last pointless introspection of the year

God, this white shit falling out the sky is screwing with my plans and itinerary for beginning my celebration of this holiday that I despise. So, lucky yous, you're getting at least one more 2008 blog post outta me. Hey, I could go, y'know, postal and actually make 366 entries for the year, which was my original plan till slacking in September threw me off track. But posting (even more than usual) drivel just to post seems counterproductive to the spirit of writing resolutions. So you'll get what you get, and like it!

Ahem. Yeah, I'm against the drivel alright.

Pointless introspection. Okay. One of the reasons I didn't continue majoring in psychology in college like I'd planned was that it didn't take me very many classes to realize that a great deal of what they were teaching me was shite. But in amongst the shite was the occasional gem, the occasional gleaming nugget of good sense. Like Maslow and his hierarchy. I was reminded of this today as I reflected on 2008 The Year. Duh duh DUH.

I was thinking 2008 was a pretty crappy year all around and then I sorta cracked myself up. What the hell are you talking about, Andrea? 2008 was the first year in a few without any major crises, without boatloads of worry and stress about major, important things. I ended 2005 extremely stressed, even if I wasn't totally aware how stressed I was: I'd made a major life change in going part time at my job and going back to school, one that was positive because I was happy I'd done it, but it was scary and new and a lot of work and full of uncertainty; plus, I was stuffing all my worry about D down, knowing he was very sick and getting sicker, but powerless to do anything about it till we reached crisis-level. I ended 2006 hopeful and grateful: it had been one of the hardest years of my life with D in the hospital the greater part of the summer, my trying to make it through school despite that, and running out of money, but I was happy to have my son alive, not institutionalized, and showing some glimmers of enjoyment in life, and I was grateful for all the help and kindnesses that we'd been shown, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with just a month of school left. I ended 2007 tired but still hopeful: D seemed stable, my working six days a week for a good part of the year then negotiating my better wages and terms at the hospital (after those massage bastards had screwed me) had brought me back to at least a glimmer of financial security, and I had hopes that 2008 would bring me some relaxation, fun, and perhaps freedom from worry.

Well, I dunno. You've been reading along. Has 2008 been full of relaxation, fun, and freedom from worry? Hardly.

But it hasn't been the crisis after trauma after deadline after worry after crisis that the last few years have been. So why am I not saying, "oh, what a great year!"? Why did I nevertheless spend such a great portion of it stressed out and miserable and making myself sick? (Besides, y'know, my fucking hormones, that is, because I am more and more convinced with each passing day that all this anxiety and mood-swingy-ness is my estrogen levels flopping all over the place, and thank god for Marcy and her magic needles.) Maslow! I couldn't worry about being happy the last few years--I was too busy surviving. But now that my survival, my son's survival, my financial security, are much less at risk, I could take a breath and start worrying about those higher level needs that aren't totally peachy keen. Being in crisis keeps you from having to examine that kind of stuff.

Point? None. I *told* you it was pointless introspection.

Happy New Year, beloved blog readers. Hope you're self-actualizing all over the place.

xoxo

last stupid story of the year

Maybe. I'm not promising anything. There's 35 hours to go, more or less.

So last night D and I were watching the first hour of VH1's Top 100 Hard Rock Songs. If you haven't seen one of these shows, what's wrong with you? No, what I mean to say is, if you haven't seen one of these shows, the formula goes like this: people vote on the website for the top 100 [whatever], and they make 5 hours of TV about it, very cheaply, showing you a portion of the music video or a clip of the artist performing it, interspersed with various "celebrities" or "musicians" (who either need a buck or like to see themselves on the television--Dave Navarro, I'm lookin' at you, pal) telling you it's a great song or why it's a great song or where they were when they first heard the song or whatever, and maybe the artists themselves discussing it (again, if they need a buck), and usually an update on where they are now.

So, we're watching hard rock songs #100-80 last night, and somewhere in the 90s is Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son. "I had that album!" I tell D. "On vinyl!" (He likes discussing the 70s with me. It may as well have been when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.) Well, they did have the guys from Kansas on, being interviewed. And one of them had an eye patch. In the clip of Carry On Wayward Son from 1976, no eye patch. Interview from 2000-whatever, eye patch. In discussion of What They've Been Up To Since Their Big Hit, no "So n so had to leave the band after a tragic slingshot accident..." or anything. I was dying. "How are they just ignoring that?" I ask D. "You cannot just ignore that the man now looks like a pirate. Do you think someone poked his eye out with an electric guitar?"

My son thinks I'm funny, but then again, he's on a lot of medication, plus he does have my DNA.

If any of you all wanna use your amazing googlefu to find out whether that's actually Paul Newman in my Les Halles photograph, could you look up The Guy From Kansas + eye mutilation at the same time? I'd be ever so grateful.

xoxo

last grammar rant of the year

There's this poster I see on the T all the time. It's for one of those "women's health clinics" and my eye is always drawn to it, because the very pretty young Hispanic woman on it reminds me somewhat of our little receptionist who thinks she's a MILF even though she's all of 25. Not that the model and our receptionist are identical twins or anything, but there's a similarity to their faces.

So, anyway. This poster always catches my eye, and I am always annoyed by it. Why? Well, the poster tells me, in English and in Spanish, that birth control is: Confidence. Freedom. Affordable. The fact that there are two nouns and then an adjective in that series just drives me insane. That's some bad writing right there. Sigh.

And then I try to rewrite it in my head and I can't think of what noun would properly replace the "affordable." So I guess I shouldn't throw stones at their copywriter.

It still annoys me.

xoxo

in which I defend my honour

I told someone the other day that this is one of the funniest and best, and perhaps my favorite, of stories from my young adulthood and I was saving it for a blog post some day. But, y'know, no time like the present. Especially since the turning of the year seems to have morphed me into one of those old people who reminisce about things that happened twenty or forty years ago and think other people ought to be fascinated. Ahem.

