Our new kangaroo is supposed to arrive next week.

I'll be honest with you: I think maybe something is wrong with me. And also with pretty much everybody I know.

As long as we've lived in our house, which is about four years, Jason has wanted a dog. A big dog. Some sort of large, bounding, herding dog that the kids can ride around the back yard and that can kill whole cows and bring them home for dinner. I have spent this last four years saying no, a thousand times no, we don't need a dog and we can't have a dog and if we were going to get a dog I want a Chinese Crested. Jason's response was "Hell no on the Chinese Crested but OF COURSE we need a dog and can have a dog. A BIG ONE."

So we've continued on in this manner for all these years.

Then last week happened.

Nothing in particular has changed or occurred. I don't have a clue what has happened to my brain. Maybe the prozac; I don't know. But suddenly Jason has been on this blue heeler kick and for whatever reason I said, "Okay, let's look at blue heelers."

So I've been looking up dogs, and it turns out Jason is incredibly particular. And it's not even like there is some list I can go by; Jason simply can look at the dog and know if it's "his dog" or not. This one is too tall. This one is to small. This one prompted Jason to say "I will not be able to fucking sleep knowing that dog is in our house."

I love all three of those dogs, so someone should go adopt them so I don't have to worry about them any more.

Anyway, we think we've found a dog we like. We've filled out adoption applications. Yesterday I finally got up the nerve to tell my mom about it. My mom is the lady who always says no, a thousand times no, we don't need a cat/dog/goat and if we get a cat/dog/goat she's going to throw herself off the roof of her house in protest.

What did she say yesterday? "Well, you know, I've had dogs all my life. I can't argue with you."

WHAT?!? So all I could think was, "Well I HAVE to send the adoption applications in NOW with all that flippant gauntlet-throwing she's doing right there."

Listen, the truth is I had dogs and cats throughout my childhood. I had Poochie, a little round mutt who followed me everywhere and took care of me and was a hell of a watch dog (the poor UPS guy). Then I had Ruppleduffie, a huge lab mix who was goofy and spent most of his puppyhood sleeping on top of a large basket of pecans. Now I'm not going to lie and say that I took complete care of them and my mom never had to lift a finger- she did the majority of the feeding and bathing and taking care of those dogs. But I helped. And I loved them intensely, and played with them, and pet them and stroked them and talked to them and took their pictures and dressed them in doll clothes. They were my pets.

Since my head has been so clear lately I've re-evaluating a lot, including how I'm raising Reed. I think we're doing a pretty good job, but I realized that I don't want him to grow up, to be a six year old and then a nine year old and then a twelve year old without ever having helped to raise a dog. I don't want him to grow up without knowing what it feels like to love a dog, to take care of it, to see its happy face when he comes home from school. Kane and Jude have had a wide assortment of pets, a few at our house and a lot at their mom's house, and I sometimes worry that their mom is teaching them that pets are disposable and you can just move on to the next one if the first one doesn't work out. I think maybe this might be good for them, too.

Last night I asked Reed, "Would you like to have a dog that lives here with us?" He got very excited very fast and said, "Yes! I wish I had a dog. I would like to have a dog."

So I guess that settles it. Reed is a normal kid and my mom and I are crazy as shit-house rats. Congratulations to us all.

You're nothing now and you never were; you're the empty core of a hollow shell!

Okay, so you know how I'm like "Crazy bitch!" and "Fuck this shit!" and "I'll choke a bitch!" and "Oh my gosh I am just going to throw myself off a cliff onto a pile of poop and porcupines and get it over with!"? You know how I'm like that? Well, here's some more.

Jason's ex is still trying to wring extra money out of him, money that he doesn't owe her, money that she is not entitled to. And the only way she'll communicate with him about it is via text message. He tried to go up and talk to her about it yesterday when we dropped Kane and Jude off; her husband was like, "She's in the bathroom, so she won't be able to hear you." FOR FUCK'S SAKES, I CAN'T EXPRESS IN WRITTEN WORD HOW CRAZY THESE PEOPLE ARE.

