Desire. Ask. Believe. Receive.

Suzie's been down for an hour and I've used the time to eat lunch, take a shower, talk to my sister, and make a big pan of veggie and soy-sausage lasagna. She could wake up at any moment but I've gotten so much done and the house is so clean that I'm really looking forward to it. Sometimes I miss her so much when she's napping.

So, my husband is going to absolutely hate this idea, and personally I'm struggling with it quite a little bit as well, but I've been thinking of going vegan for a while. I don't feel like I want to be all hardcore about it and announce it to the world and look down on people that aren't, but I think I just want to kind of quietly babystep myself into it and feel it out for a bit. I'm not going to stop wearing the leather shoes and coats that I already own, and I'm not going to not eat the meat and dairy products that are already in my house as that seems kind of counter productive. Like "hi cow, I know you died/suffered for me to eat/wear you but now I don't want to so I guess your death/inhumane treatment was totally in vain." You know? But I'm not planning on buying much more of it.

My man is a serious meat eater though. I mean, he's not a "meat and potatoes" kind of guy, but he's definitely a beef stir fry, lamb gyro type. He loves a lot of vegetarian stuff--actually I think he prefers vegan food to vegetarian food as he's not really all that into dairy so I know he'll back me up on most of my choices, probably as long as I cook a steak for him once a week or so. I eat a ton of dairy products and though and do it mostly in denial about what kind of treatment dairy cows are subjected to. It truly is as bad/worse than the beef cattle I think, I mean, at least the beef cows get to die, they don't have to live day after day hooked up to machines, not nursing their many babies and hardly ever stepping outside, right? Who was it that said "there are many fates much worse than death." ? Gandalf? Dumbledore? I think it was Dumbledore.

So yeah, that's my plan. Phase out the dairy that's already in my house, look into buying more organic products--including clothing and baby gear--and just try to curtain the shopping addiction, buying less, using things longer--generally just trying to, what's the expression--lessen the footprint. I think that's it. Lessen my negative impact on the earth, at least in some small way.

I spent most of Suzie's nap time working out so I only have a few minutes before she wakes up from her nap and I want to get some housework done.

So as I've mentioned, Suzie's been a bit of a bear lately, really needy and demanding while at the same time almost fiercely independent. I know this is a perfectly normal stage of development, but it's still a little grating at times.

Because of this push and pull, she's been needing a lot of time in mama's arms and has been more actively dis-interested in hanging out with other people. We were at crazy friends house yesterday and she informed me, condescendingly, (Ok, wait for it, this is good...)

"Well, that's what happens when you hold your babies too much."

Coming from anybody else I would have been totally shocked, but still OH MY GOD!!! It was kind of like she was thumbing her nose at me and saying "see, if you'd just let her cry it out now and again like I told you to you wouldn't have had that problem."

It really put things in perspective for me though, kind of one of those teachings in disguise as I realized "yeah, that is what happens when you hold your babies too much--they learn that you are a person of safety and security and comfort and know to come to you to get their conflicting emotional needs met."

Ok, just a quick rant--I'm off to do the laundry.

Nearly every day I make the conscious decision to live a fuller, more authentic life. By this I mean that I intend to start living for the moment, to not get bogged down in the mundane, and to live freely and independent from fear--especially the fear around how I am seen/not seen in interpersonal relationships. Nearly every day I try to free myself from cowering and stammering and not telling the world how I feel.

And nearly every day I fail.

Harsh toke dude, seriously. I'm so fearful of upsetting the people in my life, primarily my crazy friend and my crazy father, that I bite my tongue and don't say what I need to say, or worse yet, when I do speak, my voice actually comes out differently, passionless and almost babylike. It disgusts me but despite my near daily intention to change it I constantly, repeatedly, over and over and over find myself living in exactly the same way.

