It is New Year’s Eve.

I am hard at work on a grocery list template. Brad has just provided me two of the largest, best margaritas I have ever had. Oh, so very nice. My kids are watching “PeeWee’s Playhouse,” an all-time favorite of mine that they now enjoy thanks to DVD. The last episode they watched was copyrighted 1989. I was 13 in 1989. I so love(d) that show.

Griffon is entirely too excited about staying up late tonight. Archie doesn’t get to. The big kids are also (but less) excited.

It is a good eve. Maybe not as good as when we saw Prince at Texas Stadium that one time (wooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo), but good. Happy Holidays, friends. 2012 is not the last year of Earth. You heard it here first.

I haven’t posted anything in more than three weeks. Huh.

It’s kindof against my nature to be thankful for things. I’m too busy being pessimistic to be content. Terrible, I know, but it’s good in some ways. It keeps me restless and looking for ways to make things better.

If I were to stop and really think about the great things in my life, though, it would be these things:

• Brad still loves me, even though I am crazy, even though I’m ridiculous, even after almost 15 years
• Our four healthy children
• Grandparents (mine and my kids’)
• Music (I’ve been on a Bradford Cox kick again)
• Breaking Bad (we just started Season 3 – DON’T TELL ME)
• Even though it’s way too warm for November, it’s been BEAUTIFUL recently (sleeping with the windows open beautiful)
• Books (do you like these very general categories I’m using, rather than expanding to tell you what I’m reading?)
• The paint and pictures that have been sitting on the floor by the utility room all up, AS OF TODAY
• Seattle in April
• Las Vegas in January?
• Feeling for the first time in my life like I can pay all our bills without trying to rig something every month
• Anneke’s excitement at learning to use a phone (this is a whole other conversation)
• Clean house
• Footie pajamas
• Archie’s adorable, ridiculous mess of a haircut
• Alcohol (I know, devil’s plaything) and finding that neat bar by our house last weekend
• My kids’ school
• Archie’s words (“Pidermansss”)
• Anneke doing a lot more art this week due to her GROUNDING FROM ELECTRONICS
• Great friends, including some with whom we spent Thanksgiving yesterday
• Christmas trees
• New year, new start
• Brad reading In the Night Kitchen to the Little Boys
• Cherry pie (she’s my)
• The hammock
• Robot
• Chat at work (how would I surviiiiive without?)
• Kieran using my dad’s/my childhood bed set
• Coffee
• A working oven
• Backyard grass growing back
• Anneke helping me clean Wednesday (so great)
• My favorite time of year (now) (it’s the most wonderful)

I hope you all have as much.

I’m at a conference in Denver. I had dinner, alone (liberation!), at an okay Thai place. Two-for-one drinks, but the food was just meh.

I’ve had a headache since I got here, possibly from the altitude, possibly from anxiety, possibly from the cab driver who not only charged me fare for three passengers (long story… $122.40), but also dropped me off at the WRONG HOTEL.

I remember now that I hate conferences. I remember now that I can’t stand people who think they’re very important. I remember now that there are A LOT of very self-important people at conferences.

The whole idea is stupid. I mean, 10 years ago, when I went to these conferences as a graduate student, people collected papers. You’d go listen to a paper presentation, and then you’d go pick up the paper that went with it. It was almost a game, like collecting baseball cards. But now… who wants a freaking stack of papers?! Email it to me, please, and I *might* read it. It’s just arcane. And at a conference that focuses in part on new technologies…

That said, there are some REALLY smart people here. I live and work with some really smart people, but I don’t ever really engage with them in the way that one does at a conference like this. It’s nice. It makes me want to be better.

I don’t feel like I’ve ever really done anything well or deeply. I have such broad interests – I realize when I come to a conference like this – that I don’t ever become expert at anything. It’s taken me a long time to be okay with that. I’m almost 34 years old, and I’m finally okay with myself.

I know this is scattered… I had two beers, people. What do you want from me?

Just kidding. On that last post.

Still drunk. Ignore me. I’m stupid.

