as long as I’ve got my suit & tie imma leave it all on the floor tonight

Both H and I work from home fulltime these days…and just as I predicted back in 2005, we are often in our pajamas (7/10 times mine includes barcrawl t-shirts from the late ‘90s-early ‘00s). 

Sometimes I go out to the bus stop to pick up the children without bothering to change hoping none of the other parents are astute enough to see the year and do the math. For some reason they seem to think we are younger than we are, and I’d hate to spoil that illusion.

I did take great pleasure, however, in perusing the tie section when we went to buy H a new suit last month for cool cat’s wedding. He looked very dapper. Too bad that’s the last wedding I foresee attending for a long while.  

Even back in March 2005 I suspected I wasn’t going to get to pick out too many ties after I got married.

“no, this is in the big huge room where everyone sits and the cubicles only come up to the waist, so we're all together. later, when i'm at the satellite office fearing for my life, i am all alone. 

today, chatty was in his element. he somehow landed an important project and you could see how excited he was; it was like a little kid with his gameboy. 

he was irritating me today because he was second-guessing his superiors, who are clearly superior for a reason. 

but i liked his shirt. (well at least the back of it, anyway) a man in a shirt and tie gets me every time. and you know i'm going to end up with someone who works from home in his pajamas. christmas shopping is so much more fun if you get to pick out a couple of ties. what a tragedy. 

whoa, i'm getting way ahead of myself here.”

3/23/2005 1:17 AM

Chatty worked on reports for the next few years and like me, probably found himself doing something completely different when the dungeon industry imploded. I wonder if he gets to work from home in his pajamas, now, too.

#NaBloPoMo

“Suit & Tie (feat. JAY-Z)” Justin Timberlake

when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month or even your year

Highcon, Ri and C are invited and will likely attend the episode of Friends this weekend called "The one where Chandler Settles Down." Considering I was the Monica Geller at her most relentless to his avoidant Ms. Chanandler Bong (RIP Matthew Perry) for about 18 months two decades ago, I am certainly not on the guest list. But I do hope that Chandler’s new wife makes him happy. 

I've made this Friends reference in the past, and I kept it breezy, but this NaBloPoMo is all about the circleback with context, so I will go ahead and stretch this simile beyond its limits. What the hell, it's been 19 years (to the day, eerily) since we broke up.

Let's imagine that:

• Chandler and Monica are humans instead of sitcom puppets at the mercy of ratings and writers. 
• After a decade of membership in a tight-knit friend group and a benign personal connection, they bumped elbows one afternoon when they were both single and found it created an electric spark worth investigating.
• Mapping out the implications of a potential breakup and swearing upon a swing set that they would not let things get weird, they hesitatingly gave it a shot.
• The Friends eventually found out and were happy! One was especially over the moon at the idea that this best friend and that best friend were now BESTEST best friends, and announced to every patron of Side Tracks that he'd known it all along.
• They were deliriously happy until Chandler began acting kinda shady, ain't callin' her baby, why the sudden change...this trifling behavior seemed to crop up whenever Janice's laugh could be heard in the background.
• Monica's attention to detail made her suspicious, especially when stories didn't add up. This grilling made Chandler more avoidant. Which made Monica double down and catch more inconsistencies, which made her panic. 
• At Central Perk, Monica crossed her arms and glowered in an armchair, but Chandler was all jokes. He turned to the others, raised his eyebrow and circled a finger around his ear. "Could she BE more paranoid?" Everyone laughed, even Gunther.
• Monica had enough and they broke up.
• It was easier for the Friends to hang out with Chandler. He remained funny and normal. Monica cried a lot in her apartment and kept trying to get them to agree Chandler was at the very least being dishonorable and untrustworthy. If he's lying about hanging out with Janice, what else is he hiding? She was getting to be a real drag. Come on, it's Chandler. He would never! Get a grip, Monica.
• Then Monica kind of disappeared. She got an off-hours job in some dungeon in the city where she was up all night, worked all weekend and didn't see any friends at all. Supposedly she started one of those blog things.
• At the 20-year high school reunion over a decade later, Monica and Chandler had a nice chat about how he was really into the woman he was dating but she was angling for a ring and he wasn't about that life. They inquired about each other's families and Monica showed him photos of her children. 
• The group got together a handful of times but it was never the same. The Friends haven't all been in one room together since 2019, and even then they were sprinkled among 25 mutual friends and acquaintances at a going-away party. They exchanged pleasantries and raised a toast to old times.

That relationship very nearly turned me to ash. People who saw the mess that was me in the following months or caught a glimpse of the bitterness simmering under the surface for years afterward assumed I must've been so desperately in love with Chandler that I couldn't get over the heartbreak. Sure, being unable to make it work with him was a crushing disappointment. But it wasn’t just him that I lost. 

The fact that not a single one of them took my side and their refusal to acknowledge my hurt as anything beyond a crackpot theory—essentially gaslighting me into thinking I ruined the group by being extra? That's the blade that caused the festering wound.

When I was trying to explain the distinction (as recently as last year) one of them turned to me and said, "Cadiz. You have to understand. If it were ANYONE else, I would have so been in your corner, all the way. But it's Chandler! We love that guy! How could we possibly be mad at him?" 

