Juice!

O.K. so I'm not sure why this is seeming like such a huge deal but yesterday my Big Girl brought me juice. She rides the bus to my work from her school a couple of days a week but since the bus drops her off a few blocks away, she walks up to my office. Well, yesterday she decided completely of her own accord to stop in at the cafe across the street where she purchased and delivered to me a fresh squeezed Orange juice! Again, I'm not sure why this is so very delightful to me, but gosh, it just is.... :-)

New careers for all my friends!

o.K. so much as I'd LIKE to begin with MYSELF and what I accomplished this week-end -- I feel obliged to first give major shoutouts to a few folks in the fold who've managed, yet again to surprise me with their ability to not just float but to actively persuade society to "buoy" what it is they're selling! Ha!.... er.... eh. sorry.

First up, we have the ever popular CP (as in Scoot co-parent) who just got herself a "significant" grant to fund the development and staging of an as yet un-written theatre production! Whoo hoo! You grow, Girl! (Seriously, who is still getting paid to "create" in this economy????)

Next up, we have Mr.DB Watanabe who has just secured a position -- wait for it -- TEACHING ENGLISH in the sadly under-reported (at least on this blog) prefecture of Ibaraki, Japan! I believe congratulations are in order (as well as my heartfelt condolences which go out to the people of that newly-unfortunate city-state. May god be with each and every English-learning one of you!)

Now then, having dispensed with the blah, blah, blah, back to me and my various talents! So, remember how I had that truck? And remember how people kept thinking it was a really cool idea to keep backing into it/breaking various head/taillights...? Well, I've been driving around for a while now inches away from incarceration because up until this week-end those lights were still broken/out and I'd already been pulled over TWICE by (some very nice, actually) police officer types who (justifiably) wondered when, if ever I was planning on obeying the law vis a vis all of that, plus i just got a notice in the mail saying that if I didn't step the hell up by Dec. 12, and start fixin' those fix-it ticks I'd owe roughly 800.00 bucks to Da Man -- so, I did what any wanna-be tough girl butch-lite chick with a beat-up truck does, i calculated how much freaking money/wasted time/inconvenience it would be to take the truck to the dealer and instead elected to fix her myself. And, I did! This week-end. Pretty cool, huh? (See all this truck-fixing goodness and still I can't manage to keep the wife happy! Ha! Just kidding. I will admit that it is possible any me-centered annoyance is entirely due to my truck-fixing when I should prolly be house-tidying, bill-paying, dog-walker corresponding, dish washing, attention-paying but whatev. Now that I officially own half her stuff I can't imagine she's gonna choose to leave me any time soon!)

Kareshi-kun!

Guess whose "not coming back" from Japan because he's got a full-on Kanojo-san! That's right, our until very recently Texan-by-way-of-New-Mexican Toastest with the mostest, DB!!!!!

(k. so I realized that i never write anymore because I tell the wife everything first so even though she just walked in and is being all ADORABLE and everything, I am not speaking in full sentences to her until AFTER I finish writing! See! See how much I love you people!!!) Eh, hem, now then.....

First, this actually happened a billion years ago but I have to mention it. Who got a call from their former place of employ wondering if perhaps she might like to come back on board? Moi, that's who! Weird. Nice in a sort of "Ha! I KNEW it wasn't me!" kind of way since the first thing the nice recruiter lady (who came to my going away drinks-fest, BTW) was "Oh, and A-hole-who-got-you-fired? He's gone now." Sigh. so nice to hear. They moved offices as well (to Sunnyvale which is not much better but still.....) and the company seems to be doing well (there's always room in the world for the possibility of random-hookups with folks who lie on their profiles!) -- I mean, don't get me wrong, getting thrown out of that place was the one of the best things that ever happened to me, still.... It felt good that they asked me to come back.

