I am sick today. I woke up at one in the afternoon, threw up all the food I didn’t have in my stomach, took a shower and put all my strength together to get back into bed. At five, I felt good enough to go downstairs and eat some vegetable broth. Now I’m back in bed feeling like a ten ton rock with a nauseous core. My laptop is balanced on my stomach and my head bolstered by two ancient pillows that are flat as pancakes. My husband should be here in another five hours to pet my head and tell me stories. I’m counting the minutes and I’m going over the events of the last few days.

After Thanksgiving dinner when we were all sitting around the table talking, I asked my step dad Bob a question. I said, “I know that you’ve talked about how horrible and embarrassing it is not to be able to remember things. You’ve also said the pain is excruciating. If this is something you don’t want to talk about, please tell me, but are there any positive things that you’ve gotten out of this experience?”

He said unequivocally and soundly, “No, absolutely not”. He talked about reading in the bible about saints that were being tortured. He would think that if someone was in that much pain that they would just pass out. He talked about being in as much pain as he thought a human could bear and thinking, “Why am I not passing out?”. That was pretty much the end of the conversation since my mom kept jumping in and trying to change the subject because it made her uncomfortable.

When we got here from Vegas and I first saw him sitting in his wheel chair at the kitchen table I was surprised because he looked better than the last time I saw him in August. I told him that he looked good. His reply was something like, “yeah, on the outside”. When he said it, I thought of a Astronomy class that I took my sophomore year in college. My mind flashed on the lecture about the death of stars. When a star dies, when it’s “inner fire” goes out, it collapses in on itself. When it collapses, the pressure makes it re-ignite itself and it burns brightly for a short time until the it goes out again. The process continues until the core collapses. The processes of stars and humans are not the same of course, but at that moment with him sitting under the bright glow of the warm kitchen, it all seemed to be saying something.

Last night I fell asleep with my contacts in. I woke up at three or four in the morning with puffy and roughed up eyeballs. I stumbled into bathroom to remove my contacts. I was still half asleep and couldn’t seem to get them out. I kept poking at my eyes that were squinting closed because they wanted to be asleep. Finally I gave up and figured that I would deal with it in the morning.

This morning I woke up and there were two contacts in their proper holders. Apparently all that poking was unnecessary.

Tomorrow I am taking myself to the mall. Also since I begged off of driving to Green Bay, my husband will be returned to me by his sister and her husband tomorrow night.

*to anyone that’s trying to call me, Andy took my phone charger to Green Bay with him. Until tomorrow night, I have no phone.

It’s freezing in this bedroom. I’m under six blankets and have two shirts on and socks. I just came up here after spending some time with my mom in the living room/computer room. She found a online bingo site and has been on tilt (on tilt: a gambling term for losing your ass and going crazy to make up for it) most of the day. I think she ended up down $100.

She was telling me about a online writing site she joined called spoiledink.com. After I pried her off the bingo train, she showed me her profile. I helped her make and upload a user picture. She thought I was a genius.

She’s wanted to be a writer for a long time now, but she really hasn’t had the discipline to sit down and write consistently. She’s shown me a few of her stories. They had some potential, but went off on some crazy tangents and needed some polishing. She showed me this, and I think it’s the best thing she’s written so far.

If you don’t feel like following the link, it’s a touching paragraph about my step dad. I asked if she was going to show it to him, and she rolled her eyes at me like I was crazy. I told her that I thought he would really like it. After she felt confident that I wasn’t mocking her for showing me her soft underbelly, we printed it out. She also printed out a picture of our silly grocery store sushi Thanksgiving dinner for Bob to put in his notebook so he could remember it. She marveled at the print out and kept commenting on the vivid colors. She even said that she was going to bring it to the library where she volunteers and show it to the other “library ladies”.

My mom….she’s loud, bossy and difficult. She has bullet proof defenses and can be unbelievably insensitive. But you know what? That lady is a pretty good egg.

jeep
Originally uploaded by cindigodotcom.