Just rest assured that we ain't giving her any more money besides the money we are court-ordered to pay her (i.e., the monthly child support). I am tired of all of this. I want to be able to live our lives without receiving these shitty, cowardly, God-forsaken text messages from two crazy people who are so totally self-involved that they can't see past the ends of their own noses, can't even see how their behavior is starting to affect the kids that they're supposed to be raising.

Anyways, just wanted to keep you up-to-date. Plus I haven't done any of my "I might fucking set myself on fire!" in quite some time, and I didn't want y'all to get worried that I had gotten over it. IN FACT, I HAVE NOT GOTTEN OVER IT.

And now for the Micro Wrestling Federation.

For fuck's sakes, if Kane and Jude's step-dad continues to send these assy, threatening text messages to us, I'm going to visit Pelham with a large bag of poop. I cannot stand this any more. See here for further explanation.

Somehow lately I frequently feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room screaming, and no one is noticing. It's lonely and sad, this feeling, and I'm afraid that feeling it this frequently for this long is starting to make me a shitty person. I feel vindictive, mad, self-centered.

There is a lot going on in the next couple of weeks. There's Midget Wrestling this Thursday (click that link, scroll down to see the poster), we have the kids this weekend, I'm scheduled to go to San Antonio with work February 9th through the 12th, and then Valentine's Day is that weekend. Plus, there are three birthdays in a row from the 14th through the 16th (Josh, Deanna, Johnny). Busy time.

I know some people were having trouble getting to the Cutting Room Floor, and I've checked and re-checked and I'm not sure why that is. I'm linking here again just to see what happens. If that doesn't work, just go to www.flickr.com/photos/cuttingroomfloor.

I'm glad y'all are looking. It makes me happy.

And if you don't know, now ya know.

Happy day, Martin Luther King, Jr.

This weekend was a really good one. It's not frequent that I have the urge to write, hey, things were good, so I felt like I ought to write it seeing as how I thought it. Mexican Train, rap music, and homemade pizza with some of my favorite people- good times.

I'm about to make a whole mess of new jewelry; I'm just waiting on a few slow arrivals, some new supplies, to get started. My Etsy is somewhere around a year old now. Considering the during the first ten months I made something like 8 sales, and then in the last two months I've made something like 14 more, I'd say things are looking up.

I'm about to get in touch with George at Speakeasy and talk to him about having another show like last year's. I'm hoping he'll be cool with it. We had such a great time and sold so much stuff.

It's all quiet on the shithead front right now. If I was stupid enough to think that meant that things were calming down, getting better, I might feel good about it. But I've lived this life long enough to know that it just means there's some scheming going on, and it makes me nervous.

I poop frequently these days.

HA! Snuck it in there on you. I haven't talked about my bowel movements in a while. Gotcha.

Reed has been using the potty most of the time. Once a couple of weeks ago he even went to the potty, used a chair to turn the light on, pooped, and came back and laid down on the futon at bedtime without even telling me about it. I discovered the poop in the potty and asked him and he was like, "Yeah." Like, "Of course I pooped in the potty, Philistine, where else would I have pooped?" I think all we have left to work on is peeing in the middle of the night. It must be hard to train your body not to pee in the night when it's so used to doing so. But we'll get there.

Well, I guess we also have to work on standing up and peeing instead of sitting down, because I have to tell you, more than once in the past couple of days we've had a pee arc that manages to soak everything in the room- Reed's clothes, the bathmat, anything in a three foot radius of the toilet. The child produces a lot of urine, just like his mama.

Finally if you haven't looked yet, you should check out Daily Doo and Talkies Are Dumb.

Better and better.

Work is going well. There were a lot of days over the holidays when we went home early, or were off altogether. It's nice, this whole your-boss-actually-gives-a-shit thing. I think maybe part of the difference is that my boss isn't the owner of the company. My boss now is a guy who works for the company, just like I am. I think that allows for a different dynamic.

