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I’ll be the first to admit that I have odd hobbies. I like to peel the dead skin from my feet, for example.

I’m also approximately 8 years old in my head, so I have a thing about scratch-off lottery tickets. I love them. LOVE THEM. So I have a thing that I do - whenever I find money on the ground (this happens a lot, actually), if it’s less than $20, I buy instant lottery tickets with it. Whatever I win, I buy more tickets. Sometimes I only win a couple of dollars, but no matter how much I win, I only buy the $1 and $2 tickets because MORE FUN!!!

So the other day, I was down to my last $4 of winnings (got a whole batch with no winners, what a bummer). I bought 2 tickets for $2 each and won $8. Put those back in and got the same kind of tickets and won $39. OF COURSE it all went back in. $19 that time.

Today out of the $19 worth of tickets, I have already won $21. Woo!

I’m weird. This should not be news. Plus, Jillian LOVES to help.

I resisted having a cell phone for years and years. I had one way back in 1999 or so, because I was travelling a lot with Phish and Freddie required me to have one. Nine times out of ten, though, I couldn’t find the damn thing and when I did manage to locate it, it wasn’t charged.

At some point, I realized I was paying for something I was never, ever using, so I got rid of it. I’m not a ‘phone person,’ largely due to the fact that I spent my teenage years in a house that didn’t HAVE one. That would be a totally foreign concept to a teenager today, but 20 years ago, there was just the one phone in the house, usually. And we didn’t have one.

I blame my parents’ hippie lifestyle for my social awkwardness. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m um, socially awkward to begin with, no siree! It’s the hippies.

Anyway, fast-forward a few years after I dumped the last phone and when I got all knocked up, Freddie required me to have a phone again. My protests were pretty much the same as everything else I protested while pregnant, namely the fact that women had been getting knocked up and having babies for millenia without cell phones, and I could probably pull it off as well. He wasn’t swayed.

That phone served me pretty well for a few years. It could make and receive calls and texts, which was fun. I only lost it a few times, and only had to get it replaced once. It was small and I even managed to keep it charged most of the time. It got me through pregnancy and having a newborn/toddler/mental case kid, and then Phish came back and it helped me navigate that, too!

Then. Oh, then. Freddie got this idea that we could get me a fancy cell phone (I still say cell phone - am v. old) and get rid of our house phone, which was almost never used. He managed to score a deal on a fancy new Droid X and decided that would be *my* phone (as well as the house phone). Hmmm.

The lure of a fancy phone is almost too much. Freddie has a BlackBerry, which is fine when we need to get directions or something but it’s v. slow and the little keys on the keyboard are sooooo teensy! It’s laughable. Having a fancy phone that *does stuff* would be nice, I thought.

Friday night he brought home the Droid.

I have yet to put it down.

I am also now a slave to the blinky thing. The blinky thing? Well, the Droid syncs up with Facebook and Google/gmail and pretty much any other thing you want to sync it up to. So whenever I get a new email (I get a lot of email) the Droid goes “BLLOICK!” and the little green light starts blinking.

*blink*

*blink*

*blink*

*HELLO I ARE BLINKING*

*blink*

Now, I have given Freddie no small amount of shit over the fact that when his BlackBerry dings he lunges for it to check his messages or whatever. I hate this. Mostly because he does it while driving. Or during dinner. Or in the middle of a conversation with me. He said “you don’t understand!”

I do now.

*blink*

*blink*

*O HAI, ARE BLINKING HERE*

*blink*

*blink*

*blink*

*lunge.*

I don’t even know if anyone even reads this stupid thing anymore. I don’t really care.

I have nothing to say. That’s sort of a good thing, since I tend to do my best writing when I’m agitated about something. Lately, though… life has been pretty fucking good. My family is fantastic, especially my amazing kid. I don’t have in-laws to bother me anymore, so that deep, deep well of angry material has dried up. My house is close to being done. Though there may be some angsty things to write about as I argue with Freddie about decorating and furniture placement and whatnot. High-class problems, man.

But… yeah. Things are going pretty well for me. Everyone’s happy and healthy, and I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Makes for a shitty blog, though.

For me personally, I am focused on losing weight. I have a goal in mind and a strategy and all that fun shit. I’ve been going to the gym 4 times a week or more for the last month. At first it was really the only place we could go to get out of the house while they did noisy, dusty things to it, but then it became a habit and well, yay for that. I have lost 14 pounds already and I only have EIGHTY to go before I reach my ultmate goal.

Sounds crazy, right?