My ex-husband and I had this friend, R. R is deceased now--which will probably come as no surprise to you if you make it to the end of this blog entry--so I feel no compunction to change any identifying details. R's parents were working in Saudi Arabia for an oil company, leaving their house in Massachusetts under the watch of R and his brother and sister. I should say, under the watch of R's sister, because you can just imagine what two drunken idiot boys in their early 20s would have done to that house in the woods without her screaming at them all the time. Anyway. I realize that much of my suppositions of the character of Possibly Irish Danny are based on my memories of R: a good-hearted, friendly, well-meaning, not stupid but not overly bright young guy who, if he is in trouble, is in trouble solely due to an inability to conceive of the consequences of his actions before he performs them. (I have no idea if this is actually true of P I D, of course, but from my eavesdropping on him, I've come to see him as an R-like figure.)

So, R had a little bit of a crush on me. I knew this if for no other reason than (what's the statute of limitations on drug crimes again?) when R would go to Saudi to visit his parents once or twice a year, on his way home through Asia he would pick up, um, souvenirs for his friends of the illegal variety, and he always made sure to bring me back a lump of this sticky sweet resin-y hash that was the only form of THC I enjoyed, and make sure that everyone knew that's for Andrea, don't touch it. But R kept his crush under control, me being the longtime girlfriend of one of his very closest friends.

Well, one Fourth of July, R had a cookout/party at his parents' house, which, as I mentioned, was in the woods, though off a very major highway. My ex and I arrived probably around 2 or 3 pm and R was already extremely intoxicated on apparently a broad and wide variety of substances. I should also mention that I was, at our arrival, the only person there as yet who had a vagina, R's sister having thrown up her hands and vacated, our friends D and K having not yet arrived, and the rest of the bunch of drunken loser stoners who *were* there already not being able to obtain any female companionship on any kind of a regular basis.

My ex and I were chatting with a couple guys we knew and then I walked about twenty feet away from them to get a drink or some food. My ex's back was, at this point, to me. R wandered intoxicatedly up to me and, completely mutely, reached out and did what he'd probably wanted to do for the past three years: grabbed one of my boobs. I reached up and removed his hand, said very calmly but firmly (as you would speak to a misbehaving child) "R, don't ever do that again," and kicked him in the nuts. The friends who were facing us and saw the whole thing fell out laughing, cheering, hooting, and applauding, while my ex was like, "What??!!?? What'd I miss?!? What'd I miss???" R looked at me in great confusion and befuddlement, still completely mute, then walked out into the road/drive and promptly passed out, whereupon four or five guys had to drag all 275 pounds of him into the house.

But that's not even the funniest part. The funniest part was, like I said, R was a very close friend of my ex and he was at our apartment all the time, like once a week or more. For the next solid year, every single time he stepped foot into my house and I was there, he would start apologizing profusely. (Not that he remembered any of what he'd done, but he'd been apprised, to his great embarrassment.) And every time he did, I'd tell him it was okay, until after so many months of apologies I just couldn't take it anymore, and told him if he said he was sorry one more time, I wasn't going to merely knee him in the balls, I was going to remove them with one of my kitchen knives. He stopped. (You people think I'm sweet and cute and little but, especially in those days, people believed me when I threatened to assault them. They weren't particularly afraid, but they believed me.)

Okay, we'll end my little nostalgia-fest right here. Feel free to chime in with any stories of your own misspent youth you'd care to share.

xoxo

artilicious 2

Okay, so last night I finally decided to hang my Christmas present photo in the bathroom and...no. It's too big. I mean, it's not too big to fit on the wall, especially if I move the position of the other pictures slightly. I *did* measure before I bought it. But it's too big in scale. You need to be further away from it to appreciate it than is possible in a bathroom. It takes over the whole room.

So for now it's on the wall behind our exercise equipment, which is definitely not where it needs to be permanently.

xoxo

artilicious

More +++ discounts, so I ordered the above.

If I get my act together, I'll take a picture at some point of the actual photograph I got for my bathroom for Christmas from my dad, to join the ones Mr Indemnity took. But here it is, below, unframed. It's called Les Halles, 1957, and the guy who took it is a famous fashion photographer. I kept looking at it for months, before finally deciding it was gonna be my Xmas prezzie. (I dunno why it's so small here. But you get the idea.)

I also think it's kinda hilarious that I haven't wanted to buy any shoes at all, just art. I'm sure that will pass soon.

xoxo

memriiiieeeessss

Do you have any clear memories of any specific childhood Christmases? I don't. No "oh, that was the year I got the EasyBake Oven..." misty watercolor nostalgia. They all blend together into a general impression of being sick with excitement and anticipation of gifts, and of my mother's exasperation over having to decorate the tree along with her insistence that the tinsel be hung one freakin strand at a time and her inevitable sadness when yet another of the incredibly fragile glass ornaments she still had from her own childhood bit the dust no matter how careful we were being with them. I do remember pretending to believe in Santa long after I'd figured out he was an impossibility, just because I felt my parents would be disappointed if I didn't. (Um, yeah, that feeling responsible for other people's happiness thing? Goes back a ways, huh?)

Oh, yeah, and I must say, I do specifically remember that it was the year I was in third grade that I came home from school (at lunchtime, because it was the half day at the beginning of vacation) to find the demon spawn cat we had at the time, who made Evil Kitty on her worst day seem calm and well-behaved, with the entire Christmas tree on top of her on the floor, and herself completely entangled in the lights. So there is one specific, datable memory. That'd be 1970. But mostly they're just a undifferentiated blur until high school.

Oh, but do I have a horrific story about New Year's Eve 1972/73, though. Ahahaha. Probably that was the start of my distaste for the whole occasion. They've ranged in hideousness since then, from getting so drunk my senior year in high school that in work the next morning (housekeeping!) I threw up in 25% of the bathrooms I cleaned, to the exasperation of spending the stroke of midnight in the ER with my ex-husband getting stitches (intoxicated shenanigans to blame, of course), to dragging cranky children through First Night, to freezing my ass off for fireworks I couldn't care less about, to getting drunk by myself while crying and watching tapes of the X-Files and contemplating suicide, to the sheer comedy of waiting 4 hours for our Chinese takeout to be delivered (with periodic phone calls from the restaurant promising it was on its way so that I didn't just give up and cook). But the dawn of 1973? That was the one that probably scarred me for life.

xoxo

brother from another planet

One night in the spring of 1985, I couldn't fall asleep. (I know it was the spring of 1985 because I remember what apartment we were living in and I wasn't pregnant yet.) I got up out of bed and went out onto the living room sofa to, um, do something that would help me get to sleep. (Why did I have to get up out of bed for that? Well, even though we were very, very soon to create a baby together, we couldn't/wouldn't admit to each other that we did that kind of thing. Oh, so young. Oh, so stoopid.)

