Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.

Click here for Part 2.

Click here for Part 3.

Click here for Part 4.

Click here for Part 5.

Click here for Part 6.

Part 7

After I passed their grave I walked straight back to the far side of the cemetery, stopping at the fence that didn’t used to be there and walking to the right along it until I came to the grave of John Mathis. John Mathis was someone who I had never known but who I used to always visit when I was at the cemetery. I hadn’t been to see him in ten years or more. 

He was a boy who had been in the marching band several years before me and who had played the same instrument I did: The trumpet. He was very smart, had a scholarship to a great school, and everyone had nice things to say about him. I always got the idea that he was the all American Boy Scout that every mother secretly hopes her little man will some day become. 

He died a little before my dad, and their tombstones were only a few steps away from one another. After my dad died, John Mathis and I became friends because I could deal with a young man I had never known a whole lot better than I could my dad. Being boy crazy at the time, John Mathis and I had a scenario as well, although I can’t remember a whole lot about it right now. I’m pretty sure that it involved roses and me having a car. 

I was always more interested in putting flowers on John Mathis’s grave than on anyone else’s. I thought it might comfort his mother to see flowers on his grave from someone she didn’t know. Or maybe I just liked the idea of having a dead boyfriend. What’s more romantic than that in a totally Goth way? 

I never did give him any flowers though. As a matter of fact I never put flowers on anyone’s grave. There’s a part of me that talks to tombstones when I am wandering around in the cemetery. That’s the part of me that apologizes when I was walking over someone’s mortal remains. The part of me that skips from head stone to foot stone to plot marker in order to not step on someone out of “respect”. I think this is just some custom I learned from someone somewhere along the way and it’s become so engrained in my being that I can’t not do it. 

There’s another part of me though, that knows no matter how much I want there to be a place in the ether where all the people I love are gathered and where I will someday join them in the sweet by and by, that place is not six feet under. There is nothing beneath those headstones but dirt and wood and bones. They cannot hear me. They do not care if I step on them and they don’t care if I put flowers next to a piece of granite bearing their name or if I don’t even slow down as I drive past. 

But I care, and tomorrow I am going to buy flowers.  

Part 6

Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.

Click here for Part 2.

Click here for Part 3.

Click here for Part 4.

Click here for Part 5

Part 6

The whole community came together to raise money for the funeral. Burying one person is neither easy nor cheap. To bury five people at one time who had no insurance would have broken the survivors. News crews descended on the little town of Lake Como where the tragedy had occurred. My best friend says that he remembers the news trucks blocking the road in front of his house.

The older little girl had been a year behind me in school. I had seen her around, but didn’t really know her. My mom was friends with the grandmother which is why we were at the funeral. Apparently, she was the first babysitter I had ever had. I don’t remember it, having been a baby, but I was there to pay my respects all the same.

There were hundreds of people at the graveside service. The local funeral home barely contained all the caskets during the viewing. In later years, as I began attending more and more funerals in that space I marveled at how they could have fit five caskets in that space with all the flowers (and there were flowers, let me tell you) when it seemed that one casket barely fit. Granted, three of them were small.

I remember going to see the bodies, and trying to be stoic about it all. It’s not as though I had never seen a body. My mother was always very open about death with me and by that time I was a funeral veteran. I don’t think I was able to keep my composure. It was a tragic thing and even as a third grader, I could understand that.

I was looking at little girls younger than me. They weren’t supposed to be in coffins – they were supposed to be playing with Barbies. And their daddy had done this to them. That’s a lot for an adult to digest. I remember being haunted by them for a while afterward. Even though I hadn't known them in life, they were with me in death. Ghosts were no longer fun characters in books about the civil war – they were little girls who just wanted to play with their daddy.

Part 5

Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.
Click here for Part 2.
Click here for Part 3.
Click here for Part 4.

Part 5

Of course neither he nor his mother lives in that orange house now. When I was there today I looked across the street and you couldn’t even see it. The shrubs near the front door had grown so large that they obscured everything but the steps leading up to the porch. I noticed this as I was making my way to the Catholic part of the cemetery to visit Heather. While she was such a big part of all that had gone on, I never imagined that I would be paying her a visit from six feet topside. She was there for all of it. I know that she had to have listened to my William scenario more than once and I had invented a future for her as well.

