Worries and more worries

Well. I'm feeling a good bit better, but not 100% yet. This seems to be one of those 24-hour type viruses or something... I'm glad today is my day off so that I can take it a little easy. Alice is at the vet's to have the lump investigated. Have I mentioned the lump yet? (scrolls to check) I guess not. On Friday Don found this big lump on her neck, just below the jaw on the left side. I don't know what it is-- cyst, tumor, something. We couldn't get an appt for Saturday so today she's having a comprehensive physical, all of her shots, and a lump-checking-out. They made me leave her there instead of staying with her, something I've never done before. I hope she's ok because in 5 years she's never been to the vet all by herself... she looked happy going in, though.

Don's phone-interview went really well and they're flying him to Virginia this weekend to interview in person. This is getting serious, they wouldn't spend $1100 transporting his butt over there if they weren't reasonably certain of offering him the job. They said on the phone that his ability to do the job is beyond dispute and the only thing they're worried about is relocating-- whether he'll be happy in such a small town after Dallas, the fact that he's (essentially) married, etc. Also, that he won't stick to the job for as long as they'd like but treat it as yet another stepping stone, which is a very valid concern on their part. Anyone looking at Don's resume could see the pattern of advancement every 2-3 years; they asked him to commit to at least three years if he gets the position, which makes me happy as well-- I don't want to get settled in Virginia only to hop up and leave again. Three years is better than two, and could easily lead to 4 or 5.

The hardest next step will be telling Mom and Dad that we may (probably!) be moving out of state again. This is going to be a little painful and I'm not looking foward to it, especially given the rate that things are happening. I've arranged to have dinner over there tonight, which is unusual. They probably think that we're preggers or something like that.

Things I'm worried about the most.

1. Telling my parents, their reaction, etc.
2. Breaking our lease, especially considering that it's cosigned by the above. Can't do anything that will mess with their credit scores, but there's no way I can pay the rent through February when we're paying in Virginia, too. As soon as I know for certain, I'll have to sit down with the leasing office folks and work something out.
3. Transferring at work. There are only 5 or so branches in C-ville, compared to dozens and dozens in the Metroplex area. To even get a job I might have to cut to part-time and get a second job which would suck. And I really want to stay with the bank-- I'll have been there 2 years in November and don't want to have any more 2-year stints on my resume. Just once I'd like to stay at one company long enough to reap the benefits, instead of starting over as a new employee somewhere.
4. The vacations for this autumn that we have already lined up. We're flying from Dallas to Boston in October-- are we going to have to fly or drive back here to get that flight? I can't change the tickets. In December we're going with my family to Big Bend State Park in west Texas-- is it going to be hard to work that around a new branch at the bank and Don's new job? To drive from Virginia back to Dallas and then from Dallas out West will be more exhausting than restful. But to fly will cost too much I think.
5. Not knowing anybody and becoming a total recluse that cries every day. You know, like the *last* time we left the state.

"Thank you, God, for letting me not barf in my car."

Arrrrgh. There seems to be a terrible stomach virus thingy going around work, both mine and Dons. I felt kind of okay when I got up-- terrible period pains but nothing else-- but by the time I got to work I was shaking, weak, and barfy. They sent me home, wisely. But this thing comes on fast and that drive home was the worst. I kept feeling ralphy and was going, "please God don't let me barf in my car..." when all of a sudden that Other Rumble starts and I change gears to "No wait, please don't let me crap my car, three more miles, please..."
Which I didn't. I've never been so happy to see my own commode, ever. If there is a god, she must be annoyed with me for only applying in times of trouble, but then all moms deal with that phenomenon, I guess. But after too much Advil, a long hot bath (for the cramps that did not have the grace to go away and let me deal with one thing at a time) and a long nap I feel almost human again, enough to brave the internet anyways. (I saw my face in the mirror at work and it was scary--my skin looked grey and my eyes looked yellow, like something out of Star Trek. Right now it's returned to normal colors.) Because Don was sick last night we went to bed really early, so I'm all sleeped out at the moment.

He's doing a phone-interview with the Virginia people today. I don't know if that's a precurser to an in-person interview or a substitute for it. I looked up some more things about Charlottesville online and discovered that there is NOT a Borders there. What... am I going to do with myself? Here Don was telling me that I should get another part-time job there to stem the moving-depression: "There are always people you like, in Borders bookstores. People like you. Weird people." is his theory. Not a false theory, really. (Sorry Ben and company!)

