I dinnae think she can take much more, Cap'n!

Since I now have to get up at what-the-fuck o’clock every weekday morning, it’s made me a little cranky. And before you start laughing hysterically, I’m quite aware that this is my usual state of mind. I am, however, even MORE cranky than usual.

In honour of my born-again cranky-hood, I give to you: Rant In B Minor.

Who thought it would be a good idea to name a trucking company A. Duie Pyle? Seriously. It’s emblazoned across the back sides of tractor trailers all across New England. And I am NOT the only one who thinks of a big, steaming pile of poo every time I see one of those trucks, because I’ve asked. This is one time when I can’t be accused of channeling an eight year-old boy.
I am cat-sitting my mother’s cat while she’s off in Italy for a month – must be nice. Bi-atch. Black cat with an infintessimal white spot on his face. Named Punto. Why? Because instead of just calling him Spot and going for the more obvious humour, she has to name him Spot in Spanish, thus ensuring everyone and their little brother ask her about the cat’s name. I am about to call him DEAD, though, because he’s taken to dragging large sections of newspaper under my dresser every night and then kneading them. All. Night. Long. Crackle-rustle-crackle-rustle. Which makes the Dumbest Dog In The Universe come to investigate. Which makes the cat growl and spit and then knead harder. Which wakes me up at LEAST three times and when you have to get up at what-the-fuck o’clock, it makes you a bit crabby.

Also? Steam radiators? They suck. They bang and clang and hiss and wheeze like a gigantic, asthmatic sperm whale. They have a tendency to kick on at seriously-what-the-fuck o’clock, which is approximately 40 minutes before what-the-fuck o’clock, ensuring that I am awake 20 of those precious minutes, finally falling back to sleep only to be woken up by my alarm going off. Which is infuriating. And if you think I’m getting up at seriously-what-the-fuck o’clock, you’ve got another think coming.

After a 15-1/2 month struggle, we have been able to get The Boo to sleep in her crib without a peep or a fuss, which, let me tell you, was ALMOST enough to convince me that there may actually be some sort of higher power. Now, however, she has an ear infection in each ear. Again. Which means that she won’t stay asleep in her crib for more than about 30 minutes. Which means she’s been sleeping in our bed for the last two nights. Now, I love The Boo. She’s cute and funny and all those other yummy baby things. She’s also a friggin’ windmill in her sleep. I am sick of having toes in my back, my boobs, my hair…it’s getting old. Tonight, she’s going back into the crib, because I am NOT having her get used to this all over again. I want my bed back.

I got to work this morning and there was a TWIG in my bra. I don't hang my laundry out on the line (not having a line to hang it from), so how it got there shall remain one of life's little mysteries. Probably explains why my boob was so itchy while I was driving to work.

I just want to be DONE unpacking. I’m sick of tripping over boxes. We have two washers and two dryers in the kitchen, too, which makes for tight quarters. Why, you ask? Because TCBIM had to have the garage turned into a den. Immediately, apparently. So, I have no garage any more, which means I have to place no store the spare washer and dryer. Anyone want to buy them? I’m sick of looking at them.

The final enrage o' the day: The fuckers over there on Yawkey Way have TRADED Bronson Arroyo for Wily (put the second L in there, for the love of Pete) Mo Pena. (and no, there’s no tilda over the N. I checked.) Why? Why? I love Bronson. He's a great pitcher and was a great team player, willing to do anything to stay with the Red Sox. After giving them the hometown discount, I’d be willing to bet he’s seven shades of pissed off. Welcome to my world, Bronson.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

It published today's post UNDERNEATH Friday's post. How nice.

It's about bloody time

Stupid Blogspot. It's driving me NUTS. This site's been up and down more than a whore's knickers. And now I'm so annoyed that I've forgotten what I wanted to say. I had a book list, a la Joke, all set to go, but alas, it was eaten. I was even thinking about doing the confession thing that seems to be making the rounds. Or, I could have bitched about TCBIM, who is being a butthead again - although I'm sure I'll be able to come up with another post about him soon enough. The Exhole called to cuss me out yesterday, too, and I was going to go into detail about how I calmly told him to discuss it with my lawyer (who, as it turns out, wasn't much help, but oh well.)


But now I'm too annoyed. So, nyahboo to you, Blogspot. I'm taking my ball and I'm going home.

You're such a snob!

I am probably giving away too much, but here goes:

I readily confess to being a snob. An arbitrary, opinionated, sometimes contrary snob, but a snob nonetheless.

I read the dictionary and love the origins of words and their more obscure or obsolete uses. My goal in life is to get the complete, unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. I would build a special bookshelf to house said dictionary.

I think people who don’t read books have something fundamentally wrong with them and I don’t trust them and don’t think they have much going on in their heads.

I categorize people based on their taste in books, too. Nora Robers & John Grisham = Fox News/People Magazine type. Current best sellers = Mostly ok, bordering on trend-chaser. Classics and only classics = the worst kind of ivory-towered academic.

If you have a liking for a style of music I find awful, it colours my opinion of you and I immediately plug you into a category. C&W = hick. Current pop = ditz. Celine Dion = all your taste is in your mouth and even that’s probably debatable. However, if you like the music I like, you must be someone worth knowing.

If you like the following:
Bruce Springsteen
Jimmy Buffett
Dave Matthews Band
REM
Jack Johnson
Excellent – we can talk about decent music.

If you like any of these:
TMBG
Great Big Sea
The Pogues
The Beautiful South/Crowded House
Lyle Lovett
Manhattan Transfer
Then you have wonderful taste and we can probably talk about lots of things in addition to music.

People who don’t follow the news, at least a bit, are also foreign to me. People who listen to NPR immediately go up in my estimation. If you read The New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly, you get bonus points.

Ultra-conservatives make my skin crawl.

I don’t give a shit about clothing, but I can’t stand it when people look sloppy. Comfortable is fine, but attempt to match your shirt and trousers and don’t wear white socks with dress shoes.

Poor table manners make me nauseous. I stopped dating a guy once because he talked with his mouth full and waved around his fork while he was eating. Great guy, very intelligent, funny, taller than me (hard for me to find), but his eating habits were one step up from a toddler’s.

Also, please put your napkin in your lap. Please put the glasses above the knife. Please put the fork on the left-hand side of the plate and the knife (blade towards the plate) and spoon on the right. Don’t saw at your meat. Eating in the European fashion will win you points with me. When you are done, put your knife and fork at 4:20 on your plate and don’t, for the love of god, place your napkin on top of your dirty plate.

I love good (read: expensive/wanky) food, especially if it’s prepared by someone else – more so because I don’t then have to do dishes than any lack of ability in my cooking skills – but I’ll also readily enjoy hot dogs at Fenway Park or Kraft dinner out of the pretty blue box.

I also like Miracle Whip.

Cheese. Cheese is good. If you don’t like cheese, you are internally flawed and I will glance askance at you. Frequently.

Don't get me started on crappy beers. Bud Light is not beer, it's beer-flavoured water. Same holds true for Michelob Light, Miller light and anything with the word Ultra in the name. NB - if you have to put a piece of fruit in your beer, it's a shitty beer.

Chocolate. If you don’t like chocolate, I just can’t trust you. How can you not like chocolate? It’s ok (sort of) if you like Dove or some other mass-produced thing, but if you get into wanky chocolates, even better. And if you love dark chocolate with a passion bordering on obsession, well, come sit by me. White chocolate? Get out. Just leave. It’s not chocolate. It’s fat and flavouring and complete and utter crap. Worse than a Hershey bar.

Women who can only discuss their children, homes, hair styles and nothing else leave me baffled and feeling like the gawky wall-flower at the junior high school dance. I have a plethora of things to discuss. Once those have been covered, then and only then, I might be able to have a 3-minute conversation on those topics.

Poor grammar skills make my blood boil and will turn the inside of my skull a flaming orangey-red. I have to keep away from red pens for fear I’ll go around marking up signs and menus and flyers. (Note that there’s no apostrophe on any of those. That’s because they’re PLURAL, not posessive. Thank you.)


God. Re-reading this, it’s kind of amazing I have any friends at all. I call myself, only half-jokingly, a curmudgeonly misanthrope, but going by this, that doesn’t seem far from the truth.

All About Meme

1. What is your favorite word?

This is so tough. I can't pick just one, so here's a small selection:

Sesquipedalian - Given to the use of polysyllabic words. Go figure, huh?
Cromulent - Fine; acceptable. 'cause it's polysyllabic. Makes me sound wicked smaht.
Defenestrate - To throw out of a window.
Perspicacity - Acuteness of perception, discernment or understanding.
and finally, just to bring down the tone:
Poop Deck. Because I really AM an eight-year old boy.

2. What irks you every time you hear it?

Irregardless. It makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Or better yet, slap the speaker of said WRONG word.
Should of, would of, could of. NO! It's HAVE. Not of.
Me and him. Me and her. Me and them. C'mon. It doesn't even SOUND correct.
People who go up? at the ends of their sentences? As if everything they said? Was a question?
Putting like in between every third word.

