Moving. To another house. One that does NOT have two garages and a basement that will take kindly to being crammed to capacity with mountains of crap.

I need to get cracking, by cracky.

My mom did some major basement-cleaning in my absence, and I now need to do things like Craigslist my weight bench (I do not lift weights) and the treadmill (the treadmill only works sporadically) and the huge metal desk (AGH) and everything else I think that someone might want (haul out of the basement).

I also need to start packing up books. I have six bookshelves full of books in the TranceCave, and although both my mom and stepdad think I am clinically insane for bringing them all, YOU DON’T GET RID OF BOOKS. Books are non-negotiable, at least in my book.

Then we have the war of the cats. He has two and we have three, and neither of us are willing to budge regarding our respective numbers, but neither of us want five cats in the big house.

Five cats are a lot. Five cats are definitely grounds for mockery.

Part of me really wants to just secede from the family and go on and get my own little apartment somewhere and leave them to this madness.

Then I remember I have the kid, who needs driving and all that stuff.

Damn.

In other news, the J-Man informed me yesterday that it is TIME for me to start dating again.

He was very no-nonsense about the whole thing and informed me that if I didn’t pick someone, he would.

This terrifies me.

I have been asked out, but I’ve just been sort of… meh about the whole thing.

It’s just so… difficult.

I don’t know if I’m just in a five-mile radius that boasts men who are utterly devoid of personality or whether I somehow bring that out in folks, but I’ve definitely met a lot of The Boring and The Jerky during the times in which I’ve been out and about.

It’s disheartening.

Plus there’s the whole I-fall-down-a-lot-and-don’t-drive thing. I’m never quite sure how to broach that little discussion.

I don’t know.

I am interested to see who my kid would pick for me.

Probably an avid video gamer who really likes ice cream and drives a really cool car.

That wouldn’t be entirely bad. Maybe I should give him free rein.

Happy Wednesday.

You would not even believe what I am required to pack for said trip. Apparently they spend the entire time (only one day and one night and the next morning) outside except for when they’re sleeping, so the list of clothing options is extensive.

It’s something like five pairs of pants! Six sweatshirts! Three pairs of shoes in case the first two get too muddy! It’s totally ridiculous. I’m thinking of sending him in one waterproof snowsuit and boots and having done with it.

There is absolutely no technology allowed on this trip, something that has absolutely horrified the J-Man beyond the limits of reason. No DS? No iPod? But WHAT WILL I DOOOOOO?

Apparently they are going to be doing a lot of team-building exercises and things like climbing a rock wall (which I’m sure my heights-fearing child will LOVE).

I’m pretty excited for him. He is nervous about the large contingent of Lil’ Assholes that will be present, and I kind of don’t blame him.

Some of the kids in the J-Man’s class take snobby bitchery to a whole ‘nother level.

Here’s hoping he can give as good as he gets.

After all, he was taught by the best.

In other news, I am a hot mess post-Green Bay. My body is detoxing and I have a zit the size of a dime on my chin, red eyes, and of course the five-pound weight gain. Yesterday I had three freaking seizures (apparently I need to drink every day to stave them off) and I have been sleeping at least twelve hours a night since my return.

I love these trips, but they kick my ass pretty thoroughly.

I am eating like a saint and drinking gallons of water in hopes that I will return to some sort of a normal state soon, but I guess this is my penance for partying it up for four days.

I have confirmed with my mother that I am indeed quitting smoking on Monday, in hopes that she would get on board.

No dice. My mother doesn’t smoke a lot, but she is sort of a die-hard.

This will make things a little more difficult in the willpower department, but I guess it’s probably good to be tested.

I do know that I’m ready. It’s time.

It’s still scary as hell, though.

Tomorrow is the school’s VIP Day, in which I will attend school with the J-Man and probably get into all sorts of trouble for talking in class and making faces at the teacher.

Happy Tuesday.

I had a great time, seriously, and due to my copious drinking I did not have A Single Seizure, which rocked. I did, however, eat my weight in cheese and other Green Bay delights, so when I stepped on the scale this morning I found that five pounds came back with me. Five whole pounds.

