Ode to Olive Grey

You were born on your due date, September 23, 2016. Today is your two week birthday. Your daddy and I couldn’t decide on a name that we both agreed upon for quite a while. I liked a couple Irish names, Maeve and Rory, but daddy grew up next door to an Irish-American family with a ton of kids and two of the girls were Maeve and Rory. I asked him why he cared so much if we named you the same name of two girls he never sees anymore and he really didn’t have a good explanation. I asked him if he ever had a fling with one of the girls and he said no. It doesn’t really matter, names are like that, if you know someone with a name and have any bad memory associated with that person, it is most difficult to name your baby the same.  One day I was showing a friend in our kitchen the engraving on the inside of my wedding ring, which was your great-great-great-grandma’s ring and has her initials and her wedding date, April 16th, 1905 on the inside, Sam added our names and our wedding year to the inside too. My friend asked what OC stands for, and I told her, Olive Crane. Sam was sitting in the living room watching TV and we both perked up and said that we liked that name. I still wasn’t 100 percent sold on it, naming someone is a huge commitment, especially considering I did not like my name my whole life and I wasn’t given a middle name so I can’t even go by something else. But your daddy was definitely sold on it, and from that day forward he called you Olive, never giving any other name a fair chance because soon everyone started picking up on it and calling you Olive and we were basically at the point of no return. But I always had a nagging feeling that maybe there was a better name that you would prefer out there.

I got these emails from “What to Expect when you’re Expecting” everyday and about a month before you were born, I got an email with September’s birthstones, star signs, and birth trees in it. I was drawn to the birth trees which I had never heard of before, but there were four for September; the Weeping Willow, Lime, Olive and Hazelnut. I immediately started investigating and found that each tree is for a span of days and the spans of days vary in length. There are only 4 days in the entire 365 days of the year where there is no span of days, there is just one tree dedicated to one day. September 23 is one of those days, your due date, and guess what tree belong to September 23? The Olive tree.  I knew that people rarely had their babies on their due date but I was sure in that moment that one, you would come on September 23 and two, we had chosen the right name for you. As you know Olive, from the countless hours we spent together for almost ten months, the last month of pregnancy I was put on mandatory bed rest to keep you safe and because of a little elevated blood pressure, I was told the week before you were born that the doctor wanted to induce and did not want you to go past 40 weeks. I was thrilled, the doctor was going to let me pick the day, and of course, I chose your due date, the Olive tree day. Your day is significant for a couple other reasons also, for one Mercury was in retrograde up until midnight on the 22nd and I really did not want to have you while Mercury was in retrograde. We checked into the hospital at midnight on the 22nd and they started inducing me shortly after. The other thing that is significant is you were born on the cusp, Virgo goes until September 23 and Libra starts on September 23. I know almost nothing about the star signs, and I don’t know technically which one you are because of this, but I promise I will find out.

I never really identified with women who had a strong desire to be a mom. I couldn’t relate at all. I wanted to be a dog mom and have Stewie live forever, in fact, I often said that if I found the secret elixir to the fountain of youth, and there was only one dose, I’d give it to Stewie, because then I’d never have to live a day without him. When I was pregnant with you, I heard about a friend who had to give up his dog because his baby was allergic and I swore if you were allergic, I would give you to my parents before I gave up Stewie. Throughout the years, my mom friends would often say to me, “of course you want to be a mom, every woman does.” But I really didn’t, at least not to the human variety. The only time it was a fleeting thought was when I wondered what would happen to me when I was old and wearing diapers, who would take care of me then? Then in the summer of 2015 we went on a trip to visit family in Ireland and England. My mom is one of nine children and the oldest, so my youngest cousins are still babies. We were at my uncle’s house one day and my little cousin Eabha took your daddy's sunglasses and ran off with them.  Next thing I knew she had dropped them and thought she broke them. Eabha ran to the jungle gym to hide and started crying presumably over being embarrassed about breaking the glasses (which weren’t actually broken, they had bendable arms). Daddy went over to console her and I watched from a distance as he reached up into the jungle gym and lifted her down giving her a giant hug, and in that moment I had a twang somewhere deep inside, somewhere very close to my ovaries.

I never thought I was a very maternal person. I didn't understand women who went into frenzied impassioned hysterics over babies. I didn't understand when people said you'll never know love like this until you have your own, I did have my own, I knew love like that with Stewie.  I did not like how everyone under the sun called me "mama" the second I got pregnant, it actually made me cringe, even Daddy called me it and I just wanted to go back to being called babe...I found myself saying "mama" to a new mother just yesterday.  I never understood the people gazing at new babies saying, “she looks like you, she looks like you, who does she look like?” Hearing people mention you look like your daddy makes my stomach twist with jealousy and it’s a crushing blow to my ego and I’m just dying for a crumb, for someone to say you look like me. Before you came I used to say to your daddy that I hope you get everything of his except his feet. I hoped you’d get his personality, looks, carefree manner...the second you were born, a narcissist deep inside me that I didn’t know existed, wanted you to be exactly like me. The only similarity daddy admits to so far between you and I are our worry wrinkles on our foreheads...bangs fix that, I’ll show you one day.  I never understood why mother’s did those silly month by month posts saying “I am one month old today,” and all the things their baby can do...within a couple days of you being here I had already decided I had to do the month by month birthday blanket that my sisters friend Ashley does every month.  I used to make fun of or roll my eyes at those ridiculous “Baby on Board” stickers on people’s cars...on our way home from the hospital with you, Daddy drove at a snail’s pace and I found myself wishing we had a ”Baby on Board” sticker on the back of his car, and wondering how soon Amazon Prime could get one to us. I didn't understand why Sarah pressured me to get a baby book because that was just so cheesy and not me and I would certainly never fill it out...last week I ordered the most beautiful lavish baby book of all time. I ended up pouring over the Internet looking for the perfect book that I could write letters to you everyday in, so you can know one day how you busted my frigid dead heart open. I am waiting by the mailbox everyday for your book to get here.

