Good news everyone! You only have a few more days to deal with my January ramblings and incessant cat pictures. For today, however, let’s get this ramble started. 

It’s Friday here in SE Michigan and the boys started their day with a friendly wrestling match. I’m so relieved that these interactions no longer include hissing, screaming, bleeding, or urination. 

  
  
Sarge’s head got a bit squashed but he seemed generally okay with it. 

Then it was off to work with my Audible book “The Lake House” to keep me occupied on my 30+ minute drive. Have I mentioned that I LOVE Audible? I love having a book on my phone to listen to while I’m driving, working out, or doing housework or yard work. 

I met with my old friend MC Granola yesterday. I don’t see him very often anymore as he works in a different office but he is still one of my faves, with his gentle and calm aura and patchouli aroma mixed with true hip hop slang. He brought me a pastry from Zingerman’s, an Ann Arbor classic, carefully wrapped and stowed and I ate it last night whilst watching Anthony Bourdain. I savored every crumb and felt glad to have friends. 

I know I complain about Widget Central and frequently feel sorry for myself that I have to work full time outside of the home. But I’ve always done it and now that I’m divorced, I likely always will, and truthfully, I have been blessed beyond measure to have landed in this crazy, odd, funny and perplexing organization. It’s allowed me to travel to countries like Japan and work in Australia. I’ve made amazing friends and been able to support myself and my daughter and our home and pets and our car. I walk in in the morning and am greeted with smiles and someone handing me the red lifesavers out of their candy dish because they know I dig through to find them. I work hard but get everything I put into it back out and I am really glad to have this faux family and this job. So there, that’s my daily gratitude. And I can say all that knowing that it’s Friday and it’s a girls’ weekend with Miss L and I don’t have to work again until Monday morning. 🙂  

And because it’s Friday, and because I had to go fetch my new glasses from my optometrist in Ypsilanti at lunch, and because I very rarely go out for lunch (I’m usually working out, then crouched in my office eating leftovers or a Lean Cuisine and being laughed at by my metrosexual colleague for stealing my daughter’s pear cups in organic 100% juice) I made a pit stop at Dom’s Bakery. 

  
It’s another classic, and my running buddy and I used to make regular pilgrimages there for their frosted cookies. I used to bring one home for Miss L on Friday evenings. Since he left Widget Central, I haven’t been back; but today I was. I think Miss L will be pleased. 

  
  

I had to hit the ground running this morning which meant I could only linger in bed with the furfaces for a few pleasant moments to wake up. They were upset because Sarge’s midnight rampage against a hanging cable TV cord got them both ejected from the bedroom with extreme prejudice. However, they forgave me when Emmett could crawl back up onto his beloved Sherpa blanket and Sarge could watch the days forecast on the Weather Channel (he really does seem to be watching TV at times.)

  

When I went downstairs to fetch something, I saw tangible evidence of their wrath.

  
I have to apologize as I would normally never post a photo of my toilet on my blog, but the little pathetic drowned catnip mouse in its depths cried out for recognition and justice. COME ON boys.

Then of course because I HAD to get to work on time, I ended up stuck in traffic. But at least I was behind a wine truck with a sense of humor. 

  
I mused that a morning spent sitting by the side of the road, munching cheese and crackers and swilling spilled wine might not be such a bad way to waste the morning. 

But widgets called, and I rose to answer that call, and that is 27.

It never fails that I have a few very organized and upbeat and positive days and then I just have an off one for no real reason except that life, my friends, is a marathon and not a sprint. 

Every morning, I come into the office and fire up my computer and start making my To-Do list in my favorite daily planner. It has a page for every day and is big enough for my lists and any notes from meetings I attend. Mornings are my most productive time and I strive to get the thorny, difficult items crossed off in the AM and save mindless, administrative or easy tasks for the afternoon. 