He's worried because when we moved to Vermont, I was plagued by a pretty bad depression the first 6 months or so. He keeps saying that he doesn't want to see that, again. But there were other factors in play, too, besides moving: my parents' house had just burned down a few weeks before I left, which was traumatic, two months later was September 11... hell I think the whole country got a little sad over that. I couldn't find work at first and didn't have a job at all the whole first semester, and was very isolated by not knowing anyone there but him. Not to mention that it was my first time away from home, and I missed my friends and family terribly. Things will be different this time. On the bright side, his dealing with me when I was in that state speaks volumes for his character: kind, supportive, strong. Not too many relationships are tested like that right off the bat; we'd only been dating maybe 8 months when he decided to come to Vermont with me. He left his job, packed his stuff and trekked across the country to a completely new place only to find his girfriend replaced by a new version: crying, blue, moody, raging. Poor guy.

Ack

It looks like Don is actually going to be interviewing in Virginia, or at least it's being discussed. This is way too "real" for me right now... I'm starting to feel totally freaked out. One of my co-workers said that I was very brave, to consider packing up and moving across the country, to somewhere I've never been and where I don't know a soul. I'm not brave, I'm terrified! But, what can I do. It's not like we want to spend forever here in Dallas (who would?) so... leave we must. Even though that means leaving all the family and friends that I have. Again. The bit about it that's bad is that Don is suggesting that even if we move it will only be for a couple of years, before doing it again. I don't like that idea; if we go somewhere else I wanted to put down a few roots and stay awhile. I wasn't raised an Army brat like him, moving every 2 years! I'm starting to realize that he is much more ambitious than I ever realized... he doesn't ever talk big but makes plans and slowly, steadily works his way towards them. All actions, not words: I'm more of a wordy person. Which probably explains why I have a blog and he doesn't! His ambition to go from being an Assistant Director (which he is now) to a Director at a small hotel (Virginia) to a larger hotel (the next move) to a corporate-level position doesn't fit that well with my idea of staying in one place for a while as we start our family, but it does dovetail with my (very expensive) dreams of a large family, a house to put them in, etc. He and I have pretty much always each paid our own way in the 6 years we've been together, but getting married and having kids would change that dynamic and it's interesting to find out, after all this time, that he is more the "provider" type (with his corporate ambitions etc) than I ever realized. And here I was thinking he was just a workaholic... he never framed it as a means to an end...

Heat. Quilts. Babies.

ARRRRgh. It got to be 107 degrees yesterday. 107! That's crazy. The bank lost its air conditioning and we were without air all afternoon. There are no words to describe how much this sucked so I won't bother trying... I didn't get any sleep last night, had to open at work this morning, and wandered around in a haze all day. The AC in the apartment is going, too: it has been getting steadily worse for days now, maybe a freon leak or something like that. Don knows what it is but I was too hot and irritated to listen.

Anyways, enough bitching about the usual Dallas culprit! Last week I had a great idea for a quilt, it just appeared in my mind from nowhere (idea-fairy being generous again), all blues, greens, turquoises...lots of batiks and tone-on-tone prints, nothing cutesy or calico. I bought fabric so that I can get this idea rolling while it's still fresh in my mind, I hate it when the visions fade and you're left with wads of materials and a pencil sketch. I just need to wash the stuff, and to obtain some kind of chair so that I can use my sewing machine on the table and not on the floor.

I went to a baby shower on Sunday and there were actually babies in attendance, including this one baby boy who wasn't even six weeks old yet. Is there anything more wonderful than teeny tiny perfect little babies? I got to hold him for a long time while his mom ate, which was awesome, (in the original sense). Like a drug... how could anything be wrong when there are perfect little babies in existence? I had this great idea that there should be places you can go and hold babies any time for a little while to get that teeny-tiny-baby-fix, sort of like Meth clinics for heroin addicts. Don didn't think it was such a hot idea. He actually compared me to the Fat Bastard guy... all "Get in my BELLY!!" which I didn't really appreciate. But I guess he didn't appreciate me coming home from the shower all "forget our plan, I want a baby RIGHT NOW! This INSTANT! BABYBabybabybabybaby!"

