Posted by alchemist at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mary Dell's Amazing Closet-Sorting Algorithm

These are my steps for overcoming the curse of handmedowns and garage sales. The first time takes a while but is worth it. Oh and it's kinda fun.

Ready? Okey dokey.

Go through all clothing you own.

Sort it into piles based on the following questions:

    1. do I love it?

        if no, put in pile A. if yes, proceed to 2.

    2. does it fit?

        if no, put in pile B. if yes, proceed to 3.

    3. is it in good condition?

        if no, put in pile C. if yes, go to 4.

    4. does it flatter me?

        if no, put in pile D. if yes, go to 5.

    5. can I assemble an outfit that includes it?

        if no, put in pile E. if yes, give it a little hug and hang it up--it is now officially part of your wardrobe.

Now, go through pile A and ask these questions:

    6. do I wear this?

        if yes, put in pile F. if no, proceed to 7.

    7. do I feel I might need to wear this item at some point?

        if yes, put in pile G. if no, proceed to 8.

    8. do I feel compelled to keep this even though I'll never wear it?

        if yes, put in pile H. if no, put in the discard pile.

   Ok, so here's what to do with the piles:

    Piles H and B should be packed up in boxes and stored until such time as you feel like doing this again for those items.

    Items in piles G and F (unloved) should be systematically "upgraded" with similar items that you can say yes to questions 1-5 for. For instance, the blah interview suit that you keep just in case should be replaced with one you really love, as soon as you find it. In the meantime you put all those items in a different part of your closet and make a list that you take whenever you're shopping. In a year or two you'll have upgraded all of them and can discard or store them. I replaced all my baggy black tee shirts with fitted black tee shirts, for instance, over the course of year.

    Items in pile C (beloved, but damaged) should be repaired, dry cleaned, or replaced. A little mourning party is acceptable for something great that's not salveagable.

    Items in pile E (beloved orphans) should be taken shopping. Buy whatever you need to make a complete outfit with that item so that you can actually wear it.

    Items in pile D (unflattering, and therefore undeserving of love, but loved anyway) should be played with in front of the mirror, preferably when you're in a good mood. The thing you love that just doesn't suit you because of the color or whatever can be worn anyway with the right hair, makeup, and other items. I had a coral color dress that was too bright for my pale skin, but with matching lipstick it worked, because the fabric and fit were wonderful. Pull together a whole look for that item that will let you feel good wearing it.

Now you should be done! You will have 3 sections of your closet and drawers now:

        1. stuff I love and can't wait to wear

        2. stuff I can't wear just yet but will once it's repaired or I have pieces to go with it

        3. stuff I have to wear until I buy better stuff.

Keep it sectioned like that from now on. You will also have 2 sets of boxes:

        1. stuff I hope to wear again

        2. stuff I'm never gonna wear, but am keeping anyway.

And you'll have shopping lists

        1.stuff I need to replace with better stuff

        2.stuff I need to add to my wardrobe.

by Mary Dell (of course)

Posted by alchemist at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

About 3 months ago I started walking down the stairs at work.  That is, I started walking my fat ass down 7 flights of stairs at the end of the day, instead of riding the elevators.  And most days I'd get off a floor early and walk up one flight.   It's not much but it's something, right?  Well, after about a month of that my knees were stronger, so I quit walking the stairs (because it's effing boring) and started riding my bike.  I also tried a bit of walking as part of my commute--chronicled here and quickly rejected as a means of transit and as a form of exercise.  But I stuck with the biking.

So for about a month I've been riding my bike 4 miles most days.  I've gotten in the habit of coming home, changing into my workout togs (such as they are), and exercising for 30 or 40 minutes.  But the biking is the wrong combination of easy & hard.  Easy enough that I don't break much of a sweat or get my heart rate up - or lose any weight - but hard enough that I'm tired after the third mile.  So extending the ride isn't a good way to push myself.

