RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRandom

Onto other (albeit random) things: 

I think school is out.  The husband and I might join Billy Blanks' workout place kind of around the corner.  We keep threatening to and one of these days by golly we'll do it.  I think summer's here.  I really don't like the valley as much as the other side of the hill, but someone had a semi-valid argument:  if the summers in the valley are hotter, the winters are not as harsh...  Does anyone know the answer to this? 

I think I could be pregnant again.  Oooooh, that's a big one.  I hope I am, not only because I would looooooove another child, but because if I don't get pregnant soon, I'll continue to adopt critters...  just like I almost adopted a cat yesterday (in my mind) until the little son-of-a-pussycat scratched my hand while we tried to rescue it from the engine compartment of one the cars.  I'm a dog person anyway...  

I think we've solved the permanent "boxes everywhere" problem.  Hurray for storage units!!!

Man... I really hope I'm pregnant...

I would be so happy if I was that I would even be willing to quit the:

 

There are only 164 shopping days left until my birthday!!!!!

 

Really.

Fever, in the morning... Fever, all through the night...

I don't really know what is going on, but for the past few weeks I feel as if I had a fever...  all the symptoms:  my muscles ache, my ears are zooming, and I feel I'm boiling.  But here is the funny part:  sometimes I actually do have a temperature, and sometimes I don't -- yet I feel the same pretty much all day long...

It could be stress-related, or maybe I'm dying.  If that's the case then "give my love to the world" in the famous words of... does anyone know??  Here is a hint for those who love Google as much as I do:  You had to have walked through the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, GA.

 

 

I found Dave Barry's Blog

If anyone is interested...

http://weblog.herald.com/column/davebarry/

There's a temporary homeless girl wandering in Santa Monica asking people to help her because her wallet was stolen.  The first night we saw her (we didn't give her anything) I told her that she shouldn't be begging on the Third St. Promenade as the places there to eat were too expensive and she could eat more somewhere like McDonald's. 

We saw her again two nights later, but now she had the cutest little chihuahua which she said she purchased a week ago for $350.  IN LONG BEACH.  Because her story gets more convoluted every time I ask a new question, I thought I'd get right to the point:  Would it be unethical if the next time we saw her we offered her the money necessary for her hostel or maybe a little more in exchange for the dog??

Gabriela

Too busy to pee

and too busy to write... HOWEVER...

there

 

are

 

only

 

172 shopping days left until my birthday!

 

 

I'm just a typical braggy sort of mom...

THIS POST WAS WRITTEN ON 5/1

I haven't written anything in my blog in almost 3 weeks...  Strange, since my mind's been as active as if I had.  What I mean to say is, I've been on a thought pattern that is so reminiscent of when I decide to write or when I get into a one-way conversation with my husband (who, thankfully, recognizes these times).

It's a shame, really, because I had *loads* of things to write about. 

Ah!  Yes.  Just when I thought it was safe to go back to being a disciplinarian, my son outdid himself yet again.  As of the last report, he had said to me "my mommy is my dream" when I asked him if he'd had "sweet dreams" the night before.  I have now been elevated to crazy levels of perfection:  he claimed in an impromptu song that (among his heart, his dream, his soul) I was his Holy Mary. 

I felt a rush of "we must correct this right away" rising towards my brain, but no.  I didn't.  Guilty as I may be of allowing myself to be so glorified, I shamelessly and selfishly let the moment pass, all the while noticing the triumphant look on his little face knowing, that yet again he had won and sold me over a million times.

Unfortunately, the next day I found him spraying the dog right after I had told him not to do that sort of thing (it's still too cool at night), so his new Game Boy got taken away for a week.  Well, it was actually more like 3 days, but he made up for it somehow.  I think.

So as not to make this journal "starring Mr. Charm", I have to say that our daughter has her moments of awesomeness too...  Hers are just different.  Although not the charmer, she does turn it on in a blatant way, to the point where we both get the giggles and this sort of bonding amazes me...  her sense of humor is so much older than her 6 years. 