You want to know what would just make my head explode? The following sentence:
So, like, irregardless of the weather? Me and him? We, like, went for a walk? And then we went to the movies? And it was, like, really bad? So, we, like, left, right?

Ka-BOOM! Brains everywhere.

I need a t-shirt that says Grammar Rules. And I should probably add pedantic curmudgeon to my list of favourite words.


3. Name the first concert you ever went to.

The J. Geils Band at the original Gahden. Fuckin' rocked. Of course, I will now totally ruin what little musical cred I had by saying I followed that up by going to see (and shriek at) Rick Springfield.

4. Name a song you'll never get sick of hearing.

Thunder Road, by Bruce Springsteen. It's number one on my all-time, top ten desert island song list.
Also making the list (and because I like things in threes):
The Sickbed of Cuchullain - The Pogues
And anything by Steely Dan

5. What song, album, or band influenced you most as a teenager OR what song/album is the soundtrack of your youth?

Soundtrack of my childhood would be just about any AM radio staple of the 70s. Starland Vocal Band's Afternoon Delight. Tony Orlando & Dawn's Knock Three Times. Shawn Cassidy's Hey Deanie. Barry Manilow's Copacabana. The Grease sountrack.

Teenage years were all New Wave, all the time. U2 - Boy and War. The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Clash, The Jam, Duran Duran, The Smiths, Art of Noise, Squeeze, The Alarm, Echo & The Bunnymen, Crowded House and A-ha.

These Are The People In Your Neighbourhood

Saturday, I got to meet a little slice of the OC. It was very, very cool. I wish Olivia had been able to come along, but she decided she'd rather go to a birthday party. Next time....

Everyone was fantastic. It was incredible to meet these people, knowing it was for the first time, and yet feel like they were old friends. I didn't have one twinge of nervousness and usually I a mess before meeting someone new. A group of new people usually has my stomach in knots and my knees knocking. This was like sliding into a comfy cardigan.

Shannon's kids are adorable and would run me ragged. Brandon was a gap-toothed cutie with an eye for the ladeeeees. Her other two are little blonde bundles of energy. And Shannon and her husband are lovely people.

Nicole is funky and funny and had a cool hat that fascinated Isobel. In fact, Isobel was pretty taken with Nicole, period. Toddled off with her without so much as a backwards glance.

Lyrecha is slender, tall and blonde and was a great conversationalist - I really enjoyed talking with her. And her engagement ring is stunning.

Kerri. Man, Kerri is just too cute. Blonde, cute, tiny, gorgeous teeth, beaming grin, funny as all hell and genuinely nice. It would be very hard not to like Kerri.

I had a great time meeting everyone. I really hope we can do it again, soon.

I hope I win

These are my *ahem* answers to Joke's questionnaire. Hope I got them all right.


1. What is the best brand of products to preserve leather?
A little spit,some elbow grease and a dab of hair pomade.

2. My alcohoroscope shows me to be what sign?
Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine

3. What do I like to drink in those teeny tiny Petrossian glasses and what do I enjoy eating as an accompaniment?
Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine with Piggly-Wiggly brand Hot&Spicy Pork Rinds

4. What's my Myers-Briggs personality type?
Shy and retiring

5. What do I use to clean the burners of the porn grill?
Miss February's lacy underthings

6. How long did I actually have (in the physical sense) the car that sucked?
1 year, 9 months, 23 days, 4 hours, 52 minutes and 12 seconds

7. What Rat Packer am I?
Shirley McClain

8. What, in my opinion, is the worst part of living in SoFla?
All those old people who drive so fast

9. Who is the artist being honored (in absentia) at JokeFest2006?
Bob Ross

10. How many "tuxedo-able" bow ties do I own?
Just one, but it's a snazzy green and yellow madras number

11. What is my most heretical recipe?
Pate de fois gras on homemade crostini

12. What is the title of the first book I recommended on this blog?
The Roadkill Cookbook

13. Do I consider myself a metrosexual and why or why not?
Yes, because you wear your flannel shirts tucked in to your nicely pressed Wrangler jeans

14. How many turkeys did I grill for Thanksgiving 2005?
None. You did three in your turkey fryer, though, and they were great with the Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine.

15. What did I spend 1/1/05 doing?
Installing mag wheels and a gun rack in your 1975 Dodge pickup truck

16. What scary thing did my 8 year old ask Santa for?
A three piece, worsted wool Ralph Lauren suit and a watch chain

17. What's wrong with MOST organic milk these days?
All those cows roaming free, eating grass and not getting any hormones is just wrong and goes against nature.

18. What airline couldn't get us from "here to there"
Billy Joe-Bob's Puddle Jumper Express

19. What do I call the day in which Poppy and self became pals?
The Day Poppy And I Became Pals

20. What is my medical directive to my wife/children?
Make sure they keep me alive as long as possible, so I can see every episode of Wanted Ted Or Alive on OLN.

21. What holiday was the subject of a LONG and hilarious blog entry that, sadly, Blogger ate?
The one about our trip to Dollywood and Pigeon Forge, TN.

22. How did I describe the ::cough, cough:: Cupid garden statue TFBIM got? (BONUS! What happened to that statue?)
The finest use of concrete known to man. It's sitting proudly atop the planter-thet-used-to-be-a-toilet that you have prominently displayed in your front yard.

23. Which relative vexes me telephonically the most?
Your cousin Bubba, who always calls for bail money.

24. How many times has an Italian car left me stranded?
The Kia? It's got that 100,000 mile warranty, and besides, it knows you'd shoot its tires off if it broke down.

25. What did I consider (at the time) to be better than sex?
Wings and shooters at Hooters

Some seriously funny shit

Go read this blog.

If you aren't laughing your ass off over the Resevoir Dogs/Veggie Tales thing, there's something seriously wrong with you. And if you haven't seen Resevoir Dogs, what are you waiting for?


______________

I took O to her counselling appointment yesterday. She wanted me in there, so I went. I didn't say much and let O do most of the talking. She was very composed and matter-of-fact about everything, told her side of the story about her dad without getting weepy or upset or anything. When we left, she said she definitely wants to go back.

Her dad (hereafter to be referred to as The Exhole) called last night and I guess she told him about it. Of course, he called me today, seven shades of pissed off. Said he should have been told about it. Said she was upset about it. Said he wanted to go to the next one. I told him who the therapist was and what day the next appointment was and then I called O. Asked if she was upset about the appointment, because her dad said she was. She said, "No, I just didn't want to talk to him about it." When I asked if she wanted him at the next one, she very emphatically said, "No, I don't want him there. It's none of his business and he'd just get pissed off anyway."

After hanging up the phone and having a little gleeful chortle, I called the therapist and relayed this message into her voice mail. I hope to god the woman listens and doesn't let Exhole in. O doesn't want him there. They do have to abide by that, don't they?

Wicked Smaht

I am, too, because this test says so.

I got 28 right in about 20 minutes. I haven't finished yet, and may just give up in frustration, but hey, if the interweb thingy says I'm smart, then it must be true. Right? Just say yes. It'll make life so much easier if you just agree with me.

Thank you, Anderson Cooper

I always fall asleep with the tv on. Last night was no exception. Something on Anderson Cooper, 360 woke me up at 1 a.m., so I got out of bed to check O's bg. Good thing I did, because she was completely out of insulin and was 283. It's really not a lot of fun to change a cartridge at 1 a.m. when it's cold and all I'm wearing is a t-shirt and undies and I have to pee like a racehorse. Wrestling with a dead-asleep, 5' tall girl isn't a walk in the park either. She kept swatting at me and muttering "Stop it, leave me alone, what are you doing?" and trying to wrap herself back up in the duvet. Finally got it changed and bolused her for the high. I added a .2 to her bolus, which is probably why she woke up at 71 this morning. Whoops. Not too low, but she's been running high for a week and the extra bolus plus the basal rate changes I made the night before probably combined to push her down a bit.

She's back to not entering her bg when she eats. It's driving me nuts. She's got a counselling appointment today and I'm going to bring that up, but I don't know if this woman is familiar with the ins and outs of diabetes care, so I may have to call Joslin about it. Again. I don't know how to fix this, short of taking away her pump, but if I do that, then I really won't be able to tell if she checks and boluses for food or not. At least when she just boluses, there's a record of it, proof that she's not checking.

I talked to her about coming to the Pre-Union on the 11th and she wanted to go, rather than go to her dad's for the whole weekend. Heh. I didn't say anything, but inside, I was doing the little end zone dance.

__________________________________________________________

In other news: I signed my life over to the bank on Tuesday. But I own a house now. Well, the bank owns it, but y'know. It's mine. And there's not a burnt orange, sculpted rug in sight. I cannot wait to move. One more week. One more week.

AND! Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire comes out on DVD on Tuesday. Yay!!