Within a year of the breakup I had met and fallen in love with the man who would hold my hand throughout my failed attempt at “and that, my friend, is what they call closure” a few years later. I didn’t get it. What happened instead was me going full-scale Hysterical Monica on the whole group in actual Central Park. This man stayed by my side when there were two airports full of flights out of New York just a cab ride away. That is precisely when I realized I would marry H someday. Later, when asked about that bizarre confrontation, all he had to say was "Who, Chandler? I don't have a problem with the guy. Besides, he left the door open for me."

If my ex has managed to find someone as well-suited to him as I caught for myself, then he is a truly lucky fellow who deserves every happiness in the world.

#NaBloPoMo

"I'll Be There for You" The Rembrandts

i woke up in between a memory and a dream

When I started this little experiment, Ale was the only one who saw potential in what I was doing. And she joined me. Without her consistent support and comments (not to mention the off-blog running commentary between us*), none of this may have ever happened. But Ale has always been a visionary. Take this comment she made in March 2005 on my post about "Only You," a pretty bad movie that I loved anyway because Italy, truuue looove and (let's be honest) Robert Downey, Jr. (Keep in mind that at this time Ale was fluent in four languages and English was not the first one. She's likely fluent in a dozen by now.):

"wahahhaha, i'm was totaly laughing, my work people were looking at me funny. 

yep, i know that movie. I also to this day have problems with movies, pictures, posters...etc... dipicting eurpean seens. (yes, depressing topic for another day) I resigned to the fact that the only way I'll be able to handle "europe stuff" is if I am strongly connected to it where I MUST travel there more than on a quarterly basis. EX: marrying a european and bringing my childrenses to visit with their granmamas. or work... or having so much money that I must shop there every season... Until than, we cant talk, discuss, see it--- nothing.
one thing that's not clear, i like marissa tomei-- even when she is being annoying--?? you don't?"

Ale lived in New York in the early aughts. She worked for an international company and made a legitimate truuue looove connection with a colleague based in The Netherlands. She moved there. They got married, have two beautiful sons and she continues to forge her way toward world domination. If you read her comments on this blog (sadly, it looks like she's deleted hers), she told us all exactly how it was going to go down. And it did. 

*Apparently during the heyday of this blog, I spent most of my time with folks in other time zones.

#NaBloPoMo

"You Don't Know How it Feels" Tom Petty

i'm gonna find you, and take it slowly

The dungeon is being turned into a casino. I wish I were making that up.

I've tried posting about this many times in the two years since the news first broke, but I couldn't bring myself to write the words. Construction is now set to start early next year. Maybe that's why it finally feels like it might actually happen.

That place was the beginning of so much, and I had absolutely no idea. I was busy whining about problems with parking and missing my friends while trapped there until the wee hours, night after night. Meanwhile up in the stratosphere, the universe was conspiring with the Interwebs to bump me into H. Eighteen years later, I wouldn't trade the life we've built together for anything in the world.

So many things have changed since 2005. I've had a dozen jobs, two careers and four homes since I last sat in that windowless cinderblock room at a 1980s metal desk with a classic "icon" telephone as my only lifeline to the outside. I've created countless works of art in that time, too. It's no surprise that the trickiest, most laborious projects--obviously, the children--give me joy beyond measure and pride that will bring me to tears if I spend too much time thinking about how wondrous they are and what a miracle it is that they even came to be at all.

After them, however, the thing that I am most proud of is this blog. It is the one endeavor I did completely by myself, FOR myself, putting it out there just to see what would happen. I had all of this inside of me with nowhere else for it to go. And then slowly people started reading it (almost zero people I expected and a lot of people I grew to care about and still worry after--some whom I have never even met to this day, and one of whom I cannot imagine not getting to snuggle up to every night).

There are some really lame posts on here. The embarrassment practically vibrates from them. But I accept that it wouldn't be a chronicle that can settle bets about what really happened without also including busy, buzzing CRINGE. 

I've missed this blog like one of those friends who knew me during those terrible junior high years but loves me enough to lie "Oh Cadiz, you never had an awkward phase!" with a straight face. Every month that went by without a post here was like forgetting her birthday and then getting a cheesy card from the grocery store but continually forgetting to mail it. 

I'm here now. The card is crumpled and I had to add several more stamps to cover the increased price of postage. I don't know what this is going to be; maybe I'll circle back and update some stuff from before, maybe I'll tell you what I can piece together about the last three years, maybe it'll be a bunch of links back to the days when I was too stupid to realize that the clueless protagonist in the romantic comedy was actually ME. I've got that feeling again: There's too much in here that has nowhere to go. Here it comes.

#NaBloPoMo

"Ready or Not" The Fugees

day 21

DISCLAIMER: I generally don't drink, but right now I'm sipping Pinot Noir from a mug my brother got me that says "You are doing a fucking great job." And today has been one of the better days.

Last night I went out for the first time in 20 days. I fashioned a mask out of a "POW' "BAM" comic-style bandanna we got during a "superhero" themed giant project from 2016* and two hair ties. I went to the grocery store and bought a month's worth of groceries, then stopped at the daycare lady's house and picked up some preschool materials and gave her a check. It just feels like the right thing to do, especially because we have a taste of what it's like to wrangle these two maniacs all day long--God bless her for managing to take care of (and teach) 12 of them.