Oh man Olive, the things I worry about now that you are here. I was always a worrier, that’s nothing new, but the things I worry about now are on a whole new level.  Are you going to be baby napped? What if I die with my blood pressure still being so high and all this happiness is taken away? What if there is an earthquake and something from another room somehow flies from that other room into your bassinet?  We can't keep anything around your bassinet when you’re sleeping because the big one is coming, but what if some object somehow breaks all the rules of physics and travels into your space? What if I let someone come over and they drop you? What if I drop you?  What if Daddy drops you? What if you’re around someone who is sick? What if you get a fever? I don’t want you to get a fever, I couldn’t stand to see you in pain.

And then there’s the laughing. Neither your dad or I have laughed this hard in years. When you are in your cheat swaddle and you open your big blue eyes and stretch out stiff as a board, you really truly look like a psych patient in a straight jacket, mommy and daddy just look at you and start laughing at the preposterous sight of our little mini mental monster in all her glory. You remind us of a pterodactyl, you make a cacophony of these really fascinating noises that sound prehistoric. Sometimes I look at you when daddy is giving you a bottle and you remind me of a mix between Jabba the Hutt and Tony Soprano.

I was so afraid before you came of being up all night. I’m not my best self when I don’t get a full eight hours. A couple weeks before you were born I started really panicking about no sleep and it turns out, I really don't need sleep. I don't even miss it that much. I love sitting with you in the glider at 5am listening to all the world outside just waking up. I embrace gazing at your face as the morning sun comes in gently behind us through the window, lighting your whole self up very slowly and you lazily smile. I am trying to cultivate in you, an appreciation for some of my favorite music, and I sit with you in those early mornings playing the Beatles and Elton John. Daddy likes to play you Bob Marley.

And then there’s the lessons, everyday we learn something new.  The first time I learned the lesson about the diaper needing a diaper underneath before removing the first dirty diaper, it got all over the table.  And then I learned the lesson a second time because I’m a slow learner and that time it was with pee and poo spraying out everywhere like the Trevi fountain on steroids. And in the midst of the poo-pee explosion,  I'm trying to clench because I'm laughing so hard that pee is coming out of me too, which apparently is another side effect of childbirth that used to seem so undignified to me, and it really isn’t as bad as it seems. I hear Veronica’s voice in my head from the day she taught me how to change a diaper on Violet, and I did the same thing, switched out the diaper before another one was in place, "You're playing with fire Gayle," is what she said.  I look at your daddy laughing as I'm hunched over the table and holding myself trying not to pee anymore on myself and I have never been more in love with him since the day I met him.  And I realize this truly is what it's all about, being a mom really is the best job in the whole fucking world and I don't care if it ruins all my street cred, I’m going to shout it from the mountain tops anyways.  

We went to the doctor the other day and your daddy wanted to bring your stroller because the last time we went he found carrying the carseat to be very cumbersome. I told him before we left to look at the instruction manual and see how to unfold it. We got to the parking lot and I waited in the car with you as your daddy took the stroller out. I won’t say what happened over the next five minutes but I heard a lot of grunting and stream of expletives that will never come out of your angelic lips. I suddenly sprung into action, I looked up your stroller on youtube and jumped out of the car and showed the video to daddy without ever once saying, “I told you to look this up before we left!” There we were, in the middle of a parking structure in Santa Monica, looking up on youtube how to open a stroller, meanwhile, I am yet again holding my bladder and trying not to pee myself, I’m laughing so hard. We must have been quite the sight to the passer by.

I don’t want to forget a single one of these moments because it hurts too bad to think any one of them may vanish into the vastness of the universes atmosphere and someday I may not remember even one of them. Maybe the first or second night we were home it was the middle of the night and you were crying a lot. Your daddy and I were so confused, I couldn’t help thinking why the hell the hospital would allow us to leave the hospital with you, we didn’t have the first clue what we were doing, it’s harder to adopt a dog than bring home a human!! I was feeling a bit bewildered and hoping that you didn’t feel scared wondering how you got stuck with these two incompetent duds who didn’t know the first thing about babies. I reached for my phone and put on my favorite Beatles song, “In My Life,” and it became our song that night. I don’t think it stopped you crying, in fact it made me join in with you crying, but I love that we have a song now. Today is your two week birthday (incidentally, I also never understood why people celebrated day and week birthdays). There have been so many moments like these, some more intimate than others, and perhaps too personal to share with the world, I will write those in your baby book when it comes...until then, I’ll wait patiently, holding vigil by the mailbox.

