Happy Thanksgiving.

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Originally uploaded by cuttingroomfloor

Celebrate with a little dog butt.

Giving thanks.

So it's Thanksgiving time again, so I thought I'd go the traditional route and write about what I'm thankful for.

I'm thankful for having a roof over my head. In this time when so many people are dealing with foreclosure there are many who don't have any place to go, and there are more still who don't have a place as nice and roomy and comfortable as my mom's house. I know how lucky we are to have a place only a few miles from our house to move in, so close that it didn't have to change our daily routines, didn't change our driving time to work and Reed's daycare.

I'm thankful for my mom who isn't afraid to take care of her daughters who are grown and ought to be able to take care of themselves. I'm glad she still has the stamina to deal with us.

I'm thankful for having free time to write, to take pictures, to clean the house and do our laundry and cook supper. It's scary not having a job, and having to try and survive on Jason's income alone, but the silver lining is that I get moments to myself, time to think, to enjoy the silence.

I'm thankful for Duque, a dog that if he doesn't stop shitting in the house might become a roasted blue heeler and save us the money of buying a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. What I'm saying is STOP SHITTING IN THE HOUSE, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.

On that note, I'm thankful for Clorox wipes.

I'm thankful for my friends, the people who have helped me pick up the pieces an infinite number of times, and will likely do so infinitely more. My closest friends can split a six pack with me, comfort me when I'm crying, laugh with me when I'm laughing, and take me out for nachos. I couldn't ask for a better group of people to be there for me in good times and bad.

I'm thankful for Reed, my child who tests the limits of my patience (fairly short) and the limits of my sanity (about the size of a cocktail weenie) every single bleeding day. Yesterday my mom and I had Thanksgiving lunch with him at his school, and he ate an entire pile of collard greens and then proceeded to recite the books of the bible. All of 'em. He astonishes me daily, almost hourly, with his ability to roll with the punches, deal with life, and still find joy in odd places.

I'm thankful for Jason, the strangest, most patient, forgiving, ornery man I've ever known. He loves me even in my ugliest moments, even when every limit I possess has been breached and I am shaking and screaming and slamming doors and sterilizing door knobs. He loves me when I am pronouncing that we'll all die of the plague, when I'm buying too many shirts, when I'm covering all my food in hot sauce. I'm thankful for the laughter that we share, for our ability to joke with each other and giggle like all is right with the world. Happy 35th birthday Jason, and happy 6th anniversary. We've been through a lot in the past few years, and if I've learned anything it's that it's never over, things can always get worse, and all we can do is keep striving, keep persevering, and keep making jokes. I'm glad we're in this together.

Lastly, I'm thankful for beer and Mexican food, without which I probably would have thrown myself out a window by now.

Cleaning out my text messages.

- Should I be this excited about applying for a job that, in the listing, has a job "discription"?

- That's okay, yankee, go ahead and shoot me. It's hot outside and I don't wanna milk the cow.

- I guess I should suck it up. : * That's an emoticon of sucking.

- The hipsters have invaded Trussville. I repeat, the hipsters have invaded. Over.

- I've spent all day writing about anal fistulas. It's not the same as a fissure, which was my hope.

- You gay fucking gypsies.

- I wish I knew how to read.

- Rad! Fuck em! WE ALREADY BEEN GOTTEN OUT!

- And here's a pirate sucking it up: . *

- Oh, Lord, and the cooking and the walking and the shooting and the turkey-plucking. The Civil War was GROSS, dude.

- We at ur hows, steelin ur theengs. That's lol cat.

- The guys who aren't worth stalking are stalking you.

- Hipsters in Trussville! How did they ever get in?

- I GOT this shit. I am so ghetto.

- "What you about to learn is they ain't no balm in Gilead."

Man, oh man, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And it's always darkest before the dawn. And just when you think things can't get any weirder, they do. And some other random, cliche words and phrases and people say.

A lot of things are coming, like Jason's birthday, Thanksgiving, bridal portraits, Reed's birthday, a couple of weddings, and Christmas. This time of year is both fun and incredibly stressful, and lately I'm focusing more on the stress than the fun, unfortunately.

But, as they say, this too shall pass.

Fuck.

Ida is showing herself here today, and I've decided to wait the weather out inside, under a blanket.



I took a couple of pictures from various windows in the house.



