Everyone was up in arms! OH MY GOD. Teach your children to run away screaming from any stranger in a car who asks them for directions, dogs, help, anything.  BE ALERT! The world needs more Lerts! (tm Mr. Friendly)

Of course, it turned out that the guy, um, lost his dog. And was driving around looking for him. The fact that he was handing out his business card with his damn NAME on it tipped me off to that right away.

I don’t know how I feel about that situation. We got a follow-up email today saying the police had “investigated” and determined there was no “danger” from the “incident.” But goddamn, what a shitty world we live in. When I was a kid, one of my parents was always driving around looking for a cat or sometimes for me, since I was prone to wandering. And they would surely roll down the window and ask kids in the street if they’d seen the missing mammal in question.  I don’t think they were ever followed home by the police and questioned.

Do kids really get kidnapped by pedophiles more these days, or does email just allow school secretaries to go off half-cocked?

Running shit: I RAN FIVE MINUTES WITHOUT STOPPING LAST NIGHT. TWICE.  I wore my new shoes and they worked out fine. I almost think that running for longer periods of time is easier.  I actually get to a point where I’m breathing hard, but it’s not unbearable, it just…is.  And my ankles don’t hurt anymore. Now when I’m done with a run, the right things ache: my hamstrings, my calves, etc.  I might be able to do this. Maybe. I don’t know.  I will say I had no idea a 5K was only 3 miles.  That is just stupid, I agree, but I never thought about it. I can do a 5K. I might have to walk 4.5K of it, but I can do it.

When I worked for the Catholic hospital and we participated in the Race for the Cure (tee em) we had to send the Bishop a copy of Komen’s form letter (they had a form letter, so this has been going on for some time) that explained how all money donated to Planned Parenthood went toward mammography. Every single year.   Even a WHIFF of abortion was enough to make our Catholic Health System wary.  Catholics run the majority of the larger non-profit hospital systems, you know.  If Komen doesn’t care about women’s health, then every single Catholic hospital out there doesn’t care about women’s health. So if you’re going to boycott Komen, also make sure you’re not heading to St. Whatever’s Emergency Room with preeclampsia or an ectopic pregnancy because they’ll be putting you in an ambulance and sending you to a baby-killer hospital for treatment.

Susan G. Komen aside, fight the real enemy. Work to get progressive pro-choice women in office and in positions of influence. Vote for the pro-choice woman every time and if there’s no woman on the ballot, consider running yourself.  When you vote, make pro-choice your issue, not taxes.   And don’t be an asshole – pro-choice means pro-choice. Women who want to have fourteen kids have the right to do so and women who only want to have one aren’t “depriving” their child of the joys of siblings. Don’t label women who don’t want kids. Don’t judge a fifty-year-old woman who decides to use in-vitro or a surrogate to have a baby.  Shrug and say “Not my business” when someone you know elects to be induced or have a voluntary c-section or not breastfeed.

Running shit:

So I started Week Four. According to the Internet, Week Four is when most people quit Couch to 5K. Week Four consists of a warm-up, a 3-minute run, a 1.5-minute walk, a 5-MINUTE RUN, a 2.5-minute walk, and then you repeat and end with a cool-down walk. I was dreading it, but I’d already done Weeks Two and Three twice (I’m sort of on week six no caps), so, I mean, if I am going to do this thing, I have to move on.  So I came home from work Monday, put on my old shoes and decided, fine, if I can’t make it, I’ll just walk until I can start running again. Because no way can I run five minutes without stopping.

And if you’re waiting for the inspirational I DID IT it’s not coming, but I did make it and on the second 5-minute run, I actually got to a point where it wasn’t so bad.  The first 5-minute run was pure hell. I had to stop and walk a couple of times and I had a pain in my side and I think I looked like I was 100 years old by the end. But the second time, I don’t know what happened. When I first began I had to stop and walk a few paces, but then I started up again and all of a sudden, I don’t know. It was like I could have run all the way home.   Not that it still wasn’t miserable. I was glad to stop, for god’s sake. But I ran 600 yards without stopping and my ankles didn’t hurt.

Tonight I’m going to wear my new shoes. I hope it doesn’t ruin everything.

That’s another thing. I used to just be a fucking bitch all the time and didn’t care. Now I care, for some reason. It’s tiring.

The good news is I had this whole conversation without bursting into tears, which is a big change over…like, the whole rest of my life up until now.

