McDreamy McDiction

I recently discovered Grey's Anatomy.

AKA: the new reason why my kids are running around in their underwear and the house smells like water buffalo.

This show is dangerous.

I can't stop myself.

It's like a dirty mistress, and I find myself thinking about it all the time.

Just waiting for the next time when I can go home, lay in my bed in a huge t-shirt with the fan on, and watch as many episodes as I want, whilst freely and openly crying at the sad parts, and wishing I had a best friend like Cristina Yang.

I honestly can't believe I never knew how good this show was before.

Really, it's my own fault.

I am a natural contrarian when it comes to t.v. shows. Don't ask me why.

When a new show comes out that is "all the rage", I find myself almost instantly opposed to watching it. Once I hear the girl from processing in my office who has wall-eye and an I.Q. lower than some of the chicken embryos that once existed in the eggs in my fridge, talking in the break room about how much she just LOOOVEES show XYZ, my resolve to never watch show XYZ only strengthens.

Did you know I've never seen a single episode of Lost?

Did you know I watched the very first episode of 24 after the series was cancelled in it's like 11th season?

And now I'm watching Grey's Anatomy, when the 8th or 9th season is about to air in September.

It's a sickness.

Signs You're Too Addicted to Grey's Anatomy:

10. You start contemplating moving to Seattle and doing something that will cause you to need surgery, so you can go to Grace hospital-which doesn't exist.

9. You accidentally call your boyfriend McDreamy-so often that he just thought it was his new nickname until someone else pointed out where it's from.

8. When you call in sick to work, you site reasons such as your conditioner stopped working and you think you might have brittle bones, so it's best you just stay in bed and feel like dying all day.

7. You find yourself correcting strangers in public when you over hear them discussing aneurysms. 

6. Patrick Dempsey has replaced....everyone on your celebrity crush list.

5. You know every single Tegan and Sara song by heart.

4. It's after midnight, you have to be up at 6 a.m. for work, and instead of sleeping you're rationalizing ways to watch another episode because the last one was such a cliff hanger.

3. You refuse to accept that they're ALL cliff hangers.

2. Nobody asks what you're doing after work anymore. They already know.

1. You refer to your very absolute bestest friend as "your person". The one that if you murdered someone, they'd come help you drag the corpse out to the desert. Your person.

Now shut down Netflix, and go the fuck to sleep.

Sometimes

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I try reading books.

But I'm tired so my eyes get blurry and I can't focus on the words for too long.

Sometimes, I go in the bathroom and practice facial expressions in the mirror.

Now I know what I look like when I try to wink.

This has kept me from trying to wink as often.

Sometimes, I lay in bed and watch random things on YouTube, or pin useless things on Pinterest, 

But I think those things just keep me up longer, rather than helping me fall asleep.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I pretend I know how to do yoga:

Which obviously, I don't.

Sometimes I go outside and look up at the sky

But then I get scared of monsters and serial killers because it's nighttime and dark out, so I run back inside and jump to my bed from my bedroom doorway so they can't get me.

Sometimes I can't sleep, 

And I do a lot of weird things to pass the time.

But mostly when I'm not sleeping, I'm thinking about you.

About the heavy weight of your leg and how it anchors me to the bed when you throw it over my waist at night.

About the fact that if you were here, I'd be sleeping because I'm always calm enough to rest when my head is on your chest.

And all the books I look at aren't as interesting as your face in the moonlight, 

And all the things I pin when it's almost midnight end up being somehow related to you.

And all the things I wander around this big quiet house doing, are all really just ways to keep myself from calling, or texting, to wake you up and say

I miss you.

I wish you were here.

I'm not sleeping, 

But I am thinking

Of you

Of us

And how very much you and your love will always mean to me.

Goodnight, sweet dreams.

The Friday Diary: The Haves and The Haven'ts

Happy Friday!

I love Friday.
I get to wear jeans and Chucks at work.
I get to come home and take as long of a post work nap as I want without worrying about being up too late afterward, because I can sleep in the next day.
I love Fridays so much, I stop giving a fuck on Thursday in celebration of the next day being Friday, a day on which no fucks are given, ever. 

...

I haven't been:

Smoking.

I haven't had a cigarette since last Thursday, May 31st.

That's not to say I haven't wanted one.

That's not to say I haven't REALLY wanted one.

On Saturday I came -this close- to buying cigarettes. I went to Circle K and got ice cream for me and the kids instead.

Small victories.
+

Eating fast food.

I cooked every night this week, Sunday through to today, and I will cook tonight too.

How's that going? You ask.

Real fucking hard.
I thought somehow that by not eating out I would be magically transformed into a '50's housewife with a gingham apron and perfect hair.
I forgot I would still be a working single mother who's dead tired when she gets home.

...

I have been:

Working out.

Honestly, I didn't work out at all during the weekend.

Not once.