It's funny 'cause it's true.

You Are Boston

Both modern and old school, you never forget your roots. Well educated and a little snobby, you demand the best. And quite frankly, you think you are the best. Famous people from the Boston area: Conan O'Brien, Ben Affleck, New Kids on the Block

What American City Are You?

This falls under the No Shit, Sherlock category.

In other news: We close on the house tomorrow. Aaaaaaaaack! I'm so nervous, excited, stressed and about 800 other adjectives that I can barely see straight. (Should there be a comma between adjectives and that? This is one of those grammar/punctuation rules that drives me insane.)

And - O's father told her that he was not going to drive all that way to pick her up every other weekend, even though we are planning on collecting her on the Sundays she's there. O just kind of shrugged it off. It really seems like she's become totally disillusioned with her father, although she could just be putting on a brave face. O has an appointment with a therapist on Thursday and I told her she needs to talk to the woman about all this stuff, that she should have some suggestions for O that will probably be helpful.

Then from the gladdened multitude went up a joyous yell.

So, we got this guy.




No, wait. This guy.






Who replaces that friggin' traitor, Johnny *spit* Damon.

And this kid? This kid rocks:

Nick Rowland, an 11th-grader from Orwell, Vt., wore a No. 18 shirt with the word ''Traitor" stenciled across the back -- a reference to Damon, the Jesus Action Figure who was Boston baseball's uber-celebrity in spring 2005, but crushed Sox fans by joining the Yankees this winter. Rowland and a lot of other Sox fans have embraced Crisp, the charismatic outfielder from Cleveland who is replacing Damon in center.


Screw the swallows at Capistrano. Yesterday was the first full roster workout. Now it's spring.

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Yesterday, O's stepmonster was supposed to pick her up at 2:30. O called at 2:15 to say she and TCBIM were running about 10 minutes late. SM started yelling and swearing at her. Her father (P) called me and bitched at me about them not being at the house at 2:30. O called again, at 2:40, and said she'd be there in 2 minutes. SM said too bad, she'd already left, and yelled and swore at her some more.

When O got home, she called her dad and told him she didn't want to go over at all because of the way SM talked to her. Her dad tried to convince her, but she stuck to her guns and said no. Her SM called her again and told her that O couldn't come over until she changed her attitude and stopped spouting what I was telling her to say. O replied that she wasn't, she was saying what she wanted to say and that she was tired of being yelled at all the time. SM hung up on her.

Her dad called several times last night to try to convince her to come over, in spite of what SM said. O doesn't want to go at all, but we talked about it and I suggested she tell her dad she'll go, but if SM starts in on her, she will ask to go home.

I don't really know what else to do. I have called my lawyer and explained the situation. She is writing a letter to P about our move, since he won't speak reasonably to me about it and the lawyer thought it would sound better coming from her. I explained what happened yesterday, but I don't know that there's much that the lawyer can do about it. If O refuses to go with her dad, he will make her life miserable. He will probably accuse me of not letting her see me and will probably drag the police into this, since his wife works for the city police department and has a brother on the force.

I'm just so sick of it all. I'm not trying to keep O from him - she's decided all on her own that she's tired of this. She does want to see her dad, but she doesn't want to be yelled at by the SM. And of course, the SM only does this yelling when P isn't around. So P doesn't believe O about that, either. He refuses to believe that O is telling him the truth about how she feels - he thinks I'm putting her up to it. He's threatened to try to get custody of her. He's told O that he "could take M (TCBIM) in a fight" and that he screams at me on the phone because he knows it scares me.

O talked to him again today to say she didn't want to come over until Friday evening. He told her he wanted her to call him back when she "stopped being a snotty little bitch" about it. She told me she's not calling him.

I've decided to just let the lawyer handle it. It's ridiculous. O shouldn't have to be subjected to all this stress and nor should I.

I'm so unbelievably frustrated and upset by all of this, and O is, too. I am very proud of her for standing up for herself, though. She never would have done that before. I hope this continues. And I hope P doesn't take off with her, or pull some stunt this weekend by not bringing her back to me. That's my biggest fear.

Amazingly, in spite of all this crap, her blood sugars have been pretty level.

***NB: I called our work's employee mental health program to get a counsellor for O, since I'm not having any luck doing it on my own. The woman asked me if O was afraid that she would get hit while she was there and I said I didn't think so, but I just asked O now and she said yes, she was afraid of being hit. God. I'm just sick about this. I informed the lawyer. I just don't know what else to do. I just want to go into a room and cry.

Can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em for science experiments

Y'know. Ya KNOW! I've just about had it.

TCBIM is out of work at the moment. He is looking for work, and looking hard, which is good. However. He can't seem to see why he should get out of bed in the morning and give me a hand getting the baby ready to go. I need to make sure I get in at least 40 hours each week, which means I have to leave the house by 7 a.m. at the latest, in order to get to work by 8 a.m.. I get up at 6 a.m.. In that hour, I have to shower, get dressed, get the baby's food and milk together for the day, get my lunch, feed the dog, put the dog out, feed the cat, feed the baby some breakfast, get her dressed and try to throw in a load of laundry (that generally falls by the wayside). I've started getting her lunch ready the night before and I've taken to having oatmeal or soup for lunch because it's quick and I can just toss it in my handbag. Packaged, of course. Globs of oatmeal in my bag would just be messy.

This morning, the baby woke up when my alarm went off. Sometimes she'll go back to sleep, but not this morning. She came toddling into the bathroom while I was in the shower and stood there, so cute in her little pjs, babbling at me. I dried off quickly and scooped her up. TCBIM is snoring away in the bed, oblivious to the fact that Boo has made a break for it and was roaming the house. (Did I mention that she still sleeps with us? Did I mention how SICK I am of that? Consider it mentioned.)

I woke him up - and you have no idea how I had to restrain myself from giving him a good prod with my toes - and asked him to please get her dressed while I got her lunch together. Instead, he hauls her back under the covers and tries to get her to go back to sleep. She's having none of it. So while I'm cutting up veggies and fruits and meat for her to take to daycare, she's shrieking like a banshee. Cue much stomping by me as I snatch her out of bed and get her dressed in record time.

At this point, I had to have a yell. "Can you please get your arse out of bed and help me? I have a finite amount of time in which to get ready in the morning. You have all day to snooze, should you choose to do so. It would help me if you could get up, get the baby dressed and feed her some breakfast so that I don't have to run around like a crazy person. Were you the one racing around on a time limit, trying to get yourself and her ready to go, I certainly wouldn't just lie there in bed, watching the news, while you scrambled around doing twelve things at once."

He just looked at me. Then he said, "Fine. I guess I can get up and help you." I swear, I didn't think my eyes could roll that far up into my head, but every day, it seems, I can get them to go further and further. Pretty soon, they're going to be able to do 360s.

To add insult to injury, my underwear wasn't fully dry when I put in on. Damp undies. My joy knows no bounds.

I need a vacation.

Avoidance strategies

It looks like this house thing is really going to happen. I kept thinking it would fall apart, that something would go wrong and we wouldn't get it, but amazingly, it's all going according to plan.

Now here's the problem: O's dad and I are divorced. We've been divorced for almost 8 years now, but he still wants to be a control freak about everything. I haven't told him yet that we're moving (an hour west of where we are now, but in the same state), but will have to do this this week. Since he often calls and screams down the phone at me over percieved wrongs, I'm extremely nervous about this.

He is a bully. My biggest concern is that he will bully O into saying she wants to live with him. She's very eager to please him and will cave in the moment he starts to pressure her, so this worries me a lot. I don't think that legally, he has any ability to prevent me from moving, nor can he say I'm an unfit parent, but he could persuade her. For so many reasons, I don't want this. I'm fairly certain that she doesn't either, although what she says to me and what she says to him can vary wildly.

I don't know how to tell him that we're moving. I'm really afraid of what he's going to say to me and more so of what he's going to say to O. She's afraid that he's going to yell at her about it. If he's angry with me, he tends to take it out on her.

I've got a call in to my divorce lawyer, but haven't heard back from her yet. I'm hoping she has some good suggestions. Any advice, or even assvice, my imaginary internet weirdo friends can give me would be appreciated, too.

How many euphamisms...

...are there for ditz?

The lights are on but no one is home.
A few sandwiches short of a picnic.
As thick as two short planks.
Not playing with a full deck.
Dumb as a box of rocks.

Why do I want to know this, you ask? (I can hear you wondering - honest.)

Today is President's Day. Where am I? At work. My boss called me from vacation about half an hour ago and said "What are you doing there?" Me: "Uh, working," thinking to myself, duh. Him: "It's a holiday, you know. You don't have to be there."

Fantastic. So it's 1 p.m., I've been here for 5 hours and I DIDN'T NEED TO BE!

Dipshits 'r' Us.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Ok, the bad luck gods have shit on me enough. My karma is in the toilet right now and I'm t-h-i-s close to losing my fucking mind.