We are going to Costa Rica this March. It's all pretty crazy; it will be the first decent vacation Jason and I have had in a very long time, and it will be the first time I've ever been out of the country. This trip is made possible by the insanity of my very best friend, by her ability to convince herself that not only might I survive a plane trip, however short, without shoving a plastic spork into my ear, but that I will continue to be good company in a country with cheap beer and food. Kristi, you actually won't see me that much; I will be eating juevos heaped with jalapenos at a bar somewhere the whole time we're there. You will have your choice of either sitting next to me at the bar and thereby nearly losing a finger, or watching Jason and Chris attempt surfing. GOOD LUCK WITH THOSE OPTIONS.

Seriously, though, I am really looking forward to spending so much time with three of the people I love the most, three of the closest people to me, people who understand what is happening in my life, head, heart.

Anyhow, I am excited, nervous, a little bit of everything about it. 2008 was a very long, hard, confusing year. I am thankful that people in my life want to give us opportunities like this. I don't know when we'd be able to take a trip like this if it depended on our planning it, getting plane tickets, and carrying it out. We are being FORCED to go, God bless our hearts. How terrible my life is.

2008.

I'm pretty sure some crazy stuff is about to blow up around me and Jason pretty soon. It's all a crazy mess, the result of mistakes we've made recently concerning Kane and Jude. I'll have a lot, A LOT more to say on this in the next few weeks if things calm down that quickly.

As the year rambles to a close I am left thinking about what an awful period of my life this has been, how awful it's been for me and how awful I, in turn, have made it for everybody around me.

I am so lucky to be surrounded by people who empathise, sympathise, keep caring, persevere, who understand that a lot of this is bigger than me, bigger than my heart can take, bigger than my TEENY, TINY BRAIN can comprehend. I need a lot of help sometimes, and thank jeez there are people around me who want to give it to me. I don't know where I would be now if it weren't for you guys. I would NOT be at work in a good job, listening to Elvis Costello, thinking how we will make it through this. I would probably be one of those people who is always, ALWAYS over on the far side of the bar at the Plaza, drinking and not talking or making eye contact with anyone, only thinking quietly about the shambles his life has become.

Lucky for you guys I'm still sending texts and emails and making phone calls about OH GOD THE DEPRAVITY and FUCK ALL BOLLOCKS CRAZY PEOPLE and OH HOLY SHIT I'M GOING TO DIE, I'M GOING TO DIE RIGHT NOW, BUT NOT BEFORE I HAVE ONE MORE NATURAL LIGHT WITH YOU RIGHT NOW BE THERE IN A MINUTE.

Y'all are so damn lucky I'm around, because your life would probably be so boring without me in it.

Seriously, though, every year I sort of momentarily consider New Year's resolutions and I usually move on without making any because, SHIT, this life is so unpredictable and bizarre I just never feel like I can live up to resolutions. This year, I have considered it carefully and I think I want to resolve to be more fierce, more steadfast, more calm, steady, sure. I have this tendency to be super paranoid, to start thinking weird things are going on or to second-guess decisions, and looking back on this year makes me realize that I am frequently right or at least not totally off. I resolve to listen to myself a little more closely, to stop being so hard on myself, to stop telling myself that I'm wrong, stupid, crazy, so automatically. I resolve to remember that I can make it through anything. I resolve to listen to my instincts and to feel less like I need to bend against my gut reactions.

I resolve to stand up for myself loudly, clearly, make myself heard if anyone fucks with me, my marriage, my family the way some people have this year. I will not take any more of this quietly, will not walk away without PUNCHING SOME BITCH IN THE FACE, at least metaphorically. Maybe what I could do, you know, to help the economy, is pay a homeless guy to punch you in the face and I'll stand by with my Martin guitar and play More Than Nothing by the Vindictives. WHATEVER. I do not care what this says about me, I do not care what impression this gives, just know that you got off easy this time and it will not happen again.

Tired of hearing about it? No you're not. Shut up.

Those of you who take such good care of me, who worry about me and help so much, you all sort of mesh together and form a nice soft place for me to fall, and I love you for it. Y'all all come over here and sit on mama's lap and I'll pour you a bourbon and sing Crimson and Clover quietly in your ear. You know who you are. Thank you.

