Monday, May 18, 2009

eat this

moe just left to get lunch. he eats fast food every day. today it's Vortex coronary bypass with fries. meanwhile i am trying to choke down 18 month old Nutrisystem meals so that I can lose my baby weight. it's gross. the other night - Friday night - i couldn't do it anymore and ate Krystal for lunch and a pint of ice cream with theatre butter popcorn for dinner. when i told moe about the binge he simply said, 'Why?'

not one of my girlfriends has ever asked me that before which is when i realized how differently men and women feel about food. if i were to tell any one of my girlfriends that, they would have responded with their latest binge and the circumstances surrounding it. 'oh girl, please, i have that every night' or 'just one pint?' but when moe asked me, 'why?' i really didn't have an answer. because i hate myself? because i wanted to relive every lifetime original movie starring meredith baxter birney that i've ever seen? i don't know why. sometimes girls just binge. it would never occur to him to do that and if it did, he would never give it a second thought, much less agonize over it for days the way i did.

then again, why would he ever have to agonize over it? eating that would not phase him. he's really quite a phenomenon when it comes to eating. he did come to the realization the other day that living with him while dieting must not be easy. this is a man who almost seems hurt if i say 'no, i don't want anything, thanks' and who brings home McDonald's at least five times a week. he is a genetic superstar and never gains a pound. i have started saying, 'sure, get me a salad' every time he goes out which seems to make us both happy. it makes him happy because i'm not eyeing him like a lion would an injured gazelle and it makes me happy because if i'm eating a salad then it gives me something to do rather than steal fries off his plate.

any mintue now he will be eating a huge burger topped with a fried egg and bacon (not to mention a side of fries) and i will be sitting right beside him with my house salad thinking, 'this is why.'

Sunday, May 17, 2009

I'm lazy, so what?

The previous post is all out of order and is just stuff from myspace that was posted between 2006-2008. It might not make much sense. I didn't feel like figuring out the original dates they were posted.

Blogs Originally Posted on Myspace

my brazilian wax and hygiene update...

so, as you may recall, last thursday i kicked off good hygiene month by getting a brazilian wax. for those of you who have never gotten one, it goes a little something like this...

hi. Carey?

-hey!!! (nervous excitement) yeah, i'm Carey. Princess?

mmmhmmm, you ready?

-as i'll ever be!!!!

i'll let you get undressed, here (hands me a washcloth to cover my 'area' i guess...i have no idea
why i would need this and it makes me uncomfortable because i don't know what to do with it).

-where should i put my... well, ummm, where do you want me? like, umm, like hanging off the end or just like lay here on the bed like normal or what?

just lay down and get comfortable and i'll let you know if i need you to move. i really can't tell until i get down there.

-oh. oh. okay (she leaves, i undress, lie down and wait while soothing music plays and i almost doze off. pretty soon Princess, who looks like she got her certification from the University of Phoenix online, knocks and enters just a few seconds behind her teeth).

now, do you want it all gone?

-yes. the front door, the back door, side door, screen door, cat door, dog door - take all i got, whatever you see.

(politest, smallest, most non-amused laugh ever) okay...

-wow, that's warm.

is it too hot?

-no, it feels good (little did i know it would get hotter and hotter while i was there).

Princess spreads hot wax all over my landing strip area and I try to pretend it's relaxing. I stare at the ceiling and brace myself. She presses three strips on top of the wax, side by side. With no warning, she rips off each strip while she pushes my the skin up towards my stomach with her other hand. Then she half-assedly places her gloved hand on top of the area she has just worked, patting it - as if that split second makes it better.

She moves rapidly from my left side over to my right. I'm thankful for that and try to make small talk. Princess is having no part of it. I'm trying to think of other things, trying to focus, but before I can think of a topic, she is ripping my skin off again. It feels like a hard slap, I guess. Or pulling off a huge bandaid. I know this is the easy part, the part where she is still on top... It's when she has to go down there and back there that it gets truly painful.

Up until this point, i had been laying fairly comfortably on the bed with my butt towards the end and my legs slightly parted and hanging down off the edge. She had been working around me. This was about to change.

Hold your leg out like this (bends my right leg and places my foot on edge of the bed, pushes my knee down towards the bed so that my leg and butt muscle immediately start cramping but I am so scared of Princess I just hold the position - at least it gives me something else to focus on).
This is when a Brazilian gets ugly. Literally. While I'm focusing on my cramping leg, I forget for a moment to notice that someone's hand is fully in my crotch so that she can get a good angle with her other hand. She is literally sometimes pushing off me to help manuver herself and I realize this only sort of after the fact.

I tried to use a strategy that often comes in handy during workouts. I pretend horrible things are happening. For example: Feel like giving up in spin class? Think you can't pedal any harder? Pretend your niece is trapped in a burning building and try to get to her before she burns to death. Feel like doing a few less reps? Pretend you have to lift a tree off a kitten. I know, it's dumb.

Only this time it was weird, I got off track and ended up thinking, I bet this is sort of what it's like to get raped. This has got to be better than getting raped. I mean, I'm paying $60 for this, it's certainly better than getting raped. But you feel like your vagina is being ripped apart and your mind becomes detached in the same way it would, I imagine, during a sexual assault... so I could see a parallel at the time.

I'm also now fully utilizing the washcloth, biting it and trying to pull it over my eyes, but I can't ever get too comfortable with that manuver because Princess keeps asking me to do things for her. Pull here, put your hand here, take a deep breath, move your leg...

Finally, it's time for the end. My 'end' and the end of the wax. For this, I had to take one leg at a time and pull it up by my ear, using the opposite hand to hold it in place and the hand on the same side to pull my butt cheek over. I put each leg down, but because of the wax, my thighs stick to my upper little area and pull at the skin, distorting it.

