I love how people at work gather around the fucking coffee pot, so when I need my coffee, everybody looks at me like I'M butting in. For the love, there's a big table with chairs: sit the fuck down!

We're photographing a wedding in June, one in August, and now we might have one in November. Certainly not a packed schedule, but not bad.

It sure would be nice to have internet at our house so we could upload pictures. Maybe one day.

Eight weeks 'til Costa Rica. I'm counting down.

Circling the drain here in the armpit of America since 1979.

To a lovely couple in Shelby County:

You, craptet, should go lovingly suck on a beanpole in hopes of achieving more noticable results than sending cowardly, pedantic text messages to us.

Perhaps I should suggest that you, in the future, get off your paranoid jackasses and, oh shit!, act like responsible adults.

As it is, you are most certainly at the will of two very tired, very busy, very smart, hot, and crowded grown-ups who are elephantine in their memory.

Kindly,
Your Mom

P.s. The philosopher who resides here wants you to know that 'late' is a relative term, and no lateness can exist without some pre-decided specification of what shall be 'not late'. Suck on that.

Lessons.

Ah, you learn something new every day.

For example, yesterday I learned that I am indeed capable of looking a teenaged girl in the face and calling her stupid.

I was leaving my mom's and there were a group of kids playing football in the street. As I started driving towards them they all shuffled out of the way.

Except for one girl. Who proceeded to turn and look at me, standing in the middle of my lane, and just calmly watch as I drove towards her.

I slowed and slowed until my car was about four feet away from her and I came to a complete stop. She stood there for a few more seconds, laughed, shrugged, and moved to the side. I pulled up beside her, rolled down my window, and said, "Are you trying to be cute?" She laughed again and said, "No." I replied, "Okay, because it's pretty STUPID to just stand in the middle of the street in traffic."

Suddenly she looked really embarrassed, which took me totally by surprise as I was expecting some kind of "Talk to the HAND, GRANDMA" comment.

Then, as we pulled away, Reed said, "What did you do to that girl?" And then I felt guilty.

Headache- check. Plague- check. Sheer panic- check.

You remember all my whining about "ob la di", about how something is ALWAYS happening?

When I got out out to my car last night, the battery was dead. THE BATTERY WAS DEAD, I TELL YOU. Jason came up and jumped me off, but it wouldn't hold a charge, so we had to borrow money to buy a new battery and get it in there and working asap so's we could both go to work today.

AND THEN, this morning, my NEW phone crashed. I spent my lunch hour speeding from one end of town to the other and back again for it to suddenly start working again while I was standing in the phone store, and for them to be like, "Well, let's just give it a couple of days. It might be fine now."

Then my boss is out sick today so I'm doing both our jobs AND IT'S SCARY. I'M SCARED.

This all gives a whole new meaning to that line in Almost Famous, "It's all happening!"

So if last night's post made no sense to you, that's probably fine. Basically I had to argue with a collector about how much I could afford to start paying on a debt and she kept throwing all these different numbers at me even AFTER I had agreed to start making payments at a certain amount until I started getting really dizzy and had to pass Jason the phone. All this was the result of the fact that the screen on my old cellphone stopped working which led me to answer the phone when a collector called, GAH I would never answer the phone for a collector otherwise, you all know me better than that.

Now I have a new phone and can resume screening.

The best part of the collector debaucle was once I agreed to start making payments, she was like, "Okay, now you'll have to pay a $5 fee for each one of these electronic debits." I was like, "Um, can I just mail you checks for these payments?" She said, "Blahblahblahprettymuchno." So I was like, "Okay, I am NOT going to pay you to pay you." I realize that it's only five dollars, but there have been many times over the last several months when I would have sold Ida to a Chinese restaurent for five dollars because I needed the money so badly; I am not going to pay a collection agency five dollars so that I can pay off a debt that is TWICE what the actual debt used to be, with that extra 100% being fees and fines that will go to THAT DEBT COLLECTING INSTITUTION.

