The Purse of a Person

Posted on January 13, 2016 by KatieComeBack

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had something kicking the sides of my cranium trying to work its way out. It’s done quite a bit to try and capture my attention, distracting me from intense post-season NFL matchups and Sunday morning sermons. Impressive for an intangible product of my imagination. Even more impressive, it’s not about food.

What’s been festering in my frontal lobe?

Purses.

Yes, purses. Pocketbooks. Handbags. Cross-body messenger bags.

(Well, it beats staring at my thighs trying in vain, yet again, to suck them in.)

(Side note: That doesn’t work. If you find a way to do it, hit me up. K?)

Everybody loves a good purse, right? Well, women, anyway. And some dudes. NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT and I DO NOT JUDGE.

I’m not sure exactly at what age I started carrying a purse. I’m guessing it coincided somewhat with puberty – the age where you suddenly NEED to have, at all times, concealer, frosted eye shadow and neon-blue mascara (hey, it was the 80s, and I bet if I looked at YOUR yearbook, your regrettable decisions would be documented, too), and <whispers> Certain Feminine Hygiene Products We All Carry But No One Must Suspect You Have Because You Would, Like, Die.

Oh, and lip gloss. I think that was the official sign of Becoming a Woman – you graduated from either Cherry Chapstick, or this (which came in a tin and you kept in the pocket of your Lee jeans):

To Maybelline’s Kissing Potion:

Scandalous.

In retrospect, these were actually pretty horrible. Essentially, you were putting corn syrup on your lips. Sure, it was delicious, but I can’t say I’d be puckering up to that sticky, smeary mess. Especially with an inexperienced kisser. Then again, I’m not a dude. Curious, I asked the hubs how he felt about smooching on someone with gloopy, shiny lip gloss. He shrugged and said, “Wouldn’t slow me down.” (I will never understand men. And, speaking of men…if this stuff is supposed to ATTRACT men, why doesn’t it taste like bacon instead of bubble gum?)

Because I don’t really do anything halfway*, once I started carrying a purse, I used a really BIG purse. Something like a hobo bag – big enough to carry all the things I absolutely, positively COULD NOT be without for an hour (read: a wallet and a ton of useless crapola), but NOT big enough to be called a tote bag (or suitcase. Although I suppose that’s just semantics, really.)

*Except stuff like cleaning the bathroom. Because sometimes, a C+ effort is plenty, and because eeeewwww.

Funny thing about space – we fill it almost as soon as we acquire it. (Quick quiz to prove my point: Do you have any empty cupboards in your kitchen? Unoccupied drawers in your desk? Unfilled shelves in your pantry or linen closet? If you do, you’re in the minority, and basically probably not even a true American, because along with our fast food, we like our useless piles of stuff.)

The same was true for my purse. It became a catchall for various items: gum, mints, extra hose, Scotch tape, receipts, Happy Meal toys, a goat, old makeup, new makeup, Scrunchies, keys to a bunch of unidentified passages to Narnia, earring backs, bobby pins, and approximately 23948324032 pens.

Rifling through my purse, looking for the latest misplaced item, my brother would lean over, look inside, and joke, “Oh, there’s my ski!” He affectionately called it “The Abyss” and threatened to hide my sister in there, where she’d clearly never be seen again.

I kept using storage-closet-sized purses well into adulthood. Once I had kids, I had to add entertainment to the variety show in my handbag. So crayons, stickers, antibacterial wipes, sunscreen, fruit snacks, and Cheerios got added to the portable flea market.

It was nice to carry a convenience store on my shoulder – but I still hadn’t mastered the challenge of organization. All of my “essentials” were in a jumbled heap in the bottom of the Pocketbook Black Hole. After grocery shopping, I’d stand on my front doorstep, impatiently shaking my purse, listening for the metal clink of what would (hopefully) be the keys to my house, attempting to locate them before Ben and Jerry melted into a depressing puddle of ooze. Other times, I’d carelessly toss my phone in there before leaving the house; later, walking around the mall, a small voice beside me would pipe up, “Mommy? Your purse is ringing.” I’d frantically rifle through the contents, ineffectively calling out to it, “Hold on, I’m coming! I can HEAR you, I just can’t FIND you!” (Ah well. I can always call them back.)

I have several friends who collect purses. Coach, Dooney & Bourke, Vera Bradley, Kate Spade, and Louis Vuitton. Since I spend most of my money on shoes, I’m more of a “what’s on sale at Kohl’s” kinda gal.

And I’ll let you in on a secret: I actually only own one purse at a time.

One.

One purse.