We are in Chicago. By “we are in Chicago”, I mean, I’m in Chicago, and Andy is in Green Bay. Andy is spending time with his family without the distraction of his glamourous wife with her fancy hair and lip-glossed lips. While I’m spending time with my family without the company of my beautiful husband with his razor sharp wit, spot on comedic timing and muscly muscles. I’m driving up Friday to spend a few days there, and then bring him back here.

Since I’ve been in the real world doing things, I will be updating by list since trying to come up with a clever entry after being gone so long is hurting my head.

1. The kittens have homes. Two of them went to our neighbors, and one went to their friends. Mom cat is still with us. I made fliers that I’m posting in vets offices and pet stores. We could send her to the shelter, but it would be better if she could be adopted directly.

2. Nova our friend from San Diego moved in with us last month. I didn’t really want to say anything online because there was a misunderstanding between Nova and Lainstar. I thought that if I mentioned her moving in, Lainstar would feel betrayed or something of the sort. But, I’m confident that we will all just love each other and everyone will be happy. But really, I had to mention that Nova moved in because if I didn’t, I couldn’t tell you that…..

3. Nova’s dog Chin Chin eats cat poop. Or, he did eat cat poop until we put up boxes and decorative statuary to block him from it. Before we left, we upgraded to a baby gate that is much easier for the non quadrupeds to hurdle.

(Right now I’m imagining Nova frantically trying to call me to take this portion of the post down. She’s very protective of little baby Chin Chin and I could see how she wouldn’t want his good name sullied on the world wide web. But, Chin eating cat “fruit” is funny and the rule of the Blair household is “if it’s funny, it’s okay”. )

4. I have been off the internet sauce lately because Andy and I have been working like mad fiends for the past month because we wanted to buy a Jeep. We did. We bought one Monday night from two nice kids that are moving to Tucson, drove it into the garage, and flew into Chicago Tuesday morning. It’s probably not interesting to anyone other than us, but that’s our new ride pictured at the top.

5. One a more serious list note, my step-dad Bob is not doing well at all. It’s really a whole entry in itself so I won’t go into it but I will say that…

6. Because of my influence the really annoying, crazy live in care giver will be let go on Sunday. When we told Bob, he was ecstatic. Leelaa the Polish care giver (according to my mom) has been in the country for twenty years. She barely speaks English. She stands six inches into your personal space. She’s rough and methodical and laughs nervously while she hovers over and into conversations that she has no business being in saying things like, “Clean!? Clean!?” while pointing to things that she has cleaned. Or “Ohhhhhh, yesssssssss, yesssssss”, laughs and nods her head alot. Tuesday night we drove her into the city where she lived with some roommates. When we got close and were concentrating on finding the small green street signs in the dark, she began repeating street names that were not relevant “Milwaukee, Pulaski, Milwaukee, Pulaski,Milwaukee, Pulaski….” in a sing songy voice. We even turned the car around because she was grabbing the back of my chair and pointing in the other direction so violently. We drove for about a mile when the sing song became a more somber “Milwaukee, Pulaski” followed by a “Ohhhhhhhh, unnnhhhhhhh”, and then into a whisper, “Milwaukee, Pulaski”. I turned towards the back seat and said “directions” in a tone reserved for dogs that have been bad, and punctuated it with a tight flick of the mapquest print out towards her face.

Am I a bad person? Maybe. But I really, really wanted to throttle that woman.

dinner
Originally uploaded by cindigodotcom.

We were going to have salmon, but at the last minute everyone decided sushi sounded better. It was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever….even if it was grocery store sushi.

Driving down the 15, my friend Nova and I thought we were being shot at. She was screaming. I was screaming. Then I saw sparks coming from the rear wheel of a large truck that was driving next to us. Then, instead of screaming, I yelled, “IT’S THE TRUCK TIRE!” several times really fast. We didn’t crash. Then we laughed and continued driving to Starbucks.

I’ve been out in the real world and my time with mother internet has suffered. To update you all that were holding your breath, the faking of the gym membership documents worked like a charm. A charm I say. Actually, after everything was said and done, I realized that I could have just called them saying that I had already faxed the paperwork and they wouldn’t have checked. Yes, all you with baited breath I am no longer a member of Las Vegas Athletic Club, and a new member of 24 Hour Fitness.