In other news, I've disowned (and since re-owned) the twenty-somethings I work with since they let me know that they found a certain Ex someone of MY WIFE attractive. To be fair the word-age used was "Well, she was rocking that suit!" plus, they had no idea at the time of the telling who she was but still.... I felt it my duty to inform them that under NO circumstances were they allowed to find her in any way attractive and that we were no longer friends. They, being sensitive, ultimately misguided twenty-somethings who, above all, valued my friendship (and occasional rides to work) promptly rescinded their expressed opinion even going so far as to "hate on her" should they ever see her again. I, of course, let them know that they shouldn't feel they needed to go to that extreme but that they should watch it in the future. Then we all went out for edamami and teriyaki chicken (although they had actual sushi) and the world was once again good. :-)

K. Lastly, the reason i know you've all read this far, breaking news as of 45 minutes ago. DB is not coming home. He is in love with a spiky-haired Japanese grrl and is staying on that island so as to be closer to her and her gender-neutral politics. Oh, and her body. I'm pretty sure he's staying because he likes the s-e-x as well! More power to you, Hon. I wish you and your angry little GalPal all the best!

You know who I love?

Besides my wife and kids, I mean.... I love Jerry Brown. I loved him when he was mayor of Oakland, I love him now that he is California's attorney general. I love that he (like me) believes that people, by and large are fundamentally stupid. Not mean, just ignorant and easily swayed by emotional appeals. Some of you may or may not remember this but a few months ago when this whole Prop 8 thing was really gearing up for it's wave of polarizing silliness, Jerry Brown changed the title of the proposition to explicitly state that it is about taking away the rights of a minority group. Now, while at the time, this was posited as a "clarification" it is now a fundamental action point in the lawsuit that has been recently introduced to the CA Supreme court by the ACLU and Lambda group inso much as you can't actually just decide by a simple majority to 1) make fundamental changes to the constitution (that takes a 2/3 vote by the legislature first before it ever goes to "the people") and 2)You can't actually discriminate at a constitutional level against a legally defined and thereby protected minority group. In the previous Supreme court ruling the question was whether or not sexual identity qualifies as a "protected class" in the same way that race and gender do" and the answer was (an admittedly gray-area) "yes" meaning that marriage between two adults in this particular protected class was allowed. Proposition 8 tried to skirt this whole sexual identity thing by acting as though sexual identity had nothing to do with it, instead it was simply saying that across the board, same-gendered partners regardless of sexual identity shouldn't be allowed to get legally hitched which, of course is ridiculous but at the same time is exactly the sort of crazy legal-loopholeness that people like Jerry Brown anticipated and, to the extent that they could, engineered a pretty compelling Plan B around waaaaaay before our fundamentally ignorant electorant got their grubby paws on their ballots. And please don't think I'm excluding myself from the teeming mass of knee-jerk voters! I voted for at least two Props and one person based on little more than they sounded good (and in one case because the argument against included the words "protecting against {sic} the illegals accessing the system" which not only offended my sense grammatical exactitude but just plain pissed me off!) I'm just glad that there are folks in positions of policy-crafting and sheparding power who are also sort of looking out for and planning around those guaranteed-to-be-needed Plan B, C and Ds....

Sleepless night....

Last night. I was having this really action-packed dream wherein some group of bad guys (headed by one very bad guy) wanted the Scoot so I had no choice but to hunt them down and kill them. I dispatched one of them, by hitting him repeatedly on the forehead with a brick. Seriously. They totally deserved it but I'm still a little concerned vis a vis WTH is going on in with my psyche...?

In other news, spent the week-end being very chill if a little under the weather. I got some gardening done though and spent a bunch of time out front hacking up the enormous side-walk overhanging bush things lining our front yard. I can't say they actually look better but they are definitely thinner! Also got to see HSM 3 (cute, although I feel as if they might have overstepped just a tad in their desire to position one of the leads as a more "serious" -- albeit still Disney-shiny -- actor/not just tween hearthrob thereby potentially risking alienating their "fan-base" plus I really am not a fan of the new nose on Sharpay but whatev....) Additionally, I also got to see my good friend and ex-wedding planner, Ms. RSM which was AWESOME because 1) I {heart} her and 2) it was really very nice getting to talk about stuff that wasn't related to my getting married/stress-inducing! So, yeah, aside from the bits where I was bludgeoning and and/or eviscerating bad guys trying to get my kid, a pretty good week-end was had, overall.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a very cute pic of my beloved having some cake at some event she attended a few weeks ago...

O.K. so what exactly does the rationalization for this look like...?

