Because it’s been far too long since you questioned my sanity.

<rambling post of awesomeness>

I have had way too much fun lately. In fact, I told John that I was pretty sure I’m going to die soon and this is The Universe’s way of saying, “Oh, hey, sorry about that…” ahead of time. A lot of times The Universe is a total dickhead, but I can imagine that maybe sometimes it gets bummed out about what a shit it is and tries to be cool to you to make up for it.

It’s kind of like how I pretend to be nice to John every once in a while when I realize I’ve been a total hole for months on end. Cause, you know, a few hours of not actually saying anything derogatory and smiling a lot can make up for endless weeks of torture and passive aggressive quips blended with just out and out aggressive combativeness and demanding, controlling, and manipulative domestic behavior.

God help him if he complains though; then I’m all, “DO YOU NOT REMEMBER THE TIME THAT I HANDED YOU A NAPKIN WHEN YOUR FACE WAS DIRTY? I BLEED FOR YOU, INGRATE.”

Or something. But, basically, I know not to push The Universe and all, because it’s just doing the best it can, damnit. Ya dig?

So. Yeah. The Universe is clearly trying to be nice to me because it feels bad about my impending doom.

Either that or it is going to plan such a fiery, explosive and painful ending for me that getting me all complacent and mellow first will make things that much funnier for the bastard when it all goes down.  The Universe is probably sitting in a dark room rubbing his hands together, and he’s all, “This stupid bitch has NO IDEA what’s in store for her, man.  It.is.going.to.be.EPIC.  I am totally going to photograph the look on her face and Twitpic it when she gets hers. MUAHAHAHAH.”

Um. Wow, The Universe just went from being a maybe, kind-of dickhead to a completely sadistic psychopath in my mind. I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve been into the caffeine again. Also the wine. Maybe a little of the blow powdered sugar.

What the hell was the point of this post? Oh, yeah. I’ve been having fun lately – making new friends in our neighborhood, going out with girls I actually like, and generally, well, not being locked in my house like a socially inept, loser ho-bag.

That is, I’ve been pretending I’m not a socially inept, loser ho-bag, and nobody is on to the deception yet, so clearly I am up for the next Academy Award. (note to self: do not marry Jesse James any time soon)

Last Wednesday, in another installment of Happy Fun Times I Should Feel Guilty About (don’t worry, I got mine) I went to an Open House at Beleza Medspa with some lady friends: Blythe (Aka @Bejewell) and Leigh. We needed to learn about ways you can change what nature does to your body, and instead, make it all fake and HOT.

Apparently, Blythe and Leigh were getting drunk for free while they were waiting for me to arrive late (people start drinking to cope with the fact that they miss me, I’m that awesome) (either that or they drink to cope with the fact that I’m about to arrive) and once I got there, we went to a back room to find out about the process of having your facial skin turned from haggarific to Goddess Sheen of Awesometasticness.

This process is also known, to lesser degree, as Let’s Burn Your Ugly Face Off. You’ll only have to hide in a cave for about 4-6 days while all the skin flakes off as if you have some horrible and contagious disease. But after that? YOU WILL BE BEAUTIFUL. It’s a metamorphosis. You have to let your inner butterfly out… by KILLING THE SHIT OUT OF THAT CATERPILLAR we like to call your real face.

I kind of started getting scared as we were led down a hallway to a back room. Partly because we were walking in the opposite direction of the free wine, but also because I was worried about what was really about to happen. What if we ended up in a deep well being told “it puts the lotion on its skin?” IS THIS HOW THEY REALLY GET THE NEW SKIN THEY PROMISE TO PEOPLE?

It turns out we were just going to hang out with Nathan in a small room, drink, act like complete morons and listen to him tell us about all the products he could sell to us that are totally made of Fairy Dust and Unicorn Shit, and will therefore MAGICALLY MAKE YOU PRETTY. The before and after photos were really impressive, especially the one where the woman was definitely dead in the before photo and was just about to receive the crown for Miss America in the after photo.

What I’m saying is that this stuff that comes in a 1oz bottle and costs only slightly more than a new car (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating JUST A LITTLE BIT) will totally bring you back from the dead.