And I consumed alcohol, which pretty much means I should've worked out twice a day every day of the weekend just to burn that shit off, but I didn't. BUT I have gotten at LEAST 20 minutes of exercise every day during the work week.
A girl at work told me my ass looked good in the skirt I wore to work on Wednesday.
I was so happy I almost wet myself.

...

Overheard This Week:
Jackson: When I was older and I had a job, I went to work every day.
Me: Oh yeah? You had a job? What happened to it?
Jackson: I can't work there anymore because I got little. I'll work there again when I get big again like you.
Me: What did you do at your work?
Jackson: People turned me into a plane and I flew all over da pwace. {read: the place}
Me: That sounds fun.
Jackson: Yeah, and when I gotted off work and picked up my kids I didn't tell them I was too tired to go get them ice cream from da store. Like you did.

Oh. Burn.

...

This time last year:
I had just come back from Vegas, the very first trip that Bill and I ever took together.
It was a very fun trip, and I still wish we would've taken some pictures.
But, I have the memories and I have a blog post, and that's part of what makes this blog so special.
I can always look back at where I was on this date, in some other year and read about what I did from the perspective I had at the time.
And besides, pictures or no pictures, I will never forget how upset poor drunk Bill was when our room service arrived and he realized he ordered a bacon cheeseburger.
Bill: Oh my God, I got a BACON CHEESEBURGER? Why would I do that?!
Me: What you don't like cheeseburgers?
Bill: No, I love cheeseburgers, but there's BACON  on it!
Me: You don't like bacon?
Bill: No, I do like bacon. But why did I order this?!
Me: Do you want me to eat the bacon for you?
Bill: But you got your own food...
Me: That has nothing to do with whether or not I can still eat all your bacon. I can. And I will.

We still don't know why he ordered that. Or why he was so upset about it.
Everybody loves bacon.
EVERYBODY.

...

Craft time

Lainie and I spent some time doing a little crafting this week. 

We made some pretty labels for her boxes of art supplies, and organized her craft closet.

And we've been working on making good choices, so we made a good choices jar. She gets a "drop" in her jar for every good choice, such as helping her brother, getting dressed in the morning without complaint, clearing her dinner dishes without being asked, etc.  Drops in her jar will be things like "coupons" that she can turn in for different stuff like picking what we have for dinner, or getting a sleepover with a friend, or whatever she's been asking to do lately, or sometimes money, or maybe little treats like pretty rocks {which she loves} or candy, or whatever. 

We'll see what effect this has on her choice making.

Spaghetti night

I love how little kids get spaghetti sauce like all over their body when they eat it. Especially on weird parts of their face, like their nose and forehead. It's just adorable to me. Watching my kids eat spaghetti is probably 90% of the reason why I make it.

...

Stuff We Tried:
Over the weekend Lainie and I attempted Fairies in a jar, which was supposed to look like this:

It did not look a damn thing like that when we were done.
That pin was bullshit.
But it was fun trying it anyway.

...

Well, that's our week.
Hope yours was awesome too.
Happy Friday.

What It Was Like

Somebody asked me today what it was like growing up with someone who was bi-polar.

To my own astonishment, I stood there with my mouth flapping silently like a half drunk seal, completely unable to put anything into words.

What was it like?

It was like living on the edge of a canyon, where the bottom is full of wolves, and sneaking out at night to listen to them howling just so many feet below you, their hollow instinctual keening rising up like a tidal wave above the rock walls, so deep and sharp that you can feel it in your belly.

And there's nothing you can do about the sound, or the location of your house, or the fact that wolves need to howl and you can't sleep through the sound, so you just sit, night after night on the rim of that canyon and listen.

And watch.

And sometimes you howl too just because maybe they'll stop if they think they're not alone.

It's like living in a world where pain and beauty and loss exist all at the same time, and all of  the time. It's the sound of Mozart in the morning, and not being able to paint to anything but Berlioz or Bob Dylan.

It's song lyrics painted on the wall, and waking up to pasta for breakfast and candy bars hidden between the pages of your school books.

It's not having friends over for months at a time, and learning how to drive when you're 14.

It's motorcycles, and charcoal drawings and smoking on the back patio at 4 a.m.

It's knowing what the morning smells like when you didn't sleep last night, and explaining to people why your dad is always sleeping on the couch at 4 p.m.

And the weird part is, you hate all of it, and you can't live without any of it.

And when you finally grow up and move away you find yourself doing odd things.

Like making messes in the kitchen so you can pretend they're someone else's when you clean them up, or playing Berlioz even though you always hated that music, or leaving the T.V. on in the other room while you sleep, because you realize you've never slept in a silent house.

You miss the way 80 miles an hour feels on the back of a Harley when you should be at school, and what a good burrito tastes like when your dad brings you one home unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

You realize that growing up with someone like that is like carrying a bouquet of broken glass and roses, like loving someone who's imprisoned in another country, like a song you can't stop humming.