A River (of shit) Runs Through It

Full Disclosure: If you read the following you may worry about my sanity and if you are close to me, you may consider having me committed. It sounds desperate because I feel desperate. Getting it all written out, has actually been very liberating and therapeutic and I think I am going to be okay. And, silver lining, I’m writing again, even if it is shit writing about shit, at least I’m feeling inspired. I spoke to Sam on the phone after work today and he told me he is working on not telling everyone what’s going on, so he doesn’t have to stay a victim. I thought that was a very novel idea considering I tell everyone who will listen, even the pizza delivery guy in the elevator at the hotel who asks me how my day is going, “not so well sir, our house that we lived in for 4 days flooded with shit.” I don’t feel like being gracious like Sam, I wrote a whole blog about Shitstorm 2016, and now my two readers will know all the sordid details, and I will do my best to keep my problems to myself and move on in a more positive direction.

I keep wondering where things got so fucked. Was it that we signed all of the important paperwork while Mercury was in Retrograde? I knew we shouldn’t have done that, I told Sam we should wait. But you can’t wait when you’re talking escrow. You’re not supposed to sign any important documents while Mercury is in Retrograde. We got our wedding license before Mercury went retrograde and made our officiant agree to wait, a full week after our marriage, to sign the license until it was over. Isn’t buying a house, kind of along the lines of signing a marriage license, in the realm of important shit that you do in life and shouldn’t fuck with? Were there red flags along the way that we were painting white because we wanted this house so badly? I thought when we got into a bidding war, they chose us because we had the best loan and the best down payment, was it because we were the biggest suckers and the easiest to run one over on?

That scene from The Money Pit goes through my mind over and over. You know the one, where Tom Hanks and Shelley Long are standing over a giant gaping hole in the floor that the bathtub has just fallen through. The camera is looking up at them from the bottom of the hole that the bathtub has just come crashing through and Tom Hanks is laughing, cackling, like a hyena. And I don’t know what happens next, but I kind of presume he had to check into a psych ward shortly after that, and spent the rest of his days doing the Thorazine shuffle. I can’t remember the whole movie, I just have all these clips of it on a reel, repeating through my head. The two of them standing in another room, yelling at each other, and it is decided that they will finish the house, and then sell it and split the profits and go their separate ways. Tom Hanks covered in concrete, sitting in a fountain with a cherub that pees water out on him. These clips of this movie just going round and round and I think, it could be much much worse, we could have bought a house like that…and then it’s as if God has heard my thoughts, like I spoke them right to his face, and he leans over and whispers to his friend, “you wanna see a neat trick, you want to see me really fuck with them?” And as we sit down on our brand new couch for the first night without incident since we moved in 4 days ago, a river of shit comes flowing out into the living room. Well played God.

I’m not sure where it all actually began, but I know it started long before the shit river ever started running through our house. At what point did I actually become as hysterical as Tom Hanks when that bathtub goes crashing through the floor and he just loses it?

Now that I really try to think back to the beginning, there truly were some ominous omens. We were supposed to close escrow on June 23rd, but there was a mix up with locking in loan rates, we moved escrow up to close June 1st and asked the sellers to rent it back from us, they wouldn’t, so we rented it back to them for free. I didn’t want to agree to this, but I was told, in the grand scheme of things, those 23 days did not matter, because we had such a great interest rate. I also was told, when I asked if this was in writing, that the seller gave us his word as a gentleman that if they did not have their place by the 23rd, they would move into a hotel, apparently his word was as strong as oak. They were in the house for 23 days, from when we did the final walk through until we got the keys, actually 24 because they didn’t finish moving out until late at night on the 23rd of June. We owned the house for 24 days while these squatters lived in it. Did they break the pipes, and the washing machine, and infest the backyard with fleas in those 24 days?  We put in our notice at our house on June 1st to move out on July 1st. The plan was, to take that week to make minor cosmetic repairs to the house and redo the guest bathroom and move in July 1st. A few days before June 23rd, we got a phone call from their agent, they wanted to stay longer, something with their loan was not panning out. This long story short, is turning very long, like all my stories, so I will try to abbreviate. There was a very heated argument between Sam and I, where I said I wanted them out on the streets, like they agreed to, and Sam said he just wants to treat them the way he would want to be treated. They had a two week old baby and he didn’t want that on our conscience. So we told them they could stay, they ended up saying they did not need the time and would be out by the 23rd, I had a bad feeling then that the universe would punish me for being willing to put a baby out on the streets.

That was where it all begun. From there we went on to various arguments over repairs to the house, the things that were important to me weren’t important to him, and the things that were important to him weren’t important to me. I won’t bore you with the mundane details of those horrendous weeks, I was assured by other couples that cohabitate that these were all par for the course and that everyone argued over this type of thing. Looking back, I was so angry and the situation seemed so out of control but it truly was a walk in the park. It’s all relative right? I would pay money for those problems, only weeks later. So I was thinking, there is no way to really condense this whole saga into a short story, so instead, I’m going to present you with a timeline:

Thursday, June 23rd: We are told we will be able to get keys at 1PM, 1PM comes and goes and our agent gets a call from the seller’s agent saying they are still moving and we can come get keys at 5PM. At 5PM we get another call saying they will be out at 7:30PM, at 7:30PM we get a call saying they will be out at 9PM at the latest. At 9:30PM, when we are sure they must be out by now, we drive to our new house and there is still a moving van in the driveway, I ask Sam to keep driving, I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot by going out in our new driveway and flying off the handle at these squatters, we will try again tomorrow.

Friday, June 24th: The squatters are finally gone! We take Stewie to the house for the first time. Later that evening around 9PM at our old house, we discover Stewie is crawling with fleas, and I think, that is strange, he is up to date on his flea medication. We give poor Stewie a shower outside at 9:30PM because we don’t know what else to do, once he is dry, we put on new flea medication.

