I can't come to the phone right now

My anxiety about making and answering phone calls is at an all time high, but I've always hated talking on the phone. When I was younger I used to sit by our landline phone trying to control my breathing before dialing my best friend's phone number, because I was terrified of missing that critical beat between the person on the other end answering "hello?" and my response of "hi, is Dana there?" I worried that there might be too long of a pause or that they would hear me taking a deep breath before responding like I was wasn't ready for conversation when I called them. My breathing ritual bordered on OCD behavior. I was strange, but I didn't want anyone to think it just because I hadn't breathed correctly before dialing. As I got older I still worried about how I sounded to the other person, carefully reciting my lines in my head and trying to anticipate how the conversation would go, so that I was prepared and could sound casual even though my heart was beating out of my chest.

I rejoiced when I finally got a cellphone to text with my junior year of high school. I could talk to people without having to TALK to them and it was glorious. Long pauses in conversation were no longer awkward, I had time to carefully craft my response before hitting SEND, and no one could hear the uncertainty that I was often feeling. Through the years I've encountered people who would complain that texting was too impersonal, or that they didn't like that the person on the other end could ignore them until they were ready to respond, and that phone calls were so just much "easier". To those people I say, "Well, you don't have to talk to me then" simple!

The only people in this world who I feel comfortable talking to on the phone are my parents and my husband. That's it and that's all. I had been making an effort to try to answer my sister-in-law's frequent phone calls because I try to be polite, but that was before pregnancy hormones were in play making everything that much more difficult for me to navigate. Lately I've been ignoring everyone's phone calls just to text them later asking "what's up?" Maybe that's rude, but it's the best I can do right now. If I could make it so that phone was unable to receive calls I would.

I am desperately missing wine and my anti-anxiety medication.

Some jackass back East

This morning as I was groggily drinking my day old coffee and eating oatmeal that had gone cold, I received a text message saying that there was a possibly fraudulent charge on my debit card for a large amount. I was instantly sent into a cold sweat and my mind started whirring. Before responding to the text to confirm, I did some Googling to make sure that THIS wasn't actually fraud, but the number that sent the text was legitimate. I signed into my online banking and sure enough that money was missing. Clint spoke to the fraud specialist who called after I responded to the text and they froze our bank cards, but there is nothing we can do and no one we can call because today is Sunday and tomorrow is Veteran's Day. Apparently some jackass back East went on a shopping spree at Target with our money. Our mortgage payment is scheduled to come out ASAP and these missing funds pose a major problem until we can file a claim and have it honored. This situation couldn't have happened at a worse time and it sent me into a panic, but I know we can fix this, so I'm trying to talk myself back down.

I spent the first shaky, panicky, adrenaline fueled minutes talking to my mom on the phone about it until I stopped sweating. Then, I used the leftover sick-feeling energy to scour the kitchen and make snickerdoodle cookie dough, which is now chilling in the fridge. Baking something delicious seems like the only thing that can be done.

Balls.

Why I don't, and won't, drive a car.

Over the last couple of days I've had a few conversations that have driven me to share this story. One of the conversations was with a like-minded friend and it was so great to be able to talk to someone who is experiencing life on the same frequency that I am, even though it's hard, and even though most people can't even pick up this frequency on their radios. Another conversation involved someone who doesn't understand my anxiety disorder, doesn't believe my problems are real, and put me down harshly. Lastly, a conversation with a kindly relative was a soft touch on very sore spot.

So, here it is, an in depth explanation of why I do not drive a car and WILL NOT ever drive again.

My fear of driving began when I was about 3 years old. I know that sounds weird, but bear with me. Beginning at the age of 3 I had recurring nightmares that I was driving a car on a winding mountain road and I would plunge off the side of a cliff. I always woke just before impact with the ground below, but even at 3 I knew it would have meant death had it been real. In those dreams I was always an adult driving that car, but there were other recurring nightmares in which I was sitting in the backseat with my baby sister and my mom was driving. I would look to the front seat and see that my mom had disappeared and the car was swerving wildly. In these dreams I had to scramble into the driver's seat and try to gain control of the vehicle to save myself and my sister from certain death. I rarely, if ever, succeeded. At that point in my life I had never been involved in a car accident, nor did I have any understandable reason to be having these dreams or forming these fears, but the fact remains that I did and they have obviously stuck with me in a big way my whole life.