But my getting up woke my future ex-husband, so when I went out to the couch, all I could do was turn on the TV. Flipping idly through the channels I happened upon this movie in progress. And was immediately like, WTF? And was also immediately drawn in.

I loved that movie. I watched it every time I saw it on my cable for the next six or eight months, till we moved and didn't have cable any more. Then I never saw it again, though I remembered it vaguely and fondly. And I've never known anyone else who ever watched it or remembered it or even heard of it. Well, I read or heard or saw something that tweaked my memory of it a couple months ago, and found, to my delight, that Netflix had it.

And this week it finally worked its way up to the top of my queue, landing in my mailbox on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to me.

I started it last night. Oh, yes, it is very, very low budget. Oh, yes, it is dated. But it is still an extremely sweet, and quietly funny, movie and the performance of "the brother" is riveting. To be the lead character of a full length film and be entirely mute throughout, yet completely hold the screen? That's some acting right there.

I think I'll go finish the rest of it right now.

xoxo

ramblicious 2

I think my favorite song on that Amy Winehouse CD is You Know I'm No Good. Not just for the line "...and sniffed me out like I was Tangueray..." which is, face it, brilliant. But also for:

And then you notice likkle carpet burns
My stomach drops and my gut churns
You shrug, and it's the worst
Who truly stuck the knife in first?

There's two interpretations to be put to that, I think, either equally valid. I'm sure which one occurs to you first depends totally on your own relationship/romantic history. There's the sickening realization that your partner doesn't really care about what you do anymore because they...just don't care. They're not emotionally involved. You, and what you do, mean nothing. Or there's the sickening realization that your partner has just come to expect the worst from you, that your bad behavior is the norm and not the exception, and that, well, you're probably a piece of shit.

From the song title, of course, I'd say option number two is the "right" one. It's meant to be a song about self-loathing and guilt. But if we're using this as a little Rorshach ink blot to diagnose what our issues are, I'll admit the first several times I really listened to, and paid attention to, those lyrics, option one is all that occurred to me. Ah, well.

Did you have a nice Xmas? Did Santa bring you anything good? I got a whole bunch of meat. (Srsly. I'm not lying.)

Oh, one more Amy Winehouse comment. "Blake Fielder-Civil"...even junkies sound classier in Britain, don't they?

xoxo

ramblicious

I went for a very long walk this afternoon, partly because I felt like I needed the exercise and it had mostly stopped raining, and partly because I got it into my head that I wanted a piece of fish to make for dinner tonight and I figured I'd do a goal-oriented walk to the market. The condition of the sidewalks probably should have made me reconsider, but hey.

I was listening to Amy Winehouse on the iPod while I walked, because if song after song about drinking and infidelity don't put you into the holiday mood, I don't know what will. I told you all I have a pretty black mood towards this time of year--though I will say, swear to god, Marcy is helping me, because while my thoughts are fairly black, I feel very calm and peaceful about it, no anxiety, no teariness, no problems sleeping as I dwell on the things that put me in a shitty, shitty mood. And so while I walked and enumerated in my head that list of things that I perceive other people to have that I do not and which make me sad, I also was able to list a bunch of things I have that other people might be envious of. And feel peaceful. I wasn't even swearing in my head at all the people who didn't even try to clear their sidewalks properly. Acupuncture FTW.

I walked by one of the larger of the local Catholic churches (where apparently they were having Christmas mass at 4 fucking pm on Christmas Eve, which is a travesty), and for those of you who don't live in eastern Massachusetts let me point out that there are *a lot* of Catholic churches hereabouts. And that, through a convoluted series of thoughts I won't go into, led me to remembering Dave K. Dave K was the only (to my knowledge) Jewish kid in my high school at the time I attended. Dave K sat in front of me in 10th grade American history class and we spent most of that whole school year carrying on a gentle flirtation with each other there in the back of Ms L's class. He was a good-looking boy, Dave K was. Despite our long and gentle flirtation, he would never ask me out for the simple fact that, sadly, Dave K was a social climber and I was not popular enough (I know, you're shocked) for him to do more than flirt with. He was such a social climber that, that very year, he had a party while his parents were away and threw it open to a whole bunch of people (you know, like seniors) who he didn't really know but who he thought would boost his standing. They did many thousands of dollars of damage to his parents' house. Poor Dave K. So, yeah, I was thinking about him today and wondering whatever happened to him, because despite the fact he would never ask me out, I certainly would never bear him any ill will. I should probably google him right now! He had an unusual last name, I bet he'd be easy to find.

I was gonna tell you more things I was thinking about on my walk, but I think I'll save them for another time. I gotta cook.

Smooches to all.

xoxo

gentlemen!

I have one thing to say to you. Be glad, be very very glad, that you did not live in ancient China.

Why's that, Andrea? Well, I saw Marcy again today and we started talking about my kidney "energy". Mainly because it came up in conversation that my son is 22 and she was like, whoa, wait a minute, how old are you again? (I feel her, because I know from experience that even though you have a piece of paper with the patient's d.o.b. on it, you don't always do the math in your head to figure out what their age is. Especially if, like me, you're at the point where half the time you can't remember what year we're in now.) Anyway, Marcy thought I was in my 30s and said the fact that I look young for my age is indicative of good kidney energy, a very positive thing.

Depleted kidney energy is supposed to make you look old before your time and is thought by the Chinese to be due to the kind of hard living that we Westerners would also consider as contributing to a, uh, Keith Richard-like visage: drugs, too much drinking, too many long hours, too much work. But the Chinese also worry about depleted kidney energy not just for its cosmetic detriment, but because unlike other things that can be brought back into balance with acupuncture or herbs or healthy living, their theory is that you have a finite amount of this kidney energy from birth and when you use it up, it's gone, never to be recovered. Leading to all kinds of health problems and, I guess, ultimately, death.

Still with me? Well, besides the too much partying and too much work depleting it, they also feel that in women it is depleted by bearing too many children (understandable) and in men by too much sex (huh?!?). So, Marcy said, the ancient Chinese had all kinds of rules and superstitions about when it was okay to have sex. Including that you weren't supposed to have sex at all *all winter*, the idea being that your body was supposed to be more in a hibernation mode in the cold weather.

