See, that puppy just wants to be with her horsey best friend and even goes through the RAIN to say hi, and that hot rancher just keeps takin her back (sigh—ha ha), and the puppy lady is like *sorry about that*… *again*, and *hey, quit escapin under the fence!*, and then the puppy gets adopted and put in that fancy car, but that puppy is not a fancy car city type, she’s a *ranch dog*, and that Clydesdale does the horse equivalent of running through a crowded airport to stop a loved one from boarding a plane for that internship in Paris because it LOVES that puppy, and it jumps over that fence RIGHT AT THE SWELL OF THE SONG, and its posse is all *Yo back that ass up, city slicker*, and the city slicker’s like WHOA WTF, and the puppy goes back to the hot rancher and her horsey BFF, and I’ve watched it seven times.
Eventually, I ended up at Macy’s, which seemed to be no better.
Maybe I should start carrying a backpack again. (Cue Kate screaming at her screen.) — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) January 10, 2014
The only half-decent ones I found were like 160 bucks. No. Absolutely not.
Purses I won’t buy, part 1: those with a # > than 0 in the hundreds place It’s a glorified bucket for my stuff. It’s a stuff bucket. Jesus. — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) January 10, 2014
My gay husband Paul reminded me that Gypsy Rose Lee, too, wore tassels. That was a good point. I told him I’d buy a tassel-less purse and some sassy pasties.
Finally, I hit Sears--yes, Sears--and the first one I picked up was from a designer with the same name as my sister. Fate.
You may be wondering why I needed boots, given that last year I bought tall boots and short boots. Well. The tall boots, which I loved so much, are wicked uncomfortable. They just barely zip around my calves. It's like wearing calf-tourniquets all day. Plus, as I mentioned, they're so tall, the tops dig into my inner thigh fat. So I never wear them.
See, Violet does this thing when she's nervous. She collects my shoes and bras. Doesn't chew them; just puts them in her bed or snuggles with them on the couch. I often come home from work to find a shoe, a slipper, a flip-flop, and/or a brassiere next to a warm spot on the chaise.
Look closely at the top right and bottom left. You can see her shadow against the wall.
Annoying to have to go around the house, gather my footwear, and toss my undergarments back in the hamper, but I can't get mad at her because
she soooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuute.
And besides, she never chewed them.
MOTHERF
She must've been real nervous that day. So long, short boots.
The good news is, I went to DSW and found the same exact ones, except they didn't have them in brown, so I bought black. Fine, since I can't wear my black tall boots anyway because torture.
But now I need brown boots. Maybe brown tall boots? That don't boa-constrict or jam themselves into my laygs?
I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
Also, Kate told me to buy
Old Navy t-shirts
in a variety of colors, you know, for layering with cardigans/jackets/whatnot. So I did.
...It's possible I've done less of the layering and more of the just wearing them with jeans and calling it a day.
Also, I haven't worn a skirt yet this school year.
1. I only cry twice (once bc Feelings, and once when they draw blood for the infectious disease screening).
2. The nurse takes my height and weight by saying, “How tall are you, and how much do you weigh?” That’s cool.
3. Then she says, “You’re here alone?” I reply in the affirmative, and as if to explain the question, she says, “OK, sometimes the husband is coming in from another direction.” (ahem—hetero-normative!!, and also, See #1.)
4. A 38-year-old woman’s chance of conception, when trying, is 12%. With drugs, it can go up to 20%.
5. My insurance covers blood tests but maybe-probably not ultrasounds, insemination, and such because I’m using donor sperm. It would, definitely, cover all of that for 3 cycles if I were using a husband’s. (Read: discrimination.) The financial person says she’ll call BlueCross/BlueShield and let me know what she finds out.
6. The doc says he’d guess I’ve been exposed to CMV (a virus that can cause birth defects) because I hang around germ-monsters for a living, but the blood test results will be back on Friday. If, by some random chance, I’m CMV-negative, I’ll have to choose another donor because Mr. Happy Pants is CMV-positive. Guess I’ll wait to set up the new blog because I don’t want to jinx it by registering babyhappypants.com.
7. As of today, a real thing I’ve uttered to another person: “I’ve been told I have a tiny cervix.”
8. I could already pass for 4 months pregnant any day of the fucking week.
#nofilter #hahahajk #allthefilters
[Edit: After a commenter told me to “stop it”, I realized that it sounds like I’m putting myself down here. I’m not. I think I look pregnant, but it’s kind of cute, no?]