The store was a weird experience. There were masked people, unmasked people parents with wandering teenagers, couples trying to decide which box of Triscuit to get and a pregnant employee making flower arrangements. There was no milk, but lots of bread. There was zero toilet paper, but plenty of meat at the deli counter. There was no flour but lots and lots of veggies. These are strange times. There was a weird, Twilight Zone feel to the entire experience. My cashier was young and had on gloves but no mask. I realized very quickly what an error it was to get the "smallesh" cart but managed to pack it full. At check out I had to get a bigger cart to actually get the stuff to the car. And a lot of it ended it up kind of dented by the time I got home.

I didn't like it. I'm hoping to go another 20 days until I have to leave again. All these years, I've been telling myself I'm an extrovert, but I suspect a) I was an introvert all this time?!?! b) H has converted me or c) I'm getting old. Get off my lawn. This quarantine really hasn't bothered me one bit. We don't take these children anywhere anyway, and while I can make conversation with a lamppost, these last few days it takes more out of me than it ever did. I love not having to do my hair or put on makeup and the TIME SAVED not having to plan to drive somewhere? #priceless. I sent cc a meme today that said something to the effect of "I haven't been late to anything for a month!" Except I'm the last one to log into my 8:30am work standup call every morning...

Working with small children has been so challenging. I wish I could say that I've totally figured out this new job, but if we are keeping it 100, I really haven't. A few weeks ago when they were playing Headbandz Jr., Ro told H "You're much smarter than Mommy." That shiz cut deep, little girl. Later, H gently reminded me that nothing goes unnoticed around here, and likely my constant self second-guessing has been absorbed by these little sponges. So now I have to keep my abject panic about how much I have yet to figure out about this job even after ELEVEN months to myself. Fake it till you make it? We will see when I have to take call next week for the first time.

I think it's safe to disclose at this point, two glasses of wine and almost 15 since I started this blog, that I used to be a journalist, working at a pretty-giant-named newspaper. And now I work in healthcare IT. Even though this was never our intention, so does H. We have a very unique perspective of seeing this whole COVID19 thing play out without being on the floor anymore (which I was for several years). Holy cow, it's like I'm Elaine on Peppermint Schnapps.

Anyway, we are hearing about things that are terrible and worrying SO much about our colleagues, friends and loved ones. Someone on my team is working on documentation for "expired patients," allowing for nurses and physicians to document details of all kinds. And H is working on reports on how many COVID19 cases (and at what level) for his organization. Sobering, at best. Yet there are still people gallivanting around, meeting up in secret, going on playdates, because they can't stand to stay home with their Internet and their fridges full of food. It makes me stabby.

This thing could be a death sentence for my brother, and the very idea of that brings me to tears. The poor kid hasn't seen a soul in almost a month; he's doddering around his three-bedroom house all alone. I just want to go over there and give him a hug so badly, but I'm 90% certain the 'Rona has has passed through this house. There is no way in hell I want to expose him to it. He needs to re-up his Coumadin prescription, but his APN says he needs to get PT/INR labs done first. So I'm trying to find an N95 for him to wear for the lab test.

Last night we also tried to bake our own bread, in this curvy type of Italian loaf pan. It was, as Paul Hollywood says in the Netflix series 1 of The Great British Baking Show, "Calling this a disaster would be an insult to disaster." It was hard as a rock. We left it out on the stoop for the wildlife, and it went untouched overnight. What a waste of five cups of flour and two packets of yeast. I should stick to cooking vaguely directed meals that don't require any precision.

I have been obsessed with the Apple Music radio show "Rocket Hour" with Elton  John. He is a lovely deejay and plays all kinds of music. I'm hoping the exposure will allow my children to appreciate all kinds of music. They'd rather listen to the Frozen 2 or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse soundtracks.

Sleeping on the floor in the kids' room has been eye-opening. Kash will roll right out of his toddler bed, onto the floor and not wake up. Ro will have entire soliloquies in her sleep (she got that from me). Sleeping on the floor is hard on the hips. I generally end up sneaking into the twin bed with her or cramped up in the crib-turned-toddler bed with him. I haven't had a good night's sleep in years, so it's kind of moot. But wow, am I not functioning well. [insert shrug emoji here]. I am hoping so hard that my employer is not basing continued employment at productivity stats.

H is feeling much better, but of course the pessimist in me suspects this is a fakeout before he feels a lot worse, as has been reported about this damn "THE SICKNESS," as Ro calls it. I have never before truly appreciated how much he does around here with the kids. But after this past week where I'm trying to work full-time and stay-at-home-parent full-time with H laid up in bed, I kind of feel like I'm either the biggest charlatan in the world, or maybe I can handle more than I thought. I am praying even harder that no one else gets this thing.

