Proof I'm losing my mind...

I forgot the "words" to the ABC song this morning. The ABC Song, people!! I was changing The Geej's diaper and singing along, when all of the sudden I got to the "QRS" section, and forgot what letters came after what. Also, I was unable to add 9 + 8 earlier today. What the hell?

Mom is here visiting. She got here Sunday afternoon. The main reason is to see Geej, of course, but a nice secondary benefit has been that we were able to take my car to be worked on. (Mom put a car seat in her car, which makes things SO much easier.) It was overheating and the A/C was having problems, neither of which you want to deal with during summer in Austin, believe me. So hopefully, this will take care of things for a while.

Yesterday we drove down to Horseshoe Bay to see MOM'S NEW HOUSE. It's about 55 miles west of Austin--a lovely little resort community (read: lots of over-50s folks) right on Lake LBJ. Mom looked at this place in March, and then again in early July. She just loved it, put a bid on it, and I'll be damned if she didn't get it. It's only a couple of years old and is in immaculate condition. And you know how it is when a friend gets a new car, and you ride around in it and it's all super-clean and has that new car smell and all the latest gadgets and whatnot, and then all of the sudden you've got new car fever, and you're looking at the car ads in Saturday's paper and paying close attention to the endless barrage of car commercials that come on while you're watching the 10pm news...? Well, it works the same way when you go see and (almost) new house that's spotless with all the latest appliances and tons of storage and a kick ass floor plan. I've got new house fever in a bad way. But I guess it's just further proof that I'm losing my mind because a) I don't have the money and b) I don't have the time to look/buy/move. I guess I'll just have to live vicariously through my mom as she moves into and decorates this place (and I'm going to have to try like hell to steer her clear of the 1980s decor she's so fond of...).

So damn tired.

It's 9:35pm, and I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to make it to 10:00. I just put The Geej down...about an hour later than her normal bedtime. We had a big day.

And now I've got dishes to wash and laundry to fold and general straightening up to do, and all I want to do is collapse. Maybe it's the George Jones I'm listening to right now, or maybe it's the fact that I haven't gotten at least 6 hours of continual sleep in about 4 months, but I feel drugged and loopy. So, as soon as I have enough creative juices flowing through the old noggin, I will post something worth reading. But for now, nighty night.

Also, I wanted to show you what happens when you're 11 months old and you DON'T take a nap like you should.

It's dangerous stuff, skipping naps. Mind your mother, and go to bed.

Reunited, and it feels so good. Yep, that's THE Kewpie in her hand. Not a new Kewpie...the one we'd lost. Thanks to Aunt Sharon for finding it for us! 

Has anyone ever died from hot flashes?

I ask this only half-way jokingly.

I have kept count today, and since I woke up at 6:35 this morning, I have had no fewer than one an hour. More often than not, I have at least 2 an hour. For those of you who haven't had the joy of experiencing these things, it feels like you're standing in a un-airconditioned tin shack filled with roaring wood-fired pizza ovens in Death Valley in mid-August at high noon. And it comes on very suddenly. One minute, you're fine, the next minute you're miserable. It usually only last a few minutes, but it just knocks the wind out of your sails and pisses you off at the same time. And when you're in Texas in the middle of a very hot summer, it just adds to the fun. I know I'm not the first woman to experience menopause symptoms, but having them come on so fast and furiously has just been super crummy. It just magnifies the experience. Turns it up to eleven, so to speak.

Oh god...and the mood swings. They've gotten pretty bad too. Today I just started bawling because Geem was being so clingy it was just wearing me out. I just broke down and sobbed. And the new Coldplay album...I can't listen to it without crying. Or Elliot Smith. Or Lloyd Cole for that matter. I watched "Finding Neverland" last night and cried like a weenie. I don't guess they're mood "swings" exactly because that would imply that that there are highs that offset the lows, and there aren't. Then again, if there were, I guess it would be "manic-depression," so I guess I'd better be satisfied with what I've got.