9. My iPhone app tells me I’ll ovulate on Valentine’s Day, which I think is a really sweet gesture on my ovaries’ part. But turns out the druggy drugs they’ll give me will make me ovulate whenever we say Go. So.
I don’t really talk to strangers much. Maybe because I have some social anxiety that prevents it. Maybe because I learned about Stranger Danger when I was kid—you remember: mustachioed guy with Mars bars offering rides home in his windowless van.
But one place I always found it easy to strike up conversations with people I didn’t know was the dog park. I used to go there all the time when my dogs were younger, and something about being in a fenced-in space watching these lovable beings running around, and slobbering, and pooping, makes people want to share with others about how their specific dog runs around, and slobbers, and poops.
So one day, I was chatting with a stranger—I’m sure—about the minutiae of our dogs’ bowel movements, when somehow we got off on a different topic. We started talking about creamsicles. You know what those are, right?
Orange popsicles with a vanilla center.
I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid and I’d hear popsicles, I’d be like, “Ooooh!” but if they turned out to be creamsicles, I was all
Good god. They were the best.
Anyway, this particular stranger said, “You know, Arby’s has a creamsicle milkshake.”
STOP.
WUT.
Now I was at the dog park in Carrboro when this happened, and if you’ve ever been there, you know there’s an Arby’s, like, a quarter of a mile away. And I was like, Fuuuuuuuuuuuck this place—I’m out. I loaded up my dogs and headed for the drive-thru.
I wasn’t familiar with Arby’s menu—I mean, is anybody? Does ANYBODY go to Arby’s? Be honest, how many of you have been to Arby’s in the last month?
No, it’s definitely a nationwide drug front.
Anyway, I got some kind of sandwich and some fries—you know to balance out the meal—and the motherfucking creamsicle milkshake.
I only ate about half the sandwich and half the fries because they were just OK, but when I tell you the creamsicle milkshake… was a creamsicle milkshake—listen, it was a creamsicle… but also a milkshake. I was in dire ice cream headache pain but could not stop slurping it down. Thing was gone in 2½ minutes.
I lived in Hillsborough at the time, so I went home, dropped the dogs off, and headed to Durham to go out for the night. So I was on I-85 headed east when the stomach cramp hit me. It was one of those that makes you kind of stand up out of your seat, as if you might be able to get away from it?
And I was scared because I was on that stretch of highway between Hillsborough and Durham where there are no exits whatsoever. Hoping that the cramp was a one-off, I settled back into my seat, but alas. Alas! My guts started convulsing inside me. I hit the gas pedal. I needed to make it to Route 70, and I needed to do a very rude thing indeed to some poor gas station’s bathroom. I sped towards Durham, but it became VERY clear VERY soon that I was just not. going. to make it.
And that’s a weird moment, you know? When you realize that in a very short time you’re going to be a person who has shat in the woods next to the highway.
For the rest of your life.
You can’t un-become that person.
Forever and ever, if you find yourself in a game of I Never, and somebody says, “I’ve never dropped a roadside deuce,” you’re going to have to drink. It’s very humbling.
But I didn’t really have time to consider what was happening. I pulled off the interstate, grabbed some napkins from the Arby’s bag still in the front seat, and sprinted—as much as one can sprint while squeezing her ass cheeks together—into the woods.
Now I grew up in the country, just down yonder from Mr. Proffitt’s cattle farm, so I know of which I’m about to speak. When I say what came out of my body was a cowpie, I mean, in circumference, height, volume, consistency, everything—
’twas a cow pie.
Like, have you ever taken a shit so big that, when you stood up, you were off-balance? That’s how it was. Like all my organs had shifted to make room for it and now they had to slide back into place.
I staggered back to my car and made it home, and everything was totally fine—I didn’t end up in the ER or anything–but the take-away, of course, is that Stranger Danger is not always a dude in a van with candy. Sometimes it’s a friendly person at the dog park with advice about fast food.
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Dad and I drove to Massachusetts and back for Christmas. You’re welcome.
Dad: (apropos of I don’t know what) I am one clever son of a bitch.
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Dad: (recalling an acquaintance) What was her name? Siduri? No, that was the barmaid from Gilgamesh.
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Dad: Stuff is fuckin delicious.
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Dad: (on the trip north) My ass hurts. Not the ass. The muscles underneath the ass. The ass muscles.
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Dad: Hard to know who to root for. I guess I’m rooting for the Buddhists.
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Dad: You and I could start a dog farm!
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Dad: (digging in his coat pocket, where he has stowed a few, loose) Care for a ginger snap?
