Year: 2007

For years Gene and I would always claim 29. No matter how old you get, when asked, say 29. I always thought WHATEVER, it’s so far away that it’ll never matter anyway!

Except now it’s 2 days away.

Around my birthday every year I wonder when I have to grow up. 18? 21? 25? Now 30? Are you officially grown up when you start wearing mom jeans and festive holiday sweaters? Because I think I’m going to be one of those crazy grandmas that has on jeans and a snakry tshirt and Chucks. What about when you drive a Cadillac 60 MPH down the slow lane of the freeway? I think we can all agree I’ll never drive slower than the speed limit. Ever.

So I dunno. For some reason this year I don’t feel older. Last month I started to wonder if I’d be here mentally right now. And by “here” I mean, not in a mental ward somewhere banging my head against a wall chanting “29, 29, 29, 29”. Then about a week ago I realized that I get to be 29 for a year.

I’ll worry about it next year.

Saturday Cassidy, my mom and I spent the day running around to get some last minute school shopping done. She grew like 4 feet over the summer and all the skirts she put on had her looking like Cynthia. Target had all the uniforms on sale (YAY FOR LASTMINUTNESS) and we picked up a few skirts, shirts, capri’s and all that jazz. I didn’t get TOO much there because at The Great Mall there is store that sells uniforms but cut in all the hip new styles. So they are the fabric the school requires but she won’t be twinsies with Laura Ingalls Wilder on the first day of school. Cassidy is all about the fashion. This is her big fashion secret. She gets to wear uniforms that are different than the normal Lands End, Target, WalMart fair that you see and she thinks it’s the coolest thing EVER because they look great with her hot pink and purple striped tights, red knee high socks, and green and yellow hair bow. I’m telling you, she’s ALL ABOUT THE FASHION.

Only the store is closed and Cassidy is BESIDE HERSELF because HOW is she going to FACE the people at school if she has to wear the SAME uniform they do?! So before she could die right there in the mall in typical melodramatic girl fashion, we rushed her into Limited Too to see if we could find anything there. We did. ONE pair of capri’s and two bralette’s: $85.00!!!

Me: I certainly hope you include lube with that.
Clerk: Huh?

On the way out as I was mentioning to Cassidy that we’d have to go back to target the next day to get a backpack we passed Tilly’s and they seemed to have a pretty good selection of them so my mom went in. Cassidy ended up picking this Roxy backpack… after staring at two for about 30 minutes trying to decide which one she liked better. I could see the gears turning, ticking off the pros and cons of each. Hmmm, this one has wheels, but THIS one has a matching detachable LUNCHBOX!

When she finally decided on the backpack and we were paying, another clerk decided to SPEAK and please, clerks, COULD YOU STOP DOING THAT, and mentioned they had a MATCHING BINDER. My mom, of course in full on grandma mode, said, “YES! Lets see it!” So the guy brought it over and a short 40 minutes after Cassidy was ready to completely give up on life and die right there in front of a closed down Voga, she proclaimed this “THE VERY BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!”

Today is her fist day of 4th grade. Excuse me while I go cry…

OMGHI! I’m like, alive and stuff. Barely. Silly girls. 😉

Ummm, I haven’t really blogged because I’m just… ummm… I’m going through stuff that I’m not really sure how to express yet. I’m a thinker. I think everything to death, dig it back up, resuscitate it, then think it back down again.

Rinse. Repeat.

After many months of struggling physically with out of control symptoms Ben finally kicked me in the ass and I made an appointment to get to the gynecologist on Monday. I was given a blood test and on Tuesday the doctor called to confirm what we were already 98% sure of: I have PCOS.

I’m pretty much a text book case and when I first mentioned it to Ben and he read about it he was like, OMG! This is SO YOU! And it is. And the thing is, I see this as both a blessing and a curse.

Blessing: Relief. Like, now. The symptoms are treatable and I’ve been given a different kind of birth control to take and the doctor is sure that I’ll feel better within the next few weeks. This is good. For me and Ben and anybody else that has to deal with me on a daily basis because when you are that hurting PHYSICALLY, it doesn’t take long to start effecting you MENTALLY as well. It was hard on me and it was hard on Ben to have to deal with me and now, that can change. And that is good.

