What a difference a day makes.

Did you read my post from yesterday? No?

Well, go ahead and scroll down then. Read it. Look at the last photo. I took it last night.

I'll wait...

Okay, now look at THIS: Can you even BELIEVE this shit? I lie on my left side when I'm sleeping a lot, and last night, every time I tried to roll over and get comfortable, I was like, "OUCH!" When I woke up this morning, It was totally swollen and huge and gorgeous (as you see above). I can barely lift my freakin' arm to do things like wash my hair or put my shirt on. BH is threatening to make a suit for me out of bubble-wrap since I'm so damn accident prone.

On some happier news, please check out the inter-species encounters going on in our house: That's Diane saying, "Hello? Dog? Are you there? It's me, Diane."

And here's Doug's less conventional approach at interacting with the dog.

No, we don't allow them to mingle...yet. But I foresee them getting to hang out at some point in the future.

Speaking of the cats, we pulled 11 cat toys, a battery, a chunk of broken glass, and a quarter out from under the oven tonight.

Some recent images from my life.

A tofu, cherry tomato, penne and green bean salad that is SOFA KING good.

My sweet little car turned 10,000 miles old. Aww... And yes, I'm still in love with it and am very happy that I traded the big ol' Murano in on it.

BH brought this lovely work of art with him when he moved from Colorado. It now proudly hangs in our purple-walled dining room. We one day hope to have our very own den where we have a BITCHIN' paint-by-numbers collection on the walls.

The other night, while the Geej was bathing and I was folding laundry, she said in a VERY insistent and plaintive voice, "MOMMY!! Come here! You've got to SEE THIS!!" When I walked in to the bathroom, this is what was awaiting me. And she said, "Mommy! TAKE A PICTURE!!"

I worked from home a bit this week. Because we don't have a room that we can designate as an "office" (a MUST for our next house), I set up in the dining room. This time of year, in the late afternoon, the shutters make the most fantastic shadows on the wall in the afternoons.

This also makes for some pretty awesome kitteh-ready sunbeam action (as shown in my previous post). But here they are SHARING the sunbeam. I know it's kind of dark, but PLEASE look at Doug's face. Fookin' adorable.

No, that's not an armpit hickey given to me by BH because he finds me utterly irresistable. What that IS is the worst of several injuries I suffered while falling on my ASS tonight. I tripped over the power cord to this very laptop upon which I reach out to you fools, and boom, bang, bing, SMASH, I went down. On the way I hit my head, elbow, top of my foot. And my armpit caught on the corner/top of one of the dining room chairs and resulted in this loveliness. Man, I'm a spaz.

Okay, that's all for now. More soon...that is, IF I survive the goddamned "Build-a-Bear" birthday party The Geej and I have to attend tomorrow morning. I smell Xanax in my future...

Get the balance right.

As I've said before, I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. So this year, upon the advice of my wise friend Holly, I'm doing a birthday resolution of sorts.

Let me explain.

Recently at a happy hour, I was telling Holly about how, for some reason, the idea of turning forty was really bumming me out. I'm not a person who gets hung up on age normally, so it was really weird feeling the weight of this day coming at me. FORTY. It just sounded and seemed so damned serious. Well, Holly told me that a friend of hers had started choosing a word or a "theme" every year on her birthday, and that Holly had adopted that practice as well. Not a resolution, per se, but more like a mantra...a touch stone...a core value that helps guide the choices you make for that year. Holly's word for her most recent birthday had been "Health," and she suggested that maybe choosing a word myself might be helpful.

So I started thinking. And thinking. And obsessing,. And trying like Hell to come up with a word that felt honest and right. Finally, I landed on it: Balance.

Whenever I become unhappy or stressed or even sick, it can almost always be traced back to something being out of balance in my life. Work is taking over home. Fried foods are taking over fresh. Negativity is taking over positivity. Wine is taking over water. Worry is taking over sleep. TV taking over books. Small annoyances seem like big crises. You get the idea. Things get out of whack when you stop paying attention, then WHAM, you're unbalanced, unhealthy, and unhappy. So this fortieth year of my existence, I will let balance be my guide and see where it takes me. Hopefully to a place with lower bloodpressure, fewer pounds, more rest, and increased joy.

And speaking of joy, is there anything happier than a cat in a sunbeam? Not much.

My first post as a forty year old person.

Whoa.

How the hell did THAT happen?! All of the sudden, poof, I'm freakin' FORTY years old!! I need a new driver's license. I'm pretty sure I need bifocals. And I'm entering a new actuarial category.

Ugh. I simply cannot believe it. And PLEASE don't give me that mug-appropriate platitude crap that, "You're only as young as you feel!" and whatnot. Bullshit. I'm forty. Now I just need to be able to deal with it. So far, I'm off to a pretty good start.