First, there was the whole debacle with TCBIM and the online hoochie.

Then, there was the stress of trying to buy a house.

Also, being pregnant and nervous about that.

But now? Enough is enough.

TCBIM, like an idiot, gave his notice at his job even though he wasn't 100% sure that he had the job he'd interviewed for or that we definitely had the house. And guess what? He DIDN'T have the job. To top it off, his boss fired him when he gave his notice. Not only did he fire him, but he accused TCBIM of stealing supplies. Each time he's spoken to his former boss about this, the amount has gone up. First it was $2,000, then $5,000 and now it's up to $7,000. Oh, and he's insisting that TCBIM admit that he did this (even though he didn't) and pay him back the money. Even if TCBIM agreed to do this, the ex-boss is still going to inform everyone in the industry that TCBIM is a theif. So, we have a lawyer involved in this. Due to the shoddy bookkeeping practices of this company, TCBIM and his lawyer are fairly sure that they have a good case, but still. It's more than a little stressful. And the ex-boss has already made one phone call, that we know of, smearing his name.

Then, my grandmother died. Not totally unexpected, given her age and state of health, but still, it's sad and kind of stressful.

We're in the middle of signing the loan stuff and purchase and sale agreement on the house. First house, lots of stress and now that TCBIM has no job, I'm wondering how we're going to pay the whopping mortgage we're going to have, but whatever. I'll worry about that tomorrow.

And now? Now my eldest, Alex, is up at the doctor's office with his dad, having chest pains and dizziness for the second day in a row. Yesterday he was taken out of the . Oh, and did I mention that we have no insurance because TCBIM lost his job? And that while I can pick it up at my work, it won't be effective until March 1? I don't think he can be denied COBRA, but we don't know yet. So we may have this insurance fight on our hands for a while. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I really need a break. A long, stress-free break. Preferably on a warm, quiet beach with a big stack of mindless novels and a gorgeous cabana boy to bring me virgin daquiris and give me massages as needed. Right there. Under that palm tree.

My grandmother

My grandmother, Letha Nelson (in glasses) with her sister Elva and brother Paul, circa 1920.



During high school - must have been around 1920 also.



Again with her brother Paul, probably closer to 1928-ish.



My sister, my grandmother and me (don't ask about my sister's hair) at her 100th birthday party. My dad thinks I look like my grandmother, but I don't see it, really. Only in the forehead.



Having a bit of a tipple at her birthday party this past November.

100 years, 2 months and 25 days

My grandmother died this morning. She was 100 years old and had a really wonderful, long and happy life.

She was born in 1905 in Shanendoah, Iowa. Her father died when she was five years old, from cholera, so she and her brother and sister were raised by their mother. It can't have been easy, at that time, to have three small children to provide for, but she took in boarders and managed. My grandmother was able to go to college and get a teaching degree.

She met my grandfather at the University of Wyoming in 1930 or '31. He was from Peru and at the university studying civil engineering. They soon married, but becaus she was a teacher, they couldn't tell anyone. Since it was 1931 and the middle of the Great Depression, he couldn't find work here, so he went back to Peru. At the end of that school year, she left Iowa, by herself, and travelled by train to Los Angeles and then on by boat to Peru. They lived there for quite a few years - my father was born there in 1937.

They went on to live in Panama, Greece, Spain and even Bergenfield, New Jersey.

She had so many great stories to tell. I didn't get to grow up with her living close by us, but she moved here in 1998, after my grandfather died, and I spent a lot of time with her over these last years. I have some great photographs of her that I'm going to scan in and will post here later tonight.

While it's sad that she's gone, and I will miss her, I'm glad that she's out of pain and died quickly and peacefully in her sleep.

Hoovering up the kitchen

Who was trying to come up with a phrase for hoovering up the kitchen when low? I can't think of a phrase, but someone made up a t-shirt.

Meme-happy

I'm a meme-creator's wet dream....and I'm too bloody exhausted to post anything resembling coherency.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Possibilities - Herbie Hancock & John Meyer. It's poppy, jazzy stuff and it just makes me smile.

Don't Wait Too Long - Madeleine Peyroux. Fantastic stuff. I swore it was Billy Holiday the first time I heard her sing.

New York State Of Mind / Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - Billy Joel. I'm kind of cheating by putting both of these in one spot, but I love both of them a lot and they both just epitomize New York City to me.

The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn - The Pogues. If you aren't a fan or don't know the Pogues, it's impossible to explain their appeal. This is one of their best songs and I always have it on hand, in the car and at home, to blast forth when necessary.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World - Israel Kamakawiwoole. Gorgeous intpretation of two great songs.

Lush Life - Nat King Cole. Lost, lonely, boozey torch song in D flat major.

Rhapsody In Blue - George Gershwin. I just love it. No reason, really, it's just something that makes me smile every time I hear it.



You can play along, or not, as you please. I'm not going to tag anyone in particular.

I shouldn't have been so smug

I thought I'd lucked out and had this extraordinarily well-adjusted child with diabetes. One who rarely complained or felt sorry for herself or shirked her care. I should not have been so sure of myself.

I started really logging O's blood sugar information again, after about 6 weeks of slacking off. And what do I find? I find a girl who is not checking her blood sugars every time she eats, who's just entering the carbs into the pump and going from there. Well, no fucking WONDER her blood sugars have been in the 200 - 400 range. Jesus.

I let her have it on Saturday. She went 6 hours without checking - just put in her carbs. When I did her site change, and she was 465, I updated the log book for the last 24 hours at the same time and found all this missing information. I was very angry with her - I didn't yell, but I did talk rather loudly about how important it was that she do this. That I know it's boring and tedious, but that if she couldn't do something as simple as inputting her bg into the pump, then she was going to lose the pump and go back to shots.

Maybe I was a little harsh, but she's plenty old enough to handle doing that small part of her own care. I don't ask her to log her information - I do that for her - but if I'm not there, then she has to do it herself. I don't know why she's being so stubborn about it. On Sunday she did the same thing, not 24 hours after I'd talked to her about it the first time.

I've been wanting to make basal rate changes, but now I can't because her bg readings are off because she's not correcting any highs she's having. I hate having to check up on her, but there's no other way around it. Someone has to monitor the situation. It's really upsetting me that she's starting to be deceptive about her diabetes care. It makes me wonder how much else she's been fudging.

I'm going to talk to her endo about this. I want to nip this in the bud.

I guess I've hit the terrible teen years. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Tag, you're it

Damn K, tagged me again.


Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1. Waitron at Friendly's
2. Manager of a Thom McAn's shoe store
3. Bank teller
4. Admin assistant

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. When Harry Met Sally...
2. Grosse Pointe Blank
3. Dazed and Confused
4. Dress To Kill (just go watch it, ok?)

Four places I have lived:

1. Indiana
2. Massachusetts
3. England
4. Georgia

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. The West Wing
2. Law & Order: Crinimal Intent (Vincent D'Onofrio. The man is sexy.)
3. Northern Exposure
4. Miami Ink


Four places I have been on vacation:

1. Denver, CO
2. Key West, FL
3. San Francisco & Napa
4. Hilton Head, SC

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Steamed lobster with drawn butter
2. Filet Mignon so rare that it's still mooing, with grilled asparagus and fingerling potatoes with a glass of red wine
3. Cheesecake
4. A fresh bagel with cream cheese, lox, a slice of onion, capers and a tomato with a big, steaming cup of strong, black coffee

Four websites I visit daily:

1. Two web forums that shall remain anonymous
2. Boston.com for Red Sox and other news
3. Projo.com for Red Sox news
4. Realtor.com

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Somewhere warm
2. Reading a book
3. With my toes in the sand
4. And a glass of red wine


I shall tag:
daysgoby
angela
CuriousGirl
erica

Was it murder or negligent homicide?

Dateline NBC on Sunday (29 Jan), showed a piece on Ariel Botzet, an 11 year-old girl who died of diabetic ketoacidosis. Her mother was charged with her murder.

I don’t have any sympathy for the mother. She said that she feels no responsibility for her daughter’s death. What kind of parent doesn’t feel responsible for their child’s well-being? If Olivia has one high blood sugar, I feel like I’ve done something wrong. If she has a night of highs, I feel like I’ve failed her. If she DIED? Forget it. I’d have to be commited because I would completely bat-shit crazy with guilt and grief. The feeling that this mother gave off was one of “Woe is me, I’m going to jail.” Not one of grief over the loss of her child.

Her attorney tried to blame the girl, saying she could have been sneaking candy and soda. True. She could have been. If her blood sugars were running so high that she had an a1C of 16.1 (her results just before her death), which means she had an average of 420 bgl over the last three month - 420!! Jesus, that's high - then she was probably starving because her body was making so many ketones that it was eating itself. Had her mother been checking her blood sugar, she could have dealt with the high blood sugars then and there. Had her mother been in contact with an endocrinologist, the issues of cheating could have been resolved, had they been happening. It really bothers me that they are blaming the girl here, though. She learned by example and her example doesn’t seem to have taken her disease very seriously at all.