Saturday, June 25th-Friday July 1st: Minor cosmetic work done to the house and full blown guest bathroom remodel is underway. Toilet and sink are ripped out of bathroom, tile is ripped out and tile guy starts new tile. On the days we take Stewie to the house, he always comes back covered in fleas. We were supposed to move on July 1st, house is still a mess and not ready so we delay move to July 3rd, more arguing over this. I call Best Buy and Living Spaces to confirm the deliveries we have scheduled for tomorrow. Living Spaces let’s me know they are not coming and there never was a delivery scheduled as they don’t even have our furniture yet (three different friends who told me Living Spaces suck, flash through my mind and I realize I am so tired of fighting and just roll over and take it).

Saturday, July 2nd: I go to new house at 8AM to meet cleaning crew who will be cleaning house and also to meet Best Buy who is delivering a fridge and oven between 10AM and 12PM. At 1PM, Best Buy has still not arrived, I call and get passed around for 30 minutes and eventually told they have no idea where the driver is. At 5PM, 5 hours after the delivery window has passed, I finally get ahold of someone at Best Buy who tells me, “the bad news is, they forgot part of your delivery on the truck this morning, the good news is, our wonderful driver has decided to go back for you and get your oven.” I let the lady know that, all due respect but I’m not moved that her lovely driver has agreed to go back for me, because I wasted my whole day, sitting in an empty house, waiting for a phantom when I could have been packing, and nobody even bothered to call. Best Buy delivers our fridge and oven around 8:00PM. We find out the next day that the new fridge is broken and on backorder for 30 days, so in 30 short days they will bring us a new fridge!

Sunday, July 3rd Moving Day: Sam goes to the house at 7AM to spray with poison for fleas before we get there. We move. I wash the sheets for our bed in our washing machine that the sellers “threw in” with the deal. The washing machine stops on spin cycle. No matter how many times I try to work that god forsaken washing machine, it is broken. I go to Ross at 10:30 at night (I still can't get over that they are open so late), in order to get dry sheets for our beds. Stewie has more fleas, we decide to keep the dog door shut permanently until flea problem is under control and monitor every time he goes in and out.

Monday, July 4th: Sam buys more potent poisonous flea poison than he sprayed yesterday and sprays the whole perimeter of the house again, he literally wears a hazmat suit to do this and disposes of all his clothes after. Apparently we have moved to Baghdad. Although it is the most spectacular fireworks show I have ever witnessed in my life, 360 degrees of lights, Stewie is not fond of it. It literally sounds like we are under attack in Benghazi from 8:00PM until 2:00AM the next morning. Stewie and his fleas spend the night in my lap in pure terror.

Tuesday, July 5th: I come home from work to our master bathroom flooded with clean water. I think, this is a real fucking nightmare, but at least it’s not shit water. The Stewie inspections continue every time he goes outside to do a potty. Our backyard is being held hostage by these terrorist fleas. Every time Stewie comes in he is inspected with a fine tooth comb and each individual flea is picked off and has their little flea head ripped off because that’s the only way to kill the fuckers.

Wednesday, July 6th: I actually believe Wednesday passed without incident. Living Spaces even called Sam in the afternoon and said they would deliver our furniture between 8PM and midnight and they even arrived before midnight! Wednesday was a pretty decent day..besides the fleas.

Thursday, July 7th: I see a parking police driving in front of me on my way to work and I think, that’s the horrible woman that I got into an altercation with on Santa Monica Blvd a year ago. I consider ramming her car from behind at the red light and dealing with whatever the consequences of that will be, I follow her for a while and then realize it is not the same woman from last year but actually a man. The Flea Busters come over to assess the problem, they spray our yard with a microscopic worm called a Nematode. The Nematodes are harmless to humans and animals but apparently these brave Nematode soldiers will eat the fleas! We have Joelene and John over in the evening to get their opinion on our new couch which seems very large for the room it is in. Sam takes John to the back to show him some man thing and I hear a shout from Sam. I run back and see water, seeping through the door of the guest bathroom, but this water is not clean water, this water has a scent. Everything is a blur from there, I hear somebody suggest, “I think it’s time to take Gayle for an Ice Cream.” I remember going through the McDonalds drive-thru with Joelene and getting a Sundae. I remember blubbering incoherently about how this is a never ending nightmare as my Sundae melted and dripped all down my legs in the car. By the time we got back to the house you could smell the shit from the street. I wasn’t allowed to go back inside, nobody wanted me to see anything, they didn’t want me to have a “breakdown,” which is so funny because I lost it after about the third day of the war on fleas.

Friday, July 8th: The insurance people send a team of people out to our house to inspect damages. None of the plumbing will be covered, as that is simply not covered, but all of the damage will. They want to rip out half our house that has just been finished being painted and fixed. We will have to move to a hotel for at least a month, they’ll cover the costs. Plumbers come out and say they will fix the broken pipe line tomorrow. We check into hotel. Stewie really hates the hotel, there is no yard and he is claustrophobic, but at least there are no fleas.

Saturday, July 9th: Plumbers come in and fix plumbing problem. Now a few thousand dollars later, the demo on the house can start and we will start over fresh. We decide to stay at the house not the hotel because none of us could sleep at the hotel, flea inspections continue.

Sunday, July 10th-Monday July 11th: Pretty incident free. Besides the fleas, always the fleas. The Nematodes haven’t done shit, maybe we aren’t paying them enough? Demo is scheduled to start tomorrow morning, after everything is torn out, we can build it back up.

