What we got here is a brick red kitchen!

We finished painting the kitchen this weekend. Everything is painted, ceiling to trim. We even hung a new light fixture with fancy halogen spot lights (the original ugly-ass fixture from 1969 went out with last week's garbage -- sorry if you had your eye on it!). Our new kitchen is a thing of beauty and I am so excited about getting the rest of the house in shape.

When my husband and I each moved to Omaha (before he was my husband), we each had our own apartment. Within 6 months of me and the pooch arriving there, the three of us rented a house together. We looked at lots of houses before we found the one that we lived in for over 3.5 years. For me, the deal-cincher was that when we walked in the door, the floors were all hard wood and every room save one was painted a color other than white. I loved living in that house. I was so comfortable there. The house had many problems. To name a few: the basement was a hideous swampy place; the bathroom was the only room in the house with carpet in it and it was what you would imagine bathroom carpet to be; and the walls behind the shower were crumbling. In fact, the walls in every room lost about 3 ounces of plaster each time I hung a new piece of art. But the bathroom was painted a rich tan, the office was green, the living room and our bedroom a muted yellow, and the dining room was, yes, imperial red. Color on the walls allowed me to forgive a multitude of sins.

We started painting the kitchen last week. Between the crazy disarray of a kitchen in progress and my crazy out-of-control job, I was ready to sell the house and move out of the area all together. But now that we have a red kitchen, I think I can stay here for another month. We'd better get the other rooms painted quick-quick.

Don't do Anything Else Until You Look at This!

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

My Man has a Good Ticker

It's just shaped a little funny.

"Healthy white baby?!," I says. "What else ya got?"

from The Plague, by Albert Camus

"But what had he, Rieux, won? No more than the experience of having known plague and remembering it, of having known friendship and remembering it, of knowing affection and being destined one day to remember it. So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories. But Tarrou, perhaps, would have called that winning the match."

"They knew now that if there is one thing that one can always yearn for and sometimes attain, it is human love."

"Nonetheless, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers."

One good thing

When I was in jr. high, my dad came home one weekend with a ceiling fan for every room in our suburban ranch house. Since I was the oldest kid, I won the role of helper to him for that day. Because of that day, now I can install the light fixtures in my own house.

That one thing worked out O.K.

ketchup on the walls

We started painting the kitchen last nite. We're going for a deep brownish red. The guy at the paint store told us that it'll take 3 coats at least.

When I started cutting in on for the first coat (that's right, I said cutting in. I've been studyin' up on dis) it looked liked I'd smeared ketchup all around the edges of the walls.

The only reason I can even mention ketchup is because I am so certain that it will not look like ketchup when we're done.

progression of the disease

I haven't spoken to my mother since the first week in December. My youngest sister lives with her and I haven't spoken to her either. It's painful. I had to stop speaking to them because the choices they make and their actions are only pointing toward destruction. All my speeches to them were how they must change direction. They refused to listen, no matter how I pleaded, how much evidence I presented, how much of my own heart's blood I spilled over them -- they refused. So I had to get out of it.

Last night, I found out from my Aunt that my mother spent last weekend in jail. In jail. Neither my mother nor my sister who lives with her called me for help. That's a relief because I can't give it -- it's too late for the kind of help that I can give. Bailing my mother out of jail so she can continue what she's doing is not help.

When I was in high school, before I could admit to myself that I hated my father, I played a game with myself. I would ask, "What if he died tonight?" I tried to imagine if I would be sad at all or if I would just be relieved. I could only very secretly admit to myself that I would be relieved and that I would have to pretend that I was sad just so the rest of the world wouldn't know that I was a monster. Today, I can say that I would be relieved and I won't even have to pretend that I'm sad about it -- I know which one of us is the monster.

I played the game with myself about my mother today. The answer that I got is not the easy one. If I lost my mother today, I would weep for her. No pretending. I weep for her now anyway.

There's just this sadness and pain that won't go away. I have learned to put it aside for periods of time -- sometimes I can ignore it, sometimes I can forget about it, sometimes I can work around it. But there are days like today when all I can do is cry. I don't want to share it with anyone personally -- it gets so old and so heavy and it's such a black hole. I get so self-conscious about asking anyone to listen to it or to comfort me -- it doesn't leave any room for anyone else's pain or joy.

I know that I used to find distractions that would avoid these things that I can't change. Too much booze and drugs, terrible relationships -- those things kept me from doing the things that I needed to do to be stable. When I was sad then, I knew that there were things I needed to change to fix it -- I knew that if I changed my actions, I could make my situation better. I've gotten rid of those distractions but the pain isn't gone.

Do I get to ever escape this? Am I going to do this for the rest of my life? If I can't feel better by being good, then why am I wearing out myself to try? On days like this, I fight the seduction of self-destruction. I could go on a bender, wreck my job, spend too much money... create situations that I would have to fix, but that are fixable. Why not?

I only have one reason that I maintain self-control -- it's for that man who's in the other room playing a love song on his guitar. Because of him, I can imagine what my life can be like without this darkness. For how long can one person soothe another? Does the image of my life without this pain make the pain more terrible?

I need some relief.

go blog yourself

There's this lady that I work with who is really quite a dynamo. She's with us on a one-year fellowship and she's really into her work. She's great for keeping us informed about what's new in technology and in the world and she's given a big shot-in-the-arm to our professional development. I really like her and am trying to figure out a way that I can hire her when her year-long fellowship is up.

But now she's done it. She has introduced blogging as a tool that my workplace can probably use. She and our boss are posting all kindsa work related blogs and are wanting us to comment on them. She did a really cool thing by showing me how I can get RSS feeds from the blogs that I like, but dammit! I really don't want an RSS feed of my work blog.

Blogging is for fun. Work is work. The twain don't need to meet. Sheesh.

Damn! 285,000 hails!

We're watching the Star Trek where Worf is caught in a quantum reality fissure. He is some kinda confused and then all of a sudden, there are 285,000 other Enterprises.

I can relate. Sometimes I feel like life is coming at me that way. Worf had all those alternate realities to choose from... None of them seemed to involve a nap though.

Disjointed thoughts

I used to say, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." When I said that, the conditions of my life were very different than now and I spent my waking hours in very different ways.

I am working my tushie off these days. My job is challenging and rewarding and I've got good prospects for professional growth there.

One year + 2 days ago, my husband and I bought our house. Since then we've painted our bedroom, had the kitchen remodeled, and today we had our tall staircase painted.

Last weekend, my business partner and I made a presentation at a conference in New Mexico. We each took our husbands with us.

There are so many things that I want to do with my time. I want to make our house comfortable. I want to be a superstar at my job. I want to publish and make presentations and I also want to go back to school to learn Spanish and read and write English better. I want to start a family with my husband and be a good wife and mother and daughter-in-law.

If I don't sleep, I could get a lot more done.