Whatever turns you on...

I've been meaning to write about this for a while. The Geej has very unusual taste in toys. Yes, she likes the typical things that you get a toy store and cost money, but there is also stuff that she finds amusing that really bewilder me. A short list...

1) Napkins or paper towels. I discovered this one day when I had dropped a few paper napkins on the floor near her, and she decided to crawl around with a napkin in each hand and totally entertained herself for about 1/2 an hour.
2) Baby socks. Give her a sock, and she's good to go.
3) Her own empty bottle. For some reason, this item is highly entertaining.
4) My computer keyboard. She really, really wants to learn how to type. I unplug it and just let her go nuts sometimes.
5) A little silver box from a jewelry store, taped shut with some magnets in it (so it rattles). Man does she ever love this thing. She consistently digs it out of her toy box and acts like it's the biggest treasure in the world.
6) The "Power Bag." (RIP) This was a little silver drawstring bag that once held a piece of jewelry in the aforementioned silver box. Holy God, she loved this thing. I called it her "power bag" because when she got it in her hand, she would turbo crawl around the house for an hour at breakneck speed. Sadly, the Power Bag disappeared about a month ago. My strong suspicion is that she threw it in the trash can here near my desk (a pretty common place for her toys to end up), and it got tossed.
7) The bed. She will flop around and play on the bed for hours if you let her. We have at least 2 "playing on the bed" sessions a day.
8) My VERY grumpy 15 yr. old cat, Ellen. All Ellen does is sleep about 23 hours a day, but The Geej thinks she's the greatest thing since sliced bread. She tries to get her to play with her toys by bashing her in the skull with whatever the toy of the moment happens to be. I usually have to intervene at this point so that Ellen doesn't scratch the Geej's beautiful blue eyes out.
9) The pig magnet. I have a lot of magnets on my fridge that I've moved down to Geej-level so that she can play with them while I'm doing stuff in the kitchen. But there's this one magnet, a ceramic pig that says, "Ah...Food!" on it that she's taken a particular shine to. She LOVES it, and will play with it for the longest time.
10) Baby food jar lids. Something about the shape and the sound of them when you bang them on stuff I suppose. We have quite a collection of them.
11) Coupons/special offers. This one is the weirdest and most persistent of all of her quirks. She LOVES index-card size, heavier stock pieces of paper, like those that you find inside magazines or in the rebate section at Home Depot. If it's glossy paper stock, it's even better. I've gotten in the habit of picking these types of things up whenever I see them. For instance, I saw a stack of "10% off Capezio Dancewear" cards at the movie recently (what?!), and I got about three of them. Damn she loved those cards. Each one lasted about a week. She'f show her lilttle card to me like, "Moms! Peep this mad shit!" And I'd say, "I know! It's a very good offer! And it has no expiration date!" What inevitably happens though is that she starts biting on the edges of her special offer, and little bits come off in her mouth, and then we have to throw it away. It's always very sad.

I'm sure as the weeks and months pass, there will be more weird crap that she plays with. My plan is to keep at least a few of these items so that one day when she's feeling very sophisticated and/or materialistic, I can gently remind her that she used to play with napkins and socks and be perfectly happy.

Let's just say my houskeeping ain't what it used to be... 

Wherefore art thou, Kewpie? 

My noble quest.

A few weeks ago, I had about 30 minutes to kill before I picked up the Geej at school, and I was downtown, so decided to stop into Tesoros, a funky folk art store. I looked around for a while, but ended up only purchasing one thing, and it definitely wasn't folk art. It was a 6 in. tall Kewpie doll that squeaked. Geej LOVED the thing at first sight. She'd grab that Kewpie and crawl around with it, squeaking the whole time. Adorable.