Paco asked if I was medicating something with alcohol, like an underlying fear that I could die. And I thought about it, and you know…I don’t really even think about that, so it would have to be REALLY underlying. Oh, one day a couple of weeks ago I was in the shower and suddenly realized I had had cancer, because contrary to my joking around, I do forget about it most of the time. The shower reminds me, for obvious reasons.  But even then I was like, eh. I’m not going to die this year anyway.

He then theorized that perhaps I always wanted to drink too much and now I just do what I want, since I realize life is short.  That could be it, I suppose.

Food and my weight? I don’t know. I have never had an obsession with food and weight until I went on that diet two years ago.  I would haul out the neat theory that I’m controlling my weight because I lost control of my body on account of The Cancer, but actually the weight obsession happened before that.

Maybe I don’t have problems.  Maybe I just have life.

I will say this. I was listening to some lady on the local NPR show this morning and she’s written a book called Marriage Rules and was dispensing no-shitter facts like once you get into a long-term relationship you leave the phase where you think everything is FANTASTIC about your partner and enter the phase where you think everything about your partner is HORRENDOUS, EMBARRASSING AND NEGATIVE.  And I thought to myself, I think everything about my partner is fantastic. So at least I don’t have that problem. Paco might, but fuck him, he can deal with that himself.

Running shit: I did not run this weekend, because I had a hangover on Sunday that made me feel like I might die.  (Yeah, now you see where all this self-examination came from). I bought new running shoes on Saturday, though, and I am going to have to take them back. I am very frustrated about that.  This guy looked at my gait and decided I have borderline flat feet and I tend to uh…I don’t know what to call it. The deal where you walk on the insides of your feet.  Anyway, he recommended stability shoes to keep my feet from doing that.  So he measured my feet and said one was a 6.5 and one was a tad under 7 and so he brought out a bunch of shoes in 7.5. Then he poked my toes and said they were too small and went and got 8s and everything just went to hell. I get that you need to get running shoes a little bigger than your size so your toes have room, but seriously? An 8? On my left foot, which measures a 6.5? That’s not a shoe, that’s a snowboard. And I have narrow heels so the damn things slide up and down. I hate buying shoes. I don’t know why I even walked out of there with them, except that I was uncomfortable and just wanted to be done. So now I’m going back tonight and I’m telling them I want a 7.5 and I have a narrow heel.  Meanwhile, I guess I will run tonight in my old shoes, which are a size 7.5 and fit JUST FINE.

I also don’t see how I am going to move to Week 4 in the Couch to 5K. Week 4 involves running for five minutes straight. It might as well be a marathon, but I guess I will give it a try. I can always just give up and walk.

I have a stammer I didn’t even know I had, until I GOT CANCER and found myself unable to speak at doctor’s appointments so I felt sorry for the poor guy. Well. Not that sorry. He was a kajillionaire and never had to lift a finger and also, it was the 1930s – it’s not like anyone really knew what the King’s voice sounded like. They have just had a mellifluously-voiced servant read the damn speech and then killed him afterward so it wouldn’t get out.

The weather is frightful and the g.d. Jewish Community Center has the GALL to close at 6:00 on Fridays on account of the Shabbat so I actually may not run tonight. I want to get new shoes tomorrow, though I fully expect I’ll get my hopes up, put on the shoes, and be like huh my fucking ankles hurt AND I spent $100 on shoes.

The running guy in my office put it best. He’s run marathons and all that crap and he told me his legs, knees and ankles always hurt when he runs because running is unnatural.

For those of you asking me why I’m running if I hate it and it makes my ankles hurt? Here’s the answer: the Coach to 5K thing is like a prescription for exercise. Nothing is left up to me and that’s good because if it’s left up to me I won’t exercise. Couch to 5K says run for this long, then walk for this long, do this, do that okay you’re done, congrats, check it off your list. The stats keep it interesting, in that you can see if you’re going faster or slower or farther or whatever. Something has to keep me interested.  And I run rather than walk for one simple reason: it’s over sooner.

I’m in a sour mood today, which believe it or not is unusual these days.  My hair is flat, people be irritating me, I’m thirsty, I’m hungry, I’m cold.

I guess I can fix all of those things, except the people. WHAT?? Did I just rationally deal with a bad mood?  See what a lack of lady hormones can do for you?

