I want my facebook!

Yeah, that title was supposed to be reminiscent of the old "I want my MTV!" chants of the late 80's, early 90's. Doesn't work so well in type. My email friend and I often bemoan the difficulty of conveying sarcasm online. We've decided to invent a sarcasm font, a letter design that will alert readers instantly to the presence of snark. Alas, we are both much too lazy to engineer such an undertaking, and after all, part of the beauty of sarcasm is its very sneakiness, correct?

But. This is all beside the point.

The point right now is that I have been unable to log onto Facebook for almost a week now, and I'm having withdrawals. My "friends" say they can't see my page either. Facebook says it's "experiencing a few bugs" and will have them worked out as soon as possible. Somewhere, there is a room full of socially inept coders and debuggers working diligently to restore my ability to spy on old high school classmates and current co-workers alike. This is comforting. [insert sarcasm font]

What all the cool people with anaphylaxis will be carrying this fall.

There has to be something in our genetic code that causes this oddball humor, right?
This was a gift from my little sis this week, a gift that she lovingly crafted with her own two hands.



I nearly peed my pants when I saw it and read the accompanying note, I was laughing so hard. Seriously. Favorite. Gift. Ever. Ever!

In fact, I'm quite sure the demand for these will be huge and she'll have to quit her job to start knitting epi-pen cases full time.

The only thing that came even close to making me laugh this hard recently was when last night at the ballgame, after nearly seven innings of this chubby obnoxious kid seated above us yelling "Charge!" every time they played the music, Eli's dad turned to me and said, "I wish I had a beer bottle; I'd chuck it at that kid."

Oh, the hilarity. Okay, that last one probably isn't funny unless you know my father-in-law, but trust me: it's funny.

Putting my life in his hands.

The mandate to “do one thing every day that scares you” has often been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. I don’t know whether it’s true that she ever said this, and I’m not so sure it’s even advice I’d want to live by, but I do know that yesterday I did something that scared me. Yesterday afternoon I donned a helmet, threw my leg up and over the back of an especially snazzy looking Honda Shadow, and let Eli take me for a motorcycle ride.

I wrapped my arms around him and held on tightly as we motored down the gravel lane from our house to the highway. As he pulled out onto the highway and gunned the bike up to 60 mph, I felt fragile, precarious. Without a windshield or a backrest on the bike, it felt as though the wind could knock me off the back of my seat in an instant. In the rush of the wind, I could not hear Eli speak to me, though I saw the corner of his mouth move. I saw him smile in the rearview mirror.

It’s not as though I’m a total stranger to the motorcycle. My first rides took place when I was small, a child on my father’s bike, riding up front while my sister rode on the back, Dad in between us. I don’t recall ever being afraid. After all, Dad was God, infallible. I had known him to dump the bike, skinning his arms hideously, but with us aboard I knew that it would never happen. Calamity couldn’t touch us; he wouldn’t let it. He hugged me to his chest with one bear arm as he steered with the other, and I relished the feel of the breeze through my hair and on my skin. I loved the drivers of cars and pedestrians turning to watch us as we motored through town and the rush of green fields passing in a blur as we left them behind.

In my earliest cycling sojourns with Dad, I remember the helmet as incidental. In the days before car seats, when we rode all the way to Florida lying in the back of the nine passenger station wagon, thrusting our bare toes up to push round patterns into the padded roof of the car, we weren’t required to wear such a thing as a motorcycle helmet. We might wear it because it was utterly cool—my Dad’s sparkling turquoise helmet, but we wore it more often as a costume piece during our circus performances, playing the human cannonball, and not so much during motorcycle rides.

After those frequent childhood rides, motorcycles faded from my radar. I wasn’t all that interested, probably because I had entered an angry and standoffish period in my relationship with my dad, and didn’t know anyone else who rode. There was one clandestine ride during high school, on the back of the bike of a boy much older than me, but that was only to impress and scandalize the group of girls I was with at the time. And then I was a teenager, and thus invincible. ;)

So when recently I rode with my dad again, this time on a Harley-Davidson, a gorgeous machine the likes of which was never in our reach during my childhood, it was after at least a twelve year hiatus from riding. And still, I was not afraid. I still trust my dad implicitly, respect him, and know in my bones that my well-being is at the heart of much of what he does. I do not worry that he will showboat, or hesitate, or falter. With me as his passenger, he is cautious and strong. I trust his balance, his timing, and coordination. With him in control, I am comfortable as a rider.