I became convinced at an early age that I had either died in a horrible car accident in a past life, or I was psychic and I had seen how I was going to die in this life. It was the fear that I might be psychic that caused an active dread in me that surrounded the idea of my 16th birthday and the impending doom that was driver's ed. Shortly before I turned 16, my family moved from big city Washington to small town Idaho and I was faced with the reality that kids here in Idaho start driving a couple years younger than I was used to. So, not only was I dreading this rite of passage, I was also suddenly lagging behind my peers, which added another layer of anxiety and a sense of urgency to my terror. I won't bore you with the details of my education, but I got my driver's permit later that year (in the godforsaken dead of winter, no less) and I did absolutely everything in my power to delay getting my actual license. I took my sweet time racking up those hours behind the wheel with my dad as my passenger and after a couple of years I finally decided I needed to bite the bullet and take the driver's test to get my license. By this time I had also been the passenger in a couple of minor, though frightening, car accidents and I was growing less confident by the minute.

This leads me to Bob. Bob is an insufferable asshole of a bitter old man who bathes in the tears of scared driving students and eats kittens at every meal (I may or may not be exaggerating SLIGHTLY). The man is a monster. Needless to say, I did not pass my first drivers test and the shame and humiliation had me crying for days. I didn't get behind the wheel again for at least a year. I went off to university and walked everywhere and hated everything.

Fast forward to June 9, 2007, the day of my younger sister's high school graduation. I was with my then boyfriend, his mom, and her boyfriend on our way back from an out-of-town shopping trip at Costco. I was in the back right seat and behind me were all of the many groceries in bulk and other new items. We were on a two lane stretch of highway, speeding up just enough to get into the left lane, when a truck cut us off without warning. Our driver over-corrected as he tried to avoid a collision, but we collided with another vehicle anyway, which sent our car spinning 180° into oncoming traffic, until the skidding tires met the dirt at the side of the road and the car flipped. All I could hear was the sound of my own screaming as my body was at the mercy of all of that force and all I could think was, "I knew I would die this way".

When everything had stopped there was a moment of such stillness and quiet, and I couldn't believe that I was still able to think and that nothing hurt. I was alive when it didn't seem possible and it was a powerful emotion beyond measure. We soon realized that the passenger in the front seat had been knocked unconscious and there was a horrible moment when we thought she might be dead, but she came to quickly and amazingly none of us were seriously injured. I was openly sobbing and there was no part of my body that wasn't shaking violently as people came running to help us. My mouth was gritty with the dirt I'd inhaled while screaming and I was still clutching my cellphone and my Diet Coke. My window had exploded outward when the car had landed on it's roof and my door had bowed out just as my head had struck it. I could see a large clump of my hair trapped at the top of the door where it had snatched it from my scalp as we came back down. I reached my hand to my head to feel for blood and I felt something sticky and my heart dropped, but when I looked at my fingers there was no blood. I realized that I was sticky all over, especially my hair. It turned out that in the chaos a gallon of maple syrup had struck me on the head and burst. That is what I clung to, the hilariousness of that maple syrup exploding on my head. But I wasn't laughing, I wasn't making any discernibly human sounds whatsoever, because in those first moments I couldn't be anything but an animal who had survived the worst. I didn't make it to my sister's graduation.

This post is reaching novel length as it is, so I'll try to make the rest of this story short. Before the end of that year I got my driver's license at the age of 20 and I was an independent adult for a few proud months with the help of my anxiety medication and a new lease on life. Everything had changed, I had met and married my soulmate and we moved to Missouri, where I continued to drive. Shortly before moving to Missouri, however, I made the decision to go off of my medication because we wanted to have a baby. I was struggling with the returning anxiety and stress of a new (and strange) living situation, but I persevered... until a semi-truck tried to put me in a ditch on a winding back road. The subsequent panic attack and mental breakdown was unlike any I'd experienced before and one that I would do anything to avoid experiencing again.

I haven't driven since November of 2008. I will not drive again. I won't let anyone make me feel bad or stupid or broken because of that fact. I have an anxiety disorder, I have phobias, and I'm ok living my life the way I live it and coping the ways I know how to cope. If you took the time to read this post, I thank you.