One of the girls on Holly’s epic cheerleading squad lives there and last night was my turn to drive. Hallbrook is very dark. It wouldn’t do for the gentle aristocrats who live there to be disturbed in their bedchambers by the harsh glow of streetlamps. There are a couple of big traffic circles, tastefully decorated with ornamental trees and fountains.  I was in conversation with Holly after we dropped her friend off and I went around the traffic circle and kept going and then I saw another traffic circle coming up and went, “Waiiiit. Why am I at another traffic circle?”  And I was seized by the WEIRDEST feeling, like I was going nuts. I had to pull over. Then I panicked because no one pulls over in Hallbrook. They have cameras! I was all out of sorts!

I HAD TO USE MY GPS TO GET OUT OF HALLBROOK.

I think it might have been a metaphor. That’s all I have to say about that.

Someone in the comments asked if Holly had an iPhone (subtext: are you fucking kidding me that a 10-year-old has an iPhone?!?). Yes, she has an iPhone.  Elliot has one too. I do not, because I dropped my phone in the toilet one month before Sprint opened up iPhone purchases to employees and so I had to buy a Motorola Photon which is shaping up to be my favorite phone of all time. Paco does not have an iPhone either, because…I’m not sure why. I don’t think he wants one.

But please, Judgers. Remember that my husband works for a phone company.  Holly’s had a phone since she was eight, because Paco got it for free and we hardly pay shit for service.

Many of her friends have phones – not too many have iPhones, I guess.  Some of her friends’ parents are pretty dead set against cell phones at this age. One of them says her daughter won’t get one until she can pay her own bill and I think that’s fine. I just don’t have that same belief. I don’t give it much thought at all. I want Holly to have a cell phone. I like her to be able to call me.  I will not go so far as to say I like to be able to call HER, because she is hit-or-miss with answering the damn thing. Since she got the iPhone she answers it more because she plays all her games on it so it’s in her hands more.

We installed an app where the phone is silenced during school hours and from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am, if that helps.

Running shit: I had to run inside last night because I drove to epic cheerleading which would have put me back home after dark. I don’t like to run in the dark, because someone might kill me.  So I went to the Jewish Community Center’s indoor track. I expected the place to be packed, because they had a big membership drive last month, to capture all the New Years’ Resolutionairres. I made that word up and it didn’t turn out as well as I planned. Hm.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw no one on the track and EVERYONE at the machines.  Then I realized, shit! All these people on the machines and treadmills and elliptical are staring at the track. Bleh.

I was unpleasantly surprised to find that running on a track feels no better or worse than running on concrete and their track is banked on the oval ends and last night the mandated direction for running was the direction which made my left ankle (the bad one) on the down slope if that makes sense.

HOWEVER. I will say that having a big bunch of red-faced treadmill walkers and elliptical….uh..flailers staring at you will absolutely cause you to finish your three-minute run. HELL if I was stopping right in front of them. I ran longer than three minutes, just to get past them before slowing down to the walk.

I am, however, beginning to agree with Fred who says running is bad for you.  I am going to try buying new shoes, since the ones I’m running in came from Costco, but otherwise, it just doesn’t seem right to go out four times a week and sprain my ankles.

It is time for me to vent about Holly’s latest school project insanity. I hope her teachers don’t read this, but if they do, TOO BAD. I am only speaking truth.

I suppose I should be used to this shit by now, after the damn Janet Lynn Debacle of Twenty-Ten, where I had to put my cancer wig on a fucking pumpkin to fulfill a stupid biography assignment that could have easily been met by just writing a goddamn paper, but noooooo effort involving a hot glue gun and construction paper always has to be a part of these learning experiences. I sometimes don’t know if Holly attends school or a scrapbooking convention.

Every year, the fifth graders at Holly’s school are assigned a project called the “Invention.” I can recall seeing these through the years displayed at the Spring Curriculum Fair. The projects were fun to look at, but I also remember the prickles of dread I felt as I realized that at some point, in the FAR OFF FUTURE, Holly would be in fifth grade and would have to do one of these damn things.

This year Holly’s in fifth grade. At the Fall Open House, when the fifth grade teachers made their presentations about what’s going to go on during the school year, the teacher who is responsible for science stood up and explained all the units and then said, “And in the spring we do the Invention. The kids LOVE THIS!! The parents, not so much.” Everyone tittered awkwardly.

Well hell yeah, the kids love it! Because their parents have to do it!