And here is where I empty the contents of my brain onto the page:

I have been reflecting lately on my life, especially the past year or so, on mistakes and opportunities and luck and misfortune. These past eighteen or twenty months have been so hard, so excrutiating. So many bad things have happened over the past little while, both things that are my fault and things that are beyond my control. I am absolutely exhausted, tired of all of this, tired of life, and the only thing that keeps me going is the feeling like maybe we are over the proverbial hump, maybe things are about to get better.

I worry about Kane and Jude quite a bit, about their well-being, their grades, their ability to grow into functioning human beings. I went to drop off the child support check yesterday, and their step-dad kept narrowing his eyes at me and then looking at the check, narrowing his eyes and then looking at the check. Then light dawned on marble head and he laughed and said, "I didn't recognize you. Okay."

Their step-dad, who has been around for about five years and has been married to Kane and Jude's mom for a year-and-a-half and who has seen and spoken to me countless times, DIDN'T RECOGNIZE ME. I suppose maybe he was off his meds yesterday.

Kane and Jude are telling us that they might move to Montevallo, which is great because it's even further away, and we've already been assigned the task of doing all the driving, all the picking up and dropping off, and I am not feeling happy about it. Besides the driving, Kane and Jude are both doing well in school, making friends and good grades and enjoying themselves, and I'm wondering why they feel the need to jerk them up and send them yet another school. Those people move roughly once a year, and I'm not sure that that's healthy for the kids. I realize that plenty of people move around and the kids will survive, but I'm thinking if they're not moving for a job or the military or to be closer to their families, is it really necessary?

Jason and I have just celebrated our fifth anniversary, and I'm proud and grateful that we've made it. Marriage is hard when times are good; when times are tough it can be really very difficult to remember to work as a team, to think like a team. I'm sorry that I haven't always been a team player, Jason; I'm working on it. Happy anniversary. Thank you for being on my team.

Reed's godmother just got engaged to one of the sweetest boys I've ever known. The only advice that I would presume to offer you is to pray to God for patience and perseverence, both of you, because there are moments when those are the only things that will keep you from smacking each other in the head with a hammer. Also, hide the hammer from each other. That helps, too.

My job has really turned things around for me in at least a few ways. I mean, I suddenly find myself a salaried employee with a stable company that builds software. Here's to you, universe: you really know how to confuse the shit out of me. I was voted most tech-savvy on Facebook; I put that on my resume, and I'm sure that's why I got this job.

Oh man, am I tired today.

My job will be sending me to San Antonio before the year is out. This means I'll be flying for the very first time pretty soon. I told my boss, "You know I might get a little keyed up because I've never flown before." He said, "Well have you ever taken a klonopin before?"

Rocking the vote this afternoon, then watching the coverage with friends this evening. Good stuff; looking forward, for a change.

I am floored lately by my closest friends' abilities to simultaneously take care of me and put up with me.

Regarding my new job, it's comforting in an I-can-do-this, not-interesting-enough-to-be-scary, for-the-love-of-God-I'll-get-a-paycheck kind of way.

Reed was a cow for Halloween; pictures to come.

Bulldoodle.

I tell you, things just continue to get crazier and crazier around here.

I haven't heard back from my job people yet; they said it would take five days to get the background check back and that was on Wednesday.

Jason's ex-wife is trying once again to squeeze some money out of us, and now she's trying to talk him into commiting tax fraud in order to get it. These people beat all, I have to say. She still seems to think that we should give her half of our stimulus check that we got this year, as well as child support for May, June, and July, and Jason can just "claim the kids on your taxes again this year" and pay what we "owe" out of it.

The reality is that our lawyer reassured us months ago that they aren't entitled to any of the stimulus money no matter how hard she tries to make it seem like she is. The kids lived with us in May, so even if we were supposed to be paying child support for some of the summer it wouldn't be for May. If a judge orders us to pay child support for June and July I will totally jump on board BUT I AM NOT DEALING WITH ANY OF THIS UNDER-THE-TABLE, JUST-BETWEEN-US BULLSHIT FROM TWO CRAZY PEOPLE WHO ARE UNPREDICTABLE, GREEDY, RUDE, AND SCHEMING.