I really really hate it. And I've failed so many times that I feel completely helpless to change it. I don't even know how to change it. It's kind of like women who diet and diet and diet and it never works, eventually they just figure they're "supposed" to be that way and give up. I started to have a moment of clarity about the whole thing this morning and within 5 minutes of feeling empowered felt myself mentally shut down--mostly because I don't know how to go about making the change to begin with.

In the past I've always decided that when faced with situations or conversations that I was uncomfortable with I just needed to sit back for a moment, collect my thoughts, and then say what was honestly and truthfully on my mind. My history has shown me though that I need more than that. I need some kind of assistance or motivation or something. I need to somehow not be scared of pissing anybody off. I don't know why I'm so scared of that.

I can't go into it anymore right now as the baby just woke up.

Hmmm.

I'm long past needing positive validation from my dad, but my god, would it kill him to pay me a compliment now and again? I mean, really, I truly don't "care" about the lack validation, I don't take it personally and I understand that he's just too weak a person to go there, it's mostly just so embarrassing for me to watch him continue to live out his life in this passive, empty state that really drives me nuts.

My mom was telling me a story the other day about how she used to help out in my kindergarten class so much that the teacher had to ask her to limit her visits to twice a week. I didn't remember her being there but I still have that year's class picture and my dad is in it as he was helping out that day. She said that a lot of people in the community still have that picture and still comment on how much he helped out (as well as on his GINORMOUS afro and sideburns--yes, we are a Caucasian family but this was 1976) despite the fact that he only assisted in the classroom maybe once a month. She says even at the time she knew it was more important to his ego to be in the photograph than it was to hers.

That sucks. My dad has sucked for my entire life but I just didn't know until I hit 30.

We're redoing our guest bath downstairs, as I've mentioned. It's taking quite a bit of time, energy, and money and we're doing it by ourselves as sort of our first real home-improvement project together. My dad and mom are also installing new bamboo floors in their house. I was up there yesterday and had brought the new, beautiful, slate tiles that we'll be using so that I could seal them in the basement while my mom watched Suzie. I can't tell you how many times I commented on how amazing his new floors looked--and they really are beautiful--but not one single time did he even comment on what I was doing. Even as we were working side-by-side in the basement on our projects. He did bring me a workbench and paintbrush though, I should give him that as that's probably the best he can do these days. I was walking downstairs and thought he finally said something nice as I overheard him say to my mom "it's really going to look great when it's finished." She replied "yeah, the stones are so beautiful" to which he replied "no, the bamboo..." like she was retarded.

Nice.

He's so amazing with Suzie. It's funny, well, you know, sad-funny, I think he probably is her second favorite person in the world. Maybe it goes back and forth between him and her dad depending on her mood but she definitely likes her granddad more than just about anybody. She has such a good time with him, squeals and screams and laughs and runs all over the house to find him. I know he loves me but I think he's genuinely unhappy with his marriage and his life and takes it out on everyone around him. It's all his own fault though, we all reap what we sow and he's sowed very few positive seeds in his life.

Save the one that resulted in yours truly of course. ;)

Last night, when I was lying in bed at 9:30, anticipating a 6 a.m. wakeup call, I had like, 5 blog entries floating around my head. I didn't want to get up and write any of them out though as I'd been tired all day and had far more interest in a full night's sleep. Suz let the family sleep in till nearly 7:30 however and by then the blog ideas had all been dreamt away.

:(

Not really so sad though as full night's sleep makes everything better. As does waking up to a beautiful sunny morning. We have the entire weekend ahead of us with absolutely no plans. Well, no commitments to anybody else anyway, we do have tons to get done around the house, but considering how busy our schedule has been lately that feels pretty close to a vacation to me. So John's downstairs replacing the water heater (I really loath spending $400 on a purchase that involves NO FUN AT ALL!), I've been doing housework, Suzie's napping, and when she wakes up we'll all head to the hardware store to look more at stone tiles for our bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room. There's nothing like a good home-improvement weekend.