I bet Jesus used it. I mean, have you seen photos of him? His skin was far too lovely for a 30 something who was out in the raging sun without SPF all the time. Also, you know damn well that he was wearing color contacts – blue eyes, MY ASS. Easter should really be celebrated by rubbing expensive liquid shit on your face. (Or hiding colored eggs, maybe, because we all understand how that has anything to do with Jesus.)

*blank stare*

After we annoyed Nathan for some time by making sex jokes, asking if he could just make us pretty and skip all the intelligent, scientific explanations and photos, and just all around being obnoxiously hilarious, Nathan rubbed random products on us. I’m not sure exactly why, maybe to prove that it wouldn’t melt our skin on contact? We giggled a lot and then smelled it. Don’t you smell everything that a strange man rubs on your skin in the back room of a place where they ply you with alcohol and ask you for your personal information the moment you arrive? No?

Well, I don’t get you at all.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that we were the most awesome people who were there that night, as evidenced by:

• our inability to just listen to Nathan, rather, interrupting every few seconds to make drunken jokes
• Blythe making her fingers kiss and say “I do” when Nathan put eye cream on them
• Leigh commenting about the hookers we were going to pick up later (what?)
• my responding to Nathan’s question about our lifestyle habits by saying (in a very charming manner, I’ll have you know) “I don’t smoke, my diet is good, I use SPF, but I drink LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER!!!, is that bad?”
• the fact that we considered just shoving the product in our purses and RUNNING LIKE HELL
• our inability to get more than 2 feet away from the place without loudly proclaiming over the Size XXL lips on Mega Procedures Woman (I may have thrown up in my mouth a little. I mean, really, your lips are NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE LARGER THAN YOUR ASS.)

Of course, then we went to a restaurant and ordered more drinks, because we were clearly far too sober to exist and more alcohol was necessary. Of course, just as we were all having the best time EVER I got this image as a text message from John:

at which time I immediately starting crying right into the nachos and possibly Blythe’s Margarita as well. There may have been snot on the fried green beans when it was all over. In case you were wondering, being notified of your child bashing his head apart all over your favorite Chik-Fil-A is just about the best way you can SOBER YOUR ASS RIGHT UP.

Leigh was all, “Uh, uh, I have to go pee!” and almost knocked the table over as she ran uncomfortably away, and Blythe was mostly like, “OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. OH. MY. GOD.” Later, we all decided that John was a total shit for sending me that image with no text attached, and we all plotted his death.

[Watch your back, dude. These bitches don't play.]

Have I mentioned that I love Blythe and Leigh? No? Well, I do. They’re beyond awesome.

As we were leaving the restaurant, Blythe was all “I know you bitches are tipsy, neither of you has any kind of sense of direction, and you don’t really know where you are, but I hope you get home somehow, love ya, mean it” and dumped us in the parking lot and took off laughing. I was totally feeling like I might want to marry her right in that moment, and I’m sure you can understand those deep feelings.

And when Leigh was taking me home and suddenly said, “OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT, A PEACOCK?!” I knew that she is just classy enough to be my new crush. (But yes, it was a fucking peacock. Have I not told you about the peacocks that live right by us? No? Well, guess what. Peacocks. Right across the street. And they are LOUD. There. Now you know.)

I am a little pissed off, in retrospect, because the whole reason I went to Burn Your Facial Skin Off So You Can Be Prettier Palace was so I could learn about having lasers shot at my armpits and vaginal area. And NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT LASER BOMBING MY HAYHAY.

Totally robbed.

So, in summation:

• The Universe is a dick but at least it throws you a bone every now and then.
• The Universe is a dick and it will smash your kid’s head in while you’re having fun.
• Your lips should never be larger than your ass. NO, REALLY. (If they are, I DEMAND you start sitting on your face.)
• My cooter is still in need of laser action.
• Jesus wore color contacts and used skin care products.
• My blood is probably at least 90 Proof.
• John should really be sleeping with his pistol under his pillow.
• Blythe and Leigh = awesome and I might have sex with them some day while a peacock watches.

So, how have you all been lately?