Tuesday, July 12th: I am getting ready for work in the morning and packing my bags to go to the hotel after work since Demo starts today. I think to myself, it can only get better from here (this is about the tenth time I’ve had this thought and I wonder why I am such a fucking idiot). I hear a bubbling sound coming from the toilet. I cry for Sam and he rushes to turn off the water. He runs to the guest bathroom where the shit storm happened previously and pulls up the makeshift plug that was in the ground where the toilet used to be. It’s covered in shit. The shit literally came up to the very top again but thank God for the smallest of miracles, we turned off the water before it came over this time. Sam calls the demo team and tells them not to come out today, no point on having a new house that’s full of shit!! Sam calls the plumber back. Plumber comes to house and deems that they fixed the wrong section of pipe and we do in fact, have to replace the whole entire line. I don’t even ask Sam how much this will cost, I don’t think my soul can handle it.

 

I can’t stop thinking about how badly I want a cigarette. And I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to burn the house down. I’ve told way too many people that I want to burn the house down and too many people are aware for me not to get caught. But this morning, when I left the house, as the plumbing backed up for the third time, I thought, I definitely might burn this stupid house down. I thought about how I will most certainly get caught and wondered what the sentence on something like that is. I mean, it may be worth it. I could have the baby in prison and Sam and our families could raise her and hopefully by the time they release me, all this will be over. Kat and Veronica asked me this morning if they could do anything to help and I asked if they’d want to burn it down for me, which they are such good friends, of course they would. But I’ve gone and run my big mouth to too many people and there are just too many witnesses at this point for that to be a real solid option. Instead we came up with a therapeutic fantasy for me to live out that helps with the need for a cigarette and burning down my house. I’m laying on a lawn chair in my flea infested backyard with a lemonade in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There is an empty can of gas sitting next to me that I have just doused our whole entire house with. In the background the Wham! song "Wake me up Before you Go-Go" is playing. I take a long calming drag off my cigarette, the soothing feeling of the smoke entering my born again virgin lungs that haven’t smoked in almost a year, it’s the most serene feeling I’ve felt in weeks, months. I step out of my lawn chair and walk up towards the house. I can feel those fucking fleas, jumping up at my ankles as I walk through the grass. I take one more rejuvenating drag off my cigarette and flick it at that cursed house. I watch the house go up in flames, I can feel the heat on my face, I can almost hear the fucking fleas screaming as they are burned alive...and as I hear sirens and cops closing in to arrest me for arson on my own house, I quietly think to myself, “fuck you fleas, you little fucking fuckers, I finally got you, you can’t hurt us anymore, I win.

#duckface #selfiewednesday #sharkweek

This is an issue that I have felt very strongly about for sometime now, but I haven’t known how to broach it in a politically correct way. Finally I realized that there isn’t any politically correct way to say this without hurting some peoples feelings (although I’m quite sure the majority of people this blog refers to are illiterate, so maybe they won’t find out). As Winston Churchill said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” I wish it was something bigger and more important that I was standing up for, but it’s really quite idiotic and pathetic, but it bothers me, it irks me, it gets a bee in my bonnet, so here it is. If you easily get your feelings hurt or are going to judge me and think I’m mean, please stop reading this blog now, it’s Shark Week, why are you reading anyway, go tune into the Discovery channel and watch some poor guy get his leg or head chomped off.

To begin with I’m going to break down some really basic terms that I will be using in this blog for my readers that are not instagram and social network savvy;

hashtag- a symbol (#) used to denominate the number sign. In today’s world hashtag has a brand new meaning, now try to keep up mom, if you’re reading. A # in front of a phrase is something you connect to a picture or twitter feed. I still don’t understand how twitter works so I won’t even get that advanced. So let me use an example, that works best, if I was to post a picture of Stewie I might write underneath it, #stewie #boxer #loveofmylife. Any person can click on my # and a bunch of examples of each would come up. If you clicked on #boxer a bunch of other boxers would come up. Make sense? Still with me mom?

duckface- a girl that makes a face that strongly resembles a duck in a picture, no teeth, slight upturned pout. Apparently they think this is attractive, I’m still unsure if anyone else does.

selfie- a picture that someone takes of themselves in the mirror or by simply using the handy reverse camera function that most smart phones today have. Generally this person is of the female orientation, and strangely they also are duck facing. Now don’t get me wrong, a selfie is not a picture someone else took of you, that is okay, unless you do it all the time. A selfie is a picture taken by you, of you, for you.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me digress a little bit and give you the backstory on my personal social network. Because of the secret society I belong to, I know more people then I’d say the average human knows. In fact when my friends Joey and Sarah come out to visit me, we inevitably run into someone I know everytime, no matter where in LA we are, this has led Joey to believe I am the mayor of LA and in fact lovingly has given me the nickname, Mayor. Truth is, it is a complete coincidence that this happens when they come and just some random force of nature, and generally I never run into people I know in this big city, unless I’m with Sarah and Joey. I don’t tell them though, I just pretend it happens all the time, it makes me feel like kind of a big deal, which I’m not. I pretend not to see or hear Sarah lean over and whisper into Joey’s shocked face that we have yet again run into another friend of mine, “they’re in the secret society.” So I have a lot of acquaintances. I have the normal amount of close friends, but A LOT of acquaintances. So the way the social network thing goes is, I end up having a lot of my secret society acquaintances on there.  I may not be all of their biggest fans, and I’m sure they don’t all think I’m the bees knees, but it’s kind of an obligation to the secret society, we all band together even though we all might not have everything in common (the secret society is starting to sound like a cult, I do realize that, it’s not, I promise).