K. so, i went to a very cute kids party this past week-end and there was this guy there, the dad, actually of the birthday kid, and there was this lady there, a friend of the birthday kid's mom (Note: dad and mom were/are no longer an "item") flirting up a storm with aforementioned dad. So, here's the thing. I know that Dad has already shown that he can father babies at a somewhat alarming rate. Case in point, the current child spinning around like a little princess in front of us. Second case in point being the 1 year old Dad fathered with yet another lady he met at aforementioned kid's LAST birthday party .. Now, I'm not overly familiar with any of the players in this little scene but as I am familiar with this history I'm assuming an actual close-type FRIEND of the Mom would be even MORE familiar with the love-em-and-presumably-leave-em (preggers, it would seem) type of "dating" this Dad is into so.... I'm watching Flirty lady be all FLIRTY and I'm thinking, What in the name of dear sweet Jesus must she be thinking?? Seriously, did the frozen sperm get to be a little too expensive? Does she (seriously) think she's any "different"? And why (again dear sweet lord) at the kid's birthday party? Could she at least wait until the next major holiday so as to seem a tiny bit more original when she "mysteriously" finds herself with child/without boyfriend. K. sorry. I realize it's technically none of my business. Plus I'm probably being mean. Still. Why are girls so flipping weird?

Forty is the new WTF???

****** spoiler alert **********
This post is alot more "essay-ey" than I've been waxing of late, mostly onna counta there's finally room in my brain to think about things other than cutting out and gluing really pretty shapes onto thousands of wedding programs but also because I was re-reading some of my older stuff and I realized i used to actually talk about what was going on in my head as opposed to in my life a lot more. Not sure if it's going to continue in this vein but for now, there it is.....
****** /spoiler alert **********

O.K. so i was chatting with a friend of mine today and I found myself uttering the following statement: "Come to Japan to check out your show? Sure! That'd be awesome!" Thing is, I don't think it would be "awesome"... what it would be is impossible. Impossible because I am JUST back from my honeymoon trip to Mexico which used up all the vacation time (and then some) I'd managed to amass in the (relatively) short time I've spent at my brand-new job; impossible because I have TWO kids and a Wife who, granted, were included in the initial offer of tickets but whom I'm relatively sure would rather not get bundled back onto a plane and flown half-way across the world to a place where NONE of us speaks the local language (Oy vey, i'm sitting here imagining The Wife trying to get a handle on ordering those "cheesburgers, plain" en Japonese -- seriously, I have no doubt that she could do it, just not so sure she'd think her on-going relationship with me was particularly worth the effort) just to watch some grungy types pummel things with their skateboards. Impossible because, I actually don't want to do stuff like that anymore. I like where i am and what I'm doing. I think I'm just having a little identity crisis is all.

"What???" I hear your collective gasp. "Our little Chick? Arguably one of the happiest, most self-actualized, stable human beings on the planet? Having some sort of crisis? Pass the peanuts, this should be good." Because, here's the thing, saying something like that in response to an offer like that is something I would have wanted to do (albeit, possibly not actually followed through on) a bunch of years ago, pre-kids, pre-wife, in another incarnation of myself.

"So, then," I now hear you murmuring, "Tell us again, how this any different than your standard run-of-the-mill, mid-life crisis?" Well, I think it's different because I'm not actually running away. From anything or to anything. I'm content here. I'm taking my responsibilities and commitments and loves-of-my-life very seriously. I'm extraordinarily happy. I'm just finding myself acting and feeling and in some ways looking completely different from how I've sort of been for the last decade and i'm wondering what's up with that.

Part of me thinks it's this whole marriage thing. I mean, there was a pretty significant sea-change popping up pretty much out of nowhere and while I feel extra-lucky that everything worked to make such a permanent locking down of the Missus a reality, there was also a fair amount of seismic shift from one extreme to the other that went into fully embracing the concept.

Kind of like deciding at age 29 that having a baby was a really. good. idea. versus my earlier "Are you frickin' kidding me??!" stance vis a vis me and my up until then anti-child-rearing or even child-be-nearing stance... In fact, it feels just like that. Major decision arrived at. Attitudes adjusted accordingly then total and complete loss as to what exactly that looks like in actual practice. I mean, who am I now that I'm a grown-up, college-educated, wife and mother of two with a house in a "nice neighborhood", a dog and (theoretically) half a mortgage. I have the "advanced" degree, the white-collar job, the close circle of "a few good friends"; I worry about getting folks to school, whether or not the truck is going to die, when The Wife will get fed up with my choosing sleep over sex (which does actually happen occasionally and is inexplicable even to ME as, seriously, The Wife is HOT!) and leave me for her secretary or admin ass or whatever.... all stuff that everyone of a certain age, in a certain bracket/frame of mind thinks about, I'm sure just...