 

176 more shopping days until my birthday

Writing ramblings

I used to hate to write.  Almost as much as I hate to hear my voice on an answering machine.  But I think that age, marriage, and children have changed that.  These things (especially motherhood) have helped me find what I can call "my voice" and it seems to come from the same place as where Pavarotti gets his when onstage...  when it's good it comes from deep within, and on its way back up from in you it drags up with it all these feelings you kept inside...

It's so rewarding to write something that touches a nerve or an emotion within yourself.  And although "My Father's Shoes" lingered at the top of that emotional pit, I didn't have the heart nor the knowledge necessary to dive in.  And to be more "practically" honest, there just isn't enough peace and quiet around here to sit and write for long periods of time...

So my apologies (to me, you, anyone who reads this) for the rambling, emotional piece than never quite was.

My father's shoes

What happened to me on Monday was so intense, I couldn't even think about writing about it until today....  late today, as you can see...

As with most things that are unexpected, it all started innocently enough:  "Hey, Baby, check out these shoes I just bought".  No big deal.  My husband bought new shoes and he wanted me to see them. 

So I went to our bedroom to have a look.

There, being showcased by my husband's hands were the cause of something unexpected:  My father's shoes.

This was not a joke, and it isn't one now.  But just as I saw them for the last time about 27 years ago, under a spotlight of emotion were shoes so incredibly identical to the ones my father wore they took my breath away.

I quickly buried my face into my husband's chest.  I wanted to run away.  I couldn't even describe what I was feeling, what I had seen, or how I'd seen it, but I had seen my father.  More and worse than that, I felt him.  Within a hundreth of a second I felt his impending prescence, what it felt like, that childlike joy I had felt so long ago knowing he would come home after he'd been working, being in a room where he could possibly be or would be in; morphed into the present possibility of him still being alive...  back from the dead...??

It didn't help me not to see his body after he passed away, although it was something my mother thought she would shield me from when I was 12.  She didn't want that last impression of his lifeless face etched in my mind.  But now it is something that has left my life peppered with dreams of him still being alive, as recent as a few months ago.  That recurring dream in which my family confesses to knowing he was still alive and in hiding for most of my life, in a place he moved away to so as not to hurt us anymore. 

The shoes were still there, but I couldn't even look at them.  When I did, I noticed that they even had that little right-to-left hairline crease from having been walked in, which made it all seem even more real.  These shoes were the one design I ever saw my father wear, in black, brown, shinier or matte and when once they gave me a certain comfort, they were now enough reason for me to want to run away.  Hard as I tried, I couldn't look at them anymore, I haven't even looked at them since.

I love those shoes.  As a matter of fact they have always been my favorite design, for obvious reasons... but they now became a new, albeit small lesson on life: 

There are times when you cannot face something you love because you just love it too much.

Huh??

Excerpts from a Brad Pitt interview by GQ (all from the same interview, same time, same month, etc.):

"The idea that marriage has to be for all time -- that I don't understand."

Followed by:

"...acting, a career he would readily toss because 'truthfully, I'm interested in other things. Like family.'"

Right... because family is compiled by me, kids, some other grown-up but not for all time...  So maybe just me and some kids... or just one...  maybe a disposable wife?  Wait, are kids for all time too??  Shit!  I didn't know that!!!!

Big Momma Day

For Mother's Day today I got one of my "First Time Evers":  I got breakfast in bed made and served by none other than our 6-year-old daughter, or "Little C" (see?  it just doesn't work).

Her daddy talked to her last night (he's traveling) and told her to do the J family traditional Breakfast In Bed, which I thought was amazing.  I got 2 slices of bread with Peanut Butter & Jelly and a glass of milk. 

She's just so cute.  She even heated the bread in the microwave because, according to her, "it was cold because it was in the refrigerator, Mommy". 

