* We still don’t have a diagnosis. It’s unsettling, we were first delayed from Monday to Tuesday, then on Tuesday to Thursday. It’s a little like someone you don’t know juggling with your soul & the souls of those you love, waiting breathless and praying they don’t drop them. It’s a lot like sucking.

* I am perfecting the click of my eyes into the 1,000-yard-stare. Sometimes I look right through people.

* My most common reaction to things that would ordinarily send me screeching (and blogging) is succinctly captured in the form of two lines from an Eminem song:

Screaming “I don’t give a fuck!”
with his windows down and his system up

Because, in fact, I don’t give a fuck if the spot ran wrong or you want a schedule to start on Monday or you need a plan. My father has cancer. He told me yesterday it’s Stage IV. But that it didn’t mean anything, it only meant it’s in more than one place. Well, there’s no Stage V, no matter where you google. So. How do you know it’s Stage IV without a diagnosis of what the cancer is? Does this give you a glimpse of what the hamster wheel in my head looks like, the one I climb on and run at least every five minutes, the one I can’t shut off at night unless I take something to sleep? The one that spins the tears and the hope and the futility and the helplessness? The hamster wheel I cannot leave, until I have more information, I cannot separate it from my head or my heart, I cannot turn it off, I cannot let go because it is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going, when I want to collapse in a heap, when I want the one person who could fix everything when I was a kid to give me answers he doesn’t have.

* Do the right thing. This has been a common theme on the hamster wheel. To go home now, to wait. To respect my father’s needs & wishes, to care for my own as well. (He is already exhausted by the people & family there non-stop streaming into his home & through the phone.) None of these can truly be answered until we know what we’re dealing with. I know my presence would be a drain, it would also be a benefit. Being the only child is an enormous trump card that bears great responsibility and great wagering. The only thing I’ve done is start to knit him a pair of socks.

*Breakdowns are becoming a daily way of life. A junior AE tried to set up an interview for our department intern & called me on the phone to see if I would be available. I burst into tears. This is my new way of telling people what is going on, it seems to be working. At least it’s effectively communicating “GIRL IS CRAZY”. Which in the end, is what I want to leave people with. Ayup.

That’s all I’ve got. It’s an effective snapshot of pretty much every ten minutes in my head. If only my hamster wheel were a good fat-burning device, instead of a crazy-sobbing hope-despair track to nowhere. I’m getting there fast, that’s for sure.

Oddly enough, I believe our conversation started as we were watching the news & the coverage of the Hispanic protestors on the telly. Suddenly JWo was singing, and I did not, for the life of me, recognize the song. Here are the lyrics he was singing:

“And there’s a word in spanish I don’t understand
But I heard it in a film one time spoken by the leading man
He said it with devotion, he sounded so sincere”

Now, keep in mind, there was a lot of EMOTION in the singing. And big hand movements. So all I could really focus on was how funny it was. And because I refused to recognize this song, we had to go upstairs & get on the computers and listen to the snippet & prove that, indeed, my husband knows his Elton John backwards & forwards, and I have, at some point, heard this ballad.

JWo: “It came out in 1988. Whoa. You were on Social Security then.”

“Oh shove it. (I’m THREE years older than JWo.) I was listening to COOL music, like Scritti Politti and Flock of Seagulls. I didn’t have time for pop.”

JWo: “I’m getting into Elton John now, just to spite you.”

“I’m just saying, he’s pretty GAY.”

JWo: “He’s not gay, he’s just a snappy dresser!”

“HE MARRIED ANOTHER MAN! That makes him GAY!”

JWo: “Hey!”

“You are so gonna see this conversation blogged.”

JWo: “HEY!”

I’m a little raw right now. My father called Friday night from the hospital & told me he has cancer. He has a lesion on his spine & a spot on his sternum & they were giving him pain, so he went in. We’ll know today what we’re dealing with & what the course of action will be. It’s rather amazing, how much stuff sticks to your wound once the abrasion has been made; watching Johnny Sack dance with his daughter at her wedding on the Sopranos last night made me blink back tears – and there are a hundred other things in the past two days that have shot tears to my eyes. Like, taking a shower. Showers are good for crying, I think. Water washing the tears away, cold tile on my hot face. I just keep telling myself that we’ll be strong & optimistic & there are a hundred things in our favor – early detection, he’s a tough motherfucker, people beat cancer all the time. I started to write a blog yesterday, a recap of the conversation, but I couldn’t even let JWo read it, and I couldn’t finish it. Too many tears. Damn me for not buying waterproof mascara at Sephora!

*If I had a bitchin’ Camaro, I wouldn’t goose it and challenge a Porsche on Ward Parkway to race. I’m sensible like that.