  

Some days, though, I get nothing crossed off yet still feel enormously busy and I retire to the workout room at lunch feeling like the guy who spent his life rolling a rock uphill only to have it roll back down every night. And I weigh myself and see that I’ve actually GAINED weight and hey, Fuck You Bob Harper. And I haven’t had time for a hair appointment and my greys are clearly visible and I catch sight of someone I like’s ex-significant other and she is much cuter and happier than I feel and isn’t that just like being in high school all over again? Maybe I am not so spiritually developed after all if I can be made depressed by such shallow things about myself. And my former boss, whom I always admired for being so elegantly low-key and classy and understated pulls into the parking lot driving a gaudy luxury car and I feel so judgmental and disappointed that he might actually just be a Shirt after all. But if I judge him for his car, am I any different than someone who BUYS a gaudy car hoping to be judged by it? I don’t really think I should keep mining the depths of my emotional shortcomings.

The only way I know how to cope with such days is by thinking that the air smelled very mild and springlike this morning, and soon there will be muddy runs. I have a book waiting for me on the reserve shelf at the library. There are more new X-Files episodes, even if Mulder is more morose than usual and is he wearing a man girdle? It’s Taco Tuesday with Miss L. My friend at work sent me a book recommendation. And I’m not a Detroit Lion and I don’t live in Flint where they are paying for poisoned water. Life is annoying but it’s all about perspective and I got some of that. 

 

The rest of the weekend passed without incident and was mostly spent in some sort of prone position catching up on lost sleep. The whiskerfaces helped a lot with this project.

  

I don’t know what I would do without their support.

I had a proper dinner – movie date night on Saturday and we saw “The Revenant”. Normally I really love movies of this type. The history is fascinating and the scenery…well, every shot was spectacular. I wanted to build a cabin on every view. 

Unfortunately we are old and the movie was almost THREE HOURS long. (I am not a big fan of the whole movement toward movies longer than 1.5 hours or so. I feel like they’re bloated and self-indulgent. And for God’s sake don’t divide a story into three or four movies when it can easily be told in two with some expert editing. I’m looking at you, Hobbit and Mockingjay.) So by the time we’d watched Leo crawl across half of the US, grunting and, as my date said, talking like Batman, we were both sodden with exhaustion. When the last shot faded to black, my date passionately said THANK GOD and drew shocked and angry glances from other affected moviegoers sobbing into their jumbo buckets.

And then, all too soon, it was Monday again. I got up early and put dinner in the crockpot with a feeling of enormous self satisfaction (BBQ chicken to shred for sandwiches for me & Miss L). There’s nothing better than coming home after a frantic Monday and having dinner already made. Then it was back to work with to-do lists and documents and a lunch hour spent here.

  
And probably more of the same tomorrow. Happy Monday all. 

 

 
I’m on my way to bed at 930 in the morning and I’m feeling like I had waaaay too much fun last night. I know, I’m too old for this, right? I’ve learned these lessons, right? The party lifestyle doesn’t pay. 

I know what you’re thinking and let me clue you in on something that I learned firsthand last night – which is that the aftereffect of spending a night on the floor of a museum with a bunch of Brownies and their mothers is very similar to a tequila hangover. 

  
The troop got to spend a night in the museum courtesy of the Cranbrook Institute of Science. It’s a lavish and privileged private school in the old automobile money part of Bloomfield Hills. Think curving roads through stands of pine woods, brick mansions tucked back behind long drives and wrought iron gates. Think sprawling campus with museums, art & science, glorious landscapes, stone dormitories and chapels. 

Cranbrook is kind of a big deal. However, with a troop of seven year olds, I figured, it’s essentially camping. I wore yoga pants and a sweatshirt, put our toothbrushes and a change of underwear in a backpack, and L & I were off. 

Upon arriving at the museum, the first thing I saw was one of my fellow moms toiling uphill from the parking lot carrying what looked like a twin size mattress on her back, and pulling wheeled luggage so large that I think her actual child could have fit in it. Either she overpacked or I underpacked.

The programs were pretty excellent- kitchen chemistry, electricity demonstrations with a Jacobs Ladder and a large scale conductor a la Tesla, fossils, and native people. I like scientists. They tend to be extremely intense and passionate about their work, and more than a little weird. For example, the woman educating the girls about native people was excessively fond of her pelts. She stroked them and stuck her fingers through their eye sockets and turned our troop leader green. “The fox pelt is missing a paw,” our leader said from behind her sweatshirt, which she had pulled up over her mouth and nose. “We call him Tripod,” the scientist responded seriously, and moments later the adults were severely told to please be quiet because we were disrupting the workshop. “The badger still has whiskers,” our leader moaned, and set us all off again, and the scientist wrapped “Tripod” around her neck like a jaunty scarf, and shot us a single malevolent glare.