We went to a birthday party a few weeks ago, and Kewpie came with us. However, she didn't make it back home in my bag. I called the party's hostess the following day to inquire about it, but no, she hadn't seen Kewpie anywhere. I went back to Tesoros, and they were sold out. (Apparently, this is a very popular item.) Went to Toy Joy. No go. Went to Terra Toys, and the dimwit 19 year old behind the counter looked at me like I was speaking Esperanto when I asked if they had Kewpie dolls. She had no idea what I was talking about. So we're still Kewpie-less, which is sad.

I guess I'm going to have to continue my quest online, and this time I'll order one and another one as back up.

Get on the plane, Karl.

One night, a group of friends of mine and I were sitting outside at Opal Divine's having many, many pints of beer (God those days seem like eons ago...sigh), and we started playing a game that is sure to wreck our collective karmas for many lifetimes to come. We didn't give it a name, so I'll just call it "Death Plane." Here's how it went: If you had a 747 that you could pack full of people and then slam into the side of a mountain ensuring that all of the passengers either died upon impact or were forced to eat one another until there were no more survivors (excepting the pilots and crew, who would escape unscathed), who would you be sure was booked on the flight? By unanimous consensus of those of us around the table, President Bush and his entire cabinet, Karl Rove, Celine Dion, and Toby Keith all got seats in first class. The game was more fun than you might imagine and went on for hours. Not in any sort of constant way, but rather, we'd be chatting about something totally unrelated, and somebody would pipe up, "Jay Leno! He's gotta be on the plane!" And we'd all either voice our "Hell Yeahs!" or our "But wait am minutes..." depending on who the suggested passenger was.

I bring this up, only because it looks as if maybe, just maybe that slimy eel Karl Rove might be headed for a wrist slap of some sort. It's not a seat on the Death Plane, exactly, but it's a start. All I can say is IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME!! How can anyone get away with as much Satan-cock-sucking as he has and not be called out on it? He exemplifies everything I detest about the typical gun-toting, clinic-bombing, money-grabbing, Hummer-driving, war-mongering Republican. He's a poster-boy for what is wrong with politics today. When someone like Rove can wield as much power and influence as he does without being elected into office, it's a very loud death knell for what we call "democracy" and what we go around the world starting wars to try and spread.

**Tonight's episode of "The Daily Show" skewered K. Rove and his coven of protectors in amazing fashion tonight. Damn, I love Jon Stewart, et. al.

Umm...I'm speechless.

Okay, remember the Kitten Wars website from a few posts ago? This is even better. Holy God, I'm about to piss my pants laughing.

Bathing beauty!! The Geej went swimming for the first time this weekend. Seriously, could this kid be any cuter? God, sometimes I just want to cover her in mustard, stick her in a giant hot dog bun, and EAT HER!! 

The Battle of the High-Chair

The Geej and I are having "issues." Food issues, to be more specific. She is driving me NUTS with her eating peculiarities, and I've started to get really mad at her, which is stupid since she's 11 mos. old and i'm an adult. But still...

Here's the deal: She was eating like a pro. Every type of baby food I gave her, she enjoyed and ate enthusiastically. Then we moved to "stage 3" foods with chunks, and I started giving her finger foods--the kind of stuff you can pick up and eat without choking even if you've got tiny fingers and only 5 teeth in your head. And she got very good at feeding herself really quickly. It was amazing, to be honest. (Of course, I was there cheering her on like a lunatic, yelling "Hole in one!" and clapping when she'd actually manage to get the slimy piece of banana or slippery piece of avocado into her mouth.) But for about the past 5 days or so, she's simply boycotting every thing she once liked. What do I mean by "boycotting" you ask? Well, we sit down, I put a piece of sweet potato in front of her, and she looks right at me and throws it on the floor. She used to do this when she was done eating, as if to say, "Hey, I'm full. See? Let me show you...the cantaloupe is now on the floor. Get it?" But now, she does it at the BEGINNING of every dining session, and with every thing I'm trying to feed her. I tell her "No!"each time, and I've instituted a "5 strikes and your out" policy whereby once the 5th piece of food hits the floor, we're done. It saves us both a lot of frustration, but the downside is, SHE'S NOT EATING!! Granted, she's still drinking formula, so she's getting nourishment, but she's nearly a year old and should be getting about half of that nourshment from food, not formula. God, I hope this is a phase. It's so ridiculous how wonked out it makes me. I guess because meal time used to be fun for both of us. Now, I just dread it, and one of us usually ends up crying.

