After my usual 'initital resistance phase' as my Sweet Hubby calls the whining I do when introduced to new technology, I've become quite enamored with his laptop computer. He was kind enough to leave it with me this weekend (since my desktop model is still in bits all over the floor of our room while my studio gets cleaned out and painted and wired, etc.) And I think I need to mention what a big deal it was for him to leave his laptop with me. He went with some buddies to a science fiction convention and he left his primary geek tool behind! That is a man who is very secure in his geekilinity.
And I think I need also mention that while the keyboard on this thing is a severe pain in the butt, I have become addicted to blogging in bed. He told me I would. I, naturally and obnoxiously, insisted that I knew myself better than he possibly could and that the defects of the keyboard were just shy of intolerable and there was NO WAY I would ever get used to them. Wrong Pieface! (<----As an English teacher once wrote in scrawling red letters at the top of a paper she handed back to me.) Oh and how many times exactly do I have to have it proven to me that I don't know diddly squat about myself when it comes to technological thingamahoojies? Sweet Hubby could (but never does) recite the ridiculously long list of machines that I vowed to hate in the beginning and have come to rely on and love and want never to be parted from. In fact, I can only think of one machine that I still hate (=the dishwasher). What do you think the odds are that I can convince him to take the DW to work and leave me his laptop?
Monday, January 23, 2006
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Pre-emptive Jonesing for Football
I'm watching the pre-game show for the Steelers/Broncos game and it's like reading your favorite book for the first time again. You love it, you can't stop reading, but you don't want it to end. Ever. Every year I go through this. I don't care if the last two games of the season have crappy teams like the Texans, the hated Ravens, or even the putrid Cowboys in them - I will watch them. I will watch them with relish (and Bud Light). I will watch the pre-game and the post-game and I will whine and whine about how little football there is left to watch. And this year I like all of the teams left reasonably well. (Of course I have to mention here, in case you hadn't figured it out - I'm definitely an AFC kinda girl so if I could make it so the Steelers played the Seahawks and the Broncos played the Panthers I would have an easier time choosing who to root for today!) Anyway, I only have three games left (ok - four if you count the Pro Bowl - which is football and which would be fun to go see in person but only because it's in Hawaii. If the Pro Bowl were played in Iowa then I wouldn't be interested. The Pro Bowl is football but it's guys who don't usually play together, it doesn't count for stats, and who can blame them for not risking injury by playing all out?) The POINT is that it's my blog so this year it's where I'm going to whine about football being almost over.
WAAAAAANNNNNNHHHHHH!
You missed me for those three weeks I was gone, didn't you?
WAAAAAANNNNNNHHHHHH!
You missed me for those three weeks I was gone, didn't you?
She Is Not An Amoeba
VBGF wants to have a baby. But as I said, she is not an amoeba. If she were, making a baby would be a much easier process. Pinch off this cute little piece here and voila! Offspring. It doesn't work that way for humans. (You knew this, right? I mean, I shouldn't have put little asterisks down the side of the page and warned everyone that there was a spoiler coming, right?) Human reproduction (for better or for worse) is more complicated, uncertain, and (in a perfect world) more fun.
VBGF and I were talking about it last night on the phone (and each drinking wine which may or may not have contributed to where the conversation that I'm about to relay to you went.) Once again we were discussing her procreation options. She has tried the sperm bank route before with a previous partner and doesn't want to do that again. Aside from the cost (which is considerable and at this time prohibitive) and aside from the association with the cretin who left her (saying among other things that their inability to conceive a baby was a sign from God that their relationship shouldn't continue), the fact of the matter is that this time VBGF would like not to have to deal with CO2 cartridges and sterile doctors' offices. She has this radically romantic idea that she'd like her baby to be conceived with joy and intention "the old fashioned way."
