go go gadget garden!

Everyone I know is going ga-ga over gardening this summer, in a major way. Seriously, even people whose husbands have lost their jobs and are living by the river are borrowing cell phones to call and boast about their squashes and whatnot. I'm not gonna lie, my fondness for eating is totally disproportionate to my interest in gardening. Oh well, I mean, I know many people whose verbosity is disproportionate to their grammatical prowess, and somehow, the world goes 'round.

But Todd's garden, which he planted in one day, is gaining serious notoriety amongst my family and friends. Right before he stopped working, he came home after a 14 hour shift and built a patio, the first thing our yard has had to be proud of since a monarch butterfly visited in 2003. We never spent that much time in our un-landscaped scourge of a property, but the patio changed everything. Not that my house isn't cozy and inviting, and that Todd and the kids aren't welcoming and behaved, but summer nights gabbing with friends outside has suddenly become a sensation. So yea for the patio:

Please note the extra large cinder block in the corner behind Quinn, the one on which I bashed my head two posts ago.

Now for the garden. The day after Todd whipped out this little slice of serenity, before coming in and whipping up dinner, he decided to plant a garden. I scarcely looked up from my book. "Okay." He came in after dark and explained that this row was gonna be...oops I totally forgot everything he said. He added that being off work, he felt it was wise to grow some of our own produce. With my only reference being the other gardens I've seen, we're either going to save 7 cents on produce or go on an all-meat diet. Call me a cynic.

Then this happened:

Jennifer came over the other night, despondent over her ailing grandfather, and as I prepared to listen and comfort her, she said, "Holt shit! I was just here and that garden is twice the size it was!"


The back forty, which used to be dirt.


I definitely know carrots...especially when there's a sign that says 'carrots.' And I am perfecting my fraudulent, knowing nod when people arrive to see me, and then dash past me as if I were a telephone pole exclaiming, "Oh my god! That's a rare African Duvalia Polita!" Of course it is, I nod, not knowing what the hell they're talking about.


This corn is taller than I am. Every time I pass it I hear "if you build it they will come," and expect Shoeless Joe Jackson to appear.


Blessed be grape tomatoes. Note the absence of any ripe ones...


The aforementioned squashes...guess they were worth hearing about after all.

So colour me impressed. And corrected. And let me know if you need 15 ears of corn in a hurry or three bags of beans. I am not, however, sharing my tomatoes, but you can sit on the patio with me and watch me eat them.

say hello, wave goodbye

A couple weeks ago at a park day, attended by an assortment of friends and strangers, and where I am often met with hugs and kisses by various little ones, I had just settled in and became immediately engrossed in a conversation with Deborah about something either brilliant or incomprehensible, or both. I can't remember.

As we impressed the hell out of ourselves by being so smart, one of the mine-ish little kids came and curled up in my lap. My response, without looking down, was to pet and cradle the tiny tot, whom I've known forever. There I sat, for twenty minutes, relishing the deluge of Deborah's witticisms, petting this kid, who has been in my lap no less than 5,000 times before. Then I looked down and saw a boy I have never met in my life. His head was turned, and he just stayed there, all curled up. This was rather odd, I thought.

"Hi. Who are you?"

"I'm Toby." (Head still turned.)

"I'm Cheyenne, do you know me?"

"No, but I wanted to sit on you."

"Okay, I'm really glad you did."

That's when he sat up and I realized why I assumed he was mine. Not -ish, but mine.

Toby looks exactly like Maia. Exactly. He is the same size, has the same impishness, sweetness, and he folded into my lap as though he'd been doing it his whole life.

Of COURSE due to the sun and weird angles, the resemblance isn't quite as pronounced in this picture, but he really does look like her.

This is Toby:


He is so incredibly sweet and so very intent on sitting in my lap. These are good things, because talking to him helped keep the magma of hatred from erupting out of my heart. I really enjoy Toby a lot, but no one could replace Maia.

I love you Maia, I'm sorry you're not allowed to remember.

seriously?

My eyeballs are basically rolling under the desk but I have to recount this most surreal, and oddly typical day of mine.