(Yeah, I know, if it weren’t for my shoe collection, you’d be banging my door down trying to get me to relinquish my Girl Card.)

Don’t get me wrong – I truly can appreciate a really nice handbag. But, frankly? I’m lazy. Remember, I’m schlepping around a boatload of miscellaneous (yet ESSENTIAL) items – the thought of transferring all that rando shiz from one bag to another just so it’ll match my shoes is EXHAUSTING.

So I buy one bag, use it until it falls apart, and then begin the arduous task of relocating all of the contents to their new home. It’s not unlike moving a two-bedroom apartment, really. I just don’t have to repaint.

Recently, the piping started to peel off my current bag. Reluctantly, I started the search for its replacement. This was a GREAT bag. Well under $50 at Kohl’s, BEFORE the coupons and discounts. And bonus: it had a bajillion pockets, so I could actually organize things. (Hubs: “Or have more places to lose things.” WHATEVER. <eyeroll>)

<sniff> It was a good soldier. I wanted to post pictures, in reverence, but as you can see, I was mercilessly photobombed by an attention-whore tabby:

What the – oh, hi kitteh.

Aw, I love you too. Now move, asshole.

GAAAH Really???

Uncle. UNCLE. Close enough.

See all the pockets? (They’re behind the cat.) And to help me further organize, I bought a giant wallet – an organizer WITHIN an organizer! (Heloise should be sending me an award shortly.)

Also a superbargain at Kohl’s.

The smart thing about this clutch is that it has a detachable strap, which, since I travel a lot, I keep in my airport carryon. So, when I’m gonna be out of town, this goes in my backpack, along with my laptop, sewing kit, sunglasses, headphones, gluten-free snacks, gum, Advil, and bottled water.

Wait a sec….

That makes my backpack just another purse, doesn’t it.

Anyway, I just bought a new purse. Well, I bought it about a month ago, but procrastination + lazy + funk meant I was going to haul around a beat-up, falling-apart purse for awhile, while the bright, pretty new one hung in anticipation by the door.

While I’m still feeling pretty blahbulous, I did manage the purse transfer. Here’s my new companion:

newbag

Isn’t it cute? I bought this one** at the World Jubilee Fair – it’s a market where they sell crafts from around the world; the funds go to support…um…oppressed women or something.

(I probably should have been paying better attention. But it sounded sort of like this: blah blah blah in the country of blah blah women blah blah self-sufficient blah blah blah OOH LOOK SCARVES AND PURSES AND JEWELRYYYYYYY. And yes, I binge-bought, but at least it helped the planet or something. Right?)

**It didn’t come with the little state*** key fob. Or the pepper spray. Those were after-market upgrades.

*** yes, it’s stupid cold here.

The beauty of this bag is that, in addition to being ergonomic, it has TONS OF POCKETS. Score!

So there’s room for EVERYTHING. All the essentials listed above, AND a mini first aid kit, generic Advil, a taser, my work badge, a tape measure, and my grown-up lip balm of choice:

burtsbalm

I even have room for these guys:

trollguys

Although why they’ve taken up residence in my purse remains a mystery.

So what’s your bag? What do you carry? What’s the oddest thing – and the best weapon – in there right now?

Dissecting the Funk Frog

Posted on January 9, 2016 by KatieComeBack

Yeah, I know. It’s been a while. This funk that I’ve been in since – wow – November – seems to have settled in for the long haul.

I’ve been trying to pinpoint the issue, to roll back “effect” so I can find the cause. This is a coping trick that helps me (sometimes) when I get an overflowing cup of the feels. Often, emotion crashes into me like a runaway truck, and my priority at that point is to roll off the road and pick gravel out of my kneecaps, notsomuch getting the license plate of the bus or piano or proverbial cartoon anvil that’s just knocked the spiritual wind out of me.

I’ve found that just putting a label on an overwhelming feeling helps drain its hold on me. If I can identify it – if I can call it out, give it a name, loosely label what it is – it loses some of its ability to smother me and I can start to come out from underneath it.

“I am feeling anxious. This feeling will pass. It is OK to feel this way.”

Believe it or not, that small acknowledgement helps. From here, I can then ask myself if there is anything that might make me feel better. (Tonight, it was paying bills, of all things. Go figure. I suppose the getting-done-ness of an annoying pending task helped in some way, but I’m not taking it up as a recreational activity. 9/10 do not recommend.)

