Some

They will not be happy until they have their mating instinct (regardless of offspring-generation-wishes) satisfied. They have very high standards. They (I'm thinking of three-five in particular) have been loved by me, but I did not qualify as their type : )

Others will stay single for what seems like indefinitely, and they will remain jocular in bachelorhood, showing signs of strain but with such different colors.

I am looking to spend time with the kind of friend who, for at least 40% of the time, is entertaining and pertaining to me. A few qualify a percentage, even high percentage, of the time, but even 40%-attainers have deterrents to intimacy that stem from other sources. Relationshipping is a mucky half-shore, half-sea business. Mud everywhere, obscuring.

New template

It wants me to change HTML b/c it is so silly with its lack of spacing between posts.

I do not have time to learn CSS/HTML more right now.

Sorry about the appearance issue.

Text messaging

Recently I told the Facebook world, which shares little overlap with this one, that I had two consecutive +~$35 phone bills due to the addition of 5¢-charges stemming, one at a time, from sending or receiving texts after the 300/month limit has been reached. I think it's 300. I do know that the two lines can't "share" their quotas, that one phone (mine) uses far too many while his uses very few. Obviously we have the wrong product.

As an aside, another example for an approximation of service would be the dental insurance offered at my husband's job. He gets fairly good coverage for $10.06 a month. How much do you think it would cost to add me, one other person? [answer forthcoming, though you can guess which way this story is headed, I'm sure]

After I lamented my stupidity and put a ban on texting, I proceeded to "text just a little," since I wasn't near that month's limit (though, admittedly, it is very hard to tell without logging onto the company's site … the "press # something #" to see minutes remaining and messages unused has never worked / always generates a network error), and it must have broken the psychic barrier of protection around my edict, because all kinds of people have been texting me for all kinds of stupid things. Short responses in 20-text "dialogs." Addenda, in same. Double answers. Texts at 6:14 and 8 a.m., asking things that have already or should be handled in free e-mail, the kind of thing one checks upon waking but does not wish to be woken up for.

I guess people don't understand the meaning of meaningful. Probably, they are oblivious due to their unlimited-type plans. Sprint tempts with their art-building ads (filmed locally in Block) and $70 offers for all-minutes-all-texts-all-Internet (to other mobile phone number users) service. Their revenue, however, is predicted to drop by $250 million soon, due to loss of a contract with the main cable provider, which gives this household its Internet and raised rates $3 after 5 years of our paying them $49.95 for consistent coverage and speed.

In this online version of me, has the job situation been announced? Seems we left you all hanging with, "The cat died, and I'm dying." Never fear, for though I remain consistently overcommitted, I have erased the 46-hour routine from the week's 168.

It is confusing to me why I was unable to eat, shop, bathe, clean, travel to and from jobs and shops, do Facebook, pay bills, and "enjoy my family" in 36 hours a week. That is the figure I arrive when subtracting work-hours and 56 (8/night) sleep-hours. I do know that there was a problem in finding a repeating 8-hour block that came at the same time every day and also was able to offer an undisturbed environment for the production of sleep. If I lived alone, it might have happened.

So, after about a fortnight of manic behavior and life-on-coffee-and-hope, I succumbed to what most of you will peg as inevitable, and I quit. It started as a mere calling in for a sick day, paid or unpaid, it did not matter, for I was in an odd situation of mental anguish, an exhaustion that, while entertaining — especially given the boost of super-self-esteem one feels when accomplishing so much — was just too taxing. Puns are good, yes? Anyway, I was also unable to stay hydrated and was feeling the precursors of cold-like things all the time. And I know it took a toll on my teeth, which is "all that I need."

Wait! I forgot school. That's 4 more hours (class and travel for attendance) and about 3 for reading. During paper weeks, an additional 13-20 is required.

Anyway, it was "worth" $910 (net). Don't remind me that it could have been multiplied six or seven times.

Sorry about Cat in the Box

I'm sure it's distasteful.

I have not been able to get myself to take out camera at funerals (of relatives) …

But I have hyper-documentarian instincts.

Ashes Coming

The Problem With Sick Days

… is that no matter how much you wish for them to be "get well days," it's usually too late, and you end up with all kinds of pains that were either inevitable or simply manifest by suggestion — body, hey, body! Don't listen when I call in sick.

Remember when

I said that it would be impossible to take a class this semester AND work at the magazine AND do the full-time nighttime gig …

And that when my hormones did their typical shift-dance, I'd crumble into a heap …

*********

I don't remember the weekend or where the squandered time really ended up. It's hard to have to view sleeping as a crime against superproductivity. It's hard to admit that I can't have all this cake around and eat it, too. It's more than lamentable that I am missing $10,000 of worked-for money from 2008 and 2009. It's awful to be "self-employed" by proxy instead of choice — and to be dumped into paying ones own taxes for no other reason than others' horrid mismanagement.

