I have a few other things to do, you know

     "So I know you wanted to get Christmas gifts for all of the aides and nurses, but that’s like 20 people if we count all the shifts. How about I get these cool insulated cups from 5 Below, and we can fill them with candy or cookies or something."

     "And for the ones I really like, you can order some really choice ground beef and hire a chef to come to their houses and cook it for them!"

     Gretchen blinks.  "Or I could just get them Dunkin Donuts gift cards."

     "Yeah, that would work, too."

I always knew she wasn't typical

Words I am getting good at pronouncing (and spelling):

• Atypical Parkinsonism
• Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
• Corticobasal Ganglionic Degeneration
• Dementia with Lewy Bodies

Too bad we can't start treatment for her symptoms until the delusions go away ...

Old lady

     "I'd like to start her on drugs to treat her Parkinsonism, but we have to get her delusions under control first. I'll talk to her psychiatrist and we'll come up with a plan."

     "I don't know why everyone says I have delusions. You can't prove that what I believe isn't the truth."

An hour later ...

     "How was the ride back?"

     "Okay, except the little old lady who followed us everywhere today came with me, and she wants to move in with me. I don't think that's a good idea."

     "Nope, probably not. You're in a single room, after all."

There was no little old lady following us around, nobody went home with her, and no one asked to move in with her. But do I have PROOF of that? Nope.

Watercolor pencils

She called while I was fixing dinner last night.

"I'm supposed to swap houses with someone, and I have no idea how I am supposed to do that. I mean, I am so busy, when will I find the time? And who will take care of my furniture while I'm gone?"

Fifteen minutes later, I had figured out that she had been reading an article about jumpstarting her creativity, and it suggested swapping houses with a friend for a few days. She had interpreted this as a command, and she couldn't figure out how to make it happen. Another ten minutes went by while I convinced her that she could skip that part and we could try some of the other ideas when I came to see her in the morning.

And we did try new things this morning, although she didn't use a paintbrush. Here's her work, made using watercolor pencils that she normally scorns.

(Nope. No clue what it's supposed to be. Doesn't matter, it's the process that's going to do her good, not what shows up on the paper.)

This post brought to you by the makers of Crest, Wellbutrin, and Eos lip balm

My past few posts have been stale, and for that I apologize.  If it makes any difference, the REALLY bad ones never made it online, they're still stuck in my drafts folder awaiting editing or execution.  It's starting to look like an emergency room in there, with all the gory mistakes I've got piling up.  In my defense, I think I've discovered the problem, and I'm taking steps to correct it.

You see, for the last few nights I've gotten REALLY good ideas for blog posts, generally while I'm in the middle of brushing my teeth.  Not just topics, no, but whole paragraphs of comic gold.  I blame these bursts of inspiration on Jon Scalzi and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whose books I've been reading at bedtime.  They're just such great writers, and their voices, while totally different, are very much in the same vein as how I'd like my blog to sound.  You could say that, for right now, at least, Scalzi and the Yarn Harlot are my spirit guides, or totems, or mentors, or something equally New-Agey and woo-woo.

Right, so, anyway, I'm standing there at the sink, and I'm all, "Aha!  I can write about procrastination, and how nothing would ever get done in the world if we weren't all fundamentally lazy!  Here's a three-point list of funny examples, and the perfect closing statement."  I'm trying to get in the habit of not staying up until 2am writing, though, so I don't rush off to the computer right then, toothbrush in hand.  No, I haul out my phone and jot these ideas down in shorthand in a blank blog post, save it as a draft, then return to it the next day to actually write it.  I don't feel like typing in everything I've thought of with my lefthand thumb, though, and besides, my ideas are so good, they will surely occur to me again once I start writing, right?

Yeah, um, no.

In the morning, I look at the three words I've managed to save, hoping that autocorrect hasn't mangled them all into insensibility, and I draw a blank.  For example, last night's gem reads "news blackout."  Now, I remember I was going to say something about how when I'm on vacation I don't listen to the radio, so I don't know what's going on in the world, and it only rarely changes how my life runs on a daily basis.  I was going to contrast that with my parents, who always wanted to watch the local news every night, ostensibly for the weather forecast (but we all knew it was so they could tut-tut over the crime situation and how awful whatever the current war had been that day).  There might have been something about Jon Stewart, twitter, Facebook status updates, and stuff I happen to see on the home screen of my computer.  But this morning, I sat there looking at it, and nothing came.  So I closed the file and went on about my business.

So now it's 10:23pm, Jason just asked me plaintively if I'm planning to come to bed anytime soon, and I'm still tapping away on the computer.  I think for the next little bit, until I get back in the habit of writing regularly, I'm going to just have to say, "Screw bed-times, I'm writing when I get the inspiration."  Because it'll be fresher, and full of all the awesome stuff I think off while taking my pills and washing my face.  Eventually I need to find a balance between a) actually writing, b) writing well, and c) a reasonable sleep schedule.  But tonight is not that night.