I don't know if I'm being clear; suffice it to say that when I said HELL NO I WON'T PAY YOUR $5, that's when the conversation started to decline and I started to have trouble seeing straight and understanding what she was saying.

So anyways, I saved a whole $20 on that one THANK THE GOOD LORD.

Next week I'm taking on the mortgage company, so just look out.

I now have a new phone, so feel free to call and text.

The screen on my old phone stopped woorking a few days ago which resulted in my bawling like a baby today after trying to deal with a bill collector for about twenty minutes. When I started to feel like I was going to pass out I handed my headset- the only way my phone was working- to Jason.

Then I went out and bought a phone.

On my life.

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?


Banana.

Don't hate the player- hate the game.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this comment; it's really all over the place.

First, I'm sure that A and B are connected. Most feelings, opinions, and ideas people have are interconnected.

Second, I wasn't raised to think that "evil controls the world" and I was CERTAINLY not raised to think that I am powerless. I was raised to understand that just because someone is the president, or a senator or governor, or a politician in general doesn't mean that they are a good person, or a smart person, or that they have people's best interests at heart. For a lot of people that is a no-brainer, but let's be honest: there are people who don't realize that.

Third, my feelings of depression, anger, helplessness and doom grew out of a nasty case of post-partum depression. They may be deep-seated, but they don't stem from the way I was raised. I wouldn't say that I have ever been perfect, but I can say with total certainty that until after I had a baby I had never felt totally hopeless, never felt like my life might never change, never felt that I might feel this awful forever and that it might effect my family, my relationships, my ability to cope.

Fourth, I think I heap a generous helping of blame on myself as well as other things that I can control. Besides those two crabby dudes that hang out in the balcony on the Muppets, no one lives inside my head and therefore most people aren't aware of all the many things I blame on myself, and all the effort, the sheer infinity of mantras and prayers and notes that I make to remind myself to fix mistakes and stay on track and make things better for my family, my friends, and myself. And I guess all I can say is that it's working okay. I'm not great, but I'm not dead, and that's a good thing.

Thanks for your questions.

How's anonymous internet-hating working for you?

Schmeitgeist.

Oh, Lordy.

I know that I start a lot of posts that way these days, but I seriously go about my day thinking that phrase, shaking my head, and taking deep breaths.

I finally watched Zeitgeist with Jason today.

Let me just say that he's been talking/raving/freaking out about this movie for a couple of months now. I refused to watch it for this long for a couple of reasons:

A) I have always hated the government, resented it, understood how duped we all are. I don't know everything and there was certainly a lot of stuff in this film that I didn't know, but at the basis of all my thoughts and curiosities has been that the government=bad. I was raised by MY MOTHER, for shit's sakes; if you know me, you know what that means.

B) I've been having a rough time with depression, anger, and hopelessness over the last few months. Now is not the time for a movie that shows me every way in which I am stupid, every way in which I am doomed, every way in which all the bad things that happen to and in this country are the fault of THIS COUNTRY, or at least the the fault of the powerful few at the top of this country.

I didn't really have much to say after it was over. I was just kind of, "Yep. That's what I thought- that I would want to crawl under the bed after I watched it."

If anyone else wants to feel the need to crawl under the bed, you really should watch it. Also I'm absolutely aware that one musn't believe everything one hears/reads/sees on the internet. Let's just say that a lot of this hit awfully close to ideas that I've had before. It's all just a little overwhelming.

In other news I just want to say that someone I love very much found out that he has Crohn's disease. I just wanted to say that I'm thinking about you and I know everything will be okay.

I have arrived.

This week I am just trying to stay calm as our situation gets worse and worse. I am still applying for jobs, still following leads, still "knocking on doors." THANKS, DAD.

I applied for unemployment last week. It took me two months and about 45 impotent job applications to get to this point. Hello, point. I'm here.