Here’s how it works. The kids have to come up with some ideas for an invention. It has to be mechanical or tactile or whatever – what I’m trying to say is it can’t be software or an app which is fucking B.S. in this day and age.  Then get this: the kids have to research their invention ideas through the internet to make sure they haven’t already been invented!! The science teacher apparently runs a patent office now! It’s like the high school student/forgery expert at Old Navy who examines my signature on my debit card!  It’s all about confidence! Anyway, everything in the WORLD has already been invented. Trust me. Holly thought up a couple of things that I thought were good, one being a candle that snuffs itself after a certain amount of time (based on a timer that drips water into a weight system okay she didn’t think of it, Paco did) but all the ideas she (he) came up with already exist. But okay, FINE. She kept plugging away and actually came up with something herself and got it approved.

Then they have to do various tasks like doing some drawings and schematics and they document their process and problems and how they solved them etc. They have to design a big display board with facts about their invention and data and I think this is a mighty fine project. Kids should learn to do long projects that require sustained work and data collection and all that. I’m for it.

Where I get pissed off though? The kids actually have to BUILD this invention. Ten year olds! They can’t build shit! Who builds the inventions? THE PARENTS.

Holly’s invention is called Recipe Jumble (now it’s on the internet so some poor kid who thinks it up next year is shit out of luck). It’s like a bingo cage with three compartments, main dish, side dish, vegetable. I think. I might be main dish, side dish, dessert. Hell if I know I’m trying to stay out of it.  You write all the dishes you ever eat on little cards, but them in the bingo ball. Then when you are putting together your menu for the week (YES, we do this-you should too, it’s a money-saver), you crank the bingo cage and choose a card from each section and you have dinner ideas!

Oh sure, it has flaws. Like what if you get “Chicken Fried Rice” for your main dish and “Rice” for your side dish, but whatever. My problem is I don’t know how to build a bingo cage with three compartments and I shouldn’t HAVE to! There is value to putting together this project, but there is no value whatsoever to building it. Because if Holly can’t do it herself, then she’s not learning.  And the fact that the teacher lauds this project as a grrrreat opportunity for the kids and their parents to work together on something over the weekends just proves she doesn’t have any kids.

I tell you, two minutes after Holly leaves elementary school I am hitting “send” on a veritable treatise of complaints about The Crafts.  The scrapbook page in kindergarten- how about you teach the kids presentation skills and have them draw a picture of themselves and tell the class five things about their lives? From the g.d. giant “book” about mammals in first grade to the Diorama in 4th grade – how about a research project about American Indians instead of hot gluing a fucking tortilla into the shape of a teepee? The Pumpkin Head Biography? JUST ASSIGN A PAPER and leave the squash out of it! Everything doesn’t have to be fun! God!

Running shit: Tonight I have to drive to epic cheerleading, so I’m going to try running the track at the gym. Maybe it’ll make my legs hold up better. As far as all the suggestions about supplements, wouldn’t both my calves have cramps if I were potassium deficient?  I think the stretching thing may be the key, though didn’t I read somewhere that they did a big study and determined that stretching did help and just walking to warm up had the same effect?

I said, “My thoughts are this: I’m sorry, but no.”

He asked, “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

I replied, “Nope.”

And I didn’t overexplain and I didn’t apologize and after I hung up I realized that it was the first time in my life I have just said, “No” to that kid.

I usually try to work something or make a bargain or just say yes even though I know I shouldn’t because I don’t want him to be unhapppppppy.

But I think I finally learned my lesson about that from that time when I said, “Yes, you can go to this large state university even though your ACT scores were on par with a quasi-illiterate KU basketball player and your high school grades were so bad you almost didn’t graduate.”

Oh, and at the end of the conversation before I hung up he said, “Well, I think I might just be an R.A. in the dorm, then.”

Not “I think I would like to be an R.A.” or “Maybe I will apply to be an R.A.” Clueless doesn’t even begin to describe that kid. I love him, but good god. He sure has great self-esteem.

By the way, a student on academic probation can’t be an R.A., in case you were wondering. Don’t get me wrong, he’d be a great R.A.  Except for the pesky “succeeding in school” thing.

Running shit: I got a calf cramp AGAIN during my three-minute run last night. I drank water all day, in case it was dehydration, but apparently it’s just that my left calf isn’t having it.  So I’m doing week 3 over, until I can make it. Don’t think I’m overdoing it. It doesn’t hurt, exactly. It just feels like my calf is a bungee cord that is going to break if I don’t stop running.  I HATE RUNNING.

Man, since I started updating regularly I have been doocecapping it up, old school. Oh well. That’s how I do.