Like mother, like daughter

     "Hey, Ashley and some of the other neighborhood kids are playing in her yard across the street.  Want to go see if you can join them?" I asked, sitting down on the floor of her room.  I had to be careful where I sat - the only light came in around the blinds on the windows, and there were ornaments everywhere.  Apparently, I was raising a mole or a bat or something.
     "Nah," she said, looking at the floor.
     "Come on, this is the last nice day we're supposed to get for a week or more.  Get your boots and go say hello."
     "Dad said I had to pack up my Christmas tree."
     "The Christmas tree can wait.  It's 35 degrees and sunny, and there are kids playing outside.  Go take advantage of the opportunity."
     "I said hello to Ashley one day when I was walking home from the bus, and I know she heard me, and she didn't say anything back.  I don't think she wants to be my friend."  She continued the World's Slowest Christmas Tree Un-Decorating, taking one ornament at a time off of the tree, slowly trudging across the room and putting it on her bed.
     "You know, there have been plenty of times in your life when I've said something to you at a perfectly normal volume, and you haven't responded.  Sometimes you didn't hear me, sometimes you were distracted by something else, sometimes you didn't feel like talking.  Chances are, Ashley wasn't trying to shun you, that's just in your mind."  In my mind, I am wincing - how many times had I given up on a friendship with someone over some perceived slight or lack of attention?  How often had that been in my head, rather than an intentional move by the other person?
     "I don't want to go over there.  I feel like I would be butting in."  My heart breaks a little at that statement, which came out of my own mouth about a million times as I was growing up.
     "You don't have to join them.  You could just go say hi, then come back to our yard.  Or you could see if  Ashley wanted to come see your snow cave.  I bet you could both fit in there, don't you think?"
     "We probably could," she said, sounding a little more enthusiastic.  "But I couldn't fit all of them in there at once.  They'd have to take turns."  Then she stopped smiling and slowly moved another ornament over to the bed.  "See, you always do this.  I don't want to do something, and then you start talking about it, and then I start adding on things like I want to do it or something.  I don't want to talk about it."
     "Too bad.  Look, everyone feels unsure when they're meeting new people.  I bet you'd really like to go and play with them, but you're afraid that they won't want to play with you, and that's keeping you from going over.  Haven't you been complaining for the past week that your only friend who lives nearby was out of town?  You're not going to make new friends by hiding in the house, Chief."
     "I don't want new friends.  I want my old friends to be closer.  Can we call K.'s mom again, see if she changed her mind about letting K. come over?"
     "Look, I'm glad you're still friends with K., but that doesn't change the fact that it would be nice to have friends who live closer than a half-hour drive away.  It's important that you meet people in the neighborhood.  and you are running out of time, for today at least.  You want to know my prediction?  You're going to hem and haw and fart around, and then you'll finally decide to go say hello - and they won't be outside anymore."
     "Is this your ornament, or the one I made?" she asked, holding up two clay candy canes.  "See what I'm doing?  I don't want to talk about going outside, so I'm changing the subject."
     "Yeah, that was subtle.  I'm going downstairs," I said, then went over to the window to open the blinds.  The sun streamed in, glittering off of the ornaments that remained on her tree.  "And, oh, look!" I said with feigned surprise, "the kids have all gone inside now.  You're safe once again from making a new friend.  Congratulations."  My stomach roiled and I scowled as I stomped down the stairs, not sure if I was more angry with her for today's Failure to Befriend, or myself for all of my own identical missed opportunities.

Snow Day

Today I find myself taking the adult equivalent of a snow day - the roads were so bad that my boss texted me and told me not to bother trying to come in to work.  Since it had already taken me 10 minutes to travel one mile, I thought that sounded like a fine idea.  Another 15 minutes and I was safely home again, snow boots cast aside and scarves back in the closet, watching the snow fall.  Well, it's not so much falling as it is shooting, given the strong sideways wind we've got right now.  It's coming in at about a 30-degree angle to the ground, which will lead to some interesting drifts by tonight, I'm sure.

At any rate, I have a day unexpectedly free.  Sure, I'll have to go out two or three times to keep the driveway clear (a Sisyphean task if ever I saw one), and make sure the kid and I get fed lunch, but otherwise, I've got about five hours of unexpected free time.  You would think this would be a good thing, but really, I'm sort of dreading it.

It's not that I'm sick of being home with Liza - we were travelling so much over break that we haven't had much time to just sit around and do craft projects and annoy each other.  So I want to take some time to do stuff with her, obviously, now that I've got the time.

Which isn't to say that I'm above parking her in front of a screen somewhere so I can get some time alone ... these blog posts don't write themselves, you know, and they don't happen at all if I'm on "Mom I need a snack Mom I need help with this Mom I can't get my finger unstuck" duty all day.  So she can spend some time online playing the math games she's supposed to work on for school, and I'm sure there's a Mythbusters in our future at some point.  There are worse ways to spend a snow day than that.

But back to the dread.  You see, I spend a lot of my life with a tentative mental schedule in place.  Things like, I have to work on Thursday, so I'll have to wait until Friday to do the cleaning, and the Christmas decorations can come down over the weekend when Jason is home to help out.  Generally, things go according to plan, or close enough that it doesn't cause a problem.  But sometimes - like today - the schedule gets altered at the last minute or due to things out of my control, and that throws me off.

In my mind, I have lots of options for what to do today, and no matter which one I pick, I'll feel guilty or deprived or angry, or some other negative emotion.  For example, today I could:

1. Do something useful around the house, like put away the Christmas decorations or clean.  Doing any of these things will make me feel resentful that I'm spending my free time doing "work" instead of something I enjoy, guilty that I'm not spending my free time with Liza doing something fun, and grumpy that I have to do it on my own even though I'm not the only one who lives in this house, thankyouverymuch.
2. Do something just for me, like knit and watch something on Netflix.  This will make me feel guilty for not using my extra hours to do something useful, and ashamed that I'm not getting some exercise or something.
3. Do something just for Liza, like do craft projects and watch her choice of television all day.  This will make me feel resentful that I'm spending MY free hours doing something for HER, and guilty that I'm sitting around painting butterfly magnets when there's so much that needs to be done around the house.
4. Work on my writing.  This will make me feel bad I'm not working on housework, guilty that I'm ignoring the kid, ashamed that I'm not getting some exercise, and annoyed that I feel bad about myself when I'm doing something I'm supposed to enjoy.

I'll end up doing some combination of the above, trying to balance the guilt and annoyance equally among all of the categories.  It's frustrating to know that no matter what I do today, it won't ever be right, it won't ever be enough.  There will always be more cleaning, more craft projects, more writing and knitting that could have been done. The only answer, obviously, is to say screw it, drink some cocoa and go take a nap to rest up for my next session with Grunhilde the Snowblower.

Waffling

There have been many times in the past few weeks that I wished life came with a set of instructions, or at least a map sketched on the back of a napkin.  Signposts would be nice - this way to long-term stability, pitfalls of unending debt that way, no seriously just go this way and you'll be fine.  But since I seem to be driving in an unmarked area - or, like in Japan I can't read the street signs anyway - I've been left to flounder around a bit.

Oh, we're thinking of moving.  Did I forget to mention that?

It's not a huge move - just one or two towns over, mainly to get a slightly larger house that we can grow into as Liza turns into a teenager with a big personality and long arms and legs.  Our current house could be made to work, of course, but none of us are sure we want to invest the time and energy that would take.  After years and years of to-do lists that are a mile long, we all just sort of want a house that's DONE, you know?

The last time Jason and I have had to make this decision on our own, it was 1996 and 1997.  We had just gotten married, and we wanted to buy our first house.  We saved diligently, found a buyers' agent to help us find good house possibilities, and we toured a lot of houses in the shag-carpet-and-waterbed price range.  Ah, the good old days of gold-flecked formica vanities and finding "secret" stashes of porn magazines on a closet shelf!  We took our time because we were able to renew our apartment lease for a few months at a time, if we needed, and eventually we found a great property.  We had to do a lot of work to get it to look the way we wanted, but the bones of the house were pretty sound.

