Ridiculously cute puppy outside tonight on my walk from the train. I stopped at the car to put on my new city sticker and a guy came along walking this adorable dog, four months old, fluffy kind of Rottweiler mix, big paws, lolling tongue, sniffing closer and closer to me. I put out my hand and he jumped back, and started doing that playful thing, the crouch and pounce, before he sauntered over and licked my hand, let me pet his holy-god-it's-so-soft fur.

Made me smile and feel all cheery and kid-like and fun, at this start of a 3-day weekend, cute playful pup. Then I realized that the owner, who was truly fucking hot in the yummiest of ways, was just obviously way too young for me - which made me feel old and sad again. Hmmm, but he was Asian, and you know how Asians have those ageless young faces. Which btw, how totally depressing to be a non-Asian married to an Asian, and you look 50 when you're 50, but they still look like a damn teenager. Annoying.

Man, and that makes me realize Dawn still looks exactly the same as she did in high school, and will continue looking like that for another decade or two, while I will continue to prematurely age. Fookin genetics. Fookin Asians.

I think I want noodles for dinner.

~end of totally random post~

I have PMS - or really First Day Of Period, which is its own thing (the girls know) and deserves its own term, but anyway I have had a nonstoppable headache all day and decided to cure it with a dinner comprised entirely of beer. It's so totally working, and I'm halfway through my second bottle.

Incidentally, any time I start to feel bad about drinking the empty beer calories, I remind myself of a simple fact that I share with you all, so that you can deploy it at will: a typical beer has roughly the same amount of calories as 1% milk. People will say that milk is more nutritious, but that's bs and we all know it. Calcium schmalcium - eat some leafy greens, or take a damn pill and stop drinking a fluid that is intended for baby cows, not humans. I quote my mother: we don't give human breast milk to cows, now do we, because that would be weird - just like us drinking cow milk is weird. Besides, all the pasteurization and genetic engineering and questionable feed and antibiotics and so on and so forth - all the goodness is leached right the fuck out of it.

So I'm sayin: stop pretending milk is healthier than beer. That is all.




Today's Happy Factoid: My credit card debt is only 25% of what it used to be.

It kind of thrills me.

Pssst! I am quick-blogging from work (shhhh!) to see if you wanna SBD. I got nuttin - maybe I can do a few sentences about finishing that Windflower book - but figured my annoying morning shouldn't prevent me from opening up the discussion for la rest de you. (Annoying morning: dropped and shattered my fave [and only] glass serving bowl as I stood barefoot in the kitchen - no injury, but cleaning it up made me late to drop off the car at the ix-it place, putting me in annoying morning traffic where I sat and wondered wtf is up with all these glass shards invading my life recently. Is it like a broken mirror kind of thing? What's next? Why?)

Anyswayze, comments are open and go on and SBD if'n you feel like it. I gotta get back to work.

I keep trying to make myself notice the beautiful things, the lovely things, the interesting things all around me. But there's no way I can pretend it's not a constant effort, and it's pointless unless it's effortless. It's part of getting older, and part of staying in the same place too long. Maybe there are other causes, I don't know, but the bottom line is that the world has become so much less full of loveliness and discovery and delight.

So maybe I need a change of scenery. Maybe I need to intensely focus on fixing myself. Always fixing myself, aren't I, and yet I'm never happy with the results. And yet I wouldn't say anything has been a wrong turn, so that's something, I guess.

It's lovely that my tomato plant is this great green spreading thing across my living room window, a crazy miracle that I could throw seeds in some dirt and here's this living thing. The sky's a perfect blue and the sun shining after a long hard winter, and I can go outside and walk beneath the trees that line my quiet but not lifeless streets. Maybe I'll get some peaches and some yogurt, come home and make myself a smoothie. Or go to the park and watch kids play softball. Or to the library and rifle around the shelves in search of anything to hold my interest.

I could go to the beach, or the museum. Or the zoo or the harbor or the Art Institute, or find a street fest, a yard sale, an open house. So many possibilities, but here I am. Sitting here, wondering what I might like to do with the day. As usual, as every day.

It's as normal to get bored with a place as it is to get bored with a person, I guess. I try to think - when was the last time that I really talked to someone? A real conversation, about the things you see and think and want and wish? Something happens after a long while of knowing someone. You can tell they're just not all that interested. And why should they be, as it's generally the same tune with different lyrics. It's easier to just chat, that not-quite-meaningless chat, about the weather and this new recipe and how are the kids and have you read any good books lately. Sometimes it makes me miss the too-long conversations of our early twenties. I was probably best designed to live at that age, when it's all about friends and conversation and eager dreaming and adventures and constant movement.

Anyway, so here I am. I wish I wanted to write something, anything at all. I wish I wanted to go to work tomorrow and I wish I wanted to go outside today and see what there is to see. Blah di blah, if wishes were fishes and so on and so forth. I'll straighten up the apartment so it's nice and neat for my work week. I'll pull on a floppy hat and walk to the corner store for a few basic supplies. I'll put the dishes away and think about cooking something. I'll try a new book and recharge the cell phone and I'll go to bed at night and I'll keep being grateful for a life that affords such normalcy and boredom.