She's finished and wiping me all over with some sort of oil and before I know what's happening, she's shoved a mirror in my hand. It's the kind they give you when you get your hair cut, so you can see the back. Instinctively, I look. I don't really know what I'm looking for, but I guess I'm supposed to approve her work. What I saw in the mirror did not look like me. It looked like something that had just come out of a meat grinder.

-Looks great, thanks! (oh my god, that looks horrible, i hope it goes back to normal one day)

Okay, I'll just let you get dressed and meet you outside.

I get up from the table as gingerly as possible and put on my robe and slippers. Princess is waiting for me on the other side of the door and walks me to the locker room where I realize with horror I am going to have to put on clothes. Having anything rub against me for the next few hours is the last thing I want. I tell Princess thank you again and go to get dressed, cursing myself for wearing pants over there.

After I leave the tip, I head over to my friend Dori's place which is about a mile from the spa. As soon as I walk in the door, I take off my pants. Dori has come to expect nothing less and says only, 'want me to close the blinds?' to which i reply, 'i don't care. don't worry, i'm going to put on panties soon' and then i pulled out the biggest granny panties ever, made specifically for times like this, and I put them on. The elastic comes halfway down my thighs and doesn't irritate my bikini area, they're great.

I asked Dori if we could order in and basically laid on her couch and moved as little as possible for the next three hours (not even when the chinese guy let himself in and blatently stared at me laying on the couch in my oversized underwear while Dori got her money).

I have had Brazilians about a half dozen times before but none had the residual effects that this one had. I could hardly walk. Dori said I wasn't selling her on it. Then I pulled down the front of my drawers so she could see the raw skin and blood coming from my pores and she shook her head again, 'nope. not selling it'

When I felt I could put on my pants again, I went home - but the pain stayed with me for the rest of the night. I started to regret using a new girl. I started to think Princess might just have been one clever janitor with a sick sense of humor and access to hot wax. But the next day, I woke up to find Princess had given me the best Brazilian of my life, to date. I only found two strays, there were no rough patches anywhere and she had been very thorough. I was impressed. It's still holding up perfectly a week later.

So anyway, that was the beginning of my 30 days of hygiene and i have to say, so far the whole time has been almost that painful, but in a different way. i am no good at it. at every turn i think, 'i bet this is not very hygienic...' as i pick a zit or worse, my nose. but at least i am showering, washing my hair and face every day and brushing my teeth. i have only flossed twice. this is a real struggle.




all in a day’s work

so normally my saturdays go a little something like this... wake up at 7:30a and feed andie, put on baby bjorn and take her to joe's where we either go out back to the fish pond or hang out on the couches until it's time for moe to wake up around 9a. walk home and try every 5-10 minutes to wake moe up until 9:45a (he is supposed to be at work at 10a on saturdays).

after we say bye to daddy we have a 'snack' which means bottle because i am only nursing 3x a day lately and will be giving that up entirely next week when i go out of town with the muffins. anyway, so then i put her down for a nap and do housework. today i washed dishes in our bathtub because our sink is sans pipes. we have had a leaky sink since we moved in and last weekend i tried to use mighty putty on it - have you seen those commercials? well, it didn't work. the leak just relocated and now we have to call a real live plumber. figures. i can't take too many more days of washing dishes in the bathtub so they have me by the balls.

something about washing the dishes in the sink reminded me that moe's friend fat cat had called saying he wanted to come visit. he hasn't booked travel for himself, well, probably ever, so i called him while andie was still down and the dishes were air drying and made his flight arrangements for him. fat cat is the sort of person who locks the door seventy two times exactly before he leaves the house and then worries the entire time he's out that he didn't lock it. i guess that's called ocd, but i don't think he really has that. it is sort of time consuming to get him to do anything, though. he has been saying he's going to visit us since 2002 if that tells you anything. the phone conversation was not as simple as i'd hoped.

After fifteen minutes this is where we were:
now what time is the flight?
i have already told you five times. the baby is starting to wake up, i just need your billing address. we're almost there, i just need that so i can hit confirm
it's in the morning right? but what if we want to have lunch together before i leave?
fat cat, you're going to be here for seven days, you're not going to want to eat lunch together on the seventh day, now what is your address?
{writing}atlanta. hartsfield. jackson. international airport. june 17th. june 24th.what time again, Carey?
fat cat, it is the same time i told you before, 10:30a. the baby is awake, i just need your address and then i can book it and then you will get an email with all of this information and you can look at it all day every day if you want.
ooooh, so it's an email sort of thing. so you're saying i can just print it on a computer from my email? why do you need my address then? I thought they were going to mail me a ticket.
well, they would if this were 1992, but these days most people do electronic ticketing, listen, i will explain modern technology to you later, but just really quick can you tell me your address? we have been on this screen for twenty minutes now.
{writing} june. 17. june. 24... hey, why Tuesday? i am thinking Monday will be good.
okay, that is $100 more, but i haven't hit confirm yet so i can change it if you want. hold on, i have to go get her.
Tuesday is good. Tuesday is good. Newark, right?
yes.
yeah, because you know i don't like going into the city. newark is more convenient for me. i know where i'm going, you know, i just want to fly out of newark on a decent airline. not united. is this flight on united?
no.
yeah, i'm going to bring a carry on and a bag. a carry on and a bag. that's it. that's all i need. a carry on and a bag. out of Newark right?
[by this point i had done a people search online] do you still live at 123 Easy St. in Jersey City?yeah, apartment 2.
thanks. bye fat cat.
i hung up on him (at 11:45a) and put andie in her car seat and raced over to the hair place so my girl could adjust my color. i was supposed to be there at 11:45a because she was fitting me in to do me the favor. really, she was correcting the color that she put in for me mother's day w/end but still, i didn't have an appointment so i should have been on time. anyway, she wasn't mad and fit me in as soon as i got there.