But whatever’s dragging me down these last few months is engulfed in a thick cloud of fog, darting craftily in and out between the trees to keep me nervous and off-balance. After a lot of squinting and head-scratching (and, unfortunately, way too much snack food) I can only make out vague shapes and shadows of what I think it might be:

My dad. I did get to see him over the holidays, and on the plus side, he’s still alive. But he doesn’t have long – months? weeks? Every morning, I check my phone for the news I’m dreading. Every morning. Kinda wears on a gal after a while when you start every single day checking for a pulse.

My marriage. He’s trying. He’s been attentive, kind, understanding, and overwhelmingly helpful. All the things you’d ever want.

But it takes time to accept that something you once believed to be somewhat magical is really quite pedestrian. Ordinary.

It’s like Grandma’s prized antique vase:

vase

After years of admiring it, cautioning the kids to “look but don’t touch,” and hearing great stories about its perceived rarity, you take it to be appraised on Antiques Road Show, where you discover (after a four-hour wait in line behind someone with a fugly Volvo-sized painting that you’re pretty sure was created by a dog and a four-year-old) the prized glass sculpture that she so carefully guarded and protected was a mass-produced grocery store giveaway in the 1950s and has a market value somewhere between Betamax video cassettes and books on how to survive the Y2K disaster*.

Why Worrying is a Waste of Time - Y2K

*Ah, Y2K. We were all doomed, remember? Everyone was up in arms about how 1/1/00 was essentially gonna shut the planet down, because computers didn’t know that “00” meant 2000 instead of 1900. We all held our breath on New Year’s Eve, and…nothing happened. Well, except this: There was an older gentleman who was quite well-known in our small town for founding one of the larger local businesses. He was a community icon, especially after he turned 100. And the year he turned 105, he received a letter from the local elementary school reminding his parents to sign him up for kindergarten. HAHAHAHA

Anyway, even if your vase isn’t priceless, you can’t just throw it out, right? Because Grandma LOVED it, and its place on her mantle has given it a rich history and some good stories. So you still treasure it, but…it’s just not the same vase you thought it was. You just don’t have quite the same… reverence for it. It’s nice, but viewing it gives you just the smallest twinge of disappointment, because it’s simply not what you made it out to be. It’s an unstirred blob of cornstarch in your coconut cream memory pie.

Work. Normally, my busy season ends right before Thanksgiving. This year, it lasted all the way until December 23, at which point I attempted to take a few vacation days. But I didn’t really get the break I needed, because apparently, I’m SO important that they felt the need to call me EVERY STINKING DAY (three times one day. THREE. TIMES. Am I the HR freaking pharaoh?!?!) with questions, problems, and general bad behavior of certain employees. (I blame the full moon. Really. Ask any HR person, or anyone who works in a hospital, if there’s any truth to the full moon being fertilizer for the crazy daisies. They’ll affirm heartily.)

But the holidays are over now, Open Enrollment is closed, we’re all set up to print the ACA tax forms (I think, anyway; besides, the deadline’s been delayed AGAIN, so I have two more months to ~~royally eff them up~~ issue them. Oh, and that also means you won’t have them by the time you want to file your taxes. THAT won’t confuse anything, right?) and the OSHA logs (over thirty of them. !!!) are ready to post. I might be due for some relief shortly. Fingers crossed. Although I did hear that the CEO has some “ideas” he wants to discuss, so if you need to find me, I’ll be hiding under my desk behind the 2008 termination files.)

Fat. So, through all this, I’m still fighting the food demons. I went from swearing off food to eating ALL THE THINGS so no one else can have any. Here are some more of the things I can no longer have in the house (because I will tape them to my face and inhale until the bag is empty):

CC_coconut-crunch-new

Sweet & Salty

I can also no longer have no-bake cookies, because my motto seems to be One Batch, One Serving. I made two batches over the last three weeks. Moo.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate No-Bake Cookies

(If you don’t quite hate yourself enough and want to get in on the self-loathing, go here and make these. Use brown sugar and sub out the butter for more peanut butter, because butter is gross. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I cannot be held accountable for your cocoa-covered countenance of shame, or the repercussions of locking your family out of the kitchen.)

Topping off the snack-food skyscraper was an influx of gift cards (Merry Christmas!) to my favorite public binge site, Benihana. This is one of those Japanese cook-on-the-table types of places, where you sit around family-style while they twirl knives and pitch shrimp tails in your pocket. During the entertainment, you get four or five courses of food, a veritable stir-fried Mount Unami that no one could POSSIBLY scale to the summit.

Except me and the hubs. We take great pride in declaring that to-go boxes are for quitters, and that the ability to finish the whole thing is what makes America great.