I decided that if things didn’t work out for me and Will, I was going to take a road trip to Hollywood with her and George after he got a car (he was almost 16, so this could work) and I was going to woo Christian Slater. We were going to move back to Crescent City and his mom was going to buy us my dream house – a huge Victorian mansion on the lake. Heather and George would get married and live in Jacksonville. I would have an airboat and take the river to visit her while Christian was away making movies. When she came home to visit me and her family, she would stay in the yellow house on Randolph Street that I had bought her and drive around in the yellow car I had for her to use. Being married to a famous movie star, I would have enough money to make all this happen. This was before Christian Slater was officially B-List, by the way.

As I was making my way back to the car, I noticed a large pink granite headstone and remembered the first time I was ever in that cemetery. I was standing with my mom and my aunt Ida and Uncle Gene underneath  the oak tree that now shades my dad’s grave. It was April and I would fall in love with Christian Slater that very night as I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on the movie of the week.

But at that moment I was standing with my family in attendance at one of the biggest funerals that Crescent City had ever seen. People still talk about the Phemachik murder. A man killed his three little girls, his wife, and his mother in law with a shot gun on the last day of the sheriff’s vacation, about a week before Easter. Sheriff Taylor Douglas came to work that Monday morning fresh from a few days off to a scene of heartbreaking senseless carnage.

Part 4

Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.
Click here for Part 2.
Click here for Part 3.

Part 4

 He said that he couldn’t believe that I had never been kissed before. 

That was in December of 1997. Everyone was going to see Titanic and “My Heart Will Go On” was everyone’s favorite song. We were outside of the bathrooms that are no longer standing in Eva Lyon park under a flickering streetlamp. My best friend Heather and her boyfriend George were on the other side, most likely making out. That’s what people did, after all. 

It was cold. I don’t remember a winter that cold since. He was gorgeous. I had Elton John’s newest single “Something about the Way You Look Tonight” running through my head the whole time, because he was beautiful that night – all blue eyes and dark hair (in that 90s style that looked so good on Christian Slater in “Untamed Heart”) and he smelled like heaven. 

I don’t know what the hell he smelled like – I’ve never been able to identify the scent in all these years – I’ve begun to wonder if it was just raw pheromones or something – but anytime I catch the hint of it in the air I am a good as done for. If you are interested in getting me into bed, let me smell that and I’m all yours. I know that my husband would love to have that magical potion at his disposal, but it’s a mystery even to me. 

I was the luckiest girl in the 6th grade so I thought and I couldn’t wait for Monday to roll around so I could tell all those preppy bitches at school what I had been up to over the weekend. Oh? You’re going out with Andy, are you? Weh-heh-hell, I have a high school boyfriend. Eat shit and die, I am going home and watching Broken Arrow – that’s right – an R rated movie – and then I’m having phone sex with my boyfriend. Ciao bitches! 

Yeah that worked out real well when I had to eat crow on Tuesday cus he broke up with me. 

I’m sure you can now see how I let that whole rose/cemetery/ stalker thing get a little out of hand. What’s sad is that there I was at very important funerals in my young life – my surrogate grandmother – and two weeks later my dad’s – thinking of how I was going to get out of this one horse town on the coattails of a guy who couldn’t be bothered with me unless I had lust on my lips and he had his dick in his hand. Adolescence and naivety might as well be the same word.

Part 3

Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.
Click here to read Part 2.

Part 3

Even before people in my life started dropping like flies, the cemetery was an important fixture in my mind because I knew that William lived across the street. I was ticking off the days on the calendar until I got a license so that I could park in the cemetery at night and pine over him. I didn’t think this through though – he was three years older than me and would be long gone in the Army before I even got a permit, and anyway, that was stalking, and not even normal crazy high school girl stalking – but creepy weird Goth cemetery stalking.

I had this idea that I was going to stake out his humble orange abode every night from the confines of the graveyard,  most likely writing bad poetry by the dashboard light. Once I figured out when I was least likely to be discovered, I would steal into his yard and anonymously leave a single red rose on the hood of his car. He would suddenly acquire clairvoyance and know that it was me and that my love was true and pure and faithful and unending.

