fine

It happened last Monday.

I woke up, and I was fine.

Pardon the drama, but I haven't been myself since my uterus went on a Magical Mystery Tour in May of 2005. It took a detour with a second beautiful baby, and between nursing hormones, back pain and a complete life and career adjustment, it seems to be settled back nicely in the two-car garage next to the badminton set and the beach chairs. Fine.

For some of you who read this, you could be nodding your head. Or maybe even more spiritedly saying, 'Girl....mmmm.' Who knows. Some of you don't know what I'm talking about yet, and either you will in the (very) near future, or you won't. But I know what I know and I am starting to see clearly now. I feel like a hothouse flower opening up after a really long drought and thank goodness. I was starting to be....not fine.

Years, literally, of not sleeping had started to take it's toll. I was in auto-pilot and although appreciative of my blessings (trite, but whatever!), I was in a fog. Half-mast, 50%, walking through the sludge of the day. Needing caffeine. Needing chocolate. Needing sleep. Needing that 10 minutes of pelting hot water in the shower with no interruptions and no one asking me where a bottle was. If I didn't get those basic needs met, I was on the verge of tears. Verge of a fight. Verge of yelling at my 23 month old because clearly she didn't appreciate that her spoon with peanut butter remnants CANNOT be near her sister. Didn't she understand that?

SO. I woke up with the babies. I wasn't mad about not getting 10 (friggin'!) minutes to myself. I was okay with the morning poopy diapers and the big one screaming so much that the little one started to bawl. It was no big deal that I was going potty with an audience. Formula bottle dripping...whatever! It was all good. All okay.

I celebrated my newfound fine-ness (holler!) with a delicious meal that I actually PLANNED before 4:55pm when I usually hear my husband's train whistle and think, 'Oh shit! Is anything thawed out?'. It was a broccoli salad, by the way, with roasted herbed potato-fries and a vegetable-bacon frittata. It wasn't haute-cuisine, but it was good. Really fine, actually.

Tagged....Scattegories

SCATTERGORIES
Its harder than it looks! Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following... they have to be real places, names, things...nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

What is your name ~ Jennifer
4 Letter Word ~ Jump
Vehicle ~ Jeep (my first car)
Boy Name ~ Jack
Girl Name ~ Jillian
Occupation ~ Jester
What you wear ~ Jodphurs
Celebrity ~ JLO
Food ~ Jello
Something found in a bathroom ~ Jean Nate (not really, but what else do I have?)
Reason for Being Late ~ Just couldn't get it together
Character ~Jasmin (isn't that Disney? Not there yet, kids are too young)
Something you Shout ~ Just a second!
Animal ~ Jaguar
Body part ~ jugular (thank you Kel and Mom, in that order ;-)
Word to describe you ~ jovial

Oh.

Katie. Katie Katie Katie. It's funny I guess, what happens to someone when they marry Tom Cruise. And become a Scientologist. And hang with Posh Spice. And have a baby and get married (which apparently is the new trend with celebrities). So much has changed for our little Joey from Dawson's Creek.

And I even have to ask myself, 'Why does this even matter to you?'. I will admit that I frequent Perez and Tmz. I do, I do. I know, it's brainless fodder. But it doesn't keep me up at night the way CNN does.

But suddenly, Katie Holmes has become the most boring person on earth. Have you seen the footage of her lately? It's really hard to watch. Here, take a peek of her on Letterman. Or, even drier than that, her Good Morning America interview. One big, frigging yawn. It begs the question....what happened to her?

So many will jump on the brainwash/Tom/Scientology bandwagon and I get that, to a degree. And although we have very little in common (her kind of broke and my kind of broke ain't the same, youknowwhatI'msayin?), I have secretly been afraid of the same kind of thing happening.

Becoming uninteresting.

It's scary just writing it. Can you imagine? Can you imagine going on Letterman and saying virtually, nothing? Although it would be a novelty for someone like you or I, I can imagine going into a scenario like that with my funniest material. My best stuff. You wanna talk about kids? I'm going to tell you about how my little one gets happy feet after she (as my husband puts it) drops a deuce. I'm going to talk about how, mid-cereal crunching, my toddler says, 'I eat a cereeeyo. I eat a cereeyo a milk. Boys a peeeeni. Girls a a giiiina.' Yes, I would toss them under the bus for a laugh with David Letterman. I would laugh about my husband calling his hairy back the 'Wings of Man'. I would talk about stretch marks and suddenly flat boobies after nursing. You know I would. I would go there, in a second. Why? Because I'm a whore for laughs first of all, but because I have INTERESTING things to say. What would you say?