So, guys? If you were in ancient China, you'd be being abstinent right now, preserving your kidney energy. Till, like, March or something.

I know, I know. Some of you all woulda said "fuck it! I'll just die young." You know who you are.

xoxo

so *that's* what the fuck is wrong with me

Oh, Globe science page, endless generator of blog topics, I salute you. Today's headline: "Evolutionary curveball for curvy?" Apparently, a new study suggests that "women with straighter waistlines tend to be stronger, more assertive, and more resistant to stress." On the other hand, those of us who store more fat on our hips and thighs "give birth to smarter babies, since fat in those areas contains fatty acids key to infant brain development." Bulgy Polish catcher thighs FTW! I knew they were good for something more than just blocking the plate. D was a very smart baby.

In other junk science, apparently if you show men pornography before they go shopping they will buy more, because the pleasure centers in their brains that are activated by acquiring stuff are already cranked up and ready to go. But considering that those pleasure centers are also apparently stimulated by the free food on toothpicks the sample lady at Whole Foods is giving out (which also successfully induce people to spend), these pleasure centers seem kinda...non discriminating.

Okay, them's the Cliff Notes. Anything else you wanna learn from today's paper, you got to read yourself. But I know I personally will sleep better tonight just from knowing there's a biological explanation for me. Either that, or because I decide to drink the little mini bottle of Bailey's M1 gave me for Xmas. One of the two.

xoxo

and in another winter update

So, just as you probably don't remember my bitching-about-wrapping-presents post last year, you also probably don't remember me discussing how, because the mailbox for the whole street is closest to our house, 90% of the time, we remove the snow from around it, with the other 10% of it being done by the people who live to our left, the rest of the neighbors contributing zero. Just trust me when I tell you I've told you this story before.

Now these people who live to the left of me, we are not exactly friendly with them. We aren't hostile or engaged in some kind of petty neighbor war, either, but the paterfamilias is kind of a jerk and his wife, for example, couldn't be bothered to tell me when FedEx (three times!) tried to unsuccessfully deliver my package to her house by mistake. Apparently she just took the slips off her door and threw them away. They have, I think, three sons, all of whom are older than D; I'm not sure which of them still live at home, but since there was less loud, drunken midnight talking in the street directly below my bedroom window the last couple summers, I'm assuming not all of them. Not that I ever bitched them out about the noise, mind you; again, I emphasize, no petty neighbor wars. We basically just ignore each other. The youngest son, however, did, a couple years ago, see me out raking my leaves while he was doing something in his driveway and spontaneously came over to help me bag them up, which I thought was very nice.

Well, just a bit ago we went out to remove the snow. My snowblower isn't the most powerful and the snow was heavy and crusted over, so it was shovel, then snowblow, shovel, then snowblow. Basically we just did the entrance to the driveway and the first half of it, and the path from the door to the sidewalk before leaving the rest for tomorrow. I was just finishing the path before going in when the kid from next door came out to snowblow with his much more powerful machine. Apparently he saw me and saw that we hadn't finished everything, because after I went in, he not only did the mailbox, he came over and did the whole rest of my driveway out of the goodness of his heart.

Now you *know* I will never ever bitch him out in the future for drunken shenanigans beneath my bedroom window. He's definitely earned a free pass, yo.

And perhaps some day one of the other neighbors will do the mailbox and we can all feel warm and fuzzy about the neighborliness of snow removal.

xoxo

i gotta stop watching tv

Really, I was gonna go out and do a bunch of things today, but it's snowing like a bastid. So, instead, I've got ESPN news on, and you gotta know what kind of commercials *they're* showing the weekend before Christmas, right? "Buy this for your wife/girlfriend, moron, if you wanna get laid any time before next Easter." The sad thing is, I think some guys fall for this, and thus many women end up with a bunch of ugly, ugly jewelry that they then feel obligated to give head for. Or something. I'm not quite sure how normal people behave, but I've heard rumors. Anyway.

This particular commercial for Kay Jewelers (or the like, I dunno, I don't pay that close attention) shows a guy with an apparently deaf girlfriend, apologizing for his lack of sign language proficiency and saying he's learned a new sign. "Merry Xmas." And he gives her a hideous Kay Jewelers diamond necklace. And she's thrilled, of course. She signs back something that I guess is supposed to be "I love it" or "I love you" (but which if anyone at the ad agency had half a sense of humor would really be "I am *so* giving you a blowjob tonight" because I'm sure all the deaf viewers at home that caught it would be laughing their asses off, not writing indignant letters of protest. Probably.) So, yeah. I'm thinking this is kind of weird. I guess I'm supposed to assume she's one of those deaf people who reads lips really well and can speak, and therefore they've been able to communicate really well all along and carry on a relationship to the point where they're in love and it's appropriate for him to give her a present like that. Whereas my first thought is, wow, he admits first he can barely speak to her, then gives her an awkwardly expensive awkwardly romantic (ugly) gift. That's kinda stalkerish.

I know, I know. I'm just jellus no one's giving me ugly diamond necklaces. And I should go shovel.

xoxo

addendum: I realize there's been an awful lot of mention of oral sex in here lately. I'll stop that *right now*, 'k?

procrastinating leads to questioning

I do believe I wrote a whole post around this time last year about my lack of enthusiasm for gift-wrapping. Well, that's really what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

So instead, I'm messing about on the internet again. Okay, still. (How many hours ago did I find that KY ad online?) I *immensely* enjoy looking at things I would like to buy and/or do to my house and then immediately segueing into reading dire economic news that makes me think I will soon be living in a cardboard box (which will not require counter height stools or 100% wool area rugs.)

Speaking of which? Our transcription at work has now been outsourced to India by the hospital. My boss and I were discussing this the other day and I said, that's why I'm glad I've got me a hands-on type job. It really can't be done by anyone over in South Asia. He was like, "Mine could be! With videoconferencing!" Of course, that'd mean the patient here in Massachusetts would have to hit his own knee with the reflex hammer while the Indian MD looked on from across the globe, but stranger things have happened I guess. Anyway, we were pretty amused by the idea.