But I've always had a secret inner jock.  Where other big girls wistfully eye little dresses and skinny jeans, I sigh over the cute space-fiber tops and yoga pants in the nike store.  When I was young and skinny myself, it was because I would go to the gym and lift weights every day.  Well, that and I was 20 years old--youth makes everything physical easier (and everything psychological harder!).  But even though I biked, lifted weights, worked out on the rowing machine, and so on, the one thing I could never do was run.

Except it turns out, I can.  Running doesn't come naturally to me, but by thinking my way into it, and researching it and testing things out, I'm learning to do it, like any other hobby.  If I run in a way that feels natural, I get winded in about a half a block, and I stay winded for 20 minutes.  If I run in a low-down, slow, old-lady shuffle I don't get winded, but my feet and knees hurt.  If I run in a kind of bouncy jog, but take it down to half speed, it starts to come together.  I can breathe, my legs feel good, my feet come down flat without twisting, and I can run.

For a little bit, anyway.  I'm up to half a mile of actual running, which I intermix with half a mile of walking, gasping a bit, and being amazed at how years of biking have utterly failed to develop the muscles right behind my ankle bones.  Like, I'm pretty sure that muscle has never been called upon in my adult life.  Anyway today was my third day, and I ran more than I walked.  There were one or two moments where I actually was enjoying the run.  Very brief moments, but still.  I can't wait for tomorrow's run, and it's been years and years since a workout made me feel that way.

I'm so excited about this, I can hardly stand it! 

Posted by alchemist at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've ridden my bike 5 miles a day for 7 days now...and went to the gym this weekend...and my weight's still climbing.  I've gained 10 pounds since this time last year and 4 of those pounds have been in the last couple of months.  And it all seems to be in my ankles!  Yep, I've got hellacious edema and the online advice says stuff like "avoid sitting for prolonged periods."  Since I spend all my time in front of a computer, and will have to continue doing so if I want to go on making a living, that's not helpful.

So I'm continuing with the exercise program because I need the energy and mood boost anyway, and I have hopes that after a few more weeks I'll see some results.  In the meantime, though, I'm going off of the Camila.  It's helped a bit over the past year, but not miraculously like the Ortho-Tri, so I've still missed a couple of days of work because of The Ow. And it's shortened my cycle to 3 weeks instead of 4, so thats (calculating)...4 extra periods a year...FUCK!  FOUR?  Well, screw that.

I'm not sure what I'll do about pain management, but I'm sure some spammers will be along soon to post comments with drug suggestions.  I have my OB/GYN checkup in a couple of weeks so I'll talk to her about it then.

Oh - Camila's a mini-pill, so there's no "break week."  If you stop taking the regular pill in mid-pack, you'll get your period immediately, so keep that in mind if you're thinking of quitting the pill. 

Posted by alchemist at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That whole walk-train-walk-work-walk-train-walk-home thing was WAY too time-consuming, plus it made me cranky.  I spent much of the day, for the 3 days I did it, daydreaming about getting a job closer to home.  So I bailed and went back to driving...although it wasn't a total wash: I finished reading Tom Holland's Rubicon, which was quite good, and made a good start on Sting's Broken Music memoir, which I've since finished and also enjoyed.

But I'm delighted to be back in the car.  For exercise, I've ridden my bike 5 miles a day for the past 5 days...hopefully will see some sort of magical change soon. 

Posted by alchemist at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I decided I should try taking the train to work for a while instead of driving.  If it works out I'll give up my monthly parking and just do the train thing.

I live a half mile from the train station, and I work about a mile from Union station downtown, so this is a way to get some exercise and (if I stick with it and give up the parking) save some money.  And I really, really need the exercise.  I'm not slender at the best of times, and lately my weight has been creeping upward...hormone pills and advancing age are not doing me any favors.

Fortunately I'm such a couch potato that 3 miles of walking is TONS of exercise, so with luck my metabolism will begin to pick up.  Otherwise...screw it, back to driving!