Well, things got a little out of control, you see. Winter happened, which is never a good thing. Then I got injured, which sucked. THEN I had to move out of the house for seven weeks, which meant a lot of crap food/restaurants and then some unexpected stress happened, and blah dee blah, and here we are. Our kitchen was out of commission for almost three months, but we’ve had it back for two weeks now and things are improving, eating-wise.

I was running a bit at first, but I think my legs are upset about that. I had a stress fracture in my left leg that bothered me for awhile, so I let it heal and then started up again. Still have some pain there so I had to switch to the elliptical trainer. I think my legs are just not equipped to deal with the size of the body I have on them. When I get this next 20 pounds off, I’ll try the running thing again.

In the meantime, I am taking a strength-training class and thinking really hard about getting a new bike. We’re getting Jillian a bike for her birthday, so maybe I’ll get one too and we can all ride together.

Already seeing some progress, which is encouraging. Still have a long way to go, though.

1. It’s past midnight. I have been awake past midnight almost every night for the past month.

2. The reason for this is because I am back in my parents’ house and have been arguing with my father. Just like old times. Which equals stress, and stress equals insomnia. This explains the first 20 years of my life. I thought I’d gotten it all figured out, what with the relaxation techniques and the rage-displacement techniques and blahdeeblah, but ohhhhhhhh no. I never could sleep in this house, and perhaps I never will.

3. Rage-displacement = painting the house. I scrubbed the walls in the living room and painted them. FOUR TIMES. 2 coats of primer, 2 coats of color. Then I did the foyer. THEN I got down on my hands and my bony knees and scrubbed the everloving fuck out of the floor in there. NOW I am painting the kitchen. This involves stripping the paint off of the door (twice, because I fucked it up the first time), stripping the windowsills and doorway trim, moving the [new!!] fridge so I could bust up the last bit of the carpet (in the kitchen, yeah) where the fridge goes. The kitchen is almost done. I even painted INSIDE THE CABINETS.

4. I really really do not want to do the stairwell, but I have a feeling that’s next. If I’m here much longer, I’m going to need another project, and that stairwell got painted in 1942 when this house was built and I think that’s the last time it was done. Lead paint for everyone!

5. If I end up painting the stairwell, I’m going to do it in a very very deep shade of blood-red. The living room is done in lovely southwestern pinky-oranges and the kitchen is YELLOW! and GREEN! (seriously, we are talking about very bright colors here). So… red. Yeah.

6. If I didn’t have music, I would probably die. I don’t know how I would survive this place without my iPod.

7. Books, too. I’ve read about 14 books in the four weeks I’ve been here.

8. The upside to all this painting is that I’ve lost some weight. The last time I checked, it was 15 pounds, which is astounding to me, because I’ve been eating like shit and drinking a lot of beer. So… yeah. Wondering about that, because painting is hard work, sure, but it’s not THAT strenuous.

9. Did I mention I haven’t been sleeping?

10. I really really want to go home.

1. Working out. Not technically, anyway. I suppose painting my mom’s living room a grand total of four times counts as a workout, but I need to do more. I almost miss running. Since I am stuck here for the foreseeable future, I am looking into renting a bike and taking advantage of the hike/bike trail in town. In three weeks I might be allowed to run again as well.

2. Seeing people. I’ve been busy with the house projects I am forcing my mom to let me do, so by the time evening rolls around I am exhausted. Plus, most people have real jobs and can’t go out on Tuesday nights. This weekend will help, since I am getting out and about for a bit.

3. Eating right. The food here… whoa. Now, I could easily plan a menu and go to the store but the issue of storage is a tricky one. Mom’s fridge is a piece of shit on a good day, and it’s stuffed to capacity with God knows what. She refuses to clean it out because she is holding out for a new one but in the meantime, ew. I’m not the most conscientious housekeeper, but this is grossing me out and I might have to take it upon myself to make some room in there. Ewwww ew ew ew ew ew.

4. Eating right even when out. There are no diners here, which is sucky. I must be getting close to becoming a true Jersey Girl, because I really really miss my diner.

Oh. Hi.

Jillian, the dog, and I are camped out at my parents’ house. We’ve been here a week. On day 2, I didn’t think I was going to survive, what with the dog hair, the dust, the cigarette smoke, the dog hair, the dust, the musty basement, the dog hair, the cigarette smoke, and the near-complete lack of diners in Ohio. Oh, and the NOISE. The three dogs bark at each other constantly. My mom yells at the dogs. Jillian laughs like a maniac, which causes the dogs to bark more. Mom turns up the TV. The dogs bark. She yells. I die. I’m supposedly the deaf one, and I am the one telling people to turn shit down. It’s enough to kill a person. Day 2 was a rough day.