Days like today make me incredibly thankful that I have a roof over my head.

The odd couple.

The odd couple.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff

I've been spending a lot of my time with these guys lately. They are weird, ornery, and hungry.

Anyway, life goes on over here. Reed went back to school today, and Jason and I got our new bedroom better settled and organized.

I'm reading Cold Mountain for the first time, and getting ready to start People of the Whale for book club.

Okay, that's all I got.

"You look like a doily."

This week has been nutty.

We took Reed to the doctor on Wednesday; turns out he has the flu AND strep throat. Luckily he's on the mend now, and it's even possible that no one else in the house managed to catch any of his plague.

I went to meet a friend for a drink at Bottletree last night, and happened to see Those Darlins, and MAN, they are really good. So, so good. And Nikki Darlin gave me a free sticker! You can't beat that with a stick.

Tonight I am meeting my lawyer for a much-needed margarita. By "my lawyer", I mean Kristi. And by "much-needed", I mean FOR DAMN SURE, I NEED IT. I spend several days this week thinking maybe I was getting sick with whatever Reed has, but it never progressed, never turned into fever, body aches, total grossness. Finally I realized that I'm in some kind of slump. I hesitate to just say, "Okay, I'm depressed", because somehow this is different. I think it's probably a combination of moving, learning to live with my mom and my sister again, being unemployed and attempting to job search when I see listings for secretarial work that say "Must have ten years secretarial experience", and the time change that means it's dark by 5 every day.

Nevertheless, I have stumbled upon a few neat opportunities with writing and photography, and I'm hoping they pan out. Also I'm showing my jewelry at the Bottletree Craft Bazaar on December 5th, so if you're in Birmingham, come and check it out.

Anyways, the moral of this story is there is no moral to the story. There's no point to any of this. It's all just a... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know... a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle... and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.

And now I'm quoting Troy Dyer. I think it's time to go.

Pig meat, books, and music. And a Jew.

A year ago today I was starting my new job. This year on this day, I'm eating bacon. See, things are lookin' up already!

My friends and I have started a book club called Bitches, Booze, and Books!, and I'm pretty excited about it. Last month Valerie chose The World According to Garp, and the meeting was really fun. We decided that the book is mainly about blowjobs, and the male fixation on such. Well, that's what I decided. This month I've chosen People of the Whale by Linda Hogan, which I read several months ago and really liked. I hope this month's meeting is as fun as the last one.

In other news, Matisyahu is coming to Birmingham this Saturday night, and I'm hoping that Lindsey and I get to cover it for al.com. We'll be covering Pete Yorn and Eric Hutchinson (who I have photographed before) in the coming weeks, and Jason will be helping Lindsey cover Cage the Elephant.

Also I just discovered that Matisyahu's birthday is June 30th, just three days after mine, SO CLEARLY WE ARE GOING TO BE BEST FRIENDS.

"She's infectious human waste!"

Ah, another Halloween come and gone.

Reed was The Black Spiderman (as he calls it), but only for a little while at his daycare Halloween party. Friday evening he came down with a fever and cough that lasted until Sunday afternoon, so no Trick or Treating for Reed this year. I'm thinking of getting him dressed up in his costume some time this week and taking him to a couple of houses to get candy, because I feel so bad for him to have missed it. Oddly enough, he doesn't seem to be concerned whatsoever.

Jason and I dressed as Tyler Durden and Marla Singer, respectively, and I think it might have been our best costumes yet. Of course I'm automatically a fan of anything that allows me to have huge hair and tons of makeup.

Life around here is starting to feel very calm and quiet, and it's both reassuring and unsettling. I'm still applying for jobs and not getting any phone calls. Most days I clean and rearrange and walk dogs and feed cats and clean some more and do laundry. As a result, I'm not finding myself with much to write about. So, you know, bless you guys' hearts for having to come on here and read about what I had for breakfast.

It was oatmeal, by the way.

Ha!

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Originally uploaded by cuttingroomfloor

I finally have my computer hooked up to the internet here at my mom's house, and in celebration I decided to abuse the dog.

One night only!

Jason and I, along with several other people, are showing stuff in an art show on Sunday night, October 25th. If you're in the Birmingham area and want to come, get in touch with me for directions and shit. I'll have tons of new jewelry, and Jason painted a brand new piece just for this show.