And we ate there twice over the last two weeks, finishing every bite and washing it down with one of these:

Yeah. It’s as good as it looks.

Contributing to the waist-pinching is the lack of exercise. I try to run a few days a week**, but that’s been tabled lately because somehow, I hurt my hip. I say “somehow” because I quite literally have no idea what I did to it. One day, I got out of bed, stretched, and felt a stabbing pain. YAY. This week, I finally caved and went to the doctor (Happy New Year! Here’s your $5000 deductible!) so I’m hoping they can get me back on track.

**Don’t get me wrong – I don’t actually LIKE to exercise. But without it, I find the stress builds up inside and doesn’t have an outlet. It just sits there in my gut demanding I feed it naughty things like kettle corn and chocolate pudding. Exercise, like coffee, keeps me from having to chip through the frozen ground to bury the bodies.

The doctor thinks it’s something that can only be healed by using crutches for four weeks.

Whoa there, Doc.

<BEEP BEEP> BACK UP THE TRUCK.

I have to navigate a ginormous parking lot every day, and I live in America’s Frozen Tundra, AND I have to juggle my coffee and my morning smoothie, so unless these suckers come with cup holders and an ice pick, I don’t see crutches being a reality. Plus, airports. I have five trips to take between now and the end of February. While crutches might be handy to take out unruly children and line-cutters, I don’t think they’re gonna expedite my last-minute dash to my gate.

I did get an MRI yesterday, so hopefully that’ll give me a more palatable answer. Like something that requires weekly massages and heat therapy.

And speaking of therapy….I should probably add that I quit that, too. Why?

Because the therapist called me fat.

OK, I should clarify. She didn’t mean to, I don’t think. But while we were talking, Dr. P made a comment about “your size X body.” Essentially, she mentioned a size that, intellectually, I know is viewed as “slender” by society….BUT IT’S A FULL SIZE BIGGER THAN I ACTUALLY WEAR. So my brain immediately assumed that I look 10-15 pounds bigger than I AM, which is 10 pounds bigger than I WANT to be. You see how this works? I’ve been working so hard to accept myself at my current size, and one offhanded comment just burnt all progress to ashes. So forget it – we’re back to a goal of Size Invisible and I apparently need to lose twenty pounds*** in order to be acceptable.

Incongruously***, I dealt with all of this last night by downing a healthy (HAHAHAHA) portion of Cab Sav and most of this:

40% Reduced Fat Original

***Classic eating disorder logic here, amiright?

But today is a new day. I’ve broken my clichéd New Year’s resolutions about twelve times already, but thankfully, there’s no punch card of restarts.

Today, I can start anew.

What I’ll choose, though – food? weight loss? health? remains a mystery.

Sharing the Joy Bauble

Posted on December 25, 2015 by KatieComeBack

In my last post, I made a promise to myself – that I’d find myself a good, solid, abdominal-muscle-exhausting belly-laugh before Christmas was over.

I am proud to report that I got one…courtesy of my cat.

So, in case Santa didn’t bring you a big bucket o’happy this holiday, I’ll share mine. Laughter isn’t like cookies – if you share, there’s MORE, not fewer that you fight over.

Side note: I would totally cut a bish for a good gluten-free cookie. AND I MAY AS WELL ASK FOR A UNICORN TOO I GUESS SINCE THIS SHIZ DOESN’T EXIST.

Thankfully, THIS does – AND it’s gluten-free:

helladrink

I did share. A little. *hic* After about a third of it, I had lost my ability to tie the cherry stems into knots with my tongue. Which I can TOTALLY do, sober. (So can my daughter, because I taught her, because I’m Mother of the Year here. Besides, HOW WILL THE CHILDREN LEARN if we don’t teach them?!) Obviously, I didn’t care at that point…because delicious. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ME YO.

Okay. Before I get to my cat, here’s a car I parked behind the other day:

sexypony2

Do you see it? On the dashboard?

sexypony

That is one sexy pny.

So yesterday, I was getting in the car to go to work. This is usually a bit of an ordeal, because I’m juggling a couple of things:

Laptop bag
Gigundic purse with all the day’s essentials (most of which I haven’t used since I put them in there when I bought said purse….)
Lunch (pistachios, an apple, and a cheese stick, because I have to at least PRETEND to diet at work, even if my heart hasn’t been in it lately)
Bag with work shoes in it (I wear my snow boots to work, because we have a big, dark, parking lot with large ice patches and several surveillance cameras. I don’t want to fall. I especially don’t want to fall on video. So the fun shoes go in a bag until I’m safely at my desk.)
My morning smoothie
a 32oz cup of coffee

Today, I also have three gift bags for my team. (They got chocolate and alcohol, because I am an awesome boss. Don’t you wish you worked for me?) Suffice it to say my hands are full.

