LinnyLoo

Why I am overweight: Part One

Scene:  Living room, night.  HUSBAND and ME eating mini Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

HUSBAND:  Wow, these are cool.  Did you bring a spoon?

ME:  The spoon is in the lid! 

H:  Get out!

M:  I know!

H:  (eating, nodding his head)  Yep, I fucking like it.  I mean, it's all laid out for you.  Spoon, portion size . . .

M:   Totally.

(quiet eating going on, just as I am really getting into it, it's gone.  I mean, it's SUPER SMALL.  I look l at HUSBAND, who is holding the empty container and spoon, looking down at them like, what the . . .?)

M:  So, I guess the only thing that sucks about these small Ben and Jerry's is how . . . small they are?

H:  Totally.

Sunday, raining

Fall has arrived, and quickly.  The trees are red and orange, and today, dripping with rain.  Usually I do not sleep past 8:00, this morning I didn't leave the bed until 10:00.  Why ruin a good thing?  I was warm, Igby was snuggling, and the coffee hadn't been brewed yet.  My general rule of thumb is that one shouldn't get out of bed until coffee can be assured.

The Husband is insistent that we watch watch the Seahawks game, so I am buried in blankets on the couch, reading The Best American Short Stories 2004, the one edited by Lorrie Moore.  I don't know how I missed this one, Lorrie Moore is my favorite writer.  Reading stories she picked is some strange kind of idea of how her brain works. 

I am signed up for NaNoWriMo this year.  I graduated* several years ago with a degree in English Lit/Creative Writing, and my full intentions were to get a masters in creative writing and then write book after book, living with ink stained fingers and a small, yet loyal, following of readers.  This is not quite what happened.  Instead, I got engaged in my last semester of college, on the same day that my father went into the emergency room and came out with a fatal liver disease.  I was writing a thesis, planning a wedding and struggling to understand how our lives were changing.  My husband worked for my father's company, and when he got sick it the company began a long, slow, painful demise that resulted in no paychecks for anyone for a long time.  *Then I found out there had been some error with the transferring of credits and I did not, in fact, have enough credits to graduate, but I had already sent the notices and bought the gown, and because of all of this I fell apart in the admissions/graduation office, and cried loudly and begged enough that they allowed to walk, with the idea that I would take a science class during the summer term. 

I walked, took the pictures, smiled with the empty diploma holder, and never looked back.  I know!  One fucking class, and I would be done.  One little class and I could stop having to asterisk the sentence that says that I graduated from college.  It was all too much at the time, though, and something had to give.

So I ran off to Hawaii and got married, and then began to obtain and then ceremoniously lose or run from a series of jobs.  And not write. 

Which brings me back to NaNoWriMo, via the long way, I'm sure.  So I thought it would be a perfect way to jump start my writing again.  Having permission to write, with the rule being that quantity matters more than quality?  It goes against everything we talked about in Fiction 320, and feels funny and wrong, like a bad novel.  I want to try though, and have been mentally preparing myself since the beginning of October. 

Now I am starting to chicken out.  I am thinking of 1,000 reasons why it is not practical.  I am thinking of November being busy, what with Thanksgiving and all.  I am thinking of the delicious stack of books I got at the library yesterday, and how it is rainy and cold: how it is the perfect time to read the month away instead of write the month away.  I am thinking about how there is this whole trying to have a baby thing that is looming over us, and maybe I should focus on trying to do the fucking math it requires to calculate your ovulating days.*

Bullshit excuses, every last one of them.  It remains to be said whether I will push through and try to finish a novel.  I will update the progress or lack thereof here.

*I know it sounds like it shouldn't be hard, but for someone who generally dismisses the comings and goings of, you know, "down there", figuring out the answer to your average cycle length is an exercise in futility.  Then, when you do have that number, you chart it, subtract 12 to 27, divide by the number of days left until you just give the fuck up, and the resulting number is day that you have sex.  Oh.  Wait, what?   Remember how in highschool they said you could get pregnant just by standing next to someone jacking off?  Or was that just me?  Maybe that is where we are going wrong, maybe I shoud just lay next to The Husband and tell him to go for it.  Oh!  We should get drunk first!  That was the other message from highschool:  drinking + body parts = baby.  Sweet.

Hard Lesson

I worked downtown today, for the attorney that I recently assisted in trial.  She is about 38, a mom with young children, pretty, good-looking husband, rich—the whole package, if you will.  And for the first month or two of working for her I was soaking it up like a sponge—I mean, when she wants something, she takes it.  She doesn’t even ask, and she doesn’t even act like she thought about asking, or knows what asking is.  I was in awe of that, even in simple terms.  She was a living example of having it all, and doing it well. 

Even small things seemed like they could be streamlined and more efficient doing it her way.  I needed new contacts (and I always wait until the last minute) the day before trial.  I called the eye-guy I have been seeing for twelve years and asked if they could order some.  The bitchy lady who does the ordering told me no, I was ten days shy of my annual exam and would have to have that done before they would order.  So I take a deep breath and calmly, yet firmly, tell them that no, I am not going to come in, and yes she is going to order them because I am going into federal court for at least five days and I need them and that is how it is.  And she says (drumroll . . .) okay.  Okay then, she will order them, I should have them soon.

It was like a glorious light shone down upon me.  I had learned the lesson of taking, not asking.  A small step, to be sure, but for a people pleaser like myself, a door opened.

And then trial starts, and this strong, held together, uber efficient woman I had been learning from began to be bitchy, stressed, rude.  And I knew it was the stress, I was stressed, everyone was stressed, that is what happens during trial.  But it was something so much more, like she was literally cracking in front of me and underneath was this ugliness that I had believed was strength. What had seemed to be streamlined efficiency was revealing itself as a bit obsessive compulsive.  (I had to redo binders to make them white, she didn’t want to carry anything black into the courtroom, or we would lose.  It had to be white.)  (I wanted to say, under my breath, laces out, dude.)   

