce. My friend said it was freaking incredible. I did my best to not grimace as I swallowed it down. It's just the texture. I couldn't deal with the cold, slippery, almost slimy fishyness. I didn't hate it; I honestly appreciated it, but I didn't like it--at all. And I know now and am comfortable in the fact that I've tried enough sushi to honestly say I'm just not into it.

Now, onto to the figurative sushi. I know, I know, I couldn't be more crass and anti-woman sounding, but hey, it felt like a catchy segway.

I'm a bad bi-sexual. In fact, I'm so bad at it that I'd probably venture to say I'm really not one anymore (if I ever was). On the other hand, I do find myself with my face between a woman's legs now and again so I guess the proof is in the pudding. Just last week I found myself in this
predicament and because it was my friend's birthday and I'd had two bottles+ of champagne I was willing to give it my best shot. But I just really don't like it. I don't like the way it smells. I don't like the way it tastes. I'm just plain not into it.

To be fair though, I'm not really into any serious exchange of anybody's bodily fluids into my mouth. I don't even like extra wet kisses and I certainly don't like blow jobs. So there you go, I'm not a bad bi-sexual, I'm just a bad lay. I don't discriminate. There was a time, most of my life really, starting from my mid-teens until, oh, probably a year and a half ago (when I got pregnant with little Suzie funnily enough), when I believed that I was responsible for giving an orgasm to whomever ended up in bed with me, despite very few of those partners sharing that sense of responsibility towards me.

Not anymore. Since Suzie's birth I could hardly care less if my partners, male or female, are satisfied. I've got bigger things to worry about and a lot less time to worry about them in. Plus, having so little time to myself has made me a lot more selfish about how I spend my time and who I spend it with. I overheard the guy who was spending my friend's birthday with us remark to her that she "seriously gives the best head" while I was in the bathroom. There was a time when that would have driven me to strut out there and prove him wrong. Now, my thought was "hmmm, yeah she probably does. And she'll have the sore jaw to prove it."

Callous? Who cares. It's just sex.

1. No person involved with this blog believes that Tyra Banks is fat. Anyone who knows me knows that I am far more robust then Ms. Banks and still infinitely sexier. ;-)

2. Even if we believed Tyra banks was overweight, no person involved with this blog would use the words "fat" or "fatty" in the perjoritive sense.

The term "Fatty Banks" stems from a dialog regarding the ridiculousness of the modeling world that has deemed her as being "too fat" and "too old" to be marketable any longer, it's sarcastic.

Me: Can you turn off I-tunes? Scrubs is starting in 5 minutes.

My Man: Can't you just tape it?

Me: Well the problem with that is that that tomorrow night I've got to watch The Biggest Loser, Veronica Mars, AND Project Runway.

MM: So what's the problem, just watch it in the day.

Me: But I have to watch Days of Our Lives during the day!!!


Can I point out AGAIN just how much I need a life. That fact that I need to hire a personal assistant to help me with my TV viewing is really telling.

I saw something on TV today that made me question my often cynical opinion concerning the state of humankind. Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell made up, on a closed set, clearing up more than a decade of lies, deceit, backstabbing, and resentment so painful that it made one of them almost want to give up modeling altogether. ALMOST WANT TO GIVE UP MODELING ALTOGETHER!!! This, as you can imagine, was very, very serious. Tyra called this spectacle a "call to action--for all women" to embrace sisterhood. Because if she and Naomi can get past calling each other fat on the catwalk "anybody can." At the end of the hour-long show, the two 30-something supermodels walked Tyra's on-set run way together--in solidarity, both with eyes shining with emotion. It was truly, exceptionally beautiful.

Ok, I'm being a total bitch. I love Tyra; I think she's become a really positive role-model for young women and I love that she's calling the fashion industry out on its insistence that women be 16 years old and weigh next to nothing to make it in the business. Plus I think she's hot and fun to watch. I'm completely addicted to America's Next Top Model. And I tuned into her talk show today and watched the entire hour despite mocking it later on my blog. Do the advertisers care that I'm mocking it now on my blog? Hell no! They care that they got me to tune in and watch an hour's worth of commercials, which I willingly did.

So I've been self medicating with Percocet for a couple months to help me sleep better at night. I knew it wasn't the best plan, but it was prescribed for me when Suzie was born so I wasn't worried about her ingesting it through breastmilk too much. The reason I've been doing it is that it usually takes me a good 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to fall asleep at night and when I'm waking up two or three times a night to nurse her those 1/2 hours add up pretty quickly. Plus I'm just a bad sleeper anyway. When I medicate I can fall back asleep within a few minutes. Everything was going along perfectly but then I noticed I seemed to be developing a tolerance. Even though I was only taking 1/6th the recommended dose, it was still worrying me. When I started considering taking two per night instead of one I decided to talk to my doctor about it.

He agreed (obviously) that doping myself on narcotics is not a good practice and instead suggested a sample of Ambien. I took it for two nights in a row and slept HARD. We live in the boonies where hillbillies make it a practice to set off m-80s (like, lots of them, for hours and hours) on NYE. I completely slept through it. That's not really a good thing when it's my job to wake up to feed Suzie before her sleepy little whimper becomes a passionate, rageful wail. I did still wake up to feed her, but I'm afraid I may have slept longer into her her cries then I'm comfortable with. Plus, as the title suggests, I'm afraid it made me a terrible bitch. I was just a grump. A total grump. If you looked up "person who woke up on the wrong side of the bed" there would be a shot of my frowning mug. As my 5 year old friend would comment "a grumpy face."

So I didn't take anything last night. No Ambien. No percocet. Only a glass of wine. I slept like hell. Suzie slept like a log, not needing me for a feeding until 6 a.m. (after 8 hours of sleep!), but I tossed and turned most of the night. I did sleep pretty well from 6:30-8. So now I'm up, and while not anything near sunny, I'm not quite as grumpy as I've been the past few days. Maybe the drug is still in my system? Maybe I'm just depressed and the pills added to it? I don't know. But if I'm going to be tired and grumpy regardless, I'd just as soon not take the pills. They just can't be that good for me.

So here's my bloggy plan. I'm going to try and write everyday. I know that's pretty ambitious and so I'm not promising anything good. I may even bore MYSELF to tears. But hopefully, over time, with patience and perseverance, my vocabulary will return and my synapses will begin firing again and something positive will come out of all this.

Well, not really. When I asked my man what names he thought would be appropriate for this new and improved super-secret blog that's what he came up with. I don't think they quite fit. I don't know. I mean, they're real close, but just not quite. He does look a hell of a lot like Fabio and I'm confused for a playmate at least daily though, so maybe he is onto something.

But I hate the DH, DD thing. Freaking hate it. I especially hate it when someone writes "My DH is such an insensitive jerk" or something along those lines. "Dear Husband" just sounds way too subservient and really kinda lame to me.

You know, there was a time when I would have said "fucking hate it" without a second thought. I just get more and more grown up by the day.

Anyway, I'm still stuck on what to call us. This sucker is going to be searchable over my dead body so I've got to come up with something not resembling my name or anything directly relatable to me. I guess for the meantime though I'm going ultra-basic; I'm Jane, he's John, the small-fry is Susie. You know, we're the Smiths. Just your average, everyday people next door. Except we're not, just like everybody else.