And some donuts.

I’ve had a membership at Bally’s gym for something like ten years. Eight years, maybe. A long time. I haven’t actually set foot inside a Bally’s gym in three years; the last time I dragged my ass in there they’d added this ridiculously complicated card-reading machine at the entrance and when I couldn’t figure it out the twelve-year-old at the front desk wrinkled her nose and informed me that they’d had the card reader for at least eighteen months. I couldn’t deduce which was the least embarrassing: letting her believe my technological learning curve was so steep that figuring out how to insert my membership card into a slot with an arrow on it was literally taking me years, or telling her I hadn’t been to the gym since she was in the fifth grade. So I took off my sweatbands and my Walkman earmuffs and I bailed. Forever.

When I originally signed up for my membership they were offering an astounding deal: pay $29 a month for three years, pay $19 a month for the following two years, then pay nothing forever because after five years you will have earned a free lifetime membership. Fantastic deal, right?

Yeah, so apparently Bally’s went bankrupt. I’m sure they were just stunned. But things went so well for the first five years! What could have possibly gone wrong? I may not have a business degree but I do have a masters in Stupid Math and trust me, on a scale of one to ten this particular display of financial acumen rates a negative seventy. And a half. And fractioned and square rooted and multiplied by that one number that goes on and on without repeating itself and sounds like "cake".

Obviously I had no idea Bally's went under. I heard about it from my parents-- two other people with free lifetime memberships who haven't so much as driven by the gym in half a decade. My dad takes an "all or nothing" approach to exercise-- years of nothing punctuated by brief spurts of rabid workouts that leave him unable to walk for weeks at a time. Last time he stairstepped his way into shin splints in seven days. Teasingly ask him about it and he'll remind you that he's still the only guy to climb fifty-seven thousand imaginary flights of steps in under a week. Who lived. And my mom has had a slightly different priority list these past few years, and justifiably so, so we'll leave that alone.

But I was on the phone with my mom a couple of days before Christmas-- I'd decided to make the world's most complicated Christmas cookies and had thus just spent like six hours smashing red and green Jolly Ranchers with a hammer and zesting twelve limes and I needed some maternal sympathy-- and she told me about Bally's. I didn't so much care about the gym closing; after all, maybe they'd put a giant marshmallow factory there or a twenty-four hour bloomin' onion store or something, but it turns out that another neighborhood gym, Lifetime Fitness, was offering seriously discounted memberships to all the people who got screwed by Bally's. And I don't know if you have a Lifetime Fitness in your town, but it's like the Saks Fifth Avenue of gyms. There's a full service spa, all kinds of saunas, crazy indoor/outdoor pools and waterslides, granite countertops in the locker room, and... like, some other gym shit, I don't know. Mats and whatnot. The membership price generally reflects all that, too, so every time I've ever wheedled to Randy about how great it would be to be members he reminds me that a) it's roughly a zillion dollars to join, and b) I'm retarded. We turned a spare bedroom into a ridiculously adequate home gym that more than meets any of our fitness cravings. I use it occasionally, mostly the recumbent bike; I TiVo episodes of Intervention and then pedal away, secure in the knowledge that not only am I (sort of) exercising, I'm also not following up methamphetamine injections with a chaser of heroin and malt liquor. It's a double whammy of superiority-- which is primarily what I'm looking for when I make efforts to improve my general health.

"We're going to join," my mom told me as my stupid hard lime cookies burned. "Your dad and I and your brother. We're going down there tomorrow to get a family membership."

"I wanna go," I whispered into the phone, already mentally packing my gym bag. Bathing suit. Mascara. Done.

"So get Randy and get down there," she said. She'd footed the bill for the five payable years of Bally's. Apparently I'd used up all my "family membership" moxie.

"I wanna goooooooooo..."

"I'm not paying for you."

"...goooooooooooooooooooo."

"Goodbye."

I went down there the day after Christmas. Or Christmas Eve? Christmas Eve, that's right. I called first and talked to a salesperson, Beth. Beth had a pretty hard time selling me, what with me screaming "IN! I'M IN!" over and over into her ear. She walked me through the entire facility, starting (sensically, I suppose, to her, poor thing) with the upstairs workout area. We're walking up the glass staircase in the middle of this gleaming atrium, right, and Beth turns to me, 98% perk and 2% insanely good hair, and asks, "So what are your primary fitness goals, Erin?"