Curse: I am worried about infertility. In very simple layman’s terms, I ovulate about four times a year. I have a period that often. So while most women have twelve chances a year to get pregnant, I have four.

We aren’t planning on having kids tomorrow. Or even trying anytime soon. But I do want kids. Badly. And I always just assumed that since when I was 19 I got pregnant while ON THE PILL, I’d have no problem in the future. Working where I do and seeing how much women have to go through and how REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE it is for any kind of infertility treatment… it’s just been a lot of thinking.

But for now I really need to focus on the fact that SOON all of these ridiculous symptoms that I’ve been going through for months and months are going to subside and I’ll be back to normal. Well, as normal as I can be. Which lets face it, ain’t normal at all. Even on a good day. But I think now the rate at which Ben shoves his foot up my ass to remind me how NOT normal I am will decrease. Maybe. 😀

SO THERE! I’m alive AND I’ve blogged AND I have another half written about the autocross and I’ll try not to take over a week to post again. SO THERE!

😀

Four years ago today Ben drove to Bakersfield and told me, “Move up with me or we need to move on.” So I moved up. And although there have been extremely difficult times along the way, I know without a doubt, that this is where I belong. Where I belonged for a long time BEFORE the move.

I can’t believe how much I’ve grown and changed in that time. When he showed up that day I was extremely depressed but refused to admit it. I was grasping at a very thin string to keep my head just high enough above the water to make the outside world think that I wasn’t completely drowning. I really didn’t care. I wanted to drown.

I know that Ben knew this. And I know that he knew what I needed was for somebody to slap me across the face and tell me to grow the fuck up already. So in his own, much more eloquent and civilized way, he did that. He had to do it again one weekend recently. Depression is an odd playmate.

I have no doubt that Ben knows me better than I know myself. He also believes in me more that I believe in myself and he combines these two things into a wicked mind game. Wicked good though! Because it startles me sometimes how transparent I am to him and how easily he can manipulate that to my own advantage. Yes, MY advantage. I know. At some point I hope I’m able to help you understand it better but for now try, okay?

Anyway, since we don’t have a real anniversary date, I wanted to take this chance to say: Happy Anniversary, Lover. I’m still thankful every day that I have you. I love you for being such a wonderful man, an outstanding father, as patient as the day is long and for making me laugh and smile every single day. (k) 🙂

I’ll be in Marina, CA ALL DAY today for a Car Control Clinic. Then back there again tomorrow ALL DAY for an autocross. WEEEEEE!

Have a good weekend, All.

When I was 14 I demanded a pager from my mother. I told her if I didn’t get one I’d run away to my boyfriend’s house. AGAIN. I’d done this once before and it was a disaster that ended with me being Grounded For Life after the police had to come get me. But that’s a story for a different day…

The pager. Yes. Every cool kid had a pager and how was I supposed to know that a party location had changed or been busted last minute without this trusty devise to keep me connected!? My very EXISTENCE ON THE PLANET EARTH rode on whether or not I had that clear devise sticking out of my tight Calvin Klein jeans (clip out thank you very much, I totally wasn’t a belt loop clipper. Eww.) and I was not at all ashamed to remind my mother incessantly by yelling, slamming my door and telling her I hated her.

FINALLY I got one.

Mom: This pager is for ME to get ahold of you. I don’t care who you give the number to, who pages you, how many times a day it goes off. If I page you, you better call me back in 5 minutes OR BE DEAD.
Me: What?! The field party I’m going to tonight is AT LEAST 20 minutes from a phone. And first I have to find somebody sober enough to drive me there and hope we don’t get lost in the desert on the way.
Mom: *blink*
Me: I’m kidding. Kind of. 10 minutes?
Mom: There is nowhere in this city, county OR STATE that is more than 5 minutes from a phone. And if there is, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THERE.
Me: But…
Mom: *glare that was so hot it melted icebergs on other continents*
Me: Five minutes. Got it.

I can’t tell you the number of times that Stephanie and I snuck out and I’d get The Page a 2AM and I’d completely ignore it and sneak back in the house around 4ish and hope that she’d taken enough Klonopin to forget she had ever paged me. It really is a miracle that my mother even TALKS to me today. Let alone, be one of my best friends who I confide so much in. Because if I were her, I’d totally hate my guts.