It was a long night and by 9, while we were touring the bat exhibition, I could have rolled out my sleeping bag under the fruit bat cage and slept right there. The bats were intensely fascinating, with their tiny delicate ears swiveling constantly, cuddled into hanging clutches, every now and then spreading a wing to glow in translucent membrane under the lamps. 

  
However, they didn’t smell the best, so I was glad enough to retire to our allotted hallway outside the observatory. One of the moms had plugged in her air mattress, which grated to life and expanded to the size of an actual bed. She donned a headscarf and a set of matching pajamas and eyeshade a la Holly Golightly. On the floor, rolled onto a half-inch blowup pad and swathed in an ancient sleeping bag borrowed hastily from my ex, wearing the same clothes that smelled vaguely like bat, I felt a little bitter.  

Lights out and the girls took another two hours to settle. There were trips to the bathroom and much arranging and rearranging of bags. There were murmured conversations about why they didn’t shut the emergency light off, far down at the end of the hall. I ended up next to a girl who wasn’t my daughter and tried to avoid her flailing as she gradually encroached on my pad, the deeper into sleep she slipped. The floor was hard and cold. It seemed that they were piping some sort of new age whale song through the echoing and cavernous halls, or maybe it was the wind echoing in the elevator shaft. 

Then, like the rise of frog song all at once on a summer night, the deafening roar and gurgle of a herd of somnolent wildebeests as the Brownie Moms drifted into open-mouthed slumber. I lay awake for awhile. There are more than a few deviated septums in that group. When I finally drifted off, I dreamt of mastodons and the small flutter of bats and dead-eyed frogs blinking at me from behind the thick glass of laboratory jars.

It was the worst night of sleep I’ve had in awhile but the girls will probably remember it for a long time, and as we drove home in the delicate morning sunrise, I had to admit that I probably will, too. Next time I spend a night in a museum, though, I’m bringing earplugs and getting one of those big air mattresses. 

  
I started counting calories and steps on my phone app last week and it was one of the most annoying and demotivating activities I’ve undertaken. Okay, it’s not even in the top 5, but those are things I won’t talk about on the Internet.

Number one, counting calories makes me think about what I put in my mouth, and that’s good. I am sure that I did a better job meal planning and making my meager allowance count. But it also makes me obsess about what I put in my mouth, and that’s not cool. I don’t want to live a life where I count out twelve raw almonds or turn down a cookie because it will ruin my day. 

I walked into the kitchen at work today and someone was toasting a croissant and I almost fainted at the heavenly aroma. Then I went and ran 3 miles on the treadmill and had to eat a Lean Cuisine and I just thought, fuck this. 

I’m also a calorie liar. I don’t really want to know what my choices add up to so I frequently “forget” to count that glass of wine or the impact of cleaning up the rest of Miss L’s breakfast. 

I think it’s great that counting things made me park further afield in the parking lot and feeling pumped when I got to 10,000 steps and made me eat a more reasonable portion of something or eat a salad because my day’s nutrition breakdown was light on the veggies. But it’s not cool that I felt like I couldn’t get flavored oatmeal because it’s more calories, and I couldn’t eat a banana before my run because it’s 100 too many calories.

I need to think more about this. But in the meantime, I parked in the far lot when I picked L up, took a picture of the winter twilight, and got my 10,000 steps. 

  
No shortage of pics of Sarge doing the Superman, his favorite relaxation pose.
January and February are really tough months in Michigan. Maybe they are everywhere, but I’ve lived for short times in different climates and I don’t remember them being this challenging. The days are short, dark, and crushingly cold. It is a challenge to get enough sunlight or vitamin D or sleep (even though it feels like all I do is sleep). It feels like I see the inside of the same walls ceaselessly, grey car interior, beige work walls, fluorescent lights. I don’t want to work out or even work, for that matter. My productivity comes in short bursts and I feel depressed that I spend so much of my time flogging myself to do basic things that suddenly seem insurmountable. The thought of taking the trash out or waking up one more morning to shower and do my goddamn hair and go to the same place I always go to struggle to complete the same tasks makes me just want to throw something. 