We got to live in it for 11 months before we moved to Japan.

Ever since then, every move we have made has been a corporate relocation.  They were, by and large, very simple to pull off - Jason decided to take the job, and almost everything else was handled by the company.  They suggested real estate agents, hired appraisers, scheduled moving companies, arranged for mortgages and title searches ... everything.  All we had to do was pick a town to live in, and narrow down what we wanted in a house.  With a radically compressed time schedule (Let's buy a house during a one-week trip to the States!  Let's look at houses during the two weekends I can drive down to Kentucky in between classes!), stakes were both higher and lower.  Yes, it was possible that we'd miss the "perfect" house because we couldn't wait that long to buy, but we also were forced to make a decision, rather than letting the process drag on for months and months.  No, we probably wouldn't get our perfect house, but we weren't all that picky and there were plenty of decent options in our price range.

We didn't need a map - we just floated along like a chip in the river of Corporate Relocation Services.

But now we don't have that crutch to fall back on, we're doing it all ourselves.  What started as a whim - Wouldn't it be fun to live in the same neighborhood as our friends we visit all the time; oh look, there's a house for sale on the next street over from them! - has turned into a time-sucking search for The House.  We've got time, we've got (some) money, we've got a list of things we want ... and it's killing me.  Over the course of the weekend, we have pretty much firmly decided:
- to wait until a better house becomes available in our desired neighborhood
- to build a new house in the next neighborhood north of our friends'
- to not move at all, just renovate this house
- to keep looking at houses in other areas of our friends' town
- to only look at houses in our desired neighborhood
- to not look at any houses, just plans for new construction
- to build the Barrington model
- to build the Kensington model
- to wait to make a decision until we can walk through the Rothchild model
- to not move at all, we can call the electrician and carpenter on Monday about finishing the basement
- to pay off the remaining balance on the mortgage on this house
- to check and see whether our favorite lots are still available in the new construction neighborhood
- to reserve the last remaining desired lot in the new construction neighborhood
- to get in touch with the friend-of-a-friend who might be selling their house (in our friends' development)
- to see if my mother would be willing to loan us money if our current house doesn't sell before we close on the new house we might be building
- to call mortgage companies to learn about new construction vs. existing stock mortgages
- to write a check and sign paperwork - seriously, go call the realtor now - and reserve the lot we think we want before someone else snatches it up (never mind that we didn't even think about locations in the neighborhood until, um, Friday - that's OUR lot, dammit)
- to stop looking at Zillow and realtor.com because they just get our hopes up and then we find out the perfect house we found is already under contract
- to obsessively check Zillow and realtor.com so if anything new gets posted we can jump on it before it gets snatched out of our grasp again
- to drink, early and often
- to agree that the traffic in that town is worse than where we are now
- to agree that the traffic in that town is fine - we lived with it before, we can do it again
- to not plant anything new this year because we don't know if we'll be here to enjoy it
- to plant stuff early so the outside of the house will have curb appeal
- to put in a footbridge over the mini-stream in our backyard, because footbridges are awesome and I want a damn footbridge and I'm going to paint it bright periwinkle and it will be awesome and make me grin every time I see it
- that we like house A but the lot socks, and we like lot B but the house sucks, so if we could just swap the houses we'd be perfectly happy, but that's not really feasible, right?
- that we want to build the Barrington, with these "optional features," and, Holy Christ, is that really going to add close to $80,000 to the base price of the house, and that doesn't even include any landscaping or a playground for Liza or even freaking CURTAINS?
- to stay in our house
- to go to bed and not worry about it
- to not be able to sleep because we keep worrying that someone is stealing our lot

Meanwhile, Liza doesn't want to move away from her best friend, who lives four doors down from our current house but would be a 20-minute drive away from the new town.  She's communicating this fact by being surly, uncooperative, and frankly awful any time we attempt to discuss houses in front of her or have to take her with us to go see one.  She touches things she's been told not to touch, won't stay with us, makes inappropriate comments about the awfulness of the house/yard/bathroom/basement/decorating.  The only thing she has enjoyed out of the whole process so far was climbing on the big pile of dirt that was in the lot next to the one we took a look at in the new construction development.  Talking to her grandmother afterwards, yeah, her bedroom in the new house would be twice as big as her current one, but OMG LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS PILE OF DIRT I GOT TO CLIMB IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER.

I'm sure I have more fun things to say about this process, but I don't have time.  After all, I have to call loan officers to talk about possibly getting a mortgage on a house that we might possibly build, assuming we can get the lot that I have to call and reserve and drive out to give them a check.  Then we have a week to make all the decisions on EVERY ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL on the new house, including whether we want all of those $80K in bay windows, tray ceilings, and hardwood floors.  First World Problems, I have a whole bouquet of them.

Also, do you think I'll be allowed to trap some of the squirrels in my backyard and bring them with me to the new neighborhood?  The lot we want has a line of scrubby trees at the back of it - they could totally live there, right?  Anyone have a havahart trap I can borrow in October?

My name is Gretchen, and I am scared spitless

I am a writer.

I write all the time (not that you'd know from this blog over the past year or so).  I write Facebook updates, and captions for my photo albums.  I write the school newsletter, and I helped write the content for the school website.  I'm helping write the expanded content for the website of the store where I work.  I journal.  I write notes to my daughter, notes to school, notes to myself so I don't forget to write notes to my daughter or to her school.

And even when I'm not writing, I'm thinking of what I'm going to write about when I get the time.  I'm brainstorming photo captions even as I press the shutter button.  I'm making note of funny conversations to use as fodder for future blog posts.  I get up in the middle of the night and write two full pages of ideas for a story, then stuff it in a drawer until I have time to work on it.

"I am not a fiction writer.  I write essays on my blog, and while they may stray a bit from the strict truth sometimes, they're still non-fiction.  I don't write stories."

That's what I told my mother every time she would encourage me to write a book.  I don't have time, I don't have any story ideas, I can't write dialogue to save my life, and I really don't have any desire to get rejected over and over by strangers who hold my future career in their hands.