On the psycho friend front, my god, Suzie and I were driving around looking for something to do with our long afternoon yesterday and so called Courtney to see if we might stop over and spend some time with her and her son. She told me that I was welcome to stop by if I needed to feed Suzie or something, but that she wouldn't be getting out of bed. She was too cold. As you might be aware, we here in the northwest are experiencing a "cold snap." That's what all the weather people have been telling us, anyway, and this means that the temps have been dropping down into the--gasp--TWENTIES at night! But that's at night, I called in the middle of the afternoon, the temps were well into the upper 30s (at least) and, most importantly, she has this cool new gadget called CENTRAL FUCKING HEATING which she had already informed me was cranked to 80!!!

Oh my god! Anyway, her incredible lameness caused me to get over my nervousness about going back to the kid's museum and seeing psycho friend version 2.1 and so we headed in and had a lovely time talking to the many, many visitors who were also looking to stay out of the cold as well as to the previous psycho friend who was, once again, completely congenial.

Ok, off to do my housey stuff.

Everyday I clean this fucking house. Every afternoon it looks like a bomb exploded.

And there's only three of us.

What the fuck?

I can only get rid of so much of my own stuff. If everyone else is a hoarder it's never going to make a difference.

I'm throwing up my hands.

That sounds like I mean I'm puking my hands. Really I mean I'm just giving up. I'm not going to live like an ascetic while my house is still so full of crap that I can't even walk around. Let the over-consumption begin.

I feel down and blah and mildly despondent. I've been eating like a pig this week and I haven't worked out but maybe twice. I think I'm supposed to start bleeding soon so maybe that's part of it but it sure isn't a ton of fun.

John and I got stoned last night for the first time in probably close to two years, it was really fun to just chill and watch Zoolander and go with the munchie flow but it probably didn't help my overall low-level depression of the past week too much. I don't know what's going on with it, it's just that same stagnant, semi-empty feeling I've been having for the past year or so off and on. I know I just need to get off my ass and fix it but it's so difficult to find any motivation. I'm hoping that just the small step of sitting down to type this stuff out for a while will make a difference.

And I really need to get my ass back into working out. Last week I transitioned to a heavier set of weights but if I don't keep with it I'm going to have to shift back down. I was so proud of myself for moving up, I've been stuck using puny little 5 pounders since nearly the beginning of my pregnancy. God, four years ago I was using 10s for just about everything, it sucks to watch yourself atrophy.

We spent Sunday in Seattle with some friends and their daughter who's just a month older than Suzie. We took a long, long, long uphill walk from Queen Anne to the zoo and that felt really really good. Suzie had a blast at the zoo, she seemed to connect most with a huge freaking couple of pythons. Either that or she was just too scared to move. ;) I don't think so though, she really seemed to be having a good time.

On our walk home we stopped in at a few open houses in Fremont, a couple of condos and a 1930s home. This was more for our friends than for us, but I was curious to see what 1/2 a million could get you in the city. The sticker shock totally reminded me of why I'm perfectly content to stay in the boonies for a while longer. $250k would score you a sterile, boring, teeny, two-bedroom apartment with no view. $650 would get you a smallish size house with no yard, no view, a tiny kitchen, and bedrooms precariously placed in a converted attic at the top of a narrow staircase. Now granted, these were in a fun, safe neighborhood, I'm sure you could get more for your money in another part of town, but if I were to leave the security of my small town for the city it would be with the intent of moving into an exciting, vibrant community, not the ghetto or anyplace close to it.

So that was good for me. Just that morning I'd been talking to John about how we need to make peace with the fact that we have very little money as short of our winning the lottery I don't see anything happening that's going to change our situation. To be constantly thinking ahead of how it's going to be when we're rich and successful is wasting our current life, in a beautiful house with a perfect small family.