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Dad: I pressed the button for water and instead the machine gave me something disgusting, like root beer. Who drinks root beer? You like root beer?
Me: Sure.
Dad: Well, de gustibus no est disputandum. That means “Carthage must be destroyed”. No, just kidding.
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My 4-year-old niece: An M&M is a dead gumdrop.
Dad: That’s poetic. Metaphor.
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Dad: (after the waitress set my steak in front of me and headed back to the kitchen) What’d she say?
Me: Your liver’s coming out.
Dad: That sounds serious.
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Dad: (at Starbucks) Large black coffee. None of their hippie concoctions.
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Dad: (on the trip south) My ass hurts. Not the ass. The bones and joints underneath the ass.
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Dad: I don’t go to Mummy’s dentist. I don’t like Mummy’s dentist. She’s all smiley and nice.
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Dad: I’m glad I showered and shaved before we ran into your friend. That way she didn’t go around saying, “I saw Amy Scott with her derelict father.”
“There’s probably another explanation.”
“Could anything else have happened to it?”
“Maybe it’s just misplaced.”
But it was in that box. Inside another box, in my closet, next to my socks. And my house has never been broken into. What other conclusion am I supposed to draw?
There isn’t any. Someone I know took my great grandmother’s engagement ring.
I filed a police report. Durham PD has a detective who does nothing but pawn shop investigations. He’s very good, I was told by a clerk at National Pawn as I peered into their jewelry case. The investigator asked for a photo. I didn’t have a photo. I drew a picture, added details from the 1998 appraisal I had in my files, and emailed it to him.
I haven’t heard anything.
I didn’t expect to, really. I can’t imagine a friend or acquaintance taking it for the money. I don’t have destitute people as guests in my home (though I don’t like what that says about me). Years ago, a woman in my therapy group shared about her shoplifting compulsion. It wasn’t that she needed to—she had plenty of money—and she clearly knew better, but she had a pathology. I assume it’s the same in this case.
Speaking of pathology, my mind is doing weird things.
The day after I wrote the last post, I let the dogs in and found myself standing at the door unable to move. I stared at the door jamb and, in the middle of the day on a Sunday with my two pit bulls at my feet in a house where I’ve never felt unsafe, flipped the lock on the knob and threw the deadbolt.
In a fit of “Do I really trust who I trust?”, I changed the password on all my protected blog posts.
And I keep having fantasies of the ring’s return. Of a friend coming to me, crying and sheepish, to confess. Of finding an anonymous package in my mailbox. Of the detective calling and saying, “It turned up at the Picasso on Roxboro and Club.” And yes, of finding it in my laundry basket and having to eat crow. I would gladly eat crow. But it’s not in my laundry basket. It would’ve had to slither out of the box, that was inside the other box, in my closet, next to my socks.
Maybe this experience hasn’t changed me. When a friend asked if he could invite two new acquaintances to my New Year’s Eve party, I said yes without any hesitation. Is that because I still believe in people, love people, want to know people? Or is it because I literally have nothing else to lose? There’s literally nothing else anyone could take from my house that means anything to me.
I guess that’s not true. If someone took the dogs, I’d lose my fucking mind.
In my life, I’ve owned only one thing of any value. I mean, aside from my house, which is supposedly worth more than anything else, but let’s be frank, it’s a 750-square-foot glorified shed in the ghetto. People have cars worth more than my house.
And my car, which cost—I don’t even remember—$18,000? I’ll be paying my car off for a couple more years.
My computer is a 2006 Mac desktop which weighs approximately a pood. The television that sits in my spare room was a hand-me-down from my friend when she moved back to Europe in 2008.
So really, it was just the ring. My great grandmother’s engagement ring that my parents gave me for my college graduation. Platinum, a round-cut diamond in a square setting with three tiny diamonds on either side, the stones together weighing almost a carat.
I never wore it. Why would I wear it? Most days, I remember to put on a pair of silver earrings, but I don’t do sparklies, I don’t do baubles. No, I kept the ring in a little tan velvety box, which itself sat in a gold cardboard box, accompanied by a brooch and the only pair of gold earrings I own, in the small closet in my bedroom, next to my sock box. Every six months or so, I would open the box, look at the ring, slip in on my finger, and put in back in the box.
And now it’s gone.
I don’t know why—maybe because I was getting dressed in a sparkly sweater for a Christmas party, or maybe because a friend at the gym got engaged last weekend—but last night I noticed the box, next to my socks.
I opened it and found the brooch and earrings. The ring was gone.