It was worth it.

I got to see a lot of the old friends that I see every year that I love dearly, a lot of old friends that I haven’t seen in years and missed dearly, and I met a lot of new friends that I found to be really freaking cool, so it all worked out like a charm.

I always worry that my underlying social awkwardness is going to creep in and that I’m going to be the one who winds up hiding behind the potted plants, but all was well and I think I did OK. I sang karaoke with only moderately shaky hands and even danced. I fell, as is par for the course, but I danced.

(I actually fell while trying to smack someone in the ass, so in retrospect, the fall was probably a deserved fall.)

Today I am feeling that sort of mopey post-Green Bay depression in which, Hey! There is no group of forty loving, hugging people around me! And lo, I am Alone! The Sadness! It overwhelms me! And so I am doing my seventy-five loads of laundry and drinking lots of black coffee and feeling sort of verklemmt, but it’s all good, because I had four days of love and fun, and damn it, it was special.

The cat was so happy to see me arrive home that she actually shook.

The child leaped up from his video game, gave me an enormous hug, chastised me for going away, and promptly parked himself back in front of the video game console.

It’s nice to be missed.

In my absence, the stove man came back and informed my mother that our stove is an evil machine that emits far too much carbon monoxide and must be destroyed, so this week I must purchase a stove.

This seems to be a huge waste, since we are moving and will have to leave the damned thing here, so I am going to buy a cheap-ass reconditioned one.

In other news, I have to quit smoking before the move and I am thinking of doing it sooner rather than later. I smoked a LOT this weekend, and I am sounding about as gruff as Barry White on cigars and feeling about as icky as someone who has ingested bleach.

I think next week I’m going to get a packet of nicotine patches and just do the damn thing.

Sigh.

I will miss you, peppermint-patty ultra-light menthols. We have had a lot of good times, and I will miss you a lot, but it’s time for me to get to steppin’.

Double sigh.

Happy Monday.

I have a meeting at the J-Man’s school tonight with all the yuppie parents to discuss outdoor education, which is basically a short camping trip the kids are taking in a couple of weeks.

After that I will probably stay up all night re-packing my suitcase a hundred times and pulling my hair out, and willing this zit to go away.

I always get a zit before Green Bay.

I leave tomorrow morning and will be driving to GB with three of my compadres.

In other news, my sister’s boyfriend got a fat tax return, so they will almost definitely have an apartment by the end of the week. *fingers crossed*

I remain hopeful.

Happy Wednesday, Happy Thursday, and Happy Whole Damned Weekend. See you on the flip side.

I should have known something was amiss when he said “check”, because everything in my house is a hundred years old or more.

First he checked the hot-water heater, which I was fairly confident about, since I purchased it only a couple of years ago.

Wrong. Apparently the people who installed it installed the pipes against code. Red Tag! And with that, I had no hot water.

Next was the dryer, which was relatively new, too. Thankfully that was fine.

The furnace was fine and the thermostat was fine, and then Dude turned on the oven.

His little machine started to beep loudly, and I knew that couldn’t be good.

It wasn’t. I guess our oven was giving out 450 ppm of carbon monoxide, and Dude stared at me and spoke in a Very Serious Tone when he red-tagged it and told me that it could have killed us all dead.

Shit.

Therefore my mother and I are making frantic calls to appliance repair shops, trying to get people to come out NOW, TODAY to fix our shit up because my mother is on the warpath.

My mother dislikes broken things more than most.

I can live without a stove for a couple of days. maybe even hot water. I’m malleable that way.

My mother is as malleable as a steel beam.

So that’s my day. How are you?

I’ve also still been having the odd seizure, and THAT is something that is a definite no-no. Public seizures are fucking embarrassing.

I’m hoping that I can keep things under control. I will be drinking, which for some reason tends to drastically cut down on the seizures (maybe because alcohol is a depressant?), but then that might cause more puking. I’m not going to drink a lot, but still. I actually bought some beer to sort of try out this weekend to determine whether or not I can drink safely, so tonight will be my test run.