Then in January I decided to take a writing class.  I hoped it would light a fire under me to actually write some blog posts.  But it turned out that it wasn't that sort of writing class ... but it was exactly the class I needed.  Because somewhere during the first week or so of class, A Story appeared in my brain, and it wouldn't go away.

It was all there - plot, characters, setting, format - and after about an hour of roughly outlining the story and the characters, I knew it was something I wanted to work on.  I started writing The Story in addition to the work assigned for the class, and I loved it.  I wrote longhand, and by the end of January I had most of the rough draft of The Story finished.  I typed it into the computer, made some edits, and set it aside for a while so I could forget it enough to edit it properly.

I did a major edit around Valentine's Day, then shoved it back in a drawer to stew for a bit.  Things had changed massively in the format of the story, and some valuable early feedback made me completely rework the opening and closing chapters of The Book (for by now, at almost 50 pages and 14,000 words long, it would indeed be considered A Book in the children's market I'd be selling into).

My class was over, but I tried my best to keep up the schedule I had started as part of it.  I read books on writing, I worked through exercises in some of them.  I reworked some parts of The Book to meet some of the suggestion I'd found in the writing books, and I was happy with how they had turned out.  But there were still big sections that said things like ******INSERT SOME KIND OF ACTION-Y SEQUENCE HERE TO DRAW OUT THE TENSION*******,  so it was by no means a "finished" manuscript.  I didn't have to do anything with it.  Nobody had to read it.  It was just a draft, in a drawer.

Today I finished the third round of revisions.  I work on paper to make the edits, then type them into the document, page after page, and it sucks big sweaty donkey balls, especially when you realize that out of a 50-page document, you have exactly ONE page with no changes.  One.  But it's done, and I'm happy with The Manuscript - because it is a manuscript now, it's got all the parts I think it needs to be "done."

But today is the day I have been dreading, because today is the day I admit to the world that The Manuscript is as good as I can make it on my own, and am going to need help to make it the best it can be.  I hate asking for help, I hate putting things that aren't what I consider "perfect" out where people can see them.  I hate being unsure that what I've written is good, or worthy, or whatever.

I have a cadre of wonderful friends who have volunteered their children to be my test readers, and I need to send my manuscript out into the world.  I feel a sense of accomplishment at having "finished" it, and an overwhelming sense of dread at having anyone other than me, Jason, and Liza read the thing.  The thought of people I know reading it makes me want to build a blanket fort and hide there until it's all over.

But I can't tell my test readers that.  If I come off as too fragile, they won't tell me the whole truth, they'll tell me pretty lies and reserve the truth for when they make fun of me behind my back.  And that doesn't do me any good.  If I'm going to expose my precious darling to the scrutiny of chest-high strangers, I want to at least get honest feedback when they're done.

So I procrastinate.  I write a rambling blog post.  I make turkey broth.  I hit Facebook like a crack pipe, as Ze would say.  I watch Ze's invocation.  I do laundry.  I wash the freaking basement floor (it really needed it, but still - really?).  I watch Ze's invocation again with snot running down my face and a huge ball of horror in the pit of my stomach.  I tell myself that I can't send it out until I have a questionnaire to go with it, and then I procrastinate about making that, because really, when that's done, I'm out of excuses.  I have to send The Manuscript then.

And that thought scares me spitless.

ETA:  I just sent it.  Excuse me while I go throw up.

Ugh. Today's a telephone day.

You'd think that with all my communication skills (look, I post all the time on Facebook and my blog, and I have the expensive piece of paper to prove that I'm allowed to be a journalist if I want to!), I'd be more fond of the telephone. And yet every month I save up all of my non-critical phone calls - scheduling appointments, checking on things, etc. - until it gets ridiculous and I finally handle them all at once. And 10 minutes later, I wonder why I put it off for so long, because it wasn't so bad ... a fact I conveniently forget next time I need to see if something is in stock at Home Depot.

Why do I do this to myself? It's not like I'm ALWAYS an uncommunicative hermit. There are some days when I talk nonstop to anyone and everyone. But other days I'm perfectly happy to sit there and grunt agreeably to whatever you say, as long as you don't make me hold up one end of the conversation. It's like I just can't handle - or be bothered to try - maintaining all the social niceties AND get my point across AND assimilate information AND make decisions. Rather than screw it up or offend someone, I prefer to be an audience for everyone else. My brain is wrapped in wool roving, and I just can't get it untangled enough to enjoy a conversation. I'll do it if I have to, but there are a lot of really unpleasant household chores I'd rather do instead.

Besides, it's so easy to get side-tracked, or to find (sometimes valid) excuses for why I can't make that phone call now. For example, I can't call about scheduling an appointment unless I've got something to write the date on and have access to my calendar, which is on my phone (hassle to check while using the phone) and my iPad (which I don't usually carry with me, since it weighs as much as a small cat). I won't bother calling to find out about replacing our snowblower until I know I've got someone home to help me hoist the broken one up into a truck to get it back to the store - because what's the point in knowing I COULD take it back today, but CAN'T because the thing weighs as much as a Yugo and I'm here by myself? And once I get started on other projects, before you know it, it will be after 5pm so I can't call the dentist, or after 9pm so I can't call Home Depot. See? Perfectly valid excuses ... at least the first few times I make them.

But Liza's cavity isn't going to get fixed unless I schedule her filling, and my crowns aren't going to magically appear in my mouth, either. The Snowblower Fairy isn't going to repair my machine for me, and several things need to get done on the Super Secret Birthday Event I'm planning for Jason later this month. The carpets need to cleaned of the final round of bodily fluids from the cat, and we had talked about hiring an electrician to install the lights I bought to finish off the front porch renovation. I've also got a couple of notes - real, handwritten notes - I need to write, which I've also been putting off so I might as well take care of them today, too.

So today I'll grit my teeth, pick up the phone, and make the calls.

Right after I finish my yoga ... and scrub the bathtub ... and do some laundry ...

Avoidance

Recently I was reading through a book on stress reduction, and it mentioned that overusing the internet is a new  numbing mechanism for people who are trying to avoid hard situations or thoughts.

Well, that puts a whole new spin on my mindless 2am Facebook Mah Jong marathons.

Frustration

There are few things more galling that having the time, energy, and willpower to work on a project with a deadline, only to be stymied by the weather.  Because in case you didn't notice, it's rained every day for more than a week here in Cleveland, and my yard isn't exactly well-drained.  It's miles beyond moist, past wet, and straight into "I'd need hipboots to go in and transplant those hostas today" territory.  Seriously, I have to put on my knee-high rubber boots to take stuff back to the compost pile, since otherwise the water slops over the tops of my shoes and gets my socks all muddy.  And that's in the drier section of the backyard ...