Someone (a friend with no D experience) asked if the daughter wasn’t old enough to be taking care of herself. Yes, at 11 years old, the girl could have been checking her own blood sugar. She could have even been giving herself her own shots. But if her mother was lackadaisical about her care, then the daughter probably didn’t realize the importance of being on top of checking. Olivia is 11 and checks her own sugar and boluses herself, but she’s on a pump. She would not be capable of doing the calculations needed to administer shots for food. She just can’t do the math yet. And even with the pump, which calculates her dose for her, she still tells me how much it’s telling her to bolus.

I do think that some responsibility has to fall on the father’s and doctors' shoulders. Apparently, Ariel rode her bike across town to visit her father about a week before she died. From the sounds of it, she didn’t have her meter or any insulin with her. I know that I would not let Olivia ride her bike across town, diabetes or no diabetes. The father said that Ariel looked pale and a bit sickly. If he was so concerned about her well-being, why didn’t he take her back to her house to get her meter? Why didn’t he take her to the doctor’s himself? And if the doctors were so concerned over her high a1C results and her mother’s apparent lack of care, why didn’t they contact DSS or some other social service? I don’t think all the blame can be placed on the mother in this case, although she certainly should bear the brunt of it.

The case is very sad. Had someone stepped in, even a couple of weeks earlier, this girl might not have died.

It's Not A Good Idea To Piss Off Oprah

Last night, TCBIM got home from hockey around 1 a.m.. I managed to sleep thru most of his rustling around, but around 2 a.m., the snoring started. At first, it just invaded my dream, but eventually it woke me up. I poked him, he rolled over, I dozed off and then bam! It started up again. This went on until 2:45 a.m., when I gave him a hard kick in the back of the thigh. He woke up furious, spitting nails, saying that he shouldn’t have to be kicked like that, that I should just put up with it. Well. At 2:45 in the morning, being told I should just put up with his snoring did not sit well with me. At all. I told him to go sleep on the couch and, on my way back from the bathroom, laid into him, telling him that the fact that HE snored was not my problem and that I shouldn’t have to listen to it and be awoken by it 7, 8, 9 times a night and until he sorted it out, he could either spend the night on the couch or spend it being kicked.

Needless to say, I was up until 4 a.m.. Did you know that Larry King is re-run at 3 a.m.? Now you know. They had a couple of people on, discussing the James Frey debacle. Oprah had Frey on her show yesterday and raked him over the coals. I’m sort of meh about Oprah, but in this instance, I totally agree with her. I feel like he perpetuated a huge fraud, that he’s making pots of money off of a big pile of lies. Michael Wolff, a writer for Vanity Fair, was part of the panel. Now, if you’re going to give your opinion on a book and the story behind a book, you probably should have read the book. This guy didn’t, but still felt it was ok to pontificate on the subject, mostly to mock those who have read it, saying that he was rather surprised that people were so outraged – that they should have expected lies from a junkie. Regardless of the fact that Frey has been sober for twelve years, the fact that he was once a junkie automatically makes him a liar in Michael Wolff’s world.

No. He’s an author who wrote a memoir. Memoirs are, by definition, the story of a portion of the author’s life and should hold true to the facts. Not the truth, because truth is perceptive, but the facts should not be altered as dramatically as they were in this case.

People have said, “So what? It’s still a great story.” And it is a great story, but it’s a story, not what actually happened. He could have published it as fiction and it still would have had an impact. But because he published as what actually happened to him while he was going thru rehab and how he managed to stay sober without going thru a 12-step program, I feel he did everyone who’s struggling with addiction and looking to this book for inspiration a great disservice. It’s dishonest and shabby and smacks of moneygrubbing.

I’m also wondering why no one at his publishing company, including Nan Talese (and even I know who she is and I have nothing to do with the publishing world) checked up on his story. There were plenty of facts that could have been checked that would have quickly de-bunked his story, or at least raised a few red flags.

I don’t know why I’m so disappointed by this episode. I’m not an alcoholic or drug addict and I’ve never gone thru a 12-step program, but I still feel very let down by and disappointed with this author. At least I know I wasn’t alone in being duped by this guy – he even pulled one over on Oprah.

So that's what I was doing between 3 - 4 a.m. - composing this entry as I watched Larry King. Does it warm the cockles of your little internet weirdo friend hearts that I was thinking about this blog, even in the middle of the night? Just tell me it does. Lie. Everyone's doing it these days.

But that's four weeks from now!

Finally, I got a therapist to call me back. The soonest he can see us is 27 Feb. 'the fuck, man. That's a month from now. I don't want to feel like this for another month! I've called a couple of places, but this is the only one who's called back. I don't want to wait four weeks.

I guess I'll start calling a few other places. I hate having to explain my problems over and over again to some woman who just answers the phone. I know it's what they do all day, but it just wears you down after a while. Drip drip drip.

I need a vacation from my life.

Meme-stealing

Shamelessly ripped off from Joke’s blog – a blog I’ve never dared to comment on, but read daily.


Movies You Need To See To Understand Me Better:

When Harry Met Sally…
Grosse Pointe Blank
High Fidelity
Better Off Dead
Say Anything
The Breakfast Club
Lost In Translation
Office Space
Dazed And Confused
Dress To Kill (ok, it’s stand up, but it’s fucking funny)
The Princess Bride
Monty Python & The Holy Grail
Shaun Of The Dead

Albums You Need To Listen To Understand Me Better:

The Joshua Tree – U2
Hunting High And Low – A-ha
Aja – Steely Dan
Rhapsody In Blue – Gershwin
Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen
Rock Spectacle – Bare Naked Ladies
Forever And Ever, Amen – Ben Folds Five
August And Everything After – Counting Crows
Rum, Sodomy And The Lash – The Pogues
Turnstiles/The Stranger – Billy Joel

TV Shows You Need to (Have) Watch(ed) To Understand Me Better:

The West Wing (which they just cancelled, the PRICKS!!)
Northern Exposure
Monty Python & The Flying Circus

Books You Need To Read To Understand Me Better
(There are tons more, but I edited in order to conserve space and, y'know, not bore everyone to death. I read. A lot.)

Gone With The Wind
Little Women
A Wrinkle In Time
All the Little House On The Prairie books
Tom Sawyer
The Secret Garden
The Dragonriders of Pern series
Harry Potter 1 – 6
Firefly Summer
The Autobiography of Henry VIII
The Daughter of Time
The Fountainhead
…And Ladies Of The Club


Games You Need To Play To Understand Me Better:

Trivial Pursuit
Scrabble
Boggle
Mille Bourne

Periodicals You Need To Read To Understand Me Better:

The New Yorker
Vanity Fair

Catalogs You Need To Get--not necessarily order from--To Understand Me Better:

Signals
L.L. Bean
Pottery Barn
Ikea

Places You Need To Visit To Understand Me Better:

New York City.


I'll just tag whoever feels like playing along.

Needed: One Swift Kick In The Arse

I need to start logging O’s blood sugars again. I don’t know why I got out of the habit, but now I have no idea what’s going on, pattern-wise, and I’m just reacting to the most recent bg reading instead of trying to figure out if it’s a trend that needs to be addressed with basal/bolus rate corrections.

I don’t seem to have any motivation to do this, though. I have been saying for months that I need to load the pump software onto the PC, but I’ve yet to do it. I bought a bunch of log books, but I haven’t used one since well before Christmas. I just can’t seem to muster up any energy to do any of this right now. This has been an on-going problem, not just since TCBIM started to flake out.

O hates logging her own information and point-blank refuses to do it. It’s kind of hard for me to get all over her about it when I won’t even do it myself, so I need some sort of goad to get myself going. I feel terrible that I’m not doing it, but does that change anything? Nope.

Le sigh.

________________________________________________


My other quandry: How the hell do you go about finding a good marriage counsellor? I mean, really. What the fuck? How do I know if they’re any good? I hate the thought of going to twelve different people and telling my story to each and every one of them. It just sucks. This is why I don’t go to therapy any more – I can’t find anyone that I can click with, so I just keep taking my medication and hoping that things will be ok. I fear I'm headed for disaster.

Gone With The Wind

I think TCBIM is, possibly, the stupidest human alive. He handed me his phone last night to show me pictures he’d taken of the girls. I was scrolling thru it and just below a very cute picture of the baby, were pictures of himself, naked, in a rather…aroused state, along with a text message to someone named Becka which started off “Hey baby…”

You want to hear his story? It’s a fucking beaut.

He’s been going to that porn site I talked about it this post. It’s a voyeur site; the kind of thing where people send in videos of themselves that they’ve taken at home. He claims that he started talking to this girl about a threesome because this is something he’s been interested in exploring with me, but he didn’t know how to bring it up to me. So instead, he decided to talk to some stranger on the internet about it. And send her pictures of himself, naked.

