One Little Slip Does Not Equal A Fall

Ground chicken looks like cooked brains. And it's kind of hard to enjoy your dinner with the thought of brains on your mind. So I'm breaking down and I'm eating ice cream... Sure it's a light version of ice cream, but light doesn't knock off all that many calories when you're using a big bowl. But honestly, right now I'm thinking that I need a bit of a break from chicken brains, drowning myself with more water than I've ever drank in my entire life, and my nightly visits to the gym. Not that I'm giving it up altogether. No, I would never do that. But for tonight, tonight I just want to enjoy a big ass bowl of ice cream...

Two Times the Trouble

I live in a world where the cat chases the dogs, the dogs run for their lives and I duck for cover when quietly sitting on my couch somehow manages to put me directly in harms way. God love them, my pups are crazy. Sophia especially has gone from demure little dog to can barely hold still ever. Thinking about it now, it occurs to me I would have been more correct to have named her Lamborghini as I am convinced that she is just as fast. I just wish I wasn't always on the receiving end of her leaps and bounds, for my little bean packs quite the punch for being so petite.

Lucy on the other hand is for lack of any other word that could describe her any better, timid. Unfortunately for her, Tavi (the cat) has caught on to this flaw and now uses it to her advantage, often cornering Lu wherever she can manage to find her, when she's not hiding behind me or depending on Sophie to save the day. At three in the morning, having to somehow find my feet to get the dog who won't come back to bed for fear that the cat is hiding beneath it is a bit of an inconvenience. But it's either that or listen to her whine from the doorway where she quivers and frets, her nails tap dancing on the floor fraught with nerves.

Still I love them both. I just can't help it. For there's nothing else quite so nice as coming home at the end of the day and having someone happy to see you...

Almost...

I was going to and then it seems the yawns caught up with me..

Maybe tomorrow.

Frozen Toes

When your toes are numb and your body feels like a block of ice from the neck down, it's a sure sign that something is wrong. And when you're in your own home feeling cold enough to worry that an icicle might form on the end of your nose, with more blankets than a summer sleep away camp wrapped around you shivering, there can be absolutely no doubt that the reason you're freezing is because the assholes downstairs are purposely withholding the heat.

And at this point, I'm beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. For if anyone were ever going to be intentionally leaving me without heat in the dead of winter when it's a whopping twenty degrees cold outside, it would be the gruesome twosome from downstairs.

So as usual, there's only one thing I can do... Pick up the phone and complain.

Bad Dreams

A sudden sick feeling that can't be explained except to say that something is wrong. Wrong from the moment I woke up this morning more startled than rested, afraid of a dream that had followed me home. All day I tried to shake it from my head, writing it down in my little black book to chase it away, only to find that the more I tried to outrun my thoughts, the more they seemed to want to catch up with me to be carried back home.

I'm almost scared to go back to sleep where the dream might dare come back again. For my dreams, the very worst of them never play themselves just once, but follow a path of repeating over and over again like a skip on a record stuck in a groove it cannot get out of.

And I am sick with that same feeling I woke up with. Dark thoughts that gather like the snow laden clouds of winter, reaching out to cover my landscape with a cold, killing frost.

Miracle on 233

Driving home from work, I saw a man walking down the side of the road with a pair of crutches... Except he wasn't actually using the crutches just carrying them and I thought to myself, "Miracle!"

I am far too easily amused by the most ridiculous things.

Sick on A Saturday

My sojourn back into society ever so brief as it was seems to be back on hold. I feel like I've been taken down in my prime, waking with a sore throat that has stayed with me throughout the day, shuffling around the house trying to both entertain myself and conserve my strength to prevent getting any sicker than I already am.

But where this has come from I haven't a clue. I fretted for a moment that maybe it was my peanut butter that had done me in, even going so far as to peer deeply into the jar wondering if its creamy goodness had been tainted by Salmonella.. And although it did look rather odd, though there's never really been a time when I've studied it quite so intently, I've decided to drop the alarm and consider this the common cold.

But what is it exactly that makes it common when your throat feels like its gotten a recent rubdown with a block of sandpaper and the inability to stay conscious for more than an hour or two at a time makes you think you've contracted a rare strain of narcolepsy?

Like the answer to how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie-pop, the world may never know...