The hitch in her lovely plan is the distinct lack of available sperm in her world. She's a middle school math teacher and other than the fathers of her students (no) and her male colleagues (more no) - there aren't a lot of eligible guys around. Add to that some fairly disastrous experiences with men early on and a resulting shyness around y-chromosome-laden folks and you begin to see some of the obstacles our heroine is facing. Here's our girl, bio-clock ticking away (two weeks after her most recent birthday), pondering the best way to bring cheap, yet handsome, intelligent, disease-free sperm into her world for just one night (or for whatever number of nights it takes to conceive). Once her mission is accomplished, she plans to be so busy gestating and raising a child that there will be no more room for sperm in her life.
It is harder than you may think to accomplish her goal. We have often debated the pro's and con's of her going to the closest army guy bar, selecting a target, and whispering in the target's ear three magic little words, i.e. "You wanna fuck?" But (most nights) the con's seem to outweigh the pro's, with the shy factor and risk of disease both being ridiculously high in that scenario. Last night, VBGF told me she had a revolutionary idea. She was going to try an experiment. (Actually, I'm sure she said "eckshpriment" but giggling (and arguing) over that led us to giggling (and arguing) over whether she did or did not say "schweaty" the other night when she was trying to say "sweaty" and it took us quite awhile to come back around to the topic of her new idea. In fact, we were talking about groceries when we finally remembered to loop back to the experiment topic. )
She lives in quite a progressive part of the country and "anything goes" seems to be the ethos of her local independent/alternative paper's personals section. So she suggested she run an ad. We looked for the right column and debated over whether her ad would really fit under the "Women seeking Men" category. She decided she needed her own category: "Woman seeking Sperm". Then she listed some things she wanted in sperm - and I had a vision of "sperm" appearing at the top of her grocery list. We got a little silly and started throwing phrases into her ad like "organic" and "free range" and at some point we debated whether or not "hormone free" would be advisable given the necessary delivery method of said sperm.
I can't begin to guess whether this experiment will yield the results that VBGF wants (or whether she'll actually go through with it). There are concerns of course, but I've got to give my girl snaps for unconventional bravery and innovative thinking. And I can't seem to come up with a better or more honest alternative. Can you?
Peace
VBGF and I were talking about it last night on the phone (and each drinking wine which may or may not have contributed to where the conversation that I'm about to relay to you went.) Once again we were discussing her procreation options. She has tried the sperm bank route before with a previous partner and doesn't want to do that again. Aside from the cost (which is considerable and at this time prohibitive) and aside from the association with the cretin who left her (saying among other things that their inability to conceive a baby was a sign from God that their relationship shouldn't continue), the fact of the matter is that this time VBGF would like not to have to deal with CO2 cartridges and sterile doctors' offices. She has this radically romantic idea that she'd like her baby to be conceived with joy and intention "the old fashioned way."
The hitch in her lovely plan is the distinct lack of available sperm in her world. She's a middle school math teacher and other than the fathers of her students (no) and her male colleagues (more no) - there aren't a lot of eligible guys around. Add to that some fairly disastrous experiences with men early on and a resulting shyness around y-chromosome-laden folks and you begin to see some of the obstacles our heroine is facing. Here's our girl, bio-clock ticking away (two weeks after her most recent birthday), pondering the best way to bring cheap, yet handsome, intelligent, disease-free sperm into her world for just one night (or for whatever number of nights it takes to conceive). Once her mission is accomplished, she plans to be so busy gestating and raising a child that there will be no more room for sperm in her life.