Fighting the urge to punch and flee.

I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and began treatment at the age of 20, after dealing with it on my own since age 5. I may have covered some of this in previous posts, so I won't go into my history with it much now. I have tried 2 different medications with success, but chose to go drug-free for my pregnancies... it hasn't been easy, but I manage to stay afloat most days. Now, onto my story:

Recently, I needed to make it to a scheduled appointment with my midwife for a checkup (I'm nearly halfway through my pregnancy!), but Clint couldn't take me because he'd been awake more than 24 hours with work and school. I can't drive because part of my anxiety disorder is that I get to have these really fun debilitating phobias. So, I had to call my dad to drive an hour to pick me up and take me to my appointment, a 15 minute drive from my house. He was more than willing to oblige, but it's painfully obvious to me that he doesn't understand where I'm coming from and his comments on the subject are cutting. I'm only barely comfortable being a passenger, so by the time I made to the clinic I was a frazzled mess and beyond jumpy. 

Another aspect about this whole situation that was giving me anxiety was the fact that I had to go in alone, when usually Clint is there with me, talking to me and keeping me distracted. When I have to do anything out in the real world by myself (like an adult) I panic. I was so anxious that I was unable to leave a urine sample, which is impressive for a pregnant woman who generally has to pee every 20 minutes. The nursed poked fun at me a bit, which wasn't helpful. My appointment went well overall, but my midwife could tell that I was on the verge of bolting. She expressed concern that I'm not currently on anxiety meds even though I'm pregnant and she wants me back on them immediately after I give birth. The way she was looking at me and the measured, soft way that she was speaking to me made me feel about an inch tall. In a moment like that it's hard not feel like the weirdest weirdo in town.

After my dad dropped me off at home, I told Clint all about it. I don't know what response I was expecting, but the one I got was, "Oh yeah, you definitely need to be on something. No question".

At least he loves me anyway.

Be your own friend first.

A lot of life has happened since my last post and I guess I just got busy living it. In the last few months I found out that I'm pregnant with my second son (yay!) and my first son turned 3 years old. I've been doing a lot of reflecting and soul searching lately, and it's only partly hormonal.

Case in point: I have never been one of those people who have a lot of friends, but I truly value the few that I do have. Sometimes, though, I find myself valuing that friendship far more than my friend seems to value it. In the past that has meant that I become preoccupied with mending the fences and trying so very hard to please that person in the hopes that I can convince them stop being an asshole to me. I can tell you, that is very taxing and not at all healthy. But no more!

Dear friend, 

You have been a jerk on multiple occasions.

You are not allowed to call me just because you need something.

I won't be used.

Don't call me to make plans, I know you won't be there.

I deserve respect and consideration.

Good-bye,

Katie the Self-Respecting

Conversely, I've been having a wonderful time with my true friends. Coffee dates, fulfilling conversations, much needed support and all those little necessary details of love. The key is quality over quantity in all things (except money, ha!) and I'm grateful for what I have. It's pointless to put energy into anything else, really.

I don't want to drag this post out even though I have stories for you. I'll save those for the posts I plan to write very soon.

Sally Sue, come home!

On one hand I'm antisocial and introverted, but on the other hand I'm eager to help and eager to please. It was that hand that landed me in a hot, dusty old house that smelled of cats yesterday.

I had been reading this page (I urge you to click the link, read, and donate if you can) when my doorbell rang. Normally when my husband isn't here I don't answer the door to strangers, but I had seen this man earlier that day checking the mail, so I figured he must be a neighbor. He told me that Cathy, the elderly lady who lives next door, had fallen and couldn't get up. He wanted to know if I could help him assist her. I took my 2 year old son with me into this woman's house, which was empty of furniture and most of her belongings because she was in the process of moving out. The gentleman, another woman, and I helped Cathy up off the floor and then we all stayed to help her pack the rest of her things into her car. Sadly, what didn't fit in the car had to be left behind, but I made sure she had all of the important things. This poor woman was rather upset that she couldn't take her massive 20 year old microwave with her. She ended up giving me her Hoover SteamVac Carpet Cleaner and some other cleaning supplies because she couldn't take them with her. I'm going to have my dad professionally clean out the appliance before I decide if I ought to keep it or donate it. At one point her cat bolted out of the house and couldn't be found, so she sat in her back yard calling out "Sally Sue! Sally Sue, come home!" and I suppose the cat eventually returned, because Cathy left later that night.