Stupid, stupid, stupid

Hmmm. No news on moving-to-Virginia yet. It's all very conjectural at this point. I had an utterly stupid day at work. Got called in 45 minutes early which isn't much except that I was supposed to be there at 7:45a.m. and they needed me at 7:00 instead so they called around 5. In the morning. And due to understandable miscommunications--because it was blippin' 5 in the morning-- I got called like 3 different times, the last time during that precious last-15-minutes-before-the-alarm sleep. Then I did a million transactions really fast, because one of the people working with me is like a turtle to whom everything is new even though she's been with us for 3 months now-- if I hear "Well, I never saw that before/ nobody told me that before/I've only done this 98 times so I don't remember it yet/etc" I'm going to scream, YOU'RE NOT IN TRAINING ANYMORE! FIGURE IT OUT! and scare her to death. And because I was going too fast for me, I was almost "over" $360.05-- that's having more money than you're supposed to, which is basically as bad as being short. Then we finally find the problem, just before 5:00 and it was because I made the STUPIDEST MISTAKE EVER that not even someone in training would do, which was taking 82 20-dollar bills and wrapping a strap around them, which labels it "$2,000". The funny thing is that a lot of people--even my boss--were trying to help me and none of them noticed it, either.

I think this co-worker frustrates me because our attitudes are just totally different. She basically has to be told everything and has to do it 100 times before she's comfortable with it. I'm more 'I-can-figure-this-out-on-my-own'; I'm at least willing to try before asking for help. Like doing tax payments: it's not something we do very often but it's not hard either. The first time I saw one I just worked through it.... hmm, it's a payment of some kind, go to the payment screen, it must be this one 'cuz it's not any of those others... this must be the account number, and so on. I live by the philosophy that it's better to fix a few mistakes later than to constantly require babysitting, plus we have the easiest software, it's basically multiple-choice. But...she's like 38 and is not going to suddenly adopt an adventurous attitude towards work at this stage. She'd be perfect in a factory, actually, very good at doing the same few things over and over but completely unable to deal with something new or different.

So I ended up going to work at 7 and being there till 5, which is kinda draining. But I bought stuff to make chicken nachos for dinner, which sounds good to me...I'm going to try and sort of fajita-up some of that pre-cooked rotisserie chicken you can get in the deli section and use that instead of actually cooking chicken which sounded exhausting at this point. If it doesn't work there's lots of chicken and we can just eat it as is.

As Minerva McGonagall, your strict facade is complimented by a warm heart, and you always do what is for the greater good.


http://www.theharrypotterquiz.com

Siriusly, if we have to move there would be worse places to go than this....

Charlottesville?

There's a medium chance that Don and I will be moving to Charlottesville, Virginia at some point in the future. He's applying today for a transfer/promotion to the hotel there. I always bitch and moan about Dallas and how much we want to leave, but then I get terrified at the idea of starting all over again somewhere new! That's human nature for you...

Our major shared goal for the year was for him to be promoted to somewhere better than here... Texas was always meant to be a pit-stop on our life's trek, not a destination. VA sounds wonderful on paper: green and leafy, college town, historical stuff, small-town-ish, good climate. There are mountains, rivers, Democrats... everything that makes life more liveable. There are several branches of my bank there, too, so transferring shouldn't be too difficult. My parents won't be thrilled about it, of course. They love having us 5 minutes away and over for dinner every week, but we can't stay here forever just for that, can we? Don has no intention of being an assistant-director forever, he's ready to move into a director position, something that will challege him a bit.

Of course what's really scary, paradoxically, is the idea that the next move is a semi-permanent one; our destination for the time being where we will put down deeper roots, maybe buy a house, start our family. Here in Texas we've been in a holding pattern; it's always "no we can't look at houses because who knows where we'll be in 2 years and I hope it's not still here!" "Etc!" So there was always this underlying panic that maybe we'd never move on; that we would stay here indefinitely, accidentally, forever waiting for something better and forgeting to forge a life here in the meanwhile. Now I might trade that "what-if-were-here-forever" panic for a new one. Life is pretty easy, in a way, when you're not planning on staying somewhere-- live in an apartment, spend your money, put the "real life" on hold, whatever "real life" means to you. (Which I always try not to do but somehow do anyways: see my blog header?) But if we make a Big Move, it would signify that it's time to get on with life as we mean to live it, which would entail some fundamental changes, which is always intimidating.

quickie

Don's back in town! Yay. Much happiness in that quarter. We went to On the Border last night for dinner which just completely sucked. We were sat next a table that had 10 adults and, no kidding, 10 kids under age 8 or so. They had it arranged so that the parents all sat at one end of the table and the rugrats had the other to themselves. It was like Chucky fucking Cheese and I wanted to dump margaritas all over the "adults" when the little brats started running all over the restaraunt screaming. Plus our service was pretty terrible. If thoughts could kill there would have been a massacre there last night. But, the food was good.