*Insider Blasting & Ho-Ram Scoop: The girl who was hurt? Hanging on the fence leaning over the blast site. Sure, the blast screwed up? But that’s not too far from looking down the barrel of a gun to see if you can see the bullet. DARWIN called, he wants you out of the gene pool!

*More Scoop: One more week of HO-RAM. Then, corrected blasting on a same-time-every-day daily basis. The sensation of the building falling around me will still be there, so I’ll be leaving the building same-time-every-day for a while. Rational? Probably not. But I’d rather be up the hill and feel the earth shake than inside wondering if I’m going to be crushed.

*Sephora opens today. I shrieked (no joke) at my boss when he tried to set a meeting that would conflict with a long lunch hour. I have my priorites, people. Plus, I’m a little fried from burning the candle at both ends AND the HO-Ram. He’s revising the meeting time. I should probably shop for some aromatherapy?

*Sims Update: You will all be happy to know that my Sim has recovered nicely, she no longer weeps constantly (but our roommate does – GEEZ, she’s irritating.) Now I need to figure out how to unlock the gnome so all the cheat codes can be used. I’m terribly excited that there’s a gnome. And yes. I’m a cheater.

*This has probably been done, but I’m thinking of a fun Blog Day called “Flash Your Bath”. I would love to see just how jammed everyone else’s bathtub/shower area is & what-all products you have. I know I’ll need to splice two photos to get all mine in the pic. ;) Whaddya think?

HAPPY FRIDAY. May your day be free of HOs and HO-RAMS.

….makes me smile……

(Sorry. couldn’t resist the schmaltzy song!) Took these pictures over the past weekend, leaning back into the tree. This is one of the trees Polly thinks she should be able to climb in her Squirl Patrol Exercises. She’s quite persistent in the War on Squirl Terror. And, really. Couldn’t we all be a little more vigilant?)

So, yesterday, the infernal construction of the Bob Mahal was going on, and they decided to blast. I loved the idea of blasting, because we weren’t supposed to hear anything & it was supposed to be 800 times better than this goddamn HO-RAM that goes DuDuDuDuDuDuDuDuDu nonstop throughout the day. As Kristin said, it’s like being in a washing machine.

Well, something went wrong with the blasting. First of all, I did not even understand what was happening, and thought some large piece of moving equipment had HIT our building, and I kept staring at the walls waiting to see if they were going to crumble around me or not. Everything SHOOK. And the noise. An explosion! People with offices on the south side of our building had rocks hit their windows. I don’t think I’m overstating the general feeling when I say everyone was “freaked the fuck out”. An employee of the restaurant around the corner was outside when it happened, and she was hit in the face by a rock. (She was ok, overall. Cut, bleeding, but minor injuries. Apparently she was swearing a blue streak at well-meaning people who kept asking her name. “I’m not telling you my name. Get the fuck away from me!”) So, now we’re back to the HO-RAM. We’re going to have 8 of them by the end of summer. I’m sure it’s spelled HoeRam, but fuck that, it’s a HO and I hate it. I’d rather try the blasting again (the right way, not the “Beruit Way”) but that’s not going to happen, because people are going to sue, blah blah blah. I’m about ready to lodge an emotional stress complaint for the HO RAM though.

Perhaps the owner of this construction project should give us complimentary, weekly massages until the HO stops Ho-ing? I think that sounds splendid.

I have “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” stuck in my head today. And I’m sportin’ a horrid sunburn on half my neck. That’s damn sexy, let me tell you. Hi! I’m red! I’m white! I’m a Michael Jackson video, morphing before your eyes!

We may not have a very winning team, but we do have a gorgeous ballpark:

Fireworks:

And, what isn’t more all-American than a flyover by the Stealth Bomber? Holy crap.

Of course, you can’t hear it until after it’s already gone & it was a ROAR. I put my camera down so I could look up as it went directly overhead, and you could see all the metal panels on the underside, it was THAT close. Amazing technology, scary as hell. I think everyone in our group was impressed & amazed.

The rest of the game was freezing cold, because our seats weren’t in the sun, and several sections over, a woman got arrested, one section over, a woman fell down the stairs, and at the end of the day, the Royals lost. All-in-all, it made me sentimental for my days in Minneapolis, when the Twins were so good, they’d selectively walk players, as we screamed and booed. It’s unfortunate we don’t keep the good players (they get snatched by teams with more money) and yesterday, the stands were as full as they’ll be for the season. And I don’t think any sort of roof (we have a vote on that today – a gigantic expensive rolling roof for both stadiums) is going to fix what’s wrong with the Royals. Better to plow that money into the team.