Also speaking of which? L found out this week that she is definitely being laid off in two months--though she gets seven weeks of severance pay after that, so the panic won't have to start unless she's not re-employed by April. Poor L. No b&bs in her immediate future.

But back to my original procrastination question. Assuming I still remain gainfully employed at the semi-comfortable salary that allows me to live my very, very modest lifestyle long enough to buy an island/bar height table for my kitchen that is 37 inches high, am I correct in assuming that I would want the barstools that are 26 inches high, not the ones that are 30"? How much clearance does a person need in between the seat height and the table height? And does it shock you that a person who doesn't know the answer to that question has nevertheless been consecutively employed for the past 27 years?

Okay, that's it. I'm wrapping. I mean it.

xoxo

urs n myne

So, I was able to leave work early today to beat the snow, and being home unexpectedly at 2pm on a Friday, I did what anyone would do: I sat down to watch daytime TV with my dad.

Now the last time I did this with any regularity--when I was in massage school--I was amused to discover that 99% of the commercials (at least during the parade of consecutive "judge" shows my dad watches) were for either shyster ambulance-chaser lawyers urging you to sue somebody, anybody, because if anything bad's ever happened to you, it's gotta be someone's fault, and thus worth money, or for fly-by-night "career colleges," because if you're sitting home in the middle of the afternoon watching Judge Joe Brown, obviously you're unemployed or a lazy sack of shit who should be doing something with yourself, like making $9 an hour as a medical assistant.

Well, I saw some of that ilk today. But I also saw a commercial for a totally different product, one whose marketing confused and perplexed me. K Y "yours and mine" lubricant. It was a very very odd advertisement. There was a couple who were busy busy busy, too busy and stressed for...sex? foreplay? arousal? I'm not quite sure. But they apparently used the "yours and mine" which left them lying there in post-orgasmic satisfaction. Quicker. Or something.

I'm still not sure I get the point. Perhaps I need to take a week off work and study this commercial in detail. Is this marketed towards couples who really aren't interested in having sex because they've got so much else to do, but who nevertheless feel they *should* be having sex? Is it for couples who are interested in having sex, as a concept, but are too busy to allot the few minutes required to do those usual things that get people aroused and ready to have sex? Or is it for people who are aroused and want to have an orgasm as time-efficiently as possible because they have too many other things to do? I just do not know.

I do know one thing. People who are watching Judge Joe Brown at 3pm on a Friday afternoon? They've got plenty of time for oral. I am absolutely positive about this.

Wasted friggin advertising dollars. Srsly.

xoxo

more points against the white sofa

Yeah, on the new cream-colored guest bedding.

Shut up. I said actual content would reappear some time, not this morning. Uploading pictures is so much easier than saying anything even semi-intelligent.

xoxo

here's the thing(s)...

1.) Do you realize that when you google "construction studs" you don't just get gay porn? It gives me faith in the wholesomeness of America, or y'know, our ability to build houses. Something like that.

2.) I was thinking that as much as I love (cherish, hold dear to my tiny, tiny black heart) your blog comments, dear blog readers, I really dislike anonymous commentary. Even when it's not untoward. I feel like "have the fucking balls to post under your alias," ahahahaha. Ha.

3.) Actual content will reappear in this blog *any day now.* Or at least some time before 2009. Maybe.

4.) Do you think Marcy has manipulated my chi back into giddiness? Goat cheese paninis are cheaper but they aren't backed by 5000 years of medical tradition.

xoxo

when really...

don't these really say more about the whole Andrea experience?

xoxo

registering a protest

I received this e-card today and it's patently untrue.

I always wear a scarf in cold weather. God.

xoxo

see?

Want this room. White sofas. Very beautiful. Maybe I can scotchguard my whole family instead of the furniture?

xoxo

pictoral evidence and disgruntlement

Because I know you were dying to know what I ended up deciding to do today.

I guess the fact that when I finally was arsed to put some clothes on, they were sweatpants, sealed my fate. I vacuumed, vacuumed, vacuumed (and will vacuum some more) but I did not clean both bathrooms. My main activity today was putting up the new curtains and rods and being very, very disgruntled.

Let's talk about the curtain rods first. Can I just say, my future contractor husband cannot appear in my life soon enough, because all this home improvement bullshit is wearing me down and I haven't even done anything majorly tricky yet. Standing on a rickety stepstool with the cordless drill because, even though the ladder is upstairs, it's heavy and the amount of heavy furniture I would have had to move in order to get it close enough to the window made risking my life a more attractive alternative, and realizing that someone who knew what they were doing would have had those brackets securely installed in 45 seconds, not the 45 minutes and copious cursing it took me, really made me want a non-useless man around. Or my mom. Because she was good at that stuff. Unfortunately, the ghost of my mother materializing to give me guidance has about the same odds as me snagging a husband.

Anyway, I did get them up without breaking anything (bones, windows, what have you.) Then I got out the new steamer to try to dewrinkle the drapes. Well. You know the saying about you get what you pay for? I bought a $20 "Sharper Image" steamer at Bed Bath and Beyond, and it leaks out the bottom. Little drops of scalding hot water. It's a good thing I was wearing those sweatpants, huh? Though I'm not sure I don't have any minor burns. Gah. Fucking piece of crap. And its dewrinkling power is...not fantastic. Those drapes, to be fair, were really seriously creased from being in their packaging, though, so maybe even a non-piece-of-crap steamer would have been sorely tested. Oh! And the drapes? The little metal grommets on them gave me metal splinters when I was threading them on the curtain rods. Again, get what you pay for. I have the cheap Pottery Barn knockoffs from the Tazhay, made in China. I'm sure the expensive real Pottery Barn ones are made in, like, Sri Lanka and don't require an updated tetanus shot to hang. Oh! And the architecture school dropout who apparently built this house? Who the hell puts all the electrical outlets and in-floor heating/cooling vents directly under the windows? Do you think that would, I dunno, make having your drapes hang right a problem?