This morning I awoke to the sounds of construction work. I looked out the window and saw Cathy's abandoned belongings being thrown into a large dumpster along with the carpet. The man who had come to my door looking for help yesterday was actually the realtor and he told me that a contractor had bought the house and would be renovating it today. I have no idea what all is being done to the house, but it sounds like whole walls are coming down. I'm curious who my new neighbors will be.

An education in humiliation and homicidal planning

90% of my experience attending Boise State University was soul-crushing embarrassment and the reinforcement of all of my worst fears. Case in point was the arch nemesis I made in Stephen.

Stephen was even more socially awkward than I was (this is hard to imagine, even for me) and he made my skin crawl instinctively. I made every effort to avoid any interaction with him, which was made all the more difficult by the facts that he both lived on the same floor of the same building as I did and he was friendly with the girls who I was becoming friendly with. Their friendship seemed offensively incongruous, because the girls were pretty, popular, fun and socially-aware... while he was the opposite of all of those things plus the worst personality traits you can imagine. I decided that these girls were just being fashionably "nice" to him. I would compare this to the way that hipsters "enjoy" anything. It's trendy and they think it makes them look ironically cool. But instead of a heavy vintage typewriter with missing keys, these girls were carting around the male equivalent to the girl from "The Ring" and telling it that it was adorable.

He was the farthest thing from adorable.

One night, some people from my floor decided to go downstairs to watch a movie. Stephen sat next to me on the couch with his lanky, uncoordinated body, long, creepy, black hair (a la "The Ring") and weirdly bothersome John Lennon glasses. This was the first time that I was forced to have him inside of my personal bubble and it felt icky. I promise you that I wasn't just judging this creature by his appearance; I just felt so upset and uncomfortable around him and I don't know exactly why. Every time I was forced by the dorm gods to be near him for any reason I was overcome by the overwhelming urge to spew curses upon his house and throw hot coals at his face.

Part of my aversion to him was my inability to sense his presence without actually seeing him. I'll try to illustrate this for you:

Imagine, you are in your house, but you are in a separate room from the other people in your house. You "sense" that a TV is on somewhere in the house. You can feel the TV even though you can't actually hear any perceptible sound being emitted by it. You would be aware if the TV was suddenly turned off because you would feel this change in the energy more than you would hear it. Do you know this feeling? For me, if I'm standing in a room and someone walks quietly in behind me I can feel them the way that I can feel that TV. It is the exact same sensation. Stephen was a broken TV and I tried to rationalize this by telling myself that he must not have a soul.

Things escalated quickly one night when I quietly left my dorm room, crossed the well-lit circular lounging area and approached my long-time boyfriend's door for a spontaneous midnight tryst. I knocked and waited, and then I knocked some more. I started to think he was asleep, which would be pretty normal at that hour, and my focus drifted as it is wont to do. I was probably thinking about the number of calories in the bananas foster that I had unwisely consumed in a moment of weakness earlier that day as I turned around to head back to my room. Once I completed my turn, my face was MAYBE an inch from Disturbing Stephen's face. He had sneaked up on me so expertly it was shocking. I was so caught off guard by his sudden and intrusively close presence that I blurted out the first thought that entered my mind which was, "You are so fucking creepy!" Little did I know, that single assessment of his creepiness level would set off a chain of reactions (not a chain reaction mind you, but a fucking chain of reactions) that to this day I sometimes still find myself feeling anxious about.