Wish me luck, because I really do hope to be able to have a couple of beers with friends, as trivial as it may seem.

I drink maybe once a month or so, and God do I enjoy it. Maybe too much.

Anyway, this trip is looking like a lot of fun. There will be dancing, laser tag (!), a sleigh ride, karaoke, several lunches and dinners, a Very Bad Bar, sledding, and lots and lots of hanging out and swapping stories and such. I’m really looking forward to it. There will be a lot of new people this year, too, which is exciting.

I’m sort of a social tool in a lot of situations, but I must say that I am entirely, take-off-your-shoes-and-kick-back comfortable in Green Bay. It’s just a great group of people.

Hopefully I will be healthy enough to fully enjoy and embrace it. I know I’ll be completely fucking exhausted and worthless at the end of the weekend, but it will be worth it.

In other news, the J-Man’s school is having a VIP Day, and he has picked me as his VIP to take to school and go through the day with him. There will be chapel and a band concert and a luncheon and the kids will have crafty activities with the adults, and I feel very honored to have been picked, because after all I am just The Mom.

It should be fun, and I’m interested to see how he interacts with the kids in his class.

Good times.

This could be just some sort of an attempt at leverage because he is trying to talk me into allowing him to pierce his ear, but then maybe he just loves me.

Plus there’s no way in hell he’s piercing his ear at eleven.

None.

Happy Saturday.

I don’t know what the hell is going on with this child, really. I am worried, and of course the damned pediatrician can’t see him until the tenth of March.

He looks peaked.

Still no fever, still good spirits, still no lack of appetite.

I am stumped. I am disinclined to take him to the ER because other than the puking he is fine, I’m keeping him hydrated, and he seems to be in good spirits. I’m not sure what the ER would even DO.

I don’t freaking know. This is one of those times in which I really wish I’d read the manual.

You know, that manual they hand you at the hospital when they give you your little bundle of joy?

Right.

He’s in my mom’s bed right now, laughing his ass off at Spongebob or some shit. He really doesn’t look SICK, maybe a little pale, which is odd for him, but not SICK.

I am kerflummoxed.

And that is all I have to say about that.

In other news, I am obsessed with the show Say Yes To The Dress.

Stupid, I know. Stupid, and very unlike me.

The premise of the show is that all these starry-eyed brides go to a wedding salon (Kleinfeld’s, in New York City) and search for the wedding dress of their dreams. It’s sappy. It’s totally mushy. Watching these brides cry over dresses with their mothers is pure schmaltz.

I can’t get enough of it.

Although I HIGHLY doubt I will EVER take a trip down the aisle, I have a confession to make:

I fucking LOVE wedding dresses.

I love them. I absolutely adore them. I even have my virtual wedding dress all picked out. A-line or ballgown, nothing too cupcake, no lace, no ruffles, not a lot of beading, maybe a little chiffon or tulle overlay, possibly some corseting, strapless or spaghetti strap.

I am such a sap.

I am also in love with the gay fashion director of the salon, one Randy Fenoli, who fulfills the fantasy of my perfect gay boyfriend. I want to run away with him on a random cross-country trip in which we would hit every bridal salon on Route 66 and try on wedding dresses and drink pomegranate martinis.

There you have it, I am a super lame lame-o of the lamest proportions.

I don’t want a wedding, really. I just want the dress and the party. So if someone would like to marry me on these terms, I would be more than willing to go for it.

Any takers?

Happy Friday.

Sometimes I can’t even believe the conversations we have in this house.

“Aw, look at mommy in the skinny jeans. You look all EMO.”
“What the hell is ‘emo’ anyway. This has never been explained to my satisfaction.”
“It means ‘emotional’. You know, like ‘emo kids’.”
“Isn’t everyone emotional? Aren’t your stupid girlfriend-punching rappers even emotional?”
“I don’t like Chris Brown!!”
“Anyway. Emo. It’s a dumb word.”
“Well, you have an emo haircut and now you have emo jeans. And you listen to emo music. So there.”
“I listen to emo music?”
“Yeah.”
“So what are you?”
“I think I’m kind of emo, too?”
“So what is Gramma?”
“Gramma’s just… old.”
“Oh, I see. Gramma’s old school.”
“No! Just… old.”