Gretchen, the wonderasshole.

Gretchen, the wonderasshole.
Originally uploaded by cuttingroomfloor

This is my mom's dog Gretchen. Yesterday I took her and Duque over to our old house to let them run around in our fenced back yard. OF COURSE, Gretchen managed to get out of the fence.

Cut to Lindsey and me, driving around the neighborhood slowly, hollering and whistling out my windows. We discover Gretchen, sleeping peacefully in the sun in someone else's driveway about three blocks from my house. Lindsey catches her, and promptly loses hold, and then we're running through people's back yards trying to catch her. We end up in a back yard where a dude is sitting peacefully on his back porch, and he smiles and waves and half-heartedly calls Gretchen to see if she'll come to him.

Eventually we corner her in his front yard up against his porch, but alas, I've left the leash in the car (4 houses down), and so I have to pick her up and carry her squirming to the car.

It was fun.

But now I have to go. She's gotten away from my mom's house, and I have to go and try to catch her.

Slowly getting back to normal. Whatever that is.

Sleeping Duque.
Originally uploaded by cuttingroomfloor

We're slowly but surely getting all our things moved in at my mom's house. GAH, we have a lot of shit. I mean, loads and loads of shit.

We've moved most of the furniture, and our artwork, our books, our movies. And, while we've moved some of our clothes, HOLY CRAP at all the clothes we still have to move. And I have seriously already donated about 10 garbage bags full of clothes, shoes, and purses to Goodwill. For fuck's sakes, I don't know how we had it all in our house to begin with.

Duque is settling in especially well here. He's had a lightness about him, a spring in his step, that I've never seen before. He can play with Gretchen (my mom's Jack Russell terrier), or her abundance of cats. I think he really loves that, so far, he's been sleeping in our bedroom floor instead of his crate.

Reed loves this, loves living at Ma's house, and our only problem with him so far is that he is determined to sleep with Ma every night. We're working on getting him to sleep in his own room, and I'm hoping that's going to happen before we all go crazy.

Anyway, boring post, I know, but that's what's going on over here. What's going on with you?

Cleaning out my text messages.

- So, everyone has nipple hair. I feel so vindicated.

- BE COOL IS IT THE FUZZ

- I wouldn't talk to Alan Hunter about Mtv because I try not to reward people's mediocrity. How sad it must be to have peaked in the 80's.

- This thing is kind of a celebration in kissing your own ass. I've never seen so many self important assholes walking around, smiling smugly at one another.

- I just got Chik Fil A because I was craving it like a business of ferrets.

- I guess my dead Phish spell hasn't quite kicked in yet.

- You have no idea how often I've wished you were here this afternoon specifically to YELL shitty dick at people.

- I AM LIKE CUCUMBER

- I just had a shot of tequila. You people should be concerned.

- 'slam on my breaks'- is that like 'devaining shrimp'?

- I am craving a hillock of beans.

- A hotdog just told me to do the wave.

- My lovecan's wasted.

"Who says I can't get stoned; pick my nose in my house alone."

So, then, here I am at my mom's house. We're about half-way moved in, and everything is hectic and mixed up and every time we need something- clean underwear, socks, toothbrush- we have to figure out if it's here or there.

This is the part I hate about moving: moving.

What's cool about moving in here is that my mom has internet. INTERNET! How I've missed you. It's been right about one year since we lost internet at our house; one year since I've been able to roll out of bed and check my email, or read my favorite blogs, or job search, or write something new here. I'm looking forward to being able to do that again.

Plus, you know, PORN. Gotta love the porn.

Okay, I've got Jason dancing around in his underwear singing John Mayer right now. I've gotta go.

Check me out in Birmingham Magazine!

We'll all float on anyway.

Hm, where to start? I've already written about getting laid off, and about my uncle dying. Let's see; what else?

Well, on Friday we got a letter in the mail that our house has been foreclosed, and that we have ten days (until October 10th) to vacate. PARTY, right? So we've been planning and packing and trying to figure out how to fit all of us into my mother's house. It's not that small of a house, it's just the plan of action, and figuring where to put all our shit- really that should be ALL OUR SHIT EXCLAMATION- once we get there.