Anyway, to test my resolve or something, the thunder god decided to rain all over me two days in a row.  Today I had an umbrella, at least, but whereas yesterday it was a light rain when I was walking, today it POURED.  My pants and shoes were soaked by the time I got to the train station...my pants got heavy enough to start trailing over my feet a bit, but fortunately they didn't try to slide off or any of that.  And I don't wear anything particularly fancy, so it's all good.

Tomorrow, dry weather, pretty please? 

Posted by alchemist at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Susan Clements
Originally uploaded by marydell.

15 years ago today, my friend Susan Clements died in a campus shooting at IU, Bloomington Indiana. There's not a lot of info about her on the web--it happened back when you had to look in a newspaper to get any information about that kind of thing. But plenty of us remember her.

Susan came from a great family, who lived on the other end of my street when we were growing up. She and her fraternal twin sister N. were good at everything. They did their homework every day and practiced for their music lessons. Her older sister had a very dry sense of humor and was always cracking wise, and her younger sister I mainly remember from those days as sweet, and a bit of a tomboy. She had brothers too, but they were older and so they hung around with their own friends--maybe with my own older brothers, I don't remember.

Sus and N. went to a different school than me, but one summer we were all at school together. I was taking Math because I was terrible at it, and figured summer school would give me a better chance of passing, because the classes were designed for people who'd already flunked.  They were taking extra classes to get ahead on their college prep credits. And their dad was teaching, so he drove every day and I rode along. I rarely had fun at school but that was a fun summer. Sus and N. were the valedictorian and salutatorian of their high school class...I don't remember which was which but it was the subject of friendly rivalry between them.

They went to Notre Dame and I went to IU, but I worked at ND during the summers and N. and I would hang out at lunch, because she was working there too. Sus worked at Martin's grocery during the summers so I would see her and say hi to her there.  Both Susan and N. were the kind of friends where you could go a couple of years without running into each other, and then pick up right where you left off. 

After college we all went to grad school - N. went to a Chicago school for a PhD in a math-related discipline and Susan came to IU for a PhD in English.  I was pursuing an English Lit PhD as well, but I was taking out student loans while she had some sort of fellowship.  She was probably the best student in our class of 75 people--certainly, she was one of the top 10.  But she was never stuck-up about it--she was literally one of the sweetest, most down-to-earth people I've ever known, at the same time as being brilliantly gifted.  We weren't in most of the same classes and didn't live near each other--I'd been living off-campus near downtown since my junior year, while she was in the graduate student dorm on the other end of campus.  I would hang out up there, though, and once a week we would get together at a bar called Bear's Place for cheesecake and gossip.   She was developing a specialty in women's studies and wrote a terrific paper on Virginia Woolf; I remember it because one of her classmates read it at her memorial.

Susan had a steady boyfriend for about 4 years, but he wasn't nice to her and didn't make her happy.  I didn't know anything more specific than that.  At one point she had broken up with him, but he hassled her until she changed her mind and took him back.  After a year or so at IU--he was in school in California--she broke it off again, hoping that he would move on.  Around thanksgiving of 1991, he showed up for a surprise visit, staying for a few days, accompanying her to a class or two, and introducing himself to her professors as her boyfriend.  She didn't push back because she didn't want to make him angry, and she still cared about him and wanted to let him down as easy as possible.  When he went back to California she figured he'd gotten the message and it would be ok from then on.

She started dating Steven Molen in the spring semester, I think -- I got to know him then, anyway.  He was a year or two younger than her, cute, super nice, and also gifted.  A short story of his appeared in a Norton book that year called Flash Fiction--it was a good story, published in an important collection, back when the short-short was a new trend. I was envious but proud to have a real published author among my friends.  And Susan's friends were excited that she had found a boyfriend who seemed right for her. 

Her ex, (whose name I remember, but don't generally invoke) continued to call and hassle her, however.  One day I dropped by her room in the dorm to find her and Steven very upset, because she had just gotten a phone call from her ex. Susan had told him that it was really over, that she had a new boyfriend.  And he had told her that he was going to kill her.  He had gone on about it, telling her never to get married, never to have children, because she was going to die.