I don't think you would say what Katie said. I don't think you'd need a paramedic after the interview to check for a pulse. I don't think you'd walk out after that sit-down with Diane Sawyer and be pleased about it. You'd be pissed at yourself for being so GD lukewarm. Tepid.

So, has she lost herself? I don't know. I really don't care, actually. It just made me think of my own life. My own stories. I had an ex once who complained about a new woman in his life. He said something remarkably cruel about her.

'She's not even interesting.'


Ouch. Now, I wasn't a perfect partner. But I sure as hell kept things interesting. Not a boring moment that I can recall. So, maybe KH is just going through it. Maybe she's tired of being under a microscope and having constant scrutiny over her life, her marriage, her child....maybe she cringes at the thought of some broad like me thinking I have the right to write about her. Maybe she's just so confident in her life that she doesn't CARE anymore. She's good. She's happy. She's hit that point in her life where everyone else's opinions simply don't even register with her.

Maybe.

Addendum to Ad-Nauseum

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend about the idea of signing on for a month for a pre-packaged weight loss system (like the commercials that are running constantly right now). You know, order your food online, they deliver it, you eat it, you're skinny. Voila.

So she tells me that she and her hubby did it for one month, to take a few pounds off without having to think about it. Now, they're foodies, so I was surprised. She tells me how the food arrived and it was narsty narsty narsty. Apparently they tried a bit of it, were disgusted, and decided to call it a wash and go back to eating real food. Well, they didn't pack the food away, nor did they toss it. They left for a day trip. The dog got into the food.

They came back home to a shitfest.

ALL over the house. Their poor dog was horrified and embarassed. And that night, after hours of bleach and rubber gloves and fits of gags and laughter, the dog had a final, painful outburst. On their bed.

A package.

Of oatmeal.

(It's not the right thing to do, and it's not the tasty way to do it!)

ad-nauseum

Like we didn't know that New Year's was for making people less fat, we can turn on our televisions and be bombarded with commercials for new diet plans. Have you noticed? We watched some tv on the Bravo network on New Year's Day and it was amazing. Every single commercial was either for a pre-packaged food diet plan or an online weightloss program. Of course it's appropo, it's resolution time. How many years I made resolutions to drop elbees, I don't know. But it was too many. Why didn't I resolve to learn, once and for all, to play the guitar? I've stopped and started that too many damn times to count. What about resolving to learn a new language? A cool-cooking technique?

How about resolving not to resolve?

I did this a few years ago. It's been so friggin liberating, I can't begin to tell you. No more angst about my legs rubbing together. No more drama over my decision to put real milk or skim in my coffee (and just for the record....skim milk in your coffee? Jesus, what's the point? Just add some more water). No more bashing myself by February 1st because I hadn't lost 10 pounds in January like I had resolved to. Nope, none of that...just another day to shuffle around with my kiddos and be in the moment, with crushed crayons on the floor, leftovers in the fridge, and a mug of coffee in my hand. And maybe some cream for my chafed legs. ;-)

WhoopAss

There's nothing like ringing in the New Year with a self-imposed ass-whooping. As some of you know, I've had some back pain lately, which resulted in an MRI, which resulted in a visit to a pain clinic for a nerve-block shot of cortisone. It kicked in a few days ago, and I've had to resist the urge to go for a jog, knowing the damage is still there, but the pain (hurrah!) isn't.

So, in I go for a weekly chiropractic visit to stay proactive and to move forward with the healing process. It's a great adjustment. I feel great. I step outside, in my new shoes (you read about them in my ABFAB blog) and my heel gets stuck as I proceed down the steps. Concrete steps, naturally. There are five in all, for those of you who like numbers. I cleared four of them. Right to the ground. Thumpity thump thump thump. Broke my fall with my left knee, right shoulder and two palms (you read that right, I'm like GUMBY, especially after a crack at the chiro's!). Didn't even get up. A man saw me and was sweet and understood my mixture of pain and embarassment...he helped me up and gave me a gentle pat on the arm.

So, thank goodness for pain shots. Although I'm feeling my fall, it's not like it could be. The worst part, other than the scrape of my new shoes? I think I sprained my armpit.

Happy New Year! Pay attention on the stairs, jackass!