So this morning I called the lawyer for the mortgage company to find out if that date, October 10th, was the definite date we had to be out, because if we could get even a couple more days it would make things so much easier for us. The attorney said that we should call our mortgage company and ask for an extended vacate period, that they do that all the time, that it's nothing out of the ordinary. So I called Citimortgage at the number he gave me and spoke to Avery, who had no idea what I was talking about, and that I should call Joe X- I'm not shitting you, JOE X is who I should talk to. So I called the number Avery gave me for JOE X, and Kathy answered and said she had never heard of JOE X, and that the number I called was her direct line and she had never heard of a JOE X and that she doesn't work with loans and I could try Safeguard, the property management company. So I called Safeguard, and the girl there told me they had nothing to do with any of it, and I should talk to my mortgage company. THANKS. So I called the mortgage company again and spoke with a girl who said that there's nothing they could do; had we asked for assistance they might have been able to help us out. I said, "We DID ask for assistance; we filled out your hardship package TWICE and never heard from you guys, and every time we've called we've been told that our case has been turned over to someone else and that someone else is off today so we'll have to call them tomorrow." Then I asked to speak to her supervisor. Her supervisor Ashley informed me that we should call the sheriff's office to find out when we actually have to be out of the house and if we can get and extension. I said, "You're telling me that YOU can't tell me, and no one there at Citimortgage can tell me when we're supposed to be out of the house." She replied, "Yes." So then I said, "Hey, are you guys hiring? Because I need a job and I could come sit down there and not know what I'm doing for ten or twelve dollars an hour." I SERIOUSLY SAID THAT, I AM SUCH A BADASS. So I called the sheriff's department and they had no idea what I was talking about and I spoke to three different people including SMALL CLAIMS (a mortgage? small claims? seriously?) and probate and nobody knew anything about it. So now I've called the attorney again and left a message and I'm waiting to hear back.

DO NOT, FOR THE LOVE, EVER GET A MORTGAGE THROUGH CITIMORTGAGE. PLEASE. FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, DON'T DO IT.

Also, last night, Jason's ex-wife's husband started sending him threatening text messages about how he's coming to our house and Jason is a "jackass" and a "sorry ass". Oh, and I haven't even told you the half of what's been going on. I've been debating how much I'm going to write here about what's been going on with Jason's kids, so suffice it to say that everything is all messed up and the blame falls on me, on my being scary and threatening, and now my husband can't spend time with his kids and my son can't spend time with his brothers because of it.

All else I know to say on that is, 1) I am proud of this blog. I love to write, and I like everything I've written here. I enjoy every one's comments, whether good or bad, and I like knowing that people are looking at this blog. I don't regret the things I've written here because I am allowed to express love and exasperation and I am allowed to use sarcasm and exaggeration when I do it; I am allowed an opinion. If you don't like my opinion, don't read my blog. 2) I love Kane and Jude, tons and tons, more than I am capable of expressing here, and I have always treated them with love and respect and the things that I've written here about them speak to how deep and real that love is. Sometimes I write about day-to-day things like SOCKS! and COATS!, but I haven't written anything on this blog about any of that stuff that I haven't said out loud to Kane and Jude. And 3) I don't write this blog for children to read. The internet is a big, scary place and there is a lot of stuff out there that isn't for children. My blog certainly isn't the worst of it; there are all kinds of things scarier like PORN and CARROT TOP and REPUBLICANISM that kids could be looking at, but all the same, this blog is not for kids.

So, I think that about gets us up to speed. Thoughts? Questions? 'Ludes?

I wrote here not too long ago about the horrific slaughter of dolphins that has been occuring and the documentary that has come out about it, The Cove. My mom has a spiritual and sentimental attachment to dolphins that I'm not going to go into here; suffice it to say that the subject feels very close to home for me.

I've just watched a documentary called Sharkwater, and it too was horrific. Did you know that Taiwan pays Costa Rica huge amounts of money for fishermen to illegally fish sharks, cut their fins off, and send them to Taiwan for soups, pills, etc.? Costa Rica is a country that makes a lot of money off of ecotourism, and shark fishing is technically illegal, yet hundreds of thousands of sharks die there in the waters around Cocos every year. Did you also know that, as a result of intense pressure from fishermen, Galapagos allowed longline fishing of sharks for a time? It has since become illegal again, but for fuck's sakes, Galapagos! It's a place that's known for being home to some of the most rare and interesting animals on earth, and one of the biggest threats in Galapagos now is illegal shark fishing (The most pressing threat to the Marine Reserve comes from local, mainland and foreign fishing targeting marine life illegally within the Reserve, such as sharks (hammerheads and other species) for their fins, and the harvest of sea cucumbers out of season.)