She was mean, demanding, and lied about whatever she could to get what it was that she wanted.  The taking of things that had seemed so strong before seemed sneaky and backhanded.  I kept thinking that it was the trial, but trial ended and she stayed the same.  And my husband makes remarks about lawyers, it is just lawyers . . . and, he is right.  It is, to be sure, not a coincidences that all those lawyer jokes end the same.  It is just that this one I misjudged, and thought that it was a lesson about being a woman that I was learning. 

Our client is a mother too, but a blue-collar mother, who will never have what my boss has.  At the end of trial she said thank you, and in a card wrote: you do good things, fight for good things, for women, for me.  I learned so much from you. 

It was in the trash the day she got it, still taped to the side of the cheap vase the flowers were in, lost among the frantic race to submit a fee petition at 50.00 over the prevailing rate.

Promise of the Weekend

I love the promise of Friday afternoon, with the whole weekend in front of us.  Even when I haven't worked in weeks, Friday is still happy day. 

Tonight I am going to make tuna pan bagnat and tomato spinach soup for a nice little dinner (and cross my fingers that I don't get poop-born diseases).  Saturday morning I am going to have coffee with TBF and see my nephews.  Saturday afteroon I am going out in the woods with my husband to see what he really does when he goes "hunting" (and crossing my fingers that he doesn't find anything because I find the whole shooting animals thing dreadfully sad).  Saturday night we are going to see The Departed, a movie the I have anticipated for a long time.  (Since Casino, really.)  And lastly, Sunday.  We are going to try to make it to church and then go to the farmers market and grocery shopping and then lay around the rest of the day.

Really, on a perfect fall weekend, I can't ask for much more.  Though I am still all dizzy and weak from having the plauge like illness, so I am already waivering on the dinner. 

I can't sleep

And how bad do I suck?  I can't offhand check, but I believe that I have been paying for this site for about six months and this is my third post.  And this isn't even going to be a run through it before you post kind of post, I am just typing whatever is in my head because its late and I can't sleep.  Anyway . . . (this is already going well) I have been torn between using this site or blogger, when Blogger is free but just not the same, etc., but still paying (not much) for this one.

So I am here. 

I am getting over the flu, which came on quickly and fiercely and stayed for three days.  This perhaps why I am a bit punch drunk, I have been on the couch reading, watching TV, and on-line for days.  Thanks to Amalah, I spent waaaay too much time trying to figure out who the hell Cassie is, and had to draw the line after watching ten or so youtube videos.  (They were also kind of starting to freak me out, if I'm being honest.) 

During this sickness, one of my best friends lost a brother in law from complications due to Down's Syndrome.  I am super sad about it, and was trying to be there for her as best I could with a swimmy head, but I just ended up crying with her on the phone and feeling generally ripped off for humanity in general for the rest of the evening.  He was, as most people with Downs that I have met tend to be, the best example of kindness and sweetness.  A good person.  Sad, sad, sad.

To bring this back around to me, as I invariably do, I also started my period.  I know! 

All of this is to say, one day when I have a journal full of intelligent and witty posts, don't use this post against me.  Don't judge me Internet!  I have issues!

Working from home

Today I slept until 8:30, walked the dog, saw my sister and nephews, worked for a few hours, napped for half an hour, and then made a good dinner.  (Whole wheat pasta with pesto, feta, tomatoes, red pepper and chicken) (chicken because my husband insists that a meal is not a meal without meat) (I will stop doing this now).

What an awesome day!  That ruled!  Alas, I only get paid for about three hours of the day, and I spent more than I made at the store, but in theory, the day was great.  I want 100 more just like it.  My biggest problem was not getting to the pool to start my slow transformation from Pasty White Fat Girl to Super Tan Not as Fat Girl. 

Trying to be the shepard

I have been trying to come up with some great, witty, funny first post . . . like in some kind of superstitious way if the first post is great it will mean that all the other posts are great which will mean that I am not suffering from a two year bout of writers block.

That was a nice thought. 

I think I could probably describe myself best by giving a brief synopsis of my morning:

Woke up an hour early because today was day one of The Me With Straight Hair (which requires flat iron time).  I was only going to get up half an hour early but Igby, my dog, was doing his lets get up yawn, this really loud, really irritating yawn thing he usually reserves for weekends--impossible to sleep through.

So I get up, spill my coffee, and am walking back to the couch to watch news when Igby cuts me off trying to steer me in the direction of the couch that he prefers I sit on.  So I accidentally step on him, spill more coffee, he yelps, and I scream, "FUCK!  Fucking Igby!  Shit!"

This is when my sweet husband enters the room all sleepy eyed and in his boxers and says, "Happy Valentines Honey!"  While I am screaming at our pet.  With pre-flat ironed hair.  And coffee on my pajamas.  Happy Valentines indeed.

Stupid holiday.

The Best Friend is depressed because she is alone on this fake holiday.  My attempts to cheer her are scoffed at, I am disqualified because I am married. 

My boss, the only person whom I would even want to imbue with some of this Valentiney cheer and goodwill, clearly didn't get the memo.  He brought in stale biscotti and promptly raved around the office just long enough for me to start having to bite my quivering bottom lip and then retreated to his office.  Probably in there shedding his alien skin layer and growing a new head.  Freak.

So there it is.  The first post.  I am:  married, 30, no children, with dog named Igby, a legal assistant, thinking about motherhood, have a degree in creative writing that I haven't used, in love with my two nephews, live in apartment complex, have a best friend that lives in the same complex, chubbier than I would like to admit, often tired and obsessed with TiVo.

Also: trying to be the shepard here at work.