If you're going to do something, you should do it well. I haven't written a single word (except in the virtual reality of my head) for a paper due in 24 hours. Sounds like a long time, but it's not at all, not that I am going to my shift that starts in 10 minutes.

There are only so many hours in a day (surprise!).

I am at a crossroadian impasse roadblock decisionfarm pridehiatus stopping point.

Why can't the nightgig just let us be part-timers? Why …

I'm Fine; Leave Me Alone

♡

Google "Cure PMS"

as she did, just checking, since G. has all answers most of the time …

***********

and you will find one of the largest collections of unproven BS and "we don't know what it is but we recommend x, y, z"-nesses on the interweb's planet.

what a joke.

"might be caused by hormones." that's funny. i suppose, then, it might equally be caused by killer whale's killing anything morsel-y and available or, perhaps, caused by seismic waves and moon-cycles and fairies and how clean one's sheets are …

"reduce alcohol, caffeine, sodium, etc." — WHATEVER*

whatever happened to: "it's normal and o.k. to drop the heck out of life / you are not broken, you are a woman / go and be creative and alone / you have superpowers of emotion and insight / you are preparing to create an egg that can quite potentially become ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?"

… dear matriarchy, where are you hiding?

these are my so-called issues with "it."

[[the fact that there are not more female mass-murderers / artists is a testament to how well we sisters keep it under control / you testicaled beings should (again, always, more so — poor persecuted ones, we're sorry) feel (even more) ashamed of yourselves (for all that war and gun and business business, etc.)]].

*(havenotnoticedanydifferencesorcausetonotobeybody's

desiresonnutrition-front —

since when does any one's body lie about what it needs?)

** you're lucky / unlucky that i'm not posting the "i love my ice-cream-cone breasts of 'really, 35.5?'" pics along with this. shall have to be reserved for print / those who pay our mortgage : )

RIP Milo

c. 1997 — February 22, 2010, ~10 p.m.

Slept

From 6:3o to 9 a.m.

Went to work (coffee /breakfast with colleague; we didn't get much done — a sort-of friend felt like telling us a really long story about jobs and job-esque things, and I compared him to a person he had just said was difficult to talk to … I love not having a filter right now, being innocuously honest when I say things like, "You're very much the same, just orbiting in two different spheres of artist-ness; I can communicate with both of you separately just fine").

Went to office.

Accomplished weekly mail event thing.

Started thoughts on our management system.

Did not get to the Quickbooks.

Was taken to Hamburger Mary's by workfriend with other friend's car who works there (Mary's).

Ate with them.

Had a chocolate martini.

I have to say that my current state of non-sleep-non-eat means that alcohol doesn't "do" what it usually does. Nothing at all, really.

I am entertained, as usual, by the meta-experience of watching what "it" is all like.

Meant to go to many things – to see people I actually like, not obligation-events.

Determined it was impossible.

Slept from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m.

Tried for more but felt hungry.

Ate, thinking lack of hunger pangs and the addition of digestion would do the trick.

Oh, and here we still are.

Mardi equilibrium

… starving (and eating) and exhausted (and sleeping) …

Seems

Grandmother, maternal, was supposedly manic-depressive.

Without having eaten much (food is sitting right here):

I have, since 11 a.m., presented a web-publishing tutorial to a writer and an intern, actually answered my phones without knowing who was calling and talked to people, made a return call to a prospective writer, worked on macro-planning, micro-managed at least 20 e-mails and their tails of trouble (no, not tales), paid the mortgage (just in time), paid the water bill (just in time), gone to two grocery stores and a pet food store, prepared the chili, reorganized the leftover soups and Chinese foods (homemade and takeout tofus) from giant half-full bowls to exactly-the-same repeated containers in the fridge, remembered to throw the freezer-grease cans into the trash, took out the trash and recycling, washed all the dishes, refilled the cat's lidded portion bowls for the week …

Yes, I promise you I will eat.

I am afraid to go to sleep. Am "making holiday pay" as we speak (so to speak; idiom does not always match reality), thinking about another over-dreamed night and wondering if my shoddy hold on grammar will survive through the spring.

Grandmother, paternal, was an alcoholic.

… eating …

but you have to guess what it is.