It is harder than you may think to accomplish her goal. We have often debated the pro's and con's of her going to the closest army guy bar, selecting a target, and whispering in the target's ear three magic little words, i.e. "You wanna fuck?" But (most nights) the con's seem to outweigh the pro's, with the shy factor and risk of disease both being ridiculously high in that scenario. Last night, VBGF told me she had a revolutionary idea. She was going to try an experiment. (Actually, I'm sure she said "eckshpriment" but giggling (and arguing) over that led us to giggling (and arguing) over whether she did or did not say "schweaty" the other night when she was trying to say "sweaty" and it took us quite awhile to come back around to the topic of her new idea. In fact, we were talking about groceries when we finally remembered to loop back to the experiment topic. )
She lives in quite a progressive part of the country and "anything goes" seems to be the ethos of her local independent/alternative paper's personals section. So she suggested she run an ad. We looked for the right column and debated over whether her ad would really fit under the "Women seeking Men" category. She decided she needed her own category: "Woman seeking Sperm". Then she listed some things she wanted in sperm - and I had a vision of "sperm" appearing at the top of her grocery list. We got a little silly and started throwing phrases into her ad like "organic" and "free range" and at some point we debated whether or not "hormone free" would be advisable given the necessary delivery method of said sperm.
I can't begin to guess whether this experiment will yield the results that VBGF wants (or whether she'll actually go through with it). There are concerns of course, but I've got to give my girl snaps for unconventional bravery and innovative thinking. And I can't seem to come up with a better or more honest alternative. Can you?
Peace
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Did I Say TWO Weeks?
Silly rabbit. Even though I thought at the time I was padding my guess as to when my life would be back in order, I was still off by a factor of ...something too high to count. I STILL don't have my computer situation (or life) settled back to 'normal'. My fortune telling skills being what they are, I won't be giving up my day job any time soon. Or wait! Too late. One of those things I failed to accurately predict that the New Year would bring is the HUGE, UGLY, Jerry Springer-esque *conversation* with my mother on January 3rd. In case you were deaf that day and didn't hear it for yourself, our verbal exchange included the Lord's name being taken in vain and ended with a loud dial tone in my ear. This lovely exercise in failed diplomacy resulted in me leaving my job abruptly. (Pertinent factoids - the "job" I had was running/owning a shop with my mother and leaving it is NOT a bad thing. It's best for the shop, best for my relationship with my mother (which surprisingly is better today than ever), and certainly it's best for my agoraphobic, anti-consumer, solitary self!)
I've been home (in my lovely, quiet, non-commercial-establishment-house of a home) for almost three weeks now. But I've not been alone, oh no. No chance of that. Not when streptococcus decides to move in and invite his best pal (=strange-mutating-untreatable-stomach virus) to sleep over. In a family of seven - it is AMAZING how much laundry can be generated by...but I digress. Back to the part where I gloss over the other factors of my life implosion - like the septic system backing up - and wow, how much fun it is to have no potties or showers for a family of seven (some of whom were still harboring strep & co.) for three days. Or like the ex (=Senor Tapioca Head) who says he won't go to mediation (even though it's required by law). He's decided to skip straight to suing me for custody of our oldest. Just our oldest. I have explained how this is fracturing the relationships between the boys and how much the two younger ones resent his attention just to the older one. I offered the compromise of his spending one night with each of his boys alone each week in addition to the weekend time he already gets. His response was that he would consider having each of the younger ones but only if it was IN ADDITION to getting custody of the oldest. "How exactly do you feel that is one on one time with your younger boys if the older one is with you?!" The word 'Moron' was hovering about my lips but I did NOT utter it. Yay me. No, but I did add that he clearly didn't understand compromise (not that this was a news flash) and that until we went to court we'd stick to the court-ordered agreement (which is FANTASTIC for me because now I get waaay more time with my kiddos AND I don't have to see my ex as much. You'd think I would have stopped compromising a while ago, woudn't you? I guess I just didn't pay enough attention to that whole section in history that talked about appeasement and fascists.) But enough about my ex.....