</rambling post of awesomeness>

photo credit: Dan Kamminga / CC2.0

chocolate happiness

His very first cone of ice cream to eat all on his own was a waffle cone bigger than his head. He loved it deeply.

It loved him back. They became one in a melty explosion of chocolate toddler happiness.

You just can’t stand in the way of a love so deep (and sticky) as this – you just put it outside, watch the sweet carnage unfold, laugh and take lots of photos.

Mark it down on the list of fun stuff I’ll miss witnessing one day.

my, how the time does pass

one moment i was looking at this:

and i seem to have blinked.

the very next moment, i opened my eyes upon this:

and that is both intensely beautiful and horribly frightening to me.

On running. And, um, muscle strength.

Did you know that RUNNING! is awesome?  It is.  RUNNING! is fun and exhilarating and it tones your body and makes you feel alive.  RUNNING! makes you float on a layer of endorphins called Awesomeness Coated in Hell Yes every time you do it.  You do a lot of RUNNING! when you’re training for a 5K.

So, what happens when you’ve started training for a 5K and then it gets ass-shattering cold outside, so you start going to the gym with an indoor track to continue your training?

Well, apparently, if you’re using my body, you get a sweet-ass case of shin splints in your left leg, but you keep running on it because you’re a bonafide dumbass. Then, when it starts hurting like the hurtiest hurty thing in Hurtville, you do some research and find out that shin splints are not uncommon in new runners, especially when using an indoor track that has stupid, shitty, short turns (yes, like the one you started using when it got cold because you’re a whiny pansy-ass).  SO, YAY – CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE SHIN SPLINTS!

You employ R.I.C.E therapy like a good, little idiot person who should have done that right away instead of running on the injury, but has now seen the light.  You rest, ice, compress, elevate.  In fact, to also ‘medicate’ the severe disappointment caused by having to stop RUNNING! you take it to a whole notha level, and you throw down some R.A.I.A.C.A.E.A therapy.  (All together now, A is for “apple” and “airplane” and “ALCOHOL”)

After a couple of weeks, EUREKA! your leg is healed.  To make sure you don’t get too damn happy for too long, you run on it for a week, but then do some stupid exercises one day at home without shoes on after you’ve already run that day, and don’t stretch/cool down when you’re done because your child wakes up from a nap and he’s screaming like a banshee with a porcupine that’s been set on fire shoved up its anus, so you just bolt up the stairs like your life depends on it mid-stupid exercises.  (Let’s be totally clear here, it was obviously the kid’s fault. Jerk.)

Later, you realize that you were mistaken before.  The shin splint was definitely not the hurtiest hurty thing in Hurtville.  It was clearly only a slighty painy pain that lived somewhere outside of Painstoria.  THIS CALF STRAIN IN YOUR RIGHT LEG IS THE REAL HURTIEST HURTY THING IN HURTVILLE.

And it’s on vacation ALL UP IN YO BIZNASS.

So you limp around like you’ve been Kerriganed for over a week. (Again employing a massive dose of R.A.I.A.C.A.E.A therapy, because this is what professionals like you do.  You?  Are a master at physical therapy. And stuff that requires you to drink alcohol.)

Finally, oh finally, you are healed.

And so excited to start RUNNING! again.

So then you go RUNNING! again because RUNNING! was making you feel so good and so happy and heralding all kinds of gold glitter and rainbows from your rectumular area oh so many weeks ago when you were doing it regularly.

And you know what? RUNNING! is still awesome.

But you are not.  Because YOU LOST YO GROOVE while you were all up in some R.A.I.A.C.A.E.A Therapy at the Bar in Hurtville/Painstoria for weeks on end.

I’ve got some news for you.  Now you have to work back up to the same level of endurance you had before, and oh hell yes, you will.  Don’t you doubt that, because you’ve been there before, and you plan on kicking super ass and getting there again in short time.  In fact, the bursting feeling in your chest can just GO HOME TO ITS MOMMA, because you are completing every damn interval of every damn train, pushing through the sucktastical feeling of weakness,  and you will NOT give up.

You? WILL BE TRIUMPHANT ONCE MORE. Hell, you’re already well on your way as we speak!