I perform my circus act of getting myself to my car, hauling all my stuff down the steps, out the front door, and into the garage. Once I wedge myself through the car door, I start to arrange all my crap so that I don’t break the wine (a tragedy!) or spill my coffee (at which point I’d have to turn around and go back to bed.)

And suddenly….I hear….something.

whirr

whirr whirrrrrr

whirrwhirrwhirrrrrrrr THUD THUD THUD THUD

Whu??

Out of the corner of my eye, some motion catches my attention. I’m alone in my garage…

and…

SOMETHING IS MOVING.

It’s…my passenger-side mirror.

IT’S TOTALLY FLIPPING OUT YO.

It’s flopping and turning like a freaking salmon trying to leap to its homeland to spawn.

WHAT THE ACTUAL EFF.

After several long minutes of vacillating between complete bewilderment and terror that AAAAAAHHHHHHH MY CAR IS HAUNTED…I figure it out. Apparently, when you try to carry the equivalent of the contents of your hall closet out to the car, you should be careful NOT to set the ENTIRE load RIGHT ON TOP of the little doohickey in the center console that adjusts the power mirrors.

<snort>

Oh yeah, the cat. I’ve written about my cats before. Like all good cat people, I find them fascinating and endlessly entertaining.

But I wasn’t prepared for Oliver’s…beauty pose. Which completely killed me dead:

toosexy

Sing it with me:

I’M

TOO SEXY FOR THIS RUG

TOO SEXYYYY YEAAAAHHHHHH

To close the holiday out, allow me to share a Christmas Miracle:

On Wednesday, I was almost DONE with Christmas. I had ONE more present to wrap – a donation in my in-laws’ name to Heifer.org. You might have heard of this organization – you make a donation and they use it to buy sheep and chickens and bees and stuff for folks in third-world countries. It’s a really cool idea, especially if you have relatives who “don’t want anything.” Because my mother-in-law is a wonderful woman with a generous spirit (unlike me, who asked for Etsy gift cards so I can buy handmade jewelry) this organization is where we get all her Christmas gifts – this year, she and her spouse are getting two goats.

Being the Christmas stickler that I am, though, I really feel like she should have something to unwrap. So I printed out a certificate:

goatcert

And, to commemorate the event, we ordered a Christmas goat for them to hang on their tree:

White Goat Christmas Ornament Red Gift Box

You can find this beauty on amazon.com.

Yes, a legit goat Christmas ornament. Don’t ever say I don’t make things memorable. I mean, you don’t just HAVE something like this – there HAS to be a story behind such a thing. Right?

So I’m wrapping this – the LAST present, and then Christmas is DONE! and I can have WINE!

And I ran out of paper. @#$(*#@($@*!!!!

I had ALMOST enough, but, dernit, the paper, much like last season’s skinny jeans, was just not gonna close around the box. I did the best I could, defying generally accepted rules of geometry and physics, but try as I might, I had a small space on the top and bottom, about 1″ square, of cardboard-colored Christmas failure peeking through the hole and mocking me.

But then I found a sheet of old address labels (why were these in with the wrapping paper, anyway?) – oddly, from Heifer.org. (You know how that works – once you make a donation somewhere, they thank you by sending address labels. I have about ninety six gazillion of these, and it’s not because I’m especially philanthropic. I have so many that one year I actually used them instead of cellophane to tape presents shut. Because I’m all resourceful and shiz like that. Especially when it’s totally tacky.)

But this sheet of address labels HAD CHRISTMAS STICKERS ON THEM.

And they fit PERFECTLY on the Square of Shame on my meager offering.

miraclestamp

CHRISTMAS IS SAVED! HALLELUJAH!

May you all have a delightful holiday, filled with sparkles, sprinkles, and new shoes. Thank you for being part of my joy this year!

Jell-O Salad…the Leftovers (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on December 24, 2015 by KatieComeBack

(This is a continuation of my last post.)

After a frantic, exhausting trip, I’ve just arrived at my father’s room in the ICU. I know, from text updates, that Dad’s still with us; we just don’t know how much so.

I find Mom, completely drained, still in her workout clothes from earlier that day. She had just gotten home from the gym (yes, my 70-year-old mother goes to the gym five times a week and can probably bench press me on a fat day. Puts me to shame, for so many reasons.) She had poured my dad a cup of coffee and had just sliced a grapefruit in half when he gave a small moan and collapsed in his recliner – so gently that he didn’t spill a drop of coffee.

