That's My Bix!

The above photo was taken a few weeks ago, as I was driving through a neighborhood in Milwaukee trying to find a place to do a legal U Turn. I shouted “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” and my passenger Suzanna Danna curled into a fetal position and just started murmuring “No no no no make it stop”. I grabbed my phone, snapped a photo (because otherwise who would believe this crazy shit?) and then promptly dropped my fucking phone into my glass of iced tea. It was, quite possibly, a one in a million shot, an Oreo dunk of technology that ended up costing me $200 and a second trip to Milwaukee. All because of my own stupidity and these fucking dolls. Seriously, though, who DOES that?

Is it just me or does it look like the little one is crying for help and the one behind it is pulling it back behind the drapes before someone sees? When I went back to Milwaukee to get my replacement phone, I considered driving down that same street again, but didn’t, mostly because I only wanted to see if the dolls had moved. And that would just be crazy. And also, the second time I was by myself and I’m pretty sure I would have crapped myself if they had.

I’m updating again, because Robyn Anderson said that blog posts about the process of writing could be used to torture prisoners and WE CAN’T HAVE THAT. She probably just wants an update about Jincy (who is probably at home sitting in my office window, looking imperious, because she is the boss of all of us) anyway.  Next time, promise. Mean it.

So, Esteban’s job has been slowly killing him (he was basically locked in his home office for 90 hours a week and eschewed all forms of socialization for three months solid during the second quarter) and happily, he now has a new job with a huge company that has a very unlikely chance of being affected by the downward swirl of the economy, so that’s good. My own job continues to be a bit soulless, but things are getting churned again, the same churning that was happening at the beginning of the year, and well, we’ll all see how that plays out.

Up until this weekend, I had avoided speaking with my mother in 2010. It was pretty easy to do so, as I was out of town on Mother’s Day and she was fine as long as she got a present, and she completely did not acknowledge my birthday at all, and then for her birthday, I had considered playing eye for an eye and not acknowledging it but then my sister asked if I wanted to go in with her on a present, and I decided that here was the high road, smacking me in the face and I’d be a fool not to take it. So I did and avoided her yet again!

I was hoping to make it until the obligatory Christmas visit, but Fate intervened in the form of my grandmother (Mafia Grandma) being diagnosed with a nasty form of cancer, which meant that I spent the entire last weekend sitting in the hospital with my mother and her sisters Aunt Brunhilda and Aunt Drusilla. Man, I knew that I had some karmic debt to pay back for being a bad daughter, but seriously, that’s hard core. Like, we’re talking some 30 hours of quality time where you’re just sitting in a waiting room with nothing better to do than demonstrate a stunning level of passive-aggression. It was AWESOME. They are the masters of subtext-filled conversation, truly.

And yes, I feel like a complete and utter asshole about the entire situation.

As such, my head has been in a weird place. Probably understandably, but still, it makes my silly little plans for fall (pottery class, cleaning out the basement, tiling the breezeway, leveling the back flowerbeds, swimming 20 cumulative miles at the Y before Nov 1) seem totally trivial and pointless. I’m trying to be zen about everything: nothing real is threatened, I am but a leaf in the wind, blah blah blah, but at the same time, I feel the itch of an impending big change and it’s making me crazy. It’s like there’s a word hanging on the tip of my tongue and I just can’t spit it out.

For right now, I’m sucking on a sugar free Pep O Mint Lifesaver, though, and practicing slow deep breaths through the O.