Okay, now that all that’s out of the way lets get down to brass tacks. I am so fed up of looking at the same girls selfies day after day. I am really irritated and resentful at girls who take selfies all the time and girls who have duck faces in their selfies.  Okay, so I know I should just stop following them right? But I can’t, it’s like watching shark week, so intensely disturbing but so hard to look away. There are a few girls in particular that I am thinking of, and like I said, I’m pretty sure none of them know how to read, so I don’t think I have to worry about them seeing this. So really, what in the world are these girls thinking? I mean it really gets under my skin. They will post the exact same shot, of their pursed duck lips in a pouty expressionless line, behind a different background everyday. There’s this one girl I follow on instagram who literally every day, sometimes three times a day posts the exact same picture of herself in the various places she visits throughout the day, my favorite part is her hashtags. She tags #selfiewednesday, or #selfietuesday, or #selfiemonday, depending on the day of the week. It doesn’t even make sense. Okay, #throwbackthursday makes sense, and is cute when you post a picture of you when you were five years old licking an ice cream cone in your undies. But #selfiewednesday doesn’t even make sense! It’s not even an alliteration! #flashbackfriday, #throwbackthursday, these make sense to me, but #selfiewednesday is just an excuse to put another boring picture of yourself up, and I’m sick of looking at you.  And for fucks sake can you have some other expression besides that toothless trying to be seductive but look like a total jackass look. I mean, I am really upset about these selfies guys, I don’t know why it disturbs me so much. I know that a psychologist would say to me, “well usually the things that irritate you in other people are the things you see in yourself that you don’t like.” But I do not take selfies. I also am aware that I am not God and have no business passing judgement on what people do with their free time, but I am human and not Mother Teresa, so I do judge.

I actually have a real plan to fix this problem, and trust me, it is a problem. I know I’m not the only one that is extremely disturbed by the level of vanity that has overcome social networking. I mean, my friend Sherah, (about to throw you under the bus Sherah), texts me every other day, screenshots of the culprits doing their thing, just in case I missed it in my feed, because I’m not quite as glued to my instagram feed as Sherah is. (By the way, completely unrelated, but Sherah is single). I’ve got a plan to stop selfies, and I really think it’s a solid one. I can’t fix the national debt. I can’t bring about world peace. I’m not going to win a Nobel Prize for curing a disease. But I can try and put a dent in selfies. As far as I am concerned you all get a redo as of today. As far as I am concerned none of you have ever posted one, including myself. The next person I see who posts a selfie will be deleted immediately. Now I don’t consider myself so important that my deleting them would affect their life in any negative way at all, but if we all get together we can make a difference! If you all continue to one by one delete the people you follow who post selfies, then eventually there will be nobody left to look at their pictures, and they may actually start posting some pictures of substance (like puppies or food).

Who’s with me? I implore you to all join my cause, maybe if we all band together we can eradicate selfies forever!!

Stewie is as Stewie does

Mark Twain said “write what you know.” I have made a commitment to myself to blog once a week. Writing keeps my brain active. Keeping my brain active and dendrites moving apparently staves off Alzheimers. I’m very concerned about getting Alzheimers. I forget things all the time. So I’m writing once a week. Problem is, I’m having trouble coming up with material. So I have decided to take good ole Marks advice and write what I know. What do I know better than my muse?

Sam and I are in a debate over whether Stewie is abnormally stupid or unbelievably smart. I can’t figure it out. Sometimes I feel like he is a human trapped in a dog body dying to let his genius out. Other times I feel like he is the most obtuse animal I have ever known, I mean, really, really dumb.

Sam wanted a boxer his whole life. We looked at boxer rescue sites for months because I wanted a boxer puppy, but we wanted to do the right thing and rescue. Puppies are difficult to come by on rescue sites and so the search was fruitless and Sam thought we should get an adult dog. I was determined to have a puppy that could grow up with us, so I waited until Sam went out of town for a weekend, and surpise! Sam came home to a son. I neglected to tell Sam for months, maybe the first year of Stewie’s life, that Stewie was the runt. One day I let slip that Stewie was the runt and ever since then Sam has blamed all Stewie’s retardation on that, and blamed me for picking the runt.

I am constantly threatened by Sam that he will return Stewie for a smarter animal. I know he says this in jest, but I feel bad for Stewie, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I think it may be my fault that my son is so deficient and demented. I have sheltered and coddled him too much. I didn’t let him out in public for the first four months of his life because I was terrified he may contract some sort of deadly disease and wanted him to get all his shots first. I remember reading about the way Queen Victoria was brought up. She was brought up under a strict regimen that was coined the “Kensington System.” She was sheltered so much because she was the only heir to the throne and her mother wanted to make sure nothing happened to interfere with her succession. Victoria wasn’t even allowed to sleep in her own room and had to sleep with her mother until she became Queen of England. I imagine I brought Stewie up under something similar to the “Kensington System.” The poor pup was rarely out of my arms when I was around, I was constantly checking his breathing to make sure he was alive, I took him to the vet every time he displayed any sign of sickness, much to Sam and his wallets dismay. Stewie pees like a girl and Sam yells at him in our backyard, “be a man Stewie, raise your leg!” Stewie cannot even walk on a leash out in public because he is so afraid of cars, people, and any noise that you could associate with living in the city. All these defects either get blamed on Stewie’s being a runt or my being overly protective.