Let me tell you how amazingly perfect my birthday has been.

On Thursday night before, BH took me out to one of my favorite swanky restaurants as a make-up for us having to cancel last Saturday night. I ordered wrong from the menu, but other than that, it was a perfectly magnificent dinner.

Yesterday--the acutal Day Of--I took the day off of work. This has become pretty much a tradition for me. I have spent the past few years treating myself to a completely indulgent day on my birthday in order to ease the pain of being one year closer to death. (Bookhart does this too, and we think you should as well. Come ON! You deserve it!)

I have to say that this particular year was one of the best because

a) it was a Friday

b) it was fookin' GORGEOUS outside, which can be extraordinarily rare for those of us with birthdays in January

c) I'm sort of burned out on work at the moment

d) I scheduled and planned it to a tee

Allow me to break it down for you:

8:45 am--My monthly visit from our cleaning service arrives to clean my entire house.

9:00 am--A potato, egg, cheese and jalapeno breakfast taco and a small coke. Breakfast excellence.

9:30 am--An AMAZING facial that included a gylcolic peal and a hydrating hand and foot treatment AND scalp massage.

11:00 am--A very badly needed manicure.

12:40 pm--A small popcorn, a large bottled water, and "Slumdog Millionaire" all by myself

3:00 pm--An hour-long massage

4:20 pm--Checking of the e-mail. Reading of the dozens of sweet birthday wishes on Facebook. Packing of the bag. And a brief rendezvous with BH who was headed out to get his youngest boy for the weekend.

I'm going to pause here to let you in on a little secret about me: I pretty much always keep the fortunes I get in fortune cookies, at least until something that fits the bill of what was predicted in the fortune occurs. Then, I figure it's safe to toss it. It's one of my weird superstitions. Well...Wednesday, Jaye and I went out for some Asian food at lunch, and this was my fortune:

And guess what BH got me for my birthday and gave me on Friday afternoon after I got home from my massage:

BAM!! Can I play it? No. Not really. But I figure, I've got a good ear for music (tone!) and I can type blindly like a mofo (motor skills!), so I can at least have fun with it, no? I am SO freakin' excited, people!! I predict YouTube stardom in a year's time.

Okay, back to the b-day timeline.

5:30 pm--Departure for Dah's house. The Geej was out there (they'd gone out there earlier in the day), and I went to join them for a "girl's night" sleepover. Dah made dinner. Geej acted sweet. I was in bed and asleep by 11:15pm.

11:00 am Saturday--Finally woke up. That's right, bitches. I got to sleep for nearly TWELVE HOURS!! Can you think of a better birthday present than that for me? Because I honestly cannot. Wow. Unbelievably awesome.

12:00pm--Lunch with Dah and The Geej. Then we went here to feed the ducks and fish.

Yes, that's a golf cart crossing the pond. Clearly, it was another gorgeous day.

1:30 pm--I left to go back to Austin. The Geej insisted on staying with Dah. BH and his youngest had gone camping. So I got home to...AN EMPTY, CLEAN, QUIET house. The birthday bliss continues!!

Afternoon--Did three loads of laundry and put it away. Cleaned up all of The Geej's clutter and got her room all organized and straightened up, which is truly saying something.

Evening--Went and got takeout for dinner. Played around on the keyboard. (I LOVE it!!) Watched "The Swell Season" on Austin City Limits. And am now looking forward to a brand new SNL in a little bit.

I know a lot of people choose to have a big blowout on their 40th. And for a while, I even considered it. But I'm SO happy with how gently and peacefully I've entered into this strange new decade of my life. If the past 48 hours have been any barometer of how my mood is going to be for the coming year, then things are going to smooth and happy.

But I STILL cannot believe I'm forty fucking years old. Holy cow.

I am easily amused.

I'm always secretly tickled by the signs they hang up in ladies rooms that ask you not to flush certain things down the potty.

Sometimes they're very direct: "Do not flush feminine hygiene products down the toilet."

Sometimes they're kind of coy: "Please be gentle on our plumbing. It was installed before the invention of disposable feminine hygiene products."

Sometimes they're downright scary: " Do NOT flush ANYTHING besides human waste and toilet paper in this toilet. IT WILL OVERFLOW!!"

And sometimes, they're just amusing:
Overwhelm? Really?

Wow.

(And yes, I had my digital camera in the bathroom. Don't judge. I love the tiny little "Thank you" at the end.)

Cancelled.

The reservations. The dinner. The babysitter. The going out after dinner. The drinking and dancing. The cocktails. All cancelled.

Instead, I will be sitting my sick ass at home eating thawed-out leftover soup and coughing and trying to keep my head from exploding and covering my walls with phlegm.

And the four-year-old? She doesn't understand what "Mommy is sick" means, apparently. I want to crawl in a hole and die.