As far as the tax stuff, she's been frauding social security for several years and she knows that if we end up in court that will come up, so I figure she's just trying to come up with a way to get Jason in trouble, too. SUCK IT, FOLKS. I've said it before, I'll say it again, and last week I said it to a 22-year-old dude who works at Citifinancial: You cannot squeeze blood from a turnip. If you haven't made the intellectual leap yet, what I'm saying is we currently have $45 in the bank and exactly one week before we'll be getting any more money.

We have no money. There is no money. You aren't getting any money.

We will continue paying child support just like we have been since August, the month that SHE chose for us to start paying child support again. But anything else will have to be settled by our lawyers and a judge in court.

Mark: comments?

I am consumed again with worry about the same thing I was worried about for most of the spring and summer: Kane and Jude.

A couple of experiences that were relayed to Jason by a family member have him panicking about sending them back to their mom's house; he's worried that he made the wrong decision, that Kane and Jude will be harmed somehow by that decision.

I feel sad that Jason is so worried, because I know exactly how he feels: I have often wondered and feared if it was a bad idea to send them back with their mom. She and her husband have a lot of problems, and I am only referring to the obvious, clear problems that we can see that they have. There is no telling what all is going on under the surface that we don't even have a clue about.

Now our lawyer is getting messages from their lawyer asking when we are going to "make arrangements" to pay child support. It isn't clear if he is referring to current child support or backed child support. If it's current, we've been paying it, and either their lawyer doesn't know what he's doing or they are lying to him and telling him we haven't been paying. If it's backed child support, I can't believe anyone is still discussing it. While I am begging for a job, any job, and praying for unemployment, they are driving to Texas to buy SUPER-FANCY ULTRA-LIGHTWEIGHT JEEP DOORS, for Pete's sakes. DRIVING TO TEXAS IN A GAS-GUZZLING JEEP for new doors, for fuck's sakes. I can't get over it, so just don't expect it.

Anyway, this life just keeps getting scarier and more bizarre every day, and I don't see any signs of it returning to normalcy. Lindsey and I often joke that this, this right here, this is just our lives now, and we should just get used to it.

I just don't know. I am still seeking employment to absolutely no end whatsoever, while the kids' mom and step-dad don't have to work, will never have to work, on account of they're too crazy to. Yet they feel like this makes them better candidates to raise the kids because they can "devote 24 hours a day to the children".

It's all a mess, and it's making me feel ill. Maybe I need to seek lessons on making the government think I'm too crazy to work. At least I know where to look for them.

Card shark or card sharp?

So when I cleaned out the boys' room last week I found something interesting:



Have you ever wished that you had some metal playing cards with sharp, knife-like edges all around?



Have you ever wished that you could find something really inappropriate to give your children?



Have you ever felt like you didn't have enough ways to end up with your kid in the emergency room?



Do you need a nice visit from DHR? You should contact Kane and Jude's mom and step-dad. They've got ideas.

Two is just as sad as one; it's the loneliest number since the number one.

Yesterday was the second birthday of this blog.

This has been a really good year, where "good" equals "didn't kill myself", "learned how to ignore murderous impulses", "tuned out the writhing fits", or "drank during the day".

I really have learned a lot about myself; unfortunately a lot of the avenues that got me to that knowledge involve things I don't like to write about here. You know how I very rarely write about my marriage except to make jokes about how Jason must be high to be able to deal with me? That's because I love my marriage, love my husband, and Jason does not want to read on the internet about how his snoring makes me want to shove all his dirty socks up his nose. So I don't write about it.



Suffice it to say that my marriage has survived- it is just like life, or raising kids, or going to work, or doing heroine. It can be excruciating, but that doesn't mean you'd be better off without it.

Reed is a little boy.



His school has just started requiring all the students except infants to wear uniforms. He wore his new "golf-ball shirt" (a golf shirt) to school with khaki shorts for the first time this morning, and Jason said he was very grown-up, very serious about his shirt, walked by himself to the door and kept smoothing the shirt and picking off lint balls. He'll be three in three months. I can't even comprehend it.