Speaking of small families, John is getting pretty focused on making ours one person bigger. It's funny, it's like as soon as we got out of the new baby woods and things are seeming a bit easier to manage, we're like, "ok, ready for another one?" The biological drive to have more children is so fucking strong! Every logical bit of my body knows that having another baby is a really bad idea right now, but he starts talking about how joyful it would be to have another baby and I find myself going along with him and thinking about getting off the pill! At this point if I went off I'd probably be pregnant by July and would have another baby by mid-spring 2007. That would make Suzie 3.5 which actually wouldn't be too bad, she'd be out of diapers and hopefully completely finished with nursing. Actually, maybe he's right, maybe it is time to start working on this.

OH MY GOD!!!! Was I smoking crack last night? What the fuck am I talking about?!?

Plus, I've been working so hard to get into shape. I'm down 15 pounds from the summer, I've only got 9 to go till I'm at my pre-pregnancy weight and I really wanted to be in great shape by the time I get pregnant again. Well, that actually fits well with my getting knocked up by the summer, which is when I should reach my goal. My mom won't be retiring until June of 2007 though so I really should wait until fall to put this plan into action if I choose to go through with it. Which in all likelihood, I probably will.

I'd rather be cleaning my house than blogging right now but it's kind of at that "pretty clean" stage and so I have to motivation as to what projects I should take on. Especially since most of the projects right now need John's assistance and/or a trip to the hardware store. We're going to redo our bathroom with stone tiles that will eventually make their way out into the kitchen but I can't really just jump on that without his input. I'd originally wanted to do the tub walls in amethyst glass tiles but found that they cost more than $1/inch vs. $1/foot for stone. Oh well, we'll see what comes of it.

Nice, Suzie's nap lasted all of 4 minutes.

Suzie didn't nap yesterday so I didn't get a change to blog. She did sleep in pretty late but I was busy doing all the morning stuff around here and it just didn't happen. I did have an amazing workout though; I haven't been that in the zone probably since I was five months pregnant and that felt incredible. No workout today though, and it's lucky I was lazy as when I tried to go grab a shower I found we were out of water. Again. I do like living out in the sticks, but I really fucking hate not having water at least once a week. It wasn't so bad before, we'd lose it maybe once a month or so--including the night I went into labor which wasn't the coolest thing in the world, luckily I hadn't been planning an at-home water birth--but some morons up the road dug into their front yard without checking and now the process of repairing the pipe has cost our entire neighborhood water once a week or so. Usually we get a day's notice but evidently not today.

Anyway, so how's that for the world's weakest opening paragraph? I do my best.

I really wanted a shower today too. At least I took one yesterday. :(

Today Suzie and I are headed out to Shelton for a playgroup on a farm. Suzie's never seen so many animals live and in person so it should be really fun. I think they're also going to have one of those blow-up, bouncy houses. I hope she enjoys it, she may still be too young.

I've been thinking of going veg again. I did for so long, primarily for ethical reasons, well, soley for ethical reasons really, considering what terrible shape I was in, and then I just let myself get lazy and apathetic and grew away from it. I've been thinking a lot about it again though and think maybe it's time. I went to dinner with some friends (Courtney being one of them--Thanks Andrew, that name is MUCH more fitting) and we were discussing humanely raised animals and the conversation got so weird.

Courtney was saying that she actually thinks it's worse for an animal to be raised humanely and then killed then to just be tortured from birth. What the fuck is she thinking?!? Better for who? Her obviously, as her next statement was something along the lines of "I just can't think of where they came from and feel too guilty if I think of them frolicking out in a pasture and having a happy life and then being killed." But she doesn't feel guilty to think of all the horrible things that happen in a slaughterhouse? Or rather she just doesn't I guess. That's the problem, again, with so many people in our society being cut off from their emotions and empathy. Maybe if more people DID stop and think about those things then we wouldn't have this disgusting, mass-market, animal-production factory garbage that we do.

