Epiphany. Or something.

I thought I'd post a random thought, but I couldn't remember my password to log-in. And I was all "I don't need you to email me my password, Blogger! I'm better than that!" Because, you know, that would show weakness and I'd be attacked by a bear even sooner than I anticipated.

And then I remembered my password. But I used it with the wrong user name.

Go me!

So now I can post that thing I was thinking, which went something like: "If I ever meet someone less cool than me, some jerkwad is going to tell me it's an ironic lack of coolness. Which is cool. And I would no longer have someone I could lord my coolness over. FML."



That is all. Good night.

Point of No Return

In a matter of days, I will begin graduate classes for physical therapy. I began preparing to apply to this program just over three years ago, and I will graduate in just under three years.

Three years ago I was a social worker, my mother was alive, my brother Job didn't have cancer, I was living with my brother Chevy, and my antidepressant was working beautifully. None of that is true now. I can't help but to worry about what is going to happen in the next three years. Will my 80-year-old father live to see me graduate? What will the stress of work+school do to my marriage? Will I still be agnostic, or will I be atheist? Or muster a belief in God? What will I weigh?

As tough as taking night classes and applying to grad school was, I'm nervous that was the easy part. If my classmates are unitards, I won't have the luxury of a whole different class next semester - I'm going to be with the same people for three years. What if I can't make friends and most of the classwork is group work and presentations? And if I do flunk out, I will have thousands of dollars of student loans, no degree, and no career. Awesome. I've had nothing but nightmares the last couple of weeks.

The time has come to put on my big girl pants and grab school by the throat.

Rare Photo of the North American Carpet Flounder

I Ate the Garden

MacGyver has been out of town for days, and if I don't have someone else to cook for, I tend to not cook at all. Last night I had precisely no food in my fridge, not nearly enough to fill my empty belly.



My first step to remedying the situation was to pick a big bowl o' snow peas. Our first planting is currently producing like sex-crazed rabbits, and the pods are weighing the plants down. It's so beautiful. Wasps kept flying out of the pea patch and toward my head, at one point I was dancing around yelling "LET'S BE ADULTS HERE!" and tried to reason with them to leave me the hell alone. Back in the kitchen I heated up olive oil with a heavy-handed dash of red pepper flakes and globs of minced garlic - the classy kind from the jar. After a quick stir-fry my snow peas were bright green and dotted with the flavorings. I ate the entire bowlful with my hands and felt sinful doing it.



I grabbed a knife and thinned the lettuce in the backyard. The greens are more mature than baby but far from full-grown. I washed them up and picked out the weeds and slug, then dried them (five paper towels later I remembered my salad spinner, d'oh!) and inspected them carefully for more slugs. I drizzled the lettuce with Caesar dressing and chewed thoughtfully - the leaves were crisp but not chilled, the texture was nearly buttery, and the babiest leaves were sweet.



Still hungry, I headed the the strawberry bed. I picked the overripe berries, the berries that were dark, dark red and had lost their luster. I selected a few of the younger, vibrant ones to eat right away, but the majority went into the mini-blender with some cheap vanilla ice cream and milk.

I didn't once regret not ordering pizza.

Cats and Floors do not Mix

First, MacGyver and Friend ripped up the old flooring. Beneath it was some rotten subfloor and a crooked joist. This had to be fixed, so out came the rotten wood, giving us a nice view of our creepy cellar. Most of it was repaired that day, but there was a hole where the fridge usually sits. MacGyver didn't think the hole was big enough for any of the cats to fit through. A few hours later we couldn't find Moca, our smallest cat*. We checked the cellar out of desperation. She was there, covered in mud and cobwebs, fur full or roly-polys. She started protesting even before we gave her a shower.

MacGyver's brother-in-law came over to lay the vinyl flooring. Part of the process required glue to be spread over the entire surface. That's when Domino ran in. She got glue all over her paws and ran around the kitchen, jumping on appliances and windowsills, trying to outrun the stickiness. When MacGyver finally caught her, he took her outside so I could hose down her paws. The chore was complicated by my inability to stop laughing.

*She's really a baby monster

I'm Back

Holy expletive, it's been so long since I blogged that I almost forgot my password.

Life hasn't been totally awesome since I last wrote, gentle readers. After a long and painful struggle with cancer, my brother died. He was only 34. My family is tight, and losing him was like losing my left arm: I can get by without him, but it's SO GODDAMN HARD and I never forget he's gone. Actually, sometimes I do. Sometimes I see something and go to send him a picture message, or I wonder what he'd like me to make him for dinner this week. Then I remember he's gone, and life stands still just so I can feel like everything has fallen apart. I celebrated my birthday without him, attended our friend's wedding without him, and I wonder how life can possibly go on when his has ended. It doesn't seem just or possible. But that's the way it is, and I have to keep waking up every day.

My depression took a turn for the worse when I lost him, and out of desperation tried an antipsychotic. It worked really well, and I'd still take it except the side effects were terrible. The least unmentionable side effect was the weight gain: fifteen pounds in two months. This was due largely to the constant, unending hunger. I switched meds; this pill makes me sleepy, a nice change from inhaling every morsel in sight. I'm exercising a lot more, and I'm slowly seeing results. Normally I'd be more upset, but this is the fourth worst thing to happen this year, so it's bearable.

32

Though healed, the scar is palpable.