I went to bed at 5am, and set my alarm for 9am because my beloved Mesina was due to call at 9:30. Of course even as I leave my kitchen gleaming each night, by daybreak it's a war zone, so I scurried around and drank my protein shake, and then planned to take a shower. I might be the only female who shampoos, soaps, conditions and shaves (everyday) in 4.5 minutes, so I didn't anticipate a problem jumping in at 9:27. I'll be damned if Mesina didn't call at 9:28. Jesus. Really? So, since I had planned to do amazing things during our chat, including run to the store, I asked if she would call me back in five minutes. That wouldn't feel rude with any of you but she's British and somehow I felt as if I were asking her to loan me ten thousand quid. But of course she accommodated me.

We talked all about homeschooling, a possibility she now faces as epilepsy has rendered her a pedestrian indefinitely. I got dressed and dried my hair, and my skirt, with the fan, and just as she began to ask how I'm doing, as only Mesina can, she devised some excuse to hang up. (Kidding, it was legit.) She's calling me back in like three hours.

Off to Fred Meyer to haggle on an appliance, pick up donuts for the kids, grape tomatoes for myself, and figure out what to do with my day. Just then Deborah, who is two days post-op, texted to ask if today was good day to burn down, er, sort the playroom. The obvious answer is no, it is never a good day for that, but I told her to hang on. Then I made plans to drop something by Sam's, presumably en route to Deborah's. Genius, I know. But Todd called and said he needed me to drive him to Portland to retrieve the Jeep into which he has now officially put over 50 large. Um, he never asks me to do such things, and how could I say Deborah's playroom was more important?

Like this:

"But I told Deborah I'd clean her playroom." He was incredulous but understands I will wither away and die if I do not do everything expected of me at all times. Except for him, apparently. So he said he'd get it Monday with his friend Todd. (All his friends' names are Todd.) I took the donuts home to my kids, and felt like a total douche bag for flaking on him, but in true Todd fashion he was totally over it.

Off I went to Sam's. Back story: Need I say it? I love Sam. She's my oldest friend in Salem and the wisest person I know. Her life is exceedingly busy and harrowing so it's hard to plan visits but somehow, pulling up to her curb to hand her something turned into one of the most intense, soul-searching, soul-finding, profound four hour conversations in recent memory. I mean, she is deep, but she actually got her tool belt on and went inside my brain, then to my heart and before I knew it I was sobbing, with full-on snot and everything, for the first time in many months. Obviously I responded to this by trying to leave, but my cocksucking Jeep wouldn't start. God, it caught whatever Jeep Swine Flu Todd's Jeep has. I reached for my phone off the dashboard to discover that it was like peeling Laffy Taffy off a griddle, and it was deader than dead. This was awesome. Todd couldn't save me because I was a selfish bitch who left him stranded with no car. AAA was useless because where would I take my car at 6pm on a Friday? And worst of all, while Sam was hoisting me up a notch on the evolutionary totem pole, I totally neglected Deborah, and felt so horrible I knew one of us would have to die.

So I went in Sam's house, drank lemonade, apologized a lot, and blew on my phone, which finally lit up said "Device had to power down due to heat stroke" or something, but it was still all floppy and hot. I called Todd, and he tried to advise me, 22 texts came in, so I couldn't hear him, and in retaliation I went outside and tried the engine again. Miraculously it started, so Todd forbade me from going back to say goodbye, insisting instead that I pull some Y chromosome-only driving-with-the-brake-on method of getting home. This, for those of you who haven't done it, requires two feet, and your power comes from the brake, talking on a Laffy Taffy phone, yelling at Todd because I was too stupid to figure it out, because it was the most counter-intuitive sensation ever. I'm ambidextrous, which is great. Driving with two feet is the opposite of being ambidextrous. It's being non-dextrous. And you can't think, you can only drive. I had to make it down Cordon Rd. to our house. I had no choice but to become some Jesus-turned-Nascar-racer in order not to die. I immediately lurched 40 feet onto Cordon and narrowly escaped death, to which I responded by closing my eyes. Traffic on Fridays. Enough said. I hit two green lights, feeling pretty good, until an ambulance was screaming behind me and my options were to think with my feet or drive into a cornfield in order to maintain motion. Luckily I compromised and cruised the shoulder. Whew. Nine secons later another one came, faster, and two assholes in Toyota pick-ups were like playing chicken or something about pulling over so I was nearly T-Boned as I jerked along the shoulder. After they sped away (hopefully into a head-on collision with each other), and I had gone a precious mile, a motherfucking fire truck streaked by, so fast, no one could pull over, but I was able to kill the car. I could see my turn, but I accidentally began thinking and I knew I was going to live there forever, on the shoulder-ish. I prayed to the baby Jesus and got back on the road and eventually to my house (thank you baby Jesus), whereupon I shuffled into the house, stripped off my clothes, sobbed to Deborah for failing her, responded to Sam who thought I went insane and stormed away for some Cheyenne reason, sucked my thumb, and drank some diet Pepsi. Todd had made some splendid dinner with veggies from his garden wonderland (coming to a blog near you), and pork, which may even be from pigs out back. I don't know, it's his domain. Again, I asked the baby Jesus to grant me a wish. That the side dish would be mashed potatoes. I asked Reilly what our starch was. "Mashed potatoes. Do you want a plate?" Did I? I was so hungry. I was so confused I didn't know whether to eat with my right hand,left hand, or my feet.

