Kane,

Today you turn 13.

This is probably the last time we'll ever speak since I'm moving into the bomb shelter until you turn 21, 'cause, dude, I don't want any part of what all is coming up.

I'm kidding. I am actually very excited about what is coming up, especially since you are suddenly very interested in watching The Office and that is so much more tolerable and interesting to me than Pokemon, or Yu Gi Oh, or Total Drama Island.

When I first met you, you were six years old, and in first grade. Your dad brought you into the store where we worked together, and he introduced us, and Jude hid behind his legs while you said, "Hello there, Buffy."

In the months following our meeting there were screaming contests (literally; this isn't a metaphor for a fight), swimming, sidewalk chalk drawings, Super Mario Brothers all-nighters, and tag games. We did a whole lot of stuff back in those days, mainly because your father and I didn't live together yet so we had to find cool stuff to do outside of the house.

We've had some tough times together as well. You had a lot of trouble understanding your mother's illness, how it kept her away from you so much when you were so young, and I had the simultaneous joy and guilt of being able to help you deal with that. I am very glad that I got to know you, got to sit up with you at night and help you through some rough nights, but I have to tell you it is very difficult to come up with a good answer to some of your questions, "why won't mom come home" or "why can't I go to my mom's house" or "can't she please just stay home with us tonight". All I ever knew to tell you was that she loves you, and she's working on it. I hope that was enough.

You are one of the smartest, brightest, most resilient kids I've ever known, and I can't even imagine what all lies ahead of you. You sure do like to talk so I might suggest a career in politics or lawyering. You clearly also combine with that talk-love a pinpoint accuracy in recalling detail, I can't even tell you how many episodes of Family Guy or The Simpsons that you have described to me, and I could tell that you didn't forget a thing because it would take the same amount of time for you to describe it to me as it would to actually sit down in front of the tv and watch the bloody show. HOLY GOD, MAN, you need to apply your talent for seven-hour oration to something besides shows I don't even like, I beg of you.

Seriously, never stop expecting a lot from yourself, because you have the charisma and smarts to do a lot of interesting things with your life, and that kind of stuff almost never just falls into your lap: you have to work for a happy life, to enjoy your pursuits and have a happy family. Just like Gordy Ramey used to tell my mama: Remember who you are. Know that this life just gets harder and harder, all the time, and there will be moments when you think you will break, when you think it will never get easier. And I'm not here to tell you that it gets easier, because sometimes it doesn't. But it changes. Your feelings, the situations you're in, your desires, your goals, it all changes all the time, and no matter how hard it gets you can always come to your dad or me to talk about it, because we will always love you just as much, and we will always be your parents no matter how scary or unpredictable life gets.

Listen, I ain't your mama, have never been your mama and will never be your mama. But I do love you and want good things for you. I will always be there to talk or help in any way that I can. This fall you start eighth grade, and I am here to tell you that this stage of life is hard, hard for everyone, and the best thing I know to say about it is don't let them see you hurting, save the hurting for when you get home, and always be open to new friendships.

And no drinking or drugs until you're older. And no sex. Or girlfriends. Maybe you should just come straight home from school. And don't be talking to hussies on the phone, either. No HBO or Cinemax. And punch a motherfucker in the face if he fucks with you. But don't be a bully. Oh for God's sakes, I have to go; the bomb shelter is calling my name.

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.

Chapel day.

Chapel day.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

Today was Chapel Day at Reed's school, and my baby wore a tie for the first time.

Of course I'll be borrowing it soon- I can wear it with my white tank top and my Doc Martens. I just need to get some black nail polish.

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?

Spring cleaning, delayed.

I gave myself the task of totally cleaning out Kane and Jude's room yesterday. It was my "I don't have a job, I don't have shit to do, what of it?" assigment.



They cleaned it before they left last time, and they "made" their beds which really just means they piled all the sheets and covers on top of the beds. The picture above is what it looked like after I changed the sheets, MADE the beds, and swept everything out from underneath them. I can't express to you what a mess it was- popsicle wrappers, cracker wrappers, pretzels, q-tips, dirty socks, clean shirts. And in their drawers and closets every kind of clothing was shoved into every kind of place. I am a square: I think that socks and underwear belong with other socks and underwear, jeans hang in the closet, marbles and Yu Gi Oh cards don't go with your t-shirts. Square.



I spent four hours yesterday cleaning and organizing their room. I threw away five full garbage bags full of shit, and donated one garbage bag full of clothes to Goodwill.



Afterwards I felt cleansed.



They still have toys, but they are where they belong. They have a much larger collection of books than I thought. They each have about 500 pairs of socks and underwear. There are actual empty shelves. I got rid of so much garbage that there are shelves with nothing on them.