I'm blathering, but you know what, I've never buzzed posted before, and any editing I had done to my posts is out the window, because two people under the age of 5 will only play with kinetic sand for so long.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. Maybe I'm trying to say that I feel like I should be learning a hobby or catching up on shows or cleaning my damn house so we can sell it in time to move closer to my parents so Ro can go to the same school system all the way through. The reality is that I can't even find time to shower, and any free time I have is spent reading (I refuse to watch TV news) the news or listening to news radio or scrolling through facebook, where the comments and reposts give me the dopamine hits I used to get from this blog.

It will be interesting to read this later, when this buzz has worn off.


*I also have been coloring on this very beautiful calendar from 2017 that I kept. Don't say hoard--er, WAREHOUSING--never came in handy. 

whoooa, we're halfway there

Gone are the days when I have time to edit my thoughts into coherent bits--and since I have only recently discovered that most everyone else in this world has an inner monologue that basically tells them what to say and do, word for word before it comes out of their mouths *, and they don't spend 95% of their typing time hitting backspace to translate the four different emoji conversations happening over the background song (at the moment it's "I Like Me Better When I'm With You" by Lauv)--anyone who happens to still be reading this is stuck trying to figure out what I'm trying to say, as I edit the feelings and images in my mind into English.

It's coming up on Valentine's Day. Jon and I have declared that a "dead" holiday for us (perhaps after 13 years, a blog reveal about H and two children later, we might now be able to talk about how we almost broke up on that first one...some other time). My actual best February 14 ** was going to IKEA with one of my bffs and Prom Date, highcon, who gathered us together this past weekend to say adios to Chicago (again) as he officially moves back to New York (again) to be with his love, K. 

I rode the train in with JZ, a friend of mine from elementary school, who also ended up being great friends with highcon in junior high/middle school. The districting around here is wacky so JZ and I were split in jr. high and everyone was reunited together in high school, where I met highcon. I'll skip to the TL;DR: We all go waaay back.

So JZ and I are at this fancy restaurant an entire hour early. I send this text to highcon: 

"T-53 minutes. Highcon, do you know where your wallet is?

And your phone.

And your keys.

And your man?

We are here and already drinking."

His response, 46 minutes (or T-14 minutes until the private party was set to begin):

"Omg.

I lost my phone!!!!!

It's in an Uber and he's meeting us at [fancy restaurant].

My work one.

Kill me!

So, you called it"

Highcon has a history of these shenanigans. It is mind-blowing that someone who cannot keep track of mundane things such as cellphones, keys and wallets has somehow risen through the ranks to become a bigshot at an international company, literally making billion-dollar decisions on the regular. I'm not usually one to drop annoying hints like this, but he and his equally successful sweetheart have a house on Martha's Vineyard and travel the world for fun. But at the end of the day, he's still the same silly guy who'd procrastinate with me on English papers and talk smack about classmates until the wee hours of the morning on the phone in high school. 

I had already been feeling extremely nostalgic recently. I don't know if it's because I'm starting to really feel the wear and tear of 41 years on my body, or that caring for small children while trying to maintain a house, a marriage and a very demanding job that requires me to not quite ever be "logged out" is making me wonder what would have happened if I had taken any of the other options when I got to forks in the road. I regret nothing, but when you watch cheesy teen movies like "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" and read books about young people coming into their own and discovering love and life, and you celebrate one of your besties taking a great leap into the semi-unknown (his mom asked K if he was "ready to have highcon full time"), realizing that you're halfway done with this life is kind of like a sharp kick to the stomach. With a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking. 

During the warm and jovial dinner, several of us got a text that a classmate (and good friends of one of the other people) had suddenly died of cancer, leaving behind a wife and a 15-month old. This, on top of the unexpected death of Kobe Bryant, who was revered in our house by the devoted Laker fans, the one-year anniversary of Ri's brother-in-law-to-be dying of a heart attack a month before his wedding to her sister, and the pre-sad anguish anchor I drag around every moment of every day about the possibility of losing my brother was too much to bear. I broke down. Maybe it was the alcohol.

JZ had a clearer head and got me up and out of there so we could catch the train home. I had to be at work at 6am Sunday, for a work go live--which was not a fun experience, but I'll have to write another post about how the job is going. I was so thankful to have that evening. Sixteen people came together to talk about why we love highcon, sharing stories digging up exactly the kind of dirt you have on someone with whom you rode the bus or helped figure out how to put contact lenses in. 

The morning after the party, when I was broke-brain as hell, I got about 3/4 of the way to work and realized I had left my computer at home and got there at 6:20a instead of 20 min early. Then I couldn't locate my cellphone for about 5 hours. I literally walked from the car, into the office, up the steps and to the Command Center to check in. I couldn't have left it at home because the directions were telling me just how late I was going to be and I was listening to Sarah Silverman tell Conan O'Brien about how he thwarted her plans to make out with him many years ago by telling her he was recently engaged. After THREE car searches, I located my phone. I texted highcon and JZ: 

"Dude, thank you (and K) for the lovely party I had so much fun, and sorry if I was obnoxious--I haven't been drinking in a LONG time!

In total karmic justice, this morning at 5am I forgot to put my laptop in the car and had to turn around halfway, and then couldn't find my damn phone for like five hours! It had slipped between the console and the passenger seat. I think this is payback for giving you crap yesterday."