I reached the top of the staircase, fake breathing so Beth wouldn't know one of my lungs had collapsed on step number seventeen. I'm a pretty good faker, I think, except for the drooling. It's always the damn drooling.

"Uh," I spat wetly. And here comes the Lower Middle Age Denial answer: "I'm really just looking to tone?"

Beth elbowed me jovially in the empty ribcage cavern that used to house my inflated breathing instruments.

"It's like you read my journal!" she laughed. I'm not kidding, she seriously said that. You'd probably need to see her to truly appreciate where I'm coming from here, but this chick could have karate chopped that staircase down and clawed her way to the second floor using only her triceps, a rough patch in the drywall, and a tiny bit of help from her hair.

The rest of the upstairs is kind of a blur since the only oxygen getting to my brain was coming in through my ears, but I perked up again when we got to the swimming pools. Beth gestured through floor-to-ceiling glass to where the tennis courts were.

"Is tennis included in this membership?"

Turns out it isn't, it's five dollars to reserve a court. I feigned disappointment; the last time I played tennis it was in a pity class at the Gulf Breeze Country Club when I was eight. We had an instructor named Buddy who reeked of coconut tanning oil and who tolerated my inherent tennis abilities for as long as he could stand before putting me in charge of ball collection. Those baskets with the wire bottoms? That you smush the balls through? I'm really good at that.

"Do you play tennis?" A fair question-- I couldn't walk fast or climb stairs or breathe through my nose so naturally tennis was probably my big skill.

"I used to," I straight up lied. Beth and her hair didn't need to hear about my smushing prowess. A man who was walking in front of us stopped then and turned to look at me.

"'Used to'," he repeated, "what does that mean?"

"I... think it's pretty self-explanatory," I laughed. Obviously I played club tennis all through high school whereupon I got a full-ride tennis scholarship to Arizona State. Or: obviously I tried to smash a powdered donut through my rental tennis racket twenty-five years ago while the coconut golf pro flirted with my mom. Self-explanatory.

"You should get back into it!" the guy yelled. "Hold on, I'll get you some material." And he jogged away.

"That's Brian, our tennis director." Yeah. Of course it is.

"Well that was lucky."

So as I sat in Beth's office filling out paperwork, Brian The Director of Tennis bounced in with thirty photocopies and a league binder. He was explaining the tournament schedule rotation when Beth interrupted to ask me when I wanted my membership to start.

"When do you think you'll want to start working out?"

"Oh, well, I mean, how about today?" Big smile from Beth. Brian came in for a high-five. So yeah, I went ahead and activated a gym membership on Christmas Eve.

I was telling my dad this entire story on the phone yesterday, December 30th, six days since I'd shared a very meaningful high-five and six days since I'd set a fucking foot inside that building, and he was crying laughing at me. He couldn't even breathe. I couldn't breathe, either. We have that in common, I guess.

"'How about today'," he mimicked, wheezing.

"Shit, how about right now?" I mimicked back. "Can I work out in these Uggs? Here, hold my purse." I thought one of us was going to throw up.

"So yeah," I said finally, calming down, "you want to maybe go to the gym with me this afternoon?"

"No."

Thank god. Lifetime Fitness probably doesn't show Intervention on the big TVs and I'm guessing they discourage napping on the mats. Plus there's a big couples tourney coming up and I need to get to the sporting goods store to pick up one of those ball baskets.

Whump.

Yeah, I don’t know where I’ve been, either. I’ve been trying to tally it up, straining to come up with something time consuming and impressive, but mainly I’ve been watching 16-year-old girls do their hair on YouTube and avoiding certified mail.

I’m pretty sure our heater exploded a few minutes ago—it made a hard to ignore “whump” noise and went cold. The cable went out at the same time, too, so I have no fucking idea what that means. Maybe the Direct TV satellite careened out of orbit and crashed into my garage? I don’t know. Needless to say I’ve got two very different yet oddly related phone calls to make. I should also stick my head out there and see if anything is on fire. If the mailman is out there waiting for me I'm going to be pissed.

Gluttons.