Here is the detailed story (and so very much my kind of story):  The bread she gave me was rice bread, which doesn't have either the consistency nor the flavor of the bread you would want with your PB&J.  The milk was soy milk, which I like but have susbtantial reason to believe that I am allergic to it.

I did down the hot bread with the hard edges and took a tiny sip of the milk ("Mommy, it's your favorite!!") and dwelled in the feeling.  She really truly is the best.  I pictured her tiny hands trying to grasp the big bottle of 8th Continent and her mouth twisting as she tried to pour the soy milk into the glass all the way to the top, just like I like it.  Then walking diligently to the microwave, after carefully separating the rice bread slices, taking notice not to heat the bread with the PB&J on it, but the bread alone... hitting the number "1" on the micro-oven, waiting patiently... I could continue forever, just dwelling, imagining...

When she reached my bedside she announced the event and then apologized for the tray replacement (a round cork hot-plate thingy), because the real tray was too high up.

Oh... the gift itself reached me by way of email.  It was a gift certificate for a new pair of my favorite shoes (Ferragamo's "Audrey").  But (to steal from American Express commercials), the truly "priceless" part was what my imagination gave to my mind:  A picture of my husband working overtime in front of his computer to produce a PowerPoint document weighing in at 2+ megabytes, featuring a photo of the kids, with a "value not to exceed $00.00" on the bottom (a mistake, I think!), and printing at the small size of 1/3 of a letterpage...  It made me fall in love all over again. 

TRULY, really, truly:   When someone gives you their time, their thought, their love in this way, the tangible gift itself becomes unimportant.  And nothing else, ever, can make you feel loved in the same way as this.  After all, time, love and thought themselves are things that one can't buy.  Or ever take back.

Should I worry??

I know I've been fairly liberal about posting our names, pics and such on this journal...  so I'm wondering if I should stop doing so.  Go back and change it all?

I never felt paranoid enough to do that, as a matter of fact.  I felt it would seem strange to call my family things such as "Little C" or "The Hub" or "Little One", because so many friends of mine who know my family read this journal and it would seem odd to them as well...

If there are any reasons for me to worry about writing in the way I have been that I'm not aware of, please someone let me know the risks involved.

Otherwise I could make this journal private, I suppose.  But I would gladly invite anyone already reading my insane ramblings...

Gotta give them this one...

I read this online today.  I do not know its author or where I even found it.  All I can say is that this is the one where men are... how do I say it... how to get it out...  hhmmmpppffff....  what can I say..?  I can't even get myself to articulate it  --  yet I feel compelled to give credit where credit is due:

"Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy."

:-)

187 more shopping days until my birthday!

I should borrow money from the homeless...

I don't think I told this story in recent times... so here it goes.

I went into a Johnny Rockets (in Beverly Hills) when I lived in L.A. the last time to get something to eat.  At the counter and in front of me there was a man that was clearly homeless and stinky.  He was filthy and hairy and all that stuff typical of homelessness...  so you can get a mental picture which I recommend.

My curiosity piqued and I couldn't resist to look sort of over-his-shoulder (remember I don't have a sense of smell) at what this homeless man in Beverly Hills could be ordering whilst pretending I was getting a better look at the menu.  I remember thinking, "maybe he got enough money for a whole good meal today" happy at the fact that he was in a food shop and not a liquor store... 

Then I saw it, I really, really saw it.  Like the golden halo eminating from that briefcase in "Pulp Fiction" but with their own hue of green, between the pages of a TV Guide were (no joke) a minimum of five $100 bills, each one in its own little page-section.  He kept flipping through the pages; he got to the 20's section, then the 10's, then the 5's, which he gave one of to the seemingly unsurprised Johnnie Rockets Beverly Hills worker.

Just like anyone else, he took back his change, put the coins in his pocket.  Closed up his TV Guide wallet, put it away.  Picked up his order and left the place. 

