I really did intend a beefier post earlier this evening, but flickr was down and i had to watch some bad tv. Now the cat is almost sitting on the keyboard giving me some ‘catass’, which means time for bed.
I did have two funny things to share though:

and, me in grade 7. My mom made this entire outfit. Oh the hair.

OH! and I am going to BlogHer this year. I registered. For shock value, my flight costs $770. Is that devotion or what?

No matter how much I spend on a bra or how many I buy, they are never completely comfortable. My biggest problem that in order to hoist the girls to where they should be, it feels like the under wire is skewering my armpits.
Anyhow. If I had categories on this blog, which I don’t, this post would be under “life, mundane, house crap”.
We are getting a new garage built. The current garage is the same age of the house, circa 1968. The concrete was poured right on the ground and the people who owned the house before us let a mountain ash tree drape all over the roof. Huge crack in the concrete pad caused the walls to shift, mold on the roof made it crack and leak. Our garage is now a toxic pile of mold and other scary things growing on the wall and pad. This week we are getting it torn down and soon after a new one built. Getting a new garage is the most boring and expensive home renovation I can think of. Wow, we have a new place to put our car and lawn mower. It looks just like where we used to keep it, but without the dripping ceiling and mold. *yawn* Everything from the garage is now on my garden plot – no veggies for me this year. We have a giant tarp on it to protect it from rain, oh and looters.


The more exciting and way cheaper house addition is a new deck. When we got our windows replaced last year our window guy accidentally put in french doors off of our dining room instead of windows. I figured it was a sign that we needed a deck. I dragged Mark into my logic shame spiral of spending money. I am really excited about the deck. Probably unreasonably excited. I love my flower garden and yard and I would love to be out there sitting in a chair on a solid surface and not only weeding. The deck will be 12×16 feet and cedar. It will smell nice after a rain. Come over in a couple of weeks and I will BBQ!

We have a chance at new beginnings. All sorts of different kinds. I am doing some of my favourite things involving new things tomorrow. I am going to my favourite greenhouse with a $100 gift certificate. I better keep a tab in my head. I have already bought some plants and I don’t want to blow my wad. So to speak.
I will continue my ongoing fatwah on quack grass and then plant some lovelies to bring me cheer. I wish I had some company tomorrow morning. Someone come with, we can hit somewhere for lunch, have a margarita and then have a nap.

Charlotte says something blows around here.
I am currently obsessed with Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic. I can relate to how these people feel about food. I am also so sad for them. For anyone struggling with addiction, food, drugs, alcohol. Am also addicted (ha) to Intervention on A&E. I know why Intervention attracts me, it is because of my friend who died from drug abuse. Watching these shows is like torture and redemption at the same time. I also found time to see that Jaslene won ANTM. I have refined tastes in television.
What shows to you watch that would be unexpected or guilty pleasures?

I do not know, go ask your dad.
Feeling kind of sad today. Some non-blog sharing reasons and Mrs Kennedy’s bad news and Schmutzie’s bad news. Pray if you do that, hug a kitty, smell a flower, find a rooster.
* * *
Took some garden photos today. Just wanted to prove to the gardenistas that spring has spring here.

closed for the night.

nothing finer than waking up to a latté and a sausage and egg mcmuffin. too bad i didn’t get a kitty. wuzza wuzza.

I already won a prize from Kim. Even though she lives on the other side of the freeway I might waive my “too far away” rule to go meet her. We will see if she wants to.
For now, go and comment and win some fab’ stuff!
I am up too late watching Law and Order. I love me some L&O. I also bought some plants today for the garden even thought the RULE here is not to plant until the May long weekend. Victoria Day. Errrr, the weekend of the 18th I believe. I live in the cold mofo arctic and I don’t want to spend $150 on bedding plants only to lose them to cold. I will be watching the forecasts religiously.
Anyone make those sardine eggs things? They were awesome*
* Only guessing.

While watching Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, I was thinking about getting a snack. That is right, watching people who might die from eating addiction makes me hungry. I am fucked up. Anyhow.
I went downstairs to check on laundry and email and found these LOVELY recipe cards that The Mrs. Kennedy sent me ages ago. I thought I would give you a preview of tomorrow’s feast:
The appetizer is a no brainer. They sure knew how to make a recipe in 1973.

But I cannot choose the main course. Please help! I am trying to limit our red meat consumption.

OR

Because we all know there is not a man woman or child alive that doesn’t love a good nut roast.