Because really, I have so little to complain about. Not that it keeps me from complaining, of course.

Last night I decided I wanted Mexican food so I ordered from this place and it was awful. Horribly greasy, and they made the chille rellenos tacos all wrong. I don't know why I ever think that mex in this neighborhood is edible (outside of my beloved place with the excellent guac, I mean, which DOES NOT deliver and even acts annoyed when you ask for take-out). So I ate just the nachos, which were meh but not tragically wrong, and woke up with epic heartburn. Now it's breakfast-ish time and I just want a plain potato. Maybe a smidge of butter, but just a smidge. Salt, pepper. Water. No more. Bleh.

Hey next weekend is the 4th of July, check it out. Three day weekend, woo! My sweet neff wants to get together, so I'll ask the Bro3 if he and the boys have plans at all. We could cook out.

Man do I wish I could cook out. I want a patio/porch/yard/whatever, dammit. I think I may move to Bucktown/Wicker Park when I move next year - rent is cheaper and I think I'm more likely to find and afford a place with a patio. Plus, there's great mex food in that neighborhood. All my problems solved at last!

I am building giant dream-castles about vacation next year. I am utterly committed to going somewhere great, a real vacation that will cost real money and be real real real far away. There's this sudden superstition about it, so suddenly I can't tell anyone where I'm planning to go, not until it's all booked and paid for - which will be like a year from now. But omg I am so excited and I can't wait and it'll cost so much but I'll be out of the credit card debt and able to afford it and I'll have earned it and it's about the only thing I can think of that would actually be worth that much money to me. Which is saying something.

Anyway, that's what's occupying my dreaming space. It's a long way away, sadly, and I'll no doubt worry the shine away with my frequent rubbing of that talisman. But at least I also have next weekend to look forward to with the neff(s), and Dawn in another 6 weeks-ish and a possible Sinjun visit and hopefully getting together with Snookie at some point before we both hit 40. (She's very busy and occupied, which I consider grossly unfair but whattya gonna do? Babies ruin EVERYTHING.) I also have the niece's graduation party and the family reunion, but I'm not exactly looking forward to those. They're just there, on the calendar.

Oh and in excellent news that I don't think I mentioned here, the car-window fix will cost me less than $300. Hurrah! I take it in Monday morning. Thank god.

Now I will go eat my plain potato.

Newsflash: The air conditioning will stay on until it's in the lower 70s again, which will probably be sometime in like October because the fucking weather is fucking pissing me off, and I know it's just been a particularly horrible year here but I officially Cannot Take It Any More and I Am Over It, do you hear me? When I look for a new place next year, I will keep "central a/c" at the top of the requirements list, because I am now so actively angry at nature that I actually prefer ARTIFICIAL AIR in my lungs.

So there.

Most Adorable Fuckin' Anecdote Ever*

So my 13-year-old neff emails me (not the son of Bro3 and the eye-talian - this one is the son of Bro1, and his sister is the one who just finished high school , and they live on the south side and have had awful parents and turbulent childhoods) and he says he has some questions for me:

1. Am I going to the reunion next month and can he ride with me?
2. Can we get together this weekend or next because we need guacamole and some Aunt Beth time, please.

We always go to the mex restaurant, see, and then usually for ice cream and/or mochas and a movie or whatever. I inevitably spend at least $50, at a bare minimum. It's an every-other-month treat and one of the best joys of my life, these little visits.

But. The budget.

So I took a moment to think and replied at length. I explained about the car, and about the no-overtime-earnings at work thing, and the general tightness of money. I told him that I hoped to be able to go to the reunion (and of course he could ride with me, his sister already secured a spot in the car and there's always room for him), but we might have to rough it - camp out, bring our own food, etc. But until I knew how much the car repair would cost, I couldn't say for sure about the trip or even if I could afford lunch. I said if he wants to cook at home with me, I'd be happy to teach him how to make guac and quesadillas and tacos, and we could watch movies and play card games and hang with Thunder, which would all cost less than out typical outings and I think would be great fun, but he's allowed to think it's a lame way to spend a day and I won't be even a little offended if he wants to wait until the cash flows more freely.

(See, I believe in being straight with kids, especially when they're clearly capable of comprehending a situation. Rather than parroting my own parents' knee-jerk reaction and cry "We can't afford that!", I just try to explain why money is tight, what we can't afford, and what we can do instead of the original-but-too-pricey plan. I am attempting not to pass my money pathology down to future generations, and I thought this was a decent attempt at that.)

His reply:
Yeah that sucks. I'll donate 67 bucks to you.

Honest to christ almighty, people - $67. He offered me what is likely his entire life savings.

This kid.

Jaysus.

The he told me that his best friend wants to meet me, which is either because he's heard that I'm The Cool Aunt, or because he's heard how frikken awesome the guacamole is.

I told him to keep his dollars in his pocketses and don't go flashing the green like that, because here's and Important Life Lesson: never offer money to family, for they will always take it. Especially in this particular family.

So that was the cute thing that happened.

Sixty-seven dollars. What a kid. Fuckin sweetheart, he is.

*for now, until something else cute happens or I remember something from the past that was as or more adorable, but anyway you get my point, so there.