This past year has been a really hard one in the Jason's Ex-Wife arena. She decided that the kids should move back in with her and her husband whom she met in the psych ward. Then she decided that the kids need their father and therefore ought to stay with us. Then she decided that we should go back the original divorce agreement. Then she decided that we ought to pay her backed child support for the three years that the kids were living with us. Then she decided that she wouldn't be providing any transport for her kids any more; if we want to see them we must pick them up from her apartment and then drop them off at her apartment. Then she informed us that we were not to contact her ever and if we had questions or concerns we would call her husband. Then "someone" left some bizarre comments on my blog posing as Mark Dutton, an attorney. Then she dropped it and decided that we don't have to pay backed child support. Then she started contacting us again even though she expressly said that she would not be in contact with us any further.

Confused? TAKE A NUMBER, BUDDY.

Jason and I have given in to the Evil Lord Wal-Mart- we sincerely refused to shop there for the longest time, but my most recent bought with unemployment has reduced us to shopping there. It is three minutes up the road and everything is slightly cheaper than my one true love, Target.

That's another thing that's happened in the past year: I lost my job. AGAIN. I didn't write much about it because it is at once humiliating, terrifying, hilarious, sad. There's really not that much to it. I dealt with a lady throwing boxes at me and screaming the f-word for a year and a half, and I dealt with her Event Coordinator asking me how big my husband's penis is, and then she fired me for staying home with my kid when he was sick. The world is a balanced place, eh?

I've been writing and getting published in Lipstick Magazine, which is fabulous. I've also been making a lot of jewelry that I'm really proud of.



My good friend John moved back from New Orleans.



I have a couple of projects in the works, including a redesign of this blog. We've worked on it some, but then we found some booze so the blog is on the back-burner for a minute. I've been talking with Jason and some friends about starting a magazine, as well as something exciting involving being drunk and making videos.

More on that later. Aren't you excited?

Pot liquor.

Painting my toenails, doing laundry, wiping Reed's diarrhea-rear: these are the days of our lives.

Reed and I have some tiny virus that includes fever, tummy grossness, and general grumpiness, but I think it might be gone by tomorrow.

Our finances have finally reached a really awful, emergency point in which we can't afford to buy... well, anything.

Kane and Jude were here for the weekend and they both seem to be enjoying their new school. I just sincerely hope this has all been worth it, their moving back to their mom's house. I think it's probably best for them to be stable somewhere, to not change schools any more, so I hope everyone can just calm down and live life for a while.

Their mom and step-dad still inspire me to pluck the eyeballs out of my head: they send rude text messages, refuse to talk to us or make eye-contact (should they actually meet us face to face)- pretty much the usual. C'est la vie.

Jude started a Flickr if you're ever interested in the photographic talent of an intense nine-year-old.

Finally, I've been making some neat things for my Etsy lately. This one's called Mary Ramey, after my grandmother:

"buffy agan blog leeds"

So it's been a while, but I thought I'd mention that I called Mark A. Dutton on August 1st (in reference to all of this). It was a very interesting conversation: turns out that he wasn't leaving those comments. He was, shall we say, nonplussed. We had a long talk about my blog and who might want to leave such bizarre comments. Did you know that it is a CRIME to sling around legal advice when you aren't a lawyer? Did you know that what so-and-so did there- not only pretending to be a lawyer but pretending to be a PARTICULAR lawyer- could constitute identity theft, and certainly constitutes fraud?

Anyways, Mr. Dutton was very happy that I brought it all to his attention. I have no idea if he intends to do anything about it, but I know that he can if he wants to.

In similar news, HELLO IP NUMBER 68.185.251.116! How are you out there in Pelham, Alabama? How is Charter Communications treating you? Do you enjoy using Internet Explorer on your Windows Vista system? Did you catch Lindsey's comment after all those comments that you left as Mark A. Dutton, specifically:

Every modem is assigned a unique number by their ISP. Blogger, in their infinite wisdom and foresight, God bless 'em, automatically and without fail logs each and every IP address associated with every single comment left on this or any other Blogger/Blogspot blog. Utilizing your IP address, which is freely provided to the blog owner by Blogger, the public at large is able to utilize the common knowledge reverse IP look up process in order to pinpoint just who, exactly, is leaving these comments, right down to something as minuscule and specific as their area code.