I absolutely love this picture of Suzy. Both the dogs got baths on Saturday, given what a gorgeous, sunny warm day it was. As you can imagine, I also got a bath, but more by proximity. Polly’s the worst, because she hasn’t figured out yet that the more she fights it, the longer it takes. Suzy, being older & wiser, is much calmer & suffers through with enormous dignity, looking at you the entire time with her giant brown eyes, asking, “Why? WHY?”

Polly, post-bathing:

Our agency’s off to the Royals home opener today, it should be fun! (I like any Monday that is a half-day!) I’m taking some sock knitting, though, you can’t make me sit for that long without yarn…..

Given how many pranks I’ve played in my life – too many to count – I’ve always thought today would have been a fitting birthday for me. In fact, it’s a blog bud’s, Becky’s, so pop over & say Happy Day in her comments if you have the chance.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite pranks.

I was dating this guy waaaay back when I lived in Minneapolis. He started buying all this high-end gym-quality equipment. And put it in the living room. It was a good look, if you were going for a gym-theme in the home. She says sarcastically. One day we were looking at it, and I was snorting about how homey it was, and he said, “I wish there was something I could buy to put it on that I could move it all into the corner out of the way.”

Oh, yes. See, to a prankster, expressing a wish is like giving me a key. To the kingdom! So the next week, I wrote this little script, and had a guy at work call & leave it on his answering machine. It went something like this: “Hi, this is Tom from USA Gym, and we were going through our records & saw you’d recently purchased several large pieces of equipment. We wanted to tell you about this great new item we’ve just gotten in, called ‘Space Savers’. Space Savers are made of high-grade steel & raise your equipment 4″ to give you room on the floor, where you need it most. They’re sold in sets of four, and they’re $69.99. Give us a call if you’re interested.”

Hee hee hee. So I wait, until I know he’s gotten home, give him 20 minutes, and then call. “Hi! How are you?” Blah blah blah. He doesn’t say anything. I finally said, “So, did you get any interesting messages today?” “Nope.” Silence. “Nothing about say, some gym equipment?” “Uh, yeah, actually.” Big pause.

OK, this is when it all slid way the hell out of control. Turns out, he BARELY listened to the details of the message, but heard the magic words “Space Savers” and immediately called USA Gym. Where he eventually got sent to the manager, who got out his catalog to start trying to find these things. (“They’re called WHAT? Space Savers? I’ve never heard of them.”) As he was paging through it, he asked who had called & left the message. “Tom.” “Well, what the hell is Tom doing calling you? He drives the truck! He’s not allowed to be selling things on the side to customers!” Oh shit. “What were they called? Space Savers? I’m going to have to call you back.”

Hi, now I’m getting poor schlump Tom fired from his job for selling FOUR INCH CASTERS on the side. I said, “Didn’t you LISTEN? They only raise the equipment UP four INCHES! They don’t do you any good! And they don’t exist!”

“I gotta call this guy back before he fires Tom. I’ll call you later.”

Yeah, it’s not really surprising that relationship was not destined to last. But he did laugh about it, and Tom didn’t get fired.

If that’s not enough to make you worried about hanging out with me, go ahead & read the one I posted , last year.

So, I took a half-day of vacation today, and kicked it off right by doing the next best thing to a spa day: shopping at CostCo! I procured many things, some were essential (batteries, potatoes), others were not (mangos, smoked salmon I thought was really cheap but wasn’t!) (I mean, technically, it’s still a good deal, but I thought the price was per package, instead it was PER POUND. Whups!) And, after losing numerous eBay auction bids on a copy of Sims 2, I decided to go through every box of video games for PS2. Persistence pays! I finally found the game. And JWo & I have spent the entire evening playing it.

What an unbelievable step up from the computer version we have. (several years old, admittedly.) It also helps to have a biggish TV, too. All of the technical advances and high definition, however, only make it more frustrating when all I do is CRY ALL THE TIME. I swear, if I’m not sobbing, I’m peeing on the floor, and more often than that, tipping over from exhaustion and passing out anywhere, really, the street, the floor, the boardwalk, the bedroom. My Sim hits a point where she will not even do what I tell her, even if it’s exactly what she needs, like “SLEEP”. So I have to wait for her to pass out, get enough rest in that very uncomfortable position, and then try to get something done to make life better. It took almost an hour to recover from my almost-in-toto absence of all life necessities, and now I’m only lacking in socialization, and let me tell you, walking around weeping is not the fastest way to make friends. Timon actually hates me, and yet he was the only person I could find to talk to, so I’m trying to turn that situation around. JWo is doing just fine, by the way, and he’s developing skills much faster because, well, he’s not passed out on the floor with flies buzzing around his head for half the game.

Have I mentioned just how much this is all a little reminiscent of my sophomore year of college? Weeping, passing out, lacking focus…. everything but the flies….