Meanwhile, a new friend is experiencing a hellacious break-up and is torn to shreds, which translates into roughly 8,095 texts per minute. I got online to deal with some business, answered a few emails, and perused facebook solely to check out Janis Joplin video my mom sent me. Then, by happenstance, I ended up chatting with my mom's old friend Dyan from Newport. They worked at the Women's Violence Intervention Program and she was always so cool. Obviously at 16 I had no way of knowing I'd be her age in 2.5 seconds, and we chatted for hours. It was so awesome. I hate that some of my favourite people defected to Colorado (Gail, Dyan), and I have every intention of getting Mesina deported, filthy expatriate. I assaulted her with links (which I abhor when on the receiving end), and she loved everything, and my friend continued to fall apart and have panic attacks and ask me if "STOP TEXTING HER" could in any way be interpreted as, "Text her how sorry you are for the 255th time." Poor guy. He is so sweet and so sad. By the time I got done with Dyan, and had new buddy breathing for 15 seconds, I began thinking about some cloves a friend left here last night. By thinking I mean I would kill anyone who tried to stop me. I'm actually over them, but I could hear them and really felt tempted. Just then Jennifer texted to say, out of nowhere, "Do you by any chance want to smoke on your patio right now?" Obviously I asked her to marry me.

I went outside to wait for her. Having forgotten Todd's mention of one of the lawn chairs warping in the heat, of course I sat on it, and it collapsed, and I fell flat on my back, smashing my head against a cinder block I never noticed is the size of Stonehenge, with my broken coccyx stuck in the crook of the former chair, and completely unable to get up. I called Todd from my phone and he came out and had absolutely no idea how to get me up without further entangling me in this twisted heap of metal. Just as I thought I would live on Cordon Rd., so did I think I'd live on the patio, my head mashed into the cinder block, dented, wrapped up in this chair. The kids would grow used to it as would their friends, like an iron lung. Instead Todd, who always surprises me by being able to lift me, just grabbed me up. Sure enough the chair snapped and gashed my leg open from knee to ankle. God it was so excellent. He asked about stitches, but what care I for gaping bloody legs when I'm about to have my first, well, born again clove?

Jennifer came over and vented some of her grief about her poor grandfather and how some relatives are not being nice. I felt so sad for her. She is one strong, hard-working mom, and it kills me that she can't grieve simply, without needless bullshit. Then she got a much-anticipated call from her best friend and excused herself around 1:45am, and I came in wrote this blog.

Somehow, even though my Jeep never breaks down, I never cry, and I never fall backwards into the corner of a cinder block, I feel like this was a pretty typical day.

heroic women in the making...

Reilly wasn't about to let 106 measley degrees stop her from raking in the ribbons today, though I prayed all day she'd change her mind. As expected the turn out was considerably smaller than usual, but as luck would have it, everyone who did show up was a 9-10 year old girl, so Reilly still had to fight for her wins.

As always, high jump, followed by what is rapidly becoming a customary jaunt to the long jump, while she waits for her heat. She never returns happy from the long jump because, well, despite jumping two times her own length, she is the runt of the litter and can't hide her disdain for her fourth place ribbon, even when I point out that the other 62 kids over there got Participation ribbons.

Anyway, today there was a new girl, and she exuded fierceness from 100 yards away. She was in a formal looking practically neoprene suit with fancy shoes and she meant business. She cleared the pole with ease (though so did Reilly) and it became clear that she was our main contender.

When it came time to race, said superstar ran the 1,500 alone, while Reilly readied herself for the more popular races.