With Eli, it’s another story entirely.

With Eli I know that I am getting on the back of a bike driven by someone whose motorcycle experience is severely limited. He didn’t tool around on them as a boy, or as a teenager. Only as an adult has he taken up the pastime of motorcycle riding, purchasing his first bike mere months ago, logging mere hours of riding time in stark contrast to the lifetime my dad has spent manipulating these machines. He is inexperienced and lacks confidence. His body is lanky and tall, and I worry about his balance. I worry that I weigh nearly as much as he does, that the addition of my weight to the bike will be too much for him to handle.

I am 30. I am no longer the unquestioningly trusting child, riding with her father. I am no longer the brazen teenager, driven by hormones. I am a woman with responsibilities, with a young son to care for. And yet, yesterday, I found myself swinging my leg up and over that bike, planting my butt firmly on the seat, and throwing caution to the winds that rushed past us as we flew down the highway.

I do not yet trust him with my heart, but yesterday I found that trusting Eli with my body felt like a step in the right direction.

Of course, I wore a helmet.

Currently addicted to:

JAC's Squidge. Ahhhh....



Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's. Oh. My. God. These are ridiculously good. Mars, Corp. you are a sweet, evil mistress, you with your delicious candy-coated shell innovations.

Oh, Dr. Pepper, my former beloved. How could I have forsaken you all these years? I loved you in jr. high. I love you still.

Story People

So I don't at all remember how or when I stumbled upon Story People, but I came across them in my internet ramblings one day and signed up for their daily newsletter (which as far as I can tell is much less frequent than daily, but whatever). Sometimes they're wonderful and right on and sometimes they're just plain weird. No wonder I like them, right!? Sounds like me.

Anyway, I enjoyed what I found in my inbox today, even though I'm not big on the idea of angels. Just change "angel" to spirit of the universe, I guess, or something slightly less hokey. Click here to read it. It's really quite lovely.

Evidence of mid-life crisis in full swing.

Exhibit A: nose ring.

I'm just a girl.

Today I got a pedicure. And...and...wait for it...I SHAVED MY LEGS. I'll give you a moment to recover.

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Okay, are you conscious again? Good. Yes, I did indeed shave my legs--both of them, and not just from the knee down.

Behold, the pedicured feet:



(And to anyone looking at the above picture and going, "Ew. Look at those callouses! Those bunnions! Ew. Why would she post a picture of such ugly feet? To you, I say, "SUCK IT, SISTER! I said a got a PEDICURE, not a damn miracle!")

So why all of this sudden uncharacteristic girly-girlishness?

The practical reason: I'm going to a wedding reception tomorrow evening.

I've gone through all sorts of emotions leading up to this fete. It's hard for me right now to be happy for anyone, especially someone in love. Someone beginning a life with another person, taking vows to have and to hold, so forth and so on. Part of me wants to warn them, or worse, spit in their direction and snort, "Huh. We'll see how long THIS lasts." (So, I'm a nasty bitch. If you're reading this, chances are you know me and are not all that surprised.)

There is also a larger portion of me that fervently wishes them happiness. That hopes their hearts will never ache the way mine is aching. That they'll never find themselves in totally unfamiliar emotional terrain and wonder how the hell they got there and how the hell they'll make it out.

Despite all of the turmoil in me, I have decided to go to this thing, to wish the lovers well, and by god, to look fabulous doing so. Yesterday I went shopping. I shopped all day and didn't find a damn thing. Until, in a last ditch effort, I entered the Dress Barn.

Now let me just say, "Dress Barn" is a terrible name for a women's clothing store. This is why I almost didn't go in at all. Because I already feel like a cow, there's absolutely no reason on Earth I'd want to shop at a store with the word "barn" in its name. But I was desperate, and so I went in.