Yet here we are, on day 9 and it’s not getting any better but it’s not getting any worse. Over the past week, I have scrubbed the walls in the living room. Then I painted a coat of primer on said walls. And the ceiling. And then I painted a second coat of primer. Then I painted.

I’m quite tired.

There was a lot of furniture moving involved.

Anyway, we’re still here. For at least another week. There is NOTHING TO EAT HERE. Unless you like pizza, which I do… but there is only so much pizza a girl can eat and still fit into her jeans. The best doughnuts in the world are here, but again - only so many a girl can eat.

Sigh.

I suppose I could make some calls and go out but people work during the week and I can’t really leave Jillian with the parents all the time, since they are doing us a favor in the first place and the dog is still pretty high-needs and they’ve been taking her out at 6AM so I don’t have to. Plus, I’m a bit of a hermit (NEWS FLASH!!) so this sorta-downtime is actually quite good for my head. Sorta. In a way.

Did I mention there is nothing to eat here? It’s all chain restaurants and pizza and the one super-greasiest of the greasy spoons (the East Park Restaurant) or college bars or [even worse] TOWNIE bars. I would have to drive a rather sizeable distance to get decent food here. I’m a snob now.

Argh.

…for it is my birthday. Yes, that’s right. I’ve been kicking ass and not even bothering to take names (because: who cares? I kicked your ass already) for 35 years. Whoa. 35 years. Eeek.

I’ve never really had problems with ‘getting older’ or whatever it is that women freak out about on birthdays. I probably LOOK 35, but I don’t feel like I am. I sure as hell don’t act like it, and I often feel like I’m only posing as an adult. Sometimes I look around me and think “I own a house. And a kid. And a dog. And a car… I OWN these things. I am IN CHARGE of them. Shouldn’t somebody do something about this? It can’t be right!”

I see other women my age who just… seem so much older. Even women I know who are younger than me seem older. Maybe it’s because they seem to have their shit together, I don’t know. Maybe they’ve found what they’re looking for. Or maybe they figured out what they wanted to be when they grew up and they are that. I have yet to even IDENTIFY what I’m looking for, so I know I haven’t found it. I know I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, so I’m in no hurry to do that. This state of mind isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but I find it curious that other people pay a lot more attention to ‘grown-up’ stuff than I do.

I mean, I just spent $500 on Phish tickets.

It’s a good thing, I think, this youthfulness (okay, let’s call it what it is: immaturity) of mine. I have never felt like I had to grow up and be an adult, whatever that means. And as Neil from The Young Ones says: “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” My childhood was as happy as anyone’s, I guess, and I don’t see why it has to end just because I’m in a new demographic.

OH GOD. I’m in a new demographic! I am no longer the 18-34 super-desirable marketing target! Does this mean the types of advertisements directed at my age group change?

35. Sounds weird. I remember when my mom turned 35. I have a sweater that I bought that year (1988). I STILL HAVE IT. And it’s been in style four times since then.

The upside to this “I don’t feel 35″ business is that I don’t think I look it, either. I probably do, but a fine layer of fat is keeping my skin smooth. HAHAHAHA!!! If I lose all this weight I will finally look my age! Yikes. Anyway. Even though I am a die-hard hair dye aficionado, my current hair color is my ACTUAL hair color (brown? Who knew?), and there are no grey ones in there. Nope. So that’s good. Ma started going grey pretty much the day I was born (sorry, mom). But not me! NOT YET. And… NOT ON MY HEAD. Oh, I do have some grey hair, but… they’re… elsewhere. I’ve had those for a few years so there’s been time to get used to seeing them (AND PULLING THEM OUT BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK?).

Overall, I’m fine with my age. There’s nothing I can do about it if I’m not, so why waste time freaking out about it? I’m 35. Apparently, I’m a real live adult person, and people take me seriously sometimes. I have made a promise to myself that I’m not going to plan to do things, I’m going to ACTUALLY do things. When you’re 20 and say “I’m going to go skydiving,” people say “awww, isn’t that cute!” But when you’re 35 and say that, people go “Whoa, that’s ballsy! Don’t die!”

Big plans to not make plans, homies. It’s my birthday.

Sigh. Where to begin?

My 35th birthday is coming up. Freddie asked me what I wanted, since he suggested going to see Billy Elliot on Broadway and I shot that down. Not in a mean way, but I love that movie more than is reasonable and I feel like the Broadway show will ruin it for me. Plus, Elton John is involved, and… shut up, Elton John.

So… what do I want?