(Smooth segue)

Superstar's mom happened to lean against our risers and I couldn't help but ask her about her daughter's irrefutable excellence. She explained that she has been participating in triathlons since she was five, and since losing her dad to prostate cancer two months ago, she has taken up the cause nationwide, sponsored and trained by Lance Armstrong. She participates here simply to exercise, and her successes around the country have enabled her to donate literally millions of dollars to the American Cancer Society. Her name is Winter. (I had to ask her siblings' names--all boys--Magnum, Yukon, and Ruger.) I liked them already. Mom was explaining that Winter was a born competitor, often racing against adults, and she has a thriving website and basically all kinds of spectacular shit going on. And yet, despite her dedication to athleticism, she's a regular kid, who eats Fruity Pebbles (I asked) and she and Reilly talked about how Reilly shaves her legs while Winter does not. We explained Rei's natural aptitude for movement, speed, stamina, etc., citing her mind-blowing knack for rock climbing as an example. Dawn got excited and said they go to the same gym we do, and invited Reilly to join on Sundays. Man, that means I have to become a belayer in the next 2.5 seconds. But we were really excited. Somehow I can't see Reilly's life dream being an Ironman, as is Winter's, but Dawn was quick to point out that when she's not appearing on Rachael Ray's show (that's right), she likes to be a regular kid.

Winter is amazing. She has her own clothing line "Team Winter," speaks in front of hundreds of physicians, while presenting them with checks she earned one stroke, pedal, and step at a time, all to raise awareness for the cancer that took her dad. I look forward to getting to know them better. This is Winter:


But this is the girl who took home 1st place in the race. Again:

I'm just sayin. Reilly, you are my superstar!

Check out Winter:

a little bit of reilly in my life

Signs of my girl everywhere I look:


Reilly is more conservative with her affection than her brother but when it comes to her mama, she has an awareness of my needs which never ceases to amaze me. One night I came home late, everyone was sleeping, and I was greeted by my bed made beautifully, and this note.


Reilly doesn't always use her powers for altruistic purposes. Months ago she got scolded for something fairly minor, which led to a family discussion during which she would not talk no matter what. We were powerless, as Reilly has the strongest will of any human being on earth. We were sad that she reacted so severely to a minor infraction, and after our talk I found this note on my mirror. Ha ha ha! She'd kill me for posting it because she hates the handwriting, but, my blog, my prerogative.


The kids share a small room, so I have to give them some grace for cramped quarters, but I noticed this weird menage-a-trois the other day and had to capture it. Note the duct taped ear, the shades, the lei, pirate headband, the Rudolph getting, um, oh! Protected so he can guide Santa's sleigh? He's being mounted, who am I kidding. The whole scene is pretty suggestive, and while I am 100% certain Reilly has no idea these critters are doing anything but saving space, I kind of wanted to look away and give them some privacy.


Rei knows that rainbows make mama happy. Last week she sensed I needed a pick-me-up, so she painted this for me. Very uniform, with mod dots. She's incredible.


After my most recent surgery, feeling dopey, she brought me this Froot Loop rainbow. She is always thinking of me. (Melt.) Then I asked her to make me a bowl and I was even happier.


Reilly recently put "chap stick" on the grocery list, and I reminded her that I just bought ten lip balms from Carmela--far superior to anything sold commercially. I told her she could choose any flavour, for keeps. I was really afraid she'd take my only almond one, but she bested me and snatched one of my two prized, discontinued Obalmas. Ouch. But I couldn't deny her, and the next day I saw this. She must have sensed my sacrifice, lol.



She has wanted this quilt since we saw it online two years ago. I recently found it at Target. She keeps her bed very neat, but with stuffties hidden everywhere. This made me happy. Rainbows and order, what could possibly be better?