Bowling balls for tonsils.

The nausea has set in, either from the birth control or the impending nastiness with Kane and Jude's mother. Days and days of clenching, gagging, and crying is really starting to take a toll on my body and mind.

She has registered them for school where she lives. Her mother thinks this plan is "great". It's becoming more and more obvious that there must be some hidden goal, something that no one is telling us about this plan, because I just can't understand what about it is great. I mean, all the time that they usually spend the night with Nan, they'll now be at our house, so there will be no more spending the night with Nan. All the time that they go on vacations with their mom or her family will now be spent at our house, so there will be no more vacations. The only days that they will spend with their mom or Nan or whomever will be days that they're at school for most of the day; the only nights with them will be nights that will be followed by getting up for school. I just feel like there is some hidden agenda, some reason we're not being told that makes this all just FANTASTIC for them.

I really can't apologize enough to all of you for my obsession with this topic. The moments I spend thinking about anything else are few and far between. Thankfully, Jason will begin the phone calls and referral process with some legal eagles tomorrow; I hope that most of the day will be spent lawin', not jawin'. Or jawin' about lawin'. Anything that might help ease this constant feeling like I have a 40 ton cement block riding on my shoulders.

Flowers or weeds?

Flowers or weeds?
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

The last week or so has been a blur, an exhausting whirlwind of good and bad and ugly.

Our show at Speakeasy was fantastic- we sold a whole lot of stuff and did a whole lot of networking. Some new things have opened up for us as a consequence and I'm looking forward to moving ahead with our artistic careers. Plus we drank a lot, laughed a lot, and got lots of hugs from people we love very much.

It turns out Reed had walking pnemonia, but now he's on the mend. He's been sleeping through the night with no nasty coughing fits, which is good for everyone involoved.

Kane and Jude are back from spring break and ready to get this last month of school over with.

We are about to embark, I think, on a very long and painful journey with lawyers and courts and finger-pointing and I'm really not looking forward to it. Part of me hesitates to say much about it, but the larger part wants to rant and rave and scream and spill it all out for you. And for me. And for my knotted stomach and swimming head.

Kane and Jude's mom has decided that the kids should live with her
to go to school and stay with us for all the weekends, holidays, and in the summer- pretty much the exact opposite of the way things are now. She says that this is her decision to make and the fact that we don't agree to it doesn't matter.

Luckily a few people who are very close to us are very invested in this situation and are helping us figure out what path we're going to take. That's all I'm going to say for now, except to say that I hope you can all bear with me through what is bound to be a difficult time for all of us. I appreciate everyone who reads this and I'll try to keep things balanced and rational.

But I make no promises.

Five things.

1. I am very much looking forward to a girly night with one of my many bitches this Wednesday night.

2. I am very much looking forward to Officer Nick's birthday party this Saturday night- put a keg, some policemen, at least one police car, two photographers, and the Party Bot all in one location and something odd is sure to happen.

3. I am pooping my pants about seeing They Might Be Giants Sunday night. I didn't even know that they're coming until Jason clued me in last night. Needless to say within five minutes, two tickets were mine.

4. I am hopeful about a trip to Mexico for New Year's Eve this year. The last time Jason and I went on a vacation that lasted more then 2 days and that didn't involve sleeping over at a friend's house was when we went on our honeymoon- four-and-a-half years ago.

5. Upon thinking about this trip to Mexico, I am realizing that Reed will be three years old when we take this trip. I can't really clearly describe the way this makes me feel. It's very surreal, actually, like, there will be this little dude in my house who somehow sprung from the baby my body made. But instead of being my baby, he'll be... a little dude.

And a post script: I have now been at this job for one year. People Who Accuse Me of Stealing Sunglasses, People Who Throw Boxes At Me, People Who Talk To Me Like I'm An Idiot, YOU CANNOT GET ME DOWN. I throw down celebratorily on all your asses.