But, enough about that. Let's discuss how Marcy's acupuncture has apparently worn off. I was feeling much less anxious and generally in a better mood in the first few days afterwards. Whether that was due to the general relaxing effect of the treatment or whether it did affect my hormones (because I'm fairly convinced that the past six months of hugely irregular periods along with the mood swings have got to be the beginnings of perimenopause) or whether it was all a placebo, I dunno. But I was able to think about some stuff that was objectively upsetting in a dispassionate kind of way and not, y'know, get too wound up about it. Today, however? Back to the shitty shitty mood. Dwelling on things. Threw a major hissy fit at D and my dad and refused to cook dinner when there was some dissension about what I was going to make. (In fact, I stuck the steak I was gonna cook tomorrow in the freezer and told them I'm not cooking all week, too freaking bad.)

I can't wait till Wednesday to go get my chi adjusted again.

So, here's some pictures. Can you see how creased the drapes still are?


This, by the way, is what is going to be my new guest room/dressing room. Or, as L and I call it, the "L_____ M_____ Memorial Bed and Breakfast Wing of 9 F______ Drive." Because we're morons. And I told her I was doing the room over just for her. And she likes bed and breakfasts. And I now refuse to stay in any when she and I go away anywhere because making chitchat with the owners over morning coffee is one of Dante's circles of hell, I'm convinced. This bedding is more cream and less white in real life. It looks kinda crappy in this picture, but in person it's nice.
Closeup of some more of my vaguely disturbing art. And wrinkled drapes.
And just because someone kindly gave me their excess Xmas lights and I said I was going to take a picture of what I did with them:

That's it. I'm done.

xoxo

brotherhood thoughts

If I were still doing disclaimers in here, I'd warn you in advance that this is gonna be one of those posts that's interesting only to me. And if I were doing truth-in-labeling, I'd admit that this is a procrastination post, because I've either got to go out and finish my Xmas shopping today or I need to stay home, vacuum the whole house, clean the bathrooms, finally put those new curtain rods up that have been sitting in a box for three months and steam the drapes that are going on them, but writing nonsense from the comfort of my loveseat is looking far more appealing than either of those two options.

Be that as it may. I'm still struggling through the first season of Brotherhood and waffling about whether to just send the DVDs back to Netflix unfinished. I still can't give a crap about any of the characters. It's not just that I don't like any of them (well, except maybe Declan) but that I don't hate any of them either. I just don't care. They're not real people to me. The motivation for any of their actions remains opaque beyond the gross surface level, so I have no empathy for any of them. (Not sympathy [which I don't have either], empathy.)

Now, I could perhaps blame it on the acting, because, ohmygod, those RI accents still burn my delicate ears, but the acting isn't that bad or that flat. I must blame the writing. And it occurs to me that I'm probably very, very spoiled, and just judging everything by Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men standards wherein fabulous writing is capable of making one empathize with characters who are, in many instances, doing very very bad things. Not approve of, not condone, but understand. I'm finding that's the mark of great writing for me, personally: the ability to create characters who become real to me, whose actions are not only within the realm of possibility, but *exactly* what they should be doing for who they are. And you know *who they are*, beyond a collection of stereotypes and stock character.

(Does that make any sense to anyone but me? Sigh. Also? I recognize that there are other types and marks of great writing: the beautiful turn of phrase, the perfectly crafted sentence, the flawless execution of pacing that makes the reader/watcher keep turning pages/stay glued to video long after they should have gone to bed, to name just a few. But it's the multi-layered characterization that does it for me personally. Because, you may have noticed, watching people and trying to figure out who they are and why they do what they do might just have a certain draw for me. Again, sigh.)

So, finish watching this show or not? The jury's still out.

this makes me laugh

There's just something about the expression of perfect disgust on the kitteh's face.



xoxo

oh, okey-dokey

Did you see this little item in the paper today? Our man Hideki Okajima is running in the Honolulu marathon on Sunday, and the Red Sox are "not pleased" and "would have discouraged him" had they been informed of his plan to do this.

Really? I dunno, I'm not a runner, nor have I ever been a runner, but dude! he doesn't have to even think about throwing a baseball for another two months. Isn't that enough time to recover from a marathon? And isn't having been training for a marathon, apparently, for the past six or eight weeks better than if he'd been sitting home drinking too much sake and watching tentacle porn (or whatever it is those Japanese guys do when they're in uber-party mode)? Are we afraid he's going to trip, fall, and land on his pitching shoulder? You can do that from drinking too much sake too, and too much tentacle porn could always lead to, y'know, other arm overuse.

So, Mr Okajima, I'm behind you all the way! Hope you finish.

xoxo

the value of a sense of humor

I just had this little toddler in my office. An overtired, cranky toddler having been kept up from 5 am on so that she'd nap here, and to say that she was not pleased with me, her parents, or the whole situation probably goes without saying, huh? But I'll say it anyway. She was pissed.

Her parents, bless them, were expending a valiant effort to keep her distracted long enough that I could set her up to test, with the singing and the funny faces and the raspberries on the tummy and their toys and my toys, the whole nine yards. So, one of her toys was a little stuffed cow. Her dad, as he made it "attack" her belly, was saying, "I'm the baby-eating cow! I've got four stomachs and they're all full of baby!" The mom and I were cracking up. (The baby, not so much.) Through her laughter the mom was scolding him for being a horrible, horrible person, while I said, "Oh, no! It must be one of those Mad Cows!", making us all laugh that much harder. (Well, again, the baby not so much.)

And it occurred to me once again that there is very little more useful in life than the ability to laugh in the face of horribleness. I highly recommend it as a coping strategy.

xoxo

delicious rantalicious

Actually, I'm in a lovely mood today so there's no real spleen (haha) in this rant, but I've been becoming progressively more annoyed by this since its beginning, and the time has arrived to write about it.

Let me preface this by saying I am by no means one of those rabid anti-smoking people. At all. I've never smoked--my mom having been a smoker, I always thought it was kind of a gross, smelly habit--and I haven't dated someone who smoked since my sophomore year in high school, so I suppose it's kind of a dealbreaker in the romance department, and I was pissed when my son briefly took it up, but by and large, I figure other people's smoking is their business, not mine. We clear on that? Okay.

As of November something, the hospital I work at has gone completely nonsmoking. As in, you cannot smoke on the grounds anywhere, even in the parking lots, and employees are prohibited from smoking in their own cars. Which, you know how I feel about Big Brother telling people what they can do in their own vehicles, even if you're parked on their property, but whatever. This isn't, lemme say upfront, due to any concern about anyone's health, so matter how they try to spin it. It they were so concerned about their patients' and employees' health, they stop serving shit in the cafeteria that's 50% saturated fat and 50% sugar, okay? Rumor has it the JCAH is very soon going to stop accrediting hospitals that allow smoking anywhere on their grounds, and that's triggered this new rule.