911. The stretcher. Grab the medications. Follow us, ma’am. Why aren’t they moving? Start CPR – charging. No, wait, he has a rhythm again. Stroke. Heart attack. We can’t move him. Now we wait. Transfer. Stabilize. Wait, stroke or heart attack? Yes. Wait. Wait and see.

We’re a little unclear on the details, but Dad’s in a medically-induced coma at the moment, and we have a consult with the cardiologist in the morning. Mom camps out on the questionably-comfortable pullout in Dad’s room while the rest of us head back to Mom’s, dazed and exhausted.

The next few days are filled with ups and downs. Dad wakes up. He doesn’t know what happened, even though we’ve repeated the story several times. He thinks he’s back in his college dorm. He thinks he’s back in the Army. He thinks I’m his wife. (That added an extremely awkward and bizarre twist to the whole dealio.) But there are other times where he knows exactly who we are and where he is. He worked in maintenance at that hospital for over 30 years, and even though he retired seven years earlier, he recognizes several of the nurses who come to care for him.

There are also times – MANY times – where he thinks it’s time to go home. Like, NOW. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen your father in a hospital gown, fish sticks and tartar sauce a-flapping in the breeze, vehemently fighting through the tubes and wires trying to leave the ICU.

My sister: My eyes! MY. EYES!!!

Me: He MADE you with that. WITH MOM.

Sis: EWW EWW EWW <whacks me with bedpan>

Dad sees several specialists. They all agree – he should be dead. They marvel at the angiograms. “Never seen anyone walking around with this, this, these, that, and those all blocked up.” Four highways to the heart; three are permanently closed. They debate about whether to attempt to open up the fourth – aptly named the widowmaker – as it will most likely kill him.

We decide to proceed. What choice do we have? My sister and I walk Mom down the hall, shoring her up on each side, and start planning his funeral, start making lists of who to call and where to start.

But Dad isn’t done yet. (Stubborn old coot.) The procedure works, and when we go back to see Dad, he’s telling the surgeon some elaborate story, gesturing with his hands to illustrate.

Two days later, another setback. The left side of his body droops; we can’t understand his words. We Skype in with a specialist who confirms, after watching him raise his arms, speak, and stick out his tongue, that yes, he has had another stroke, albeit a mild one. (Mild? Is ANYTHING “mild” at this point? Every step feels like a mile; there are no slopes, just mountains and canyons pocked with prickerbushes and mudpuddles that leave marks and tears as you go.)

And so it goes for several days. Ups and downs. Adjustments to medications. Him trying to bribe me to bring him a beer. My sister and I having chair-spinning contests. (Hey, we were exhausted. And it’s a lot harder than it sounds. YOU try staying up for three days straight and completing FIFTEEN rotations on a backless stool without tumbling to the floor. I’ll wait.)

Countless friends and relatives stop by; Dad tells them one by one about his new pacemaker. Sometimes, he stops suddenly mid-conversation and jerks about, faking a shock “event.” (This only fools me the first time. I punch him in the arm. Too soon, Dad. Way. Too. Soon.)

In between these visits are rounds of physical and mental therapy:

Nurse: I want you to tell me something that begins with “B.”

Dad: <cold stare at nurse> BATTLE-AX.

(Hey, I come by my smartassery honestly.)

The good news: Dad went home a couple of weeks later. And this is a blessing, I know. He’s supposed to be dead. All the doctors said so.

But over the last year, he’s gotten progressively weaker. There’s nothing else to be done for his condition. As the cardiologists so eloquently put it, “Surgery is contraindicated.” His veins are too weak to reinforce.

So now, we wait.

And every morning, I check my phone for news. He could have a few weeks, a few months….he’s had a year now. The man who could fix any engine, appliance, or sticky door – the man who somehow managed to restart his own heart the day he collapsed – is dying.

But every morning, he’s still alive. So far.

My mother is caring for him at home. Once overweight, he now needs to be cajoled into eating. (Last weekend, he had pie for breakfast AND lunch. We were thrilled to get two meals into him. AND PUMPKIN PIE IS TOTALLY A VEGETABLE.) He takes dozens of pills a day. He sleeps a lot. He falls out of bed a lot.

Mom’s also trying to slowly transition his business to another dealer. Dad’s had his own business for decades, selling and servicing lawn and garden equipment. He was running this business until the day he collapsed. He tried to run it after he came home, too, but two hours in the shop required an eight-hour nap. And the risk of a laceration is just too great. (Being on powerful blood thinners can turn a paper cut into Niagara Falls. He can’t even use a manual razor anymore.) Yet, Mom doesn’t want to move too fast, throwing out too much of his life’s work too soon. “It’ll only upset your father.” I know this is true. But being in limbo for a year takes its toll.