His response:

"Bwahahahahah

See this is why we are friends

We are all functional hot messes"

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't know where all the time went. But talking about all that old stuff, which was SO IMPORTANT back then, and realizing that most of us can only even recall it in pieces so we have to be in the same space to argue and put it all together, makes me realize that this life is zooming. Just flying by. And I'm so thankful to have written some of it down. 

*subsequent posts on this dude's blog say that he has ADD, so there goes that theory (I am not officially diagnosed, but an ADD therapist said almost all the markers light up for me having ADHD or something of the sort).

** I pulled that post up on my phone to show K what a sweetheart highcon was for going to all the trouble of printing out a kids' coloring-book valentine to give me on the way to IKEA.

if I can do a 1.75 all-nighter, I can give this another shot

I’m talking about NaBloPoMo.

• The party was fun, but the place wasn’t really even finished so it was a bit raw. A lot of people got overserved but I nursed two drinks all night. We went next door to a hotel and closed out their bar, too. It was so nice to see everyone, so it was a happy 40th to me. 
• I just finished a HUGE project at work, that almost resulted in my death (I was convinced a terrible tension headache was an aneurysm and started planning what I’d say as my last words). 
• I was up for 45 hours in a row. I hadn’t done a double all-nighter since college (and then only once). I’m not bragging; I know how pathetic that is. 
• Apparently, it took all these years of trying all kinds of music and noise and techniques to help me concentrate before I realized that I work best to the soundtrack of show tunes. 
• Here (and everywhere) all I talk about is work. It makes others annoyed and makes me hate myself. Because while I have two amazing children and the best husband, friends and family, this job has siphoned off my life force, leaving me nothing but 76 tickets in the queue inhabiting the shell of my former self. Wow, did I actually just write that down? 
• During a “debrief” conference call the 22-year-old showpony, as I like to call them, ”managing” the project said “you all can have 26 minutes minutes of your life back, I wanted to scream, “BUT CAN YOU GIVE BACK MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD’S BIRTHDAY?” 

Damn. I’m rusty. Let’s see how long this lasts. 

the dungeon is kind of an office building now

It’s five in the morning and I am pumping. I thought I was awake because I had a bad dream someone was trying to hurt my child but after tossing and turning for 20 minutes, then reading a bunch of parenting stories about how to protect my kids from predators, and an hour of catching up with what a blogger I used to follow has been doing the last eight years, I realize this strange feeling is the need to empty the tanks. So I’m pumping.

This is stupid because my kid is going to wake up really hungry in about 25 minutes and I won’t have much to give. So I should stop. 

I have so much to say and no time to say it. One of these days I’ll come back here and tell you about my son, who radiates joy every second of the day—even when he’s hungry—and he *may* even prefer me sometimes to his father, which is surprising and nice. And my daughter, who is very likely smarter than I am already: when I tried to convince her a goblin ate her cookie, she said “no, mom, I really think it was you.”

I am filled with anxiety so much of the time—it used to be the mechanism that kept me in line, but I think it’s veering off into the land of hindering more than helping. I’m probably just paranoid. 

Two years ago I started to suspect I had always had ADD and started talking to someone about it. Then I learned if my goal was to have another baby and not consider taking medicine, there’s really nothing to do except techniques and tools you use “until they don’t work anymore.” I did get that baby (it wasn’t easy), and I’m cycling through those techniques and tools. Still, I’m pretty wound up and easily distracted most of the time. 

Last month I went to Greece for 14 days with my best friends from college, leaving my 9-month-old and 3.5-year-old with their dad. I grappled with unbelievable mom guilt about it, but many people were encouraging me to go—including my husband and mother (who would be taking care of the children). Truly the one sentence someone told me that made me feel ok about going was “think of this as “Jon’s separated pelvis.” And while it was probably a rough 14 days for him, as FaceTime showed, trying to heal a separated pelvis (twice) takes a LOT longer than two weeks. Also? An infant doesn’t understand FaceTime. Recording/sending videos is better when you’re on another continent and your child can’t get to you. That brief but heartbreaking experience is probably the reason this government-separating-families-at-the-border thing has been keeping me up at night, crying.

It took me a full ten days to unclench and start to relax on vacation. I did carry the breast pump with me wherever I went and dumped more ounces of precious milk than I care to admit, but I’d be damned if my kid was going to stop nursing because mommy got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hang out with her friends in a gorgeous place for 14 days of only having to worry about what she was going to eat for dinner. 

Part of the reason I sought the tools and techniques about the ADD was because I was so miserable at work and of course thought that was my fault. Allowing myself to be bullied probably was, though. After six years, I found an oppportunity to report to a different person and, damn, that makes a big difference.

I am typing this on my phone, and while I am wearing my glasses, I’m pretty sure I’m looking at 0.2 font size. The Blogger app has been unsupported for years and this may not even post. Doesn’t matter because I’m the only one who will read this, likely in a few years when I’m up at night worrying about where we will get drinking water when the United States coastlines have flooded and all those people show up in the Midwest to maim us for lake water. 

Oh the sun is up. Perhaps it’s time to go to bed. 