i sat andie in the middle of the floor with a biter biscuit and some toys and she just sat there and ate it while i had toner put in my hair. she found the stocky lesbian in the waiting area quite interesting and was particularly taken with her rainbow flip flops.

we left there and came home for lunch which is when i got sucked into a real world marathon on mtv. i swear i only watch tv because i love to hate everyone on it. i do not like a single 'housemate' on the real world, but for some reason i watched it until 4:30pm.

andie is crawling now, so i let her entertain herself by eating shoes that were over by the door. i figured she had worked so hard to get to them, she deserved to stick them in her pie hole. moe does not approve of a) me saying pie hole - but it rhymes in an eating song i made up to teach andie about how to eat properly "first we take the spoon and we put it in the bowl, then we scoop up food and we stick it in your hoooooole. pie hole." so i have to say it so she gets it and 2) letting her eat dirty shoes. to which i say, "okay, i won't let her anymore" and then i do.

after the real world marathon ended, so did my desire to live. wait, no, that is not what i was going to say. oh yeah, then we went on a walk to check out the EABF which was pretty happening this year. we got spit on accidentally by a drunk guy and then his drunk girlfriend yelled at him somewhat incoherently for spitting at us, but i had to point out to her that she should really be yelling at him for spitting at her. we just happened to be behind her, that's all. and also, he didn't hit us, he just almost hit us.

i think maybe she was not his girlfriend, but maybe he had banged her when he was drunk one time. and maybe he had lost his license from having a lot of DUIs and she was the only one he could get to drive him to the beer fest so he was stuck with her. he was walking way in front of her and she was ... well... she was heinous and she had one swollen ankle which actually was a good thing because it drew your eyes away from her jean shorts and Eeyore 'don't bother' t-shirt.
we got home and ate dinner around 5:30p. again, that just means milk for her for the most part, but i gave her some bite sized deli chicken slices and small cubes of cheese because it is fun to see her eat stuff. she has six teeth, so she can pretty much eat whatever as long as it's not too seasoned.

after we ate, i was still wanting to go out somewhere so we went to barnes and noble at 6:30p. i made a critical error at B&N and drank a large coffee beverage. at least i am typing instead of talking to my friends on the phone right now. i am a bit much after large coffee beverages. anyway, there were two other babies in B&N and naturally we moms chatted it up about baby stuff - how old? when did yours do this? how did yours do that? nursing? bottle fed? teeth? so cute! adorable! yours too! so smart! look at those _____!! i could just eat her/him up! - before i could go over to my favorite section which is the kids' section.

it was my first time bringing andie there and she loved it. before i knew it it was 8pm and time for bed so we drove home (oh, i bought her an elmo book that says something about elmo going potty when you push a button and i bought my niece a math workbook for when she comes to work with me on wednesday for 'bring your child to work day', but then after i paid for that we went home). all the beer festers were out and about in the neighborhood bars and eateries and for a split second i thought, i am driving a mini van listening to delilah, but then that moment passed and i put my baby in her pjs and after a final feeding she went to sleep and here we are. and moe is still at work.



hotmoms.com
so i talked to the guy across the street and he is sending his kid to public school when the time comes. he pointed out that all the people i see pushing strollers around here are in the same predicament i am and that some are already members of the pta. others have headed up a tutoring program to get the kids' test scores up and get the school more money. he thinks that by the time our kids enroll it will be a great school. i sort of felt like an asshole after the conversation because it had never occured to me to try to help.

anyway, that's not even what i got on here to say. all i really wanted to say was that i think it is funny that i hardly ever pay attention to how i look when i leave the house. i pay a lot of attention when i know i am going to meet someone for the first time - i always try to bathe and look presentable on those occasions - but in general i just walk right on out the door as is. that is not what is funny. what is funny is that every single time i come back in the house i check myself out to see what i looked like when i was out. i will fix my hair, look at my ass, put on lip gloss - as if me primping afterwards is going to impress whoever i just saw.

andie and i went to joe's today when she woke up from her mid-morning nap and i had on olive green sweat pants with a different colored green 'kiss me i've been to ireland' t-shirt, no bra and a blue zip up New Jersey Ledger sweatshirt. my feet were housed in hospital issue blue socks and fake pink crocs that my dogs had chewed. my hair was sticking straight up in the back from where i slept on it and needless to say i did not have on any make up.

i must have talked to about fifteen people while i was out - i didn't even think twice about how i looked - but as soon as we got in the house, i went straight to the mirror to see what everyone else had just seen. i pursed my lips, adjusted my hair and pinched my cheeks to give them color. image is everything, afterall.


skool is for lewsers
it's 10:45am on sunday and andie and moe are both asleep. i feel like at least one person in this house is always sleeping and it is never me. i smell really, really bad. i'm not sure why, but i do. and i think i should have said, 'badly' there. i have been drinking coffee nonstop and i need to shave. i should shower, but i'm blogging and watching meet the press (against my better judgement).

we are going to buy another house this year and i realized that it will be in that house that andie begins to go to school. i also realized that that means she will have to take one for the team and get a bad education because i am not willing to move anywhere that has good schools. sucks for you, kid.

my parents moved to conyers for us when it was time for my older brother corey to go to school because at the time i guess conyers had a good school system. i cannot make that kind of sacrifice so i am issuing a public apology to andie and the people of this country that will have to live with her ignorance in years to come.