TEN FIRSTS

First Best Friend: Hollie Luttrell. I think I’ve written about many of our crazy adventures. She lives in Pasadena now.

First Screen Name: Brainchild

First Pet: Edward the siamese cat. It was a funny, funny joke because my last name at the time was Edwards. Edward Edwards…..get it…..funny stuff. I’m assuming that my mom named him, but I’m not sure. He died under suspicious circumstances. My mother has always blamed the Chem Lawn people.

First Piercing: ears…boring, I know. But I was twelve, I mean what do you expect me to get pierced at twelve.

First Crush: Davy Jones from The Monkees.

First Record: Manhattan Transfer. Well, that’s the first record I bought. The first record I owned was Disco Mickey Mouse.

First Car: I inherited my mom’s 1987 grey four door Honda Accord. It was a pretty nice first car.

First Love: Andrew Blair, fourth grade. I peed on his microscope slide in the bathroom and then wouldn’t tell him what it was he was looking at.

First stuffed animal: A ragged pink dog bunny hybrid. It had a metal knob you could turn and it played music.

NINE LASTS

Last Alcoholic Beverage: A very weak screwdriver four hours ago.

Last Car ride: Driving home from “girls night”.

Last Movie Saw: The last half of Enough while sitting in this very purple puffy chair. It was bad, bad, bad.

Last Phone Call: I called Andrew Blair to profess my undying love. He was playing poker so my love is waiting to be professed.

Last CD Played: While packing my friends house to prepare for her move, we listened to Bjork. It was funny because one of the lines was “I won’t know what happens after this weekend” or something like that. She’s moving to Vegas Sunday, so, she’s not going to know what’s going to happen after this weekend. Very deep man…..very…..deep.

Last Bubble bath: I haven’t taken a bubble bath since I’ve been a kid. I’m not a big bath taker.

Last time you cried: Last month in the middle of my hormone induced binge of ice cream and pizza.

EIGHT HAVE YOU EVERS

Have you ever dated one of your best friends: I married him.

Have you ever had a sex dream about someone? Andrew Blair and ummm David Spade (not together!). But the David Spade thing is just weird, so lets pretend I never said that.

Have you ever been arrested? No.

Have you ever skinny dipped: Some friends and I crashed an apartment complex pool after drinking and went skinny dipping. It looked cool because the pool lights were on, it was pitch black, and there was steam rising from the water. Man, if only David Spade was there…..oops, did I say that outloud?

Have you ever been on TV: The back on my head was on CNN.

Have you ever kissed someone, and then regretted it? just myself.

Have you ever had sex? Define “sex”.

SEVEN THINGS YOU ARE WEARING

1. cotton pants from Banana Republic
3. Wedding ring
4. long sleeve cranberry colored t-shirt
5. black lucky brand black short sleeve t over the other one
6. cranberry and black crochet head thing

SIX THINGS YOU’VE DONE TODAY

1. watched American Top Model (It was girl’s night….I had to)
2. made and ate a salad
3. finished faking my documents to get out of my gym contract
4. helped to return $400 worth of merchandise to various stores
5. Ate three spicy tuna hand rolls
6. bought a pair of Diesel shoes that were on sale for $20

FIVE FAVORITE THINGS IN NO ORDER

1. Andrew Blair
2. my blankey
3. when my butt looks small
4. my fennel flavored Tom’s of Main toothpaste
5. sushi
(also, you could throw in Andrew Blair a few more times.)

THREE CHOICES

1. Black or White: Black
2. Hot or Cold: Hot
3. Chocolate or Vanilla: Vanilla (but Vanilla Bean, just so you know I’m a little edgy)

TWO THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE

Since I am immortal, this question is irrelevant.

ONE THING YOU REGRET

I wouldn’t say that I regret anything. If I had a wish, it might be that I would not have struggled so hard in my twenties to get to the fabulousness of today. Some people get their life lessons easier than others. I seem to have needed anvils dropped on my head for ten years or so.