Randy and I are sitting on the patio pretending it's not 55 degrees outside. He's reading the newspaper and I'm... well. Doing this. Five minutes ago I was watering the plants and the dog got all up in the hose as per usual before he realized I was actually shooting him in the face with liquid nitrogen. He immediately ran to the nearest pile of dirt to dry his face off. So now his face is both paralyzed with cold and mudcaked.

Randy just put the paper down and walked into the house.

"Where are you going?" Because if he's quitting, I'm quitting.

"To get a sweatshirt."

"Close the door, the heater's on." In hindsight I should have asked him to bring me some socks.

Although anyone who came outside barefoot in the first place doesn't really deserve socks.

The leaves are finally giving up on the mulberry trees. Every few minutes there's a loud rustling high in the branches that gets progressively lower until a giant yellow leaf plops out. Giant yellow leaf, giant yellow leaf, giant yellow leaf, giant spider, giant yellow leaf. It's only a matter of time.

Randy: "I was enjoying sitting out here when the sun was trying to come out."

"Yeah, it's pretty miserable now."

He opens the business section.

Wait, what?

Well, that could be the worst NaBloPoMo showing in the history of BloPo-ing. I guess I took an inadvertent internet hiatus last week; out of nowhere I became obsessed with finding a place to get married and I couldn't rest until I'd seen every venue inside a forty mile radius. Even better it rained a lot last week, so I spent a lot of that time shivering under an umbrella while the chick at the Hyatt explained how awesome it would be to get married in a courtyard surrounded by three swimming pools and yes, that is a working water slide, why do you ask?

I did ultimately find a place to get married. Once I've got it all finalized I'll share.

I also wrangled Randy into helping me clean out our bedroom closet for the first time ever. I got caught up in the liberation and ended up accidentally donating ninety-eight percent of my wardrobe to charity. There are literally twenty-seven articles of clothing hanging on my side of the closet right now, and five of those are nightgowns. My jeans are in the wash so today I'm wearing my college graduation gown and ski pants.

A new issue of The Plug is out and as usual I highly recommend it. Particularly the calendar, particularly June. I've already downloaded my copy and I'm heading out to get it laminated at Staples. Should I wear my mortar board? Or is that too showy.

I'll leave a shovel in their line of sight.

Seven of the thirty or so snapdragons I planted a couple of weeks ago didn't make it. I spent enough on plants last month that I'm taking the "money back year guarantee" seriously, so I snagged them out of the ground and threw them in the trunk of my car as my money back evidence.

I forgot about them until a couple of days later when I got in my car and was overwhelmed by the smell of plant decay. I immediately drove to get my refund so I could "dump the bodies", so to speak, but the smell refuses to go away. It's surprisingly putrid. I get in my car now and I feel weird and guilty, like I'm a hitman in some garden mafia.

The good news is that the rest of the plants definitely seem to respond positively to fear.

He moonlights as Father Christmas.

I went to the gynecologist yesterday for the first time in my thirties and I stayed a total of seven minutes. Apparently the doctor was at the "hospital" dealing with some "emergency". Whatever. And the twelve-year-old behind the counter gave me a bunch of self-important shit for not having a point of contact for my previous medical records. I tried to explain that the guy had retired but she wasn't having it. According to her, there's this magical machine called the INTERNET where all the information in the universe is stored and I should find an annex class or a pamphlet or something to figure out how to use it. I told her that I'd already learned about the internet through a book on tape, and the only information I'd been able to find about my doctor is the fact that he was born in 1905. Meaning he's now presumably 103 years old. Meaning I was unknowingly paying a HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN to probe around my action with complicated metal machinery.

She also didn't seem to appreciate the effort I'd spent toward recreating my medical records; evidently scrawling "Bad pap, freezy wand cervix thingie-- 1995, 96, 97-ish?" on the back of a Walgreen's receipt doesn't cut it.

So I bailed. And didn't reschedule. I'm thinking I should maybe go the other way now, maybe find some nine-year-old medical prodigy doctor just to bring this shit to a reasonable average.

Fight for the tube.

Chelsea and her boyfriend fiancé, Jordan, have two tiny dogs. A sweet and licky chihuahua named Toby and a brand new Jack Russell puppy named Max. Randy has always been kind of obsessed with Toby, it's like he can't believe a dog that small actually exists.