I spent the first couple days of the rain shopping for stuff for our new patio room - buying the light fixtures and ceiling fan we need to install, scoping out furniture and accessories we might want to get, things of that nature.  Tee-hee, look at me, I get a break from having to do stuff in the yard!  Construction is now two weeks behind schedule, and I've run out of places to put stuff while I'm waiting for the room, so I can't shop anymore.

Putting in the new fire pit patio thingee was accomplished during a 2-day break in the weather, and was only possible because I didn't mind that the ground underneath it was getting squished into hard-packed oblivion.  Planting our front beds got done mostly before the rain started, but I've been able to throw in a plant here and there when the rain abates, since the soil up front is much better drained than the soil in the back, but even then I sort of expected there to be a welling up of water in the bottom of the holes I dug.  I should have planted St. John's wort ... then I could just go out and graze for a while and feel better, right?  Nah, it wouldn't be worth the wacko dreams.

Earlier this week I spent part of the day cleaning the craft room, doing some filing and sorting that's been waiting all winter for me to feel like doing it.  Yay.

Yesterday I decided that sometimes you just have to give in and say, "Fuck it, you win, I'm going back to bed and maybe this will all be over when I wake up."  And when I woke up 3 hours later, lo and behold, the sun was shining!  True, there were big gray storm clouds on the horizon, but I had at least an hour-long window of opportunity, and I wasn't going to let it go to waste.  I high-tailed it over to the nursery and finally got the witch hazel I've wanted to add to the back yard, and I found a dwarf (actual fruiting) cherry tree that will look great in the front yard, and then - score! - I found a six-way espaliered apple tree.  Just the day before I had been telling Jason that I sort of wanted one of those to put in the edible garden up front, but nobody around here had them.  Never been so glad to be wrong in my life!

Of course, now I've got a 5' tall apple tree sitting in the middle of my front yard, waiting to be planted (or fall over in the wind and break off one of the grafts) ... which I can't do until I move the bush that's already there.  Which I can't do until the ground dries out some.  Which won't happen until tomorrow, at the earliest.  Which is when the rain is supposed to start again.

Gah.  Guess I'll put on the rubber boots and try to prune back the crocus foliage, or do something else that can be accomplished without actually stepping into any of my beds.

Or maybe I'll just say, "Screw it," and go see a movie.

Well gee, thanks for that advice, Dr. Helpful

Yesterday I gave in and took Liza to the doctor. She's been complaining every night for the last two weeks about having a sore throat, but the complaints only come as part of the litany of reasons she can't get ready for bed yet, so I've been ignoring them. Yesterday she started with the runny nose and cough, though, so I figured it would be a good time to get her checked out and find out what the doctor recommended for seasonal allergies. Humidifier and Zyrtec for the win!

I also wanted to talk to the doctor about the anger management issues that Liza has been having recently. I know that the time change messes with sleep schedules, and stress can make kids do weird things, but the tantrums have just been out of control for the past few weeks. It's not just that she gets upset about normal things, like getting ready for bed - it's things like having a 20 minute screaming/kicking the wall/throwing things fit because "one of the kids started eating his snack before I was done making it into a smiley face on his plate" (not that she had told the kid to wait, or that she was doing something special with snack, or anything). And once she decides she's upset, it spirals out of her control, and we're in for seemingly endless inconsolable screaming over every. single. thing. She won't look at us, she won't be consoled, she won't stop flailing around - it would be entertaining if it was some other person's kid on YouTube, but it's my kid, and she's pissing me off.

Luckily this sort of crap just happens at home, not at school or at the park, but it's still not getting any better despite our attempts at helping her through it. Rationalization doesn't work, ignoring her doesn't work, consoling her doesn't work, deep breaths don't work, threats don't work, and we're starting to run out of ideas. Jason and I have both had to restrain ourselves from attempting to beat some sense into the kid. We know it won't help, but on the 10th day of "I-huh-can't-huh-stop-huh-crying-huh-because-huh-I-huh-don't-huh-want-huh-to-huh-brush-huh-my-teeth-huhwaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh" it starts to sound like a reasonable option.

Unfortunately, we got to see the "sick kid" doctor instead of Liza's regular pediatrician - yes, the practice is large enough that they have one doctor just for handling the kids who are sick and need to be seen the same day - so we didn't get the usual sympathetic ear. Instead we got:

• This is very common in kids her age. [yeah, common in everyone except every other child she has ever played with]
• Don't send her to her room, she has to learn to cope with the frustration where it happens. [that's going to be fun during playdates]
• Hold her arms firmly in front of her, [did I mention it takes two of us to hold her down to brush her teeth some nights?]
• Look her in the eye [you weren't paying attention to the "won't look at us" part, were you?]
• And explain to her why her reaction isn't appropriate [you also tuned out the part where we already do that and it doesn't do squat because she still can't calm herself down, didn't you?].
• Set a timer and tell her she has 10 minutes to calm herself down [also fun during playdates]
• And ignore her during the 10 minutes but stay nearby [I guess you also missed the part about how she crawls up the front of me bodily, using my clothing as handholds if I refuse to pick her up? And what am I supposed to do when the 10 minutes is up and she's still not calm? Do I get to whack her then?]

I was polite and told her I would give it a try, but I also got her to give me the list of pediatric psychologists they recommend just in case we needed to up the ante a bit. Because honestly, she knows she's overreacting, and she understands that she needs to do things differently, but we haven't managed to come up with a coping strategy that will help her calm herself down. I swear, some days its like she's got the Niagara River of emotions going on in there, and she's just the poor schmuck in the barrel going over the falls (again and again).

The doctor did have some helpful suggestions about bedtimes, so we're going to try doing things a little differently. Instead of dinner - play a few minutes - bath - teeth and hair - books - bed, it's going to be dinner - teeth and hair - calm play longer than we used to - books - bed, and we'll do her bath in the mornings. That gives her more time to play outside now that it's light later, moves the toothbrushing so it's no longer part of the going-to-bed battle, and lets me do her hair in the mornings when she's more tractable. Bonus: with her hair wet, it's easier to convince her to let me pull it back out of her face into ponytails or braids, and it stays back neatly for a longer time.