Much too busy to write now more. :)

Chuggin' Along

on my own. I miss Don so much I've been listening to country music, and I don't like country. He should be calling pretty soon, funny how it's even worse after hanging up the phone. (I mean, clicking "end". It's not the same thing, really, is it.)

When I was cleaning the bathroom yesterday I realized that our sink was draining really slowly. So I went online and researched clogged sink-drains and how to fix them: went to Home Depot: took apart the drain stopper, unclogged and reassembled it. It made me feel very capable, and also feel that the cat should not sleep in the sink anymore.

The End of the Great Mystery

So at long last Chuck the Cake Hater has come out in the open and . . . it turns out that it's all a big misunderstanding. A case of mistaken identity. Nobody hates me after all, or if they do they're not messing with my blog, at least. Somebody with my name did something bad, but it wasn't me. Which was good because now I can stop running through my personal history, trying to figure out what'd I'd done to deserve such retribution. See, this came to my email (which had also been hacked):

"I'm so sorry for attacking your blog and e-mail. This appears to be a case of mistaken identity. My "boyfriend" cheated on me with a girl whose name is also Mara _____. I thought that was you, but now I know it's not and I am so incredibly sorry. Please know that I did not mean the things I said towards you. Looking back, I should have handled this in a more mature manner anyway."

I thought this was nice, seeing that she could have just ... gone away, and left me to wonder forever who the hell Chuck was. Boy would I hate to have this lady as my enemy! She got into my blog and into my email, too, which I thought would be impossible. Sent emails to everyone on my list. Hacker extraordinare, or maybe my passwords etc. were just too easy. It's nice knowing that it wasn't actually me that inspired such animosity-- I have to say that my self-esteem was starting to chip around the edges, as I was thinking, "Why does this person hate me SO MUCH? Why?" It's kind of a load off my mind, really. I just have to explain to everybody on my email list what happened... argh. At least it's over now.

I'm going to dinner and the movies with my family tonight... not exactly clubbin' but it should be fun. I went out last night to this Addison place and it felt like my friends were the youngest group in there-- it was mostly 40's, the yuppie crowd. Which I guess is ok. It's more fun sometimes to be 25 in an old place than 25 where everyone else is 18 and suddenly you feel old as the hills because your belly isn't perfectly flat and pierced.

Blah. . .

Day off = migraine headache. Again and again and again. Why? Why do I always get headaches on my days off? It's so random and weird. Everything started off great, I had lunch with Ben - then got a massive headache and had to rest most of the afternoon. There must be something about my day-off routine that triggers it, but damned if I know what it is. Little brother is training up to do some crazy Boy-Scouts backpacking hike in the Colorado Rockies next month, so he came over to use the treadmill in our apartment complex gym. He walks up inclines wearing a heavy-loaded backpack: it's mad, I tell you, mad. When Don and I go camping we take the car and spend the time relaxing; cooking over the fire, fishing, (gentle) hiking, canoeing, doing fun things in the tent. Not trekking through mountains with half our body weight again on our backs. Blech.

I got my HP essay all finished up and turned in; it would be very nice if this website published it-- if nothing else I'd like all the feedback. I still need to book a hotel or BnB for our trip to Vermont this October, I need to get on that before they all fill up with crazy leaf-peepers. Which is what we'll be. But still. I'm going to bed super-early tonight to kill this headache, so no more now. Tomorrow I'll feel better and will write something more chipper and upbeat.

It's all good again

Well, I made my comments stupid members-only which was a pain in the neck what with all the email addresses and everything but it all seems to be fixed up now. I've come to the conclusion that "Chuck the Cake-Deprived" isn't anyone I know personally, because I don't know anyone like Chuck; unless he acts vastly different in person i.e. has IQ over 80 or something.