Stewie has recently taken up watching animal planet and documentaries about wolves. This leads me to believe that he is in fact, not a half-wit, but a savant. Have you ever seen a dog watch TV? Ever? I mean for extended periods of time without getting distracted? This isn’t like the game where you pretend to throw a ball two times and on the third time the dog realizes there is nothing in your hand. He never gets tired of it, it never gets old, Stewie loves watching animal planet.  His favorite movie is “Life of Pi,” for obvious reasons. I put on the opening scene of “Life of Pi” and he just is mesmerized. So here’s the dilemma. When the animals come on Stewie literally tries to climb into the TV to hang out with them. He watches and takes it all in, he is clearly understanding what is happening. But is he? Does Stewie believe that there are animals living inside my TV/laptop, or does he understand that he is watching documentaries about other animals and he just enjoys learning how his ten times removed ancestors live and what their habitats are like?

I recently suggested we get a bark box subscription for Stewie. A bark box is a monthly box that comes filled with dog treats and toys and I thought Stewie would really enjoy something like that. We don’t have kids to spend our money on, why not spoil him? Sam, to my surprise, said “Sure!” And then he followed it up with, “we can take out the treats when they arrive and send Stewie back in the box.” I know he just does this to get me riled up and his mission in life is to do things that upset me so I will argue with him, but it gets me every time. I really don’t want Stewie to develop a complex about being stupid or unwanted.

Everyday when I leave for work in the morning Stewie looks out our window after me, he actually pushes his snout up against the window so his whole face is smashed up. It’s a terrible gut wrenching sight to see. It makes it very hard to leave the house at all because I feel so guilty. Every evening when I come home from work I lock my car and the second I click my alarm and it goes beep Stewie runs up to the window and is waiting there, watching, wiggling with anticipation. I don’t have the market cornered on this routine of his, he doesn’t break it out just for me. He recognizes his fathers car alarm too and goes to hold vigil at the window until Sam walks in. There are many cars that travel and park on our street, many that have car alarms, and he only gets up for the ones he knows. Which again, is another sign that he may be smarter than he presents at times.  

Despite his goofy, retarded disposition, he makes me incredibly happy and it’s impossible not to break out in a smile when I see him. Senseless or intelligent, I’m sure the debate will continue, but it doesn’t really matter. Sam will continue to terrorize and bait me about sending Stewie back or turning him in for an updated and more intelligent model. I will continue to play along and feign shock and horror at the idea that he would give up his son. But when we are laying in bed at night and Stewie is laying right on Sam’s chest with his head in the crook of his dads neck, I hear Sam whisper in Stewie’s ear, “I love you bud, you’re such a good boy.” And I know he really doesn’t care that Stewie pees like a girl, and is afraid of his own shadow, and is ranked 48 on Stanley Coren’s dog breed intelligence list, and is really extremely needy, and dense. Stewie’s love for us is unconditional and it’s hard not to love something that is blind to, and loves you despite all of your flaws and imperfections.

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” -Mark Twain

Celebrating Mediocrity

A baby was born this week. Thousands of babies were born this week. But one, was a Prince. He doesn’t have a name yet.  Baby owners all over the world are delaying naming their spawn, either because they want to name it after the Prince or they want to make sure they don’t give it the same name as the Prince. This doesn’t seem fair to me. Thousands of nameless babies, waiting around patiently in their baby bassinets, to be named after, or not the same as, a Prince. The most irritating part about all of this, is this monarchy doesn’t even hold any power. Why does anyone care? They are purely figureheads. Prince William cannot pass a law, he cannot behead Kate Middleton when she is unruly or he gets sick of her. (Although that might make things more interesting, I don’t understand why beheadings have gone out of fashion). But people care, I care. I myself, googled all the pictures and videos of the Prince and Princess leaving the hospital with their brand new baby.  I oohed and awed over the new successor’s birth. I watched Kate in her blue polka dot Jenny Pakham dress, and she is so perfect and gracious and beautiful and I longed to have her life. Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here embracing mediocrity.

When I was small, who am I kidding, when I was small until I was about 30 years old, I was convinced I would marry Prince William. The only reason the dream stopped is because he married someone else. All the signs pointed to a royal union for William and I. I was born in England, practically royalty already, I’m sure if you traced back through the family history I had some blue blood running thru my veins. We were both born in June, only six days and one year apart. These coincidences made me sure I was destined to be a princess. Turns out it was some other girls destiny to be a princess too, her name is Kate, and he chose her. My dreams were smashed.

As I watched Kate and William emerge from the hospital and show off their prize, Baby Cambridge, to the world, I realized how insignificant I am in this world and how, I, am not special. Nobody will photograph me if I ever give birth. Nobody cares. I have about three regular readers on my blog, my sister, my boyfriend (who I make read it), and some weird girl I don’t know. I’ve never done much of any significance. I’m not going to win a nobel peace prize. I work a nine to five. Come home. Usually order Thai food from down the street because I don’t know how to cook and they really show up fast. Sometimes I go to my secret society meeting. Sometimes I take Stewie to the dog park because socialization is important for him and his self esteem. I go to bed, Stewie takes up the whole bed, Sam and I try to adjust ourselves around him. I wake up. I set my alarm 45 minutes before I actually have to be up because I like to hit snooze for 45 minutes. And then I do it all over again. I will get old and die and disappear and nobody will ever know I was even here. We are all just floating around in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nothing and who even knows why the hell we are here and in the middle of it all, I am insignificant, and I can’t sleep a lot at night because of it.

