Yeah, your kids are cute...

but check this out:




Okay...so, you probably still think your kids are cuter...and I probably won't argue. But doesn't this just make you wanna squeeze her little face and belly?

**Update**

I promise to wash the mildew out from the corners of the wall/tub before I take more pictures in the bathroom. *sigh* It's just so hard...it's an apartment. I don't want to invest too much time or money in it; I already spend a fortune just to sleep in it.

Doin' it...

When I was 13, my best friend at the time lost her virginity. She arrived at school one morning looking like a fiery hell beast had shown up in the middle of the night and annihilated everything she loved. She looked like shit. And I knew, because I had learned that sex and anything related made people feel terrible, that she had had sex with her boyfriend.

A week later, she asked me to come with her so she could buy a pregnancy test. When we got to the store, she asked me if I would buy the pregnancy test and I said "sure, but if you can't buy one yourself, you probably shouldn't be having sex." I was that girl (not That Girl!). The one who said "Oh my gawd, Joe McIntyre is so hot Iwannahavehisbabies!" while feeling absolutely NO attraction to Joe McIntyre whatsoever. I didn't wanna do anyone.

I don't actually know where I'm going with this post.

Anyway, while we're on the subject of doin' it, check out this phallic mushroom that I photographed last night:

A.A.

I quit drinking and doing drugs on February 3rd, 2002. When I first quit, I was 19 and I thought my life was over. I lived in a college dorm and was the only one who didn't drink. I had never legally sat on a bar stool and downed a margarita (though I had sat on a bar stool and downed a margarita).

Had I only been drinking, I think I would have gone on messing up for a VERY long time. But, I was also doing pills...any pills I could get my hands on: Vicodin, Oxycontin, Lorazepam, Tylenol-Codeine, Morphine, Xanax, Klonopin, Ritalin, Adderall. I smoked pot every hour of every day that I wasn't working or going to school. On weekends, I would trip on acid and mushrooms or take Ecstasy...or snort cocaine or heroin. My parents knew about the pot and they knew I was drinking, but they had no idea to what extent...and they certainly didn't know about the pills or the other "hard drugs."

Getting arrested prompted me to quit using and drinking. I was shoplifting and got caught. I couldn't believe that it was happening to me...I'd always been the nice girl, the girl that people's parents raved about, good in school and good at sports. How could I get arrested? Good people don't get arrested...

But I wasn't good. I was a liar. I stole things and I cheated and I didn't care about anyone but myself.

So I ended up in A.A., going to meetings every day for years. It kept me sober and clean and it allowed me to finish college and get a good job and then decide to go back to college.

I only go to meetings once a week now and I struggle with it, because I have been more or less brainwashed into thinking that I must make A.A. the most important thing in my life. A.A. is like an organized religion. You are indoctrinated into it and suddenly, it becomes The Truth. It becomes The Only Way. I do not like this. It doesn't jibe with my brain. When I don't see someone from A.A. for a while, they always ask how I'm doing, but it's loaded with accusation, as if my absence certainly means I've relapsed. I'm told that I must have a higher power and that if I don't pray, I won't stay sober. If I don't have a sponsor, I'll won't stay sober. If I don't work the steps, I won't stay sober.

I want to call BULLSHIT on all of that. I do not pray. I do not have a sponsor and I do not work the steps as they're laid out in the program. What I do, and I find it works, is try to act differently. I don't drink, do drugs, steal or cheat. I honestly examine my motives and my intentions and my actions and I decide to change them if they're unsatisfactory. I don't blame the rest of the world for my problems.

A.A. was all about making myself better. I am content to accept myself for the most part and change my actions. I can do this without a sponsor and without praying.

I don't hate A.A.. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to stop drinking. It works. What I don't like, however, is the exclusivity...the "we're right and any other way is wrong." I just don't think that's so...

Office Space

I am the youngest of all of the people in my office. My boss is 82 and my two other co-workers are in their 60's or older. I am 25.

One of my co-workers (we'll call her Nice) is the mother of a friend of mine (that's how I got a foot in the door). She is very sweet and is sorta a mother hen, while still maintaining a professional, respectful relationship with me.

The other co-worker (we'll call her Annoying) is a lot like my mother. She has all the same mannerisms as Mom and she even looks like her. I don't get along with her...not at all. She drives me crazy.

Today, Annoying asked Nice a question. Apparently, it was one that I could have answered easily, but I didn't answer it because I was not listening because Annoying did not ask me the question...and because of that, I tuned out the conversation to, y'know, get some blogging work done. So, after minutes of discussing said question, Nice turned to me and asked, "A.C., did you blah blah blah?" And I, tuning back in to the conversation, said "yes...I just did that."