People are just so attached to their, what's the word, to their denial. Like to the point of saying "the truth is too painful for me, I'd rather just stay in denial and go on living in a way that's more comfortable for me than have to face the truth." I'm not even against eating animals, I'm really quite in favor of people killing their own food, humanely, and with a healthy dose of respect for how that food got to their tables. And since I'm not at the point of being able to do that, then I think it's for the best that I just stop eating meat again.

I think I would like to get a few chickens though, for the eggs, and possibly a goat. I'm outside the city limits but I'm not sure of the ordinances. I'll have to look into that. It's not like I'm too busy these days to take care of a few animals. We do have a big raccoon problem around here though, would they eat all the chickens?

I didn't post yesterday because all I really had on my mind was more frustrations with my dad and I knew if I did sit down to write I wouldn't be able to get anything authentic out aside from that stuff and I just didn't want to go there. Luckily for us all my crazy friend decided to grace her children with her presence after two coked out weeks in Southern California so I have an entirely new set of frustrations to vent about. Bear with me as I've got a lot to say and not a lot of time to do it in so instead of rushing through it I'm just going to get to what I can. I'm really trying to have a calm morning while Suzie naps and don't want to get myself all riled up.

So my friend, I don't know, I guess I'll call her Julie, goes to California every few months or so for the weekend and generally has a pretty fucked up time. I know I've mentioned these trips before, the most notorious being her last trip to a strip club in Tijuana. A few weeks ago she told me that she'd was going this time for at least a week, probably more, and would call me when she got back. My first thought was "how fucking selfish to leave your husband to take care of the three kids and hold down his business while you medicate yourself into nothingness." Then I realized that despite the selfishness of it all, her husband would probably have an overall easier time as he wouldn't be taking care of her MANY MANY MANY needs as well as the kids', nor would he be spending his other "free" time being verbally abused by her.

So she's been gone a couple of weeks, maybe 10 days, and I have to admit, it's been really nice to have her gone. She's just so toxic and difficult to be around, and like the URL of this blog states, I'm much too weak a person to actually break free from her. I guess she got back Sunday night but I didn't know until I stopped by yesterday afternoon. Her husband was going to watch Suzie while we went to my friend's daughter's funeral which was only a couple of blocks away. Julie was sleeping when I got there so I didn't see her until I went to pick up Suzie after the service.

I gotta tell you, Julie was in top fucking form. She was lashing out against my friend who'd lost her daughter, almost to the point of criticizing her for having a funeral for a child because no person should be forced to attend one of those awful things. She went on and on about how three girls from her high school lost babies to SIDS and she swore she'd never attend a baby's funeral. And she hasn't since. I told her that attending the funeral had more to do with my other friend's need to have me there and to pay my freaking respects to her family for her horrible, horrible loss then it was to have a tear free afternoon. She magnanimously replied "whatever, I'm not fucking going."

Well, for one, it's already over, you lunatic. For two, you weren't invited anyway. And for three, yeah, got that. I forgot it's really all about you.

Ugh, it was just so ugly and frustrating. Suzie wasn't ready to leave yet but I grabbed her and left, I just couldn't take another second with this horrible person. Why oh why oh why can't she just take her family and leave my town? Not seeing her for two weeks was so refreshing and now, since she's been back, or at least since I've known she's been back, I've felt icky and stressed and ugly inside.

I work so hard, every single fucking day on improving myself. I try to work out at least once a day, I read spiritual books, I'm trying to make my home as zen-like as possible, but I still keep saddling myself with these relationships that attempt to sabotage all my hard work. It's so frustrating and I have no one to blame but myself. I'm just so weak when it comes to standing up for myself. As I've said before, what do I have to lose by just responding to her honestly when she says such horrible stuff. So I piss her off, so what? Either she learns and grows or she kicks me to the curb, either way is a win, right? Why am I such a loser weakling?