So. After literally years of me bitching and guilting and moaning, we finally decided to get our house recarpeted.  Yes, I know some of you are hardwood floor fans and I guess I am too, but look. I live in a 1970s house. Hardwoods were out of fashion when it was built so there is nothing under our carpet except…shitty particle board or something (Paco will correct me, I’m sure). The cost of putting in hardwoods is prohibitive. I mean, seriously, like $20,000. If I’m going to add $20,000 to the value of my house that I’ll never get out of it in a sale, it’s going to be on an extra bathroom or a finished basement.

Shit, man, just carpeting the whole house is incredibly expensive. I almost cried when we got the bid.  True, we picked out really nice carpet but still. My perspective is skewed. My house is bigger than I think because the floor plan is fucked and carpet prices are deceptive. You see a tag that says $3.89/yard or whatever and it seems so cheap and then they start bitching about stairs and carpet pads and labor and furniture moving and before you know it the price is more like $500/yard.

Paco was especially reluctant about carpet because of the cats. We held off while LB was alive because she barfed on the floor daily. Then we held off because of Dave Fucking Ramsey. Now we have the cash in our hot hands and suddenly Greeley is spraying.

I KNOW. Fucking cats!  Poor old Greeley is getting old and confused and when it gets super cold outside, he won’t outside to do his daily marking so he does it inside. He has TWICE peed on both Paco and me as we sat in chairs. For god’s sake.

But what are you gonna do? Greeley’s 15 or so and he limps and he’s a weirdo who drools when you pet him and I love him so we are just going to have to suck it up. I bought him a heated bed for the garage so he will be more willing to go out there when it’s cold. HE LIKES THE GARAGE, okay?  He has water out there and such and when he’s in the house we will just watch him like hawks.  The way I look at it (to keep from crying) is that we’d have Greeley even if we already had nice carpet and we’d figure out how to deal with it.

My sister-in-law is an interior designer (a real one, with a college degree and everything, not one of those people who buy brightly colored trendy shit off the internet and stencil dandelions on the walls and then take pictures of it with expensive cameras) and my brother-in-law is an architect (he designs sports arenas, but that doesn’t stop him from having an annoying ability to visualize the best design for all dwellings) and so we get all sorts of great advice, which always confirms my suspicion that I have truly execrable taste.  When my sister-in-law pointed toward the classiest color of carpet, I hesitantly pointed toward the color of my dreams, a dusky green, and she said, “Honey, no.”  And when we told the architect we were getting new carpet, he smiled benevolently and said, “But what about your walls and those ceiling beams?” and I was like, “NOOOOOOOOOO,” and he said, “That would be a better investment than carpet. Just keeping it real.” So now we’re tearing down our oak paneling and ceiling beams.

I’ve never had a house that looked like anyone other than a college student lived there, so I’m fine with advice.

I am happy to report that Holly has not regressed back to throwing her stuff on the living room chair. The other day her coat was there briefly, so I walked into the kitchen and said, “Where is that Barbie you got for keeping the chair clean?” and she ran like a rocket to get the coat.

Running shit: I did Week 3 Day 2 on Saturday, when it was 23 degrees. Paco and I had been doing errands earlier in the day and froze our asses off so I was going to go to the gym and run on the track but a) I made the mistake of using the thermometer as a guide instead of, like, my SKIN. “23 isn’t that cold! I’ve run in colder!” BAH,  and b) I don’t want to run inside because then the GPS can’t track me and draw my map and give me my average pace and whatnot and that’s what I like about RunDouble. I like stats so I can send pathetic emails to everyone I know who runs and whine, “Why is this so HAAAAARD! If I run a 10 min/mile my ankles HUUUUURT! Tell me what to DOOOO!” Oh, and c) I would have had to shave my legs to run in shorts. Also d) I don’t have a thingie to hold my phone which has the app on it.

The run itself was a disaster. I wore a different jacket made out of thin down and it made an annoying noise when I swung my arms back and forth. I discovered it didn’t have a pocket on the inside for my phone and so I had to put it in the outside pocket which makes the coat swing. Then I didn’t trust the app and stopped to check it obsessively during warm up because it seemed like it should have prompted me to run already. That ruined my flow. THEN something went wrong on my second three-minute run and I got this…I wouldn’t call it pain exactly, but kind of like a weakness in my left hamstring and I just couldn’t keep going. I wasn’t winded or anything, my leg just wouldn’t work. A cramp, maybe?  Or hamstring cancer?  And it was cold and my face was frozen and it was not a satisfying exercise experience at all.  Why don’t I just do fucking Zumba?