Memories of a Summer Day

She holds her pose like a tree stands still in a forest. Captured in the moment, a click of the flash, laughing. Holding the paddle in her hands, a look of shocked amazement on her face, her hair dripping wet with a lakes worth of water.

"Good day for a swim," she says, pointing out the wetness of her clothes. "The water is warm."

She reaches back and tugs the bright blue kayak beside her, heavy now with its insides filled up with sloshing water. "Perhaps a little less confidence and a little more caution is called for," she confesses.

She banks the kayak on the sandbar, her feet happy to have reached dry land and sighs.

"Somewhere out there," she says pointing towards the middle of the lake, "one lucky fish is sporting a killer set of shades."

Reclamation

Behind tall buildings where even shadows don't dare to linger long, the barren silence of leaves scattering down deserted roads whisper.
Streetlights burning cold and distant, keeping their silent watch.
She counts her steps, retracing her route, learning silence as she goes.

It is this she knows. The better left to be unsaid.
The better left to be forgotten. And so it is left unspoken
for more years than she's been counting.

She counts her steps.
One foot in front of the other taking it back.
She opens her mouth to find the words and begins to speak.

Retracing her lines.
Finding a way back from what was lost to
what waits to be reclaimed.

A Matter of My Opinion

Stephenie Myers is overrated.

And though I'm sure this is not a particularly popular opinion to have, at least not with females in the twelve to eighteen age group, I can't help but feel a little shortchanged with her Twilight series as a whole.

To me it was almost like reading a well thought out instruction manual. Tab A fits into Tab B which slides into Tab C resulting in the finished piece D.

Or in layman's terms, completely and utterly, and exponentially predictable.

Now I know I really don't have any business critiquing a published author but I couldn't help my wanting of more. More background, more character depth, more something that would make something seem different from one story to the next. But it was not to be. The author, having found the magic of what worked in the first go round, kept up the same laid out routine in book two, three and finally book four.

And I know the whole if it's not broken, don't fix it rules apply to writing just as much as it does to anything else, but honestly by the fourth book I was so ready for something to surprise and shock me, that when it was over, I was just relieved to know that I was done.

Mostly I felt a sharp keening of disappointment for what I wanted out of these books when compared to what I actually got. And I kept thinking to myself, that the story - and yes, it really was a good one, would have been so much better had she strayed every now and then outside her own self imposed boundaries and freed herself to write without worrying so much to sticking to her premeditated outline.

Still she did what I haven't been able to do for thirteen years... She got my daughter reading.

It's hard to get any work done with two incredibly cute puppies begging for your attention.

I'm writing. I'm writing. I'm writing!

Still Struggling

How easy it is to slip back into old habits. Old ways of dealing with new problems flair back to life as if they'd never been cast aside. And it's so much for thinking that I'd somehow managed to escape myself completely while struggling for middle ground.

And middle ground to me is an equilibrium that can be easily disturbed by the slightest of shifts. A choice between right, wrong and the dreaded in-between. I learn nothing but how to fall right back down into that rabbit hole.

Crash. Burn. Pick myself back up to dust myself off to do it all again. You'd think I'd be a much smarter woman by now...

And yet.

And yet I'm the same old mistake. The same old narrow eyed view. The same have to have it all right now rather than sit back, relax and let something good come to me. And maybe that's why it never works out the way I think it should. Wish it would. Know it won't. Because it can't... Not when I only choose what I know will end.

A Matter of Public Opinion

Dear NWTLO,

It's been a while since you and I have had a good heart to heart, but I can no longer deny that there are things that need to be said. Things like facebook is taking over my life, leaving me little time to do anything else but keep tabs on what all my friends and my not really my friends but they're my friends on facebook are doing. I think it may have something to do with the comments. As in I get them. I don't want to make you feel bad or anything, but the comments around here are almost non-existent. No one even says hi and I've got to tell you, that's more than just a little bit depressing...

But I won't hold it against you since it's mostly my fault. I used to get loads of comments and then, well I did kind of sort of let you down by taking a hiatus long enough to lose almost all my back then regular readers. Or at least the readers who would also take it upon themselves to speak up every now and then. So yeah, that's completely my fault and credit must be given where credit is due.