Instead of finding a suitable dress for the occasion, I found five. I couldn't decide. So I bought them all. FIVE DRESSES.

In order to appreciate the enormity of this expenditure, you have to realize that the last time I bought a dress, an actual, honest to goodness dress, was in 2000. This is a big step for me.

So tomorrow night, I will be wearing one of those dresses, HEELS (*insert another collective gasp from the peanut gallery*), legs and underarms freshly shorn of all hair, and toenails painted.

Which leads me to the other reason for the recent self makeover: the emotional reason.
There's something about careful grooming that just makes a person feel good.

What is that quote about looking good being the best revenge? Oh yeah, I think it goes, "Looking good is the best revenge." So anyway, it was either that or sell her panties on Ebay, so I'm going to stick with looking good. ;)

Ha ha. Kidding. Of course. The other quote I know about revenge is that the most complete revenge is forgiveness. And that's the one I'm really going for.

But it doesn't hurt to forgive in a new dress, heels, and pretty painted toenails, am I right?! ;)

We had chemistry together.

When someone asks how I met my husband, this is what I say. He grew up just a few blocks away from where I grew up, but we didn't really meet until high school. When we had chemistry together.

I will always remember the first time I noticed Eli and began to take an interest in him. Before, I knew who he was in a vague way, one of those Heicher boys, but I didn't know which was which, who was the older and who the younger. One day in chemistry class we were taking a break from our usual lecture/lab routine to help make the decorations for the Sweetheart Dance. (At least, in my memory it was the Sweetheart Dance, but then, that doesn't seem to line up with the right dates. Oh well, we'll call it the Sweetheart Dance.) Eli was lying sprawled across one of the lab tables, talking to my friend Cecelia. He was twirling a tiny ring around his pinky finger and debating out loud whether to give it back to his current girlfriend and call it quits with her.

He was wearing an old pair of too-big farm overalls, and some band t-shirt underneath. He had long hair, dyed blonde. I remember thinking he seemed so cute, in a cute sort of way. (I was sixteen.) He seemed sort of innocently cheerful, which I thought was strange, given the grungy, vague back of the school bus type of persona that I had always attributed to him.

In any case, I just remember thinking, "Huh. He's cute. Kind of hope he does decide to return the ring..."

I really don't know how long it was after that day that I ended up on a double date with Eli, Cecelia and Ethan. It was pure circumstance. Eli had been trying to get Cecelia to go out with his brother. She finally consented, with the stipulation that it be a double, with Eli and someone else. He agreed to those terms, but argued that she had to find the someone else for him to go with. (All of these terms and negotiations, of course, being ironed out through whispered conversations and scribbled notes passed during chem class. As all important teenaged matters are.) She asked if I wanted to go and I said yes, recalling the vague stirring of interest from weeks before.

And so we went. Dinner and a movie. Fazolis and Twelve Monkeys. It was January 12, 1996, and I hadn't worn a coat. I wore huge baggy pants that drooped low enough on my hips to show off the waistband of my black Calvin Klein underwear, a black top with a blue thrifted Caterpillar workshirt thrown over it. I remember the details because I was trying so hard to come off as unintentionally sexy. God, I was SO sixteen! :)

I was cold in the theater, so Eli gave me his coat to cover up with. It was an old green coat; I can't remember it well enough to describe it, but I remember loving it. Back then, as now, I loved the old, the vintage, the thrift store finds. And he wore a pocket watch. A pocket watch! How cool was this guy? My crush on him was pretty much immediate.

When we came out of the theater into the cold, I handed Eli his coat back, and like a gentleman, he tried to refuse and get me to keep it. I said that, no, it was my problem; I was the one who didn't wear a coat and he shouldn't be the one to suffer for it. And so he took the coat back and wore it himself. I have always been impressed by that for some reason. I guess because he listened to me. I wasn't used to being listened to.