Work is boring, my supervisor compared me to an evil ex-coworker who we all hate but she then apologized for it, and I have tomorrow off. Yay! Who doesn't love a day off? I have to clean the apartment (having neat-freak friends over on friday, mustn't scare them!) but that's ok. It's really not too bad at the moment, anyways. Don is doing pretty well in New Orleans, he sounds upbeat; interested and motivated. He's always good for a change of scenery and I'll bet that this two weeks goes faster for him than for me.

I think I might bake another cake, if for no other reason than to annoy certain cake-hating blog-lurkers. I must check my pantry for ingredients. Pecans, anyone?

Chuck the Cake-deprived

Wow, I just had another really weird blog experience, remants of which remain below. Some bizzare person decided to write anonymous comments on like every blog entry that I'd written so far this far. Strange rude comments, mostly about cake, my ass, and how boring and un-readable the blog is. Which is really ironic, because whoever this was made 60 comments covering 6 months worth of posts! Even if you assume that this character is a speed-reader and got through every post in, say, 30 seconds and then spent another 30 seconds commenting, that's like one hour's worth of reading and writing for blog that is supposedly really boring. If he's not a speed reader, then maybe 1 1/2 hours to 2. That's a lot of time to invest in someone else's blog! I know some people (Ben) will assume it's the same co-worker that I was having blog-issues with before (the one that read my blog and took its contents to our manager behind my back) but I can't believe that that's true for several reasons:

1. It's fairly obvious that it's someone who's never met me as he refered constantly to my fat ass, lard ass, etc. I'm actually not overweight at all, although I could see how one would think that from reading the blog, esp. as there aren't any photos-- baking, not so much eating, is what I talk about but it would take an intelligent mind to notice that. Also, my co-worker and I have a similar build, so it would be very pot-kettle-black if it were her making those "lardass" comments.

2. The tone is very masculine and very dumb. She isn't either of those. If she were going to trash my blog she'd do it in a funnier, sharper way, with very witty, cutting comments.

3. Some really sad things have happened where we work this year; the death of one of our coworkers, and of another one's grandbaby. There's no way she would write disrespectful and mean things about those deaths as they affected her probably as much as me; same goes for my own grandmother's death. I just don't think she could write uncaring things about that, it's just not like her.

4. Almost every comment was a rude, negative remarks about my cake-baking skills, and I know for a fact that my co-worker likes my food! She once even organized a raid on some cookies that I'd been saving for a later meeting, on the grounds that if everybody had one nobody would get yelled at. (she was wrong, but it proves that she likes my cookies and that it would therefore be wrong to dis my cakes all over my blog.) Likewise, whoever it was has clearly never eaten anything I've made before.

So while she can sometimes be petty and immature, she's not mean-spirited like this fella is. Actually she's OK most of the time, and while we rub each other the wrong way sometimes I don't get the feeling that she's very put out with me or anything. So. Clearly this dude has some major dessert-related issues, probably stemming from never getting any cake as a child: it makes him resentful and bitter. I shall call him "Chuck the Cake-deprived" from now on, or until we discover who Chuck really is.
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SO, we have a mystery blog-attacker! How mundanely exiting! I had to spend half and hour dredging up these comments and deleting them-- I left the last couple just for amusement's sake, and had to change my comment options to 'users only', which sucks because I liked never knowing who was going to drop in and say hi. It's just mysterious because if it's someone I know, who could it be? And if it's not, who the hell would spend over an hour messing with a stranger's blog that's supposedly too boring to read? What a conundrum! Chuck, what is going on in that little brain of yours?

Don's only been gone one day and I miss him. The apartment is too quiet without him and the autonomy is weird.

My sister blew off Father's Day entirely-- no phone call, no card, nada. Our dad is so hurt, although of course being a dad he tries not to show it. The whole time yesterday evening there was this question hanging in the air-- where was she? She's also pretty much ignoring me for the time being as she doesn't need our dog-sitting, and if she doens't need something than why would she bother?

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So Chuck, go eat some cake (German Chocolate would be good) and then get laid. God knows you need something to do.

Cakes and alone-ness

Gaaah. Don is going on task force again so he is in New Orleans for two weeks. Please take pity and hang out with me, all those who read this, because I'm sadly unused to being on my own for any length of time. We seem to have become one of those couples who merge into one organism, like ameobas or something and I hate it when he's out of town. He left this morning and doesn't get back until the last of the month. Uuuurgh. So to take up my time I've decided to reallycleantheapartment - finishmyHarryPotteressay andstartanotherone - maybestartaquilttop - getlotsofsleepandexercise - spendmoretimewithotherfriends - cleanthegarage-etc-etc-etc.