as i have established, i live in a neighborhood that still has one foot firmly planted in the ghetto. that affords us a lot of leeway in terms of leaving spare tires and couches in our yard, but does not offer us things like safety or good schools. that said, i love it so much that i wouldn't dream of buying our next house anywhere else. andie can learn plenty out on the stoop, right?

unfortunately, i can't even lie to myself and pretend that the schools will be better by the time my child has to go to them since half a year has passed and i didn't even notice. kids go to school when they are four these days and andie is already almost seven months old. we're so fucked.

there are things i always hear people talk about called 'charter schools' around here, but i am going to have to google that because i don't even know what that means. my across the street neighbors just had a kid, too, so i bet they are all over this whole education thing. i will just wait and do whatever they do. they are smarter than me anyway, so i am sure they will make a better decision about it than i ever could. they named their son Adlay. that is something only really smart people do because smart people probably say, 'ah, adlay from greek mythology' or some shit like that. i just said, 'oh, cool, another 'a' name, just like andie'.

speaking of names, the little kids in my neighborhood are total hipsters. or at least their parents think they are. okay, i am talking about the white people now, to clarify. my neighborhood has one foot in the ghetto, as i said, but the other foot is in trendytown and the mayor is the man. he drives a honda element with a human rights campaign sticker on the back and volunteers with the less advantaged neighborhood kids on the weekends. you can find them together in the library on saturdays and they both look bewildered.

anyway, there's adlay, cash, dylan, davis, pola, etc, etc. i told moe that when we have a boy i want to name him 'frog' - it's the only way he'll fit in around here. even though the name he wants to use for a boy is just as weird as that he still said, 'no'. i think 'frog' is a cool name for a boy. i have lived here too long.



real time blog

it's about ten minutes until one in the afternoon and i am sitting here in an adult diaper, tee shirt and sweatpants watching the food network. i actually took to wearing adult diapers to bed a few days ago, but today is the first day i have worn them in the afternoon. it is pretty great. and i have never slept better, by the way. some people might wonder why i would choose to wear adult diapers, and i guess that is a good question so i will tell you. in detail. but first i forgot to mention that i am eating Pillsbury Cream Supreme Cream Cheese frosting with a spoon straight from the container because i don't know about you but i have to eat while watching the food network.

okay, so - adult diapers. a few years ago (almost three years now) my friend rebecca had a baby and my friend lisa and i raced up to north carolina to visit her in the hospital and try to be there for the birth. we missed that, but we did get there in time to be told by rebecca to go buy her some maxi pads. apparently, after you have a baby you have to wear pads for a few weeks which i guess i had never thought about but makes sense- oh, also, i am drinking international foods french vanilla nut flavored coffee right now.

so when we were shopping for them at sam's with rebecca's mom in tow, we were debating on which ones she would like best. i suggested the adult diapers. apparently that was a ridiculous suggestion. her mom and lisa were like, no. so we got an overnight kind with super absorbancy and wings which HELLO that is practically bigger than an adult diaper and way more uncomfortable, but i digress. i decided then and there that when i was pregnant i was going to get myself some adult diapers for after my labor.

a few week ago, i had some spotting and was told that if it didn't stop i would need to go straight to labor and delivery. it stopped and was no big deal except that moe and i were like, oh shit, if we would have had to go to l&d we would not have been ready. so that weekend we kicked it into high gear and everything has been ready ever since then. i went straight to walmart and bought me some adult diapers to pack in my overnight bag for the hospital. i didn't think it would be necessary to bring the entire pack, so i opened it and put some in the bag for my car and put some more in my back up bag that is always in moe's car (in case we were out somewhere and needed to go straight to the hospital, we have two bags ready - one in each car).

so since the pack was open... i put one on to see what it was like. they are fantastic! i don't see why anyone would ever wear a pad when they could have a comfy diaper on instead. and talk about full coverage! i will say that they are pretty hot - not sexy, but like, they make my back sweat - so in that way they are not perfect. anyway, i didn't start wearing diapers nightly at that time, i just sort of thought how great it would be to have them when i needed them later.

i guess the turning point was right around when i hit 39 weeks and was 2cm dilated. i thought, hmmm, i don't really think my water will break since that is a big farce for the most part and only happens to like 5% of women, but i mean... we do have a new mattress and if my water did break and if i were in bed, that would be gross so what choice do i have?... so i have been wearing diapers to bed ever since and sleeping so hard it's frightening. wearing diapers really takes the pressure off wetting the bed - i'm totally relaxed - so much so that monday night i almost died choking on acid reflux that i thought was just a dream until moe forced me to wake up, sit up and drink water. he says it has been like i have been in a coma this last week. i give all the credit to diapers and recommend them to anyone who is willing to have an open mind.

meanwhile i just remembered that it is the most gorgeous day of all time and i'm sick to my stomach from sugar intake at this point so i am going to throw away this container and put my coffee cup in the sink and go outside. actually, i think i'll go to walmart and stock up on diapers...






black like me

white people scare me. not on a personal level. just, like, as a whole or when they gather in large numbers. moe and i were just in the north georgia mountains and we went to this cabin restaurant with dead animals all over the walls - oh and there was literally a stuffed beaver right behind his shoulder, i could not have planned that any better, i tried to take a picture, but the lighting was too dim...i digress.

before we walked in i was gripped with fear and i turned to him and said, how many black people do you think are going to be in there? and he said, 'none.' none? no black people? not even in the kitchen? nowhere? and he said, there are no black people here, ANYWHERE. and he was right.