Reaction #1: Epic Pranking

On a subsequent night I prepared to leave my room and, as always, I first looked out the peephole of my door before exiting. I was less concerned about psycho murderers and more concerned about my peers' judgy eyes. I was baffled by the nonsensical blur that met my eye instead. I tried, unsuccessfully, for a moment to translate what I saw into the shapes of the couches that I knew must still be out there. Finally, out of frustrated confusion I flung open the door and... A STARTLING CURTAIN OF NEWSPAPER. I was angrily surprised by this lame prank and I simultaneously ripped down the paper and forcefully walked forward and TRIPPED OVER THE FUCKING SOFA THAT WAS HIDDEN BY THE CURTAIN OF NEWSPAPER. My rage-fueled adrenaline rush quadrupled my strength (read: Hulk) and I veritably tossed the offending furniture aside. I lurched toward my boyfriend's door and started angrily pounding on it, thinking he would burst forth and valiantly defend my honor, but no. Instead I proceeded to bang on Stephen's door and I let loose a string of expletives so acidly vitriolic that my potty-mouthed mother would have been shocked and awed. I don't know that this string of expletives was necessarily coherent in any way, but the fact that I was able to speak at all was impressive, considering that I had bubbling lava in my veins.... and then nothing. Nothing happened. No one appeared. The hatred that I felt was swiftly morphing into a humiliation panic. That's when I saw the sign on the wall next to my dorm room door:

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA, KATIE :)

And there it was, on the floor, a webcam. To this day I have no idea whether or not that webcam was actually recording me. The silence suggested not. The lack of any triumphant glee on Stephen's part gives me a sliver of hope that my embarrassment miraculously went unnoticed. Utterly defeated, I sulked back to my room. As I approached I saw that toothpaste had been smeared over the peephole.

Reaction #2: Toilet Paper Tussle

One day I walked into my dorm room and I was alarmed to find Stephen inside, toilet papering the half of the room that my friends lived in. My instant blind rage out-weighed all logic and reason and I went ape-shit. At first I was only verbally abusive, but when this turd of a human refused to leave my living space I resorted to attempting to physically throw him out. My rage-monster strength was apparently an equal match to his soulless-creep strength and the ensuing violence resulted in frenzied shoving with very little actual movement. This resulted in his shirt being ripped at the collar and that's about it. We were at a standstill. I ended up fleeing the scene to find "help" in the form of my friendly neighborhood RA. What I meant to do was get assistance eradicating the psycho from my room. What I actually did was accost, confuse and frighten the RA as well as the nice family he was giving a campus tour to. I said something along the lines of, "Stephen just put HIS HANDS ON ME!" which just sounded weird. All that came of this was that I ended up looking like the bigger psycho in the scenario than Stephen did. Nothing was done about it. No one helped me. I started being more vigilant about checking the lock on my door at all hours.

Reaction #3: Toilet Paper Bomb

*Muffled thud*

Me: Whaa?

*opens door*

There is a roll of toilet paper on the ground.

There are messages written in Sharpie that go many layers deep.

"YOU ARE SO FUCKING PATHETIC, WHAT A BITCH. YOU ARE SUCH A STUPID BITCH" ad nauseum.

So, what did I do? Something logical or effective? Haha, of course not! No, I picked up the rude tissue and hefted it mightily back at Stephen's door... and it only flew halfway before falling impotently to the ground. It's surprisingly difficult to lob a roll of toilet paper intimidatingly, even with rage-y Hulk-strength. Instead of leaving the stupid roll on the floor and protecting my last scrap dignity I charged toward it, picked it up and threw it again. I then stormed through the first open door I saw to tell everyone and anyone how much I hated that creepy little prick. I'm telling you, I didn't even know the girls who I walked in on. I just stomped into their room and began berating them with my all-encompassing hatred of someone else. I had lost all ability to reason with myself and I simply needed to tell someone just how badly I was losing my shit. I remember seeing alarmed faces and almost nothing else about that moment.

And you know what? Stephen won all of the battles and he most certainly won the war. All I managed to do with my Hulk-smashing was to humiliate myself more than he could humiliate me on his own.

Touché, ass-wipe.