Im willing to bet you can find that exact line in posts from 2006, when I was working in the dungeon. In rather sad news, the castle where I worked is being turned into condos, so half the staff has been relocated to the dungeon. Which is good, because with all those witnesses, the odds a person will be murdered and dismembered have gone way down. 

NaBloPoMo: it's been a long time

When you have kids, time seems like a handful of water you're trying to keep. There is so much that happens throughout the day that you wish you could record, preserve, save to cherish later. But it floats away, and the efforts you make to try to hang on to it often get in the way of enjoying it.

I've said this so many times here before, but I love this blog. I miss it terribly--mostly the community we had in 2005, where I'd spend the day thinking of something to post, then eagerly look forward to what people would say about it. Then go around and see what they'd had to say on theirs. I was mostly in love with my husband long before I had even shared a meal with him, all because of this. Unfortunately, like everything else, the supportive, amazing community couldn't last. So much other stuff took up time and it withered away into an antiquated fad. I came out a winner, as I got the husband, and now a beautiful family. But the nostalgic in me wishes she could come back here once in awhile, write something silly and connect with people as we once did.

Thinking about it, the comments were just a part of the appeal. Writing every day, looking around my life to try and find something worth remembering, taking stock of the world and documenting what was happening in real time, those are treasures you can't re-create. I've settled many a bet about when/how things happened by pulling up an old post. The daily gems about having to park downtown or how my biggest struggle was whether I'd get the next Netflix DVD in the mail on time? Looking back, that all seems laughably quaint when we're responsible for keeping two other people alive these days.

Jon turned 40 yesterday. He's reflecting on his life, contemplating what will happen afterward and wondering what it all means. And as I'm generally thinking a few years in the future half the time, I have been doing the same, for a while now. Burying a child tends to shake things into focus, a sharp view of all that isn't actually necessary; it's one that many people get through life not experiencing. Or maybe they do realize it, only when it's too late to change. I think I have my priorities straight, but it's so very hard to give everything worthwhile the time it deserves.

I'm not sure what I'm getting at. I'm rusty. I no longer have the hours I've spent on posts in the past. These muscles are stiff from disuse. But I've gotten up. I'm stretching them. Maybe I can run again.

well, heck

I have never in my life so badly blown NaBloPoMo. I am so sorry.

Looking at my posts, there is a LOT of whining. Again, sorry.

Truly, this is one of the best (if not THE best) periods of my life, but you would never know it because of all the whining.

But this has also been one of the worst periods of my life because I don't know what the heck I am doing, or how to manage it and I feel like I'm always disappointing someone, if not everyone. It's hella hard not to care about that. I don't know how mommy bloggers have time to post. Because I barely have time to wash my hair. And sometimes I worry that I'll leave without rinsing.

It seems unfair that the lovely fleeting moments of early parenthood can be so thoroughly tainted by a constant hovering of a nervous breakdown.

Inevitably, I will look back on this time and hate myself for caring so much that the ironing didn't get done or that I could no longer keep up with coworkers who put in 70 hours a week.

Thank goodness we have cameras.

She makes everything I have to whine about seem not so bad. 

in a nutshell

Once upon a time there was a very bored twentysomething. Every day, she worked the evening shift and was awake when her friends and family were either at work or sleeping, so she watched one Netflix movie a day (before there was streaming), read books and knit, but she was lonely. One day, she discovered a web log with good writing, started her own and bumped into some random, cool people. Because of that, she became very close to a few of the bloggers, especially Jon. Because of that, they started emailing every single day, then talked on the phone for hours and hours. Until finally they decided they needed to meet: Three years later, he moved across the country to be with her; three years after that, they got married; and three years after that, they had a wonderful baby.

because I'm trying

This blog is really important to me. It helped me out of a very low time, it kept me sane when I was isolated (I cannot stand to be alone) and—most of all—it led me to Jon. And now, Ro.

She turned five months old yesterday.* Time has never gone by as quickly as the last five months has flown. 

So it's been killing me that I have only posted here once since the end of October. Beyond parenting, trying not to get lost in our house clutter and readjusting back to working full time, the main thing I do these days is look at Facebook. It's a serious habit that started when I was on bedrest because it is easy to do on my phone while lying down. Or holding a precariously sleeping child. Or while I'm pumping. Or waiting at a stoplight. Or unable to sleep. And now something horrible will befall humanity if I miss a single FB post/link/article/video/meme. I have probably read ten books' worth of linked articles in the last five months.

This blog has always been something I do for myself. Even when no one reads the posts, I like to have the record of what was going on in my life at any time (it has settled bets). The act of writing and the small community of commenters/other bloggers makes me happy. And while I want to be a great parent, in 18 years when my kid is off saving the rare spotted iguana, deejaying in Berlin or curing mesothelioma, I don't want to be sitting here wondering where "me" went.

Part of the reason I hadn't posted in so long is because I thought my first posts back needed to be about the "birth story." Some crazy stuff happened (spoiler alert: I separated my pelvis) and I put a lot of pressure on myself to carve out time to get it all down, in order. Because OCD.

"You don't have to do it perfect," Jon said. "You just have to do."

I ignored his advice for a few months and then decided that I wanted to make posting a priority. I am quitting FB for the month of April and putting that time into a good old-fashioned NaBloPoMo.