The best part is that doctors of any sort are one step below God in Liza's list of Those Who Must Be Obeyed, so when she whines about the new schedule, I can just pull out the "sorry, the doctor said we should do it this way" card, and she's likely to go along with it. Boy, do I love using authority figures for my benefit!

And I've got that list of psychologists, just in case I need to call in another higher authority* for backup.

* Not sure she'd agree to the authority, though. When we went in to meet my mother's therapist, Liza didn't want to talk to her at all, and I think the longest sentence we got out of her the entire time was, "If you're a doctor, then where are your licenses and stuff?" Apparently having paintings and tapestries on the wall rather than diplomas makes you suspicious, as far as my daughter is concerned. I guess I'll have to pre-screen the potential psychologists for office decor as well as bedside manner ... sigh ...

The whole nine feet

It started with some pretty yarn. And a cool pattern. And when I combined them, they colors of the yarn sort of obscured the lace pattern, but I was having so much fun knitting, I kept going anyway.

And going. And going. And going. When I hit the halfway point in the pattern, it was looking a little, um, long, but I forged ahead. And after complaining about not having time to finish it, I finally found time to finish it (thank you, Bill Nye).

All 9'2" of it.

Okay, it's kind of ridiculously long, but it is virtually weightless. Keep in mind that the whole kilometer of yarn that I used to make it weighed about 100 gm or so. It was so light, I went and bought some beads to add to the ends so that the whole thing wouldn't fly off in a light breeze.

And yesterday it was nippy enough to wear it over my t-shirt when we went for a walk in the evening, and I lurrrrrrve my new shawl! It's only slightly too long to wear with one end draped down my front, the middle part wrapped loosely around my shoulders, and the other end flipped over the same shoulder so it hangs down my back. So you get to see the awesome ends whether I'm coming or going - lucky you!

I've already got my next "ridiculously complicated" shawl planned out, yarn bought, beads purchased, needles set aside. But I'm not allowed to work on it until I finish another repeat of the 71-row chart for a blanket that I've been "working on" since, um, October. It's a bit of a bear to work on, and it's so heavy now that I gave up on it entirely for the summer. But I've decided I want to try to finish it by Christmas, and I can only handle one high-maintenance project at a time, so I'd better get it done before I start the shawl. At least it's pretty to look at while I'm slogging along ...

Also: Yarn Porn!

Bow-chicka-bow-bowwwww ...

Yes, I did just buy 1,100 yards of superfine 100% silk yarn to make a terribly impractical lace shawl for me. Me. ME. MEMEMEMEMEMEMEME! Because I'm not spending $45 on one skein of yarn for any of y'all :)

Not sure what I want to write about

My kid is shy. No, not shy - tentative to the point of debilitation when among unfamiliar people, especially kids. Once she knows the people, she's the most outgoing blabbermouth you've ever seen, but throw one unknown kid in the mix and she clams up and (usually) starts screaming.

Needless to say, this makes visits to the playground a bit traumatic. It wasn't bad during the winter, when most people stayed inside and we had playgrounds mostly to ourselves. It started getting bad a few months ago - we went to the indoor playground at the mall when it was raining outside, and there were maybe 10 kids playing. It took 10 minutes (yes, I timed it) to pry her off of my lap, get her to stop saying, "Mommy, make the other kids go away," get her to stop wailing and shrieking because one of them tried to talk to her, and convince her to go play. Then she tried to run in a circle around a piece of equipment, but when she got to the other side there was a parent standing in her way, so she had to run back the way she came, and she managed to make it back to my lap before she had a total meltdown. Another 10 minutes of sniveling and whining and "Mommy, make them go home! I don't like other kids!" and she finally went off to play, and I ended up having to drag her out of there half an hour later, she was having so much fun.

Next trip there, same thing, only without the break in the middle - 20 minutes of nonstop whining and moaning and asking very politely for me to tell the other kids to go home, followed by her finally working up the nerve to go play and then not wanting to leave.

We went to a birthday party for the older kids of some friends, and my kid was a wreck the whole time, despite the fact that we're over at that house all the time and we know the kids and she's best friends with the youngest sibling. Why? All the grandparents and great-grandparents were there. Next time I told her we were going to visit those friends, the kid started kicking and screaming and saying no she didn't want to go, it was too scary. After some prying, I was told it was too scary because there were "all those people there."

When my mother-in-law was visiting last month, we took my kid to her end-of-school picnic, which was held at a park we go to pretty frequently. The picnic was for every kid in the school, plus parents, so there were a lot of people there. We were there for close to an hour and never could get her to go on anything other than whatever baby swing was currently occupied by another kid. We had to sit on a bench a few dozen yards away from every single other person on the playground and watch. In the cold. For an hour. And as soon as we left, she wanted to go back and play, after I told all the other kids to leave. Um, no.

We went on vacation, and she loved the hotel pool ... unless there was anyone else using it. We managed to get her to ignore the one guy swimming laps by assuring her that he would stay on his side of the pool and we would stay on ours, but the four rowdy folks on Sunday kept her out of the water for at least 15 or 20 minutes, standing on the edge telling us to make them leave.

She was so excited to go to summer camp at her regular school ... until she found out that none of her previous classmates were in the camp, and there were a bunch of other little kids she was going to have to play with. The screaming was so bad the first day that we left after 20 minutes, I didn't even try to leave her there. It was "too scary," she wanted to go home so she could "just be with Mommy," and couldn't I just make the other kids leave?

The next day I told her I would stay the whole time, and she was fine in between the six or so complete meltdowns she had because, say, that girl looked at her pink hula hoop. The following day I did a dump and run, and after calming down from her initial hissy fit, she was fine. The next week I dumped and ran on the first two days and she was fine after a few minutes of crying; on the last day (her favorite day - water day! with swimsuits and everything!) she hadn't stopped crying after 45 minutes, so I had to come get her. What was so horrible that she couldn't stop crying? According to her, some other person had eaten her snack (because she was crying and wouldn't eat it), and she hadn't gotten to do craft (because she was crying and refused to participate) and she hadn't gotten to use the water table (because they were just lining up to go outside to use it when we left). Um, kinda circular logic there, what with the "I'm crying because I'm sad that I didn't get to do things because I was crying," but it's been a recurring theme recently.

On Monday we went to a friend's house to throw water balloons at each other, and after a while I put away the balloons and the kids went in the backyard to play on the swingset. The friend's next-door neighbor has a 2-year-old, and she came over to swing with my kid's best friend. My kid wouldn't look at the neighbor, wouldn't sit on the same side of the swingset as her, and only barely managed to avoid a full-on fit.