My neighbor wants me to help him vomit

Moments ago I was unloading the dishwasher when I heard a timid knock at my door. When I saw that it was my strange neighbor I was tempted to pretend I wasn't at home, but he knows my habits too well. He asked if Clint was available because he needs medical advice. My husband works at the hospital, but he isn't a doctor, and since he is sleeping between shifts I refused to wake him. This neighbor then tells me that he thought he was eating his customary meal of raw beef, but to his great dismay he realized too late that it was actually raw pork. To his knowledge raw pork is much more dangerous to ingest than raw beef and he is desperate for advice on how to induce vomiting. He was shocked that he couldn't find ipecac syrup available anywhere and I informed him that it is rarely used now because it has potentially dangerous side effects. He has been unable to induce vomiting on his own and he told me that if he doesn't find a solution to his situation that he will be back at my door in a couple of hours when Clint wakes up. I told him to call a nurse and ask for advice, but he is phobic of nurses and doctors... This man mends his own broken bones in his garage. I really don't want to find him on my doorstep again at 4:00. You guys, this is some seriously weird shit.

The day my parents tried to kill me with embarrassment

April 16th will mark 5 years of happy togetherness with the love of my life, Clint. The beginning of our love story, however, is as ridiculous as they come and I still blush from embarrassment when I think back on our first lunch date, especially because my parents love to remind me of the fiasco.

To properly set the stage for you I first have to tell you how it is that Clint and I came to know each other. When we were 15 years old Clint and I began talking over the phone after his best friend urged him to call me on his behalf, trying to convince me to leave my boyfriend to be with him instead. The noble and very social Clint did this favor for his painfully shy buddy, but it turned out that Clint and I hit it off as fast friends and his ill-fated buddy was soon forgotten. Some time later the phone calls stopped and we lost touch as our lives went in separate directions. It wasn't until 6 years later that, either by happy accident or cosmic design, our paths crossed once again when he unknowingly stumbled upon me on MySpace, struck up a conversation  with me and I recognized him by name and friendly association. A week later we had plans to meet in person for the first time, on a completely nonthreatening lunch date at a local bar & grill. This is where my insane parents come into play.

When I offhandedly relayed the details of my plans for the day to my parents (keep in mind I was 21 years old at this point) they somehow got the idea that I was planning to meet up with some completely random dude from the internet on a dangerous flight of fancy. Maybe it was all of the alarmist Lifetime movies they'd watched about internet predators that set them off, all I know is that when I turned off the ringer on my cell phone that day like any polite dining companion, I set off a chain of idiotic events. Meanwhile, Clint and I enjoyed a nice meal and lovely conversation; we had a great time and found that we had a lot in common. Further plans for the afternoon were made and it was all very laid back and adult. As we walked back out to the car to head to the movie theater together, I checked my phone and realized that I had multiple missed calls from both of my parents and several panicked voicemails from my mother who was near tears and ready to call the police to report me as "kidnapped by a psychorapistkiller" if I didn't call her back in the next 5 minutes. I'd never been so mortified in my life. I called my nutty mom and tried to put out the fire that was raging in her brain as Clint laughed hysterically at my shocked and ever-paling face. All the while, my dad had located my car and was stalking us, watching us like a hawk from the innocuous green Subaru Outback. I'm telling you, I was embarrassed to the point of near-nausea. I was instantly made to feel like a reckless 13 year old about to be dragged home, kicking and screaming, by my over-protective parents. I was so sure that I would never see Clint again and I would become nothing more than a funny story he would tell his buddies at the bar. The fact that he stuck around to see what would happen next still amazes me to this day. 4 months later we were married. He still thinks my parents are crazy though. They are, anyway.

Every year my dad loves to threaten to follow us on our date while we celebrate our anniversary, and every year I give him hell for it. The embarrassment manages to stretch through time.

A beautiful life

In my last post I talked of goals made and projects started that never took off from the ground. I'm happy to report that in the sunlight of spring I have once again found energized motivation. Writing is still on the back burner for now, but I've been exercising every day and I've finally started scrapbooking again. I've filled multiple photo albums too; it feels good to know that those memories are just a page turn away. Speaking of page-turning, I've rediscovered my love for Stephen King after more than a decade of neglect. His books light a fire under me and remind me that it's okay to embrace my dark creativity. I'm feeling inspired.

My days are now filled with gardening in the sun, accompanied by the musical soundtrack of wind chimes, my favorite songs and my son at play. The vegetable garden that I've been planning for years is actually happening now and I'm excitedly awaiting the first signs of life. Strawberries, flowers and climbing ivy on a pretty new lattice are all happy works in progress as well. I'm reminded every day how lucky I am that I've been able to manifest the beautiful life that I always dreamed of.