"Why don't we have a tiny dog?" he always asks, Toby perched like a teeny, trembling gargoyle on the arm of his chair.

"Because you'd accidentally kill it," I always answer.

"Oh, Erin." But he totally would. Anything smaller than a roll of paper towels wouldn't last twenty-four hours over here without getting kicked, smooshed, crunched, slammed, or eaten. I don't even recommend bringing a new baby over here unless it's bolted into a carseat with an airbag.

So when we met Max for the first time last weekend, Randy's joy exploded two-fold. If Randy had his way we'd have a herd of fifty microscopic dogs rambling around the yard, and I'd have to follow them around all day wrapping them in bubble wrap and I'd never get anything done.

This is a video I took of Toby and Max fighting over a toilet paper tube and torturing The Jake. It was the day after the wedding, hence the evidence of my nine-hour nap.

Fourteen? No.

The rehearsal dinner went fabulously. I had plenty of time to set everything up, the tables and flowers were beautiful, a hundred tealight candles stayed lit until midnight, and we had enough food and booze for everyone-- even the twenty or so extra guests we hadn't planned on. And the wedding itself on Friday was gorgeous and sweet and emotional the way good weddings always are, and the reception was loud and happy and open barred the way good receptions always are. I had meant to post via Blackberry sometime on Friday but the day just never slowed down; by the time I actually had five minutes to string together I'd just sobbed something into the wedding video about homemade chicken soup and CSI Miami, and I'd henceforth declared an immediate moratorium on any outgoing calls, texts, or internet usage. You're welcome.

The next day I dozed on the couch for nine hours, feeding my aching toes Ibuprofen and avoiding the dishwasher. And on Sunday after all the tables had been broken down and the linens put away, all the trash had been carted off and I'd found my left silver heel in the front yard, I caught myself feeling Day After Christmas glum. I futzed around, cleaning vases and pitchers, reading, bored. We went to see the new Bond. It was boring. We ordered boring pizza for dinner from Yawn Brothers. I made a mental plan to call it a night around seven so I could lie in bed and count the ceiling fan blades for a few hours.

Until Randy and I got simultaneous text messages from Randy's daughter, Chelsea. Whose sweetheart boyfriend had just proposed to her on the beach in Coronado. My spirits rebounded immediately. I won't lie, it felt really good to cry again. My wedding in March, her wedding in July... I can't believe how lucky I am to have so much to look forward to. And how wonderfully overwhelming it is to be surrounded by so many declarations of love.

Thirteen.

Before:

And after:

Not bad, right? Click on the picture above for the rest. I don't have time to take pictures of the whole patio, the breezeway, or the front of the house right now, but I'll do it this weekend. Before everything dies, withers away, and is covered by spider webs and caked in dust.

Twelve!

The doorknobs look fantastic. Sleek and unobtrusive and totally unable to halt my forward progress. One hitch: the door leading into our garage from the kitchen doesn't naturally want to close, it never has. When it closes, it simply rests against the door frame instead of latching. We all take that for granted, the non-latching, and it's evidenced by the decade's worth of dirty handprints on the outside of the door. There's no need to deal with the knob-- just push the door open. Even The Jake understands how it works; whenever we go out into the garage or front yard or something, he simply noses the door open to come back inside.

But Doorknob Guy fixed the latch. So now the door closes. It's only been a few hours but I've already almost fractured my arm multiple times trying to nonchalantly push open a locked door. The Jake's feelings are hurt because he wasn't invited outside to check the mail or unload groceries with me today; little does he know I'm only trying to prevent the concussion he's no doubt going to get when his little trained doggy head slams into a closed door.

Elebben.

Until we get Christopher's wedding in the rear view, posting is going to occur in "to do" list format.

Tomorrow the guy is coming to replace all of our door hardware from scrolly gold to sleek oval polished nickel. It's not something I would have put on the priority list but apparently Randy has had it up to HERE with our existing door knobs. I'm excited about it for two reasons: one, I'm constantly somehow catching my belt loop on our existing door handles and there's nothing quite as jarring as being told by the HOUSE that no, you can't leave the bathroom. And two, new door knobs means new KEYS. Keys that are all the SAME. Right now there exists exactly one house key and it only opens one of our doors. I never thought being able to lock and unlock any door to the house with a SINGLE KEY would do it for me, but there you go.