We bought Cassidy a cell phone today. She’ll be 9 in 3 months and is not the first kid in her class to get one. Or even the second or third of fourth. She was “so happy I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight”. We have a list of rules a mile long and she’s perfectly happy to just HAVE the phone.

Me: So we understand? The phone is to call Ben, myself and in an emergency, Nana. If you want to call anybody else, you MUST ask for permission first.
Cassidy: I know. But I can still hold it and play with it and look at it though. IT’S SO COOL, MOM!!!

Every once in awhile I call my mom out of the blue and apologize.

“I’m so sorry about that time that the police brought us home and Stephanie was arrested and I had to wake you up in the middle of the night so the cops could explain to you that we were pulled over in the WORST PART OF TOWN. I think I understand how you felt now.”

“I’m SO SORRY about that time I lied to you about the smell in the house when you came home that Sunday. I didn’t realize that 300 drunk people in the house could SMELL SO BAD and I scrubbed for 24 straight hours and the smell, it just WOULDN’T LEAVE.”

Tommorrow it will be:

“You know all those times I didn’t call you and you sat up and wondered where I was and if I was alive and when you’d ask me about it I’d just yell at you and slam the door in your face? I’M SO SORRY!! Let me buy you lunch and we’ll go shopping for shoes we don’t need and I can grovel all day and tell you over and over again how wonderful you are.”

*Bonus points to those of you old enough to understand the title. 😉

Dear Hollywood Starlets,

Please eat.

I have an almost 9 year old daughter and it kills me every time we see you on the TV and you look emaciated and high. I want to invite you to dinner and cook you a big steak and feed it to you and pat your head and tell you it’s going to be okay. It’s OKAY to eat.

Cassidy has friends at school who already count calories and skip lunch. This started LAST YEAR in THIRD GRADE. These girls worship you. And I know that your first response to this is going to be “I didn’t ASK to be a role model” but please kindly shove those words up your ass. I’m sure they’ll come out during your next colon cleansing and I swear, words are very low cal/low carb.

So you didn’t VERBALLY ask to be a role model. You DID ask me to go see your last movie, buy your posters, your music, your entire clothing line, your perfume, your book, your dolls, your energy drink, your makeup line, and whatever other products you’re being paid to push this week. Little girls like my daughter pay for the alcohol, cocaine and laxatives you swallowed for dinner last night so please, for me, just take a few minutes tomorrow and squeeze a meal in between cigarette breaks and flashing your vagina to cameras. And I don’t mean four grapes. I mean A MEAL, something that contains all the food groups. And no, Redbull is not on any part of the triangle.

A concerned mother,
-Antigone

P.S. – I’d like point out that Miley Cyrus is excluded from this letter. AT LAST, a role model I can stand behind! The music makes me somewhat homicidal when I’m forced to listen to it in the car but still, HOW FREAKING CUTE IS MILEY!?

I talk about the book below but will warn you before is starts.

7:00PM Friday – We got to Barnes and Noble because I decided to go eat dinner with my mom and Cameron. THANK GOD, we got done pretty fast because if we had gotten there any later we’d have been there A LOT later than we were. There was a line to stand in to get a wrist band to determine where you’d be in line at midnight when the book was released.

10:00PM Friday – We got a GOLD E21 band about three hours after we got there. I didn’t thing we’d actually have a book till about 2:00AM based on how long it took JUST to get the wristband.

11:30PM Friday – After going home to see Ben who had been at the track all day, we drove back to B&N to get in line. I find out they are letting in people 50 at time. Gold A(1-50), Gold B(1-50), Gold C(1-50), etc.

12:30AM Saturday – As we are walking in the store, they stop the family in front of us. They have BLUE E(51-100) and are told then need to go to the BLUE E group, which will probably be let in an HOUR from then. Cassidy is ecstatic that she got to be awake when it changed from Friday to Saturday. HA! Kids.

12:45AM Saturday – Walking out the door, book in hand WOOHOO!!!

1:30AM Saturday – After getting Cassidy into bed, Cameron set up for the night and reading 2 Chapters I crawl into bed, exhausted from only about 4 hours of sleep the night before and being awake for 21 hours.