Annoying, under her nasty coffee dragon breath, muttered nastily "Don't you listen???"

EXCUSE ME?

No, Annoying, I do not listen. Not when you've been talking for a million hours about something that you specifically addressed someone else about.

So, instead of letting her snide comment go, which I usually do, because I'm a pushover, I said "Annoying -- I don't generally answer questions that aren't addressed to me and when you specifically address someone else, I tune out because I have work to do."

Part of me wishes I had just jumped over the cubicle and onto her back while pulling her hair and yelling "I'M NOT LISTENING! I'M NOT LISTENING!," but she's, like, 73, and whenever I think about how much I don't like her I feel guilty because it sorta feels like I'm hatin' on my own mother.

I don't know why Annoying thinks she can treat me like I'm an idiot. I'm not. She may be 3X my age, she may be wiser, she may have more life experience...but there's no excuse for her to treat me without respect. I get the feeling she feels justified in doing so because of our age differences.

On Nicknames

I just realized that my friend Midge used to call me A.C., so it seems fitting that I would choose it as my mystery blogger name (even if it's my first two initials). And just after I realized that, I also realized that Midge used to call me A.C. because it was short for "ass clown".

The Cardinal and Mary Oliver

I was horribly depressed this past winter. A.J. got a mystery illness in January that resulted in two E.R. visits and lasted for almost 3 whole months. He was totally unavailable emotionally and physically and the whole deal really tested our relationship.

On top of that, I was taking the hardest course I've ever taken in my life. The course was taught by a no bullshit math whiz. It was two courses rolled into one and moved at lightning speed over really difficult topics. At the same time, I was also working forty hours per week and taking another difficult course that demanded a lot of attention.

I was SO.FREAKING.TIRED. by the time April rolled around. My life had somehow unraveled itself and I was panicking. How the hell am I going to fix all this? What the hell am I doing, anyway?

So I was trucking along, in the aftermath of school and disease and difficult friendships, and one day, I heard a cardinal. And it changed everything (for a week).

As I was climbing the stairs to my porch, a bird song caught my attention. Above the noise of the street, the school kids playing soccer, the neighbors dog. I searched the trees surrounding the apartment building and soon spotted the songster. He was a brilliant red and each time he called out, he looked like he was putting every tiny bit of life and breath into it. Something about him, his music, snapped me right back into myself. I vowed to sit, each day, and listen to him sing for a few minutes before retiring for the night.

So I did...and in doing so, I got a little closer to myself. Y'see, before I started to hide out in a drug-induced coma-like lifestyle, I was a nature sitter. Every night, even in the winter, I'd wrap myself in a blanket and stare up at the stars. I took long walks by myself and sat, alone, on the lake shore. Nature was enough. I was enough when I was outdoors. I was small, insignificant and that was so reassuring.

But that got away from me. I was no longer enough...no longer insignificant and small. My problems loomed large and they consumed me and I stopped learning how to breathe and relax and shrug off the weight of living. And even when I stopped gettin' high, nothing was ever enough.

Somehow, though, for a brief time this spring, I got back to being a nature sitter. There's something incredibly beautiful and simple and sacred about the natural world and it resonates in me. I can't do it justice with words, but if I could, I'd write something like this:

Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986)

Blurry Lines

"He went that way..." she says and points to her left. "He took off his ring and threw it on the ground."

I picture him, his large brows colliding with one another and tears rimming his eyes. He's hurt...I shoot a mental bullet at the bitch that did it to him.

He'll be at the library. That's where he always is, especially when he's upset.

I have been to the library before, have searched its vast clutter for him in the past. I've never been successful.

But there he is, just beyond the shelf filled with molding red-bound tomes, sitting with his elbows to his knees face to his hands, distraught.

I approach open-armed, feeling what I can only guess is the love and warmth a mother feels when she is consoling a hurt child. I want to embrace him and soak up his pain. Take it by the tail and swing it, like Atlas would, into the universe. Far far away.

He collapses under my hug, letting his face fall to my chest. For the first time, in any of my dreams, he gives himself up and becomes vulnerable. He kisses me.

I am so fucking in love with him. It's going to kill me. My heart is going to pound right out of my chest and I'll never catch my breath.

Suddenly asleep and awake intersect and I remember A.J. and I have to choose one or the other. I want to be good to A.J. more than anything.

And then I wake up. A.J. is asleep beside me. I do not have to choose...

I sit up and kick my feet over the edge of the bed and try to shake the dream from my head. But it stays with me and I feel guilty, all day...