All Adither

Hypochondriacal thoughts

My right eye has been twitching since May. Actually, it's not my eye, per se, but the lower lid. I've also been getting headaches just under my right temple for quite a while now. I think they're tension, or allergy, related since they come at the end of the day and also when the pollen is so thick that my dark gray car, after being parked outside for any length of time, appears to have severe dandruff.

I don't think a twitching eye and end-of-the-day headache are cause for alarm. I don't think they're cause for alarm unless it's two-thirty-six a.m., I've just gotten up with Kitty Cat and am now flopping around in bed trying to sleep while a speckled, ugly filmstrip runs through my head.

Etched across this film strip are images of me being diagnosed with a brain tumor, going bald from chemo and, ultimately, orphaning Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat and widowing Jay. That's what happened last night. I was connecting the dots with my symptoms when understanding bloomed from my hairline down to my fingertipes. I was going to die. Soon.

Such realizations are not new for me. I've deduced that death is imminent dozens (hundreds?) of times. I'm better about it now that I used to be (thank you Zoloft). But still, sometimes, the middle of the night is not kind.

Peek-a-holic

I'm addicted to checking the Stats (which tells me how many people have visited AllAdither) on my blog. You people are such enablers for coming here!!

But I love it.

Thank you. :)

Shameless self-promotion

I just found an archive of one of my old stories on Night Train if anyone is interested.

Undercover

We spent the whole day on and commuting to and from Bainbridge Island today. I figured it would be okay with "Jay" to post this picture of Fruit Bat, since he is essentially incognito in my giant sunglasses. This is him on the ferry.

What has my life become?

These kids are wearing me down today. Particularly Kitty Cat. I'm so thrashed from trying to break up skirmishes, feeding, cleaning and entertaining them all while beating back the laundry and dishes and piles of paper (where the h does all that come from??) that, if they asked, I think I'd let them drink root beer, chew Hubba Bubba and draw murals up and down our hallways with their Twistables for the rest of the day.

Burning up

As you may have seen in previous posts, my 20th high school reunion was a week-and-a-half ago. Long enough, I think, to have mentally processed most of it, reviewed that night's conversations, regrets and triumphs (though I don't know if I'd call drinking the perfect volume of Bell's Oberon to ignite my charms while staying just this side of nausea a triumph.).

So, it's 10 days behind me. Almost a fortnight. And still, I am having dreams about my stupid renunion every single night. These dreams are, of course, different from the real event and hazy and featuring a rotating cast of my classmates. But the one thing that stays the same is that I'm hot. Irresistible to every male I went to school with. And I know it. And it makes me very, very happy.

Last night I was sauntering around, flashing my bright white teeth and batting my bronzed lids while wearing my satiny, navy blue night shirt. It all seemed completely appropriate and, even, wise to have chosen that particular ensemble since it showed off my legs and highlighted my eyes.

My subsconscious is obviously trying to extinguish some small fires in there.

It scares me a little

...how bitterly disappointed I get when my babysitter cancels. Especially when it's two days before the day she was going to come and I have a notebook page full of things I want to get done and I've been looking forward to it and at times talking myself out of mean, bad places with my kids by muttering, "Two more days. Only two more days and I'll be sitting in Tully's with no one to answer to but an Americano and my laptop."

I might be wrong, but I think babysitters take advantage of the fact that I'm a stay-at-home mom with fairly flexible tasks and goals. I don't think I'd be cancelled on as much if I had to get to a nine-to-fiver. And maybe rightly so.

But maybe not. It's very frustrating.

I want this kitchen

No more mealtime chaos with this bitchin kitchen.

Kvetch, whine and fuss

We are lucky. We have, because of our neighborhood, access to a private beach along the Puget Sound. It's a good beach. There isn't much of it when the tide is high, we have to cross two sets of train tracks to get to it and, because we live in Washington, the shoreline is dirty and rocky rather than silky and golden. But we like it. During the summer we take the kids. Jay pokes around the rocks and pulls out squirming shore crabs for Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat to touch. They dig and throw rocks. I often get to sit on my arse and watch boats criss cross the ocean in front of me.

This summer though, we haven't been able to get down there much. The railroad is working on the tracks and have blocked our entrance with a fat chain and menacing lock. Jay and I tried to make the trek this morning and couldn't. We grumbled: But we paid 45 dollars for the year! Why do they have to work on the tracks during the three months we actually want to use the beach?!

We attempted to get in to by way of our swanky neighbors to the east (Blue Ridge) who have, not only a nice, paved path to the sand, but a play structure that sits lonely and unused. We pressed our faces to the chain link fence, but no one came along for us to pester.

So we loaded up the car and drove to the nearest public beach.

We still had a good time. The tide was superlow. Two blue herons stalked around us, looking for food, then lumbered off: 747s of the avian world who seemed barely able to stay aloft. Sea Anemones (which I think are disgusting, but Jay--who used to be a marine biologist--has made me swear not to convey this disgust to Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat) bubbled up through the sand like hundreds of plantar warts. And the sun came out just enough to warm our backs and lift our spirits.

And I thought, how dumb to grumble about losing beach access when we are so charmed to have it in the first place. I thought a lot about human nature and how people (especially me) will find something to complain about no matter how comfortable our lives may be.

(Thanks to Heather for bringing up this topic a few weeks ago too!)

A little somethin' somethin' to start the day

I've gone and gotten myself addicted to the caffeine again.

Seems like it always happens when I go to Michigan to visit my family. I start self-medicating to overcome my jet lag and next thing I know I'm adding extra scoops of caf coffee to my usual quiet brew.

I know this bender is temporary. Soon I'll be up to three-quarters caf, one-quarter decaf. I'll start getting the shakes and heart palpitations and the kind of morning hunger that I imagine bulimics must experience where I can't cram enough food into my gullet. Then I'll quit.

But for now I'm in the sweet early days and I'm enjoying it.

Ooooh. Yum!