Susan wanted to think that he was just trying to upset her, and that he didn't mean it, but deep down she knew better, and she told her family, and she told the police.  Nobody knew what to do.  There was no witness to what he had said, and stalking wasn't illegal at the time.  He kept calling her, but he didn't repeat his threats; he was pleasant and acted like nothing had happened.  She worried, but she didn't talk about it; she cut her hair short so she would be harder to recognize, but she continued on with her life. 

After that it was exactly what you would expect; all of her classmates and professors got together in the faculty lounge and cried for hours, and tried to think of ways this could have been prevented.  But there's really no way to prevent someone from killing you, if they're willing to die in the process.  Indiana did pass a stalking law the next year, though; one of the first states to do so, as I recall.

I wish memories faded consistently.  I don't remember most of the hundreds of conversations Susan and I had over the years, just the ones when we talked about him.  I remember that she was a wonderful person, and that everyone felt that way about her, but the specifics get fuzzy as the years go by. She didn't do anything crazy or stupid or outrageous, to make herself the subject of the kind of funny stories that stay fresh in everyone's minds forever.  And since she was the helpful girl who'd say "give me the camera, I'll take pictures," at a party, I have a couple of dozen pictures taken by her, but only three of her.

This is one of them, taken about three months before she died. It was at a party for me and my friend Angie, who sort of share a birthday.  Susan was 23 years old here; she was in her second year of graduate studies and was starting to make a name for herself in the department.  Professors were getting interested in her as a scholar, not just as another face in the crowd.  Looking at her you would never know the strain she was under, and that's how she wanted it...she strove to be happy, and largely succeeded.

Posted by alchemist at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Obviously.  Spending a lot of time on work and not a lot of time on adoption, art, or life.  Will resume when I have something to talk about besides Daylight Savings Time patches!

Posted by alchemist at 07:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by alchemist at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So to celebrate my birthday, we went up to (chicago's) chinatown to go shopping.  In particular, we were looking for a jade ring - something to symbolize having finished the dossier and being "paper pregnant."  I've been sort of pretending nothing's happening, and I need to stop it and get my head into the mode of thinking something is going to happen, even if it's going to take a really long time.  So, we found one jewelry store that had jade stuff, but the rings were all kind of boring and similar - oval jade cabochon on a thinnish ring with little diamond chips on either side.  Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted something a little more stylish.

It was only 9 degrees out, and windy, so we walked up and down Wentworth and stopped in a couple of tchotchke stores but mainly we were cold and kept saying "this will be fun when it's warm!"  So we didn't try too hard to find another jewelry store.  Oh well, guess this is a job for my friend the internet. 

Chinatown was cool, though.  I've driven through a million times but only actually went shopping once or twice. There's a trillion restaurants and the ambience is neat - the sidewalks have designs molded into them and a lot of the buildings have chinese details.  The whole place was built in the 50's or 60's, from what I recall, when chinatown was moved from its original location. So it's a planned community, kind of, and has a uniquely chicagoish feel to it, with warehouses and factories and stuff along with shopping centers and housing.

Posted by alchemist at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taking stock of last year and I have to say it's a bit of a let down.  In the plus column, we took a great summer road trip, I read a lot of books, I got a promotion, and we completed our adoption dossier.  In the minus column, three of my friends are getting divorced (two from each other), my favorite high school teacher died, my new job is really hard, the last couple of months have been eaten up with a family health crisis, I've hardly written anything, I haven't finished any artwork, and I'm still not a mom.

It's not that I don't appreciate the good things in my life - I do, and overall my life is great.  But I'm a goal oriented person.  All year long it felt like I was climbing mount everest, but looking back at it I don't feel like I accomplished much of anything.  Bleah.