THE INTERNET IS NOT AN ANONYMOUS PLACE, PEOPLE. People seem to think they can do anything they want, such as impersonating a lawyer, and no one will ever know. People can see when you look at their web pages like you did this morning at 8:31 am right after you got the kids off to school, like you did at 10:03 pm last night right after you got the kids to bed. Does your wife know what you've been doing, or are y'all in on this together? Because you know, should we ever end up in court, this is like a freakin' GOLD MINE for our case.

To the rest of you, I love you guys and thank you for putting with up with all this crap. CRAP ON A BLOG. That's new, right?

To Pelham, enjoy searching "buffy agan blog leeds" and "buffy jason agan blog leeds" on Yahoo Search over and over again. Thank you so much for your support.

I'll have to remind Jason to shave...

I believe old Mark admitted defeat- he hasn't been back in a few days and things have quieted down. The human tendency towards lunacy never ceases to amaze me.

Kane and Jude's mom sheepishly accepting her first child support payment last Friday. Now we wait for the next time she decides to start threatening to sue for backed child support. Mark my words: it will happen again.

From what I understand they've been counting change over there; I do sympathize, as we've been in hard times of our own. Then again, we didn't move into an apartment we couldn't afford and buy a series of brand new cars including two sports cars and ending with a four-door Jeep that surely guzzles gas.

When the kids' step-dad called Jason at work a few weeks ago and ranted about everything under the sun, he included how much better of a provider he is for the kids, adding that Kane and Jude each have their own bedroom and their own cable tv at his house. I wonder how that's working out for him now? I'd like to add that Jason, God love 'im, immediately replied that he doesn't agree with them having televisions in their bedrooms. We limit the kids' tv-watching over here because we feel like it's better for their brains to, I don't know, play, and interact, ride bikes and ride skateboards and read- you know, all the old-fashioned, Amish-type stuff.

Anyhow, Reed still breaks my heart every day saying things like, "I miss Kane and Jude. Kane and Jude miss me. Can we go get them now?"

Lipstick has their August issue on the website now, but sadly they don't seem to include all the content from the magazine on the web. I DO have an article and some jewelry in the magazine; I can mail you a copy of you're out of Birmingham and want to take a look. Just drop me a line and let me know.

Life goes on, and I'm trying to keep up. I've been making loads of jewelry; I hope to have twenty or thirty new pieces up in the next few days. Jason and I are photographing a wedding this Friday, as well as making the groom's cake and being a bridesmaid. You can figure out which of us is doing what. Jason does look good in a dress.

I must have imagined my graduation in '97. And the subsequent college graduation in 2004.

I don't know if you've been keeping up with this, but it's really very interesting. I have a feeling that I and my ilk have inflicted so many fierce burns that he won't be back. However, you never can tell- it's my understanding that sometimes "Mark" goes off his meds, so there could be more to come. Stay tuned!

If you haven't checked out my Etsy lately, but I have lots of new things that I've just listed in the past couple of weeks. I sold something last night to someone in Tel Aviv- apparently the word is spreading far and wide.

The Lipstick Magazine with my article and my jewelry has come out and it's awfully exciting. Unfortunately they don't have the new issue on their website yet so I can't link it, but I will as soon as I can.

My good friend Lindsey has offered to help me redesign this blog, and I'm really excited about it. LINDSEY, I'M HOLDING YOU TO IT. So you might see some changes in the next few weeks.

This week brings more jewelry-making, job-hunting, and house-cleaning. I'M SO HOT ABOUT IT- especially since I have to accomplish all this without even the help of a GED. Man, I should have finished high school.

And finally, my poor deprived baby: he doesn't have his GED either.

It's okay to try again.

When I was a kid I was scared of the dark. Okay, I am still scared of the dark. But when I was a kid that meant sleeping with my parents. I slept with my parents much, much longer than is appropriate for any child; my mom would try and come and sleep with me in my room, but I would wake up in the night alone and go crawl into bed with her. They had a queen size bed and it could be a tight squeeze with my dad, my mom, and myself. I'm sure it was super for their marriage, having a huge wiggling nine-year-old desperate to sleep with them all the time. I remember at some point telling them that it sure was crowded, and when I got married they were really going to have to buy a bigger bed- true story. HA HA HA.