all through dinner i felt like the mouse in a snake cage. any minute something horrible was going to happen. how could i possibly feel comfortable in this place? there were white people everywhere. and these were super polite white people with mountain accents. how scary is that?!!?!?

i asked moe if he felt uncomfortable and he said, 'no. i'm always the minority wherever i go. i'm used to it' and i said, 'don't worry, i'm sure you're not the only asshole here' - good one, good one, hahah - but seriously... i couldn't help feeling like we were in the presence of evil.
i had felt this twice before - the first time was when i was living in San Francisco and went to Kansas City for the weekend and the other time was while i was living here and i went to perimeter mall for dinner. i've been back to kansas city since then, but i'll never return to perimeter mall if i can help it.

have i lived in the ghetto for so long that i cannot relax if there isn't at least one other black person around? oh wait. i'm not black. i'm always forgetting that. it might be because the people in my neighborhood also forget that i am white. once a man even went so far as to tell me that jesus was 'black like you and me' - i had to point out to him that i was not, in fact, black. he told me i had brown eyes and that was close enough.

i guess he was right


"laughter through tears is my favorite emotion" - me too, dolly. me too

when i must have been around nine or ten i remember looking at my mother and asking her how old she was. i asked because i thought she was beautiful and perfect and whatever age she was at that moment is the age i wanted to be. she was 38.
i held that age in my mind as a sort of ideal. i would be my most perfect beautiful self at 38. i couldn't wait.

it has always been in the back of my mind that something special was waiting for me in my thirties. something womanly. something feminine. something... maternal. but as my birthday approached, something else happened entirely. something that robbed me of my joy, although it was indeed something womanly. i got my period.

you know when you're reading or watching a movie and there is a key turning point where everything starts to go wrong? if that one moment were different, the whole thing would have turned out differently? you don't notice it at first, but when it's over you think, 'oh yeah...' well, that is the feeling i got when i realized what was happening. when i realized that this was the beginning of the end.

my periods are disappearing. for years they've been getting shorter, but i didn't care. shorter periods? hell yes!! who wouldn't want that? but as it turns out, now that they're leaving - i want them back.

over the past couple of years i have become acutely aware of my cycles. when you're trying unsuccessfully to have a baby you start to take notice. you learn your body's rhythm. day one, irritability. day two, bloating. day three, energy...day fourteen, cramping. day fifteen, ovulate. day sixteen, wait...day thirty, start your period. back to day one. eventually the constant regularity of it lulls you into a state of apathy. you go numb. you accept it. you expect it. nothing changes. you move on.

on the thirtieth day of my cycle a few days before my thirtieth birthday, i went to the restroom with every expectation of starting my period. my pitiful, one day long excuse for a period that at most would require two tampons. total. maybe one the next day if i worked out hard.

what i found, instead was textbook implantation bleeding. this was nothing like my normal periods. discharge with blood, a tiny bit of spotting, much lighter than a normal period - this was not a period at all, i'd read about this. i was pregnant. i didn't know how i felt about it.
the day went on and i was in shock. did i even still want to be pregnant?

the answer, as i looked at the negative pregnancy test the next morning, was decidedly yes. painfully yes. sob after sob yes.

but i had bigger problems now. where was the rest of my period? what was going on? was i really just going to spot for two days and be done with it?

i researched all day on the internet - the sworn enemy of modern medicine and gynecologists everywhere. in the morning, i had mistakenly thought i was pregnant and by the end of the day i had diagnosed myself with early menopause.

of course, all i have to do is get a test and see what my hormone levels are. of course it all sounds silly. of course i'm sure i'm perfectly fine... but there is no denying it - my periods are getting shorter and shorter. how many more can i possibly have before i stop having them altogether?
and so, entering my thirties was sullied by a profound sense of loss. instead of feeling like i was finally becoming a woman, i felt like i was becoming less of one.

and yet, at the same time - surrounded by friends, a cubicle filled with balloons and a paper mache seal wearing a birthday hat in my honor - i could not have felt more human, more loved or more grateful.




anyssa and angus

i walk monroe off leash. it is sort of famous in our neighborhood. i will hear the old men on their porch say, 'watch 'is - he ain't gwanna move, not until she tell 'im to' and then i will catch up to monroe (who is waiting for me at the curb because he knows not to cross the street without me) and i will say, 'ok monroe, GO!!' and he sprints across the street ahead of me.

sometimes there will be young kids there - taunting him at the curb. they'll stand on the other side of the street and whistle and call for him. the men on the porch say, 'he ain't gwanna come to you, boy!' and he won't. he waits for me and then we cross when i say it's time. sometimes i make monroe walk next to me, but most of the time i let him run ahead. he knows where he's going and more importantly, i know he'll listen to my commands. 'get out of the yard, monroe' 'wait for your mommy' 'walk with me'

the people who work in the village shops call him the dog who walks himself. i love it. i love this about monroe more than anything else. i am so proud of it and yet, it seems unlikely that i ever would have given him the chance to become this way if it weren't for anyssa and angus.

i got monroe when i was living in manhattan. i was obsessive about him at first ("at first??!?!"). what he ate, his training schedule, his vocabulary words (he had a list), etc. i never would have dreamed of letting him walk off leash on the busy streets of midtown... until i saw anyssa and angus do it with absolute confidence.

we lived on 2nd ave between 50 and 51st - a not always bustling, but pretty busy little stretch of asphalt. if not with cars, than with people dining or meatheads drinking. i moved in when monroe was about six months old and all of five pounds. i don't know how much angus weighed but he was a very sleek greyhound/german shepherd mix several years monroe's senior who took the pup under his wing.