Doesn't take much to get me feeling the love for life, does it? It's gorgeous today and it's supposed to last for at least a week?!? That's awesome! Suzie and I met a friend and her toddler in town, went for a long walk, and played at a quiet little park with some little girls and their 8 week old chocolate lab for a few hours this morning. I wouldn't normally have scheduled anything for so early (10...) in the morning, but I did and even THAT worked out well. How's this for nice, Suzie slept until nearly 8:30 this morning, we met in town at 10, got home around 12 and now she's down for a nap, giving me a chance to write for a few minutes.

She's actually been a real bear for the past few days and I need a day like this now and again to remind me of how much fun having a toddler can be. I feel a little guilty for saying that though, well actually a lot guilty, considering what my other friend is going through this week. She ended up not having to end her daughter's life support, her daughter passed even with it. She ended up having a stroke, completely unrelated to her heart condition, just a freak thing, but her weak heart couldn't keep up with the medications and just the added stress on her little body was too much for her.

It's so horrible I keep kind of not letting my self go there. I get too overcome with grief and find myself feeling kind of self-destructive and "what's it all worth" about it all. That's why I had to get out of social service, I just internalize everything way too much. My friend told me the whole story of the baby's last night, last hour, what happened after she died, all of it, but I just don't want to type it out and think of it so clinically right now. I'm just amazed at her strength and don't know if I could handle it as well as she is.

Wow, I didn't really mean to go there with this entry. I guess that's the thing about stream of consciousness writing though. You generally go straight to what's on your mind and obviously that's pretty high on my list these days. The funeral's tomorrow. There's a viewing before but I don't think I can deal with that. My friend was talking about how difficult it was to find a small enough casket and that about knocked me over, I just can't see her laying there, still so small.

She was such a sweet, funny little girl. So good natured, she had no idea yet about her disabilities. Maybe it's better? I don't know, people always say that but I don't know if it's just a way to deal with the pain of it all.

You know, I really don't want to keep writing about this but I feel like it would be disrespectful to go back to talking about what a lovely day it is when my friend's family is suffering so. John and I just had a talk about this the other night, about how I internalize everything and feel sad about things because I feel guilty or disrespectful to be laughing or having a frivolous time when so many people are suffering. He said it wasn't doing those that are suffering any good to have me suffer along with them of my own volition. I know he's right, but I really believe the world would be a much better place if more people were truly more aware, on a physical level, of the suffering of others. People would be a lot less likely to hurt other people in any way if they they could feel in their own minds and bodies the suffering that they were causing.

But I guess the fact is that most people don't and my choosing to feel that much isn't going to make them any more aware, so all I'm really doing is causing myself pain because I'm not really doing anything else tangible to stop their suffering in any real way. I don't have any money to donate, I don't volunteer my time anywhere meaningful. I take care of my family and try to instill those values in them and in the people I have contact with but really, maybe I should just lighten up a little bit. I'd probably have a better time of it if I did...

I wonder how long I have until Suzie wakes up. I should go do a project.

Wahoo! I made a resolution and I've stuck to it for an entire week! Okay, okay, and entire workweek, but still, there have already been a couple of days when I wanted to bag it and I didn't and that gives me at least the smallest modicum of satisfaction.

You know what also gives me a modicum of satisfaction? Using the word modicum. Do you know how long it's been since my vocabulary has stretched beyond the absolute basic? Ok again, so maybe modicum isn't Proust but it's something and I'm proud of that. For now.

My family is sick. My baby is sick. My husband is sick. And now I am sick. Baby's been sick since Wednesday. Husband has been off work since yesterday. I woke up sick this morning, well actually at 4 in the morning, during one of Suzie's every other hour nighttime feedings. It seems she's too stuffed up to breastfeed enough to have a full enough tummy to get her through more than a couple of hours. Or maybe she's dehydrated and not sleeping well, that's what I've been feeling like.