She's also simultaneously entered in to a severe hair-pulling phase and a crying-like-its-the-end-of-the-world-whenever-she-gets-her-diaper-or-clothes-changed phase. But hopefully, these too shall pass.

Now some of the great stuff she's doing:

• Trying like hell to stand up on her own.
• "Dancing" to music, which is WAY cute. It started out innocently enough with "Row, row, row your boat," but now she's into New Wave and the blues.
• Waving to the cats whenever she sees them.
• Going to bed at 8:00 - 8:30 instead of 9:00 - 9:30.
• Swimming! We went to the pool for the first time yesterday, and she liked it a lot. Probably because it was so warm it felt like bathwater, but man, did she ever look cute in her swimsuit and sun hat...

[By the way, the "mood swings" part of this whole menopause crap has set in big time. I cried at least 3 times yesterday, for no real reason. And let's just say my fuse is a lot shorter now that it once was. It takes very little to really, really piss me off. (See the previous paragraph about The Geej's eating habits, for instance.) I'm supposed to go back and see my doctor again in a few weeks, and I'm hoping there's some kind of medication out there that can make me sane again, because between the exhaustion caused by the insomnia and night sweats and the mood swings, Karla May isn't much fun to be around these days.]

Smoke a bowl and head on down to IHOP for Funnel Cake Carnival!! 

My current favorite commercial.

Have you seen the IHOP commercial that starts out with a couple on a ferris wheel? They get to the top, and the ferris wheel stops, and the chick says, "We are SO HIGH!!" Then it shows a bunch of circus type people going to IHOP for Funnel Cake Madness or some such shit. It's exactly the kind of crap that people who actually ARE high would totally jones for. I've gotta give mad props to Madison Avenue for this one. Very clever.

WET LEAVES!! FROM ACTUAL RAIN DROPS!! 

Thank ya Jesus. Thank ya Lawd.

It rained this evening. Finally. When I walked across the yard, it sounded like I was walking on bubble-wrap, the yard was so crispy. But now...aaaaaahhh. And it was dramatic: lightning, thunder, wind. Granted, it only netted .5 inches, but still, it was really freakin' cool.

What else...

Mom left today, and I cried. Having someone to help share the work of caring for the baby has been so amazing. I was crying because I was sad to see her go, and I was crying before I knew how much work I had ahead of me without her here. We've already talked on the phone 5 times today.

London bombing. What the fuck? And of course Bush comes out with his standard "The 'War on Terror' continues...we're going to hunt down and bring to justice these people and spread a message of compassion and freedom." Yeah, George. It seems to be working so far, so just stay the course...

I have my post-op visit with La Doctora tomorrow. I can't say I'm looking forward to the poking and prodding, but I do look forward to having some questions answered...such as, "How long exactly will these 'menopause symptoms' last?" and "When will I stop being so tired all the time?"

Okay. That's it for now. More soon...

Great big green wooden shoes with white and aqua glittery spots. That's the kind of baby gift you get when your second cousin lives in Holland.  

'Member?

'Member how I was saying how much I hated Tom Cruise and how the whole "Tom and Katie" thing was making my gag like that scene in "Jackass" where the guy eats the pee snow? Well, seems I'm not the only one: http://tomcruiseisnuts.com/home.php

Enjoy!

The Mr. Mumbly Update

Several of you have been kind enough to inquire about what happened with "Mr. Mumbly" when he came over the other night. I feel obliged to fill you in.

First off, I'm starting to feel like a real Grade-A asshole for calling him "Mr. Mumbly." He's a very nice, decent guy and he doesn't deserve to be made fun of like that. So from now on, he'll be known as Hutch. (Some of you reading know why, the rest will have to wonder. Sorry.)