The strangest thing of all was the normalcy of how the situation developed.  One can only assume that this man was a regular...  Mr. Bum of Beverly Hills...

What about Benny

I have this way of torturing myself at times by trying to imagine certain situations to the point where I almost feel like they are real...  Not the healthiest of things to do, yet occasionally helpful to pre-judge decisions I have to make.

For example:  As I lay in bed last night, I wondered (as I often do, especially during the day) when or where our dog Benny's body would finally give out. 

[some of Benny's intestines have gotten into and packed in his lungs -- I believe it's what is called a hernia?-- and the operation to have them removed is too risky and expensive for us to take that chance.  We decided to let God have a say.]

I imagined him getting sick.  Or not being able to breathe, and not being able to help him...  or running desperately to the Pet Hospital for him to be put down to ease his suffering.  The problem is that I don't know how, when or what to expect when it finally happens.  I don't know how I will deal with it and the kids.  What if he's alone? 

That's when I came to the realization that it would probably be best for me to try to find him a the best possible living situation for a variety of reasons:  

He needs to be in a home where he has no access to sweets, or things that could be detrimental to his intestines.  Here, he steals it from the kids. 

He needs to be in a home where he can be fed soft foods in smaller servings 3 or so times a day.  Here, our Shepherd is extremely upset that we would (this late in his game) try to re-schedule the feedings he (the Shepherd) was the supervisor of.  He has been a little impatient with Benny lately.

He needs to be in a home where he can keep from getting too excited.  We have 2 kids and 3 dogs.  Enough said.

He shows no signs of being sick at all.  He loves, he plays, and he's one of the best dogs we've ever had, but he deserves a one-on-one relationship with a human to live his life to the fullest.  Here, is just a little more than one of the other dogs.  We love them all, but he deserves a little more.

Last but not least yet most selfish, I don't have the heart.  I know I couldn't handle it if something happened to him, which will most likely sooner than most dogs. 

So I will start looking.  I will make sure though, that he has the absolute best possible situation and would even consider to cover the costs to have him put down if it should get to that, I just don't want to have to do it myself.

Advice would be nice.  Just for some additional views...  thanks...

 

188 more shopping days left until my birthday.

Starting the countdown

Man... I haven't done this for *years*..!!!  But here it goes:

There are 190 (shopping) days left until my birthday!!!

I used to do this every year until sometime in my late twenties...  All it ever got me really was a bunch of hugs and love, which is what I was hoping for nevertheless... 

One of the best years was probably that surprise birthday party my Retix friends/co-workers gave me after I drove everyone insane through my humble self-advertising...  back in the 90's when I lived in L.A. the first time.  I heard that even a year later my birthday was still announced over the loudspeaker, after I was long gone...

Ah, the memories of Retix...  Geeks are really the best people to have as co-workers.  For an office-setting, that *had* to be the most fun I had working anywhere...  I mean, where else would the department head tell you flat out that the reason you were hired was your looks, and that:  "how often would we get a chance to work with an ex-Hawaiian Tropic girl?"  I should have probably cared more one way or the other about this matter-of-fact statement, but the "California" salary I was offered impressed me enough and I had zero other choices available at the time.

Retix, believe it or not, was probably the best work experience I ever had... Unfortunately not with the best mind I ever had...  but they put up with my lunacy and like all good things it came to an end... 

...to a "Medical Leave" sort of end.

I love Scrubs

That's all.

I just love the show "Scrubs".  Even after watching 4 in a row.

A Spoon & The Pretzel

I love to spoon. 

A wonderful thing about spooning is that you can time your breathing right so that it has the same rhythm as the person you are spooning with (this is especially true with a person near your size, as I've tried to do it with the kids and almost passed out).  

I like spooning when:

In need of empathy

In need of comfort

In need of emotional protection  

As with comparing apples and oranges, there is what I call the Pretzel. 