I have plenty of things. I am in desperate need of new clothes, BUT I refused to buy clothes for the size I am now so maybe when I lose 50 pounds I will be more interested, but the kinds of clothes that are produced for the size lady I am are hideously ugly and certainly don’t help with the body-image issues I already have. I will continue to wear ratty concert t-shirts and cargo shorts and Chuck Taylors until I get that part of me in shape. It’s a work in progress, and a slow one.

I have books. I have music. I have… things.

What I do not have is… mental health? I don’t know. This year has been really hard so far because I haven’t been feeling like I ever have time off. There is always something going on, even on the weekends. I need quite a bit of downtime to get my head in order and I haven’t had very much of that lately.

I get up around 6AM, when the dog starts chewing on her leg or whatever the hell she does that shakes the bed. She does that for about a half-hour, then the nosing and face-licking starts because she has to go out. It was slightly better when she slept in her crate because then I could ignore her for that extra 15 minutes, but now? Not so much. The upside is that she wakes Freddie up, too.

But *I* take her out. I don’t get 10 minutes to wake up and figure out what planet I’m on before I have to do stuff. I get out of bed, into clothes and am out the door within 5 minutes. It sucks, especially (or perhaps because) I am not a morning person.

Some of the more snarky of my acquaintances will take this opportunity to say “well, you’re not an afternoon or an evening person either” and I will take this opportunity to tell those people to just fuck right off. Whatever it is that you think of me, you’re probably wrong so fuck off. For sure. Like, totally. People seem to have these preconceived notions of who I am and what I will do, and then they have the nerve to act disappointed when I defy their expectations. I have come to realize lately that a lot of people whom I consider friends… aren’t. It will be a slow process to divest myself of them, but I think it has to be done because I am too old and have had quite enough.

Anyway, once the dog is taken care of, more often than not, I have to drive Freddie to the train station because he is a princess and is either running late (oh, to sleep in even for ten minutes!) or the weather isn’t perfect for walking a mile or… whatever the fuck. I don’t know. I do it and I don’t really complain to him about it, because (as he reminds me fairly often) it’s my job.

Ugh.

Yes, I chose this life. I love it. I do. I am insanely grateful that I don’t have to get up and go out to work because that is never a good thing for me. But I never, ever, EVER get a break. Ever. I never have downtime. Ever. Even at night, if Jillian or the dog have some kind of emergency and need tending, *I* do it. Motherhood/half-assed housewifery is truly a 24/7 sort of job. And, again, I wouldn’t trade it, but some time off would be nice.

I feel sort of broken. It’s like I carry not only my own emotional burden (and let me tell you, it’s a big one because I am… erm… yeah) but that of everyone else around me, too. People like to tell me their problems and I feel like I give good advice, but I haven’t figured out how to shake the feeling that I’m carrying all of this stuff. My own shit is quite enough, and oftentimes far too much.

SO, what I really really really would like to have is a week’s vacation, to just go somewhere else and be BY MYSELF. No husband, no kid, no dog, no JGz, no Facebook, no internet, nothing. Since that notion really crystallized just this morning, I’m not sure what that would look like, exactly, but that’s what I want. Even a long weekend somewhere else completely would be so amazing, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

Even though I have the best of intentions when it comes to writing here, my reality just isn’t reflecting it. It’s not that I’m rushed off my feet - in fact, quite the reverse - it’s that… I don’t know. I feel hobbled, somehow.

Anyway, Zeus willing, the house renovation starts tomorrow. The guys are coming to do something painful to my driveway, and something something foundations blah. I have a feeling this renovation process is going to be VERY irritating in the worst way. My whole life is an exercise in Trying To Avoid Irritation, Even Though It Follows Me Everywhere, and a project of this magnitude… well, let’s just say that if *I* were in charge, it would probably go a lot smoother.

In other news, I don’t think this half-marathon is going to happen. I have developed shin splints, which might be a result of new shoes (which are the same as my old shoes, just the updated model) and/or an increase in mileage. After the tailspin that was February, getting back on track has been difficult, to say the least. While I think the body could slog through 13.1 miles, I’m not so sure the mind can do it. I’m too distracted.

I hate it when my life gets in the way of my life.

Last weekend, I allowed my periodontist to drill a hole in my jaw and insert a bolt.

That was fairly uncomfortable in itself, and then the swelling and the bruising came and the right side of my face looked a bit like Jennifer Aniston, with the cheek and all.

The blood part was pretty gross, too.

But it’s been a week, and most of that is gone except for the remnants of the bruise, a wee bit o’swelling, and the stitches.

Which I cannot stop playing with.

The periodontist is going to leave the stitches in for another week at least and then take them out maybe but that’s a WHOLE WEEK at least of sticking my tongue in there! I’m going to be so annoyed. And I may sprain my tongue.