Well, when Hutch called and said he wanted to come by, I was just sure that telling him my mom was still here would turn him off because, after all, he's a guy. But no, he was like, "Okay, so when's a good time?" Hmm...

He came by about 7:00 with a sweet "Get well soon" card and some rather sad looking flowers that he had left in his car in the scorching heat, and were therefore, quite wilted. We all hung out and chatted. Mom made a pitcher of margaritas and then tended to the Geej so that Hutch and I could talk. But eventually, we all ended up in the t.v. room. The Geej was getting cranky and our tummies were starting to rumble because nobody but the baby had actually eaten dinner. You see, Mom and I had just been planning on having tunafish sandwiches prior to Hutch's plan to come by and visit. Ultrabore. But now that we had company...who obviously wasn't just "stopping by," we were in a pickle. He offered to go get a pizza or something, but then I said, "Well...we were going to have tunafish sandwiches...I don't know if you're interested..." and he wholeheartedly agreed that yes, he would indeed like a sandwich. So I whooped some sandwiches and we all sat around eating sandwiches and drinking margaritas. It was nice, but strange. He was very complimentary of my "cooking," which I thought was very sweet. When I started yawning uncontrollably (I get tired so early these days), he graciously excused himself and went home.

He e-mailed me the following day to tell me what a nice time he'd had and how he'd gotten a kick out of the fact that I so casually said "fuck" and "shit" in front of my mother. My reply was, "And you don't?"

So now I'm grappling with whether or not I should ask him to go to a wedding with me in August. I've got a hot BCBG dress that I got for 75% off months ago that I've been dying to wear and have had no occasion to. And I have all of these friends who've offered to babysit whenever I need it. But asking a guy to go to a wedding with you is sort of a big deal, no? My real motive is so that I could introduce him to as many friends as possible at once and I could see, once and for all, if this is worth pursuing on another level. (How he gels with my friends is very, very important. My ex-husband never melded, and that was an issue. My friends ARE my family, and you gots to love 'em.)

So, what do YOU think I should do? I'm sort of socially retarded at this point, so I need feedback. And I've got an RSVP date looming...

Conversations with Cheryl, #8

It's been a while. Since March, exactly, since I've written about my conversations with my Peggy Hill Celebrity Impersonator mother, Cheryl. And believe me, it's not because we haven't been chatting. After spending a month in a hotel room with her in Russia and the past three weeks with her here in my house, it goes without saying that we've talked...a lot. But what follows is one of the top three most bizarre conversations I've ever had with her in my entire life. And that's saying something. This happened at the end of last week.

Me (while looking in the fridge, somewhat suspiciously): Mom? Did you clean the refrigerator out?

Mom: Well...I threw out a few things...

Me: Did you throw out a container of cream cheese?

Mom: Yes, but it was empty.

Me (after a lengthy pause): No. It wasn't.

Mom: What?

Me: My pot was in there.

Mom (after a lengthy pause): Oh.

Me (not meaning it, at all): It's no big deal.

Mom: Well...I just threw it out this afternoon...there wasn't much in the trashbag...it's still out there...

Me (envisioning the trash can that's been sitting the gazillion degree heat, with nasty Diaper Genie "pearls-o-poo" diapers as in the bottom of whatever else is in there): It's okay. I'm not going to dig around in the trash for it.

Mom: I'm sorry. I'll go get it.

Me: No! It's not that big of a deal.

Mom (seriously curious): How much was it?

Me: Not much...like a quarter ounce...

Mom: No, how much did it cost?

Me: I'd say there was at least $60 of smoke-able stuff in there.

Mom: Oh! Well I'm going to get it.

A few minutes later, she comes in from outdoors holding a catfood and baby-food carrot covered "Organic Valley" container. I shamefully thank her. We haven't spoken of this since. I still cannot believe this happened.

Night sweats, hot flashes and zits. Oh my.

So menopause has set in. Full force. And it blows.