Happy Thursday from your emo blogger.

Let me first tell you how this came about.

I am a clearance shopper. The clearance racks are the first place I hit and generally where I stay. And while I have to dig and dig and dig, sometimes I find a gem. Whether that gem is exactly my size is another matter.

I sometimes buy stuff that is too small. I don’t wear it! I just throw it in the back of the closet for motivation. Forty pounds ago, this stuff was just a dream. However, the thought occurred to me recently that some of this non-fitting stuff might now actually fit.

It did. It ALL fit. The Calvin Kleins I got for a song, the skinny jeans from Gap that I sort of laughed at when I bought them (my mother laughed harder), the shirts that were not an extra-extra large, they all fit!

So all I have been doing is trying on clothes, and reveling in the trying on.

Normally I would not be caught dead in a dressing room and am loathe to put denim on my thighs, but I’m finding it sort of liberating.

My body is still squishy and imperfect and well, fat. I’m not a slim girl. BUT, neither am I two hundred pounds.

Neither am I two hundred pounds.

I’m happy about that today.

In other news, the J-Man came home from school yesterday, having puked in first period. This is probably the fourth time in two months that he has come home puking during school. Once he gets home, he appears to be fine. No fever. No loss of appetite. No lethargy.

I don’t get it. I don’t know whether it’s some sort of nervous stomach or whether something more sinister is at play here. I made a doctor’s appointment for him, but I’m also worried about putting him through a battery of tests he might not need.

He’s been having some problems at school with teasing, but other than that he does very well in school, and I don’t really see him as the nervous kind. I asked him about it, and he said he isn’t nervous at all.

This is troubling, but I’m hoping that the doctor will be able to shed some light upon it with a minimum of poking and prodding.

God forbid he has gastroparesis like his mother.

God forbid I should even think it.

In still other news, Weetacon (Green Bay) is fast approaching, and I am very excited. I am already half-packed and am bringing far too many shoes.

I need these crazy little getaways. They’re good soul food.

Happy Tuesday.

Myself.

At home.

As much as I wax rhapsodic about poop and am happy when I do actually poop, the idea of this frightened me beyond the limits of comprehension.

I was given a kit that included a few paper sheets, wooden sticks, and some very vague instructions.

The idea was to float the sheets in the toilet, poop on the sheets, and retrieve a sample of said poop BEFORE it hit the bowl water.

This is not as easy as it sounds.

This is not easy at all.

You also have the option of crapping into a container and then proceeding from there, but I really didn’t feel like busting out the good Tupperware.

Anyway, I somehow managed to perform this feat three times and get my poop onto three slides.

I made sure to inform the J-Man that this poop-testing was going on, because I knew that he would be horrified.

“Guess what?”
“What?”
“There’s an envelope in the bathroom with my poop in it.”
“WHAT?”
“There’s-”
“I HEARD YOU. WHAT? WHY??”
“I am testing my poop for the doctor, isn’t that gross??”
“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT THIS, AND GET IT OUT OF THE BATHROOM.”
“Wimp. Heheheheh.”
“You are so gross.”
“One day you may be called upon to do this, and you’ll remember.”
“NO I WON’T.”
“You might.”
“NEVER.”
“You might.”
“GRANDMA. TELL MOMMY TO STOP BEING GROSS.”
“I could go to school with you, do a show-and-tell all about poop-testing.”
“MOMMY.”

I can’t help it. He’s so fun to torture.

My mother then had the charming task of dropping my poop off at the doctor’s office. I was informed today that my poop is blood-free.

So, no colonoscopy.

YAY.

In other news, I have now lost forty pounds since December. Woot woot and all that stuff.

I’ve certainly lost it the hard way.

Happy Friday.