Yesterday she didn't want to go to camp, but I took her over and told her she could watch through the window for a while. After assuring her that no, I can't tell the other kids to go home, I managed to get her inside the room next to her class ... but she wouldn't budge from there. I decided that it's not worth the psychological damage she's starting to associate with school, just for me to have two hours of free time, so I didn't make her stay.

Today we didn't even try to go to school. Instead we went to the playground, the one she specifically said she wanted to visit because the little splash pool was finally open. When we got there, there were maybe 10 kids running around and splashing near the pool. She wanted nothing to do with it, and we had to use every deserted piece of equipment that was as far from the pool as possible. Another kid came and sat on the swing at the opposite end of the swingset, so we had to leave. A kid tried to climb up the ladder wall next to her - a couple feet away, not paying any attention to her at all - and she lost it and screamed and whined and rended garments and summoned demons and I could only calm her down by telling her that if she's trying to get the other kids to not notice her, wailing like a siren wasn't the best choice.

After maybe half an hour the preschool group that had come in the meantime all climbed out to get dried off for lunch, and there were only three or four kids in the water, and I managed to convince my kid to sit with me on a bench near the pool. She stood there, got up the courage to go into the water in front of us - there was a 20' circle free of other kids - and before she could get her shoes off, some other kid walked through the empty space. Didn't stop, didn't look at my kid, didn't even know we were there, but my kid lost it again and 5 minutes of screaming ensued. She finally went in the water when I agreed to come stand next to the edge (rather than sit on a bench 10' away), and I had to practically drag her home after another 30 minutes of playing in the freezing cold water.

On the way home, she wouldn't stop talking about the "friends" she made at the pool, the one little girl who walked with her (for five feet, and I'm not sure she even realized Liza was there) and the other girl who could get her whole head wet, not just her hair (as the girl derisively pointed out to my kid and her walking friend, who were leaning over getting the tops of their heads wet). Neither of these girls are likely to even remember Liza tomorrow, but I'm going to be hearing about them for a week.

*******

I hate this. I hate that she's so tentative, so slow to warm up, so overreactive about the littlest, weirdest things. I hate that she's so tall people assume she's older than she really is and expect her to be able to hold it together better than she does. I hate that she's always on the outside, watching through the window or from across the playground, lucky if she talks to one kid without melting into a wailing puddle on the floor. And I especially hate that I know exactly how she feels.

I was always the one on the outside, wanting to join in but too painfully embarrassed to try. I can remember sitting on the fringes of the playground, watching the other kids play, wanting to be invited to join but never making it over there to ask if I could. Feeling like everyone was watching me, judging me, criticizing me - when it's unlikely they even knew I was there. I was the tall one, the chubby kid with glasses and bad hair in the back row of every single class picture. The kid who was so unpopular in elementary school that the boys who played Dungeons and Dragons wouldn't even let me join.

My parents wanted me to be outgoing - my dad is the kind of person who will go to a historical reenactment village and end up chatting with the sawyer for 45 minutes - and I don't think they ever quite got it. Go join things! Talk to people! Be nice! Nobody's making fun of you, it's all in your head! I did, I tried, I was, they were, and it wasn't. Sorry, guys.

I tried to join the field hockey team in 7th grade, and I didn't even make it through the organizational meeting before I got so embarrassed at my own lack of knowledge and/or skill and/or physical abilities that I burst into tears and had to get my application back from the coach. And that was just sitting in the auditorium in a meeting - I never even made it to the field.

I tried to go to my 8th grade "formal" dance, despite not having a date and hating dances in general. I got the dress (a black tank-top knit dress with a long swirl skirt that looked really good on me, and cost $80), got my dad to drive me to the dance ... and as far as I can remember, I started crying in the car as we pulled into the school driveway, and I never even made it to the door. Every other girl was wearing $200 prom-type dresses and had dates, and I was going to be the awkward dateless one. Again.

In high school I was on the fringes of a couple groups, the band geeks and the theatre people and the math nerds. You know you're in trouble when you're the least popular one in Math League. I had one good friend (Hi, K!).

I joined the fencing club in college, not because I had any particular interest in fencing, but because one of the members literally reached out and dragged me over to the table during the activity fair at the beginning of my freshman year. She was tall and weird and a little chubby, and I loved it. Fencing attracts all manner of oddballs and outsiders - let's face it, MLF, you have to be a little off to enjoy poking other people with potentially deadly archaic weapons - and yet I was still on the outside. I was the one who didn't drink at parties, who didn't sleep with everyone in the club, whose room or apartment no one ever bothered to visit. I was asked to parties only because the entire club was invited (and they needed someone sober to keep score during beer bowling); I was asked to come to the mens' team away meets because I had been nominated the Team Mom, mainly because I had a sewing kit and was the only person liable to have cough drops, kleenex, or extra snacks in my gym bag.

I made a few friends with coworkers after college, but when I switched jobs I didn't keep in touch with more than one or two. I didn't make any friends at the new job, although we did end up being good friends with our neighbors, mainly because they gave us no choice (Hi, guys!). When we moved to Kentucky I only ended up with friends because they pretty much grabbed me at the library and forced me to join in (thanks, Kimberly! I needed that!). I had people to hang out with who had kids roughly the same age as mine, but I never got to the point where I could just call one and say, "Hey, let's ditch the kids and go see a movie."

I've been back in Cleveland for over a year now, and despite visiting playgrounds, going to storytime at the library, going to tumbling lessons at the rec center, hanging out at the library, and joining the local preschool PTA group, I have a total of two friends in town - my former next door neighbors. I go to kid activities, and either the parents all already know each other, or they blow off my attempts to start conversations, or I'm so busy wrangling Little Miss Whinypants that I don't get a chance to try to meet people. I went to two PTA meetings - the first one I had to take my kid with me, and she refused to stay in the gym with the other kids where were being babysat by the girl scouts, so I didn't even make it to the actual meeting. I went to one other meeting, and I swear I was the only one in the room who wasn't paired off with someone they already knew, chatting and having a good old time. I sat there like a stump and went home having talked to a total of one person - the one at the door who asked my name so she could make my nametag.

I hate this. I hate being awkward and outside and lonely. I hate that I do the things I'm supposed to, yet somehow friends never magically appear like they seem to for other people. I hate that when something good (or bad) happens, I call my friend (singular), and I call my mom.