i was relatively new to manhattan and certainly new to midtown. i would observe anyssa while monroe got schooled by angus. they taught us how to get around there, where to go to the dog park and how to trust each other.

i remember watching anyssa let angus out to pee. it was miraculous. he ran down one flight, out a couple doors and jumped into a patch of grass where ny tried to pass off what they considered a tree in a little square bed made of concrete.

i had come from a 4th floor walk up in the east village. monroe had to learn to go to the door, wait for me to get his leash on, walk down four flights of nasty, twisting stairs, wait for me to open two sets of doors, walk onto a stoop and then down one more set of steps until he finally got to the pavement to pee. needless to say we did not arrive at the apartment on 2nd avenue fully house-trained.

it was amazing seeing angus go off leash directly to the tree. didn't matter how many people were walking by, how many horns were beeping, how many obstacles between the door and the tree. he went straight to the tree by himself every single time and he came straight back. all you had to do was hold the door open for angus and unless he pooed this meant you could stay in your pajamas. this meant barefeet. this meant freedom.

i couldn't do this with monroe at first. it took a lot of practice for us, but we watched and we learned and he finally went with angus and came back. it was glorious, but it was the tip of the iceberg. anyssa also walked angus to the dog park off leash.

the dog park wasn't far away, but it was a few blocks and there were some streets to cross. anyssa would casually drop angus' leash from time to time and i would inwardly have a heart attack. i would grip monroe's leash tighter. after a while i realized it was fine. she knew what she was doing. she knew him. she knew he knew what he was doing. it was fine.

eventually i gathered enough courage to take anyssa's lead. monroe would run up and walk just behind angus - a tall gorgeous creature - beside a silly looking wannabe... and i was just behind them walking with anyssa - a tall gorgeous creature - beside a silly looking wannabe.

i am so grateful for those walks together. watching two creatures trust each other. learning from them.

angus died this past saturday. i just wanted to tell him thank you. and thank you anyssa.



doing blow

I've been thinking a lot about turning 30. not so much about being 30, but about my life up until now. what have i missed out on? what things have i always wanted to do that i've never done? all of this reflection has lead me to one all-consuming thought - i want to do blow.

i decided early on that drugs were bad. i think it happened the day we found a shattered 'Thriller' record in my uncle Chris' room at my grandma's house. how had that happened?!?! we asked Grandma. she said it was the drugs. your uncle chris is on the drugs. if drugs could make someone smash a 'Thriller' album into pieces, i wanted no part of them.

but by the time i was in high school, i realized lots of kids did drugs and they never destroyed a michael jackson album because of it. i still wasn't convinced i wanted to do them - my uncle chris was a pretty fucked up individual - but i realized there were a lot of factors that led to his behavior and that it couldn't be blamed solely on drug use.

at that time, acid was pretty popular and one night all of us were supposed to do it. somehow, as it turned out, i didn't. not for any good reason, it was more like someone walked in, something happened to interrupt us, timing - can't remember why, really. two days later my friend told me about her experience that night and asked me to promise her i'd never do it. i said okay. so i've never done it.

i smoked weed a little bit my junior year - never bought it, but smoked at parties, friends' homes, etc.- nothing out of the ordinary - and by the time i was in college i was over it. my college friends didn't smoke it. we didn't hang out with people who did. i'm not saying i never smoked it in college, it just rarely happened and wasn't a part of my life. i didn't aspire to be like the people who made a habit of it, it didn't impress me... so i didn't do it.

in my early 20s, ecstasy was really popular but i never tried it. ecstasy is right up my alley and i have always sort of regreted not doing it. i guess i never did it because every time i said i wanted to, people who had done it and know me well would say, 'don't start, you'd like it too much' or 'you don't even need it' or something to that affect. i figured they knew better than i did and i took their advice. i am not the sort of person who has to make my own mistakes. if you are willing to make them, i am perfectly capable of watching you and learning from yours.

i'm also not one who enjoys going to bars or clubs or even parties for that matter. so by virtue of that, i never really even had to try to avoid ecstasy - it has never been offered to me. i can't say with any certainty what i would have done if it had been.

in my mid-twenties, i was living in manhattan when i realized i had totally missed the boat on cocaine. i was young, i was willing to do anything and i was totally naive to the fact that almost everyone i knew had already done blow. of course, by the time i figured this out, the only one i knew who was still doing it was the bar manager and his behavior was not appealing. Coke was old news, no one i hung out with was still doing it with any sort of regularity - i was never around it, never really intrigued enough by it to seek it out... so i never did it.

but lately - especially after going to Hedo where anything and everything is okay to do and readily available - i have been thinking about drugs. i have been thinking about them a lot. it doesn't help that i just read 'a million little pieces' - i think i missed the point because it made me attracted to drug use - not repulsed by it. i thought, if this guy can smoke crack and just decide to stop and actually stop, then there is no reason i shouldn't be able to snort a line or two.

there is no reason and yet i am afraid i will not actually ever do it. i know there is nothing wrong with using drugs recreationally and yet i hear my mother's voice. it's not saying, 'drugs are bad' and it's not saying 'people who do drugs are bad' it's saying that drugs are for people who don't think they are enough. it's for those who are incomplete. it's for the weak. the insecure. people who aren't okay with themselves.

i know that that is not perfectly true, but it's always been true enough to stop me. dammit.



father's day

so yesterday was father's day and i asked my dad what he wanted and he said he wanted help with the barn. my dad is building a pole barn out of recycled material. my mom calls it an eye sore, my dad referred to the material he's using for it as unsightly. i really don't care what it looks like, the shit is heavy. i guess it is some sort of insulated wall panel he got from Publix - my dad works in the Publix distribution center as a technician in their freezer. it's like as big as several city blocks or something, it's pretty huge.

