I’ve been researching for the book I am desperately trying to write.  Since I am not a professional, my first plan of action is watching movies. Good movies, lame movies, independent movies and foreign movies.  I figure if I can get a handle on this ‘love’ thing and how other people go about dealing with the ups and downs of it, this book will write itself.

So far this is meat of my book:  You Stay or You Leave.  If you stay, stay hard and hang on. If you leave, leave for good and don’t come back hoping to get back what you had.

It’s pretty much all that bullshit in between the meat that needs to be worked out.  Like, the shit that comes with staying and shit that comes with going.  I mean, who would guess that staying and going would be SO MUCH WORK.   Who would guess that being caught in the in between would be work too.

So far the majority of this mess I have learned to always ask, ‘We okay?’ and hope that what comes out his mouth is the same that I am saying my head.

On occasion I get an email saying how much people love the relationship that my mom, sister and I have.   Sometimes people say, “I wish I could hang out with you guys…I bet it would be fun.”

I have been trying to locate CD’s that I have misplaced (kids stole) and I ran across 2  (ones I stole from my sister) the title is my mother’s handwriting that says; ‘Copy of Kathy’s funky CD’.
If my sister made a CD it’s going to be rockin’ so I grabbed it as I headed out of the house.  The first song, “Bad Mama Jamma” (of course) and I instantly was in a good mood.  After flipping through the tracks I said to myself, “Now where is ‘the floor’? It’s gotta be on here.” and low and behold it was the next song. Insta-grin.

The floor is OUR song.  If there is a time we are together and we are groovin’ to music, that song has to be played.  In fact, I would go as far to say that at each of our funerals that it will probably be played and the remaining two will be groovin’.

I thought I would share it with you. Pretend you’re hanging out…but get up and dance, because you can’t just listen to it:

Johnny Gill - The Floor

When I called I knew the woman worked from her home. No big deal. Remember Mike Keaton’s Dad on Growing Pains worked from home?

After we got to the house we had a clip board waiting for us on a bench in front yard.  *blink* Okay, lets sit in the heat and fill out a form.

We get in this little green room and it was so hard to take the woman seriously because she wasn’t wearing a bra.  I know that sounds really odd and normally, I’m all about odd, but her boobs were just sitting there on her lap.

Every time she looked away, Shaun would look at me and give me this ‘look’. The, “What the fuck?” look.  I just had to scrunch my eyebrows and give him the, “I dunno” look.

She had copies of papers she had from a book (one I have already read) that talks about what you’re feeling.  She encouraged us to use this paper that says, “I feel…I think…”  She had this cute little survey that tells us what type of personality we are.  She said, “It will help you figure out how to communicate with each other if you know what kind of personality you’re dealing with.”  *blink*  Really? Cause I hadn’t figured out his personality in the last 5 years.  Well how do you do! it’s THAT easy?

As we were walking out Shaun said, “God, if you want me to start packing and move out, I’ll do it…as long as we never have to go back.”

This was part of the therapy right? Find the worst one and be forced to sit through it together without bursting into laughter and making up crazy scenarios just to freak the therapist out?

My mom left a note on this picture:  “It looks like what I carry in my pocket”

Sad, but true.

You know how when you’re sick you pick up on things that you would normally dismiss?  I had a moment on the phone and I had to scribble it down on the back of the Tums bottle for when I felt better.

My mother pronounces each day of the week like this; Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. THURS-DEE. Friday. Saturday. Sunday.

Thurs-dee.

Hmm.

Holy hell, I thought I was dieing.  Friday Shaun and I left to go to Reno (again) because we had a wedding right out outside of there on Saturday and to make sure that we were going to be there on time we always leave a day early.
I checked in, got to the elevator and the way Shaun explains it, I was hit by a germ water balloon.  By the time I climbed on the elevator I was about to barf.

In between 10pm and 6am I had snapped. The fever got to high and I was certain that the end of my life was nearing and I was going to die in a hotel room in Reno.  Shaun did a good job trying to bring the fever down, but I was resistant to have cold rags put on my freezing body.  Why that happens, I don’t understand. Make someone who has a fever be freezing cold.

Some other things that made me believe that I am on the top of God’s shit list;  I had formed ANOTHER bladder infection, started my period, AND then got a fever on top of it.
I’m laying in bed freezing to death, burning up, Shaun is convincing me to put cold rags on my forehead. By the time I finally get comfortable I have to get out of the bed, out into the freezing air AND GO PEE.    Then after all that I have to get back into bed and start over again.  ALL NIGHT LONG.

At 8am I finally caved and called my friends to come and get me. I think it came out more of a high pitched whine begging them to come sit with me while Shaun goes and shoots the wedding because If I am left alone, I would die.
They drove all the way up there and got me and brought me  home.