However, during your return to triumph, while you’re doing your warmup mile one day, you do think that it would be awesome to do two sets of 50 jumping jacks at 1/4m and 3/4m, and you know what?

You could have been using all that time you spent sitting on your ass with your compressed, iced legs elevated while you sucked down booze and healed doing something you could have really benefited from.

SOME DAMN KEGELS.

Stupid jumping jacks.

I could always shave my head, get a penis tattoed on it, and be a real dickhead.

I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my hair after some of the pictures I’ve posted recently, and that makes me feel good about myself (thank you!). But it also kind of makes me feel like a jerk, because:

• I’m horrible at taking compliments and
• those photos were taken after I made a special effort to look nice.

So, I actually took a shower and then did something other than give my hair the finger in the mirror and walk away. Hair styling products were definitely involved, as was a blow dryer, and maybe some praying and/or cursing. (I hate spending time on my hair.) I may or may not have duct taped my son to the closet door so he wouldn’t get into trouble while I was preening.

I’m actually extra sensitive about my hair right now, because it’s been falling out fairly badly for many months, which means I actually have to put effort into making it look nice. Of course, you are probably scoffing at me right now because it certainly doesn’t *look* like my hair is falling out badly.

If you’re unsure, you can ask my husband and he can relate to you how he’s had to pull a hamster sized ball of my hair out of the drain on any occasion that he’s showered after I did. He might tell you that there’s hair in his food often. (Unless he hasn’t noticed, in which case, oops, my bad, honey… uh, I was just kidding!) He wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about our vacuum cleaner because he can hardly pronounce vacuum cleaner, much less use one, but I can tell you that I have to *cut* the hair off the rotating brush every time I want to use it. There are strands of my hair everywhere, and it’s driving me insane.

I pulled my hair up into a ponytail before a workout the other day and, at my left temple, I could see my scalp through my hair there, because it has gotten thin enough for that. If I did not draw your attention to it, though, you’d never notice. Not yet. But I notice all the ways that I can see my scalp all of a sudden that never occurred before. Like when I get out of the shower and my part falls in a weird way after I towel dry.

Most days I do still look totally fine.  (Even if my hair may not look quite as nice as in some of the photos I’ve recently posted.)

But what bothers me is what I don’t show off in photos online.

This (what you see in the photos) may not seem abnormal (I assume) to some, but I’ve always had enough hair that you couldn’t see spots of scalp like this. You just couldn’t. It’s the *change* that bothers me.

Now, I’m not trying to cry and whine and solicit attention here. My hair is still far more than passing for normal because I’ve always had an insanely high number of hair strands. Every hair stylist I’ve ever had has remarked on this, as well as how fast my hair grows. If, however, I’d started off with thin hair, I shudder to think what I’d look like by now. I can still give special care and make sure it looks nice.

What worries me is that there must be some underlying cause, because this has yet to stop or slow down, and eventually, no matter how much hair I started with, this is going to look bad. Yes, it’s vain, but it’s also just the truth that hair matters. And I don’t want mine to fall out.

To make sure the recent hair loss wasn’t caused by a drastic change in my thyroid condition, I’ve had recent thyroid panels done, and even an ultrasound to make sure there aren’t any cancerous nodules on my massive and ultra sexy goiter. The scan showed that yes, my thyroid is still large and in charge, and I do have nodules (knew that already) but they don’t appear cancerous. The bloodwork laughs in my face, saying, “Your hormone levels are normal!”

What’s fun about Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (your body has antibodies against your own thyroid and attacks it regularly) is that you can have “normal” hormone counts and still suffer symptoms, which apparently, doctors are unsure of how to treat. In fact, my experience is that a hormone imbalance is the only thing they know how to treat – you’re on your own with the rest of it.

So now I’m stuck with having to go pay out of pocket to another doctor, listing symptoms and seeing whether there is another underlying problem that could cause them. And that makes me feel tired and kind of like breaking things.

But that’s life, right? If you don’t find the answers you need behind one door, you just have to keep opening them until you find the right one to walk through.

So here I go, about to seek out the next door, hoping again that the knob doesn’t break off in my hand and that no one slams it in my face. And preparing myself if it’s just the first of many more I’ll need to open.