He would sweep me off my feet and we would move somewhere far away and have a great studio apartment like on Friends and have lots of eclectic people around us with whom to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas (so that we would never have to come back to Crescent City, God forbid). I would make fantastic feasts for our bohemian crowd and my mom and dad would come to break bread with us. Then, after the guests had cleared out on these holidays we would wrap ourselves in warm blankets

Even before people in my life started dropping like flies, the cemetery was an important fixture in my mind because I knew that William lived across the street. I was ticking off the days on the calendar until I got a license so that I could park in the cemetery at night and pine over him. I didn’t think this through though – he was three years older than me and would be long gone in the Army before I even got a permit, and anyway, that was stalking, and not even normal crazy high school girl stalking – but creepy weird Goth cemetery stalking.

I had this idea that I was going to stake out his humble orange abode every night from the confines of the graveyard – most likely writing bad poetry by the dashboard light – and once I figured out when I was least likely to be discovered, I would steal into his yard and anonymously leave a single red rose on the hood of his car.

He would suddenly acquire clairvoyance and know that it was me and that my love was true and pure and faithful and unending and he would sweep me off my feet and we would move somewhere far away and have a great studio apartment like on Friends and have lots of eclectic people around us with whom to celebrate thanksgiving and Christmas (so that we would never have to come back to Crescent City, God forbid) and I would make fantastic feasts for our bohemian crowd and my mom and dad would come to break bread with us. Then, after the guests had cleared out on these holidays we would light black cherry candles, wrap ourselves in warm blankets and our love, and make love on the floor as the rain fell outside.

Sometimes we would go to the roof of this fantastic apartment building I had constructed in my mind and dance to the sounds of the bars that wafted up from the street below. We would live together in delicious sin in a city that I am pretty sure was either New York or Seattle considering the massive amounts of cold weather and rain this daydream had woven into it. I would be a famous writer and he would do whatever it was that insanely attractive incredibly smart older men do for a living. We would have a Turkish Angora named Nefertiti who would take long naps on our burgundy comforter. We would drink tea and have the kind of sex that people had in the movies that involved moving in slow motion and kissing as though you were going to consume the other person’s entire existence and become part of them with the lightest brush of tongue against theirs and the gentle pulling of their lips with your own.

I had a very active imagination. And he was my first kiss.

Here's an Essay. Because Mental Health is Important.

Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.

Part 2

I stopped in today. I don’t know why. I was killing time because I had just been to Winn Dixi for a few groceries and after I had gotten back in the car and was on my way back to my mom’s, I realized that I had forgotten the very thing I had been sent out to get: Bread. In the hopes of not looking like the moron the moron I am, I wandered around the cemetery for a few minutes while I waited for everyone to forget I had just been to the store.

I wandered over to my neighbor Eleanor’s grave first. I can’t ever bring myself to visit her when I am there with my mom. I can’t do a lot of things around my mom. I don’t want to give her any information that she could use against me later. I try to have a poker face at all times. This isn’t the best idea since I am a lousy poker player and what I think is a blank face is always closer to an angry one. People think I am pretty sour as a result. 

I now know (as I had once known and subsequently forgotten) that Eleanor died on June 18, 1998. That was pretty big summer for me, as my dad died two weeks later on July first. I remember being at their funerals and looking across  the field of headstones to an orange house across the street and wondering if the boy who lived there – a boy with whom I was infatuated – was looking out of his bedroom window at me in my time of grief. 

When my dad died, I was a little hurt that he didn’t show up to the funeral – but I now know that I am the only person who goes to funerals not for the dead, but for the living that I care about. It was a nice distraction to imagine him in his room looking out the window and thinking of me. Because that’s how you think when you are 12.

All the Small Things

One of my friends put on her Facebook status that she was sitting in a car making out with her husband. Now, I know that seems kind of like a dumb thing to post, but it makes me smile and I think there should be more pleasantness around here. Here's to making out with husbands! (Or wives!)

Kids, this is where babies come from. Source

Snap Out of It, Negative Nancy!



Misery may be my totem spirit. Source

Yeah, this hasn't been the happiest place to be lately, has it? I apologize. I'm known for many things, but my cheery outlook ain't one of em'. That being said, I'm going to make a real effort to be more positive. It's going to be hard and I am opposed to the difficult, but I've heard that overcoming obstacles builds character, so I'm willing to give it a go. Again.