Again, please don't misunderstand. I LIKE it here. The weather is great and the perks are awesome. I'm just not sure how I ended up here with the rest of the crowd and, more importantly what I'm supposed to be doing now that I'm "one of them".

Anyone?

[Note: Any and all suggestions will be duly considered in the order in which they are received. Thank you for your attention.]

Well, that was fun...!

O.K. let's start with an IM conversation from half way across the globe:

DB:Hey.
Me:Hey.
DB:So.... How'd it go?
Me:How'd what go?
DB:Everything.
Me:Everything? You mean the bachelorette party, the family's arrival, the wedding, the honeymoon and the return to work?
DB:Yeah.
Me:Good.
DB:Cool.
DB:k. just checking
Me:K. Bye.
DB:Bye.

gotta love a man of few words..... ;-)

Now then, to expand on a few key concepts -

Lead up to the wedding was grand. Stressful but in an entirely good way. Lots of my favorite peeps in one place with practically no fighting so that was kind of awesome. I LOVE my peeps. Just plain across the board love. them. Period.

Wedding, itself, was awesome! Again with the lots of lovely people in one place looking all fancy-pants and having some chocolate. Three of the sweetest toasts in the world were delivered by The Wife's Big Sis, my Big Bro and one of my VBFsF, Mizz Tail. It was a tiny bit sad that as I was the one in the dress, i had to stay locked away in a room while everyone was assembling but that actually just made it more delightful to get to see who showed up making their way down the receiving line. Once again, I feel compelled to ask: "How is it possible that we know so many completely adorable people???????" Seriously. I'll be posting pics as soon as they become available so folks can see exactly what I'm talking about but for now. Trust me. I know ALL the pretty people.

After-wedding-drive-down-the-coast was sweet. We didn't bother changing and so got some applause upon our arrival at the tasty steak house where we had some sup. The room The Wife booked was gorgeous and the bed was one of the most comfortable beds I've ever slept in EVER.

Honeymoon went well. Extremely well, IMHO, although there may be one or two others who experienced it as a bit more on the stress-inducing side,I found it to be delightful. I loved our cabana. I loved the fact that we got to hang out as a family of persons without TV, work, school, radio, phones, errands/scheduled engagements competing for our time. I love my kids and I love my Wife and I really, really liked that we were able to co-exist in a (mostly) enthusiastic, symbiotic, happy way in a strange new place for days on end. Gives me hope for when the apocalypse comes and we're the only ones left standing!

Return to work, also relatively seamless (due in large part to the excellent coverage provided by the always amazing IHOEL) -- everyone was very happy (or at least seemed happy) to get me back which made me feel nice, plus I THINK while I was away my 6 month "trial" period ended so I am now officially part of the union/they can't fire me even if they wanted to unless I do something horrific like steal all the computers in the building and sell them on the black market in Fukuoka... which, brings us nicely back around to my second IM conversation with a certain ex-patriot who apparently has befriended a (I'm sure) delicate flower of a Japanese Lass who also happens to be some sort of "gender-activist":

DB:Hey.
Me:Hey. [Anyone but me interested in figuring out why ALL IM conversations start this way??]
DB:My friend K wants me to ask you if you're "done being a girl" yet?
Me:??
Me:Sorry?
Me:You have a friend?
DB:[Presumably Rhetorical Question plus expletive deleted]
DB:She lives here. I met her at a show.
Me:"Kay"?
DB:Kaoru
Me:Ah...
DB:Like Bubbles.
Me:Sorry...?
DB:Or Buttertop....
Me:Wha?
DB:The little girls on TV
Me:Are you on some sort of muscle relaxant?
DB:LOL
Me:Seriously
DB:She wants to know "if you're done being a girl?"
Me:Done like "done, done"??
Me:Why? Does she need to use it?
Me:Ha! Get it? Does she need to... never mind.
DB:You know with the hair and the wedding and stuff
Me:Excuse me??
DB:We were talking about you and she's got a theory that you weren't comfortable with having your hair short because that's masculine so you needed to present yourself as more feminine when you did something traditional like getting married for your family and everyone.
Me:...
Me:Did you tell her I married a girl?
DB:...
Me:You're an idiot.