A few days ago, I saw a slideshow by Gavin McMahon at Make a Powerful Point. It was created from a set of 22 tweets originally tweeted in 2012(?) that has gotten a bit of notoriety recently. The "Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling"  were written by a former Pixar artist and director, Emma Coats. I'm going to use those rules as inspiration for this month's return of Cadiz.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time have been through a lot with me. I went from a dream job (yes, the dungeon was actually pretty prestigious) to being laid off four times in five years and having to start at the bottom in a totally new career. Jon and I found each other in such a happenstance way and had to make it work for years from 2000+ miles away, get laid off within a day of one another and had to scrape together the monthly mortgage on a condo that wouldn't sell for more than two years. And then there's all the baby stuff. I have never known joy like I get from a single one of Ro's smiles. If we had given up after the bad times, we would have missed out on the very best thing in our lives. It was terrifying. And painful. But so very worth it. 

Don't tell my dad you've seen photos of Ro online or he'll try to ground me or something—he likely saw some horrific news story about predators and is adamant that she stays offline.

36

So here I am, on *this* side of 35.
And here we are, on *this* side of 4 a.m.

***

I've never been melancholy on my birthday, but during the last few months I've found myself at the top of the world, taking in a deep breath of gratitude...then BAM, I get a glimpse of the straight drop ahead and my stomach is suddenly in my throat. I guess the only nice thing about emotional rollercoasters is that if you (and your understanding family) can ride it out, you're back on an even keel soon enough.

Last week, Syar turned 26. Do you guys remember when she was a precocious 16-year-old commenting here with all the wisdom and wit of a much more experienced person? Then how we blinked twice and now she's a grownup lady? It's so crazy how much she has grown but stayed the same. And how I feel like I know her, yet never have met her. Oh, blogs.

***

My mom has always taken the day off work on my birthday. I never understood why, especially when I still had to go to school. I mean, if she can't hang out with me--and this day is all about me, after all--then what's the point? Even now, 36 years later, she took the day to be home, cooking and shopping and who knows what else while I was dealing with conference calls and frantic instant-messenger requests and mounting email, attempting to solve problems.

But now that I may get to bring somebody new into the world, I kind of get it: My mother might just want a day to herself to think. Maybe remember all the stuff before I showed up and what she had to go through to get me out and all she had to do to make sure I even made it to 36. I wonder if 36 years from now I might take my child's birthday off to think about these months of bed rest and no carbs and having to walk around like an 96-year-old and only going to the store once a month (if they have a scooter/wheelchair). And how it makes my damn day every single time this baby kicks me to show me that she's doing ok so I don't freak out. Is it possible to believe you have a great kid even before you've met her?

People kept asking me what I had planned for today, and honestly, there was only one thing I can say for certain. There will be ice-cream cake. There is always ice-cream cake. It'll be one sad, sorry August 14 when my mom isn't around and there won't be ice-cream cake. It just doesn't taste as good any other day. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that she didn't disappoint.

***

In general, I have a pretty low threshold for decision-making. You know, decision fatigue, when you are supposed to be making a lot of important choices in a row, but the weight of all that deciding has piled up on you so you are standing in front of the refrigerator, paralyzed and frustrated because you JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO EAT. Just choose! Whatever you want! It doesn't matter, just pick something! Like, now! You haven't decided? Hurry up! Everyone is waiting on you! I feel like the world is my refrigerator with its French doors flung open to reveal thousands of delicious choices, and everyone is demanding that I make up my mind RIGHT NOW. Except I can't make my mind do anything at all, let alone make that final choice between spaghetti and soup. Because what if I take a bite of spaghetti and immediately realize I should have gone with the soup? Doesn't the world understand that scenario is a risk I'm just not willing to take?

What scares me is that I am soon going to have to make hundreds of decisions a day for a person incapable of holding up her own head. And I'm sure that by the time I actually figure out how to comfortably make those choices, she won't want me to decide anything for her anymore.

***

Being alone all the time is getting to me. All day, every day. Thank God for conference calls.

I hate to be alone. I would certainly be one of those people who were asked to sit in a room with an electrical shocking device for 15 minutes with their thoughts who ended up shocking themselves to avoid having to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes.

It doesn't matter if the other people are somewhere else in the house doing their own thing and not interacting with me at all; just knowing they aren't far is good enough. I used to lie awake at night in my dorm room, only able to fall asleep when I heard my roommate's key in the door. Perhaps that was because I worried she'd be jumped on the way home from the library, but still.

***

I just spent 15 minutes trying to put a cover on one of those snuggly, noodly pillow things that pregnant ladies cuddle in order to sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time. About three-quarters of the way through that ordeal, I realized the thing already had a cover on it, which is probably why it was so difficult.

Pregnancy brain is real, people. And at this age, I don't think I will ever get my wits back.

my ring

M and Ale over at On The Same Page blog did a feature about unique love rings from around the world. M (who you may have been hearing about for years on my blog as Kaiya) asked me for a photo of my engagement ring and a little blurb about it. There are some seriously gorgeous pieces in that post.