Kate could have had my life. Kate could have a nine to five and eat thai at night, I doubt she’d go to the secret society meetings because she is too pure for them, but maybe all the rest.  Except for she chose to go to a little school named St. Andrews. And she met a Prince. And now she has a different life.

Today I’m rejoicing my humdrum life. I’m not reading any tabloids today because they make me feel ugly and generally like shit. I enjoyed my Thai dinner tonight. Sam and I took Stewie for an enjoyable evening walk to 7-11 so I could buy cigarettes. I don’t think I’ll google Will and Kate anymore because you know what, they really haven’t done much either, he just was the lucky little royal sperm that won the race. And by the way, he’s going to be bald in a couple years, and my boyfriend has a head full of hair. I didn’t marry into the royal family, but that’s okay, because Sam thinks I’m a princess (most of the time) (maybe half of the time).

A Prince was born this week. And I’m just here celebrating mediocrity.

Humidity Levels in California

It has been unusually humid for California. My sister got married. I thought about quitting smoking. My family came out and visited us from Ireland. I got a fake spray tan. I thought about quitting smoking. The Newsroom season premiere was a bit of a letdown, I had been looking forward to it for almost a year, poor form Newsroom writers. I started back listening to my book on tape, after taking a week hiatus, I like it, it’s entertaining and makes the drive to work go by quickly. I thought about quitting smoking, and read a couple pages out of Allen Carrs “Easy Way to Quit Smoking,” it’s not easy and the title really pisses me off. The Zimmerman trial verdict was laid down. Groups of angry people are “protesting” the verdict, back in the day these were called “riots.” Although I remember the day the Rodney King verdict was announced, I was at Magic Mountain with my parents surrounded by over one hundred thousand angry African American people and I only have seen that look of fear for their daughters lives on one other occasion, which I will not mention right now, but those were real riots. The current “riots” are childs play compared to 1992. Cory Monteith died of a heroin overdose.  I’m not joking about the humidity, I’ve been forced to seek solace at the mall because it’s the only place I know with air conditioning. And I have a serious problem with shopping, it’s not an idyllic place for me to go for sanctuary.

These are all events that happened in the last week. Yet I cannot conjure up one thing to write about. I started this blog over two years ago and since then have wrote on average one entry every four months, barely qualifying it to be called a blog, maybe more like a quarterly newsletter. I started the blog because I want to be a writer and I got lots of advice saying “if you wanna be a writer, you gotta start a blog.” So I did. Nothing is inspiring me to write, although I see inspiring things everyday. So there you go. Here I am. Writing a blog on how I cannot write. I’m not dead, I just have writers block.

My boss told me today that I had outgrown my position here and although he loved having me here, what was I going to do with my life. Isn’t that  just the million dollar question.  I feel like I am stuck in the middle of a room with hundreds of people, screaming at the top of my lungs, “what am I going to do with my life, help me, tell me and I’ll do it” and none of them can hear me. I’m too old to be in college at this point, but will never go any farther if I don’t finish up. The degrees I’m interested in will take four, more likely, eight more years, I’ll be  on social security and getting the senior citizen discount at Denny’s by the time I finish college at the rate I’m going. The thing I really wish is that I could time travel back to 1999 and convince myself to go to college and take it seriously, or even 2005 when I finally cleaned up and tell myself to go back and get a degree. Instead I find myself telling any young person who’s willing to listen, to go to college now, or you’ll regret it. And I sound like all the grown ups that I have always hated for lecturing me.

When my boss asked me of my future plans today, I told him the usual, “I am going to be a writer.” I barely even believe it when I say it out loud anymore. My boss suggested I start a blog if I want to be a writer and get some readers, to which I informed him, “I already have one.” Then write Gayle, just write.

I was in line at Starbucks a couple weeks ago when Sam sneezed and a very large gentleman behind us in line said “God bless you.” Or maybe the man sneezed and Sam said “God bless you,” it really doesn’t matter, that’s not the point of this story. For whatever reason they started chatting with each other and the man said, “Who even knows where the expression “God bless you,” came from?” Without missing a beat, I informed him that it originated during the time of the Bubonic Plague. When someone sneezed it was assumed that they had caught the plague and so whoever heard them said, “God bless you.”  Now this gentleman was incredibly impressed that I knew this. I’m not sure why.  Five minutes later we were waiting for our drinks and the man said to me, “I can’t get over the fact that you knew that, how did you know that?” I told him I must of heard it at some point in my life and just remembered it, honestly, I don’t know where I heard it. He said, “you’d make a great lawyer, being able to remember facts like that.” We started chatting and I told him I was a little lost right now in the world and appreciated the direction. As he picked up his drink and went to walk out he turned to me and said, “You know what the best thing to do is when you’re trying to figure out what you want to do?” I looked at him incredulously, this stranger was about to tell me the answer to all my problems, the way to figure out what to be when I grow up. I was shaking with excitement on the inside but kept it cool on the outside and just said, “No, what?” He smiled an encouraging and loving dad like smile, leaned down, and I thought he was about to whisper the secret to life in my ear but he simply said, “DECIDE,” and smiled generously as he walked out the door into the humid Los Angeles evening.

“Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.” -Mary Schmich