That night will go down in history not only as the night I fell in love with my husband, but also the night that I got grounded for the rest of my life. I'm actually still grounded from that night. Cecelia and I went back to the guys' house and stayed there until 2:00 a.m. playing Jenga. Oops.
When I arrived home in the wee hours of the morning my mom was waiting for me. She was not impressed.

But I was. I was love struck. But I was playing it cool.

The next night Eli called to apologize for getting me in trouble. We talked on the phone for over an hour. He was so interested in me, such an active listener. He seemed to want to know everything at once. Not just my favorite color (green), or my favorite band (Smashing Pumpkins), but more importantly, what was my favorite jelly? (apple) He was off-the-wall, funny, charming, wonderful. He was unlike any 17-yr.-old boy I knew. *sigh*

We went through our ups and downs after that weekend. Immediately there were obstacles. There were silences, arguments, and long soulful talks. But there was also love. Love like I had never known.

I will never forget how thrilling that time was. How I woke up every day in anticipation of seeing him. How he would come home late from his part-time job and throw rocks up at my bedroom window to wake me so that I would come outside and sit on my porchsteps and talk to him. How the electrical sparks would practically fly between us in the dark, wherever our bodies touched. The brush of a hand, the bumping of knees.

That is how we began.

This is not an end.

We will always have chemistry.

Gotta love the wildlife.

Of course the deer are plentiful around our house, and a week or so ago I saw four wild turkeys run across the field. We've got squirrels, opossums, crows, etc.

But tonight there's a new presence outside my window. An owl, hooting.
Pretty cool, really. Eli's asleep on the couch, gearing up to go into work later. Eliot is in bed.
I'm the only one up. Listening to the hooting. I can't see Mr. Owl; it's too dark. But I can sure hear him. He's got a lot to say.

And I'm thinking that after another 15 minutes or so, all that hooting isn't going to be nearly as cool as it was to begin with.

I'm just saying.

All kinds of yumminess.

I've been uberproductive today. And that "uber" should have an umlaut over the u, but alas, I can't figure out how to do that. Anyhow, I finished up my spring semester syllabi this morning and moved right along to baking peppermint cookies, using the recipe posted back in December by this awesome gal here.

You might ask, why in the world are you baking holiday cookies NOW, Rachel? Why didn't you bake those in December? And the answer is, because I'm cheap. If you wait until after Christmas, you can totally buy candy canes for a pittance. Mere cents on the dollar, people! Wal-mart practically pays you to take them. No, actually I bought the candy canes back before Christmas and then got annoyed when I didn't get around to making the cookies and saw candy canes priced way down later. Oh well. Such is life.

The real answer is because I suck, okay. There. I said it. I am a crappy person who doesn't get around to making holiday cookies until January. And even now, I'm only making them because a) I like to eat cookies, b) I like wearing an apron, and c) I like making lists using letters as bulleted points.

Also fun about baking these cookies was that they call for ten crushed candy canes, so I put them in a sandwich bag and then beat the hell out of them with a coffee mug. It was loud. Really loud. Great way for us passive-aggressive folk to take out pent-up anger. Or frustration over one's husband, who might be, say, sleeping in the bedroom down the hall and hitting the snooze button on his alarm. Repeatedly. For over an hour. You know, just for instance. Hypothetically speaking.

The fun pictures are over at i made my day, if you're dying to see a blurry picture of me in an apron. I know I would be.

After the cookies were made and iced, Eli and I took a plate of them over to our nearest neighbors. They are the sweetest elderly couple. But we did discover not to go over there unless we want to talk for at least a half an hour. We'll have to go back with Mog in tow to entertain them.

In other news, I've embarked on yet another scrappy/journally project that I probably will not finish. Hey, what else is new? You can check out details if you like, over at em falconbridge's blog, another one of my favorite artsy crafty scrappy chicks. For this project I'm decorating used envelopes and then doing my journaling on index cards that I'll tuck inside. Here's the first:









I got this made last night after I put Mog to bed. It was fun, fun. I love messing around with paint.

If and when I finish at the end of the year (or maybe sometime along the way), I'll probably punch holes through the corners of the envelopes and join them all on a jump ring. That's what I'm thinking right now, anyway.

