Good bye cruel (blog) world....

I'm pulling the plug.






-- Mox

The contents of my head today.

The bad news is, I feel fat today. So I put on my fat pants (don't tell me I'm the only one who has fat pants, don't lie to me) and the good news is, I found $5 in my pocket. Woo!

Had a dream last night that I had open heart surgery. I have no idea what that means. It must be significant in some way, though, since I rarely remember my dreams. And I've never had surgery, major or minor, so where that came from I have no idea.

My best friend is having major trouble with her oldest son and I just want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her to see if I can shake some sense into her. She knows what needs to be done but she's not doing it. I'm trying to stand by her and be her sounding board but my bossy nature is hard to deny.

A word of advice: an antique bed is probably not the best choice for a six year old. The only reason Spawn has an antique bed is that we were able to purchase it, complete with mattress and box springs, plus a dresser, for less than $500 for the whole shootin' match. But the thing has fallen down twice. I'm ready to give up and get the kid a whole new bedroom suit, one that can withstand jumping.

After I made my first sale on eBay, I was hooked. Heaven help me, I'm selling everything I can find around the house. It would probably be a good idea for the cats to keep moving.

I can't decide what's worse -- having to be at work on a gloomy, rainy day best suited for sleeping in, or having to be at work on a glorious, sunny day best suited for anything but working. Either way, the common denominator would be not working, I think.

Damn. I'm tired.



-- Mox

Legal, moral, ethical.

I am a knowledge junkie. My friends will attest to this because I am the one flooding their email boxes with links to interesting articles that I've read. But I think you should constantly be learning something. I used to make a habit of taking at least one CEU course each semester because it kept me from getting into a rut, mentally. Over the years I've taken oil painting, tai chi, ballroom dancing, and writing classes. The last class I took, I was pregnant with Spawn. I haven't had the time or the money to take anything in six years.

Six years!

Now, I'm going to admit something to you that's probably pretty obvious by now. I am, at the midpoint of my 39th year, having a really hard time with the concept of turning 40. Every ten years or so, I go through this assessment period and I start to wonder what the hell I've gotten accomplished in the past decade.

And right now, the answer is something akin to Not A Whole Lot.

I mean, sure, I've managed to go and procreate, but in six years I think that's just about all I've done.

And there's so much I still want to learn.

Seven years ago, I took a short story class. And y'all, the professor teaching this class was CUTE. Turns out, I am not too old to be crushing on the teacher, especially since he's what I'd consider my "type" -- meaning he's well-read, articulate, intelligent, and has a nice smile. And I like a man with a nice smile. Especially if I'm going to be discussing story theme and analyzing meaning with him and he's truly a nice, nice guy.

I'll admit, I was interested. And I can't say for sure but I think it was reciprocated. You know, the warm tinglies were flying between us. That sort of thing.

And I'm still sort of crushing on this guy because his kid goes to the same school as my kid and I see him pretty often. I find myself fanning my face after I talk with him sometimes. This is not good. This is dangerous. This is a case where out-of-sight-out-of-mind is good, in-my-face is not.

I can see real potential for me to get into trouble here. I've always been a stereotypical "good girl" whose only infractions have been misdemeanors. I mean, I didn't even have a fake ID in college.

So in search of something to get me out of my rut that is legal, moral, and ethical, I've decided to learn Italian.

Sicurezza preventiva.




-- Mox

Photo Friday: you know what

Okay. Show of hands: how many of you decided to stay in bed today just because it's Friday the 13th?

Gotta admit, that's a pretty convenient excuse. If I were more superstitious I'd use it myself.

Regardless, though, of what the date is, the fact still remains that today is Friday. Which means date night with my spouse and post-Lent imbibing. Life is good, or at least it will be sometime after 5pm.

For those of you who are superstitious, just remember: in some cultures, a black cat is a symbol of GOOD luck. It just depends on which side of the superstition fence you're on.





-- Mox

I fear they will revoke my Southerner card.

People around here talk funny. I talk funny, too, so I can say that. It's like saying my sister's ugly -- I can say it, but nobody else can without risking a bloody snoot.

And I know that I talk funny and everybody around me talks funny, but that doesn't mean that I always understand what's being said.

Here's the thing I don't get: dinner and supper.

Now, around here, dinnertime generally means the hour of noon or somewhere thereabouts. Suppertime is the evening meal. Of course if you work second or third shift time isn't as big of an issue and the designation for your midshift meal is generally "dinnertime." Supper is the meal after that.

I'm afraid to admit this, but I use the two terms pretty much interchangably, and I use them solely in reference to the evening meal. The midday meal to me is Lunch.