So, let's pull a completely made up statistic out of my ass, as I so often do. Let's estimate that 20% of the employees of this hospital are smokers. During their lunch (half)hours, they can leave the grounds and go smoke, right? But I daresay, most of them can't go through a whole work day smoking just the once. They are physically addicted, y'know? So what are they going to do on their breaks, when time is short and they really want a cigarette? They're in a tough spot. Well, the ones who are mannerly will leave the grounds and go for a walk around the block or something. I can't say I'd be exactly pleased if I was one of the near-neighbors with hoards of hospital smokers now traipsing past my front lawn everyday, but still, it's a fairly polite solution.

The ones who are rude and inconsiderate? They'll go smoke in the bus shelter immediately in front of the hospital which is ostensibly for little old ladies and people with babies in their strollers to use to wait for the goddamned bus. I wait for my bus across the street and I see them coming down the hill in little clumps, in their scrubs and their ID badges. And because the shelter isn't hospital property--I suppose it's MBTA property--security says nothing. In the three weeks or so since the new policy, there have accumulated approximately 4000 cigarette butts in and around that bus shelter. Which no one cleans because it's not hospital property, it's MBTA property and they're not even aware it exists. It's disgusting. And it's this kind of behavior that makes people into anti-smoking zealots.

xoxo

stick needles in me

So, I saw my new favorite health care provider this afternoon. It was *very* relaxing and very interesting, but there was no moxibustion, alas. I'm wondering if there will ever be any moxibustion, considering most of my problems--anxiety, menstrual irregularities, that rash (!), even the new onset of acid reflux I mentioned in passing--are, in the Chinese medicine way of thinking, due to excess "heat".

My diagnosis: yin deficiency, spleen deficiency, and minor imbalances of my heart and lung meridians. And our Mr Barma can take a bow, because he was the one who, upon being forced to examine my rash (yes, that's the kind of friend I am, the kind who insists on showing you her disgusting skin conditions, probably before you've eaten), said, "You should find out what meridian that's over!" Okay, he said it facetiously, sorta, but Marcy would still say he's wicked smaht, because it was exactly right over my spleen meridian. That being, apparently, the root of all my problems.

I've gotta do more research on this now, but I will say this. They, and by they I mean acupuncturists, place great store on what your tongue looks like. Good god, another part of my body to be self-conscious about. I bet you've never worried about yours!

xoxo

merry kitschmas

of a piece

I don't think I've done this blog post before, though I've mused on it, but you never know, perhaps I'm wrong. So if I'm plagiarizing myself, mea culpa. You people never remember anything I tell you anyway.

Mr Indemnity loaned me a whole box set of Muddy Waters to rip to my iPod, and some Slim Harpo and...I don't remember who else. But, anyway, the main reason he did this was not just because he's a nice person and the (emotionally-challenged foster) brother I never had, but because it bothers him greatly--greatly, I tell you!--that I listen to and love all this blues-oriented stuff, but not much actual blues. Which he is kind of an expert about. And I was saying to him that the thing about the blues is that, even though I do like it very much, it all sounds more or less the same to me. If I'm listening to Muddy Waters on the CD, I'm hard-pressed to notice when one song ends and the next begins.

That's not a criticism. Right now I'm listening to Exile which, besides (as already alluded to in here many times) being one of my favorite albums ever is also the kind of blues-oriented stuff that my love thereof drives Mr Indemnity to distraction, and it's exactly the same. I could not name one song off the album that I'd consider in my top 30 favorite songs of all time, but the CD (and, of course, back in the day, the vinyl) as a whole is in my top three and, 27 years after the summer I played it over and over in my crappy Allston apartment, I'm still never sick of it. There is music that is meant to be listened to as discrete songs, and there is music that is of a piece, meant to be listened to as an ongoing wall of sound.

That's what I think.

xoxo

very quick observation

In next week's Kohls ad, on page 20, there is a model who I am completely sure is a man in a wig and lipstick. Maybe the people behind the "Simply Vera Vera Wang collection" have been unable to sell their ugly, ugly clothes to biological women and have decided to target their marketing to the crossdressing population. Which, y'know, god bless 'em. Nothing wrong with filling a niche in these difficult times.

xoxo

writing quandry

I'm taking a poll. I know, I know, I always ask you people for your opinion and then just do what I feel like anyway, but please don't let that dissuade you from offering it nevertheless.

Here's the background. I haven't written any original fiction since 2003/2004, though I did do a little revising after that. In the process of cleaning closets, I found a draft of my last half-written story with two more scenes than I knew I had. So, I read it and I liked it and I decided it's probably worth trying to finish. And lately I've been feeling like maybe I want to start writing again.

Here's the question. If I finish this story I either have to update all the 2003 references in it (the protagonist's kitten-heeled boots, the fact that the band plays "yet another Outkast song" at her wedding, the late supper at Sonsie, etc.) OR I have to make plain in the story that this is all happening circa 2002-2003. It's easy enough to fix the fashion references, the restaurants, the hit songs that are inescapable, but on the other hand, the protagonist's suitor/lover/husband is in--wait for it--commercial real estate (when I made that quip in here a couple months ago about commercial real estate being a cover for the mob, I *totally* forgot I ever had used it for a character) and I'm thinking, in the current economy that doesn't have the same meaning as it did in 2002/2003. See, Jeff has to be in an occupation that has made him *a lot* of money at a fairly young age, and an occupation that relies on smoothness, charm, and really nice suits, for the purposes of the story and characterization. Jeff cannot have made his money through geekery. And I'm thinking, those are the kind of people who would be very nervous in today's economy. Jeff cannot be nervous for my purposes; Jeff cannot have a moment of doubt.

So perhaps it's best to have this all taking place in the near-recent past rather than the present. Would it disturb you as a reader to read something that clearly happens almost-now but not now? Would you think "why the hell isn't this happening in 2009?"