I can't take any hormone replacement/estrogen stuff because the cancer I had apparently feeds on estrogen. In fact, for the rest of my life, I have to take this "anti-estrogen" pill that they give to breast cancer patients but hasn't really been proven to work on my cancer (because it's so rare there's been an embarrassingly small amount of actual research done on it). Therefore, I'm stuck with natural remedies...black cohosh...soy isoflavones...Acupuncture... Right now, I'm on the soy and black cohosh, but haven't tried the acupuncture yet (only because I haven't had the chance--I'm a big fucking believer in acupuncture...it helped my endometriosis pain and a wicked case of sciatica...God I sound like I'm 80 yrs. old...).

But I digress. Let me tell you about what's going on in KarlaMayLand.

NIGHT SWEATS: I wake up at least 2 times a night, drenched. Sweating like the proverbial "whore in church." And I sleep on my side, so usually that means I've got some super sweaty river-running-through-my-cleavage action happening. It's like waking up with a raging fever that's just broken. It's gross, and you don't want anything touching your skin. So you rip off the covers and lie there praying for coolness. And I sleep with 2 fans on all the time...even in the dead of winter. So pretty soon, I get so clammy cold, pull the sheets back on and try to go back to sleep. One of the side effects of the "anti-estrogen" pill I'm on is "sleeplessness," and I've got it in a bad way. Once I wake up, I'm awake. And it sucks. If I do doze off again, I usually wake up within an hour, drenched in sweat again, so what's the point really, right? Ugh. I change my sheets like every 3 days at this point. It's miserable.

ZITS: I have been a lucky girl when it comes to pimples. Yes, I always had pre-menstrual or stress-induced breakouts. But usually they were short and sweet. Nothing to write home about. The only time I've even been to a dermatologist was for a "mole check" (which, by the way, I recommend for those of you of the fair-skinned variety. Especially if you used to lay out in the sun on your roof slathered in Crisco oil when you were in high school like I did. Brilliant.). But in the two weeks since the hysterectomy, I've had more zits than during my entire teen years. I feel like a fucking circus freak. Chest broken out like I've got monkey pox? Check! Left side of my nose looking like a leper on Molokai circa 1948? Yes! Enormous comic-book zits on my cheeks and forehead? You bet! I have never, ever in my life felt uglier. It's just fucked up. I'd put a picture up of the lunar surface that is my face, but I know you wouldn't like me any more if I did. C'mon...who wants to be blog buddies with a true freak?

HOT FLASHES: I'm at Whole Foods today. I went in with a list and was pretty efficient with my shopping, albeit I had the occasional wandering that one has when one goes to Whole Foods. By the time I got the the check out line, I was sweating and didn't know if I'd be able to stand up until the cashier got me checked out. Granted, part of it was fatigue that I'm still feeling from the surgery, but the rest of it? Hot flash. Big time. I can only describe it as what someone who spontaneously combusts feels the instant before they burst into flames. It's so fast and intense. And on a karmic scale it sucks--I mean, this happens to women who are and/or have ended their child-bearing days and/or have had a hysterectomy. These are humans who have had periods and dealt with pregnancy and childbirth and endometriosis and fibroids and ectopic pregnancies and abortions and PMS and cramps and you name it. At the end of all this, wouldn't random endorphin highs be more appropriate? Imagine it: you're in the checkout line, and all of the sudden, you feel like you've smoked a bowl of amazingly mellow skunk weed. Flippin' sweet. You leave the cashier a $5 tip just for the fuck of it, float to you car, load in you groceries and rock out to Tool on the way home. THAT'S what menopause should be like. Not this fucked up bullshit.

But in a weird way, it makes you realize how powerful your body is. It makes you respect it.

So after you read this, do something nice for your body. Drink some green tea. Do 20 crunches. Go for a walk. Put down that goddamned cigarette. Eat an avocado. Whatever. Think of it as the only car you'll ever get to drive, and treat it accordingly.

Please. Make it stop.