He says he can understand why I’m mad – so, he’s not completely brain dead, just the stupidest fucking person on the planet. He says he wasn’t having a thing with her, that it was just talking about this threesome thing. I say bullshit. I say, you don’t start a text message with the words “Hey baby…” if you haven’t got some sort of relationship with this girl. I say, sending pictures of your naked dick to someone is cheating.

He claims that he loves me, that the kids and I are more important to him than anything. If that’s the case, why did he feel the need to talk about our sex life on the internet with some woman? Why did he feel the need to send her some photos of himself?

I’m just sick. I spent most of the night awake, grinding my teeth and crying. I feel like we need to go see a marriage counsellor but he thinks we can sort this out by just talking about it. What is there to talk about? He’s ruined everything, he’s destroyed the trust I had in him. How am I just supposed to go back to our normal life when it feels like that life was a big fat lie?

He says he’s sorry. I’m reminded, of all things, of that line by Rhett Butler – “You’re like a thief who’s not sorry he stole, but is very, very sorry he got caught.”




I have no idea what I'm going to do now.

Breathing again

Everything went fine today. There was a heartbeat of 158 and I'm exactly on target for my due date.

Whew.

There was a double rainbow yesterday afternoon over Worcester. I took that as a good sign.

Frea. King. Out.

I have an ultrasound tomorrow. I had one last week, but for some reason, the OB wants another one. And TCBIM can't come with me because his dickhead boss won't let him leave work. Bastard.

I am, of course, a nervous, neurotic mess about this. Two years ago, on Jan 23rd, I had a misscarriage. I was 13 weeks along, had already seen the heartbeat, had started getting a bit of a tummy, had started talking about names when, one night, in the middle of the night, there was excruciating back pain, vomiting, diarreah and blood. And that was that. I had to have a D&C because my body didn't actually miscarry the baby. I was a mess after that. It only took me 6 weeks to get pregnant again, but I spent more than half of that pregnancy being worried out of my mind, terrified that something would go wrong. I spent a lot of time combing the internet for reasons why, ways to prevent it from happening again, stories of successful pregnancies after miscarriage, some shred of comfort in the howl of fear that was my life.

Tomorrow I will be nearly 12 weeks along and close enough to my miscarriage anniversary that the superstitious side of me is taking over. I'm scared to death that I'm going to get to the appointment and there will be no heart beat. Of course, today would be the day that I feel fine - no morning sickness, no headache, no nothing. Which, in my uber-freaked out brain, translates to no more baby.

I NEED to chill.

A random cat post

This is Oscar.

I love this cat beyond reason. I got him a week before I had my miscarriage, two years ago. He was my consoler when no one else could stand my tears. He talks to me when I'm sitting on the couch. Gets right up in my face and starts meowing at me, especially if I'm reading a book. Tries to filch Veggie Stix out of my stash. Gets into bed with me and puts his paws around my neck. Licks my nose. Yells at me when he wants to be fed.

You can keep your dogs. I'll take a cat any day.


Oh, and apparently, in true julia's always The Last To Know fashion, it's de-lurking week. So de-lurk, dammit!

Take head, insert in sand

After mulling this over for most of the week, I figured I'd put it out there for my imaginary internet weirdo friends to comment on. And I know, it's Bad And Wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. Strunk & White can bite me. Both of 'em.

I went online on Saturday morning to check my hotmail. That Canadian Boy I Married had been on there before work, so when I brought up the hotmail page, he was still logged in. I honestly didn't realize this and just clicked on the bottom email. It was a receipt from a porn site, something he'd signed up, and paid $30 for, in May. Nice.

Being the nosy person I am, I decided to look at the email in a folder marked Product Information. In it were about 15 pictures, taken with a camera phone, of a woman doing various and sundry graphic things to herself. They were all sent from a Sprint phone, from a number in West Virginia.

After a few moments of stunned shock, I called TCBIM. He claimed to not know what I was talking about. Claimed he'd never heard of the person in the pictures (K.L. Gettel, if anyone wants to know). Claimed he gave his email password to the guys at work. Claimed it had to have been one of them getting these pictures. Came home and reiterated all these things, several times. Said he didn't care that I'd gone thru his email. (Although he did say "If I had pictures like that, do you think I'd keep them?" - yeah, that's reassuring.)

So, now what? I've had my head in the sand over this all week. The pictures were dated over a one week period, last March. That doesn't mean that there weren't more, just that those are the ones that were saved. And is he really that dumb that he'd give out his email password? Seriously. I know he's not a rocket scientist, but I didn't think he'd be so fucking stupid.

On the one hand, he seems very sincere that he didn't do this, that he would never do this, that he's not that kind of person. On the other....there are those pictures. 95% of me wants to believe him, because he is a good person. Yes, he has his faults and there are days when I'd trade him for a Five Star Fruit & Nut Bar in a heartbeat, but most of the time, he's a solid, stand-up guy.

If it had been saved pictures from a porn site, I wouldn't have cared. I don't get the same thrill out of porn that he does, but I certainly don't care that he looks at it sometimes. It's not all the time and it's not an obsession. It's a normal guy thing, as far as can tell.

But now I have this little voice in the back of my head, every time he's late getting home, every time he goes out without me, every time he stays late after hockey. And I hate that voice. It took me a long time to get over the screwing over I got from my ex-husband. It took me forever to start trusting again, and it's still a slightly warped, tentative, run-away, run-away kind of trust. I think it was three or four years after we got married that I didn't start thinking "He's going to leave me" every time we had a disagreement.

But in one swift moment, I'm back in that place. Only now, I'm back in that place and I have a child with him and another one on the way. I actually started checking out apartment rental rates the other day. I don't want this to become a huge thing. I want it to be true, that it was one of the guys at work. I want to be able to continue to trust him.

It's terrifying.

Call me Oscar

I hate days like today.

Olivia woke me up at 4 a.m. to tell me that she'd forgotten to hook back up to her pump after her shower last night and now her blood sugar was 563. Oy. She was down to 240 by 6 a.m., so I sent her to school, but no sooner had she arrived than she puked, so now she's home with my mother. Her blood sugar is fine - 141 - but she still feels like crap.

I had to have my mother pick her up because I had to take Isobel to the doctor's. I thought she had yet another ear infection because she's been pulling at her head and very fussy at night, but she doesn't. This is good, because the pediatrician was talking about doing tubes if she got another one, but it's bad because now I have no idea what's wrong with her, other than she's 13 months old and this is what 13 month-olds do. It's infuriating.

What has sent me into full-blown pissed offedness, though, is the fact that, yet again, I had to wait half an hour in the exam room at the doctor's office. I had an appointment at 8:45 a.m.. HOW can you be running late already??? And WHY can't one of the nurses TELL me what's going on? Last week, I waited an hour and ten minutes to see the pediatrician. I need to find out who to complain to because this is pissing me off no end. I have a job I need to get to because I need to get paid and not get fired, thank you very much!

Mark has been advised that I'm Not Fit Company. If he knows what's good for him, he'll go play hockey or something. He's already in the dog house, which is another story.

Test results

I have no idea what this means.

Urine Culture
Organism 1 - Mixed gram positive and negative growth (this is highlighted. In black. Makes me a little concerned.)
Colony count: 50,000 colonies/ml.


Colonies of what? All I can picture is little green space aliens setting up their little green space homes in Olivia's urine. Obviously this is wrong (but I bet she could make money off it if it were true.)









I have a more detailed report that I can't make heads or tails of either. Both have been faxed over to the endo and now I'm sitting here, waiting. Why do they send me this shit on a Friday? I'm going to sit here and stew about this all weekend.


Anyone have any ideas? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?

Tatnuck Booksellers

Tatnuck Booksellers, in Worcester, MA, closed. It's just wrong. I loved that store. I loved the creaky wooden floors of the converted old mill building. I loved the way the high windows let in the light but shut out the noise of the city. I loved being able to wander around for hours, picking and choosing what books I wanted to buy that day. I loved the sofas and seating areas scattered throughout the store. I loved that everyone who worked there knew and loved books just as much as I did. I loved that they published local authors. I loved that they had booksignings by small authors as well as the famous ones. I loved the restaurant. I loved the sweet potato fries. I loved that I could get a book and a glass of wine and sit there and read.

I'm so upset by this. I was just there! There was no indication that they were in trouble. The parking lot was packed, the restaurant had lots of people eating and there was a line at the register.

This was the only independent bookseller in Worcester. The only place now to get books is Barnes and fucking Noble. Soul-less, corporate devil that compounds its Wal-mart-esqueness by having a fucking Starbucks in every location. Bastards.

This blows sweaty, hairy donkey balls.

Ear Worms

For the last SIX weeks, I've had Fugue For Tinhorns stuck in my head. It's Driving. Me. Crazy.






I got the horse right here
The name is Paul Revere
And here's a guy that says that the weather's clear
Can do, can do, this guy says the horse can do
If he says the horse can do, can do, can do.