I spent a long time just hanging out in their room yesterday, because it is now the cleanest room in the house. I think I might just move in to their room.



I have overhauled their room and Reed's room. Next is ours.

I haven't been sleeping well anyways.

Reed has learned how to climb out of his crib.

I cannot make a big enough deal about this, can't get across what a huge change this will mean for us. I'm pretty sure that he forgot almost as soon as he learned, but that means that we are that much closer to turning his bed into a big-boy-bed, that much closer to The End of Sleeping at Night for Mom. Like, POOF!- Now I lay awake at night listening for any noises that indicate that my child has padded into the bathroom and is drowning in the toilet. Or has wandered into the kitchen and is sticking his soft little hand down into the blender while pressing the "frappe" button. Or has gotten into mama's gin. MY GIN, REED. MY GIN.

Today I did something fun.

I donated a whole lot of hair to Locks of Love.



Here I am before I left this morning (with wet hair):



And here I am now (after much sweating and kid-wrangling):



Tomorrow I will style it and take more pictures.

"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.

Making a wish.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff

There has been so much going on lately- nauseation, continued bleeding, A LOT of crying, pulling of hair, frustration, worry, constant phone-calling, and then a couple of good things.

I think this super-cute little boutique in Homewood called Happi is going to carry my jewelry. I am so excited and hopeful and grateful- it's really a big deal to me, and I hope that it works out well for everyone involved.

An article that I wrote is being published in the June issue of Lipstick Magazine. Again, great opportunity, very excited, could lead to other opportunities, super-awesomeness.

I am not downplaying either of those things because they are both so rad and exciting, but I must say that the past two days of making 734 phone calls to 347 different people, telling our story those many times, talking to people who didn't know, or didn't care, or didn't want to disturb their lunch is really defeating. It has gotten to the point where every time I hang up the phone, every single time, I start to cry. I sit there for a few minutes and cry and rub my eyes and collapse in on myself, and then I straighten my shoulders and find my list and make the next call. It's not even that we're getting bad news from anyone; we just can't seem to light on the right branch, so to speak.

Luckily we're checking out another couple of branches on Thursday. So the beat goes on.


P.S. I just noticed that Lipstick has a link to my blog under "Our Favorite Websites". How cool is that? WAY.

The tide is high, but I'm holding on.

Reed has stayed up until about 10:30 for three nights in a row.

I might crawl into the drier with a bottle of rum and see how long I can still breathe.

There is some good news. I think I'm being published in a local magazine. More later when it's finalized.

I forgot to even mention that Jason's cell phone was stolen at his work a few weeks ago- we've since ordered him a new phone, and tonight someone CALLED HIS PHONE asking for a person who works with him. I think I may have hyperventilated until I can no longer clearly make a point, but the point here is that now Jason thinks he knows who took the phone. Now we can at least try and get that person to pay for the $30 in downloads and the $80 in new phone.

There is more good news, but I think it's better not to go blabbing about it here, at least for the time being. It just feels good to feel some hope tingling down there somewhere.

WOW, that sounded dirty. I meant "down there" in my stomach, you PERVERTS! Gah!

I would like some wine with this cheese.

So on Sunday Kane and Jude's bikes were stolen. They were on the carport, chained to a post with a titanium bicycle chain. It was midday, and I was at home. No shit- someone apparently came up and cut through the "impenetrable" titanium chain and hauled off two medium-sized trick bikes in broad daylight, while I was in my bed complaining about all the aches and snot.

Jason came home and was like, "Do you know where the kids' bikes are?" I was like, "NO. But I know where the FLU is. RIGHT HERE, BUDDY." But don't worry; then my indignation set in.

My flu-induced stupor kept me from encouraging Jason to call the police and file a report until he came home from work last night telling me about seeing some 15-year-old kid riding Kane's bike around just a mile or two away from here. Finally I was like, "Wait a minute! Before you go beat up a minor, how 'bout we call the cops?" Of course Jude was raring to go with Jason looking for this kid, and I let Jude know that if his dad was going to go abuse a child, he would have to stay at home. (He moped.)

So the policeman came over and got all the information from Jason; the entire time they were on the front porch talking, Jude was standing at the front door staring out with little hearts bubbling up above his head.

Reed heard Jason talking and asked what he was doing. I said, "He's outside, talking to a policeman." Reed thought about it for a minute and then exclaimed, "EWWWWWWWWW, NASTY!!"

So the policeman said the description sounded like someone they had busted several times stealing bikes, and said he'd call us if they found anything. We haven't heard back yet. It IS kind of sad, though; they haven't had the bikes for long, and they were kind of expensive. Plus, it's the SECOND time Kane's has been stolen.

For Pete's sake, we really need a break around here.