Now, before anybody spits out their sweet tea and calls me a carpetbagger, let me assure you that I am born and raised Southern, right down the shoes that are not on my feet. And despite my elevated educational level and bona-fide degree in English I still say things like "y'all" and "ain't" and all manner of stuff that's just not proper grammar. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck, right?

And that's just it -- I speak the language. I understand my neighbors and they understand me.

But at noontime, I go get myself some lunch.

And at six PM, I call my family to the supper table, to have dinner.

I can't really keep it straight in my head, either. When someone says dinner to me I picture meatloaf and mashed potatoes, unlike what I picture for lunch, which is a sandwich. I'm just as likely to ask my family what they want for supper as I am to say dinner's almost ready and no you can't have a snack right now. It's all the same to me.

It's shameful, that's what it is.




-- Mox

For everything that I post here that's not depressing as hell, there are at least two posts in my drafts folder that are.

A farmer had 3 beautiful daughters who were getting ready to go out on dates. The first beau came to the door and said, ''I'm Eddie, I'm here to pick up Betty. We're going for spaghetti, is she ready?''

"No," the farmer said.

The second beau came to the door and said, ''I'm Joe, I'm here to pick up Flo to take her to the show. Is she ready to go?''

"No."

The third beau came to the door and said to the farmer. ''Hello, my name is Chuck.''

The farmer shot Chuck.



-- Mox

You don't need to see that.

I had a post all written up just a few minutes ago and decided that it came from a dark place in my brain that I just don't want to share with the Internet.

See, I didn't want to run you off. You come here for the funny. Am I right?

No?

You come here for the interesting? The enlightening? The educational?

I didn't think so.

You come here to see me lose my shit.

Well, sorry. Not today. I can't even watch that, myself, today.

It's pretty spectacular, though.

We'll try again tomorrow.




-- Mox

Thank God THAT'S over.

The main reason I don't make a habit of denying myself anything is that if I can't have it, I want it. And if I want it and can't have it, I get rather bitchy. So to save everyone the trouble of having to deal with me, I just don't deny myself anything. Works for me.

You can bet your sweet bippy I won't be giving up ALL my vices next year for Lent. Ambition has its' place, but not if it leads to self-flagellation.

But now that the Resurrection has been properly recognized and celebrated in the Christian world, I can go back to my chocolates, my cokes, my booze. My sinful nature can once again exist without attendant guilt.

Funny, though. Now that I can have it, I don't want it.

Figures.




-- Mox

Photo Friday: the little things that tick me off

I don't ask for a whole lot in the morning, usually. My basic criteria for a successful morning is a glass of OJ, an hour of quiet, and my newspaper. That hour of quiet is the reason I get up so damn early, before everyone else in the house. If I can get at least half of that hour by myself then I can tolerate most anything the more cheerful members of my household can lob at me.

By that statement you can assume that I am not a morning person. Never have been, never will be.

Because I like for things to go according to plan at 5-freakin-30 in the morning, I expect that there will be at least enough OJ for one glass and that my morning paper will be on the stoop. If my paper isn't there I get irritated.

Like this morning.

Back when our little podunk paper was locally owned, there was a number you could call to notify them when you didn't receive your paper as usual. Someone was actually sitting in the newspaper offices at six in the morning just for that purpose. They would offer to bring you a new one or credit your account, and in the wee hours of the morning that was as close to vindication as sometimes I got all day. But now our paper is owned by a big conglomerate and they've taken everyone out of the office early in the morning. Now you have to wait until "business hours" to call and report your missing paper, and while they will still offer you a new one or a credit, it's just not the same.

Hmm. Maybe what this post is about is not that I didn't get my paper this morning, but that I don't get the customer service I used to.

I think if we all got more bend-over-backwards customer service we'd all be a lot easier to live with.



-- Mox

Thoroughly disgusted.

Y'all, I have GOT to stop shopping at the same stores as my mother.

Yesterday Spawn and I hit the mall in search of something for me to wear for Easter. Hitting the mall with Spawn is exhausting all by itself, but you throw in a comprehensive search for suitable churchwear that meets the criteria of a casually attired, pushing-40 but still in good shape mom of one, and you've got yourself a recipe for collapse.

My preferred mode of dress has a lot more to do with jeans and flipflops than it does with plunging necklines, and since there is no way in hell I'm going to appear in public dressed in a slip dress made of Pucci-style print fabric... I pretty much bombed out. Designers these days must be on some sort of extended acid trip.

I have no idea where women my age shop for clothes. I mean, I see a lot of women in my age bracket who look fantastic, and they're not wearing what everyone else is wearing, nor do they look alike. They wear their clothes, not the other way around.