There are things that are so beautiful in the world, but the world is still flat, and I’m still a misfit.

*****

And this probably makes it worse.

*****

Whatever. I’m probably sobering up.

Gwen Bell asks “Album of the year: What’s rocking your world?”

I might answer her later. Right now, she annoys me.

Shit. I am drunk. I mean, not drunk in a way that I cannot write words, but drunk in a way that I may be less censored than I should be.

This is how I am right now.

I am thinking about friends. And I am texting a friend who is a really great friend, who I love, and I am thinking about how I can’t trust that, can’t trust friends, because they can break your heart. You can think you’re friends, and then, all of a sudden, you’re just not as important to them as they were to you.

And now they’re not. Because they hurt your feelings.

That’s how that goes.

It’s horrible.

Horrible.

But I’m drunk, so what do I know?

Don’t even know if I should post this because I’m too stupid to think. But maybe I will anyway. I wrote it.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

This time, no gin.

Flew to Nashville today, then drove to Bowling Green. I’m *tired*. Seriously. Inhumanly. Exhausted. My legs ache. I’m thirsty, but I don’t like drinking from hotel sinks, so that’s not getting fixed anytime soon. I also was prepared for cold weather (maybe I should check before I travel… hmm…) because of all the ice Kentucky’s had recently. I get here, and it’s fucking gorgeous. 67 degrees. Meanwhile, I’m wearing a thick sweater and carrying my heavy coat. I didn’t pack pjs because I usually wear a t-shirt or something I can sleep in. I could technically sleep in my sweater, but I would probably die of heat exhaustion.

So, here I sit. In my underwear. Unable to waddle down to the lobby to buy some carbonated confection because that would involve my having to put my clothes back on, and that is *so* not happening.

Friendly Kentucky has even provided me a small fridge in my room, but there’s nothing in it. It’s okay. Anything great inside probably would be off limits to the giant pregnant woman sitting in her underwear on the middle of the bed.

Bah. Maybe I’ll play WoW.

So we are on our way home from my aunt’s house — the DogRanch, as we like to refer to it — this first Sunday in September. I’m a teensy bit intoxicated, which is always real nice. The kids are in the back completely passed out because neither had a nap, and both needed them. That’s real nice too.

It’s September. If we lived anywhere else in the continental United States, this would be cause for celebration because the insane fucking heat would be dissipating. This is not true where we live.

In hell.

Sadly, there will be no need to bring down the sweaters from the top of my closet for at least a month. I love sweaters for some reason, so this is upsetting. And unnatural.

I have started back to work, and this is both good and bad. Good because I tend to be happier when I’m busier and bad because I have to wake up. I live so far away from my job that I have to wake up at 5:15, and I don’t even take that long to get ready. I’m a 30 minutes, tops, kind of girl when it comes to showering, etc. So, really, 5:15 is a little ridiculous, no?

I’m sleepy. I like margaritas…

Brad and I are going to try to have another baby…

I realize margaritas arent good for babies…

But I havent ovulated yet, so I’m cool.

So anyway, thats the big news. When I got pregnant with Anneke, I didn’t tell anyone until the second trimester because I’d had two miscarriages after Kieran. But really, I’m fucking 30 years old. I feel like an ancient mofo when it comes to reproductive viability. If we’re going to have anymore kids, we gots to get on it. And really, after you have one, you might as well have 13 because you’ve totally screwed yourself… or, if your glass is half full, been blessed by the universe. :)

My glass is sitting in my aunt’s kitchen sink with a wedge of lime and a tiny bit of tequila in it. So I guess it’s more on the empty side.

I’ve said it before… My ovaries are turning to shit. If I wait any longer, my children are going to be born headless and without souls.

This is not helped by the fact that pregnancies tend to be really hard on me physically. I get giant and puffy and have heart palpitations and pelvic symphysis dysfunction and kidney stones. I fully expect to weigh 700 pounds or more when I give birth to my next child. I store tremendous amounts of water in my tissues. Like a camel. Or a blowfish. Whichever is grosser to you.