She just took a really long nap though which afforded me the time to clean the house, do a teeny bit of yoga, and make a fajita for lunch. I've been craving tortillas like crazy lately. Yesterday I ate 5 of them. One in a wrap, one in a fajita, and three just steamed and eaten plain. I don't know what that's about. They're not even whole wheat tortillas, just basic white flour and lard, plain old tortillas. I'm full from lunch but I could still stand to go steam me another one. I won't though as I'm leaving John home alone tonight and he'll need one for dinner.

Weird. If I hadn't just had a period I'd be thinking I was pregnant again with all these crazy cravings and mood swings I've been having.

Not sure what else to write about. Just not a ton going on. Oh, did I mention John's work semi-offering me a part-time job helping out with their AP/AR? It would have been really cool, but then the woman who offered it called me back to tell me the boss had vetoed my working in AP with my husband doing the receiving. It just kind of sucks as we'd talked about it before but it just never seemed valid, then yesterday she was really pushing it and I got my hopes up but then within a few hours John called to tell me it wasn't going to work. Oh well. My mom was right, she said "you didn't have it yesterday and you were fine without it, now it's gone and you're still going to be alright."

So yeah, it's not really that big a deal, the most exciting part was how flexible the hours were going to be and that the woman running the department loves Suzie to death and would have been really supportive of working around her needs. I'll put some energy into trying to find something similar. It's just a little frustrating.

I've stopped using cloth diapers completely. I feel a little guilty about it, but I guess my laziness and unwillingness to fight getting Suzie into them 9 times a day outweighs the guilt. She's such a wiggler and I'm just not into the struggle. Plus they're so bulky they seemed to be interfering with her walking properly. I'll just comfort myself with the knowledge that I did the "right thing" for a year and at least gave it a good try. It's just frustrating to feel like a failure.

I like have John home during the day. He's not so sick that he's incapacitated so he's able to help out and just take it easy. I wish we could win a bunch of money just so he wouldn't have to leave every day and go to some suck job. Other people dream of winning the lottery and buying all this stuff and traveling all around, and I'm not saying I wouldn't be interested in that, but I'd really mostly just be interested in not having our family broken up everyday with his having to go to work.

Bah, I just don't have much to say today. I'm writing for 20 minutes though and I've got 6 more to go so I'd better figure something out. I'll just keep typing and then when I edit and spell check this I'll go in and erase all this drivel. That way I'm fulfilling my promise to keep writing but not boring all of my dear readers (all 5 of you!) to tears. Many more entries like this and those 5 readers will quickly drop down to only one, my husband, probably. Though actually I think AA would continue reading even if things were boring for awhile. ;)

So, Suzie's hanging out with John while I kill time typing this out. What I'd really like to be doing is reading the Harry Potter thread on Mothering.com. I love reading people's theories on whether Snape is good or bad. People have some good ideas, and I love love love hearing from people who are smart enough to go back and put the clues together, but it still comes down to he's either good or he's bad and we really won't know until the next book comes out 2 freaking years from now. That's a ridiculously long time to wait. I think I'll go back and read books 5 and 6 in the meantime. I really should read the whole series again but I don't own them yet. Maybe this would be a good time to look into that.

Ok, times up.

A friend just called to tell me that her baby is in the hospital and that she'll be taking her off life support tomorrow. She's had a heart condition since birth and nobody expected a long life but last time I saw/heard about her she was doing fine.

I'm just so sad for their family. I cannot imagine what they're going through right now.

She's not dead yet, you know? She will be in the morning but right now she's still alive. That almost seems worse to me. I don't know how they can deal with having to make this decision.

How are they going to get through this night? What are they supposed to do? Sleep? Sit with her? Drink? I don't know what the fuck I'd do. John's at his radio show and I'm home alone with a sick baby and I just can't stop crying.

So yesterday, just before I got on the phone with John and fell into a depression I did a tarot reading for myself that seemed to be suggesting that I find some kind of peace through feeding/nourishing others. I liked the reading a lot and that's what really got me thinking of going back to school. I've been considering culinary school for quite some time but lately I've been thinking more of going to esthetician school, which would be kind of a radical departure for me but kind of not at the same time.