I sought refuge in the one store I was certain I could find something in -- Talbots. And I bought a really nice suit, on sale, that will work both for church and for work. I look like I can kick some serious ass in that suit. No, really. All I need is a briefcase and some Ferragamo pumps. And because I'm always in search of things to wear with jeans, I bought a couple of knit tops. I was feeling pretty good about it, too, until I got my purchases home and discovered that my mother had bought one of the exact same tops for herself.

Yikes.

I am mightily resisting turning into my mother in so many ways, and yet here I am mimicking her fashion sense. No wonder I'm depressed.




-- Mox

Uncharted waters

How do you teach a six year old the difference between pointing with a pointer finger and pointing with The Bird? Especially when they attach no significance to The Bird, like us more worldly adults do?

I am without an answer here.




-- Mox

Further evidence that I am starting to lose my edge.

In the position that I play, the position of Mom, there are skills that come into play that may seem insignificant to some. There is, of course, the Eyes In The Back Of My Head skill. Also, the Been There, Done That skill, which pulls up scenes from my own childhood and allows me to quash a plan before it gets hatched because I did that once and it did not work out in my favor. The skill of Anticipatory Reaction has saved me many a spilled drink at the dinner table. And the Ability To Count All The Way To Three works in a way that no mere warning could ever accomplish.

But I'm losing my grip on one of my skills, the one called Knowing Where Everyone Is At All Times.

Truthfully, it's been an easy skill to keep up on, since the other members of my household all seem to have the grace of a pack of elephants and we have old squeaky floors. Plus, Spawn has a tendency to sing all the time and my husband is either coughing or sneezing (allergy season, you know), and the cats generally are meowing/hissing/fighting/running all the time, so keeping tabs on my family has been pretty simple.

But lately, I've found myself losing track of them. My husband can be in the back yard instead of in front of the TV like I thought he was, and I will have no recollection of him walking through the house to go outside. Or Spawn will be in the living room one minute and the family room the next, and I never heard the kid move. The cats I can still pretty well keep track of, since they mostly want to be under my feet at all times. (Meow? Meowmeowmeow?)

I am starting to wonder if I'm losing either my hearing or my grip.

I used to be a lot more on top of things around my house, but here lately I've found myself preoccupied more often. There's a lot of stuff rolling around in my brain that takes up an inordinate amount of space, and then there are the lists. Because my psyche doesn't seem to be content with the two shopping lists I have tacked up on my fridge, I have started to make lists of the intangibles in my life -- things I like and hate about my jobs, goals yet unattained, ideas that need fleshing out, worst case scenarios.

Maybe I just need to chill out.





-- Mox

Now I've gone and done it.

I don't have what I'd consider a particularly addictive personality, which is to say I can walk away from stuff if need be. And sometimes, the need be. Ho boy.

Now, I do a fair amount of shopping online; Amazon is my best friend. And someone in my position doesn't have a lot of time to do leisurely shopping trips, so if I can hunt & gather online then so much the better.

I try to limit my forays into cyberspace because I see real potential for me to abuse the system. I'm trying to get out of debt, not further in. And so, thus far I have been successfully able to avoid one of the biggest selling sites on the Internet.

eBay.

Oh, I hear you. How could I be willfully ignorant of one of the top sites out there? Obviously there is something wrong with me because everyone who is anyone is buying and selling on eBay.

Or so I've been told.

I've been a little afraid of eBay, to tell the truth. There seems to be a real science to the buying and selling that happens there, a system that looks to be quite complicated to the average liberal arts major with no head for business (me). So I've done what I always do when it comes to stuff I'm a little afraid of: I ignored it.

But here's the thing. I am a consignment shopping fool. I buy a lot of Spawn's clothes at consignment shops because a) it's cheaper and b) the clothes have already been washed, so whatever they are is whatever they are. No guessing about shrinking/stretching/fading. I don't feel too anxious about turning the kid loose in a consignment outfit, since whatever damage that can be done is, to my thinking, negligible. I don't feel nearly as blase about full price brand new clothes. And I take a lot of stuff to consign, too, because I don't have a lot of smaller kids in my acquaintance to pass things on to and really, I'd rather have a few shekels in my pocket.

I had three outfits of Spawn's that the kid has outgrown, top-label designer stuff that was barely worn (thanks, mom, for clothing my child), and I knew I wouldn't get too much out of them in consignment. So what to do.... what to do... ?

You guessed it.

I closed my eyes and jumped into eBay. I listed the three outfits and am waiting, on pins and needles, to see if anything happens.

And you know what happened next? I started shopping. And I started bidding. And I won an auction. It should be delivered this week. I'm also watching a handful of items.

My road to hell is paved with eBay links, folks.





-- Mox