I've carefully been distancing myself from people who I react to with negative emotion and I've stopped paying such close attention to toxic news media. It's amazing how quickly the fog lifts.

Secret worlds

It always starts with a goal, of course it does. I want to be a writer, so I start journaling. I want to scrapbook every milestone that my son meets, so I take thousands of photos. I want to get in better shape, so I buy an exercise machine. I start a lot of projects with every intention to do something great, but everything is stunted by my inability to stay motivated. So, years worth of journals are lost now, I have hundreds of printed photos sitting in a box, and my Gold's Gym elliptical doubles as a towel rack. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I almost deleted this blog because after letting it sit dormant for a month I lost interest and I started to question if I wanted my name to be attached to this collection of mundane thoughts.

I don't let a lot of interesting things happen to me anymore; I like that my life is boring and mostly uncomplicated. There is comfort in my routine and I like that my days are predictable. So many things make me anxious, everything from strangely placed ellipses in a text conversation to someone else's tragedy in the news, and absolutely everything in between. So, a boring, uncomplicated, routine home life may not make for  a very interesting read, but what I really want to do is to find a way to share some of my secret worlds. I want to find and access the tools I need to become a novelist. Until then, I guess I'll keep sending out these surface thoughts while I gather the strength to let my greater, deeper self shine up and through.

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe." -- Neil Gaiman

Burn them!

Have you ever had to clean up a mess so vile that afterwards you wished you could burn all of your towels and start over? Well, that is the scenario that Clint and I were faced with the other day. I'll spare you the details and leave them to your imagination. The problem is, we can't afford to replace all of our towels just now, so I washed the same load of laundry 3 times in hot water on the longest cycle setting. I'm still wary of these towels and it makes we anxious to use them to dry off after my showers. It's safe to say that we are deeply traumatized. I'm going to need to buy more bleach.

After that, we needed to take a family mental health day, so we took our son to the mall to run around and explore. There is a cool little aquarium shop in there and he loved seeing all of the sharks and beautiful tropical fish. I was enjoying it too, but I kept overhearing snippets of borderline disturbing conversations about fish that had me questioning the sanity of these nerdy fish fanatics. One woman was talking to the snails as she tried to coax them onto a different rock. Another man was explaining to a boy that if you let a stingray nibble on your finger it feels a bit like a teething baby gumming you, except the gums are coarse, unlike a baby's. The boy then asked the man if he had ever been bitten by a bearded dragon and wondered if he could compare the feelings of these two finger nibblers. The man, regrettably, had not had this experience to compare it to. I also learned that they got in trouble with PETA for feeding live fish to the sharks, so they only do it after hours now. Weirdos, I tell you.

I freaking love the internet

I've been putting off the daunting task of sorting through and selecting the photos I want to print out of the thousands I've taken the past 2 years. After I broke the photo printer I needed a new way to get prints to send out to grandparents and great-grandparents. The plan was to put them onto an SD card and take them to Walmart, which I've been dreading for financial and anxiety reasons. Well, the other day I happened upon a friend's facebook post about a website that was having an insanely good deal on photo prints for 2 days only. This got my ass into gear and I spent the next 3 hours going through all of my photos and ended up selecting 377 to be printed, 151 of which I got for free! I freaking love the internet. Thank you, shutterfly.com! I should be getting the prints in the mail soon and I'm so excited to finally get back scrapbooking and such. However, since I only ordered single prints I still have to decide which ones to make copies of at Walmart to send out to everyone, but now it will be a much easier and cheaper process. I'm actually glad that I broke that printer now, I saved us a lot of money in the long run.

Another thing that I'm loving about the internet right now is the new 6-second video sharing app called Vine. Technically I can't use the app yet because it's iOS only for now (beyond annoying when that happens), but it's been fun seeing my friends' vines. There is a website called vinepeek.com that streams vines in real time and I'm obsessed with it! People lead such interesting and beautiful lives. There are a lot of absolute wackadoodles on there too though... and cats.

I know this post reads like one giant multi-company advertisement, but I swear they aren't paying me. I just wanted to spread some happy customer love.

Well, crap!

