pardon the boring bloggyness, or lack there of. all recent drama has been taking place only in my dreams and fantasies. my real life has been fairly mellow, tremendously busy but mellow-ish and domestic. or as domestic as my life ever is.

what i'm reading: written on the body by jeanette winterson

this was a gift from j3n for my birthday and it's one i'm glad to own on paper rather than digital copy for my kindle. it's a genre that i love and poetic and flowy and about a subject that i find irresistible.

we lay on our bed in the rented room and i fed you plums the colour of bruises. nature is fecund but fickle. one year she leaves you to starve, the next year she kills you with love. that year branches were torn beneath the weight, this year they sing in the wind. there are no ripe plums in august. have i got it wrong, this hesitant chronology?

what i'm watching: life on the discovery channel i'm a huge fan of the planet earthseries and this show seems to be right along those lines (though i prefer an male brit to oprah winfrey when it comes to narration and i see now that this series is available in the original bbc version narrated by david attenborough too.) so far the kids and i have watched the reptile/amphibian espisode and the one about fish. both visually stunning...the footage is truly amazing. (the more i read on imdb, the more irritated i am that discovery isn't broadcasting the bbc version!)

swamp

i'm absolutely buried under grading, a ramped up chocolate schedule, play dates, wedding stuff (amanda's!) and life in general. this is a good kind of busy.

the business has taken off in unimaginable ways. sometimes i look at ben and wonder how the hell we got from there to here. i still don't know (though i know we couldn't have without dad and jen). my dad has sold so many new wholesale accounts that we're having to stop taking new ones until we get used to this pace. we don't want to over-extend ourselves. (we're in four wine stores/wineries, three coffee shops, two grocery stores (one a chain of six), a toy store and somewhere else that i'm forgetting...).

things are settled once again on the bk front. he generally sees them once a week, sometimes twice, sometimes not at all. he's decided to move out of his parents' house which is good news because he'll be closer and able to take the kids to his house instead of coming and keeping them here at our house (therefore displacing d and i for the evening). i've gotten him to commit to paying for half of summer camp for parker and though it's taking a while he is giving me the money bit by bit.

lorenzo has a girlfriend in preschool. it's ridiculously cute how smitten he is with her. 'mama, can i bring this flower to blonde kyra?' 'mama, do you think blonde kira will love this picture i drew for her?' every tuesday and thursday he comes prepared with a little gift and presents it to her enthusiastically. they hug for extended periods of time. :)


oh yeah, the blog OR just call me 296.32

we're swamped getting ready for the salon in sf this coming saturday and i'll likely be busy until that's over. oy. and i have a stack of grading that i've been ignoring...

i had my first appointment with my new psychiatrist today. (i fired my last one 3.5 years ago after she broke client confidentiality with bk in our emergency session 2 days after he left. up until today my ob/gyn has been managing my meds.) the session lasted two hours as it was a full intake appointment. basically i'm looking for someone to manage my medications for the next several years or until i don't need them anymore... i can't remember if i've talked about it before but i've been on antidepressants without (intentional) pause for the past ten years. depression runs deep in my maternal family tree and i don't know that i'll ever be completely free of depression AND antidepressants. the stigma wore off long ago in me and i'm not particularly ashamed or even affected by this. i suspect i'd be more affected if i was too depressed to take care of my kids. ;) anyway, these appointments are always a little unnerving because my degree is in psych and i'm fully aware of what some of the more pointed questions are stabbing at. "ever had periods when you didn't feel like you needed to sleep? periods of promiscuity? excessive spending?" no, i've never been manic... "felt hopeless? desperate?" no, and no suicide attempts either. and these symptoms are all clouded by 10 years of thyroid issues and learning disabilities related to my cancer treatment. it's empowering to be so familiar with your own health/body/mind but on the other hand frustrating. do we have to do this? can't you just fill my prescription/test this blood level/give me this x-ray and let me go home? please?

thursday 13: week 7, a day late

13 things i to be irritated about

1) having to have high risk (and very expensive) medical insurance because i had cancer

2) this rainy weather - blerg

3) facebook users who have no grammar skills

4) my own tone deafness and general lack of musical ability

5) the nasty woman who shares our kitchen and snoops and complains and is generally disagreeable about everything

6) the terrible school jen's son goes to just because they live in a cool neighborhood

7) having to give up coffee because it was making me feel wonky in the mornings

8) not being able to find the perfect sized paper cups for dad's truffles

9) have i mentioned the rain? and how much i want to take the top off the jeep?

10) family fueds

11) the horrible host on "family fued"

12) feral cats... feral children

13) things that require batteries, and the constant lack of the right size replacements

mmm, hair.

this latest hiccup in my thyroid levels left my hair (and skin) dry and dull and ugh. since my meds have been corrected the shine is coming back and i'm losing a lot less down the drain. ben gave me a little trim today and i've decided to go the no-poo route again (click my link or google it, there are endless sites). have i talked about this here before? the short of it is that instead of shampoo and conditioner you wash with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. the last time i did this for several months i had the most beautiful hair i'd had since childhood. it really works. and it's cheap as hell.

as a child i had long hair up until 6th grade when i had a bob. then it was long again until i was diagnosed with cancer as a junior in high school. i knew my hair would fall out and chopped it short and then very short and then buzzed it. i rocked it very short for the entirety of my treatment (but had fun with it) and for a while afterwards. i grew it out again for my wedding during sophmore year of college. when parker was born it was looooong but when i got pregnant with lorenzo i cut it shorter and shorter. in a disaster with bangs i wound up shaving my head again shortly after renzo's birth. i half-jokingly attribute this brazen move to the ultimate demise of my marriage. (i will not lose another man this way!)

and the point of this post? i don't remember. i'm in a prather ranch tri-tip coma.

(and, as a side note...how cute was lorenzo at that age? and wasn't i rockin' short hair?)

sometimes i wonder if bk believes/feels what he says. 'the kids are my number one priority." and said with what sounds like sincerity but how on earth does that match up with once a week visits of a few hours? i believe people are capable of change because against all odds i've changed myself but i'm afraid it'll be too late if he ever realizes what the hell he's done. the kids don't care anymore. they don't notice that it has been a week since they've seen him and when i tell them that plans have changes it no longer shatters them or phases them at all. he's been replaced by someone stable and loving and willing to be there every day. when parker asks d to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day will it then sink in?

i graduated high school with a girl that abandoned her two little girls to her ex. she's slumming around the area and can be found posing semi-nude around the internet. her facebook updates revolve mainly around what club she'll be at, how close she is to a spread in playboy, and pictures of herself in various stages of undress. i'm afraid if i ever see her out and about i'll slap her across the face. twice - once for each of her beautiful little girls that she whores out once a year in her photo album to make herself look decent. how do people DO this? how can you walk away without a second thought?