Ate

10 almonds at 4 p.m.;

2 hot chocolates at 11 a.m. …

with coffee … really just coffee with chocolate shavings and powdered milk in it … leftover from Valentine's Day when he made it and I didn't drink any b/c we wanted food and so walked to You Say Tomato (which was slammed), then Succotash (yes, me; it was also slammed), then started driving to Vietnamese places for Pho and gave up in advance b/c it was Chinese New Year and then ended up at Grinder's West (before it got slammed), where we had the choice of 3 menus and got lovely sandwiches, half of each which ended up being our dinners later, which for me was midnight.

am off tonight, thank the presidents. going to use time to start some buffalo chili, try to do homework for Wednesday night while awaiting his return from Topeka.

have 20 hours of work to do in 1.

really do not believe it is Monday.

starving, sleep-deprived … giving it up as a pre-Lent offering, pretending that mental solidarity somehow "helps" people in Haiti, for example, who are starving and sleep-deprived.

Has

15 web pages open (in one browser program,

4 in the other),

2 emails in progress,

4 articles to edit/post,

6 birdcages to clean,

2.5 jobs,

142 messages in one inbox (work),

722 in another,

325 facebook friends

and

0 children or sick relatives to care for.

and she got 2 valentines already.

2-3-10

Sounds like a good combination: Two adults, three kids, 10 helpings of food at dinner.

I've just finished again Main Street. I have no kids. We hardly have "dinners."

Equations are not always equal, because serving size depends on so many things, as so many things depended on Williams's Red Wheel Barrow, in the rain, with those white chickens.

For example, to bring the faux metaphor (I shall call it sous rature, even) to the personal level, where it only really means something to me/T.:

I/she ate/drank today only some coffee (and it did not make her nauseous, so, again, all is random and unreliable), two cups of chicken broth, one cup+ of 1% cottage cheese, with pepper, a 110-calorie vending machine bag of Sun Chips, and about 15 almonds – and I'm not hungry*

… because the day before there were red beans and rice x 3 servings with celery, some cheddar cheese, two apples, salsa, blue chips, about seven plain Triscuits, some other things that are not within recall (could have been Monday food … blurry lines … had to remind myself at least 6 times today that it was only Wednesday … ). Oh, and there was more coffee in the evening tonight, and it had some milk in it, but again, no nervous system freak-out.

In three months, I will have been married 7 years.

*at least not undefeatably hungry, irrationally hungry, hungry without being able to "conquer" it with caloric logic, not the kind of hungry that leads to — ah, yes, we recall now, consumption of 5 peanut butter cookies (made at home in a late-night kitchen that looked really trashed the next morning, of limited sugar, only one egg, and generic Rice Krispies tossed in for good measure — and they fared much much better than the Kellog's Corn Flakes tossed into the "really, marshmallows can't make that much difference" fudge that is in the fridge and waiting for trash day). Fudge took care of the surplus chocolate chips; have had the flakes of corn since June (opened them only a few months ago; that BHT stuff is amazing). They were a gift. They are just fine with soy milk, but there are only so many cold cereal breakfasts that one wants … usually "having nothing" is more appealing. Body so not with this earth.

Last

I figured we would have decades of gum-lap

But the final molar,

A tooth of wisdom,

Has finally broken itself all the way through.

Weird!

It's the only one left.

Half-birthday

Now that I'm all used to winter and find it funny that I ever cared that my feet (as now) become blue-white and numbed by the computer-desk-circulation-destruction program we call "doing our job," I want it to snow more. The big piles laying around everywhere still — for over a fortnight, amazing — make my part of the Midwest feel like someplace else.

I'm not just looking for excuses to stay indoors, either.

I think, so this is what Minnesotans have every year, for an extended period … how do people keep up with six months of such encumbrances to mobility in the Dakotas? If I squint my eyes a little, I can even pretend it's a white-sand beach out there.

Making two eggs, chocolate (French style — like for Undine Spragg, only not delivered in bed on a tray with the letters and a single flower in a small vase) and toast … and eating it … wore me out.

At some point, perhaps 4 a.m., a little while before I was able to go to sleep, I noticed that the rooftops were all brown and grey and boring again. No more reflective shimmer. Being wide-eyed at all hours does not really produce startling revelations.

I acquired some luggage that is modern, TSA-useful and giraffe-patterned, and so, visit-ables, I'm making progress. I have no idea if I will get on any planes, but at least I'm not pro-procrastinating this part any more. There's a pile of boxes here … this place always looks like we just moved in. Things come, things go. The luggage box is still unopened.

Sparse as they may be

These laurels of mine are awfully fluffy. I'm content, comfortable, bored but unmotivated to change anything. Oh, it was sunny today, but it's been under freezing for days, with no real change in sight. Pipes are angry again.

The new year brought nothing new, only more snow. It's hard to stay interested in things that are not rewarding. A personal indoor pool would be good right about now.

Hibernation mode is dull. Brain does not have power to overcome. Furnace seems to be freaking out. Makes me freak out. Lovely. Winter is stupid.