In other news, life goes on as normal... To work, to gym, to bed and then back to work again. I keep thinking that at some point there should be a little fun in-between all the routine, but fun seems to keep it's hand up in a give me a little space wave that keeps me at a distance. I try to get over this, but there are moments when I'm sitting at home waiting around for what turns out to be nothing when I feel like I'm at the edge of losing my mind from needing to just get out and have some fun.

So maybe I'll make plans NWTLO and then maybe I'll have something to write about besides doing my laundry and how damn cute my dogs are.

For now though I've got to get myself to bed... At some point this week, I'm going to hit the gym before going to work and since there's only two days left before the weekend, I'm running out of time to make this happen.

Let's make it sooner rather than later, shall we?

Yours...
Stacey

If I Only Had More Time

One of these days I'm going to find enough hours in the day to write about the floppy penis boy at the gym. Or maybe even about the little old man who nearly accosted me at Panera's. Because you and I both know that floppy penises make for good story fodder and my magnet pull on the geriatric would almost be comical if they weren't the only men who hit on me...

If I weren't on my way to bed, it would be on. So on...

Floor Possible

Angry?

Miffed?

Ticked?

Turned inside out over little stuff gone big?

Try ripping out a floor. No seriously, it works!

I started with my hands. One little spot in a cheap old linoleum already gone bad floor and I was in business just pulling away a days worth of frustrations. And when the pulling had pulled all that it could, it was to the trusty tool box to find some useful tools.

I felt like a doctor...

Hammer.

Pliers.

Screwdriver.

Band-aids. (For those tender moments.)

And I huffed. And I puffed. And I pulled that nasty old floor right from where it was until it was no more.

Now that it's done, I have just one thing to say..

What do I do now?

Filling In the Gray

Another glass of wine. This one goes down far easier than the first. The second even quicker. She's feeling all her years tonight wrapped up alone in her blanket, the suspension of her silence hanging heavy on the air.

Waiting, watching the clock and wondering if maybe there was some shift she forgot to notice. Some catalyst that toppled her over when she was distracted for a moment by something else.

She feels off tonight as if there's something not quite right, something not quite wrong. She closes her eyes, committing herself to focus on just breathing. A steady catch and release, in and out with no thought required.

No thought. That's important for her tonight. She doesn't want to think anymore than absolutely necessary. She doesn't want to interpret any of these actions as anything that might resemble a beginning of an ending, or an ending to something that never really was.

She doesn't even know if she knows what she's been doing. Whether it's wrong, or right, or something inevitable, something she could not have resisted had she tried.

If I were a man stranded in the desert, she reasons to herself, no one would blame me for taking a sip when handed a glass of water.

She doesn't think that this is just an easy excuse for bad behavior. Black and white has a gray she says with some authority. You don't really know what you know until you know it. And even then, you know you knew it all along.

She smiles. Laughs at herself in the darkness, trying to ignore her own questions. Trying to ignore just how much she could use a comforting hug to chase away the cold that lingers on her skin like a dull and settled fog. But there are no hugs tonight, and she's trying not to dwell on the question that would ask why.

My New Laptop

Waiting, my hands lovingly stroking the keyboard of my intended. I read the description again. RAM, GB, processor, all that computer lingo that could really jazz a girl up if she understood the half of it, rather than the bright shiny light attraction that is the real reason she's about to put her money where her mouth is.

I wait for the beardless sales boy to figure out I'm waiting on him. "Here to buy!" I want to yell out across the store. "Service please!" I'm impatient. No surprise there really. If I were a super hero, I'd be Instant Gratification Girl without the cape. My motto, "Now is not soon enough."

He swaggers over, his geek squad badge riding high on his chest, his pocket protector high on the other side. He is not John Wayne. "Is there anything I can do for you little lady?" he drawls.

I answer gleefully, "I'll take this one."

He gets a look on his face that says he knows that I know that he knows that the only thing I really know about this computer is that the keyboard lights up and that's why I'm buying it. I decide to let him think this even though I know that he knows that I know that he's still a virgin. This as it turns out is besides the point.

And then he does it. Asks the one question that no one should ever ask a woman such as myself . Not if they know better. Not if they know me better.

"So what will you be using this for?" he asks.

I try to keep my mouth shut. I really do. But I'm stuck with the first answer that pops itself inside my head and there is no resisting.

"Porn," I say and smile.