On my mind today.

I have no cohesive, overarching theme for a post today, but I keep feeling the need to blog bristling up against my skin like an itchy tag on the neck of my shirt. Here's what's on my mind today as I teach my classes, hold office hours, rinse, and repeat, in no particular order:

1) It's really cold in my office.

2) Eliot and I spied a "monster buck" out in the yard this morning, drinking from the neighbor's little pond. I think I'm going to love living in the country.

3) I'm planning on getting a new tattoo. Until very recently, I never thought I would get another tattoo. Once was enough for me, thanks. But since Molly died I keep feeling the need to have one, not so much to memoralize her, as to commemorate her passage through my life. Her life and death taught me a lot about living and made me think about the kind of person I want to be. I am.

Right now, I'm thinking the new tattoo will be a phrase written in script on the inside of my right wrist. I was thinking "simply live," but now am considering "embrace life." What do you think? Too hokey?

4) It's really, really cold in my office.

5) I'm 29 years old and I still like Little Debbie snacks.

6) I just bought this delicous pair of gloves and can't wait for them to arrive in my mailbox!

7) Why is it so friggin' cold in my office?

8) There's a movable sign that I pass now every day on my way to and from home, and every time I see it I get the nearly uncontrollable urge to vandalize it. Today it says "USA has turned against God." Last week it said, "Would Jesus vote for the party of abortion?" and before that it said, "Abortion is murder: God said so."

This sign pretty much serves as a laundry list of reasons why I get frustrated with a lot of people who subscribe to organized religion. (And yes, I know you're disagreeing with me already, and shaking your head in frustration, Adriane.) But first of all, who are you (you who maintains the sign) to presume what Jesus would do? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't vote at all. And by the way, voting based upon a single issue while completely ignoring the rest of the country's and the world's problems is ridiculously short sighted. Secondly, use an article in front of "USA." I recommend "The." Third, when did God say "Abortion is murder"? Is that the eleventh commandment? Did I not get that memo? Or did "He" just say it to you personally? Does he call you at home? Do you have a dorsal fin?

9) When I came into work this morning there was a tour group of prospective freshmen roaming about campus. I love that. Seeing those kids, high school seniors on the brink of the rest of their lives...there's just something there that fills me with hope. Yeah, it's hokey, I know. But I'm just like that. (For reference, see #3.) It's one of the reasons I love working on a college campus--this continual sense of renewal.

10) I don't really have a number ten; I just thought the list would look better if I did. And did I mention it's really cold in my office? Like, Antarctica cold?

Making it right.

I'm completely in love with Etsy. And one of the reasons is that buying handmade items from the people who actually made them is so rewarding, for both buyer and seller. I recently bought this light switch plate from Trixie and Radar. Unfortunately, when I received the light plate it was cracked all the way across the back. (Damn postal workers and their rough handling of packages!) ;-)

I sent a message to the sellers, just to let them know what had happened, not expecting them to refund my money or anything like that. After all, I know there are no guarantees in life, and I hadn't purchased shipping insurance or anything like that. I kind of thought it was just one of those things and I'd say, "Oh piss!" and use it anyway. After all, the front part of the plate was still held together by the decoupage and it was still fairly usable.

But Trixie and Radar, bless their hearts, upon hearing the news, immediately and with no questions asked, made and shipped me a brand new lightplate. It arrived the other day in excellent condition and is now happily adorning the wall of the office in our new house.

To me, this is just one example of the complete difference between buying handmade and buying from the big, impersonal box stores like The Pits of Hell (otherwise known as Walmart). Walmart couldn't care less whether I'm satisfied with my purchase. Their idea (and so many other retailers' as well) of customer service is just blow enough smoke up the consumer's ass to keep them buying. Etsyians, on the other hand, want you to love your purchase because it brings you the same happiness that it brought them when they were making it. They feel warm and fuzzy inside when they know their item is treasured and loved. They want you to be happy because they want you to be happy. They provide customer service because it's the right thing to do.