The result of all this life implosion is that while my life is still messy - and while it doesn't yet involve consistent computer access - I am going to have a room of my own. I will no longer share an office with Sweet Hubby. I will have my very own studio, with a door that closes the rest of the world out. I'm going to paint it silver (which may look terrible but is very much fun for me to get to risk trying). I'm also less than a week away from getting all my hair cut off. Well, not ALL of it. But lots and lots and lots of it. I'm getting it shaved up the back and leaving maybe an inch or two on top to be spiky. I've never in my life had my hair that short and I am soooooo excited about it. I have been reading (when I get too tired to paint or move furniture). I have been running. In fact - I had shelved plans for training for the half marathon in April since I had no time or energy before. NOW - I am back in the training groove. I ran for 38 minutes on Thursday. Unless the weather decides to be all icky and seasonal again - I'm going to run four times a week. (If the weather remembers it's Winter then I might not make my goal because I do NOT run when it's cold. I am a total wimp about it and that's okey dokey with me.) AND, if I haven't been rapturous enough already, I'm going to get to quilt again!!! <-----Please note the restraint in my punctuation. If you only knew how many exclamation points I wanted to put.
I've had a bang-up, fantastic start to 2006 and wish you the same! (Ummm, although I will add that I hope you've managed to avoid both altercations with the mother you adore and Tapioca Headed People in general.)
Peace.
I've been home (in my lovely, quiet, non-commercial-establishment-house of a home) for almost three weeks now. But I've not been alone, oh no. No chance of that. Not when streptococcus decides to move in and invite his best pal (=strange-mutating-untreatable-stomach virus) to sleep over. In a family of seven - it is AMAZING how much laundry can be generated by...but I digress. Back to the part where I gloss over the other factors of my life implosion - like the septic system backing up - and wow, how much fun it is to have no potties or showers for a family of seven (some of whom were still harboring strep & co.) for three days. Or like the ex (=Senor Tapioca Head) who says he won't go to mediation (even though it's required by law). He's decided to skip straight to suing me for custody of our oldest. Just our oldest. I have explained how this is fracturing the relationships between the boys and how much the two younger ones resent his attention just to the older one. I offered the compromise of his spending one night with each of his boys alone each week in addition to the weekend time he already gets. His response was that he would consider having each of the younger ones but only if it was IN ADDITION to getting custody of the oldest. "How exactly do you feel that is one on one time with your younger boys if the older one is with you?!" The word 'Moron' was hovering about my lips but I did NOT utter it. Yay me. No, but I did add that he clearly didn't understand compromise (not that this was a news flash) and that until we went to court we'd stick to the court-ordered agreement (which is FANTASTIC for me because now I get waaay more time with my kiddos AND I don't have to see my ex as much. You'd think I would have stopped compromising a while ago, woudn't you? I guess I just didn't pay enough attention to that whole section in history that talked about appeasement and fascists.) But enough about my ex.....
The result of all this life implosion is that while my life is still messy - and while it doesn't yet involve consistent computer access - I am going to have a room of my own. I will no longer share an office with Sweet Hubby. I will have my very own studio, with a door that closes the rest of the world out. I'm going to paint it silver (which may look terrible but is very much fun for me to get to risk trying). I'm also less than a week away from getting all my hair cut off. Well, not ALL of it. But lots and lots and lots of it. I'm getting it shaved up the back and leaving maybe an inch or two on top to be spiky. I've never in my life had my hair that short and I am soooooo excited about it. I have been reading (when I get too tired to paint or move furniture). I have been running. In fact - I had shelved plans for training for the half marathon in April since I had no time or energy before. NOW - I am back in the training groove. I ran for 38 minutes on Thursday. Unless the weather decides to be all icky and seasonal again - I'm going to run four times a week. (If the weather remembers it's Winter then I might not make my goal because I do NOT run when it's cold. I am a total wimp about it and that's okey dokey with me.) AND, if I haven't been rapturous enough already, I'm going to get to quilt again!!! <-----Please note the restraint in my punctuation. If you only knew how many exclamation points I wanted to put.
I've had a bang-up, fantastic start to 2006 and wish you the same! (Ummm, although I will add that I hope you've managed to avoid both altercations with the mother you adore and Tapioca Headed People in general.)
Peace.
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