No, I didn’t lose it.
No, I didn’t put it in a safe deposit box and forget.
It was in that box, next to my socks, and now it’s gone.
And the hardest part about this situation is that my house has never been broken into.
So what that means is that someone came into my house, invited, looked through my stuff, and stole my ring.
And it could be anybody. I have parties. I invite friends and acquaintances and neighbors. I don’t know them all well. I hang out by the fire pit while they mill about my house. I do that because, and this is the hardest part, it would never occur to me to walk into a person’s house—friend or stranger—and take so much as a postage stamp. So I never imagined anyone would do it to me.
When I was in 5th grade, Monica Green got a birthstone ring. It was purple. She was skinny. It fell on the floor of Mrs. Heller’s classroom. I picked it up and tried it on. It more or less fit my pinkie. Eventually, Monica realized it was gone and saw that I had it. She told Mrs. Heller, who then inquired. No, I said, this ring is my sister’s. And remarkably—I can’t, as a teacher, imagine letting something like that go—I was allowed to leave school with the ring.
Years later, when I read “The Telltale Heart”, I would get sweaty remembering the way the ring had felt awkward on my little finger, the way it had sparkled in my dollhouse bathtub where I dropped it, the way I hadn’t been able to shake the cloud that hung over me, the way the next day I had waited until Mrs. Heller wasn’t looking, walked casually by Monica’s desk, and dropped it on a pile of pencil shavings inside. And the relief—good god, the relief.
I should have said sorry to Monica. I should have confessed to the teacher. I still think about that. But the important thing was the lesson I learned, which was that it’s real shitty to take something that’s not yours. For them, definitely, but in addition, it will make you feel real shitty.
And so I don’t do that. I don’t take things that don’t belong to me.
And now I feel so mad and sad and stupid. The box wasn’t hidden. It was in my closet, but it wasn’t hidden.
Why didn’t I hide it?
As I sobbed to Mom this morning, she said it’s a good thing, or it means a good thing about me, it means that I’m trusting. Is that a good thing?
I know it’s an object. And objects are just objects.
But this object can’t be replaced and neither can my belief in people.
In my life, I’ve worked very hard to become less judgmental, and I have had great success. But lately I’ve been seeing this photo show up in my feed
and to those of you who have Liked or Shared it, I want to say this: I am judging you.
I am judging you because you’re sharing propaganda about an issue you don’t even understand. LITERALLY NO ONE, not even those who are on strike themselves, thinks fast food workers should be paid more than soldiers.
But some of us think that LITERALLY EVERYONE deserves a living wage. And if you comment that minimum wage is a living wage, I will judge you so hard, my head will probably ‘splode.
And if you truly believe that raising the minimum wage and paying soldiers more are mutually exclusive prospects, that lifting the bottom doesn’t in turn bring up the middle, I don’t. even. know. where. the hell. to begin.
I’ve been attempting to focus on the abundance in my life, rather than participating my usual Trance of Scarcity. The meditation (see Day 25) definitely helps, but I also thought I’d tweet one of those annoying 30 Days of Thankfulness things, except try to make it not-annoying.
The most difficult part was not coming up with things for which I felt grateful—I got plenty. The most difficult part was staying within 140 characters. You know how I like to babble on. The teacher of a writing workshop I took last year said, “You’ve got 25-30% too much fat.”
I was like, “DON’T I KNOW IT. Wait, you mean my writing?” He was right. I need to trim it down…
Arg! If I wanted to go on a word diet, I would’ve been a poet!
But I did it for thirty days. (NB: The following is not poetry. It’s just skinny prose.)
Day 1: 4 years ago today, my sister called me at 3am to ask if I could come watch her 2 kids bc her 3rd was rarin to come out. #thankful
That 4-year-old, man. She’s dramatic and sassy, she wants what she wants, and she’s in the 8th percentile for height. In other words, she’s me. Hahaha. No, she’s not. She’s her. She’s her own person. But kind of me. I yub her.
Day 2: 6 years ago, her cage had a sign that said “Cruelty/Confiscation” on it. My 5yo niece said, “You could name her Violet.” #thankful
Day 4: I used to eat my feelings all the time. Sometimes I still do but sometimes I rip a barbell off the floor instead. #crossfit#thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 4, 2013
Day 6: Talking w Dad abt a childhood friend, realized Idk what it’s like to have a parent who said he’d be somewhere & not show up #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 7, 2013
This goes for both my parents. My parents showed the fuck up.