There are good things - Yesterday I began to write about the life and times of Cecil, The Elusive Bavarian Snow Lizard. It's a children's story that I made up a long time ago when I thought I was going to move to Germany. Since I cannot think of anything else to write about I decided to work on fleshing out Cecil's story. It made more sense than sitting at the computer for hours staring at a blank page. Who knows, maybe it will be a children's book for adults, like Go the F*ck to Sleep. Cecil, by the by, is a white Elusive Bavarian Snow Lizard with a blue neck fin. He stands 3 3/4 inches high and walks on his hind legs like a Basilisk lizard. He hates to fly, and as such, he is wintering in Munich while the rest of the Elusive Bavarian Snow Lizards have gone to Tahiti. He plans to become a ski instructor.

The diet routine has been going well. The gym thing is not coming so quickly as I hate to give up part of my Sprout free morning at the gym as they have childcare anyway. I need to ask the babysitter if I can start bringing her a little later. That way I can get the gym out of the way first thing. I did manage to work out on Tuesday, and I am still feeling it today. That's a good thing.

I am updating the blog, that's a positive. I've also been making it a point to listen to peppier music. That means lots of Lady Gaga. I think I've got a Spice Girls CD somewhere around here . . . damned if I know where. I'm listening the The Streets on YouTube. That's upbeat. Yeah.

I sound like I'm trying to convince myself, huh?

Really, there are things for me to be happy about. Thankful for. I applied for a job yesterday, which if I get it will be a pretty good gig. It's 20 hours a week but the listed salary is $24,000 - $25,000 a year. That's pretty good. It would relieve some of the pressure I am feeling, that's for sure. Maybe then I would have some inspiration to write about something other than little blue and white lizards. Additionally, I won't have to do English Major math to figure out how to pay for certain things (Alice Cooper tickets, dance lessons, baby showers, personal organizers).

As for that Sprout - where can I begin? She's growing like a weed! She's into everything which is vexing, but it's really good as well because that means she's curious. She is a baby on the move, so when she's not exploring everything (including the top of the stove and the knife drawer) she's just moving her little body. She has become quite the little jitter-bug as of late. Whenever she hears any music either on the radio or TV she's bustin' a move. It's the best. It might just be my favorite thing about her right now. I cannot wait until next fall when she can start Creative Movement classes. Lately, she's become stingy with her hugs and kisses and "No!" is her favorite word. I think that's probably a good thing. I wouldn't want her to be indiscriminate with her love. 

She's a little parrot as of the moment, which means the end of Mommy and Daddy's life of swearing with reckless abandonment is imminent. I'm sure that is as it should be. I swear more than anyone I know. I think it's a wearing the ovaries on the outside thing. Kind of like my drinking habits. "I will drink and cus any man here under the table. Bring it." Not exactly a good trait in a parent. The drinking I've found was far easier to kick than the swearing. Although, for the past couple of days I've been eyeballing the Tanqueray with the thought of killing the bottle. Straight. See, I do have self control!

One last thing that made me happy this week: Netflix has a KidzBop dance video. So, I AM going to learn to dance to "Telephone" by Beyonce and Lady Gaga. If a bunch of 10 year olds can't teach me how to dance, there may be no hope for me.

My Heart is Breaking Into a Thousand Tiny Pieces

The summer between 9th and 10th grade - the summer before I started going to Palatka High School - the summer after I failed my first class and put myself out on a limb forever for LGBT rights - I spent a month in New Haven, Connecticut taking college classes at Yale.

It was a political science summer school for very clever high school students such as myself. We stayed in the dorms at Silliman Hall, attended two very intensive seminars six days a week, and made like we were the genuine article at this institution of higher learning.

I was a fucking seashell. Source

I couldn't tell you jack about the classes I took - it's been way too long. I remember spending a lot of time in the stacks of the library, there was a lot of reading and writing going on, and in the few moments I had to myself  I indulged my budding interest in glam rock. New Haven was where I began my love affair with Lou Reed. When I came home with The Velvet Underground and Nico GT and my mom wanted to burn the thing after listening to "European Son" one time. In truth, they wanted to burn all the CDs I came home with to varying degrees - the only possible exception being a 90s Alternative Compilation CD that by comparison sounded pretty innocuous.

Silliman Hall: Sorta Like Hogwarts

I remember being home from my adventure, sitting in my room, in a lawn chair, in the dark, listening to The Goo Goo Dolls "Name" over and over and over wrapped in a blanket and pining for the few friends I had made that summer. A continuing theme in my life is that I am lousy at correspondence, so after a couple of letters were exchanged, 9-11 happened and life got the better of me.