I'm pickin' Valentine, 'cause on the morning line
A guy has got him figured at five to nine
Has chance, has chance, this guy says the horse has chance
if he says the horse has chance, has chance, has chance

But look at Epitaph. he wins it by a half
According to this here in the Telegraph
"Big Threat" - "Big Threat"
This guy calls the horse "Big Threat"
If he calls the horse "Big Threat",
Big Threat, Big Threat.


And now, the semi-alternative radio station I listen to - The River - is playing some more ear worms.

Brick House by The Commodores
Can't Touch This by M.C. Hammer
We're Having A Party by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes

What songs give you ear worms?

Random Ramblings

It's amazing what you can buy on Ebay.

http://tinyurl.com/abghd

Read the comments from prospective buyers. Priceless.

________________________

I've hopped on the nausea express. It's puke-tastic. I can't believe how awful I feel. Constant queasiness, like I've been on a small ship in high seas. Unless I actually have food in my mouth, I feel like I'm going to hurl. Last night, I stocked up on fruit and veggies in a probably vain attempt to limit my weight gain. I never felt this bad when I was pregnant before. I just want to crawl into a hole, puke and then die a little.

_________________________

Why do you have to buy a whole friggin' box of Clementines? I only want three or four at a time. If I buy the cute wooden crate of them, they will go moldy. And do they sell seedless tangerines? Because sitting here, spitting seeds into my hand while trying to type my blog and answer the phone is really pissing me off.

Tell me I'm not the only one that starts singing every time they see a crate of Clementines. Oh my darlin', oh my darlin....

_________________________

I'm having avocado cravings. I don't even really like avocadoes, nor do I know how to eat them, save scooping them out with a spoon. The colour and consistency is like sick baby poop, and yet, I would crawl on my belly over broken glass to get to one. Go figure.

_________________________


Olivia started her period over Christmas. This would explain the INSANE high blood sugars of the last few months as well as the attitude, tears, drama and snottiness that have prevailed at the Bedhead household. Oy. And vey.

_________________________

Either my husband is screwing around on me or he really does love me, because he gave me these for Christmas:

Ghost of Christmas Past

Someone asked me today if there was anything about Christmas that I miss. I miss my grandmother. She lived in Indiana, so we only got to see her once or twice a year. She came out every year for Christmas and it was great. She spoiled us rotten - my sister and I were her only grandchildren. She came out with one suitcase full of clothes and one full of presents.

She always looked like a million bucks. She worked in a factory all her life, but you'd never know it by looking at her. She always had her nails polished, usually in a pearly white or pink. Her nails were so long and strong - I remember being fascinated by that when I was a kid because my nails were always raggedy and grubby. Her hair was always perfect, and always red, even when she was 70. She never left the house without her makeup and she always wore high heels.

She loved to play pinochle and euchre and would always try to teach me to play, but would eventually give up in frustration and just play War with me instead. She loved to drink Manhattans and she smoked cigarettes, letting the ash get really, really long. It drove my mother crazy. She could play anything on the piano. I can still hear her fingernails clicking on the keys as she'd play Christmas carols, warbling along and smiling at me to join in.

She'd always take me shopping while she was here. We'd get the bus in to the city, which, when you're 7 or 8, is a BIG adventure. She always wore her good coat, the one with the fur collar and matching fur hat. Once we got downtown, we'd go to the Worcester Center Galleria. It was THE place to shop. There was a Jordan Marsh and a Filene's. I'd always go to Jordan Marsh to shop. For some reason, I liked it much better than Filene's. She'd always take me to Bergson's, this little burger shop there. She'd get a coffee and I'd get a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. We'd split an order of fries, covering them with lashings of salt and ketchup.

We always went in to Sharfman's Jewelers. My mother collected Lladro figurines and my grandmother would usually get her one. I would wander around, mesmerized by the sparkling rings and necklaces, awed by the stern salesladies and the quiet hush of the place. Then we'd go out to the common and look at the Christmas tree all lit up and the decorations around City Hall and catch the bus back home. It was magical.

She died when I was 16. I still miss her. Christmas has never been the same without her.

Say It Ain't So, Johnny (you rat-bastard)

Ok, so how pissed off am I? Johnny Damon, our signature player, our lead-off hitter, the FACE of the Boston Red Sox, just went and signed with the fucking YANKEES! The BASTARD! The team he swore he'd never play for.
From Wednesday's NY Times:

Last May, he professed his devotion to the Red Sox, or at least his distaste of the Yankees.

"There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know they're going to come after me hard," he told mlb.com then. "It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need."

Guess if you wave enough money under his nose, he becomes a whore like all the other baseball players.

So, management let Theo walk away. They didn't make a play for Bill Mueller, who is, like, Brookes Robinson good at third base. They let Kevin Millar go. They traded Doug Mirabelli. Who's left from the 2004 championship series? Veritek, Trot Nixon, David Ortiz and Manny. And Manny wants to go, claims he won't show up at spring training if they keep him. Maybe Manny's on to something. Leave before the ship goes down, before the team completely implodes.

I'm so pissed I can't even see straight. My husband is being far too philosophical for me right now. Whatever, he had a lousy throwing arm and he's 32, but the fucking YANKEES? It's like a knife in the heart.

Yeah, that would be a big fucking NO!

This post may offend or piss off some of you, but it's how I feel on the subject.

I stumbled upon the Diabetes TalkFest blog today after reading about it in Lemonade Life .

The question is: If, at the time of diagnosis, you could have chosen, would you have chosen diabetes or not?

I was stunned to read that most of the people with D would have chosen it. Stunned? I was fucking gobsmacked. Why?? Why would you choose that??! It seems so selfish.

Every fibre of my being shrieks in disgust and disbelief. Ask your parents what they would have chosen for you. Ask yourselves if you want your kids to have this fucking disease. Ask yourself if you want to go into your child’s room every fucking morning, wondering if they’re going to be alive. Ask yourself if you want to obsess about where your child is and what her blood sugar is and if she has glucose tablets and if someone is with her because what if she passes out on the two-block walk home from her friend’s house? What if no one finds her for an hour? What if, what if, what if?

Watching my daughter worry that she won’t be accepted by her friends, watching her learn to check her own blood sugar when she was five, learning to give herself an injection when she was eight, not letting her sleep at anyone else’s house until this year, when she was eleven, because no one was willing to get up in the middle of the night and check her.

Years of doctors appointments and new regimens and monitoring and worrying and crying. The crying never stops. The worrying never stops.

Yes, I have made some wonderful friends, in real life and online, because of diabetes. I’d give every last one of them up in a heartbeat if it meant my daughter could have lived her life without this disease. I would give up my own life to let my daughter live her life without diabetes.

I hate this disease with a passion and I bust my ass to make sure that Olivia is as healthy and happy as possible. I also don’t let her see how much I fret about her and how I worry about what diabetes is doing to her body. For the most part, she’s a well-adjusted, funny, happy young lady who doesn’t worry too much about diabetes. But a life without it? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Here, go pee in this cup

Olivia had lab work done at last week's endo appointment and I got a note back saying that there was blood in her urine. I took her to the pediatrician today for a re-check and there was also protein and glucose in her urine. Her bg before we went in to the appointment was 83, so it wasn't from a high. I'm getting a little freaked out. Is this something that can happen normally? Should I worry? She goes back in two weeks for more testing, including blood tests, if needed. Until then, I guess I'll just chew off my fingernails.

Ain't That A Kick In The Head

8.6% Big fat F, that's what that is.

So, we tweaked her insulin:carb ratio and her insulin sensitivity factor and now we wait. Three days. Two of which she's spending with her father, so I can throw those two days out the window, which means I have to wait until at least next Wednesday, when she's back on a semi-normal schedule, in order to see if there's any pattern of improvement in her numbers.

There was also blood in her urine from the pee test. I have to call the pediatrician to see what that's all about. Hopefully it's nothing. Means another couple of hours missed from work. I don't really care, I'm just wondering how much longer I can keep doing this. My kids are way more important than my job and for some reason, Olivia seems to need me more now than she did when she was little.

Blah. I just want to go home and pull the covers over my head and ignore all this. This keeping on keeping on shit is really wearing thin.

Five random facts

Thanks to K over at Fresh sKWeezed

I will now regale you with five random facts about me. You lucky, lucky people.


1. I am a complete and utter book snob. Not about the types of books people read, because I'll read just about anything and generally enjoy it immensely, but people who don't read are like alien beings to me. How can you NOT read? When I was younger, I would be so desperate for reading materials that I'd read the backs of cereal boxes. I used to make my parents leave the hall light on so that I could hang off the end of my bed and read by the light coming thru the open door. I used to hide books in the towel cupboard in the bathroom and if I had to get up in the middle of the night to pee, I'd sit there until I had toilet-seat impressions on my ass.