Pondering

Why do people decorate their bathrooms with seashells?

Is it because the flush of their toilet bowl reminds them of the roar of the ocean?

Consider the floor open for discussion...

Because You Can...

There should I suppose be some sort of conversation between us to make up for all my silence. Sound reasoning in fact should be laid out on the table of examination in explanation of my whereabouts for the past few months. Because I, the woman who once had more than enough time to blog all the things I wanted to talk about, has now become the woman who wishes she had more time to say all the things she'd really like to say. And today, with as much of a lark as it has started out to be, what with waking up to three puppies intent on playing in my bed, have decided that there really must be enough time to steal a few precious moments for the sharing of words.

As some of you may already know, or at least be marginally aware of, I decided well over six months ago to take back what had then been my life going in a downhill direction. For years I had willed myself to become complacent regarding my own personal health and well being. I had in fact given up, tossed in the towel, and made a passable peace with myself that as good as life could get, I just didn't have enough fight in me to make a true and honest effort. I made deals with myself that as long as my daughter could live the life I wanted to live, what happened to me really didn't matter.

And then I realized last January just how wrong I was...

"Love is watching someone die." - Death Cab For Cutie

Without detailing the complexity of my relationship with my stepmother, there is no doubt that the days leading up to her death and the afternoon she died had a profound affect on me. The reality of loss was overwhelming... The reality of life however was not.

Before Becky died, I made her a promise. A promise to care as best as I could for our family. To be there when I was needed and to take a back seat when I was not. Fulfilling this promise has been a gift of grace. I am closer to my Dad now than I have ever really been in my entire life, and my relationship with both of my younger sisters has bloomed into a garden all its own. And I am only now realizing that the promise I made to Becky was in fact a promise she made to me...

My eyes are watering as I sit here curled up in my chair typing away, though a small smile plays on my face. I think of all I've accomplished this year. The dedication and strength of spirit it has taken to get so far in such a short time with the encouragement of my entire family and their actual participation in the changes we have been making.

For Dad, Jodi and I, our commitment has been made to becoming healthy. Trekking to the gym everyday (though I've got to admit, we've been a bit lax this week) we have been pushing ourselves to the very limits of our capabilities, inspiring each other to work out harder, to do more rather than less and to encourage rather than discourage.

And each one of us has made significant progress from where we started... For me personally I am over eighty pounds lighter than where I began, and still challenging myself to lose more. Where once I couldn't walk a mile without thinking I would die from the attempt, I can now run a mile and half without stopping. And though I still think I am quite crazy for even thinking I'll be ready to do this by summer, Jodi and I have begun training to run a 5K road race in July.

The honest to God truth is that there is nothing impossible to achieve when you believe you can do it. You don't need a genie, a wishing star or a magic bullet to make changes in your life. You just need faith to begin, dedication to see it through, and hope to carry you forward into the blessing and opportunity of each new day.

I thank God for the family he has given me, for the people who have touched my life, and for the second chance that I have been given to learn the true lesson of life.

Live! Without fear. Without regrets! With everything you have! With everything you'd like to be! With all the goodness you have inside you to share! With absolute joy even in the darkest of days for even the darkness has its own blessings to bestow.

Live! Because you're here. Because you can...

A Very Merry Christmas

Before I can say anything else - or come up with a valid excuse for not giving anyone anything to read for well over a month and a half, let me be first (or quite possibly last) to wish you, your families and the entire known world a very Merry Christmas.

And though my Christmas is somewhat put on hold until my daughter gets home from her father's this afternoon, the Christmas spirit is all around me, from Santa Claus sitting in his plastic sled on my father's table, presents adorned in brightly colored paper held together by invisible tape beneath our tree to the four dogs at my feet begging for attention.

Grander yet is the addition of the fourth dog to our family this year...

Meet Sophia, or as she will most likely be called Sophie, Lucy's new sister... Who is actually Isabella's half-sister who is Arabella's sister who is indeed Lucianna's true sister from the same litter. In other words, we've got ourselves a bunch of related, non-related dogs.

And though I'm quite sure I didn't need another dog, especially a puppy to train and teethe, I've got to admit, it was love at first sight. But honestly, how could you not love a face like that?

For now however, I am back to Christmas and my bagel which hot from the toaster requires my attention. So in the spirit of the season, enjoy...