I've been baking and etc a lot in the last few days; Don's birthday was Friday and I made his usual German Chocolate cake but with a few modifications. Usually there's this super-sweet pecan-coconut filling and frosting that goes all over the cake and makes it almost sickeningly sweet; this time I used it only as a filling between layers and used a semi-sweet ganache as the frosting--very thinly, like a glaze. It was a definite improvement and cut the sweetness with a more sophisticated, rich bitter-sweet taste. I also replaced the cake-layers with a better recipe--darker, moister, and more chocolatey. Easier, too; the original recipe calls for beaten egg whites and all the jazz which as far as I can tell is only because there are 4 yolks in the filling and they don't want to waste the whites. The one I use is practically a one-bowl. I took a lot of the cake to work with me where it received rave reviews, including several suggestions that I go pro and one offer of a business partnership. Much jealousy of Don was expressed (I can see why he fell in love with you; if I were him I'd be as big as a house, etc) which is really funny because I bake for my coworkers a lot more than I do for him!

Right now I'm making our traditional Father's Day Maple Fudge (Also used as Dad's Birthay Fudge and Dad's Chanukah-present Fudge--what can I say, he loves the stuff!) When you make it with the real syrup it smells just amazing during the boiling stage, where it is right now, to the point where it's making me light-headed. The whole apartment is just drenched in maple-smells. I'm also making tuxedo-strawberries just for fun, because the berries were on sale and I have the white and the dark chocolate laying around.

Food Network has been running all of these cake-decorating shows that have crazy cakes wrapped in fondant and stacked really high; shaped like suitcases, wrapped presents, etc; I'd love to try something like that someday but I think you can only get good with practice, and I can hardly afford to practice something like marzipan or fondant-decorating just for fun. I've always gone for taste alone, before, and tried for the "not-finished-by-small-children-or-special-needs-adults" look as far as finishing went. And that goal usually proves hard for me.

Planning

First, many apologies to my many loyal readers (hahahahhahha) for my long absence--things have been busy lately and for some reason I just haven't felt like going online much. First off, Don and I have settled on next May for our wedding, in Vermont. So if you want to go, there's time to make it happen, and then some! Late May should be do-able for an out-doors wedding up there, if it's not pouring down rain. Meanwhile we're taking a trip there in October, for a vacation and for wedding-reconnaissance. He and I haven't had a vacation since we moved back to Dallas 2 1/2 years ago... that's a long time to go without leaving town, without traveling at all. One little weekend camping trip is all we've done in that time. So we're going back to our town for a week at what should be the peak of leaf season (wow, we've gone from proper residents to leaf-peepers in less than three years, but if you're going to New England, might as well be there when it's at it's nicest. . .) Expect many brightly-colored photos of trees and us wearing sweaters being cute, and such. In December we're going to Big Bend with my family, which should be really fun.

It's finally occurred to me that we each get paid vacation time from our jobs-- why not take vacations? I'm going to try to make it a regular feature in our lives, plan ahead, pick destinations, save money ahead of time. It will be fun. I've never had paid vacation from a job before this one, so it's a new experience. Don prefers being spontaneous, but where does that get you? We're both scheduled in at work weeks or months ahead of time, so "spontaneous" means weekends at the most, driving-distance only: camping. Which is nice but not a real vacation, all that cooking and peeing in the woods.

Harry Potter and writing

I just finished writing a 10-page paper on Harry Potter. No, I'm not in school. Yes, it was just for fun. Is that weird? I like writing (even though now I'm at that icky part where you have to list all your sources and go back and notate, so that it doesn't look like you're copying) and I love good ol' Harry. I was only aiming for 1,000 words or so but they just came pouring out, and now it's 4700. I'm hoping to get it published online at my favorite HP site, even if I have to divide it into two sections or something. I just hope nobody beats me to this paticular topic.

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Went to Borders today, saw Ben and some other nice people. He's amazed by our friend Amanda's pregnancy--apparently she's just beginning to show at it's hit him like a ton of bricks that she's actually making a baby. He said something to the effect that if he climbed Mount Everest, found a cure for cancer, or landed on the moon it wouldn't be as miraculous as what she's doing right now...