10:00AM Saturday – Get up, take car to stereo shop to fix everything the fucked up the weekend prior, eat breakfast with, drop off Cameron, run to Home Depot with Ben.

12:00PM Saturday – FINALLY SIT DOWN TO START READING. Getting up to take a 15 or so minute break every hour or so.

5:00PM Saturday – Go to eat dinner. Stop at Outback. One out wait, HELL NO! Go to Aqui which is PACKED! NO! Ask Ben if we can just grab Taco Bell so I can get back to reading. He agrees. Love that man.

6:00PM Saturday – Back to reading.

4:30AM Sunday Morning – Finish Book. Take about 15 minuted to lay there in the dark, think, absorb, then drawl into bed.

** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **

I was actually kind of disappointed with this book which made me incredibly sad. It felt to me like it was going well and then she got to the end, was in a hurry, pulled out the *warm fuzzy feeling cookie cutters* and used them to end it.

When Mad Eye was killed in the second chapter I felt a little rush of tension. It set the book up to be a tense, nail biting, fast paced, page turner. It was SO HARD to put the book down but I was exhausted and didn’t want to read it in that state. The next day going in I felt a nervous excitement and maybe that was a mistake because the book just didn’t live up to that initial feeling.

Some people are complaining about the slowness of the almost never ending tent scenes. I actually liked that part. They were kids, age appropriate. Almost waiting and wanting somebody to step in and tell them what to do, where to go, how to fight. Loved the graveyard scene, loved the action at the Malfoy’s, loved the Gringots caper, loved the drama at Lovegoods… And then everything went stale.

I feel like the Hogwarts fight scene was lackluster. Like JKR had a lot more written there and didn’t include it and that was SUCH a mistake. There could have been an epic battle there. And there were some scenes that were funny, but nothing POWERFUL. Professor McGonagall leading the desks into battle, priceless. Neville facing Voldermort the way he did, awesome.

But the final battle between Harry and Voldermort, predictable and cookie cutter. The ‘purgatory’ scene with Harry and Dumbledore I feel could have been either written better, or completely eliminated. Not including Lupin’s death was a so wrong. Lupin should have been given an epic fight scene, possibly trying to save Tonks or in reaction to Tonks being killed. I think that Neville should have gotten to kill Bellatrix but that was a selfish want on my part and Mrs. Weasly coming in to save the day was somewhat comical.

But the epilogue?! What was THAT about?! Worst bit of JKR writing to date. It was so out of place, so forced, and SO obviously there to make sure that you closed the book with the warm fuzzies which I think was a big mistake. It seemed thrown together as an afterthought with some very important players left out. As bad as it was, George should have been included. And Luna? And the NAMES! Really?! Lilly, James and Albus Severus?

I really wish that she hadn’t gone the “safe route”. I wish that she’d put more FEELING into it. She had the chance to make this book something spectacular. Something powerful and memorable and lasting and to me it just seemed like she let it fizzle out because she was too scared to upset her fans…

I’m going MIA till I’m done with Harry Potter. I read the last book in a day so I’m sure it won’t be long. MSNBC already has spoiler warnings on posts and the book isn’t even out on the East Coast yet. Boo to MSNBC. Bad form, people. BAD FORM!

Anyway, The Princess and I are heading to dinner than over to the bookstore in our matching Gryffindor tank tops. GEEKS! HA!

So. I’m turning off twitters and email to the phone and logging of the ‘E’niverse till probably sometime Sunday.

Have a good weekend everybody!

PS – I might log on long enough to post some shots from the book release, but that’ll be it.

For awhile I was really debating what to do come July 20th. I mean, it’s the last book. This is the last time that Cassidy will have the chance to wow her grandkids someday with, “I waited all night in line for that book.” So in the end, I’ve decided that doing it for her alone is worth it.

But I swear to God, if somebody decides to drive through the crowd yelling out who is killed, it will become that time where, “Your great-grandma finally crossed the line to Crazyville and killed somebody over that book. True story. She grabbed him by the neck and actually shoved his own head into his own asshole. Up until then it was just a figure of speech that nobody ever really thought was possible. Not your great-grandma though… she proved them all wrong.”

Plus, I totally bet Ben $10 that I’d make it to midnight.