Posted by alchemist at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My first attempt at NaNoWriMo was a bust, although a few good things came out of it.  I did find a couple of quiet places that I like to sit and write...and I found that I can force myself to write a little bit even when I'm completely stressed out.  The family medical situation is still lingering, three divorces are underway among our circle of friends, my new job is still a source of confusion to me as I try to figure out all of my new responsibilities and hand off my old ones.  But at least I'm not working on our dossier any more.

It was Christmas last year when we had to admit we were beaten, and that we were going to have to set aside the (failed) notion of getting pregnant in order to treat my ever-worsening menstrual cramps.  After years of TTC it was a relief to throw myself into the adoption process.  But now the main part of the process is done.  In about a year I'll need to get an updated home study so I can get a second I-171H when the first one expires, because the total wait for a referral will probably be 2 years or so.  So I'm in limbo now, and I'm trying really hard to see it as a nice break from thinking about baby stuff.  Yes, I still have tasks to do like painting the baby's room and buying furniture, but there's no hurry.  I'd rather open the door of that room and think "jeez, I really need to paint that," than see a finished nursery with no baby in it.  I had enough of that with the room (now our guest room) we originally painted for the baby I never got pregnant with.

So soon it'll be a new year, with nothing baby-related to do all year long. No morning pee tests, no ovulation predictor, no social worker, no blood draws, no medical techs, no financial reporting, no notaries, no paperwork.  What the hell am I going to do with myself?

Posted by alchemist at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Normally I'm very sociable...but right now I really need a day in which I don't interact with anyone for at least 8 hours.

Not happening.

Posted by alchemist at 08:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, after all the drama with the stinkiness we got a surprisingly decent payout from the insurance company.  Surprising because of the age and mileage of the car, not because we expected to get screwed.  We're with State Farm and we LOVE those guys, seriously.  Anyway, after looking at this and that we decided to get a Honda CR-V.  I can haul stuff in it, I can eventually haul a kid in it, but I can still maneuver and park it.  And while the mileage isn't quite as good as the old Corrolla (22 city mpg vs. 25-ish) I won't have to raise and slaughter my own dinosaurs to keep up with its fuel needs.  Hub is still happily driving a Civic, so we're a Honda family now.

I love the new car but after all my years of Toyota driving I feel like an apostate. 

Posted by alchemist at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The insurance guy came and checked out the car, and it is totaled.  I feel bad for it!  But they gave me a pretty decent settlement so we're putting it toward the much nicer car we were planning on buying next year.  Hoping to go out tonight and buy it.

Poor little stinky Toyota...what a trooper.  126k miles and it probably would have gone 100 more if not for the water.

Posted by alchemist at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The fresh-ish smell in the car lasted for about 20 minutes, and then it started smelling like a swamp.  Hub kindly took it for detailing - they did a very nice job, it's never been so clean.  For about half a day it smelled like a very pungent lemon grove.

Now it smells like a pungent lemon grove situated on the shore of an even more pungent swamp. 

I filed an insurance claim yesterday and it goes to the body shop on Friday to see if replacing the carpets will take care of the problem.

Posted by alchemist at 05:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

flood
Originally uploaded by marydell.

Posted by alchemist at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the food court yesterday, I went to the Chinese place.  Two Chinese women were working behind the counter...one taking orders and one ringing them up.

Me: Two orders of potstickers, please

Woman #1 to Woman #2:  Dos potstickers!

Woman #2: Dos potstickers?

Woman #1: Dos potstickers, por favor!

Woman #2 to me: Dos potstickers, I mean two potstickers, $5.15 please.

Posted by alchemist at 06:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The dentist seems to have actually cogitated about the situation during the two weeks since my horrible horrible crown-making experience, so he gave me nitrous oxide this morning when he put the permanent crown in.  It didn't make me goofy at all (it was a mix of nitrous & oxygen designed to keep me calm but not knock me out or make me sleepy--I guess they can also knock you out with it).  It also didn't take away all of my anxiety - not nearly.  BUT it made it so that my usual dental-anxiety-management tricks actually worked.  Those tricks include: breathe through my nose, close eyes, think about pleasant things, pinch myself (to redirect my brain to a different part of my body), wiggle toes.  When I started being afraid that I'd choke, at one point (they have to pack some cotton around the tooth to keep it dry while they work, ech) I reminded myself that I had an oxygen mask over my nose, so it didn't matter if I could breathe through my mouth anyway.  So, yay.  He also said that he can have me take a valium an hour before a particularly tough procedure.  So I think I may stick with this guy, even though it took 5 shots of novacaine to numb me this time!  But I'll decide that a little later.