He's hit upon the reason that men do all of these things, for better or for worse; why they throw themselves equally into creation and destruction; buildings, monuments, pyramids, great feats, wars, crusades. . . at 40 he's just realized that he can't make a baby. Every guy realizes at some point that we can do this miraculous, life-creating, baby-building thing, and they just can't. It really makes it kind of obvious why all ancient cultures worshipped the feminine, and why our current patriarchial society does its best to diminish and degrade this act of creation, medicalizing it to the point of making pregnancy a disease that needs constant (male) medical intervention. Interestingly, most of this degradation has come about in the last century and aligns with the rise in status that women have made on other fronts--education, careers, personal relationships. 'They' have to rob pregnancy, birth, and infant-care (especially nursing) of it's incredible power, that power of creation, because it's a power that men don't have, and now women have an almost equal footing in every other field... imagine if we also embraced the power of our bodies to create new life instead of viewing it as something of an inconvenience?
Everybody rants on about how society worships the thin female body, but that isn't exactly it--society's "ideal image" of the female body is that of a very young woman, a teenager. Most women don't realize that by striving to keep off those 5 pounds what they are really doing is trying to stay in a pre-mature state, as dictated by the patriarchy. Really, the teenage female body-- thin, narrow, athletic and colt-like--is very non-threatening and immature. What if instead of striving to keep our bodies in an adolescent state, we took pride in a full, womanly appearance, complete with physical maturity? There's a constant message aimed at women--be young, be thin-- and underlying that message is the one that robs pregnancy of so much: "Your body (which is of course flawed being female) couldn't possibly handle pregnancy and childbirth on its own! You can't take the pain, you'll do it wrong, you need us, the male medical world, to tell you what to do."
What if instead of doubting our bodies and swallowing everything the man in the white coat tells us-- you need an epidural, you need an epistiotomy, you need a C-section-- we trusted our bodies to do what they do best? What if, instead of trying to placate a male-driven society that wants our bodies to themselves, we nursed freely, using various body parts as they were intended by nature rather than by man? We would rule the world, I tell you!

Hmmmm. I seem to have rambled on a bit. Oh well.

My Butt was on TV!

So, yeah, our bank branch got robbed on Tuesday. It was all very scary and dramatic, almost cliche really; man with panty-hose on face takes the money and runs. Police arrive. FBI arrives. Etc. Unfortunately the robber chose just about the worst two people to deal with (for them), one being this poor girl who's pretty new to the bank and is very high-strung to begin with. I wasn't going to mention it but it's been in the news since then so ok. I haven't told my parents yet because they get all freaked out about my working in a bank to begin with and I don't feel like adding fuel to their worries. It'll make a nice anecdote someday, when I'm at a better, safer job.

The funny bit is that the news showed the clip from the security video and because I'm standing right next the teller who was robbed, my rearview was on tv. At 4, 5, 6, and 10 oclock yesterday. Hehehe. I feel like Mike from Monsters Inc. "I.... I was on TV!" This is their story, but no, I'm not in the picture.

http://www.nbc5i.com/newsarchive/9301697/detail.html#

The bank sends councellors out to the bank to deal with the stress and trauma that the tellers go through with something like this. It was too bad that she didn't get there until everyone had left except for me and Jennifer; of everyone that was there we're probably the least in need of psychological aid, being reasonably easy-going and down-to-earth, non-panicky type women. "well, no one was hurt, let's get on with it then!"

Still it has its effects; if nothing else I'm being very careful with my working cash and trying to get a good stare at everyone who comes in the door. I didn't even notice that the poor girl beside me was getting held up until it was half over; I never did get a good look at him either-- that self-preserving instinct to be non-confrontational in dangerous situations had me looking aside, trying to focus on my customer-- the poor guy was standing right next to a robber, after all.

Not a Bad Assessment for 9 Questions

You Are a Seeker Soul

You are on a quest for knowledge and life challenges. You love to be curious and ask a ton of questions. Since you know so much, you make for an interesting conversationalist. Mentally alert, you can outwit almost anyone (and have fun doing it!). Very introspective, you can be silently critical of others. And your quiet nature makes it difficult for people to get to know you. You see yourself as a philosopher, and you take everything philosophically. Your main talent is expressing and communicating ideas. Souls you are most compatible with: Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

... and I only took it once!