"My father-in-law's grandfather had this ring made for his future wife sometime around 1919 or 1920 in Germany, before they left to come to the United States. When my husband had it appraised, the jeweler said everything about this ring is hand-crafted from the cuts on the stone itself to the delicate filigree work in the setting and down the side. It was saved for the wife of my husband (the only boy of four). The diamond has a flaw in it, but it's part of his family history and I wouldn't want any other ring."

evolving

I miss you guys.

Recently I read this "State of the Blog Union" post on designsponge, and while it did have a bunch of stuff that doesn't really apply to my little blogger-standard-template-from-2004, it did hit on a few things that have changed since I started this blog back in 2005.

• People have a lot more online outlets, so they have shorter attention spans. 
• a blog is no longer the place to interact with readers
• "The internet is no longer a place where there is divide between those who make and those who consume.

That makes me:

• glad that people even read my posts at all these days--especially because I haven't really been writing very often.
• a little wistful for the days when I'd hurry to check for new posts on your blogs and be sure to see at least one per person and rack my brain to come up with a thoughtful comment for each one.
• sad that I don't really have time for that anymore--I know some of you are putting up great posts.

I miss writing posts. I miss commenting. I miss documenting both the trivial and the momentous; being able to come back here to settle a bet on when something happened is tremendously sweet. And I've probably forgotten more than I can remember about my life--this place was great to let those experiences live past their moments.

I've come so far. I've gotten to know you, met some of you (hell, I even married one of my best blog buddies from back in the day). It's making me sad that this isn't as big a part of my daily life as it once was.

I miss it.

I need to come back around here more often. 

at least i have a window

This is where I spend most of my time. Other than hitting the snooze button from the warm cocoon of my bed. This is also what I blame for why my NaBloPoMo is not up to par this year. I'm sorry.

Jab We Met

Woohoo! Another NaBloPoMo comes to a close. I didn't think I was going to make it.

Some of you may have come over from Ale's blog, The Sunny Orangery. Hi! Speaking of happy endings, here's the story of how I met my husband.

the big reveal
In which everyone finds out that H, the man I've fallen in love with, and Jon, a faithful commenter, are the very same man. 

Thanks for reading, everyone!




*Jab We Met is a Bollywood movie

the problem with parking: reprise!

So in seven years of NaBloPoMo, I don't recall missing a day. Until yesterday. This post will be post-dated till 11:59 just so my OCD self will not go nuts looking at the list later, but we all know the truth: I dropped the ball. It happens.

So here is my collection of parking woes from back when I had to drive downtown, park for two hours, sneak out of the big 5p.m. meeting, wait in line for 40 min to get into the lot, not get an official lunch break but eat whenever and stay in the dungeon till all hours. If you can believe it, I truly was thankful for that job.

2005: a review
In which I complain about parking. Here is a taste:

the problem with parking -- vol 3 (july 9, 2005)

the problem with parking is that, when you're in a hurry and you've been trolling for a spot for 10 minutes and finally find one that's dangerously close to an intersection and you accidentally move up too far, another driver can *claim* to think that you were signaling to turn, not park, and then pull a fried-green-tomatoes move on your ass.

then he'll just shrug his shoulders as you contemplate giving him the finger, wasting the entire appropriate finger-giving window, and you end up having to park down the street six blocks. that spot had been right in front.

you just come away wondering where the hell Tawanda is when you need her.

beginnings

Hey, remember seven (!) years ago when I started this blog and I worked in a dungeon doing reports? Sometimes that feels like a long long LONG time ago, and sometimes it feels like it just a couple of summers back.

When I get frustrated and overwhelmed and have too much on my plate that hurts my brain, I just find more stuff to do. I guess the busier I am, the less time I have to think about how busy I am. But that is tiring, so I am going to bed early.

I leave you with this, my paranoid nightmare about being murdered and my dismembered parts being left in a janitor closet to rot by a one-eyed psycho. No one would even hear me scream.

So yes, I keep extra busy to distract my mind, because this is the kind of stuff it comes up with when left unattended.

show this to the police when you don't hear from me

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here we are again

I'm certainly not one to break tradition, if I can help it. So for the SEVENTH(!) YEAR IN A ROW, I will be participating in the NaBloPoMo, posting every day of November.

Currently, I spend double-digit hours a day staring into a screen and looking for answers--even on the weekend--so I've decided that this month I will be doing 30 *flashback* posts. They will be new, of course, but I hope to reference, expand on, update or otherwise re-run what I like to look back on at do they read obituaries in hell? with fondness.

So it's only fitting that I go all the way back to the very first post on this blog, March 7, 2005:

pumped up 
In which I pontificate about filling air in my tires and how I'm glad I know how to do it.

I didn't really know what blogging was about. Heck, like 1% of all people had even heard of a web log in the spring of 2005. But I randomly found a blog called Tequila Mockingbird and just loved what she was doing. So I thought I'd give it a whirl.

If I had any idea it would bring me closer to a friend in NY than I was with any of my local friends at the time, introduce me to a bunch of wonderful people--including my husband--and provide a great way to win bets about when things happened over the last few years, I probably would have done a LOT more editing.

Let me know if you're participating and I'll try to comment as much as I can. C'mon, we both know it: Comments are the coal in the old blogging locomotive.