It's beautiful and it's painful, and it's a color that there isn't a name for.

It's what a child who's been deaf since he was born calls his mother.

It's your own word for love.

Love Lives Here Now

As you kiss tiny trails down my spine 

I can feel stars come alive, 

One by one beneath the petals of your lips

Awakening tiny sparks in the endings of my nerves and the multitude of cells that compose my skin, 

And you are shaking off the dust and apathy that I have settled into.

With each imprinted kiss that moves down the winding road of me, 

You are leaving some signature, 

Some rose and beach blush,

Some sign that love lives here now

And I hope you never let me go.

Our Weekend: Food, Fun and First Sleep-overs!

The top group of pictures is us on our way to see a girlfriend of mine from work, and then my kids playing with her son. Our boys are only a month apart in age so watching them play together was absolutely adorable. She lived out in the sticks {as you can see from the pictures} so we all slept there that night, and it was Jackson's very first sleep over!
Very exciting times for a four year old.
Saturday we hung around the house, had lunch with Jack's uncle Tony at his family's restaurant, and then I had a lovely night with Bill, that unfortunately there are no pictures of.
Sunday we hit up the farmers market for some fresh peaches, nectarines and watermelon {which I spent ALL DAY cubing and jarring}, I finally got around to cleaning Jack's room {yes that is a picture of it CLEAN} and then we fattened up on some parmesan crusted chicken breast.
Want the recipe?
I know you do, because it's only four ingredients and it was so good that BOTH kids asked for seconds, which literally never happens.

All you need is 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast
An oven heated to 425
A 9x13 glass casserole dish
Shredded parmesan cheese
Mayo
Italian style bread crumbs
Seasonings you like such as garlic, onion powder, salt and pepper. That's what we used, but you can use whatever turns you on.
Mix the cheese and the mayo, spread on both sides of chicken
Spray the casserole dish with some Pam
Place chicken in it
Sprinkle bread crumbs over the top of the chicken until its coated, but only on the one side

Bake for 20 minutes or until juices run clear.
Enjoy.
It's seriously delicious.

Happy Sunday!

The Friday Diary: Goodbye May, Hello June

Happy Friday!

And also, Happy June!

Holy crap, it's already June.

Good Lord.

As always, I like to wrap up May, and look forward to June.

Join me, won't you?

...

In May....

Returned from Italy

Bill had a birthday

Jack turned 4

My dad FINALLY got his driver's license, after over 20 years without it

And I confessed to the internet at large that I don't shower everyday.

Winning.

All in all, May was a month of a lot of change.

A healthy amount of self realization, and hopefully the catalyst for some more positive change in June.

IN FACT, speaking of positive change, I made a list of June goals, y'all!

I know. 

You're on the edge of your seat.

Well, suffer in anticipation no longer!

In June I will....

Stop smoking....for reals this time. I smoked the last cigarette I had today, and I am refusing to buy more.

+

Stick to my ever loving, mother fucking budget. Seriously. I make one every single month, and every single month I fuck it up one way or another. Most of the time it's something small, like an extra five or ten bucks on something, but sometimes, and please don't judge me for this, it's ridiculously out of control. So this is the month! I'M GONNA DO IT.

+

Sidenote: I am taking my dad to Oceanside for his birthday on the last weekend of the month...BUT I BUDGETED FOR THAT SO IT DOESN'T COUNT.

+

Eat better. I've been getting better and better about the shit I cook. Making more fish, less beef, hardly any pasta anymore. But I still get so freaking lazy and eat out or order pizza more than I should. I'm going to be SUPER strict with myself and limit it to 1 fast food/pizza a month until I learn better habits. Then I might losen the reigns a bit. Last month I went almost 100 dollars outside my food budget, entirely because of convenience foods. I know. For shame. 

+

Work out five times a week. Minimum. I got a couple more work out videos {Jillian Michaels 30 day shred and Bob Harper's Weight Loss Yoga} so I have plenty of variety to change it up with and hopefully keep me interested. A guy at work asked if I just had a baby the other day...so I shot him. In my head. In real life I cried and ate five cookies. It's time to not jiggle so damn much.

+

And last but not least, I am going to remember that happiness is a choice.

I've been through some super hard shit in my life, but for as long as I can remember I was always considered the happiest, most positive person anyone knew-except people who hung out with cheerleaders or The God Squad. Lately I've totally lost sight of how good it used to feel to just choose to laugh shit off, and have a good time, as much as possible, instead of letting every negative thing effect me to the deepest degree possible. 

It's Summer, damn it!

If this isn't the season to be peppy, then I don't fucking know what is.

So here's to UBER POSITIVITY. May we all be so happy, that we irritate the shit out of people who are having a bad day, just by walking past them.

Happy Friday. 

Happy June.

Go get 'em tiger.