I also need to go and pick up the tablecloths, Randy needs to go and get the tables and chairs, someone still needs to go to Costco, the flowers should be in on Thursday morning, my mom has the flower sticky things that keep the flowers upright, the vases need to be washed, a plan needs to exist in regard to all of these heart-shaped ice cubes I have jammed in my freezer, oh my god I still need to get a dress for the wedding and some of those propane hand lighter things to light all two hundred candles, marshmallows, a new orchid for the bathroom, lemons, glass bowls from Ikea, the shower still isn't draining, I'm late meeting Michelle for dinner, seizure.

Ten...

See, this is why I don't post every day. I've got nothing. So here's a recap of my day. NaBloPoMo: You're Sorry You Asked. I'm going to do my best to make it brief, too, because it's sort of late and I'm either geriatric or an infant but I'm tired as hell.

This morning I got up around 7:30. Randy was already up, I don't know when that happened. I don't like when he gets up before I do because he usually gets industrious and ends up doing bodily harm. This morning he tried to roll a giant concrete pot around the patio and smashed his pinkie finger. Yesterday he crushed his thumb under a giant propane tank. Just stay in bed, baby. You won't get anything done, sure, but you'll keep all your fingernails.

The Jake had a grooming appointment at 9:00, his second visit to the vet's office in less than a week. His last appointment was an annual checkup and vaccination routine; we learned The Captain weighs 76 pounds and that he will totally jump up onto the chair in the examination room in a magnificently pathetic attempt to wedge his bulk behind me and hide. It broke my heart to take him in today, but I can only live with an animal that smells like cat shit sandwiches for so long. After I got him into the lobby, he immediately body checked all of the wicker furniture out of the way and smashed his desperate, seal-like body against the room's only window.

Yeah. We're their favorite patient. They don't even send me reminder emails anymore, they seriously hope I'll eventually just opt out of preventative care for this animal.

Once home again I called my friend Michelle who's in town with her kids; I am by all accounts a terrible communicator and I wanted to make sure we got together. I emptied the dishwasher while I was on the phone. I try to empty the dishwasher as often as possible when I'm on the phone because I think all telephone conversations should be set to the crashing sounds of clean dishware.

I think I then went to finish ironing napkins for a rehearsal dinner we're hosting on Thursday for Randy's son. Randy emerged from the back of the house, clean and pressed, hair still damp. Napkin wrapped around his newest finger to have blood as a cuticle. We talked about when we could go to Costco: I'm busy with my mom tonight, hopefully meeting Michelle tomorrow night, he has a meeting on Wednesday. I don't think we ever nailed that down, actually. Note to self: go to Costco alone.

The home phone rang and fate shoved me toward it. It was the publishing company I work for with another book project for me to start. I accepted (too eagerly) and caught my boss up as to where we are on our current project, a conversation that led to me searching through research and needing to make a few phone calls.

But I couldn't find my cell phone. Anywhere. I'd just used it to call Michelle so I knew it was around. I used the land line to call myself and then stalked around the house like I was hunting for mines. No dice. I called Randy.

"Hey, did you accidentally take my phone?"

Insert every version of "no" here.

I called it again. Stalked the house again, the trash can, the closet, the dryer, the pantry.

Randy called back. Seems my phone was in his pants. "Well I kept hearing this ringing," he said. Awesome.

There's an adorable family moving into my rental house on Friday, sight unseen. The house looks fantastic-- and it's 100% bee free-- but it's important to me that it be as clean and sanitary as possible. I loaded up my car with cleaning supplies and drove to Safeway to get some convenience move-in stuff-- apple juice for the kids, bottled water, toilet paper, soap, detergent, etc.-- and then went over and started cleaning the crap out of the house. I figured out how to clean the shutters without wrecking them, I Easy-Offed the oven, I donned yellow rubber gloves and attacked the toilet with a vengeance previously unheard of between me and toilets; the toilet was actually gagging when I was done. I needed new burner cups for the stove, four outlet covers (the ones I bought had a single screw in the middle, I needed the ones with a screw at the top and the bottom), and something tall to dust the fans with. I got in my car to run up to Lowe's but the clock in my car read 3:18. Fuck. The Jake is still at the groomer's. And I don't have a phone. Or a clock. Or any working knowledge of how a day works, apparently. I bailed on Lowe's and drove straight to the vet, saved a very clean, very terrified The Jake (and groomer) and came home.