Back to happy

Not that I'm ever all that far away from it! So, of course, countdown to the wedding and these last few days have been a little intense but totally in a good way. I am lucky enough to be Jewish by association so i have Rosh Hashanna off (yesterday and today) which is sooooo nice because it means I got a chance to actually (gasp) try on my wedding dress for like the second time since i got it. Also to sort out the various undergarments that would be accompanying it, try on the shoes, hate the shoes, try on better shoes, feel better about the shod-i-ness of it all (heh! get it....? eh hem. Sorry), finalize some/most/sort of the program situation, make a HUGE list of stuff that still needs to be done, stare at my wedding ring which is in a box in my desk because, yes, folks, I am a BIG OLE GIRL like that! etc., etc., etc. {sigh} I have to say, it's all good but it's also a lot, knawhattamean???

One other thing though,

quick shoutout to my homies who came out for some bachelorette P-tey giging. I had a wonderful time as did the GalPal -- seriously, truly delicious pizza, bevvies, cookies aside, you guys are great and I am sooooo glad you're my friends! No, really, I mean that.... :-)

T-8 and counting...

No idea if that reference is correct but whatev. So, things here at work are a little stressful. Nothing serious just everyone kind of on-edge. Happy though because the fabulous IHOEL will be covering for me while I'm out which makes me feel MUCH better in addition to making a situation where he can demonstrate his perfectness to the organization at large and subsequently so that the aforementioned OAL can then get off it's collective rear and just hire him already! (I've also passed along the contact info of our former GV Sr. Designer/my Ex-crush -- who's, like myself, newly married so no conflicts of interest there! -- so we may just end up with a little GV-specific re-union up in these here parts!)

{sigh} I just want to be away from here. Everyone is such a freaking stress-case right now and I've got all these things I think I'm supposed to be doing (don't know for sure as I've not had time to breathe/make an actual list) that have nothing to do with work but that are happening TOMORROW..... It's fine. I'm fine. It's just a lot is all. :-)

On a completely unrelated note though, I had the tastiest tiny sandwich thing at a meeting today. There were preserves involved. Really quite yummy.

In terms of wedding planning and task accomplishment though

Things are actually coming along nicely (thanks in no small part to my pose of extraordinarily talented friends) -- we have pretty much everything we need either almost done or done-done and the final touches don't seem too impossible to complete within the next few weeks.

Also, huge massive kudos to the GF/Wife on her focus since I am still, technically, trying to finish and submit my dissertation and she is being all proactive and sweet about reminding me how nice it would be to actually have something to show for all those years of hard work/$80,000 even if it is just a piece of paper that probably won't even get framed until next year..... :-)

Also having lunch with my pal Abby-Tail

Which I am VERY much looking forward to! I only wish it were today.....

My friend IHOEL....

Experienced a loss this week-end about which I am very sad. I hope the trip back East to be with his family helps him find some emotional and physical peace and that he (and all the Bees, actually) remember that they are very special to me and that I am always on hand to do whatever I can to assist should needs arise......

Aging Out

I'm having lunch today with a Pal of mine who "has to talk to me" about something. Now, It's not like I'm not available to this person via phone, text and/or e-mail (all preferable modes of communication where this individual is concerned to be perfectly honest) but, no. This "talk" has to be face-to-face. Which is fine, i guess. Although I can't escape the feeling that it could possibly have something to do with the fact that I may or may not have repeated to him a comment our mutual pal made about him "aging out" of my "corral of young studs" I'm currently interested in paying attention too but that may just be me finding the hilarity in the situation. It is equally possible that this Pal of mine is just missing our little tete a tetes and/or wants a peek at the long hair... Either that or he's angling for an invite to the Bachelorette party now that he knows the wedding list is officially closed! ;-)

Delightful!