anyway, dad seems to finagle a lot of 'recycled' goods from the freezer. so far he has commandeered a set of lockers, a year's supply of frozen food and these huge insulated wall panels he is now using for his pole barn. they are several feet long, a few feet wide and at least 100 lb each. i am not sure on that, but maybe. maybe more.

he has all the walls up - walls meaning these insulated panels bolted to poles... which are also recycled as they are old telephone poles and tree trunks found on their property... so what we were helping with was more of a clean up effort. dad is convinced he can sell what is left of these free panels so rather than loading them on a trailer or setting them on fire, he had us move each and every one of them to a new location - out of his way and mostly out of sight.

even though it was father's day and this is what my father wanted, my mother could not hold her tongue and proceeded to tell my dad just how stupid of an idea it was to keep these panels and how no one in their right mind would ever buy them. dad poo poo'd her criticisms with a short outburst that was mostly indecipherable to me...mumble e-bay something something my panels anyway mumble e-bay something just watch me something mumble mumble...

the whole thing took about an hour - not worth arguing about from my perspective and an easy gift to give. especially since i couldnt really lift them and every time i tried i would drop my end or step in a hole. so really i guess moe gave that to dad for father's day since he was the one helping while i got in the way and mom shouted her objections. afterwards, we went to hang out in the pool while moe 'watched the world cup' aka 'took a nap' and dad turned to me and said, 'Carey, say an accident were to happen and you ended up pregnant... what would the baby's name be?' - now, i thought this was pretty funny seeing as how I've been trying to get pregnant for a year now and apparently my dad knows nothing about it and a couple days before i had a doctor's appointment where my doctor confirmed for me that i was, in fact, probably infertile. so it's funny on two or three levels at least.

i explained to him that it wouldn't be an accident (a surprise, yes; accident, no) and that moe and i had already decided what we would name our baby if we ever had one - ______ Munoz Overby - buy that now we were contemplating changing both of our names to something in common like Rockefeller, Kennedy or Trump. he thought that was stupid. again, i think - funny.

after the pool, we took dad to the restaurant of his choice. he thought i would not like it, but in fact it is one of my favorite places - the golden corral. just as we were getting ready to leave, my mom's friend deaf deborah showed up and let herself in - we only knew she was there because moe happened to walk through the kitchen and saw her sitting at the table talking to herself about how no one was there. mom went and told her we were just leaving to go eat and so she came along. we call her deaf deborah because she's deaf. have you ever been friends with a deaf person who doesn't use sign language? they think they can hear, but really by 'hear' they mean talk really loud and read lips. she made us all sit on the other side of the table so she could 'hear' while we ate.

deaf deborah isn't always aware of her surroundings - i guess when you just stare at people's mouths you don't really get a full picture of the scene. had she been aware of her surroundings, she probably wouldn't have told us in her booming voice that the german slang word for pussy was foot, she might not have elaborated in front of all the church going folk out at the golden corral. then again, maybe she would have. i would have and i am not deaf.

oh crap, it's late. overby, out.

sometimes i get scared.

my friend caroline recently referred to a quote in one of her blogs - 'a ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why ships were built' - i am paraphrasing, but i think that's pretty close.

sometimes i get really scared that my relationship with moe is like a ship in harbor. i have my 9a-6p life, he has his 5p-2a life and then two to three days a week we have our life together. it's almost never two days in a row, and sometimes they are not days at all, but merely the evenings after I get home from work. moe is usually off on sundays but all the other days of the week are crap shoots. that's how he likes it. i hate it.

what results, for me, is a feeling that our time together is precious - i cut off all other activities and my friends get a curt 'no, i can't - moe's home tonight' if they ask me to do anything at all.
unfortunately, this creates sort of a weird vacuum. on those days, it is just the two of us. the rest of our time, we belong to everyone else and rarely even speak, but on those days, it is all about us.

as i'm writing this, i'm thinking it doesn't sound so bad and more people should try to do that - create a cocoon where their relationship is protected from the outside world - but on the flip side... when the outside world comes in, we are ill prepared to deal with it.

i know that moe is a social person. i know he goes out often (without me). i know he has a lot of acquaintances. i know he is outgoing, i know he is flirtatious, i know he is irresistable. i try never think of these things in combination. i try never think of them at all. when i think of them, i drive myself crazy wondering where he is, what he's doing, who he's talking to, what he's saying, who he's with...

and so every day goes by, and maybe we will talk once on the phone before he goes in to work, and maybe we won't. maybe he will come home at 2am and maybe he won't. not all the time, but most days this doesn't phase me. i get up, go to work, do my thing, come home, go to bed, rinse and repeat and all is well in the world as i wait for moe's day off to roll around.

sometimes, his world invades mine. sometimes i am forced to think of all the things he does without me. all the friends he has that i don't even know. all the nights he's gone out, all the plans he's made, all the places he's been. i'll see a receipt, answer a phone call from someone i don't know, see a flyer for a party I know nothing about and the ship will rock. i get motion sickness. i want to throw up.

it is not, in fact, our world: population two. i like to believe if we had similar schedules this would not bother me. i like to believe that if i just had more time with him, i wouldn't be so protective of it. i like to believe that if we spoke to each other every day and saw each other every day that eventually the need to shut everyone else out would subside. then maybe we would be that couple you loved to hang out with... we'd be the couple single people wouldn't mind having around. as it is, we're really not a couple at all in the outside world.

when we're forced to acknowlege the existance of our other lives - our single lives that we cultivate five days a week - we usually fight. i don't want to have to think about how many people adore him at every bar in Atlanta, he doesn't want to think about what I do when I go out of town with my girlfriends.

