Well, we’ve got a super-busy, fun-filled day ahead of us – noontime feast at our dear friend Roger’s, with his family & other friends, and then we’re off to the Chiefs game at Arrowhead, where we are fervently hoping we stomp the Broncos! The game is airing on the NFL Network, and our local Fox affiliate; if you see me in my new hand-knit felted Chiefs-colors top hat, let me know! (I’m rather proud of my new hat.) I will get a picture up of me in my new hat soon.

I’m not going to get all goopy & traditional, and list off everything I’m thankful for, because I feel that list pretty much every day. I’m sad every day, but for the first time last night, I dreamt of my dad and it wasn’t sad. I miss him, and I always will. I look at these new permanent feelings and I know that in years, they will be worn a bit more smooth, they will slide around and together in my pocket, they will not prick with a savage dagger so sharply. I simultaneously appreciate and hate my wisdom rocks.

So yes, I said I wasn’t going to make a list, but I am thankful for JWo, and the laughter and the love we share. We had his mom over for dinner last night & taught her how to make her own sushi rolls – we did real crab meat & gourd, and smoked salmon & cream cheese – and stuffed ourselves. (You know, sort of like training, for today.) There were a few slices left, and we gave the dogs a treat….. we broke all the house rules for the sake of priceless photos…..

Polly’s pretty delicate in how she takes food from you, so watching her eat from chopsticks was hilarious. She was a little nervous, because she’s never sat in a chair before.

“Um, hey. Hey? Hey, guys, I’m down here…..”

(Don’t worry, Suzy got her sushi, too….)

May all YOUR dreams come true & enjoy the day.

Today was a debacle beyond my control. The construction upstairs moved to the next step, which was installing carpet. Remember how I mentioned these dudes were more knowledgeable in the realm of vinyl? Well, they apparently didn’t believe in the strong religion of “Ventilation”, and when we got to work this morning, the entire office smelled as though a thousand of Santa’s Little Helpers had been furiously building airplane models all night. Eye-scorching, lung-searing glue fumes. Fortunately, my boss & I had a meeting off-site, and that was followed by a lunch. The rest of our team vamoosed out of there, met back up for lunch, and then we went back to the office, which was better, but the longer you sat there, the more your eyes burned & your chest tightened. I’m starting to think my personal stupor was directly related.

I went to Lowe’s tonight, and picked up everything on my list – including metal epoxy, and stain. So of course, because I’m being kinda crazy and hyper and project-focused, I had to do my small Junior Shop Projects, and I think the net result is that my brain is tired of being subjected to chemicals entering my bloodstream through my nasal passages. All I keep visualizing is the image of Spike Lee in “Crooklyn”, where he gave himself a small part as a glue-sniffer. If it’s not better tomorrow, I’ll be detoxing in Hazelden for the Holidays……

……there is some renovation/construction shit going on upstairs – recall the glue fumes from last week? Well, those people got yelled at to stop with the chemical potions, so they started pouring buckets of water on the carpet to pull it up, and that resulted in ah, yes, water coming through our ceilings. (The funny quote from that: “Well, we are used to vinyl, mostly. We’ve never really done this carpet thing before.” Rilly? You don’t say.) Today, they are scrubbing and sanding and scraping and chiseling at the uncarpeted floors, and it sounds like we are inside a giant, erratic washing machine. Add to that unpleasant environment the fact that I drank part of an Airborne fizzy before it had completely unfizzed itself into liquid and it got stuck in my throat and I thought I was going to be the next urban legend, right next to Mikey and his Pop Rocks. In total, I am ready to GO HOME. I have my headphones on and it means I can’t concentrate very well, because I have to have the music so loud to drown out the whump-whump-scrape-scrape-scrape from above. Don’t even get me started on the construction outside – it feels like a video game, where the reward for navigating it all is that you get to stay alive.

I have to end this because I have to follow up on something that is three jobs removed from my actual scope of responsibility. I’m sure they will see me coming, what with the black cloud over my head. I gnash my teeth! Hear the clicking and grinding! Except you can’t! Because of all the noise!

Miss Julie tagged me for this meme…..of course it’s going to be a challenge to narrow down the list to just FIVE things, but hey, I’m willing to try.