We had Christmas with them last weekend. And it was bittersweet. We won’t have another. This, my friends, was it.

But there were blessings.

The hubs came along and, since he’s incredibly handy, he helped Mom out by fixing the sink and the lights and doing a bunch of other things Dad has always handled. The hubs has been working really, really hard to rebuild my trust and to repair our relationship – and last weekend, I saw him at his best. (Oh, and in his down time, he bought me a seat warmer and steering wheel heater for my car. THAT’S LOVE.)

My siblings and I got to make dinner together and open presents together and laugh together, as a family, one last time.

And I got to watch the love my parents have for each other – after over fifty years of financial ups and downs, three surly, unappreciative teenagers, polar-opposite political opinions, and the general irritation that comes with having to wash your husband’s socks:

Mom: Do you need anything else, dear?

Dad: Just you.

And then I had to leave. And as I dropped the kids off at their father’s house, and drove off, I was inundated with Christmas music. Every station was jingling their bells, rockin’ around their trees, and lettin’ it snow.

And I lost it.

Over the stupid radio.

As I started to hyperventilate, heaving great, big, mountainous sobs, I told the hubs to find something, ANYTHING, that was just people talking, because If I had to hear “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” ONE MORE TIME I WAS DRIVING OFF AN EFFING CLIFF AND LIGHTING A COOKIE FACTORY ON FIRE.

Holly Jolly Christmas? More like…

(I actually found this “gem” on The Hymns and Carols of Christmas. Clearly, not everyone in history was decking the halls with marshmallow cheer and boughs of jolly. To be fair, though, there was more plague back then.)

The holidays are hard on a lot of people. We have dysfunctional families; we lose loved ones. Yet society has established this Great Expectation of what we’re supposed to do and feel. And it sure as heck ain’t a gray funk of no.

Years ago, I got overwhelmed by the obligation of it all – the cards, the decorating, the baking – and I quit. Voluntarily resigned from the madness. I bought a pre-lit plastic tree, and topped it with an angel that makes me laugh. I gave my unused Christmas cards to Goodwill, and only ate cookies that other people so generously baked and shared. I made reservations for Christmas dinner OUT. I relaxed and enjoyed the season.

It was very freeing.

This year, I’m struggling to find my joy.

Last Christmas didn’t go as planned. That happens sometimes. There are things in life that you just can’t prepare for. But life happens, and you find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

That Christmas wasn’t the one I wished for – but it happened. And we’re going to be okay. We aren’t the same. But we’re going to be OK.

And as painful as the whole experience has been – as heartbreaking, terrifying, exhausting, unfinished, and messy as it is – it was beautiful in its own way. It’s OKAY to be sad. It’s OKAY to be afraid. That means we’ve been blessed to know things when they were different – and I have had, and continue to have, a life full of blessings. It’s also okay to hope and dream and wish. That’s part of the magic.

Christmas last year didn’t go as planned. But it is one I’ll remember forever. I learned more about love, forgiveness, and family than I think I ever knew – and I had no idea how badly I needed the lesson.

When I was a kid, my parents took me and my siblings to church faithfully every Sunday. Sometimes, during one of the prayers, Dad would be standing next to me, serene….then, without warning, he’d uncross his arms just enough so that he could punch his right hand with his left fist. This sent his right elbow swinging….into my hymnal, into ME, or into the collection plate. As the coins danced dangerously to the edge, I’d giggle. And once you start laughing in church…there’s no stopping it. The floodgates are opened, the dam is broken. Mom would glare, and it was like kerosene on an open flame. BOOM. Muffled snorts would sneak out from the hands tightly clamped to our faces, fueled by the dirty looks and stares from <gasp!> other families.

So tonight, at the candlelight Christmas Eve service, I’ll be thinking of my family. I’ll pray for my dad, and for my mom – for strength and happiness while those last few sands in the hourglass fall. I can’t quite capture that bubble of lightness and joy this year, but maybe, that’s OK. This year, maybe my gift isn’t meant to be flashy, heady buoyant exuberance -maybe it’s a solid, calming classic peace.

But the man who taught me that laughing in church is totally OK once in a while would want more than that.

So, if I haven’t found my joy before I’ve blown out my candle tonight, I’ll make it my mission to find a solid belly laugh before the lights go out.