it's hard to describe how it feels to know there is nothing to worry about and to simultaneously be terrified anyway... no, wait, actually, I can do it. its like riding Acrophobia at six flags. You ride because you know for a fact its safe - even though once youre strapped in youre pretty sure youre going to die anyway. And yet, if you love it, you ride again willingly. You cant wait. After a while, I guess you stop feeling like youre going to die. I hope so, anyway. (btdub, if this were an essay I would have closed with a ship analogy).


one thing i won't do.

i cannot stand closing the door to the bathroom. even in public restrooms, i hate to latch the stall. at home, i never close the door. at first moe hated it, but now he leaves the door open all the time, too.

i have been known to remove clothing in public places from time to time. it wasn't that odd in college to hear my roommate lisa say, 'put your clothes on Carey, we're going to another bar'
i blurt out whatever pops into my head. even during meetings, which has not always been a great idea. usually what's in my head is inappropriate at best.

i will try almost anything, i will discuss almost anything and i will debate just about everything.
there is one thing, however, that i absolutely will not do. ever. i will not let moe see me work my way into a pair of jeans (ones either straight from the dryer or just plain tight). moe has seen me shit, puke, piss, sweat, stink, gag, burp, humiliate myself, humiliate others, pick my nose, have a hangover, fart, shit myself, wet the bed, have the flu, be on my period, recover from surgery, gain weight, lose weight, with bad hair, with acne, be cruel, be bitchy, be jealous... but he has never seen what I have to go through sometimes to put on a pair of pants. and thank god, because that would be embarrassing.





i'm a meatetarian

just got back from Fogo de Chão for lunch. moe and i went for part uno of our anniversary eatstravaganza and i want to just say this. i love to eat. i love to eat meat (if you don't have a Fogo de Chão in your city, it is a Brazilian style churrasco - an all you can eat meatfest). few things make me happier than all-you-can eat restaurants and this one is the best ever http://www.fogodechao.com/ (side bar in - i think changing it to 'all you care to eat' is total bullshit - side bar out).

i know this is shocking, but both moe and i have a competitive streak. we compete in almost everything - he's a good sport, i am not. it's perfect. i think i can eat more at buffets but he calls himself, 'the professional.' he gets extra points because he is skinny. it really is a sight to see a slender man house more food than a giant fat guy. my dad is well known for his appetite and moe eats him under the table. the first time my dad witnessed this at the golden corral, he was stupefied. i call moe the world's skinniest fat guy.

today, i was impressed with him - i think he may have won by a hair depending on how you judge.

i am going to try to catalog what he ate:
fresh tomato slices, fresh mozz, garlic bread, heineken, fried banana, chicken skewer wrapped in bacon, filet mignon, top sirloin, bottom sirloin, garlic steak of some sort, chicken drummette, house special (red meat), lamb chops (3), pork loin, asparagus, black beans and rice, more garlic bread, crème brûlée. i think i left some stuff off.

he pulled away from me with the plate of beans n' rice. otherwise, i had him.

this is where i think i could be the winner in this category. i can eat all that and 15 minutes later be hungry again (i am hungry now - i ate e'thing he ate, plus some other veggies, but no starches and i drank more, but not alcohol). moe will be worthless the rest of the day. he could hardly drive home.

i'm already thinking about the next place we're going to eat. he's pussing out and wants to eat seafood. he said he couldn't even really think about it. but i can. seafood's okay...if you're a frightened little girl!! gimme a fucking break, seafood. yeah, it's good - with STEAK!!! or like as an appetizer. seafood! don't insult me. it's just filling enough to really piss me off.

so, i guess i am a meatetarian. i hardly eat anything else and it seems to work out for me. it annoys me when people push other foods on me - would you do that to a vegetarian? here - just eat this hamburger. for me that's like saying, 'here, just eat this apple' no thank you, i don't eat that. wrap it in piece of bacon, fool, shit.

oh, that reminds me - the muffins are toying with the idea of throwing me (or helping me throw) a 'pork-a-palooza' 30th birthday party. i think the rules are you have to bring something with pork in it - prizes awarded for creativity, extra points for dessert and drinks. i'm starting to get into the idea.



fessing up

i put a new blog up here yesterday, but removed it. i don't think anyone was too attached to it, but i do apologize. i started to just edit it, but then thought, who cares? and removed it. it felt sort of dishonest to remove it, though, so now i am fessing up to it.

also:
the shirt i am wearing in that six flags, jazz hands photo says 'beavers'
i have ugly feet.
sometimes i forget to brush my teeth.
calling attention to myself makes me happy, other people calling attention to me makes me extremely uncomfortable.
if there is no one else in the bathroom, i don't always wash my hands.
i am the one who sprayed our classroom with the fire extinguisher in seventh grade - it wasn't tommy farmer.
i'm a bed wetter.
porn boosts my self esteem.
i have abused vegetables in the past.
i don't think golden showers are weird.
i think 'secretary' is one of the sweetest love stories imaginable.
i hate to clean (that includes showering).
i don't like to drink alcohol.
i overeat. all. the. time.
i wear all of moe's clothes including his shoes.
i am almost always late.
i would rather paint a room than go out on a Friday night.
i don't walk the dogs enough.
i'm starting to hate the taste of coffee.
sometimes i don't like kids.
i sort of wish my grandmother would die (happy birthday shout out, grandma).
i hate owing money.
i love the zodiac.
i think the moon is the most powerful force in our universe.
i simultaneously love and hate to go bowling.
i am an impulse buyer.
i do cruel things.
i want to see 'ATL'