K. i forgot to blog about this the other day but My Big Girl is now officially Street-smart and has been riding the (public transit) bus from her school to my work where she has her after-school camp thing and it's been a little bit of a learning experience (for both of us). This is mainly due to the fact that she's NEVER done anything even close to this before so there have been the occasionally missteps -- getting on buses going the wrong direction, getting on the bus going the right direction but having it choose to stop and kick everybody off mid-way to the stop she's supposed to get off on, getting off on the right stop but then forgetting which way you're supposed to walk up the hill (especially since your stop is sort of in a valley so there are two "up" directions) but she is a trooper and has totally got the drill down. So, Friday she calls me from stop one to announce that she's on her way to stop two and I decide, what the heck! I'll head on down to meet her. Can I just say, the look of sheer delight on her face as she gets off the big ole smelly bus and sees me waiting there at the cafe across the street with a magazine, some tea and a cup of hot chocolate for her..... priceless! Anyhoo, she comes trotting up with this huge grin on her face and says "Wow. I didn't expect to see you here! How delightful!" Seriously, I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is moments like these that are THE reason you have kids.

Freaking out

K. So, i took my big girl to her first drum lesson yesterday and I'm siting there waiting for her to get out and I'm looking at my scheduling book and I suddenly realize that we are 21 DAYS AWAY FROM OUR WEDDING! What the freakin' hell?????? I know I've been doing pretty much nothing but getting ready for this for the last several months and yes, I also realize I've been yakking about it non-stop for like weeks but STILL! I do have to say, this is kind of like that thing where you're going along minding your own business and playing with your kids and feeding them and stuff and then you look away for maybe 3 seconds and when you look back they're basically ready for COLLEGE! {sigh} I simply am not prepared to deal.

A life lived scattered...

O.K. so I am officially completely and totally exhausted. I was up all night (well technically every two hours) giving puffs to a pretty little asthmatic princess so we could avoid what I've come to regard as the "gold standard" of unpleasant circumstances elicited by this condition -- the Emergency Room and subsequent admission to the hospital visit. She seems to be doing better -- the Wife is at home with her right now so I'll p'raps get an update soon-ish but I (skating so close as is my wont to the edge of exhaustion anyway) am completely wiped. Because of this lack of an ability to put thoughts and sentences together I am going to depart fro our typical, lengthy summary post and instead do a bunch of mini-posts remarking on things pretty much as they occur to me (which, some of you may remember was how all of this nonsense started in the first place!)

Tired...

Tired, tired, tired. Plus, we have no water right now. A pipe under our house burst (finally!) Apparently, according to three different plumbers, the pipes were in horrible, leaky condition -- a fact which we just starting figuring out a few months ago when we noticed that the water bills were astronomically high but which Slacker-I did nothing about until yesterday morning when my eldest noticed a "running water" sound as well as a pool of water flowing up and out from under the house down the driveway...... All of which spurred me to action (the kind of action where you ask your New Wife to pretty please take care of it but action nonetheless!) and which resulted in no running water for us last night and today. Cute in a "let's pretend we're camping!" kind of way. Annoying when you realize you have to choose between basically throwing away the gallons of water it takes to flush a toilet and having water on hand to cook your kids some supper/make coffee in the morning. Suffice to say, we opted for java-buzz but, fair warning now, I wouldn't advise any "impromptu visits" to the Chick Homestead until we get this figured out. ;-)

And, scene!

My goodness. Where to begin??? The week-end was lovely. The CP married her GalPal of many years, the ever-fabulous Mimsy and they were both radiant and beautiful plus there were cupcakes! Also, dancing (Vogue, the Charleston, I'll leave it at that....)!! Add in the special bonus of getting to see Mistah Lovah-Lovah all "hard at work" and professional looking with his little cameras strung around his neck and the beautiful Mizz Tail who just got back from a trip back east (I swear -- what is it with The East that all my nearest and dearest feel they must go there all the time???) Good friends, beautiful weather, etc. Just a really sweet event all the way round. Hanging with the kiddies and the Woman for such a concentrated time was nice too although I think we all ended up a little more worn that expected so it was nice to have the extra day to chill-lax. Back to work yesterday where I was greeted by all the e-mails in the world demanding things but (strangely) I was able to get most the requests done so I'm feeling fine and in line today. ;-)

Melissa Etheridge = dreamy...

Seriously, how fun is it to get impromptu invites to really kick-a** stage performances featuring cutie, amazing lesbo singers?? Very is how. (and YES, Virginia, that IS a back stage pass!!!)





Yay!