It would be nice if all of this weren’t so expensive. I’m hoping that along the way, one of the doors I yank open leads to a Money Tree Plantation.

If so, I’ll grab a few extra seedlings for you guys, promise.

Running from my problems. Literally.

Some of you may remember the post waaaaay earlier this year where I admitted to you something that really was no surprise, considering I have mentioned how gross and lazy I have been on a regular basis.  Yeah, I’m talking about the one where I basically said, “I smell like forty ripe asses rotting in the sun.  Oh, and I have fat rolls that have fat rolls and their fat rolls are bigger than their fat rolls’ fat rolls.”  I’m not sure if that even makes any sense, but I wrote it out anyway, because I like the way it sounds.  You do too, you just don’t know it.

The point is that I had gained quite a bit of weight (enough to aggravate my joints and make my fat pants tight on me) and I wasn’t caring enough about myself to bathe regularly.  Unless you’d say once every week or two is regularly.  I guess it is, since I regularly waited that long to scrape the accumulated layers of sediment off of my body. (I swear I found a tiny, fossilized animal in one of the layers once. It was from the Cretaceous Time Period. I’d be rich if I hadn’t dropped it down the drain.)

By May, I was carrying a good amount of weight…

By the end of May, I was sick of myself.  I made a lot of changes (that really needed to be made) and turned my life onto a healthier track again.  Instead of drinking the local liquor store and grocery beer aisles dry practically every other day, I stopped drinking entirely for a whole month.

I hated every fucking one of you bitches that talked about drinking on Twitter during that time.  I wanted to stab you in the face.

Hahaha, just kidding!

No, really.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, in all honesty.  And during that month, I dropped junk food and excessive carbs, as well as late night eating.  You know what else?  I started moving.  And I had some support: people who motivated me by talking to me about what they were doing, listening to what I was doing, and just being there.  They lifted me up when I was dragging, and they celebrated my successes with me when I was floating.  That kind of support from friends is instrumental for me.  Thank you so much Leslie, Haley, & Karen.   I got my ass in gear and I started doing The Shred – downloaded it right to my computer and did it almost every day.  I added in some Yoga, too.

And the real killer for me?  I went to bed at a decent hour more often than not.  It was like a sign of the Apocalypse.  Or flying pigs.  Or that monkeys streaming out of your butt thing.

But mostly, it was a whole heap of positive change in my life that both cleared my head and dropped pounds of fat off of my body.

I lost 15 lbs in just a couple of months.

Then I started traveling.  Oy!  Chicago first, then NC, and before I knew it I was drinking and eating excessively again, and not exercising.  And sleeping? Hah, what was that?  I was up into the wee hours again.  For some reason, I love the wee hours.

I was still making half-assed efforts to exercise once I got back home, but it wasn’t adding up because I was being really inconsistent, and the other bad habits were still hanging on, blossoming even.

By mid-September, I was saying, “hello again!” to the last 8lbs I had dropped.  (And by “hello again” I mean, “awwww, shit, you again? Damn.”)

But I was in a funk.  The sloth in me was in charge.

By mid-October I had reached a point again where I realized this crappy way of whipping myself back and forth has got to stop.

I called on the cavalry again:  I’ve got Haley, Leslie, and now Mishi motivating me in a Skype chat regularly (thank you, ladies! I love you.).  And I’m trying this novel concept: moderation!

I cut way back on drinking, but I still have one drink most nights.  Junk food is out again, and healthy food is in.  But “cheats?”  Oh yeah, they’re around about once a week.

I’m *trying* to go to bed at a decent hour (most nights, and sometimes I’m actually successful) and I’m moving again.  I’ve been doing different things to keep it fresh -  Shred, Yoga, Dance, Walking.  I’ve lost that ugly 8 I gained back, and then some.  I’m feeling better again… lighter, smoother, and quicker.

Just this week, I started pushing myself to jog and run.

And then a little birdie named Leslie got on my proverbial shoulder and whispered in my Skype Chat ear: “Fiiiiive Kaaaaaay?”

And I said, “What, me? Surely not.”