The Pretzel is great and I can only describe it as that physical intertwining with someone that if the two of you were to be frozen, they would have to cut off limbs in order to set you apart.    You see, I just have to write about the Pretzel, because I once told my mom that my husband and I pretzeled after an argument and that alone illustrated so much of our feelings it deserved its own journal entry.  

A pretzel is what you do:

After a hideous argument, when you have that need to become one again, and not two on opposite ends of the spectrum/bed.  

Before facing a great challenge ahead, when you must stand together

After being apart for a while

After a major crying fit  

So in one of my "Aha!" moments I learned through my own teaching that what my husband and I end up doing physically when we cuddle is just a projection of what we are feeling at the time...  which I thought was very interesting.  When we Pretzel we want to be like one.  

No matter how much additional thought I gave it, I haven't been able to come up with any other cleverly named positions. 

I'm just left with the: 

Don't-Even-Think-Of-Touching-Me-I'm-Sleeping-On-My-Belly-With-My-Face-Away-From-You-And-My-Arms-Tightly-By-My-Side position.

Which happens when:  

I'm reallllly pissed off, or 

I'm very tired.

G

This post is from 4/10

Last night we went to dinner with some friends to some L.A. restaurant.  While waiting for a table I see Randy Newman scurry by me towards the back, but I didn't realize it until he had already passed by.  So the rest of the night I struggled with thoughts that defied me between being "cool" or a complete blubbering idiot and try to talk to him.  More than just talking, I had a feeling of gratefulness for the music he has written, while not extremely poetic or deeply insightful as someone like say, U2, still helped me pull through the day many times.

Dinner was wonderful.  The drinks must have been even better.  So much so that when Simon (the guy from American Idol) was left alone at his table across from ours I felt compelled to wave to him...  he just seemed somewhat ill at ease by himself...  almost uncomfortable.  So out of kindness I waved, I guess Gin and Tonic and I decided he needed the attention.

As I got up to use the restroom, the amount of drinks I'd had became clearly evident.  Walking in heels has never been my forte, and something I don't much practice, so I became slightly self-conscious.  Blessings to the attendant that was keeping drunk-vigil by the steps.  I now believe that his sole job is to stand there to help people judge the distance betweeen their toes and every one of those three steps.

On my way back and after I had practiced balancing high heels and alcohol, I turned on the charm and told the Step Guardian that I would really like to meet Randy Newman.  I'm not sure which charm it was I turned on and given my condition I don't think I really had a conscious choice, but the SG started asking all the other waiters, the maitre'd, host, etc. culmitating with the Manager where Randy could have gone.  Nobody seemed to know, and those "in the know" said I'd seen the wrong person.  I ended up face-to-face with the manager who was absolutely convinced that Randy Newman did not enter the restaurant that night.  Although I tried to convince him otherwise, he was unmoved and ready to dismiss me...  Suddenly, I resorted to the last of all resorts:  We were in an Italian restaurant.  The manager was Italian.  He must like cars.  He must like Ferrari.  DING!!!  "you're Italian!" I said, "My husband spent a lot of time in Italy!  He used to race for Ferrari in Formula One!!" and then the final "Come, you should meet him!!!  Just remember to come get me if by any chance you happen to see Randy Newman".

So when Randy Newman was about to resurface from the restroom to leave the restaurant (I knew it), the ever-so-wonderful manager came to get me.  Actually, the manager and a couple of the waiters all came, very excited for me.

I got my chance.  I was able to tell Mr. Newman how his "I love L.A." had been at times an escape from Indy, how on dreary days it took me back to California and helped keep my hope of moving back some day.  Of course I also told him the kids love the songs he's written for Disney and he told me of a new kids' movie that is about racing, of all things.  At some point I took him to meet my husband and they chatted briefly and...

that's about all. 

I got to thank someone for the work they did.  I don't know why, but it makes me very happy to let a person know I get and appreciate their work.  I know L.A. has many bad things, but the way I feel about this place is summarized in that piece of Randy Newman's work. 

And I love it.