Sorry to bring the room down with that last post. It had been brewing for a very very long time.
SO! Want some free stuff? My new friend Kim, who lives nay a half hour from me, owns thebabymarketplace.com AND has her own personal blog mommyknows.com. She is giving something away in EVERY DAY OF MAY! Dude, free stuff, need I say more. I bought an awesome baby car seat fleecy cover thing for Char way back and it was awesome. She has great stuff. Check it out. Wiin some loot! Happy month of May from Kim! well, and me, since I am telling whoever reads me.

xoxoxo

Some of you will relate to this post. This post that I am drafting but who knows when I will publish it. Recent things in my personal and family life have be thinking of feeling excluded, left out, on the fringe, the feeling of not belonging. I am going to go ahead and make a huge generalization and say that a lot of adopted children feel this way. People will sometimes tell you that you have your “dad’s curly hair”, even when they know you are adopted, like throwing you an non-genetically related bone. Others ask you if you have ever met or wish you had met your real parents. Choice of semantics there, I like to use biological parent as much as possible. I don’t go so far as so stay sperm donor (which is sort of how I feel in my case). I am lucky to have a decent relationship with my BioMom™ for the last 13 years, but it is one we developed and not one that was instantly forged through ancestry and blood. She had higher needs and expectation than I and we still work on that.
Before I met my biological mom I thought in my childhood, then adolescent, then adult head, “if I was really really really good enough, she would have kept me”. I understood that 1969 was probably not the best year to be unwed and pregnant and poor, but part of me still thought and ok sometimes still thinks that if I was a shining beacon of babyness that she would have taken me home and raised me no matter the consequences. Realistically, I was given to some kick ass parents and I thank god that BioMom™ made the decision she did. I grew up having recurring dreams where I would wake up and my parents wouldn’t know me and ask me to leave. Or I would go into their bedroom after a bad dream (still dreaming) and they would say WHO ARE YOU? what are you doing in our house. I didn’t even remember that until I was in my twenties.
I don’t know if this is adopted child syndrome or insecure crappy self esteem syndrome, but I grew up wondering that was intrinsically, invisibly, but obviously wrong with me. I asked myself this all the time. It was the standard ‘what the fuck’, every time I was rejected or snubbed or not called back or not invited or ignored, made fun of or looked at funny. I figured my hair must be wrong, I was too fat (that never seems to wane as a reason for things gone wrong) or I was too tall, too short? I read every Seventeen magazine from the age of 12 to about 18 (I figured I had to move on by then to Mademoiselle and Glamour), to see what I could do to become pretty, well liked, well mannered, cool, with-it, smell right, have the right hair, perhaps if I dressed as fashionably as I could given whatever money I got from my parents I would fit right in. No more questioning what was wrong with me.
My plan started in grade 7. In grade 8 I was called a “fucking punker” for wearing striped pants. (forgive the 80s people) They were cool pants, I was careful to be fashionable, yet I was mocked, loudly and for all to see in the hallway. Things got a bit easier as school went on, I found a kindred spirit in my friend Pam (who was my recent companion in San Francisco). By the time we hit grade 10, we were both suffering from not fitting in angst and Pam was suffering from severe depression and spent some time in the hospital. I had debilitating anxiety that cocooned me closer and closer inside my parent’s home and made it nearly impossible to be out when it was dark outside. I wasn’t properly treated until my second year of university. I got a job in a clothing store between grade 10 and 11 and my clothes got better. Social status remained the same, but I am sure the perpetual scowl did not help. The popular girls still had something magical about that that I could not empirically prove or adapt to. I had some reprieve in grade 12 by being chosen to be class historian and barely made it through my speech because it was at night and I was still terrified and anxious about being out of the house.
I went to University in my home town and I my anxiety abated somewhat, I was able to go to two school relation functions where people were drinking at night and not die. It wasn’t until my second year I got help as an outpatient in the hospital. There! That was what was wrong with me! People could sense my insanity and stayed away. I was invisibly repellant. What a relief. I finished my degree far from home on the other side of the country. Without the tangible baggage of SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ME, I enjoyed my two years there immensely. Sure, I drank a lot, and slept with a few too many guys, but I didn’t feel like there was some cloak of “stay away from me” that I was still wearing.
I am now 37. (“ALMOST FORTY” – my mom). I think I still wear some of that invisible repellant. When my Aunt died from Cancer last year, I felt a little outside looking in, not genetically related to a family who all looked A LOT like each other. I stopped going to family functions when I was in my mid teens, partially because of anxiety and partially because I never felt part of the family. Neither on my dad’s or mom’s side. Whomever I connected with was on a personal basis, just like I would make a friend in a non familial setting. I have a couple of aunts and cousins that I love, because we connect.
I was at a birthday party for my very good friend Kelly’s daughter Zöe on Saturday. There were about 19 kids there. It was chaos and Charlotte was attached to my person most of the time. It was a pajama party theme, I forgot. We weren’t the only ones, but I felt that feeling again, a little. Where all the other little girls were bedecked in Disney princess nighties and we were in our regular party clothes. I feel for Charlotte. She is still so shy amongst such chaotic events, even though I know she would have fun if she was able to take the risk. Even with me close by she is hesitant and gives up easily. I am still hoping the pre-school will help (she seems to thrive there), but non structured childhood fun and insanity makes her shiver. Poor Charlotte, in no princess pajamas hanging out with me, and some lovely moms inside the house with their newborns.
I just want to fix it, for me, for her. I don’t know if I will ever know how. Such is the power of the things that are invisible to me. I wish it would stop hurting so much.

this is me in grade 9 baby

rain rain go away