Oh, and if anyone would like to be a beta reader, please let me know. I don't have anyone to do that for me anymore and it's always so useful.

xoxo

mary sunshine is in da house

Not really, but I'm marginally less cranky today, if simply for the fact that no one has done anything yet to piss me the fuck off, and look! it's 11:30, so that's something. Plus, those of you with astonishingly good memories who were also readers of my old blog (um, that's...no one, probably), will remember me using this blog title before. Recycle, recycle, recycle. It's good for the environment.

Nevertheless, here's a blinding dose of positivity. D went to see his cute little Indian psychiatrist today (is that sexist of me? I know she made it through medical school and a psychiatry residency, so she's obviously a bright woman--though also obviously not at the top of her class if she's working in the clinic full of poor, chronically mentally ill patients on MassHealth--but she's adorable and she looks like she's fourteen, so I must adjectivize her as "cute and little", no offense meant). Anyway, she was teasing him that it wasn't really fair of her to weigh her patients between Thanksgiving and New Years, but when she did, he'd lost another 3 pounds since last month, Thanksgiving notwithstanding.

Also, when I went to hand her a copy of the bloodwork in case she didn't have it, she told me she did already. And then she said, "But, thank you. You're really on top of things! That's great." I did *not* say that I have to be because everyone else in the world is frigging incompetent, mostly because I spewed that yesterday and got it all out of my system. But, anyway. Thank you, Dr M, for recognizing that.

But what I really wanted to be positive about today? I'm gonna give my dad a little praise here. I know I tell you guys when he's driving me crazy. Most of that is because he's old and deaf and going blind, and thus really needy in a "I've devolved to the state of a five-year-old who needs Mommy to take care of my needs *right now*" kinda way, and to his credit, if I point it out to him without yelling, he often sees my point. The other part of his driving me crazy is totally predicated on our being way too much alike in many ways, which is neither of our faults. But I was thinking, in the context of a friend's idle remark about one of their parents, that one thing I can say about my dad and totally give him props for, is that he has never, ever criticized me for any of my relationship or lifestyle choices. Never a word of disapproval about my living with S before we got married, nor about our accidental pregnancy, our marriage, our divorce. Never any criticism about anything I did in raising D (and nothing but incredible sympathy and care for D since he's been sick, even though he doesn't understand it at all). Never any disapproval from the time I started dating again after my split with S to now about my going away with guys or sleeping elsewhere or any other indications, however discreet, that I have a sex life. It just doesn't occur to my dad to be judgmental about any such matters. I mean, he might be exasperated I didn't vote for McCain, but other than that? I'm golden. I really have never felt that there was anything I could ever do that would make him not love me.

Now, my mother... Wait! We're being positive!

xoxo

o hai

As they say.

I have not yet recovered from my shitty, shitty Thanksgiving mood, and the general incompetence and maleficence of just about everyone else in the entire world (excluding *you*, of course, blog readers--well, most of you) is just stressing me out more. God, do I hate everyone.

Want a rundown? Oh, fuck you, you're getting one anyway. (That's a joke, for those of you who are, rather than incompetent and maleficent, slow.)

Let's start with JCrew customer service and/or Eastern Bank, since I'm not sure who exactly is at fault in this particular set of circumstances. Remember I told you I got a great online deal from Garnet Hill Thanksgiving night? I paid that, as I pay for everything, with my Mastercard debit card. No problem. Friday morning I ordered something online from JCrew, also at Thanksgiving sale prices. I go out Friday afternoon and evening and use my debit card at Borders and at Homegoods, again with no problem. I use my debit card for groceries Sunday. Monday pm at work I get email from JCrew saying my order cancellation has been processed. WTF? I call them. Customer service girl says, oh, my item is out of stock. (Email says nothing about that.) Oh, do I want to reorder it, because it'll be back in stock December 12? Sure, at the sale price, please. She tries to put it through and says my debit card is being rejected. WTF? Do I want to put it on another card? No. Fuggedaboutit. I leave work, go directly to the ATM, take out $60 cash with no problem and confirm that Eastern Bank knows I have well over $6000 in that account. Tuesday I call the bank. The nice customer service guy sees that it had happened and has no idea why. Plenty of money in the account, no restrictions on the account, used my debit card both immediately before and immediately after with no probs. No idea. "Call us *while* you're trying to use the card if it happens again and we'll put it through." Um, thanks?

Next. Oh CVS how I hate you. D's visiting nurse leaves me a note last Wednesday saying he needs his 25mg clozaril refilled. I know I picked up both the 25 and the 100 mg on November 10, with a month's supply, but I take her word for it. I try to call in both yesterday, so I'd have them for her today. (She comes every Wednesday and helps him organize his meds for the week.) I go to CVS after work yesterday and a.) those incompetent morons at his clinic have not forwarded the bloodwork form (what else is new?) even though I faxed them Monday and b.) it's too early to refill those prescriptions anyway. Okay. I leave D's nurse a note saying I couldn't get the 25 mg b/c it was too soon. I come home today to find a note back from her saying he only has the 25mg until Saturday. That means CVS shorted us 5 or 6 pills last month. WTF? Now I need to count them before I leave the fucking pharmacy? HATE.

Next. Remember the Sunday before Thanksgiving I told you I ordered my first Xmas present online? Well, I cannot go into details about the merchant or the item, but lemme just say, they sent me confirmation email saying they'd email me again when it actually went into the mail (USPS). Well, it occurred to me the other day, like Monday, that I had not heard anything from them. No shipping email. I go onto their site, sign in, and tracking tells me it's been mailed. But not when. And here it is Wednesday and I haven't gotten it yet and, of course, no email from them. I suppose I need to call their customer service, but frankly, the agita that's going to occur when I find out my small but expensive item has been lost by the Post Office, delivered to the wrong person (one of my probably-larcenous soccer mom neighbors, frex) who kept it, or not actually mailed at all despite what they say is making me put it off.

The only person I am pleased with at this juncture is my soon-to-be acupuncturist Marcy whose customer service skills so far have been excellent.

I did just drop off five items of clothing to my regular, and usually stellar, drycleaner. Want to take bets they lose one of my sweaters this time?

In closing, everyone sucks.

Bai.

xoxo

P.S. I also have to hire an electrician to put in my chandelier and I'm really scared to do that at this point. I had this guy I was gonna call today but now I'm gonna wait a week or so. If my dining room doesn't look pretty for Christmas, too bad.