Thanks to all for the tips & encouragement...I'm SO glad I'm done with this freakin' thing.

Posted by alchemist at 06:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I see the dentist at 8 am tomorrow to have my temporary crown pulled off and my permanent crown put in.  Hopefully this will mean I can start chewing on that side of my mouth again and give the cavity on the other side of my choppers a rest.  Maybe I'll even go have a different "pain-free" dentist fill the cavity finally, since the guy who did the crown didn't have time, and didn't have a novocaine alternative, and seemed to be perfectly ok with me going 2 weeks unable to chew properly. Not that this has prevented me from keeping up my usual ridiculously high caloric intake.  Sigh.

Anyway, am scared of dentist.  No wanna go dentist.  No likey dentist.  

Posted by alchemist at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Corel's selling the newest version of Painter (IX.5, they're calling it.  Shouldn't that be IX.V?) for $200 through the end of May, marked down from its usual $450 or so.  You get the full version for the upgrade price.  Painter is the caddilac of natural-media paint tools so if you're into that you should check it out.  Just remember it goes back up to full price on June 1.

On an unrelated note, what does this say about my laziness?  I got a frozen "seafood scampi" dinner (Stouffer's, I think).  It wasn't bad - decent noodles & sauce, pretty ok shrimp, and bad little scallops--tough and really fishy smelling.  After eating one I thought "ok, I'll just toss the other 4 scallops and just eat the shrimp and noodles."  Then I thought "I don't want the scallops in the kitchen trash making the whole place smell like fish!"  So, rather than have to take the trash out after tossing them, I just went ahead and ate the rubbery little beasties.  Soooo lazy.

Posted by alchemist at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, the new basement bathroom was finished a few months ago.  We decided to do without a tub, because we have a decent bathtub in the upstairs bathroom.  Of course I wanted a family-size jacuzzi as well as a shower, but we don't have that big of a house or that much money, so we ended up with a nice normal-size bathroom with a BIG walk-in shower with a built-in bench, so I can sit down to shave my legs. Ahhhhh.

A week after the downstairs bathroom was finished, the bathtub upstairs decided to spring a leak in the outflow pipe, pouring cups of water down the wall of the NEW bathroom.  Houses and cars enjoy screwing with their owners.  So the bathtub has been unusable while we noodled around figuring out if our skills were up to doing the plumbing job ourselves.  We finally decided that they weren't, so we had a plumber out yesterday morning and he replaced the outflow pipe and took care of a couple of other things and all is well now.  Price: four hundred and fifty samoleans.

While that was going on, I broke off a hunk of one of my back molars, by eating a cracker.  That tooth has been mostly made of metal filling material for 20+ years now.  The remaining enamel was mostly icky gray color due to staining from the metal.  Apparently I got a fresh cavity in there someplace, and so part of the enamel just cracked off. Those of you in your late 30's and up already know what this means, right?  Oh yes, I get to have a crown! 

A crown, for those of you lucky enough not to know this yet, is basically a prosthetic tooth.  They saw the old busted tooth down to the gum line, and then they mold what's left and then stick a temporary crown in there.  After a couple weeks of not chweing on the temporary crown (which begs the question, why stick it in there? It's my back molar, nobody can see it) the new, permanent crown is ready, and they pull out the temporary and glue in the permanent one. 