Eventually my parents divorced, and it was much more comfortable in that bed with just my mom and me in it. Now with the foreclosure and all of our financial problems we are moving into my mom's house, that same house that I grew up in. As it turns out, my mom is going to take a different bedroom and Jason and I are moving into the master bedroom. It just feels funny that I will be once again sleeping in that same room, the room where I felt safest for all those childhood years. I sure hope that I feel as safe there now.

Yesterday we met with our lawyer and then had a celebratory, take-a-deep-breath-and-stop-worrying lunch at the local Mexican restaurant. We are still trying to get things straightened out with Kane and Jude's mom. Jason made the decision that the kids could move back in with her and we'd go back to the original custody agreement, which is what she asked for. She rewarded us by threatening to sue for backed child support for the years when the kids lived with us, the years when we were doing homework and sending lunch money and field trip money and attending parent-teacher conferences. The saddest part is that I predicted this years ago, and here it is. Thanks for being predictable. It will be so satisfying for me to revel in my rightness while living in my cardboard box.

I still don't know what's happening with the house- if the foreclosure if definite or if there are options. There has been so much going on over the past few weeks that I haven't been very good at staying on top of things, at following through. So I just don't know.

Reed is just amazing. He woke up this morning and told me that he dreamed about going to the beach, going to the ocean. He wakes up smiling almost every day, and even though the day goes on to present fits and fights and disagreements and floor-writhing, that moment when I first peer into his crib and he looks up at me and smiles is magic. He told me yesterday in the car, "I love Kane and Jude. Jude always talks to me. But they at they mommy's house." I almost cried.

These days have been marathons, racing to get to the end of the day without bursting into tears. Some days I win, and some days I lose. I have been listening to this song a lot, because it makes me feel better.

Hot potato, hot potato.

Man, oh man. I don't think my fingers could even manage to type all the stuff that has been going on today. Let's just say, Courtroom, here we come. We're being harassed now via text message by Jason's ex-wife, and she's slinging around transparent threats and expecting us to start giving her tons of money for absolutely no reason. I can't really think of much to say besides something I said here about two weeks ago: When you figure out how to squeeze blood from a turnip, please let me in on your technique. I'm nearly certain that she reads this- everyone wave hi!

Job-hunting, jewelry-making, photography-planning, blog-writing, child-rearing. That about sums it up. I'm going to try very hard to have some interesting things to say here; right now I'm absolutely void of anything to type besides bad words.

Making your way in the world today takes everything you got.

This birthday was about half great and half shitty, with great being against all odds. My attitude and emotional status have been all over the place lately, from grief, shame, humiliation, and regret to optimism, happiness, and hope to rage and spitefulness.

We got our letter of foreclosure Saturday morning. I worried about it all day, and then went out for birthday dinner with several friends, and then headed back to Kristi and Chris' new place to drink birthday beer. It was nice to spend time with everybody; most of my favorite people were there.

I think living at my mom's house isn't the end of the world. It is one of those things that will work eventually, but will start out kind of stressful and uncomfortable.

I've been talking with the mortgage company today, and I think we have some options, some possibility of avoiding the foreclosure, which I am taking steps to move towards. I do feel like we can't possibly pay for the house, and whether the bank forecloses or we get out of the woods and then hand them the keys, we are going to have to get out. I wrote a long letter of hardship to send the mortgage company and realized we aren't irresponsible, we aren't bad people, this isn't all our faults. These past two years have been really, awfully hard; it's been one bad thing after another, including insurance disasters, plumbing disasters, employment disasters, custody and ex-wife disasters. The end result has been that the amount of money Jason and I bring in to the house has dwindled lower and lower, and the amount of money we need to be sending out has risen higher and higher. Unfortunately we just can't reconcile the two. Add to that the fact that Jason and I are both totally, absolutely stressed out 24 hours a day, and you got the recipe for a hot mess.

Things with Kane and Jude's mom is pretty much at a standstill. Jason occasionally gets text messages from her asking for money. I would like for her to know that as soon as she figures out how to squeeze blood from a turnip, she should give me a call. Or a text. Whatever.