So everyone’s bugging me to comment on the Dooce divorce. It kind of makes me ashamed of myself to think that due to my past criticism of her people are rubbing their hands together with glee waiting for me to gloat about her misfortune. Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t gloat when bad things happen to her. I criticize her for things she says in her blog and Twitter that make me mad. You guys have always misunderstood me on this point!  But I am truly sorry when anyone gets a divorce. Well, unless they’re married to a terrible person, but actually there are plenty of people who truly mourn the loss of a marriage to a terrible person, so who am I to say.

But thank you for the writing prompt! I shall talk about dee-vorce!

I think divorce is pretty simple. You marry the wrong person.  At least that was my mistake. I really like Mr. Friendly. If it weren’t weird, I’d hang out with him.  But oh my god, we are not well-suited to spend any extended amount of time together. It is glaringly obvious now. He lives in a little house with loads of character. He smokes clove cigarettes and drinks retro cocktails. He travels in Europe and speaks Italian and boycotts Starbucks and shit. He shops at a Community Mercantile and decides to be a vegetarian every three years or so. He knows about artisan cheeses.  I like him, but I make fun of him every time we have dinner because good god, seriously? Do you know every waiter in every restaurant in Lawrence? BY NAME?

Where it gets complicated is when people try to make it work with the wrong person or when only one of the partners thinks he or she married the wrong person. That’s the most unfortunate marriage equation of all.  Either way it’s miserable to live your life once your marriage goes south and it only gets worse when people do ill-advised things like look around for the right person while still married to the wrong person.

And then there are kids. I remember when I was set on getting a divorce, this psychiatrist I went to see about my meds decided to get all talky with me and asked about my situation and I said I was getting a divorce. He asked why and I don’t know what I said but it wasn’t good enough for this guy. And I got kind of huffy and he calmly said, “It just seems to me that you need to think this through very carefully, especially since there’s a child involved.” He pissed me off at the time and obviously I didn’t rethink my divorce and I’ve been with Paco twice as long as I was married to The Friendly and I think things are going well. But I will say, as defeatist and icky as this is: divorce is never good for kids.  They suffer.  The parents suffer too. I will freely admit that my issues with Elliot, the reasons he tears my heart out, my paralyzing guilt are almost all because I divorced his dad and I had to see Elliot less and I feel like he was sad and injured and got the short end of the life stick and none of that may be true but it’s true TO ME so don’t be diminishing it in the comments.

Speaking of comments, I’ve decided I’m the only blogger in the world who loves comment advice.  I appreciate it, even when folks out-and-out tell me I’m doing it wrong.  I do think Holly is in too many activities and I used to criticize parents for that issue, but truly? It’s HER. She wants to do these things! She could quit any of them any time and she knows it. Oh sure, I could force her to quit something, but honestly, she’d just sit around at home staring at her iPhone and the television.  I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to spend my evenings amusing her.  And at least when she’s out at these activities she’s exercising. Today she was lying on my bed watching me pick out jewelry and she went to sit up and her (hold on I have to go Google this) deltoid muscle looked fantastic.  Girls who do sports and dance are generally more successful in adolescence and don’t come out of their rooms with purplish black hair and safety pins in their cheeks on the first day of 8^th grade. I apologize in advance to anyone reading who has a well adjusted kid with purplish black hair and a safety pin in his/her cheek.

As far as the sleep thing, I do appreciate all the advice. I don’t know about the sleeping on the floor of my room thing, though, because as my friend Michelle pointed out in a previous whine about it, if I let her sleep in my room, I better be prepared for that to go on for a while. At least if I go in her room, I can leave.

We do have plans to have a discussion with her about solutions.  Pardon me if I don’t have high hopes.

Tomorrow I swear I will change the subject and I will write about we made arrangements to buy new carpet at substantial cost and how my cat sensed it and started spraying everywhere.

My running: I’m putting this at the end so those of you who don’t give a shit can move on.