Checked my email while The Sweet Smelling, Smooth Toed Captain rolled his fat ass around in the grass. IMed with cw on Facebook; I didn't even know Facebook had an IM application (see above: geriatric). Time well spent. I like cw. Even if he doesn't have a television.

Today is my brother's first wedding anniversary and my parents had happily agreed to watch their boy while he and his wife went out to dinner and a movie. My dad realized over the weekend that he was going to be out of town tonight, though, so my mom had called to see if I could come over and watch him with her. My mom's had a really tough year battling alcoholism and while she's doing wonderfully right now-- I think she's at 120 days sober now, maybe more-- she doesn't watch the baby by herself. It's a distant precaution that we all stick to, her most of all.

I just typed "120 days" and it seems absolutely impossible that it's been such a short amount of time since the latest craziness. It must be true what they say about time healing all wounds. I can't remember what it is exactly it is they say... It must have been a while since I heard it. In all seriousness, my mom is fantastic. She's clearly healthier and happier than she's been in years. Like ten years. We've been spending a lot of time together lately; she's been helping me get my yard in shape and teaching me which plants can live where and whatnot. It's... man, it's like having my mom back. And it wasn't until she came back that I realized how long I'd been missing her. That I let myself realize it. And further, if tonight is the first anniversary of my brother's wedding, it's also the first anniversary of my total recognition of my mother's illness.

It's 11:31 PM and this is NaBloPoMo. I no longer have the luxury of time.

I took a shower before heading over to my mom's; I figured I owed it to her what with the two hours I spent with half my body inside a foreign toilet and all. I'd just rinsed my hair when I realized the shower wasn't draining. Oh good. I could now either get reasonably clean or not flood my bathroom. I opted in favor of the bathroom. Obviously. When I stepped out of my ankle bath I saw that our toilet had taken it upon itself to suck all the water out of the bowl, a sure sign of septic trouble. I ran around and checked the other two toilets: both bowls had drained themselves. Fabulous. It's not like we're having sixty people over in two days or anything.

I put on pajamas, stapled my wet hair to my head, and called Randy. Four times. ANSWER YOUR PHONE WHEN I'M CALLING YOU WITH A FLOODED SHOWER AND A SEEPING SEPTIC TANK AND STAPLES IN MY HEAD AND WHEN YOU STOLE MY GODDAMN PHONE FOR A WHOLE DAY. He finally answered. It went the way you think it went. Full of love and mutual admiration.

I fed my dog and drove to my mom's house, wet hair and pajama pants, check and checkmate. You know who's awesome? My nephew. He's got one game: the animal game. Ostrich! Elephant! Rhino! Lion! Giraffe! Hippo! In truth he has more games than that, he's also got the "let's count arbitrary objects" game, a game I'm totally down with and pretty good at, not to toot my own horn. He's also got the "I'm not going to eat that" game down, and that's a game I don't pretend to grasp. My response to the "I'm not going to eat that" game is to turn off Noggin until he takes a bite. My second response, given that cable bribery failed, is to let him starve to death.

Why I don't have kids: Volume YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH BOOKSHELVES.

He was great otherwise, though, and he's still alive since my mom apparently has a mercy gene that threw him some American cheese slices. We read books and "ooohed" over toy catalogs. He's a doll baby. When my brother and his wife got back I went in for a goodbye hug.

"Hug me!" I'm on my knees with my arms outstretched staring at a sleepy two-year-old.

Nothing. No response. It's like I'm begging Skynet for a hug.

"HUG ME," I yell, "OR I'M GOING TO RUN AND GRAB YOU AND HUG YOU FOREVER."

"Hug!" he says, and walks toward me with his arms open. He stops three feet short. I scoop him up like ice cream.

It's 11:55. Any hope you had of a neat closing here died an hour ago.

Nine?

I lied about having pictures today, I don't have shit. The wind blew eighty all day and we were pruning giant trees and hedges, and when we weren't pruning giant trees and hedges there was a gorgeous toddling pig-tailed grandbaby who needed to walk up and down and up and down and up and down the steps.

So we were busy.