But later in the day I said, “Why not? I can do that.  I am *going* to do that.”

And that’s where I am right now.  In total, I’m down 21lbs (and counting!) from my May 09 top weight, and I’ve built some muscle.  It’s time to tone, train, and build endurance.  I have a plan, some tools, and at least one friend to do this with.  I’m about to bust crazy and go for something I’ve never attempted before.

And I’m not talking about going one whole day without saying, “fuckbuckles!” (What, you don’t say that every day?)

It’s time to train for a 5K, my friends.

I plan on leaving a little piece of my funk behind me with every step.

Time-traveling in my mind.

At first I think that surely I can’t remember something from such a long time ago. I mean, if I were trying to call on a specific, dramatic memory, I’d have more confidence in my ability, but this? I’m doubting I’ll reel in anything of describable value when I cast my line into what have become the murky and age muddled waters of my memory.

Elementary school lunch wasn’t important, it was just another thing that happened every day, in the same place, with the same people. I don’t need that information anymore. It has to have been crowded out by important things, I think. But instead of fishing a boot or an old tire out of those polluted waters, when I close my eyes I see into my mind, as if through the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean. It is almost like I am actually standing outside that cafeteria, looking in through the rectangular windows at rows and rows of tables, each one lined with chattering children.

Then suddenly, I’m not standing outside the windows anymore. In a flash, I’m inside the room where the ambient noise rises ferociously with the spark of my transition. Utensils scrape across and smack into plastic, segmented tray plates that clink against one another and slide along table tops and counters in search of final resting places. Chairs scratch the floor both meeting and departing table tops, as diners come and go. Bags, books, and other items thump and bump as they drop into waiting places, becoming items of secondary importance now that the task at hand is eating, socializing.

Above and beyond these sounds there are the types of audible events that come only from the mouths of humans: talking, laughing, yelling. The majority of this is of the child variety, mostly high-pitched, squeaky, and giggly. Most of the yelling is happy, jovial, prankish. Occasionally, there’s an angry yelp or an adult admonition. The overarching effect of the mingled, youthful voices in all of their utterances is a feeling of busyness, of pleasant fellowship and mirth.

I feel, in my mind, as if I’m standing there, having entered suddenly, but still separate from all of this, just taking it in with my eyes closed. But the deeper I go, the more I process. I’m allowing myself to sink into those waters and wade out to a place where eventually there’s a drop-off. I’m going to fall right in.

It happens, and the next transition hits me with cool, hard plastic under my posterior. My legs dangle towards the floor, and I grasp a metal fork with curiously uneven tines in my right hand. The fork is poised over a pretty ugly example of fruit cocktail.

The cocktail isn’t half as bad as the rectangular piece of gooey mess masquerading as pizza. I know this and at the same time, I also know I love this disgusting mockery of a real pie, just as I love the grease laden tator tots that neighbor it in the adjoining tray segment.

I look up and now I’m taking in a sea of faces at my level. Instantly I’m overcome with emotions that blast me almost simultaneously: wonder, excitement, insecurity, awkwardness, need, desire, invincibility.

This is youth, glorious youth. I have more than just miles to go; there’s a path stretched out in front of me to what seems infinity.  All I can see is shining horizon and I know that forever is just over the hill up ahead.

For a moment the sounds disappear. For a heartbeat every smell of sickeningly delicious grease puddled over cheap cheese on soggy crust is undetectable. The cool, slick cardboard milk carton under the curled fingers of my left hand disappears. All the children move in slow motion.

I feel like a time-traveler in my own mind, and for just that one moment, there’s a distinct and deep pain that knifes through me, witnessing this slice of my past, this irrelevant little reenactment of an any-day sometime so long ago in my life.

I want to stand up and scream, “We are all here again! Back here again! Have we made mistakes!? Let’s do better this time!”

But then it all rushes back in with its loud busyness, its irreversible hurrying of children forward into their fates. For a moment, I feel defeated, and then I blink my eyes, and it all swirls away like bath water that flows down the drain, pulling away both the bright, gleaming bubbles and the dirty scum that once clung to you, in the same smooth motion.