So, anyway, yeah, thats me. Bitch done stole my fish.

One of my kids died. One of my students. The only student who ever asked me the names of my children. He was 13. I’m completely overwhelmed. This isn’t supposed to happen. For the longest time after I found out this evening, my brain sort of hazily kept trying to figure out ways to make it not true, to make it not have happened, to rewind reality.

I keep thinking about things he did, things he said, conversations we had… He had these beautiful green eyes. They were dark green, like an olive color, and I only noticed they were green after we came back from winter break. I remember working with him on something in English and being in the middle of a sentence and saying, “What color are your eyes?” I remarked on how pretty they were and how it was so strange that I’d never noticed them because my husband has beautiful green eyes, and I tend to notice green eyes.

I keep thinking about how he must have felt, dying at 13. He died on Friday afternoon, the last day of school before spring break. He went to work with his dad at his construction company that day, and a piece of heavy machinery fell on him. I keep thinking about how his dad must have felt being there, must feel now, and how his family still has to feel and be alive, even though this preposterous, unbelievable thing has happened, and they’ll never be with him again.

And I keep thinking about all the things I did, and all the things that happened, after he died but before I knew he died. I have this strange, autistic fascination with that little piece of time surrounding death. I checked my school e-mail at 6:17 that night. He was probably already gone. There’s something so sacred about that piece of time in between. It’s like your whole life and your perspective are about to change, and the thing that will change them has already happened, but you don’t know about it yet.

My head hurts, and my eyes sting, from crying so much.

I want to be drunk. I want to be so drunk my head falls off.

We don’t have any alcohol in the house, of course. I want to drive and smoke, and I want to drink and do a lot of drugs. I want not to feel like I feel, and I want it not to have happened.

we’re closing on our house today at 10 am. i woke up at 5 unable to sleep, which is absolutely typical for me, but i am having even greater anxiety than usual. egad. oh god. i hope everything goes smoothly.

the local news is so so so stupid. so happy to get away from tv soon. a news anchor said a few minutes ago something like…

ooh ooh ooh! just heard another good one…! “some texas lawmakers are trying to change the way young girls can have an abortion.”

yess! and the first one was a grammar thing, something like, “grab your coats because it’s going to be chilly and your umbrellas as well.”

b– has proposed a drinking game where we do a shot whenever a local newsperson uses the phrase “north texas” or “north texan.” good way to get s-mashed!

so b– says he is issuing forth a challenge, now that i have a blog of my very own, to see which of us can keep up with this the longest. i told him it was a little unfair, since our computer is dead, and so i literally write my posts by hand (which is so strange now) and then post from his laptop later. he said, “yeah, but nobody knows that, and if you mention it, they’ll just think you’re whining and making excuses.” so i say and realize at the same time, “yes, but that’s what my blog’s about.” so there. my tenses are screwy, but i’m trying to be true to the ds school of writing (ds was my dissertation advisor), so harumph. no pretensions.

my mom is having a super bowl party today. my family doesn’t really get into football, and i would be hard pressed to think of a more agonizing way to spend my day, but i like my mom’s idea for the party: ingest fried comestibles and watch commercials. i’ve tried to convince her to dvr it, so we can watch later and fast-forward through anything involving a ball, but she won’t go for it.

anyway, so b– and i (and baby a–, by extension) have been charged with the task of getting the alcohol. we have to go outside the suburb in which we live because it’s dry. this could have been changed last november when the issue was on the ballot, but people like n– told all their idiot families/friends to vote it down because they were convinced by the propaganda monsters that if it passed, people would start buying liquor at dollar stores, and homeless people (egad) would start hanging out everywhere. the whole thing had this insidious racist undercurrent. i actually heard n– say — and i love her most days — “i’m not racist [you always know something good's coming when you hear that], but the mexicans like their beer.” yes, the mexicans. jesus fucking christ. do people like this actually exist?! (need an interrobang here) it was all i could do not to gnaw off my tongue. gotta love the dtx.

media consumed since last post:

sea and cake: the biz