The only lovely times of these unlovely days are the beginnings and the ends. The sky becomes electric and then translucent. For a moment, everything stands out in sharp relief against its pale opal light; the lacy silhouettes of bare branches and the lonely span of sagging electrical wires like looping careless songs. In the mornings there is the small stabbing light of faraway planets in the pristine dawn, and at night, it is the more crude violet of streetlights as they pop on one by one. The streets are dark and empty with arctic cold except the other night, when I stood at my bedroom window and watched a lone walker pace down the middle of the street, as though he was the only one and everyone else was dead or fled from an abandoned city. Out of nowhere, a sleek black shape darted out of the shadows down the block, loped gangly and otherworldly up onto the curb and across a driveway. The walker paused, uncertain. To continue? A fox or a coyote? Just a neighborhood dog? In such a winter, one can never tell. 

I’m trying to float with my biorhythms and not get too down on myself if it’s hard to work out, hard to say no to a 730 bedtime with a book. It’s like this every year and we will drift back to the light. 

Homes are important. I love my house and work hard to stay here. I can’t explain how and why it matters to me, except to say that it does. Maybe homes soak up some part of their owners. This blog is named after my first real home. My parents live in another of my homes, and there is this house. 

It just matters, is all. During my labor pains, giving birth to L. in the hospital, the place I fixed in my mind was this home. The walls breathed with me and I rode the waves of pain with the pine branches outside the windows of this house. And when we brought Miss L home, we brought her here. 

I know that at its core, home is where the people you love are. But when the pale winter light suddenly glows through these rooms and casts shadows of branches on these walls, I feel that it’s a tiny bit more, too. 

  

  
Clearly I’m not very good at this “posting every day” thing but it will get better when I have a working personal laptop. It’s in the works but in the meantime, thumb blogging progresses. 

It’s a long girls weekend here in Michigan and we are bunkered in. I have been counting calories in an attempt to lose the five pounds of fluff I’ve gained this fall / winter and I have actually gained five more. I guess I have some dates with Tony Horton and Bob Harper (convivially known as Fuck You Bob Harper in the dark recesses of my mind). 

Last night Miss L & I picked our way across crusted ice tundra streets to visit our little 1940’s theater for a movie night. We came home and stoked up a fire and stayed up too late. Miss L is absorbed in watching Jackson Galaxy Cat Mojo videos and I was finishing my second book of the new year, “Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff. Today it’s back to the library for more books. 

  

Sometimes I just run out of steam. This usually manifests in a headache or extreme torpor and is exacerbated by monthly hormonal issues. Usually I can push through until the weekend and recharge but sometimes it’s a perfect storm, a migraine like I’ve had for the past few days, and I have to take a few hours of vacation or sick time and unplug. I pushed through a presentation this morning with a vicious stabbing pain in my head. By all accounts it was a good presentation- I sucked all the air out of the room and rendered my mostly non-native English speaking audience dumb with the unspoken desire for me to Stop Talking. I still don’t like public speaking but forced necessity has made me adept and I take bitter delight in going over my allotted time and numbing the shit out of everyone. Hey – you want me to talk? By God I will talk. This delighted my CEO who is nearing retirement and becoming almost pixieish in his glee. He knew I wasn’t feeling 100% so he spent some time pulling faces at me from his Big Chair – thumb to nose waggling his fingers at me- and bawling at me in his broad brogue on the break to pay attention. Then relenting and telling me crossly that I needed to move away from the window because it is too bloody cold over there and what was I trying to do to myself? I have an odd relationship with executive staff, and they take great pleasure in pushing me this way and that in my career as though I am a species of amoeba that reacts in particularly fascinating ways to being gently needled.  

I drove home at midday pondering the concept of self-driving cars. The University is testing them at their mock-city which they built under the pale blue clouded water tower a few miles fromWidget Central HQ. Who wants to trust a driverless car? Wouldn’t we be better off spending money on better public transportation, efficient high speed rail, etc? Perplexing to a Luddite such as myself. I came home and Sarge was exactly where I left him, face down in the duvet, and I was happy to join him.

  
Now, a few hours later, my headache has dwindled somewhat, a hurricane becoming a tropical storm, downgrading in intensity. It’s the type of headache that I will feel after it’s gone, an empty hollow space of remembered pain.