So last night I ran Week 3 of the Couch To 5K. I was dreading this week because the drill is: five minute warm up walk, 90 second run, 90 second walk, three minute run, fall down and barf, hobble home in disgrace. A couple of days ago my unofficial running coach (okay, a guy in my office who runs and I’ve asked him two questions) told me to run slower (YESSSS) and it made a huge difference. I could do the 90 second run and actually felt like I could keep going even when the robot voice told me to slow to a brisk walk. But still, I couldn’t imagine running for three minutes straight.  But I did it last night even though the second time toward the end of the three minutes I actually said out loud, “Really? Come on, it’s been like five minutes!” Another milestone: I did that thing where you blow snot out your nose. I really didn’t want to, but it was 19 degrees and I didn’t want to mess up my new mittens so I just looked around and then did it. It was totally gross and I immediately said, “JESUS I can’t believe I just did that.” Obviously I talk to myself when I runalk. I sing too, but only intermittently. I always, always sing “NO SHOES NO SHIRT BUT I STILL GET SERVICE WAAATCH!” during “Sexy and I Know it” and “I AM NICKI MINAJ I MACK THEM DUDES UP.” I know. I’m ridiculous. Anything to keep going though.

Yes, we still have to take turns dealing with a sleepless child. Ten years after the child was born.  IT DOESN’T GET BETTER, SUCKERS.

I am kind of on the same wavelength as Leelo who just said, “Fuck this,” and took her kid’s “dummy” (is that New Zealand/Australia/England for “pacifier?” I forget where you’re from. I can’t DO EVERYTHING.) and dealt with him crying for four days straight.

Tim, however, is mortally afraid to just start weaning her off this mess. I told him to go out of town for four days and I’d take care of this shit and he looked askance at me and I’m like, YOU’RE the one who loses his temper, not me. Except for that time I told her I’d lock her out of the house if she came out of her room one more time. Heh?

I know I harp on this a lot. I acknowledge your patience in listening to my complaints for the 40000000^th time. The thing is: for me, this sleeping issue is at the root of everything about my relationship with Holly. Tim claims he doesn’t feel that way, but for example. Holly is also really picky about food now. She used to eat anything, but over the past few years, she has become impossible.  She’s not as bad as Elliot was, but she is more irritating because Elliot truly didn’t like the tastes and textures of certain foods. She likes things but won’t eat them on general principle. For instance, she won’t eat pizza.  This is a capital offense to begin with because everybody likes pizza, for the love of god (except the picky fucks out there who are getting ready to leave a comment that THEY DON’T). Even Elliot liked pizza; he was just picky about what kind.   Holly has Ideas about food. She may like the taste of chocolate soy milk, for instance, but will not drink it because it’s made of soy! Ewwww!

The other night Tim and I had soy burgers on the menu. I was all, “She’s not going to eat this. Don’t even try!” but he was determined to try to sneak it past her.

He assembled it and put cheese all over it and she ate about a third of it then said, “Wait, this doesn’t taste like hamburger. Is this a chicken patty?? I don’t like chicken patties!”

Okay, first of all? You like chicken nuggets, so how can you not like chicken patties and second, it’s not a chicken patty and THIRD YOU ALREADY ATE IT SO YOU OBVIOUSLY LIKE IT WELL ENOUGH.

She put it down and didn’t take another bite. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I was coming off about four nights worth of sleeping nonsense and was in no mood. After it became apparent she wasn’t going to eat any more of it, I took the sandwich from her and sawed off the part that had her bite marks on it so I could finish it because I fucking love soy patties and put the little strip I cut off on her plate and said, “Eat this.”

She sat at her place for a while, dawdling over her French fries and her apples and avoiding touching the piece of sandwich. I started cleaning up and every time I watched her picking at her plate, I saw red and thought, “She won’t sleep at night and she’s pulling this shit too?”  I remarked, “You have to finish that sandwich piece before you can leave the table,” and she whined “I know!” and my unspoken thoughs were so resentful and insulting and all about her not sleeping at night.  Just like couples who fight and it always comes back to the guy not doing enough around the house, everything, from leaving her shoes out to eschewing pizza, always comes back to bedtime for me.

My inner monologue stopped when Tim completely lost his shit and yelled, “EAT IT. NOW!”  and she burst into tears and got dramatic and acted like she was having to choke down this vomitous mass of delicious soy patty that she’d eaten earlier without problem.

The other night we were driving to dance class and Holly declared she didn’t want to attend KU; she wanted to go to college out of state (Jesus God, do ALL kids say this? Is there some memo that goes out?) and I snarked, “Well, you can’t because I can’t fly in every night to lie down in your dorm room with you.”

That was a really mean thing to say, and I don’t think she heard me, but god damn.