The Guidelines: List 5 weird things about yourself or your pets. Tag 5 friends and list them. Then, those people need to write on their blogs about 5 weird things, and state the rules, and tag 5 more people. Don’t forget to let the people you tag know by posting a comment on their blog!

1. I enjoy eating bouillon cubes. Straight up. I gnaw at them like a tiny salt lick. Before you freak out, I don’t eat them every day. And, they have to be fresh/super dry. This is one of those weirdo-beardo things you did as a kid, and every so often have to revel in.

2. Here’s something weird-ish about Polly: she spazzes out if she has water on her head. Not like if she’s been swimming, but out in the rain or something. Once she’s back inside, she gets on her pillow and rubs her head all over the place, eventually drying off her whole back that way. It’s hilarious to watch.

3. If something gets broken, or no longer works, or has something wrong with it, I have to either fix it immediately (see: Murano, rear wiper!), order a replacement, or throw it away and try to purge it from my memory. It honestly feels like the balance of the universe is off to simply do nothing. It flips me out just thinking about making that choice.

4. I looooove ketchup on my scrambled eggs. My dad taught me to eat ’em that way. Mm. I may have just answered the breakfast question right there.

5. When I’m outside, I see most of nature & landscapes as potential compositions. This is a result of the umpteen hours spent as a studio art major, picking the spot where you wanted to sketch. Maybe why now I like snapping pictures – it’s much faster for me. It’s hard to explain it, because obviously not everything is sketch-worthy, but when I am at that point and I see it, where a group of tree trunks create interesting negative space, or the lines of the earth meet the sky, I feel the “click” inside, that says, “this is where you should take a picture, or draw this.” I miss the leisurely days where I could spend 4 hours painting on a sheet of Plexiglas to make one monoprint, you wouldn’t even know what you were ending up with until that wonderful hold-your-breath moment, when the paper pulled away from the plate.

Ok, tag, you’re it! Kristin, Kyra, Bekah, Shanny, and Laura, who most recently posted about weird dreams, so I know she can do this meme. ;) Y’all feel free to steal it & tag away!

Happy weekend!

So, I was thinking about all those Circles of Hell, and what mine would consist of. Obviously the first one would have bad drivers and terrible customer service. The next one would be filled with all the stupid bosses, managers, and random idiots I’ve encountered along the way. The third one in would be filled with scratchy Red Heart yarn, and if there were any good yarns, they’d all be hopelessly tangled.

And this week, I am pretty sure that one of those next circles involves newspapers, and ad-buying, and sales reps. This one’s going to take a little bit to explain, if you’re not in the ad-agency game, so get yourself a hot cup of coffee & enjoy the tour.

Let me first state for the record that I do not hate newspapers. We subscribe to the Star, and even if we only read the funnies some days, we recycle. But my experience with newspaper sales is a long one. I worked for the college newspaper, both in ad sales and ad layout, and then my first job at an ad agency involved working on two major national accounts with local retail locations, and we had to compile local media options for all of them. I’ve literally called hundreds and hundreds of newspapers over the years, and early on, I asserted that if I ever had a frontal lobotomy, I’d still be able to get a job at one of those papers. I’m not talking about calling major papers. Even minor papers. I’m talking about those tiny little, teensy-weensy local newspapers, where the advertising person also writes a few articles, and drives out a paper if your delivery was missed. And not all of those people are terrible, or stupid, or have had frontal lobotomies, but I just recall looming deadlines of my own, a form I needed to fill out, and the agonizing conversations to determine whether the ad rate I was being given was net or gross.

The other thing about small-town newspapers is that sometimes you stumble into a “group”. Where one company publishes twelve small papers. Sometimes these are the ones flung onto your driveway, the ones you don’t want. But sometimes you still have to buy them. And trying to figure out how much these things cost can be tantamount to solving the most challenging logic problem I was ever given in college. Because they have combination rates, and frequency discounts, and then separate color charges, and everything’s printed on a tiny brochure and nothing is clearly stated. And that’s what I’ve spent part of my week wrestling with. I’ve sent the sales rep countless emails, to clarify if I’m calculating this correctly. Jesus, I’m boring myself now. Suffice it to say, it’s been a week of yelling at my monitor, groaning, and being very, very frustrated, and feeling quite convinced that I’m temporarily visiting one of my rings of hell.