Watch this video I stole from Schmutzie. I love it, it reminds me so much of my nephew-- another little boy who happens to be a fraidy cat and a gourmet.

Eight.

For what seems like the fifteenth day in a row I have BROKEN MY BACK getting our yard into shape. I don't even have a back anymore, I just have a front and then another collapsed front on the other side.

We're finishing up tomorrow so I'll have pictures then. In the meantime I'll be parked on the couch, lying on my new and confused other stomach.

Pretty good post, yeah?

NaBloPoMo: It Can't All Not Completely Suck.

Seven.

While we're on the subject, I love this dress. I can get married in it... and then sleep in it!

I wonder how many months this model had been dead before they could wedge her spray-painted, emaciated corpse into this vermicelli-sized dress. I'd love to see this photo in a higher resolution because I suspect she's made entirely out of pipe cleaners. I bet if you look close her arms are all fuzzy and there's a wire sticking out of her shoulder.

Be that as it may. They better have human sizes available, too, or else I needed to die like yesterday.

Six.

Believe it or not, Randy and I have made some forward movement in regard to our wedding plans. For starters, we're still getting married. Which is key, I've heard, when planning a wedding. Still early next year, still a small ceremony, still wearing a glorified nightgown, still avoiding the details. About a month ago Randy broached the subject of a ring.

"I really just want a wedding band," I told him, truthfully. "Something plain."

Randy looked at me and declared I was being a "ring martyr". He insisted I find something fancier than a band.

"No, I'm serious," I protested, watching him pull up bridal jewelry websites. "I don't need anything fancy. If it's a choice I'd really rather have a new couch." I can't imagine why he thought I was acting like a martyr, willing as I was to accept something with a slipcover as a sign of our love. "Something brighter maybe, with a chaise... oh jesus god, I want that one right there."

I went from sincerely asking for an engagement sofa to diamond ring worship slave in under ten seconds. I think I held up pretty well, considering.

A friend of ours owns a fabulous jewelery store in town-- and also coincidentally designed the ring I'd just licked on the computer monitor-- so Randy suggested I go talk to him.

Which I did. That conversation went something like this:

ME: Oh my god, that's it, that's the one.
JEWELER: Oh, yeah, that's gorgeous, isn't it? A ring like this typically takes about a month to create from start to finish.
ME: That's perfect because my birthday is in three days!
JEWELER: First we measure your finger, obviously, and then once the two of you have selected your stone we make a wax mold.
ME: I'm sure Randy will be in soon because my birthday, it's in like seventy-two hours.
JEWELER: The wax takes about a week. Once we verify that the wax is correct-- and we'd like you to come back in and oversee that-- then we'll send it out to be cast in precious metal.
ME: We'll probably go out to a fancy dinner. Oh, man, I need to get my nails done!
JEWELER: The casting takes another week. Then we'll get to work polishing the metal and setting the stones. That generally takes another two weeks.
ME: I can't believe I'm going to have something this beautiful on my finger on or before this Saturday!

At which point I gleefully left without having my finger sized.

This effective shutting down of my brain made for a particularly disappointing birthday. And a particularly disappointing twenty or so days after, all of which tumbled out in a series of hallucinogenic expectations. Randy casually asks if I wanted to grab appetizers? I immediately run out and get a manicure, call every woman in my family, and shave my legs. Randy has to work late? I spend the afternoon applying clear nail polish, calling every woman I've ever met, and daydreaming about the romantic surprise picnic he's no doubt secretly setting up. Randy thinks we should drive up north for the afternoon? I grab a nail file, call every person male or female I've ever come into casual contact with in my entire life, and apply waterproof mascara.

Several weeks of this, of telling myself that every dinner, every lunch, every conversation, every car ride, every walk was going to be The Big Reveal, and I was exhausted. My family was likewise exhausted.

"You're giving woman's intuition a bad name," said my dad, sixteen false starts later. I agreed.

"Please," I begged Randy, "Just call the jeweler and find out where this thing is."

"But I want to make it a romantic surprise!"

"I can't handle a romantic surprise," I told him. "I'm obsessed. I feel like I'm waiting for someone to jump out of a closet and scare me only I don't know when it's going to happen."

And how do you get more romantic than that, the old "hiding under the bed with a hockey mask and a single red rose" proposal. You can't. I checked.