So anyway, I was still depressed this morning, as I already mentioned but got up and cleaned the kitchen (well as best as I could with no water or electricity), worked out, and did another reading.

--I'd just like to add how fucking proud I am of myself for getting a workout on despite feeling as lackluster and sluglike as I did...

This reading said two important things. The first was that I need to step way outside of my comfort zone and embrace change. The second, and really super pivotal idea was that I need to open myself up to loving myself and others in the best way I know how. I think anyone who knows the real me knows that I do that best through cooking. I love having big dinner parties with tons of courses where everyone eats way too much and feels exceptionally happy and comforted and cared for and loved.

So I think things are really pointing in this direction. I'm still going to fill out the applications in the meantime but I want to put my real energy into deciding how legit I want to make this business. Do I want to do it kind of undercover? Do I want to get a business license? I need to really look into the ins and outs of the whole thing. And I suppose I should get a food handlers permit. I need to come up with a name, figure out menus and prices, then look into making flyers and possibly building a website.

I feel very energized about this. I hope something positive comes of it.

I need to go clean the kitchen floor. Again.

I'm acting grumpy with Suzie and it's not her fault. I'm just tired and bored. I got enough sleep, but I'm tired of vacuuming the carpet and mopping the kitchen floor every single fucking day. Maybe I should just look at it as a meditation in, um, what's the word? Patience, yeah, that's it, a meditation in patience and let it go. Of course I should. I just have a bad attitude today. I cleaned the kitchen and that helped a little. I don't know why I'm so grumpy. After Suzie goes down for her nap (which I pray is soon as she's been up for nearly four hours now) I'll work out and hopefully that will help improve my mood.

I got some great job ideas from Sarah yesterday and that was really helpful. She suggested I come up with some basic menus, figure out pricing and then make some flyers and post on some parenting boards and see if I can start making delivered meals for people. I think it could possibly work, I'd just need to go through my recipes and tweak and perfect some of my favorites first. I wouldn't want to deliver weird food to people. And I doubt they'd come back for more if I did. Maybe I should do something like give two entrees for the price of one for the first order--that might get people's interest.

Anyway, that improved my mood a bit. She also suggested really trying to get work at non-profit agencies doing admin stuff. I definitely like that idea as well, though I'm not finding too many of them to be hiring at this point. I'll keep looking, but the best idea would be the cooking from home, that way I wouldn't have to put Suzie in day care all week but I could possibly make enough cash to get her to a sitter once a week or so, just so I can hold onto my sanity. Or perhaps join a gym with childcare so I could have an hour or so to myself everyday. That sounds like heaven. For real.

So what else? I don't know. I'm feeling a bit more energized just having written this. We lost power last night. It went out around 6 and came back at midnight. The scary thing was that there was an actual line down across our driveway. John was at work and I wouldn't have even known about it if our neighbor hadn't also been trapped at home and came by to tell me. As it was John came home and parked at the neighbor's house down the hill and walked up through the vacant property next door. With a pizza--good husband!

Today I've got to go and pick up an application for a case manager position with the Area Agency on Aging. It's due on Friday but I think I can bang it out tomorrow. I can try today but John has his radio show tonight so I won't get any baby-respite. Probably the most I'll be able to accomplish tonight is drinking a glass of wine and watching Veronica Mars and, um, what's that show I watch on Bravo...with Heidi Klum, god damn I can't think of it. You know, it's like America's Next Top Model except they're all gay fashion designers...PROJECT RUNWAY! Thanks husband for the brain jog--I could totally not remember that. Anyway, that's my plan for the evening.

It's funny that that job just came open as I was just talking with a friend last week who mentioned that I should look into direct service with aging populations as it's pretty stress-free as far as direct service work goes and mostly just has to do with service coordination. I think I can deal with that so I'm going to put some energy into making that happen if possible. It's just been so long since I've had to interview for anything--I'm pretty nervous about that.