Dental work always sucks, but I really drew the short straw yesterday.  My regular dentist takes that day off, so I went to someone else.  He was nice enough, but when I said "I don't get numb with novocaine" he didn't have an alternate drug like my regular dentist; he just gave me SEVEN shots of the stuff.  Even then I wasn't totally numb and since a crown involves drilling away pretty much your entire tooth, well, OW. But that was the easy part. 

See...I have a thing about folks putting stuff in my mouth.  For certain fun activities, I've learned to work with the concept, but for the dentist...well, I'm still not very ok with it.  Breathing, for me, is a fundamental form of self-expression.  It's important to me.  It's important to my subconscious, which doesn't listen when I explain to it that the rubbery tooth molding glop filling my mouth is a good thing, and that four minutes of keeping my jaw clamped tight around it isn't really very long at all.  You know you're having a bad day when the single thing you can be proud of is that you merely retched and drooled on yourself in front of total strangers, rather than vomiting on yourself in front of total strangers.

And then I got to write them a check for (after insurance) five hundred and seventy bucks.

Posted by alchemist at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I should Not:

1. Eat Oreo Cookies.  Even the vanilla ones.

2. Play Frozen Bubble when I should be writing

3. Read blogs when I should be writing

4. Watch tivo when I should be writing

5. Forget to put on sunscreen

Posted by alchemist at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We've hit a lull in the paperchase - waiting for fingerprint clearance to come back from the FBI so that the Home Study can be completed.  Just about every other piece of paper is done (the I-171h won't come til long after the home study is done, so I'm not even fretting about that yet.).  Now I have nothing to do, adoption-wise.   So that leaves me plenty of time to feel bad about being infertile.

I spent my 20's trying to get my shit together.  It really wasn't together at all.  I made a huge radical life change when I was 25, after the sudden death of a close friend.  I dropped out of graduate school (Lit and Creative Writing) and moved to the big city and started working with computers.  I had a few friends here but mostly not, and I'd never lived anywhere really big.  It was the right choice - it started me on the path to being actually happy for the first time in my life - but it was a very hard couple of years.  I didn't do anything too masively stupid but I did manage to fall mildly in love and get my heart broken.  I was 28 when I met Hub and was still licking my wounds and kind of drifting, life-wise.

It took a while to get around to getting married - I wasn't cut out for partnership.  I'd always dated jerks, so I didn't really know how to deal with someone nice.  "You mean, when I come home, I'm supposed to sit and talk with you?  But what if I'm in a bad mood?"  Fortunately for me, Hub is a very patient, sweet guy, and he rode out the crappy first year of living together while I figured out how to be an ok girlfriend. 

So, I had more things to learn.  For assorted reasons, I didn't acquire certain skills as a youngster.  Managing stress, keeping my workaholism to a manageble level, friendly conflict resolution, building normal instead of super-rigid boundaries -- I had no idea how most people handled these things.  On the other hand, I am super-duper in a crisis, and will wrassle with a rabid tiger if I think there's a need.  A year or so of therapy made a big difference. (Advice to folks seeking therapy: find someone who specializes in your Issue.  If you're dealing with the death of a friend, for instance, see a grief counsellor. If you're addicted to crack*, see an addiction counsellor. Otherwise you get a sympathetic person who says "oh, wow, that's terrible" but doesn't teach you useful skills for changing)

By the time I was about 34 I felt like I was ready to be a mom.  I'd always wanted kids, but I didn't want to screw them up.  I knew I would never be perfect but I wanted to have skills for dealing with stress, and I wanted to get past the majority of what I'll call my moodiness.  Thanks to a good job, a terrific husband, a good therapist, a stable home life, and nobody I loved having died recently, I was feeling normal and healthy and ready to start trying for a baby.

Two years later, we thought probably something wasn't working right. My confidence in my ability to be a mom had grown a lot - we'd had a bunch of family crises & illnesses, including losing a very dear aunt to cancer at the age of 56.  It was horrible but it didn't send me into an anxiety spiral - it was just a sucky, grief-filled time, like anyone else would have.  So I felt like "if I can handle this, I can handle anything," but my body seemed to be going the other direction.  Another 2 years and I'm 38 and we had to decide how to address the situation.  If I was 30 right now, we'd be making a different set of plans.  We'd be adopting a baby, because we want to adopt a baby. But I'd also be going in for a laproscopy to see what they could do about my apparent endometriosis, and then I'd be finding out what they could do about the uterine abnormality.  In short, I'd have more options.  I could still daydream, at least, about growing a life inside me.