That whole night I threw up and most of Sunday.

Monday came rolling around and who would have guessed that MONDAY would be my favorite day of the week??

I must have said, “I want my mommy” 300 times this weekend. I called about 10 times just to hear her voice.   She IMed me today, “Guess you’re feeling better.”

Maybe I should call her more than when I am just sick.

Halo’s been obsessed with TV and the mirror lately.  This was an obsession she had gotten over after months of therapy and shock therapy.

In the last week she’s been spending way too much time in front of this mirror we have the living room. I told Tyler, “Perhaps it’s not OCD over her reflection, maybe she’s just a really vain dog.”

Like every single day in our house, I have on CNN on in the bedroom.  Halo doesn’t get up early enough to watch Morning Express with Robin Meade so she doesn’t know what every man and woman on the planet knows; ROBIN MEADE IS SO HOT.  She carries on banter on the show that is so adorable you want to eat her with side of chocolate cake.  I have found her only flaw is this lame segment she does on Nascar, but you’re allowed to have one flaw…hers just leaves no room for anything else.

The past few days Morning Express has been on with this other woman who has the most dramatic facial expressions when she is switching between stories, almost like she’s scared.  It’s just not the same starting my morning (at 3am) without Robin.
I found out why she hasn’t been hosting the morning news, she’s been interviewing the 3 captives they rescued.

Halo came in mid-morning and licked the bottom of the screen.  She got her normal, “HALO NO!” and so she started to walk out the door…then she heard Robin’s singsongy voice and turned around.  The rescued captives began talking and all be damned the dog sat down and started watching the news.  This went on through out the day, but only the segments where Robin Meade was on.
Now when I say, “Robin Meade is on!” Halo comes running in looking at the TV.

Shaun said we are going to teach her to bark and growl madly whenever Nancy Grace comes on.

to view the dog watching CNN: click here

Today our two year anniversary.  Today is also the day I made our first marriage counseling appointment.

No one puts on their wedding dress and thinks, ‘In two years from today, I am going to be making an appointment for counseling.’
No one expects the “Happy Anniversary” email to be followed up with an email for a therapists.

I know, I’m suppose to be happy today.  This day is suppose to mean something, be an accomplishment. It just feels sort of hollow.  And this is where I pep talk myself into saying, “this is a journey and it’s a rough one and you have to work for it and life is hard…’ and all the other stereotypical expressions that have stuck to the wall all these years.

Thinking back to my first marriage and the final days of excepting the fact that it wasn’t going to work was the same phrase running over and over, “I’m going to be ‘divorced’. My kids are going to come from a ‘broken home’. My kids were going to say, “our parents are divorced.” and all those words felt so dirty and the thought of them saying them broke my heart into a billion pieces.
When I finally excepted the fact that I was going to ‘re-marry’, another ‘bad word’ in my vocabulary, I guess I figured it was going to be ‘right’.  I mean, if I screwed up the first one so badly, maybe it wasn’t meant to be and the grand plan, big picture of things this one was my do-over and because I had walked through the fire and survived it, this one was going to be easy and right.

God, I am so young and naive.  I figured people that got married the second time around really had all the answers and that marriage would last forever.  Then of course you hear about second marriage ending and you rationalize those; ‘got married to soon.’, ‘got married for the wrong reason.’, ‘too much baggage’… they are damaged and should stay single then.
Yes, again…young, naive and let’s add stupid to the mix.

Are there people out there that don’t live in their head all the time? Do people not sit and get so twisted in the responsibility of being themselves that they want to vomit?
You know those commercials for like, Tide or Bounce when they have the white sheets hanging on the line and the wind is blowing through them and there is that woman standing in the middle?  She’s probably wearing white capri’s and a bright yellow shirt. She’s a perfect size 10 and she’s holding up her arms and spinning around in circles with a big smile on her face?
To understand what it’s like to be in my head take that scene, make the woman not so svelte, hair in a pony tail, voices of children yelling at dogs and each other and instead of standing there spinning with a smile on her face, she’s caught in the sheets and thrashing around.  She knows in order to be able to get out she’s going to have to slowly unwind from the sheets, but the more she turns and pulls, the more one sheet overlaps with another.   At the end of the day, when the sun has gone down and instead of the sheets nicely folded in a wicker basket by the door… The backyard is a cold mess of sheets, dog prints and a very exhausted woman still caught in there somewhere…sobbing.

And why did I stop taking medication?

I’ve now got to call my ex-husband and tell him to quit telling the children about our finances because Shea came in and informed me that Dad should get a break on child support because he has them more than when the court ordered. SHE IS TEN.