UPDATED: Oh, mah, God. I got to work, and within the hour, this rep emailed me for my address, phone, fax, etc. All of this information is in my signature, that has accompanied the SEVEN+ emails I’ve sent him in the past two days. Seriously. If I ever meet him, I expect a concave forehead. HAH he just emailed back and said “I guess I’m just brain-dead.”

I’d drink more coffee as a coping mechanism, but our stupid coffee machine is broken. They “fixed” it yesterday. This machine is taking on the same qualities as the fax machine in “Office Space”. I want to take it to a field and beat it with a baseball bat. Apparently when you lose your job at the newspaper, you move on to Coffee Machine Repair.

So, what would one of your Circles of Hell look like?

I’m having a rotten day! Except for lunch. Lunch was delightful, except for the crying, but that passed quickly. Kristin & I went to the New York Deli, and the men behind the counter treated us like princesses. Sometimes I think it’s in part because I’m wearing my Liza Minelli CruiseWear tunic top and it shows a lot of cleavage. All of that aside, I had the best corned beef ever, and a macaroon. So that was nice. But it’s been a devil of a day, and I’ve got a candle burning, just to sortof offset the noxious toxic fumes that are seeping down into our offices from the remodeling going on upstairs, it’s mostly the heady smell of glue that has us all slightly nauseous and headachey. And our roof is leaking, so I think somebody made a boo-boo.

In my dazed state, I keep correcting myself as I reach for my water, because my candle’s sitting on my coaster, and I can just see myself trying to drink hot wax and figuring it out a split-second too late. (Yeah, just like the Murano-backing-up episode.)

I suppose if I had gin in my mouth, I’d set myself on fire, though. At least I’d get to go home, where it doesn’t smell like glue and there aren’t buckets on the floor. I swear. Liza Minelli never had to work under these conditions.

I get “US” magazine at work, and two weeks in a row have been mightily amused by the lesser-story headlines that are still making the covers:

“Anna Nicole Smith: Her Secret Grief”
Ah, yes, so secret, this grief. Secretive and private, right there under her bleary-faced pic on the cover of US magazine! And wasn’t she just on Access Hollywood, too? Let me tell you, “secret” and “private” are not words this woman evokes when I think of her.

And this past issue’s chuckle: “Nicole (Richie) Gains 10 Pounds”
Sweet jesus. Do we still care? How can you even tell? The woman looks like a boiled chicken. She obviously has issues, and stalking her anorexic ass everywhere isn’t going to make her start eating Cheetos. (Maybe she needs to pal around with Britney, who dominates the cover!) Granted, who am I to point fingers at the skinny – you’ve never been able to clearly identify all the ridges and bones in MY sternum, so from an anatomy textbook perspective, she’s a walking teaching model for budding doctors everywhere. But really, are an estimated 10# :that: gossip-worthy?

Oh, and one final thing. Bubble skirts. They’re stupid. STOO-PID. If they make Molly Sims look like she’s wearing an artfully-gathered potato sack (Hi, Frumpy!), how are they going to work on the average Jane? Jesus, I’d look like a frickin’ hot-air balloon crashing into the ground. Or an upside-down Jiffy-Pop bag.

That is all. End of ranting at the stupid. For the next ten minutes, anyway.

….. Those “Oh FUCK” moments? I had one of those this afternoon, when I broke from my usual routine of how I get out of the garage (hit the inside button, get in car, back out) and instead decided to get in the car, use the remote, and then back out. Too quickly. And who uses the frickin’ rearview camera when you back straight out, no kids around? NOT ME. The door was alllllmost all the way up when I hit it (a horrible, horrible sound, btw), so I just smashed the rear windshield wiper. Right off. ARGH. I SCOWLINGLY drove straight to the dealer, (I’m still amazed how the ginormous dark cloud over my head fit inside that generous roomy interior with me) and they ordered a replacement arm – it’s $30, so it could have been way worse, but it totally derailed my plans – I skipped the post office, got my sandwich to go, foregoing my sit-alone-eat-and-read-a-book plans, and I just went straight back home. It seemed like I’d tempted the fates a little too much by NOT destroying the back end of the car, or the garage, for that matter, and so back to home base I went. And then I thought about my friend who took on a concrete pole, and another friend (who happens to be married to me) who did the exact same thing, and thought, ok, I’m lucky, it’s ok, but it still took a long time to shut off the Oh FUCK gnome in my head (he’s the one with the megaphone).