Have you ever watched fishermen catch sharks and "obtain" the fins? They use long lines, miles and miles long, with lots of hooks attached all along the line. When they haul the sharks onto the boats, sometimes they're already dead, but sometimes they're still alive. They slice off all the fins including the tail (even with the live ones) and toss the body back into the ocean. Fishing in this manner means that they catch all sorts of things, sailfish and other species that they aren't looking for, and all different kinds of sharks including hammerheads and tiger sharks and even whale sharks, a species that has no teeth and filter feeds, eating things like algae and krill.

We humans get the majority of our oxygen (that we need to survive) from the ocean. This shark fishing is rapidly killing off the animal that is at the top of the food chain in the ocean, and no one knows how badly this will upset ocean ecology, marine life as a whole when there are no more (or just drastically less) sharks. Sharks are the oldest living animal on this planet, older than dinosaurs, and they've survived and thrived for this long in nature, until now we're killing them off, obliterating them.

The man who made the documentary Sharkwater, Rob Stewart, talks about how he's always been drawn to sharks, how watching them die is like watching his family die. His intense concern for sharks reminds me a lot of my mother's connection with dolphins.

I realize that there are terrible things happening all over the world, that there are fifty million different causes to be concerned about, but I think the first step to change is to talk about these problems, to get the word out. In the film Sharkwater it is said that to make change, you don't need everyone in the world to fight for change, you really only need a few people who are really passionate about it. So I'm just trying to help get the word out.

Cleaning out my text messages.

- So many douchebags, so little time.

- I FOLLOW THROUGH WITH MY HYPERBOLE, BITCH!

- Can you or would you be willing to ghostbust?

- BUFFY. There's a girl in Wal-Mart who is the TRUE embodiment of 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag.

- Why do good hair days only happen on days when you have nothing to do but watch Gilmore Girls and eat slices of turkey lunch meat?

- I want a baby. What? Did that come out?

- My mom watches some dumbass soap opera and she's watching it now and I looked up and there's Kevin Arnold's mom, being a skanky ho.

- I am wearing shorts with a one-inch inseam and a Snapped t shirt. I think this qualifies as letting oneself go. I had an icecream sandwich for lunch.

- You can just lick the doorknob.

- Is she a Republican? Does she like Nickelback?

- I feel like a big dirty whore most of the time. I embrace my big dirty whoreness.

- I just folded your dumbass linens. I should be getting paid.

- I am dismayed by the youth.

- I feel like a prized asshole.

- Your lame leg is somebody else's pot o' gold!

- Gutter is a tool! Gutter is a tool!

- Hangover, I am your bitch lover.

- Dick Cheney: still a douche.

"Things that we learn are no longer enough."

Hoo, boy, I don't even know where to start. Not that much exciting has been happening anyway, so there probably isn't actually even that much to say.

Life has been weird, difficult, trying, unpredictable.

So, you know, pretty much like any other time in my life.

I keep thinking of ways to make things better, steps to take, and I can't seem to muster any motivation when it counts. I'm having a lot, A LOT, of trouble getting things done, finding the persistence to work on my life.

I've been reading a lot, watching movies, the usual modes of procrastination. I've also been using a lot of energy just to get through each day without whacking myself in the face with a hammer, whac-a-mole style.

Again, like any other day.

I really hope I can get things going again on this blog soon. I am really very proud of a lot of the things I've written here, and I don't want to let it go by the wayside. It's been suggested to me recently that this blog has caused me so much trouble that I ought to just take the whole thing down, and that idea made me so sad, really really depressed, so I think I'm going to stick with it a while longer and see what happens. Selfish, maybe; it's just that it has really meant a lot to me, really gotten me through a lot of things to be able to document them here. I enjoy getting it out, working things out in type, and I love and appreciate everyone's comments, advice, encouragement.

There have been times when this blog has been all that has gotten me through the day. I'm just not willing to toss it out yet. Thanks to those of you who are sticking with it with me. I love y'all.