“No one said it would be easy, but no one said it would be this hard “- Sheryl Crow

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July.
Shaun and I got two free nights at the Atlantis Hotel in Reno.  It’s always fun to get free stuff, but then you stick us in a city were everything focuses on putting all the money you saved into slot machines.
In order to avoid that trap, I planned a trip to Virginia City.

We had planned it out quite well.  Shaun would take a half day at work and while he was working, I would get the oil changed in the car and fill’r up.
Things didn’t work out as planned.
He woke up with a sinus headache and I was still battling the bladder.  The 20 dollar oil changed turned into a “Ma’am when was the last time you changed the oil?” trip.  Note to readers; Change Your Damn Oil More Than Once A Year.

After hours and hours of getting things ready to go, we started  our drive up through the mountains, without any cell coverage to our destination.  The car overheated.  The 40 dollars in coolant the oil change people swore they put in wasn’t put in.  The GPS system we just bought paid for itself in spades as we located a nearby mini-mart and fixed the problem.
We drove home and got the gas guzzling truck and began our adventure again.  Instead of getting there at 5pm, we got there at 10pm.  BUT WE MADE IT.

The next morning we plugged in “Virginia City” in the GPS and headed out to the old town.  It was awesome.   I hadn’t been there since I was a little kid.  It’s weird going back as an adult.  I think my mom’s attitude towards Virginia City when I was younger is what made the place so magical.
I kept telling Shaun, “I need to find the candy store!”  When we finally found the store that had barrels of candy, I wanted to squeal with delight.  No, it wasn’t the candy, it was the memory of the awe I had as a child when my mother brought me in that store and allowed me to pick out an assortment of whatever candy I wanted.  It was ALL mine, I didn’t have to share it with anyone.  What heaven, a store of barrels of candy.

We spent the majority of the time at the old cemetery on the outskirts of town to avoid the huge parade they were having for the fourth of July.  We could hear everyone hooting and hollering and I stood at the top of the hill overlooking the town I tried to remember how old I was the last time I was there and tried so very hard to remember everything from when I was a kid.
The only thing I could remember holding my mom’s hand as we walked through places and looked at the old relics.

I wonder what places my kids will remember when they get older and revisit all the places we went…and what they will remember.

I was joking with Shaun earlier that I had peed 15 times in one hour.  After he fell asleep and I was half way through the massive bottle of water he bought me at the store when I realized, “Crap, i’m going to be up all night peeing.”

Yes, I counted. 18.5 times in ONE hour.  Now you might be saying to yourself, “Hope she has the soft toilet paper.”  No, I don’t.  Yesterday I went to the store and decided to let my 11 year old and her friend pick out what were going to eat for dinner, including having to pick out what brand.
They started out pretty frugal.  They picked the thinly sliced bread, the smallest bundle of bananas anddddd the cheapest bulk wrapped toilet paper.
Six bucks bought like 24 rolls of toilet paper.  By the time we got to the frozen food section all thoughts of saving money went out the window when they saw the ice cream.  They got the keg of chocolate chip ice cream, the waffle bowls, waffle cones, the chocolate that hardens when it hits the ice cream (Thanks Kathy for showing that to my daughter!) They also picked out a 4 dollar bottle of  Cool Whip in the can.  Next time, I shop alone.

The toilet paper is like wiping with the Sunday paper inserts.  I think I have a paper cut.

Shaun didn’t find my joke about peeing 15 times in an hour.  Remember he’s not big on talking about things like that.  Just to make him even more uncomfortable I said, “Hey honey, I’m peeing bright orange! It’s like I’m peeing Tang!”

Honeymoon’s over, folks.

I swear, I am falling apart!
Last week I had a raging bladder infection.  It’s a problem that runs in our family. If the wind changes too fast, I get a bladder infection.
Usually I rush off to the doctor to get the pills that make my pee bright orange and some antibotics.
THIS time, I decided I was going to fight this the cheap man’s way…with Cranberry pills, Cranberry juice and an obscene amount of water.  It worked!  Yay for me.

This morning I woke up and the infection is back with a vengeance. I called the doctor after I crawled whimpering and crying from the bathroom.

I called my mom whimpering and crying all the way to the pharmacy and she asked, “Don’t you get those from nasty, kinky sex?”

*blink*
*blink*
*blink*

No. I get them because I made plans to go somewhere.  It never fails.

I am now in possession of some bad-ass antibiotics…which will OF COURSE cause me to get a yeast infection.

My mom said, “Well, if you wear your sweats with the hole in the crotch, you won’t even have to pull your pants down to pee.”

That’s my mom, always the bright side of every situation.