Day 7: A few wonderful people have taught me that if your face wants to cry, who are you to argue? #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 8, 2013
I’m still bad at crying (i.e., I need to do more of it and less eating/checking Facebook/self-flagellation/etc.), but I have good role models (namely, Cat, EJ, and Melissa).
Day 9: I’m having a hard time moving on from hot tubs, so, hot tubs. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 10, 2013
Day 10: There’s this pic of my friend’s baby chilling with my dog. Not my baby so I’m not gonna post it here but trust me. #adorbz#thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 11, 2013
Day 12: It’s cold outside. My little house in the shitty part of town is little and in the shitty part of town. But it’s warm. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 13, 2013
Day 12: My sister can make me feel very good about myself with very few words. She also invites me over for taco night. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 14, 2013
(Typo: That was supposed to be Day 13.)
Day 14: That lump I’d been alternately pretending didn’t exist and catastrophizing? Doc: “Where?” Me: “Here.” Doc: “Uh…where?” #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 14, 2013
When the doc actually felt it, she goes—I shit you not, “Yeah, you got a lot of lumps and bumps, and this one doesn’t feel any different from the other ones.” :/
Day 15: My friend Cat and I *cannot* get our phone calls under 75 minutes. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 16, 2013
Day 16: Learning (1) I *can* say, “When you say/do X, it makes me feel Y,” and (2) people don’t automatically hate me as a result. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 16, 2013
Also, if they do hate me as a result, that’s their own goddamn problem.
It’s a good job. I just wish I got paid more and didn’t have to deal with so much bullshit. I guess that’s everybody, right? Except I really should get paid more.
Day 18: Got a couple pretty spectacular Kates in my life. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 19, 2013
Day 19: I’m so very #thankful that I’m no longer online dating. — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 20, 2013
Every so often I consider it, dry-heave, and un-consider it.
Day 20: @TheMonti1–one of the few things that’ll get me out of my stretchy pants & off the couch on a cold dark weekday night. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 21, 2013
I’m hosting the StorySLAM on December 11, folks! Come on out!
Day 21: There’s a dude at the gym–dances & smiles & fistbumps nonstop. Impossible to be around him & not feel better about life. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 22, 2013
Day 22: Drove by a dialysis clinic with a jaunty sign tonight. So #thankful I have no use for the place. Also, what a liar of a sign. — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 23, 2013
Day 24: Ben. Also <snaps fingers> what’s his name…? Jerry. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 25, 2013
Day 25: Since August, I’ve been doing 20 minutes of meditation most days. Amazing what becomes clear when I STFU for a sec. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 26, 2013
So, in today’s ironic news, when I need to unplug, I use an iPhone app. It’s called Get Some Headspace, and I highly recommend it. The dude who leads the meditation is a former Buddhist monk, and he sounds a tiny bit like the Geico Gecko so everybody wins.
Day 26: Twice-baked potato night at my sister’s! #thankful (Also, I didn’t take enough Lactaid… #thankful for once that I live alone. #PU) — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 27, 2013
Day 27: I love writing & want to do it as a career. Today a *tiny* door opened. Trying not to get too excited but #thankful for a tiny door. — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 27, 2013
Terrified of jinxing it, but there’s an amazing woman who has created a passion project, and we met, and it was awesome, and she’s invited me to be part of her team, and I hope I can keep up.
Day 28: Both my siblings married people I adore and created tiny humans I could never have dreamed up. #thankful — Avid Bruxist (@avidbruxist) November 28, 2013
Day 29: I can watch 3 episodes of Breaking Bad in the middle of the day, bc I have the day off, I’m an adult, and I feel like it. #thankful
January 2014 is baby-making time. I’m gonna order some of Mr. Happy Pants‘ seed, put my legs up a wall, and think of England.
Or maybe I’ll go out on New Year’s Eve, get wasted, find some rando who seems to have a fair-to-middling IQ, have unprotected sex, and cross my fingers.
(JK, MOM. Condoms r gr8! I <3 protected sex!)
(JK, DAD. I’m a virgin!)
It occurs to me that, if I’m going to blog about this process, and of course I’m going to blog about it, the series should have a name.
Something catchy like:
Single Gal Makes a Baby
or
And Baby Makes Two
(Never mind—just Googled that one, and there are two novels, a documentary, a feature film, episodes of both ER and Three’s Company, and a smug column in the Wall Street Journal with that title.)
Maybe instead:
Fool’s Errand
(What am I doing?!)
Whoever comes up with the best title for the series wins a prize. A really good prize, like brunch or something.