So Randy, at this point wishing he'd just taken me to Crate and Barrel, called the jeweler.

"He says probably Wednesday, but Friday at the latest."

I felt like a weight had been lifted. This was Saturday, so for three solid days I could eat a meal without waving a metal detector over it first.

And then Monday morning Randy got up before me and set a ring box on my nightstand.

I rolled over and stared at it with one eye.

"Do you want to open your ring?"

I opened the other eye.

"Is it an empty box?"

"No."

"Because that would suck."

"That would be pretty mean," he agreed.

The box wasn't empty.

 
I should have known Randy would figure out a way to surprise me despite my rabid investigation tactics. And he didn't even have to jump out of the coat closet with a butcher knife! We'll probably save that for the honeymoon.

Five.

So I finally got an appointment with a gynecologist who accepts my insurance, who isn't available in the next forty-five minutes, and who didn't try to bribe me with movie passes. I then called my dentist, being on a healthy roll and all, and they want to know if I can come in at 2:10 on Christmas day. I said probably.

In the spirit of NaBloPoMo, here's another video of my dog.

Four.

I've been throwing a little bit more effort up against being a responsible human being lately. Eating more broccoli and less candy corn, brushing my teeth for longer than four seconds, using a toothbrush and not a giant piece of candy corn... essentially I'm just trying to shut the door on candy corn. Candy corn is the root cause of like 85% of my problems.

So I'm brushing my teeth this morning and I have all this time to think now, right, just me and the sink and my sugar-stuffed gums, and it occurred to me that I haven't been to see a lady doctor in like three years. Since 2006, more accurately, since that's when my gynecologist retired and I took that as a sign that I was off the stirrup hook forever.

Probably not a great idea, since every woman in my family has had some form of the cancer-- including me, what with the pre-cancerous lesions I had removed from my cervix fifteen years ago AND the twenty-two stitches (and eight internal stitches) they hacked into my back to remove the skin cancer ten years ago-- so once my teeth were clean I sat down with my inner nanny and the laptop to try and navigate the Aetna website.

That was three hours ago. Three hours. Every doctor I've called either doesn't accept my insurance plan, is a completely different doctor than the one listed in the insurance directory, or has some weird recording promising same-day appointments or free movie tickets. Same day appointments?? What the fuck world is this? I drop off the speculum for a few years and suddenly gynecologists can see me before three o'clock TODAY? What the hell happened? I don't know, call me old school but I don't trust a doctor who has a lead time of less than five months. Where's the guy who's only open two days a week, takes a three-hour lunch, and can't see me before March? Because THAT'S MY GUY.

Three.

I woke up this morning and my abdomen and ribcage were sore, like I'd spent yesterday doing sit ups or side bends. I hadn't, though, not even close, in fact whatever the opposite of a sit up is, I'd been doing that. Lie downs. I'd been doing lie downs all day. But my muscles were really tender around my torso, and as I thought about it I realized that this wasn't completely foreign, that I'd experienced this same unexplained phenomenon several times over the past few months. Not a big deal, it always goes away, but it stuck in my recollection because of the oddness of it; not only did it seem to happen when I hadn't exercised the day before, but when I hadn't exercised in weeks. When I felt guilty about my lack of exercise, in fact, and sluggish and lethargic because of it.

And as I started thinking about the timing, puzzle as it was, it suddenly dawned on me: the mornings I woke up with a sore ribcage and a tender stomach were the mornings after some formal event to which I'd had to wear my chest-high Spanx suit to fit my waffle-inhaling ass into my outfit. My muscles weren't sore-- I had girdle burn.

Another mystery solved by my syrup soaked brain. Now I can either cut back on the breakfast cakes and start working out more, or I can stop taking that damn thing off and just embrace life from inside a constant flesh-toned shield of lycra. My lung capacity will be reduced by about half, sure, but I'll just fill the void of oxygen with pancakes.

Two.

Randy taught The Jake to sit for indiscriminate amounts of time with delicious food parked on his face. He's pretty proud of himself. Actually, they're pretty proud of themselves; Randy's proud of his dog training prowess, and The Jake is proud of having apparently reached some princely dog echelon where humans drape crispy rotisserie chicken skin across his nose as a reward for doing absolutely nothing.