These are the ribbons Reilly has amassed in her very short experience with track and field. She took second in the high jump the first and second times she tried, as well as various races (they really work those kids!). Yesterday while waiting for her heat (high jump), she trotted over to try long jump, where she did amazing. I'm realizing she is the shortest nine year old competing. Very weird to have one giant and one runt. Anyway, she returned and threw her fifth place ribbon down, and nothing we said convinced her that fifth place out of about 50 kids is really fucking good when you've never done it before. Then it was time to race. The previous week she was sick so got one second and one participation, as she collapsed into my arms in the last 50m. This time signed up for the 100m, 200m and the 400m. For some reason, the 200m is the most anticipated, and all parents were on the sidelines. Quinn was all nerves watching her hunch down into position. They waved that flag and my tiny girl led the whole pack of much taller kids. A tone point toward the end a long boy was right at her neck and I screamed down the track as loud as I could "Push it Reilly, go go go! He's right there!" I have never seen such determination on her face. From where I stood, it was a photo finish, but a mom I had spoken to earlier, and whose ears I'm certain I ruptured, looked at me with thumbs up and said, "First!" Rei didn't believe it until we went to the ribbon booth and the guy found her blue ribbon and said loudly, "Reilly Fitzpatrick, first place!" People cheered. I was so proud. Our media card bit the dust so we haven't brought our camera, and my mom tried using her phone, but Rei was just a streak, lol. Anyway, I am so proud of her and just hope that now that's she's tasted first place, she still appreciates ribboning at all.



Reilly hates trainers, always has. We've tried, oh how we've tried. Nada. She prefers punky skate shoes, but mostly flip flops. After her first day at track Todd told her she had to get running shoes or else. And, thanks to the added coup of finding days of the week socks, she is the proud owner/wearer of these very shoes, which led her to the most thrilling victory in documented history.

To my baby girl, I hope you always love rainbows, keep your bed neat, and know that you always come in first with us. Well, in a tie with Quinn of course. Also, if your stuffties get more risque` I will have to banish them, or have the talk. I love you baby, never change.

quinn in pictures

Things around the house that characterize my growing boy:



We are very fortunate that lying is not one of the issues we typically face with Quinn and Reilly. Thus, I have displayed this note prominently for eight years. When Quinn was three and a half, he asked me for something, which escapes me, and I said no. (Parish the thought.) To my surprise, Quinn made his way outside where Todd was, and returned bearing this note. You see, he couldn't bring himself to lie out loud, lol. I was so taken aback by the gall, the misspelling (which embarrasses him to this day), the gorgeous penmanship, and his face as he sheepishly handed it to me. I did not punish him, I laughed until I cried, took the note outside, showed Todd, who doubled over, laughing until he wheezed, and we basically celebrated the awesomeness of our clever, sweet son, and his first, and basically only, foray into the dark netherworld of deceit. And no, he didn't get whatever it was.



A precious Valentines card Quinn bought on his own for his sister. His willingness to express affection freely is one of my favourite qualities of his.



This has been Quinn's towel for four years. It's like seven feet long, with a grid. It's a spa towel. We also have it in white, but he only uses the green one. Thankfully we stay on top of the laundry, so it's available 99% of the time. Meanwhile, I prefer tiny, old, scrubby rag-type towels. To each his own. I'm sure it's going to college with him.



When he's not enjoying the finer, plush things in life, Quinn is busy toting things like this to his friend Israel's house. This is a gun (duh) constructed out of a vacuum hose by my brother Chris, exclusively for Quinn. I'm very un-PC in that I don't try to banish gun play, and I love to think of Quinn learning how to make such things, and impressing his friends with his custom-made implement of death!



Gun-toting thug though he may be, he is very particular about his hair. He currently uses approximately seven gallons of my $16.99 hairspray everyday. I rue the day we gave him control of his hair.



I love the Willow Tree figurines, and had two of them for a long time, but I don't collect things because of a statement in 1990 wherein I express a fondness for an elephant in my aunt's home, and spent the next 15 years receiving every type of elephant everyone I knew could get their hands on. Anyway, two christmases ago, he hitched a ride with my mom, shelled out his very own clams (my kids insist on buying presents with their own money), and presented me with Heart Boy. It was the sweetest thing I'd ever seen, and I bawled and bawled. It looks like my Quinny, and as he said, it's holding the heart we share.



I am militant about keeping our big bookshelf clean and clutter-free, but due to limited space, I granted Quinn's request to keep his wallet, watch, iPod and however many coveted booklights he can hoard in this box on the bookshelf. As charming as it is that he has stuff, it's also a sign that he's growing up, and I'd like him to slow down.

I couldn't find the book he's reading, but this is his essence. Sweetness, luxury, a healthy dose of simulated violence, and attentiveness to hygiene and using all my hairspray. I don't know what I'd do without Quinn.

goodbye o'clock

In the random sentimental attachment category, which frankly, is bursting at the seams, I must finally throw out an old relic from my childhood, and felt a proper send-off was in order.