I really, really don't want this for Liza. She's been like this since birth, always wanting me or Jason, never anyone else, never showing much interest in what other kids were doing, never wanting to play with them or talk with them unless she already knew them. She'll chat up the clerk in the grocery store for 10 minutes, but she won't say "Hi" to a girl on the swings.

I want her to be the kind of kid that walks into new situations happily, not the kid who clings and cries and protests and refuses to try new things. I want her to want to talk to other kids, even ones she doesn't know. I want her to want to join in, and then DO it. But it isn't happening.

And I hate it, because I know I can't "fix" it, it's just who she is, just like it's who I am. And some days, I hate that, too.

*****

Also, I hate that I just wasted my kid's entire nap by writing this. So much for getting anything done today.

*****

Edited to add: Also, hate thatshe insisted on wearing underwear for nap today. When I woke her up from her nap, she was dry, but groggy, so I let her stay in bed while I went to switch a load of laundry and go to the bathroom. Huzzah, dry after nap! BUT... When she got up a few minutes later, she was in a huge puddle, which had soaked through her waterproof mattress pad and soaked the mattress, too.

I now have the least depressed bath mat in Ohio

While I was getting ready for bed tonight I realized too late that the lid on one bottle of antidepressants wasn't actually closed. As I took it down from the shelf, tiny white pills flew everywhere, including on the floor, on the throw rug, underneath our bathroom reading (child-care handbooks), and onto the wet bath mat, where they immediately began to melt into the fibers.

I scrambled to save as many as I could, pitching the half-bathmat-digested ones and any that landed in the cesspool behind the toilet. The rest, however, I carefully picked up and dusted off, placing them back in the bottle and closing the lid tightly. I'm going to be inspecting my pills each night for pubes, cat hair, and that ubiquitous bathroom dust made from toilet paper lint. Gonna be a looong two months until the new (hopefully unsoiled by bathroom skeeze) bottle of Prozac gets here.

Guess I'd better go do another sweep to make sure I'm not going to have a drugged-out kid tomorrow ... then again .... hmmm ...



Nah. Better not chance it, especially with my mother-in-law due for a visit later this week. That would be a fun conversation ... "What fun things would you like to do in Cleveland? I know! Let's go visit Liza in the hospital! I think they should be done pumping her stomach by now!"

Abundance

I've started reading Simple Abundance again. Basically, it's a series of 365 essays on how to live a life that's authentic and true to what really matters to you. I keep the book in my bedside table, and since I first discovered it a long time ago, I tend to pull it out when I'm feeling scattered and dissatisfied with how my life is going. I've found in the past that the author's ideas really help me stay centered and focused on what really matters.

The first principle that the author discusses is gratitude for what we've already got - basically acknowledging that it's easier to be happy with what we have than it is to get everything we think we want. There are a number of low-key exercises she recommends, including a "gratitude journal" where every day you write down at least five things for which you are greatful. I've still got some of my old gratitude journals, and the entries run the gamut from "I got a promotion!" to "I didn't die today - yet."

I haven't been too good about following her exercises this time around, and I haven't started working on my official gratitude journal, although I have been trying to take a minute to think of five things I'm greatful for each day before I go to bed. One of the essays I read last night (catching up for a few days of slacking) suggested that I make a quick list of 100 blessings in my life.

"Yeah, right." I didn't think it would be quick at all, but since I've been slacking so far, I decided to give it a try. I managed to write down 50 things I was greatful for or that I consider to be blessings in my life before I ran out of time and had to go to bed, and that took maybe 15 minutes. I'm sure I could have managed to get the full 100 if I'd had the time and inclination, although the final 25 would have been a bit of a stretch (#79. Air).

The trouble I ran into is that a) I'm inherently pessimistic, and b) I'm a bit superstitious. So not only did a lot of my blessings fall into the category of "bad things that haven't happened yet," but I was sort of reluctant to write down the best stuff because I'm afraid I'll jinx myself. You know, write down that I am really enjoying my daughter at this stage of her life because she's so fun and it's such a great scientific experiment to see how she's developing her personality and her quirks ... and then the following day she turns into a little hellion I'm aching to foist off on my mother-in-law (Hi, Susie! Hope you liked the photos yesterday! Want to come visit for a month?).

I actually didn't write down "I didn't get the stomach bug that felled every other mom I know" because I was afraid to jinx myself ... and then I spent an hour getting way to familiar with the inside of our bedroom trashcan around 12:30am. Part of me thinks, "See? You didn't write it down, and the bad thing still happened, so you didn't jinx yourself." And the other part says "See? I just thought about it and the bad thing happened, so I'm doomed to suffer."

Not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe I'll get around to finishing the list tonight, and post the complete compendium one of these days. I haven't bothered to do any of the "100 things about me" memes here, so I suppose it would be good for filling space when I don't have anything else to talk about. In the meantime, anyone else want to list a few things off the top of your head that you consider blessings in your life?

Do you think there's a 12-step program for me?

You know how strong the Ikea assembly addiction is? We spent the night at some friends' house last night, partially to keep me from messing with the stuff in the living room.

Of course, the gigantic meal they cooked for us (ham! sweet potato casserole! fresh biscuits!) and the hours of gaming after the kids went to bed might have had something to do with the decision to go over there, but the Ikea Avoidage was definitely a factor. So very sad, my life is.

Braaaaaaaains!

So I stopped using the new birth control pills, and so far most of my symptoms have lessened or completely disappeared. Most notably, I think my Irrationally Angry days were down to about 12 hours total (instead of three days), and my Headaches Of Sickening Intensity were gone.

That is, until Thursday afternoon, when I got a headache for the first time in a month. Oh, god, I've just postponed it. But it didn't feel quite the same, so I took two Motrin, put the kid down for a nap, and sat down for a relaxing bout of sewing feverishly to finish stuff for my craft show.

And for the first time in six months, the headache went away. Gone! Poof! Just like they're supposed to when you throw massive amounts of pharmaceuticals at them! It was like a miracle, only more productive! It made me so happy, I feel the need to use exclamation points at least three times in every paragraph from now on!

So basically, screw the Pill, I'm going all natural for the first time since 1991 (excluding the months for conception and pregnancy and breastfeeding). Hurrah for fewer symptoms! Hurrah for saving money on prescriptions! Hurrah for exclamation points!