2. I swear like a sailor. My favourite word is fuck. It's short and emphatic and I like it. A lot. I'm also worried that this will be Isobel's first word, since I say it quite often while I'm driving.

3. I dread telling my mother that I'm pregnant. I'm 39 and married, but she will make me feel like I'm 15 and the stupidest person alive.

4. I try to be above this sort of thing, but I'm just longing for a diamond necklace or anniversary ring. I see ads in The New Yorker or Vanity Fair and I just drool. I don't know what it is about them, but diamonds and sapphires make me lose all sense of reason. If they're set in platinum, I'm done for. It's so shallow and materialistic, but I can't help it. Ok, I could help it, I just don't want to.

5. There are days when I wish I didn't have all this responsibility and mommy-ness to deal with. Days when I envy my single, childless friends with a green-eyed jealousy that's not pretty to behold. Days when I just don't want to make dinner, do laundry, check homework, do dishes, bathe the baby, Hoover the floor or feed the cat. Days when I just want to come home, sit on the couch, bury my nose in a good book and have cheesecake for dinner.


Ok. I will now pass along this infection. 'cause I'm a sharing kinda girl. IO don't know how to make those pretty links that just say the blog name, so you'll have to just pretend they're there.

Days Go By

Simpler Times

A Shot In The Dark

Six Until Me

Martha O'Connor

Impending Endo Appointment.

Nothing fills me with dread the way an endo appointment does. Olivia's numbers have been all over the place. The CDE we see at Joslin drives me a bit nuts. She talks over me and tends to poo-poo me when I say I want her sugars more in range. She tells me these fluctuations are normal. Yeah, but this is wild fluctuations, not normal fluctuations. I know her A1c is going to be high again and no matter what people say, I do regard that as a report card on how I'm doing and how I'm doing is not so good. If there were a teacher comment section, it would say "Could try harder, needs to apply herself more."

She spent the weekend at her father’s and I swear, he feeds her crap and lets her run high just to piss me off. He refuses to log anything, so I have to scroll back thru two or three days worth of blood sugars in order to see what they were and what her doses were for them. All weekend, she was in the high 200 – 300 range. He never gives her a shot to bring her numbers down, nor does he change her site when she's running high for a few hours. I’ve tried talking to him but it’s like talking to a wall. He says “Yep, yep, yep” and then goes and does whatever he wants. Meanwhile, she’s running high and feels like crap all weekend and usually all of Monday, too. I wish I could get the endo to say something to him, but I've tried that before, to no avail.

Last night I was able to get her down to 180 by 8:30 (bedtime) but then she was 309 at 11:30. What?! Where did that come from? She had a homemade hamburger for dinner. She didn’t want any potatoes, so that was all she had. 30 gms for the hamburger roll. How does that send her to 309? I slept thru the 2 a.m. check, but at 5, she was back down to 145.

I upped her basal rates a week ago, but I don’t think it was enough. I’m really feeling like I’m flailing around these days, just making futile stabs at this stupid disease. It’s very frustrating and I’m sick of it. I want a Guardian or a Navigoator and I want it NOW.

And I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach, oh joy.

Huh, part two

Well. Two pregnancy tests later, both positive, and I guess I can stop kidding myself. This certainly wasn’t planned, so I have to admit to some hesitation and ambivalence. We had discussed having another baby in an abstract way, although I did tell Mark that if we were going to do it, we had to do it soon, since I just turned 39 last month.

Thirty-nine and pregnant. God. Do you know they consider you of advanced maternal age if you’re over 35 and pregnant? I hate that phrase. I feel like I should stump in to the OBs office with a walker, complete with tennis balls on the legs of it, orthopedic hose puddled around my ankles, all the while asking the nurses to “speak up a little, deary.”

I don’t feel anything yet. I can’t remember if I felt sick right away the last time or not. I’m exhausted all the time, but then, that’s par for the course: I’m always exhausted.
I just wish I weren’t so ambivilent about this. I want to be excited and happy and instead, I’m just sitting here thinking “Huh. How’d that happen?” Maybe I’ll get more excited as time goes on. I certainly hope so. Mark is more excited than I am. He’s already telling his friends and co-workers. I haven’t told anyone yet. Well, except my imaginary internet weirdo friends.

Huh

Now Appearing At Your Local Megaplex: When Condoms Break

In which I whinge about a lot of things

I just finished A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I strongly urge you to pick up a copy. It's an amazing story of the author's stint in rehab. I've been raving to everyone about this book. It's a tough read emotionally, but it's really well-written. It doesn't pretty up drug addiction or treatment, which is what I've found with other books on the subject. They tend to turn them into Hallmark Movie-Of-The-Week-type sentimental claptrap. This isn't. I’m not great at writing book reviews because I can’t distance myself from the book. If I love it, I rave, if I hated it (yeah, Captain Corelli, I’m lookin’ at you, jerkface. What are you gonna do about it, huh?), I rage.




I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism a couple of months ago. I’ve been taking Levoxyl for it, but I'm still feeling kind of crappy. I see a nurse practitioner because my primary care doctor is never in the office. That’s another rant for another time – I’ve never even met the woman and this annoys me. I’m not a big fan of the N.P.. She’s got a lousy bedside manner; she’s very brusque and has a tendency to poo-poo you if you come in with an issue and think you know what the problem may be. I had to diagnose my own allergy to anti-depressants and she completely missed the fact that I was in the middle of a miscarriage when I went in complaining of cramps and excruciating back pain. Anyway, I went to an endocrinologist the other day and was told my blood pressure was too high and my resting pulse was 114 beats per minute. I think it’s time to find a new doctor because mine seemed to think that pulse rate was nothing to worry about. Yeah, my heart is tripping like a jackhammer, I can feel it beating in my chest, neck and wrists. Call me crazy, but I'm a little worried.




A woman in my book group sent me a flyer about a church chorus looking for members. Now, church singing isn't exactly my thing, but I've been wanting to get back into choral singing of some sort for a while now, so this will be a good opportunity. No audition required, just send in the form. Yay! I'll have rehearsals every Wednesday and Sunday, so it's a guaranteed few hours out of the house every week. Mark started to hem and haw about it, but I gave him The Look and he shut up. This will be a great way to get my toe in the door and find out about other groups that are looking for members. And I'll get to sing in Latin. Always fun.




I’ve been blog-hopping lately. I’ve noticed a definite progression with the people who have been blogging for a long time. Most start off hesitant and somewhat apologetic and then gain confidence and a voice as the blog grows. I’ve found a few really great blogs – last night, I spent an hour or so reading Mimi Smartypants - http://smartypants.diaryland.com/ - and laughing like a drain. This morning, I found out her blog has been published as a book.



It's Friday. I just talked to Mark to go over what we have going on this month. Jesus. We have a ton going on. Not one, not two, but THREE Christmas concerts, one play, one musical honour society induction, birthday dinner for my mother, weekend with Tom-from-Cambridge, and somewhere in there, I have to finish my Christmas shopping. No wonder my blood pressure is high! Jeesh. Tonight, I have to buy a cake and a birthday present. Ugh. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. I cannot believe I'm going to go to Toys R Us at 5 p.m. on a Friday. I need my head examined.

Random Thursday

I spent an hour or so last night, reading (and crying over) this woman's blog. It's amazing. It's heartbreaking. It's powerful. Go read it.

http://tobequitefrank.blogspot.com/

*****

I'm feeling a bit better. I don't know if the anti-depressants are helping or if I'm just busy and that's taking my mind off things. Whatever, I'll take it. I'm sick of feeling like shit, of trying to stay away from my family so I don't affect them with my mood, of trying not to weep all the time. I just want it to go away.

*****

Olivia was 331 last night at 11:30. She's back to feeling low when she's not. She dropped to 60 around 9 p.m., so she had a juice and was back up to 120 in about 20 minutes. She insisted she still felt low, so I let her have a slice of bread with some cheese. I should have dosed for it, but I didn't. Thus the 331. *sigh* You'd think, after seven and a half friggin' years with this, I'd know better. I need to get more glucose tablets and just give her one when she feels like she's still low. 4 grams of carbs is much easier on her blood sugars than a 20g piece of whole wheat crunchy granola bread.

I feel terrible, too, because I didn't get up to retest her at 2 a.m.. I haven't been lately because I'm so tired all the time, but I have to start again. I need to see what's going on overnight or I won't be able to make corrections to her basal rates. I don't know what happened last night - Isobel has an ear infection and was up half the night fussing, which makes getting up one more time just that much more difficult.

*****

I went to the doctor's the other day and my blood pressure and pulse were high. 130/92 and my pulse was right aruond 100. I wonder if this is from the Levoxyl I'm taking or if I just suddenly have developed high blood pressure. If this is what happens when you start to seriously push 40, I want off. A mulligan. A do-over. I'm not that old! High blood pressure, my big fat arse. Hmph.

*****

For Christmas, I want one of these:

I don't even want the nice flat stomach it's on, just the device.