 Part of my would love to know what became of them, but another part feels better not knowing what a failure this JSA Yale alumnus turned out to be. There are a couple of people I wish I had stayed in touch with. I found out in doing a little research that my nemisis died in 2007. I got in touch with him at some point after high school. That makes me a little ill. His fiance was pregnant with their child at the time.

Classes? Names? No. Music Store? Yes. Source

But it was fun, wasn't it? Just thinking about it, I get the same kind of electric butterflies I used to get falling in love. I feel like I'm suffocating and I want to cry and scream and run forever. It's a wonderful and terrible and beautiful and harrowing feeling. I was there and I fucked it all up. I lost it. I could have been somebody. I could have lived that life. I could have spent my every last at Cutler's Music and studied writing and literature and politics and followed in the footsteps of so many people I love and admire.

But I pissed it all away. I loved it there. I really, really loved it. And I loved who I was when I was there. I wasn't fucked up. I wasn't an extension of someone else. There was no Daniel. There was no Odis. There was only me. And I was alive. I was beautiful. I was a scholar. Oh my god! I had work ethic! I barely remember, but I know I had it. I know it! I had drive and goals and dreams. I want so much to be that person.

I know what Terry Malloy was going through. Oh God, I'm crying. I hate Elia Kazan, but dammit, I am Terry Malloy.

Being Cultured While Broke

The Height of Culture. Source

I like the opera. A lot. My first semester at UWF, I was score tickets to La Traviata for the low, low price of $15. I sat in these nosebleed seats that were too small for a 5th grader for hours in rapt attention watching these people moving around the stage singing in a language I didn't understand. Thankfully, there was a small scrim at the top of the stage that displayed the English translation. It didn't really matter though. You could pretty much surmise what was going on. It didn't hurt that La Traviata is more or less the same story as Moulin Rouge. Just about everything great is based on something classical and greater. For some reason unknown to me, I was never able to make it to another show while living in Pensacola. No matter, I had been bitten by the opera bug.

I joined an opera Meetup group while I lived in Raleigh, which allowed me to get a healthy dose of culture for free. The organizers were these two middle aged "roommates" (I asked no questions, I was drinking their wine and eating their cheese) who had pretty much ever opera DVD known to man in their home library. They had an entire wall inlaid with bookshelves. Very tasteful. Full of Opera. Sadly, I discovered this group about a month before I had to move, so I only got together with them a few times before moving to Savannah - the black hole where culture goes to die.

I don't want to really get into a city bashing rant at the moment, but I will say this: Savannah offers a very good illusion of culture. A non dairy culture substitute, if you will. I am not impressed. There's a lot of history here, but that's about all the place has got going for it in my opinion. There's so much "diversity" that it's really not diverse at all. It reminds me of a circus. I like the circus, don't get me wrong, but I like it because it's novel. If that was all there was it would be boring and trite. That's Savannah.

But there's hope! There's hope! j^C and I went to the movies on Friday; a rare occurrence these days. I will be so happy when That Sprout is old enough to go to the movies. So. Effing. Happy. Anyway, while I was standing in line to buy a soda that I never got, I noticed an advertisement on the huge screen in the lobby.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD

WAGNER'S RING CYCLE ENCORE

I didn't think much about it until this morning, but now I've decided that I am going to go. Fandango told me that it's going to cost me $15 per show. So, I'm going to be shelling out a total of $60 to basically go to the movies. Alas. It will take all the quarters in my crab cup and all of next week's allowance to pull it off. I am going to the theater this afternoon in order to buy my first ticket. In quarters. That oughtta be fun. I feel so sophisticated. I also feel like they're going to turn me away as though I were freakin' Freddie the Freeloader trying to get a Christmas Dinner.

I'm goin' to the Opera!

I Remember Everything

What have I become? Source

"I remember everything."

That was once my mantra. My identity. I was the keeper of the past. I knew who went out with whom, when, and in what order. I kept track of times, places, dates, birthdays, anniversaries, and esoteric holidays that we made up between classes that everyone else forgot. "Happy Cornbread Cult Day!" I would say as I showed up with a plate of the stuff. I would receive blank stares in return. "Don't ya'll remember? We decided that April 30th would be Cornbread Cult Day?" Everyone thought I was a weirdo, but they weren't going to refuse my famous Cajun Cornbread. These are the things that supplied a good deal of my angst as a teenager.