As I open my eyes in the here and now, I reflect on that moment at the end, that painful longing to hit the “restart” button. But I’m here, for better or worse, and it’s okay if I can’t change the things my little self so worried about for that brief spell inside my mind. She forgot for a beat that out here on the other end, I’m not too shabby, and even the mistakes have had a hand in making me who I am today. No regret.

Well, I do kind of wish she had grabbed one of those tater tots and slammed it. This lagging metabolism is a bitch.

******

Today’s post is my answer to The Lunch Box, a writing challenge at {W}rite-of-Passage.

The following people took the challenge, too.

Short but heartfelt letters.

Dear Hashimoto’s,
Thanks for making every day harder. You’re a dick.

Dear PMS,
I do not like you. You do not actually make me more powerful, you just make me want to break people in half all day long. You do not help me deal with my emotions more effectively, you just make me cry at things that should not be cried at (the fight scene in Ice Age? Really? No. Really?) You do not make my son’s toddler habits easier to deal with, you make me want to run screaming from his presence. You are like a disorder all unto yourself. I am tired of you, officially.

Dear Braden,
Yes, it’s true. Your “farts are stinky like poopoo,” indeed. The amount of joy you bring into my life with simply silly things like that cannot be measured. Oh, but please don’t kick me in the eye again. That was the opposite of joy.

Dear Birthday,
I see you lurking there. I know, I know. I’m almost officially a whole year older. It’s really not even exciting anymore. It just validates the white hairs and the callouses. If you were really as awesome as you claim to be, you’d give me my old bewbies back. Now THAT’S a happy birthday.

Dear John,
I know you miss being at home. To make sure you feel welcome upon your return weeks from now, I am saving you all sorts of chores to complete! Nothing says loving like that, right?

Dear Debt Collectors,
Thank you for the recent letter demanding the thousands due in medical bills, immediately. The way the entire sheet of paper was pink truly made me feel the threat inherent in your message.

Dear Property Management,
I’m guessing the magic number for phone calls before you come and fix the light in the kitchen is something higher than 3. Even if you have promised “someone will be out tomorrow,” they won’t. You don’t really mean it. It was a joke – you were just kidding! I get it now. I hope you get explosive, burning diarrhea on your birthday.

Dear Jillian Michaels:
When I do the “butt kicks,” instead of holding my hands in fists in front of me, I hold out both my middle fingers. It totally helps me make it through. I’m not flipping you off, though. You are the toughest bitch I’ve ever not known but loved. In a completely platonic, non-I think of you naked when I’m in the shower kind of way. (Really.)

Dear Mexican (our dog),
Please just stop being gross. Seriously.
PS: I know. Watch your back.

Dear Body,
I know that you are tired. I know that you hurt. I know that it’s not your fault. I know that you feel bad because I always hate you. I am sorry. I’m still pushing and I’m trying really hard to get you healthy again. Please hang in there and work with me on this, damnit.

Dear Hair,
Did you hear what I said to Body? You are leaving me, and it’s making me frantic. I know you are just really tired of the antibodies in my bloodstream and the Hashimoto’s that is the result. I feel embarrassed that you are so important to me, in a way, but it’s true. You are important to me and I have cried several times already now, noticing how you are taking leave of me steadily. I do not like to see my scalp. Please reconsider. Please stay.

Dear Health Care Industry,
Please just fix it. Please stop telling me there is nothing you can do to help me. I am broken and you are supposed to be able to fix me.
You are supposed to.
So when I come in this next time, please do not turn me away again, telling me to keep waiting. I am done waiting. Ok?

Dear Reality Television,
You are still really, really stupid. Stop tricking people who I know are otherwise really smart.

Dear Halloween,
I hate the temptation of your endless bags of delicious candy. I love your ghouls and goblins, witches, werewolves, vampires, and ghosts. I delight in feeling your spirit as I watch horrible movies about undead monsters. As you approach, I tilt my head back in the dark and utter a high pitched cackle. When you are gone, please make any leftover candy disappear. My ass does not want to be dressed up as an elephant for the rest of the year.

Dear People Who Drive,
YOUR BRAIN. USE IT.

Dear You Guys,
Thanks for still coming here.