The other day we acquired a VCR to play old movies for our son and a relatively old photo printer. Our little guy has been asking to watch Bambi, but it's not on Netflix and we only have the VHS version. Clint set up our "new" VCR and was about to put Bambi in, but I remember all too well the dreaded sounds of shredding tape, so I said, "wait, we should test it with a movie we don't care about." I did a quick search for such a movie and selected Oliver and Company, despite the fact that I actually do quite like it, I just know it doesn't tend to be a favorite for most. We slid the tape in, pushed play, and immediately heard the sounds of doom from within the cursed machine. My movie is ruined! I should have run out to the garage to grab one of the crappy old non-Disney cartoons, but I was in a hurry and I thought for sure it would be fine.

Then came the testing of the photo printer. Our grandparents have been asking for some printed photos for the past few months and we've been seriously slacking on what should be a laughably easy project. Problem is, I haven't printed any photos since Christmas of 2010, so it's really no small project at all. In the past I've enjoyed scrapbooking and I have a few nice picture frames that I would like to put to good use, but for whatever reason I just can't be bothered to make my way to the Walmart photo kiosk. So, this little at-home photo printer that MIL gave us seemed like a good idea. Clint tested the thing to make sure it was functional before we brought it home and then he set off the buy the ink and paper for it. While at the store he called me to ask what the ink cartridge said and tried to walk me through the "really easy" removal process of the cartridge from the tiny printer, but I was getting frustrated and started aggressively pushing and pulling the darn thing trying to wrench it out until finally I realized I had the whole thing turned on it's side instead of upright like I thought. It turns out I totally scrambled its brain, but I didn't know it until after Clint had forked over a wad of cash for the ink and paper. I feel really stupid, Clint just laughed and laughed. Hopefully we can return the unopened items so I don't feel extra terrible. I guess we'll be making that trip to the photo kiosk afterall. And hey, we'll save money in the long run and the photos will be better quality, so I did us a favor, right? He'll be returning the ink and paper and buying a Bambi DVD, assuming he can find one. They better not be locked in that dumb vault.

Saved from a chicken coop

Today was good and rather different. Clint and I took our son to visit my mom and MIL for some family time. At my mom's house we picked up a few useful items like a VCR, framed cross-stitches, peanut butter cookies and two suitcases full of my younger sister's clothes that she left behind and I'm stealing. Quite the haul, right? While there, I sat in an old rocking chair that has always been around and my mom said to me, "your grandmother saved that old chair from a chicken coop and refurbished it." I stopped rocking and looked at her and she continued, "she thought it was too nice to leave in there." So, there you have it, chicken coop chair.

After that we headed to MIL's house for the first time as a family since our epic blow-up more than a year ago. I was a little nervous that it would be tense, but we quickly fell back into a comfortable rhythm and the hours-long visit was nice. MIL sent us home with a photo printer, a remote control pig, a light-up simulation aquarium wall fixture and a wooden whistle that sounds like a train. Silas had a lot of fun visiting his grandmas.

Now, I need to figure places to put all of these interesting gifts. Except for the cookies, I ate those.

I should've eaten those darn peas.

This week has been rather unlucky. For starters, I've been in a borderline depressed mood that I can't seem to shake. People have been saying all the wrong things to me on top of it, like they have a running bet on who can make me lose it first. I know certain things would help like exercise or at least getting the house clean, but I can't get motivated. I simply can't be bothered. However, that has been the least of our problems.

Monday, Clint woke up with strep throat and after getting his antibiotics he took a nap on the couch. He then woke from his nap with excruciating pain in his big toe. We chalked it up to a case of spontaneous acute arthritis caused by complicated strep, because that was Google's best suggestion. Over the following couple of days the pain worsened until he was crippled and he spent a couple hours in the ER getting xrayed. It turns out he has a calcium deposit near his joint and his infection somehow spread from his throat to his toe. This kind of medical weirdness happens to Clint all too often. This is a man whose appendix was located in the wrong side of his body. He's an alien. So, a lot of money and a few prescriptions later he is slowly recovering and taking the week off of work.

I personally don't believe that the number 13 is unlucky. Clearly, I have to blame the bad luck we're having so far in 2013 on the fact that I forgot to eat black eyed peas on New Year's Eve. I knew I was going to end up regretting that oversight. Don't ignore your superstitions, people!