Walmart? Walmart could care less. They provide customer service because they're afraid if they don't you might find somewhere else to buy your cat kibble and your toilet paper and your Lucky Charms. Oh, no, wait. They're not all that afraid, because they've taken extra steps to ensure your loyalty by running everyone else who sells cat kibble and toilet paper and Lucky Charms out of business...

But that's another story.

So, just a public service announcement. This Christmas season, buy handmade! Support local artists and people who take pride in a job well done. :-) Not the money hungry execs who want to grab more and more of your hard-earned dollars to spend on expensive Scotch and high priced hookers.

Our house is officially on the market!

Here is the blurb from the real estate listing:

"You will be taken by the charm of this extremely well cared for older home in a quiet, low traffic neighborhood. Newer furnace and roof and many improvements and updates. Square footage above does not include the 12 x 48 finished and carpeted attic area. A complete list of improvements is in the office. See this one today. It won't stay on the market very long at this price."

Nice. Couldn't have written it better myself.

Link to pictures. Should have taken Mog's swing down before the picture taking. Oops.

You can call it fall if that's what you please.

We've been spending a lot of time outside, now that the days aren't quite so blistering hot and Eliot is steady enough on his feet to wander about the yard and push his shopping cart back and forth and up and down the driveway. My uncle gave Eliot three pumpkins from his garden yesterday, so we've been stacking the pumpkins up in his shopping cart, hauling them across the driveway, and unloading them on the neighbors' bench, then repeating the same over and over again. Eliot likes to pick them up one by one, straining with all his little toddler might, and then throw them and yell "uh-oh"as though their wobbly rolling down the driveway were some unexpected accident.

The neighbors are on vacation and we've been bringing in their mail, so I figure we're well within our rights to use their bench and play in their landscaping rocks. First he was having fun just pouring a cupful of rocks from one cup to the other, but today Eliot got the brilliant idea to try to put rocks in his ear. Because, as you all know, bodily orifices make great storage space for objects we might want to play with later.

I can just imagine the consultation with the ENT specialist after Eliot's surgery on Wednesday: "Well, ma'am, when we began to insert the tubes, we found that your son's ear is actually full of gravel." Ah-ha! Suddenly everything makes so much sense.







(His shirt, compliments of Aunt Lecia, reads, "My parents are exhausted." And, oh, is that the understatement of the year.)

What, I'm supposed to think of a title, too? You have to be kidding me.

So it's 3:30 in the morning, and I'm lying in bed thinking about my blog post labels. You know, because that's what normal people do at 3:30 in the morning. I lie there and toss and turn and think about how really, truly unorganized my blog is.

(Wait. What? My blog? Not my house? Every room of my house, where there's clutter reaching to the ceiling and oozing out the rafters? Wait, does my house HAVE rafters? What ARE rafters, even?)

But yeah, I'm worrying about how unorganized my blog is, how I USE blog post labels to sort my posts into categories, but those categories are somewhat randomly applied and effectively useless, like a certain person's moving box labels that read "stuff" and "crap." A certain person who shall remain nameless, in the interest of privacy. Ahem. *coughs with hand over mouth* Elecia.

So I toss, and I turn, and I try to get back to sleep, but something won't let me. I have to get up, turn on a light, fire up the computer...and blog. Either this is a serious addiction that wakes me up at night, unable to return to sleep until I get a fix, or I really shouldn't have drunk that green tea energy thingy that Eli bought and then didn't want.

But I'm thinking this obsessing over labels and organization is indicative of something more than just an Internet addiction, spiraling out of control. To me, it seems to signal a more general displeasure with my inability to organize (and therefore control) ANYTHING in my life, even the little things that should be a cinch, right? I can't keep my house clean. I can't get my shit together at work. I can't settle on any kind of important, definitive, life decision, and I sure as hell cannot sort my blog posts into any kind of coherent organizational scheme. I might as well label them all "stuff," "things," and "farfignuggen."

So where was I going with this? Because it seemed like I was about to make some kind of point, followed by a nice, spiffy ending. You know, so that I could go back to bed. Because it's now 3:51 am. Hmmm....
...

Nope. I got nuthin.

Goodnight, Internet.