The Grief thing, it is eternal. It ebbs, it flows. It sits way in the back of the classroom, then one day it’s front & center, waving wildly. I am bracing myself for the holidays, not that I spent a lot of them with my father in the past 20 years, but more for the Norman-Rockwellian nostalgia that assaults us all this time of year. For all my bracing, and thinking, and therapy, and good ol’ cognitive work, there are Unexpected Moments, that seem to come from nowhere, that take me by surprise.

I was in a terrific mood this morning. I’d spent most of yesterday in a trance, knitting furiously, cleaning the garage, doing “stuff”, and while I never felt that I was actively thinking about anything in particular, I could feel myself zoning out. So when I started to get ready to run to the store this morning, I felt like I was snapping back in to place. There was great music on the radio, I was shimmying and singing along, and then – blam – as I stepped out of the shower, great wrenching sobs. It happened, I suppose, because I was thinking about my dog, Polly. And how she would have stayed in Agnes’ kennel this weekend, and how I’d checked to make sure there was still a top on that kennel, because the doghouse would’ve given Polly a great launching pad to jump/climb right on out. And I saw my Dad’s face. How I’d have imagined he looked that day, the first time he saw Aggie sail by the kitchen window, or into his workshop, out of her kennel from her own industriousness and problem-solving. And the mixture of chagrin and pleasure, irritation and delight, that he had a smart dog, despite having done something wrong. Perhaps I saw it enough as a kid, when he’d look at me with those same conflicting feelings. But I saw his squint, his head tilt, and then the flashbulbs began. It’s hard to explain, to describe it, our brains have such complexity as they send images and memories and signals. But in these times of utter grief, without an “event” or clear correlation, it feels like the old instamatic flash cubes, the FlipFlash, bursting with light and crackling into shattered opacity.
I saw the hospice nurse, holding his wrist, pronouncing he was gone. I felt James’ hand on my shoulder, I felt Dad’s hand in mine. I see the nurse so clearly, her brown hair, her glasses.
I heard his voice on the phone, as we laughed about some smart ass comment I’d made.
I saw his old red down jacket.
I heard that sound, his expression of amusement, as his mouth opened and his lips pulled back and I can’t describe it but it sits on the tape in my mind, one of my favorite things to hear, because it meant he thought something was funny, and he was smiling.
I thought I heard his voice on my drive Friday, after Brenda called me again to say the weather’d gotten worse, and before I called James to check the roads. I heard him say, “This isn’t a good idea”, as though he’d said it on the phone. I know it was my own mind, cautioning me, taking his voice because he was the wisest person I ever knew.

Like flashcubes, these moments burn bright and then they are gone. The gut-wrenching pain and sobbing subsides. I know it gets easier, I do. My puzzle-loving brain still wants, sometimes, to pick up my grief, and figure out how to undo it all. To make him alive, to erase everything that happened. But I can’t. Just like I can’t make the spent bulb flash anew.

We knew the weather could be a factor in this excursion, and my step-mother called me a couple of times with updates – each one making me more concerned. So I called the Wo & had him investigate road conditions, and it turns out the highway that I take for about 2.5 hours was designated as “ice/snow/slush-covered” at only 10:30 a.m. with temps dropping and more precip on the way. So, I got off on the next exit & turned around and came home. Which meant I drove through the blinding rainstorm (and construction zones) twice! I’m pretty tuckered out, and disappointed the weekend didn’t go as planned, but there will be another time, and there was no need to risk my safety. Polly had a grand snooze – she is a good traveller, as long as we don’t stop. When we stop, she barks at people because she’s nervous and not sure what’s happening next. And whatever it is, they better think twice about taking her on. Because she is FIERCE. And all the new stuff she got for her first big road trip? Have been re-labeled “burf-day presents”, and she’s delighting in her new big chewie nylabone, and “Sheep on the Lamb” canvas toy. I’m going to go crawl under Lizard Ridge & get caught up with the DVR!