So, not only has my body failed me (and let Hub down), but my psyche has too.  If I was one of those people who sailed into her 20's truly knowing herself, not struggling with life angst or what have you, not wasting years in school and starting a career later than everybody else, not dating worthless bozos, etc etc, etc, then maybe I could be, you know, a REAL woman.

Sheesh, where's a giant stack of paperwork when you need it? 

*note: I am not addicted to crack. This is merely an example.  At the moment I am addicted to "chuckles" candy, but I'm sincerely working on beating it.

Posted by alchemist at 05:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I grew up in Indiana, one of the two states in the nation that doesn't do Daylight Savings Time.  Even though I've lived in Chicago for nigh on 15 years, I still have trouble getting used to the whole concept.  I'm okay with the "fall/back" portion, because that just involves sleeping in.  But this spring/ahead thing is killing me.  I generally get up at 6 am to get ready for work.  So far this week the earliest I've managed to drag myself out of the sack is 6:27, which would be this morning right here, and I feel woozy and exhausted.  Possibly that has something to do with the fact that I went to the bar with friends after work and didn't get home til 9, and had vodka-induced heartburn that kept me awake until nearly 1 am.  But I prefer to blame Daylight Effing Savings.

To make things even more irritating, Indiana is doind Daylight Savings for the first time in history, and they're on NEW YORK time.  What tha F? So now instead of just being an hour ahead of them in the winter, and on the same time in the summer, we're going to be an hour off all dang year.  Since my parents, best friend, and favorite brother all live in Indiana, I spend a lot of time going back and forth from here to there, particularly in the summer.  If we want to get to my folks' place in time for lunch on a saturday in the winter, we have to get on the road by about 8:30 am our time.  We were looking forward to flipping back to leaving the house at 9:30, because it's the WEEKEND for crying out loud.  The effort it takes to pry Hub out of bed on a Saturday morning would make angels weep.  And now my dang fellow Hoosiers stole my precious extra hour of sleep.  Phooey.

Posted by alchemist at 05:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. The bright colors.  Being tall and wearing a 1x doesn't make me feel conspicuous enough, so I'm delighted that designers avail themselves of every color in the PAAS Easter-Egg-Decorating pallete.

2. The high waisted pants.  As belly buttons move outward, they also apparently move upward by several inches, and it's nice of the designers to notice this. 

3. The wide, boxy cuts.  Women gain weight evenly all the way around, like sausages, and it's so great to have clothing that reflects this.

4. The short shirts.  My poochy belly wants the world to see it, damn it!  So I'm glad no-one thinks to make a shirt long enough to cover it.  It's particularly edifying to find a shirt wider than it is long.

5. The waist-to-hip ratio.  Although I weigh 200 pounds and am shaped exactly like a voluptuous potato, I like to imagine that my waist and hips are in the same proportion as a swimsuit model, so I'm glad designers keep nipping in those waists.  Nothing's so calming as the sound of the extra fabric around my hips flapping gently in the breeze when I wear pants that fit comfortably in the waist.

6. Dart-free construction.  Rather than sew shirts to fit boobs, designers just make the whole shirt bigger.  So flattering, and gives me plenty of fun opportunities to talk about how I'm not pregnant.

Posted by alchemist at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Posted by alchemist at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Torrefaction," in alchemy lore, is the process of heating metal in a furnace until the base substances are burned away, leaving pure silver or gold.

Thanks to Carl Jung, medieval alchemical concepts have taken on whole new meanings in the realm of the spirit, useful (to me anyway) when pondering life's more challenging aspects.

Posted by alchemist at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)