I bought this alarm clock when I 13, when Sprouse Reitz (gag!) was going out of business in Newport in 1990 and we went to peruse the off-brand disgusting crap.


This clock got me through eighth grade, all of high school, zero period AP classes, a full time job, 4am Street Law competitions, where I totally kicked ass, and that snooze button was my saviour.

Later on, this surprisingly trusty Sprouse Reitz clock got us to the hospital in time to be induced with Reilly, got Todd off to jobs that started at the most ungodly hours, got us on the road early for long trips, and everything in between.

A few years ago, when my dad was dying, it kept me on a regular schedule of caring for him, and it got me to all functions fun and not so.

It finally just petered out, after 19 years of dutiful service. Mostly, I cannot believe I've owned and used something for 19 years. There is no denying I am really getting old.

Todd bought this new high falutin clock, which I'm sure is plenty wonderful, but I was surprisingly attached to mine and have snubbed this one for the most part.


I know it's silly, but 19 years! It's okay though, I am seriously ready for better times...

apostrotastrophe

During a recent perusal of one our favourite haunts, Old Navy, Quinn, who has actually grown to hate the place, and holds his breath when we pass the mall, in in effort to keep us from pulling in, spotted a t-shirt he had to have. It features a red foam finger, something we had just talked about as we watched Jon & Kate (yes we watch, we love, we are deaf to your criticisms) and their foam-fingered brood. The shirt said "#1 fan Mom's." I told Quinn he could get it but upon subsequent inspection I became outraged by the apostrophe, assuming the shirt's message was that "I am the #1 fan of moms," as in plural moms? Moms in general. I was utterly dismayed and told Quinn he could not have the shirt. In fact, where is management? He said he really wanted it, the apostrophe, while misplaced, was small, and the over all sentiment was really important to him. Ugh. I told him I was colouring over the offending punctuation the instant we got home, because my OCD would sooner kill me than allow my child to brandish an errant apostrophe. Well, it just so happens, Quinn has quirks of his own, and taking a Sharpie to his new shirt is one of them. Simple. I made it the condition of the purchase and he had no choice. So we get home, he dons the shirt, I take a picture to show everyone I know, and whip out my Sharpie. Quinn winced, as if to say, "Must you?" And I coloured furiously. "I must."

This is the shirt, in its shame:


Mom's effort to erase the evidence of apostrophe ignorance:


No sooner had I made the world a better place did I realize the mistake, was, um, mine. I suddenly became aware of what the shirt was actually trying to say, which is "Mom's #1 fan," and could also have been read as, "#1 fan of Mom's," both quite correct. In fact, I really have no idea how I came to read the shirt as being wrong in the first place. Somehow I really thought the "Moms" was plural, thereby rendering an apostrophe offensively out of place. But the instant I "fixed" the shirt, it all became clear, and I had, in essence, ruined it. Now "Moms" has to be plural, which will be counter-intuitive when reading the shirt. I don't blame myself though, I mean, who prints sentence fragments on foam finger t-shirts and expects everyone to get it? Least of all me, the ultimate Grammar Nazi.

Let this be a lesson in Old Navy fever, a phenomenon wherein prolonged exposure to the lights, the colours, some good, some bad, two trips to the dressing room, and gift cards burning holes in your purse result in spontaneous illiteracy and half hour contemplation of such things as faded denim jackets that would even make the Indigo Girls cry.

So please, if you're ever going to write me a letter, don't do it on a foam finger.

right now i am grateful for:

My amazing, indescribable, beautiful, healthy children, who love me so unconditionally I am humbled everyday. They make me laugh, they enthrall me with insights one could never imagine in beings so young, they tell me they love me ten times a day, they take care of me if I'm sick, write me precious notes, and damn they're getting good at cleaning!

My mother lion. Enough said.

Todd, hands-down the best father I've ever known, one hell of a provider, a gracious friend, and thankfully, a willing and capable cook.

Friends who are so fantastic I've gotten home two nights in a row as the sun was coming up because they are just.that.great. Friends who will stand beside me in an ambush, make sense of the truly senseless, listen without prejudice, and continue to offer the ever-elusive perspective.

Red bell peppers, my favourite food. (Note: A green bell pepper is not the same, I am eating one now, and am sorely disappointed.)