So what happened? Now, it seems, I remember nothing. I go through days as though in a fog. Birthday cards pile up waiting to be mailed months after their due dates. I buy things and then lose them. I then buy replacements and lose them as well. Eventually, I might find all of the items at the exact moment after I've bought and used a second round of replacements. I forget about bills, appointments, and a myriad of very important although mundane things.

Yesterday, I forgot to take That Sprout back to the doctor to follow up on her TB test.  Hopefully, I can bring her in this morning and it will be fine. All they have to do is look at the test area and tell me that she's fine. I walked around in circles all day yesterday wondering what I was forgetting. I knew there was some essential bit of house work I was supposed to do, but what? I also knew that I was feeling really low for some unknown reason. I fought it off as long as I could,  but I found myself breaking down in tears in the Target Pharmacy because I felt guilty about having Zaxby's for lunch. While that was less than ideal, it did not warrant the tears I found myself fighting for the rest of the day.

By the time I got home it was close to quitting time for j^C and I realized I hadn't started dinner either. I had just sat down at the computer to look for a quick chicken recipe when he pulled into the drive. He got off early. It was then that I remembered the essential piece of housework I'd neglected: I was supposed to clean off my dresser so that we could hook up the PS3 in the bedroom. Shit. I begged off for another day, and started dinner still in a foul mood. I was sad and I didn't know why I was sad, so that made me mad. I knew it could have to do with PMS or whatnot, but that explanation just didn't cut it. After dinner and some quality time with the family, I went to bed fairly early and tossed and turned all night.

This morning, I realized what the sadness was about. I was lying in bed half awake and in a moment of clarity, I remembered. Yesterday was Heather's birthday. When we were kids, this event was usually marked by a sleepover at her house full of scary movies and press on nails and all her friends who seemed to merely tolerate me. I was a year younger, but between March 3 and May 2, we were the same age. I always liked that. For a little while I was one of the big girls. I wanted so bad to be older and to fit in. Now, I'll always be older than her. It feels strange realizing that. She's going to be 24 forever and I'm just going to keep getting older before I die.

Someone I used to love once told me that my mind is so preoccupied with the larger goings on of the universe that I can't be expected to remember the mundane. He said this after buying me my fifth replacement gas cap. I think about that statement a lot nowadays. Even though my mind forgot to remember Heather yesterday, I don't think the rest of me did. I might forget bills and chores but I remember the important things. I remember how I always thought she smelled like magnolias and gardenia and how long and pretty her fingernails were. There's a lot more than that, and maybe I'll write about it some day. I want her sons to remember their mom like I do, but I can't do it today. It hurts too much to remember right now.

I'm Baaaaaaaaaack!

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaack! Source

Dear readers, I apologize for my absence. The end of j^C's Magical Mystery Tour came and brought with it a month and a half of readjusting and utter pandemonium. Yesterday was his first day back at work after our month long vacation. I could have written to you all yesterday I suppose, but it seemed better to wait for the first of the month. I'm like that. Despite my lack of organization, I really do like nice clean lines. Also, today was That Sprout's first day back at the babysitter's, so I have a few moments to myself again.

I don't have a lot to report - the month of April was a blur. We went to Florida for Easter weekend. Then, we had a little over a week at home, which was punctuted by a 14 hour ER visit with That Sprout. She had a 103.9 temperature and she wouldn't eat or drink. After all that time, they gave her an IV and told us to go home, it was a virus. I'm still waiting on the bill. Thank everything that's holy for insurence.

Then we were with j^C's parents in Greenville, SC for a few days. After that, we were in Raleigh, NC over night, then finally on to Hilton Head Island. That part was pretty awesome. We got to stay in a half million dollar condo walking distance from the beach - FOR FREE! I want to live in this place. It was lovely. I must write my thank you card to the owner ASAP. I could have stayed there for the rest of my life.

All of our travels ended Saturday, and now we are trying to get back into the swing of every day life. I was informed this morning that the Magical Mystery Tour 2.0 is scheduled for March of 2013. I am not so thrilled about this, but there's not a lot I can do about it. It's all very uncertain for now, anyway.

In the meantime, I am have decided to work on some professional development type things in order to make myself more marketable. I plan to start a beginning HTML class in a few weeks, as well as a refresher course on grammar. One way or another, I will figure out a way to be somewhat financially independent, or I'll die trying.

I really hope I don't die trying. That would suck.

I do hope to at least be as good with money as Kyle's Cousin Kyle though. He is so my favorite South Park character.