Meeting new people.

Dasani water (1 ltr.) bottles being on sale for 99 cents.

Truth, as it is in such short supply.

Sharpie gluttony. Good god.

Sam. I know I said friends but she's in a league of her own. There are no words.

Mesina. She's in her own league as well, but abroad. In a few short weeks I will have loved you for 20 years (holy shit!), and I will continue to do so well past eternity.

I mean, Kirkland wipes, obviously.

New activities, new scenery.

Being asked by someone I just met "How did you learn to speak so well?"

Seeing the words "President Obama" every morning.

Elyse hugging me, "Cheyemme."

Visits on the patio.

Being on a run of excellent books.

Nordstrom's liberal return policy.

Love in unexpected places.

Santa Cruz Limeade.

Music. What I salvaged from the wreckage.

Brainless television, because shit, I can't be all reasonable and philosophical 24 hours a day.

The soy yogurts that do not taste like shit.

Scott.

Three-tiered hangers.

Freedom.

Knowing everything that I know, regardless of how I came to know it, even the things that felt like they might kill me.

some people are just this way:

EGO-DEFENSIVE REACTION FORMATION:

In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency.[1][2]

Reaction formation depends on the hypothesis that

"[t]he instincts and their derivatives may be arranged as pairs of opposites: life versus death, construction versus destruction, action versus passivity, dominance versus submission, and so forth. When one of the instincts produces anxiety by exerting pressure on the ego either directly or by way of the superego, the ego may try to sidetrack the offending impulse by concentrating upon its opposite. For example, if feelings of hate towards another person make one anxious, the ego can facilitate the flow of love in order to conceal the hostility."[3]

Where reaction-formation takes place, it is usually assumed that the original, rejected impulse does not vanish, but persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form.[2] Thus, where love is experienced as a reaction formation against hate, we cannot say that love is substituted for hate, because the original aggressive feelings still exist underneath the affectionate exterior which merely masks the hate to hide it from awareness.[3]

In a diagnostic setting, the existence of a reaction-formation rather than a 'simple' emotion would be suspected where exaggeration, compulsiveness and inflexibility were observed. For example,

"[r]eactive love protests too much; it is overdone, extravagant, showy, and affected. It is counterfeit, and [...] is usually easily detected. Another feature of a reaction formation is its compulsiveness. A person who is defending himself against anxiety cannot deviate from expressing the opposite of what he really feels. His love, for instance, is not flexible. It cannot adapt itself to changing circumstances as genuine emotions do; rather it must be constantly on display as if any failure to exhibit it would cause the contrary feeling to come to the service.[3]

Reaction formation is sometimes described as one of the most difficult defenses for lay people to understand;[1] this testifies not merely to its effectiveness as a disguise, but also to its ubiquity and flexibility as a defense that can be utilized in many forms. For example,

"solicitude may be a reaction-formation against cruelty, cleanliness against coprophilia",[2]

and it is not unknown for an analyst to explain a client's unconditional pacifism as a reaction formation against their sadism. In addition,

"[h]igh ideals of virtue and goodness may be reaction formations against primitive object cathexes rather than realistic values which are capable of being lived up to. Romantic notions of chastity and purity may mask crude sexual desires, altruism may hide selfishness, and piety may conceal sinfulness."[3]

Even more counter-intuitively, according to this model

"[a] phobia is an example of a reaction formation. The person wants what he fears. He is not afraid of the object;he is afraid of the wish for the object. The reactive fear prevents the dreaded wish from being fulfilled.[3]

The concept of reaction formation has been used to explain responses to external threats as well as internal anxieties. In the phenomenon described as Stockholm Syndrome, a hostage or kidnap victim 'falls in love' with the feared and hated person who has complete power over them. Similarly paradoxical reports exist of powerless and vulnerable inmates of Nazi camps creating 'favourites' among the guards and even collecting objects discarded by them.

The mechanism of reaction formation is often characteristic of obsessional neuroses. When this mechanism is overused, especially during the formation of the ego, it can become a permanent character trait. This is often seen in those with obsessional character and obsessive personality disorders. This does not imply that its periodic usage is always obsessional, but that it can lead to obsessional behavior.

-As familiar as an old blanket...with poisonous thorns stuck in it.

The good news is, unlike other plagues, you can ignore this one and it will go away...unfortunately, to ruin the lives of others instead.