I’ll find just one shiny bauble of joy, and hang it on my mental tree.

For Dad.

Whatever you celebrate, I wish you and your loved ones the brightest of blessings.

P.S. 2015? You can suck Father Time’s little second hand. Baby New Year has a steaming pile for you at the back door, yo.

‘Tis the Season to be…Gelatin (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on December 23, 2015 by KatieComeBack

So I’ve been absolutely sucktacular at posting lately.

I feel kind of like a bad Jell-O salad from the 1950s. I seem to be stuck in this gelatinous, undecipherable state of…blah. I’m suspended in this gray, chilly place that I don’t really like, but can’t seem to find the energy to work my way out of.

Lately, I’ve been rotating between three general moods: 1) anxiety over something I can’t identify, 2) a vague general sadness, or 3) feeling nothing at all. Season with a pinch of irritation and a teaspoon of fairly random anger, and serve on a platter of bitter arugula to a bunch of society ladies who are harshly judging you.

Occasionally, I spy a bit of brightness, like a maraschino cherry*, just out of my reach. It looks…nice, and even though I think, at least intellectually, that I’d rather be warm and engaged in life a bit more, I’m not motivated to actually DO anything to move towards it. Besides, moving would take energy. So here I stay.

YOU KNOW YOU WANT ME

When the sadness or the anxiety creep in, I shut those bishes up with other vices. My emotions are drowned out by the crunching of chips, the munching of popcorn, the suddenly urgent work project, the flood of wine. The world around me is gearing up for the holidays, but the joy and exuberance of the season are muffled by the thick layer of apathy clogging my eardrums and blurring my eyesight. I’m not powerless, really. I’m just uninspired and unmotivated. So I shrug back under my shawl of numbness and do…nothing.

Blah.

*Did you know that, in most of those beloved fruit cup snacks from childhood, that the cherries weren’t even cherries AT ALL? They were GRAPES. Grapes with makeup. TRUE STORY. Nowadays, the USDA has defined standards for what percentage of fruit cocktail actually has to be cherries – but many of those cherries STILL wear blush. And often, the dye is carmine. WHICH IS MADE FROM BUGS. That’s fine with me; I’d actually rather eat bugs** than a lot of what we attempt to pass off as “food”; this is more of a PSA for you vegan types.

**Speaking of eating bugs – if you want to get in on the hippie-trendy-sustainable-food bandwagon and try some really tasty bugs (come on, all the cool kids are totally doing it!) visit chapul.com. These folks make some seriously good energy bars – out of crickets, of all things. Yes – crickets:

from inhabitat.com

Now, before you jump on your chair and scream like a little girl – hear me out. I swear they have NO weird aftertaste – when I first tried them, I was actually disappointed because they DIDN’T taste…I dunno…exotic? I’m not sure what I was expecting. Something more unusual, I guess. But although they won’t make you hear colors or grant you metaphysical genius powers, they’re energy bars that actually taste good. Like cookies. And the bugs are all ground up, so I promise you won’t get a cricket leg in your teeth. Taste some adventure and buy some. I TRIPLE-DOG-DARE YOU. I mean, unless you hate Mother Earth or something. Whatevs.

Anyway. I’m trying to figure out why I just don’t FEEL this year. And, while I’ve been dealing with a few things this year, I think this particular funk may have something to do with my dad. So this post is super long, and I’m sorry, but selfishly, I need to get this out of my head so I can start to deal with it in a way that doesn’t involve a bottle of wine, sharp words towards my family, or gallons of delicious, brain-soothing popcorn.

Almost exactly a year ago, my phone rang at work. Now, this was unusual for a couple of reasons: One, it was my personal cell phone. I don’t get many calls on my cell phone – I mean, who actually talks on the phone anymore? We all text and Facebook and InstaTweet and a bunch of other things that your average preschooler has figured out and I will never understand.

Two, I don’t have cell phone coverage where I work. We’re not entirely sure why, but there are theories. One is that our building is haunted. Even though I totally believe in ghosts, I’m not buying this one. I’m more aligned with Team Crappy Construction and Leaky Windows. Our building actually used to be a window factory before the current company bought it. In the winter, my office gets so cold that I get ACTUAL LEGIT FROST ON MY WALLS. (Gee, and the window people went bankrupt WHY?) Suffice it to say I have a space heater cranked at 80 between October and May. (And the rest of the year, because air conditioning.) And I’m sure somewhere in this shoddy shack is a solid, scientific explanation why my office can’t hold heat, yet is impermeable by cell phone signals. (And probably isn’t bulletproof, but has successfully shielded me from crazed local wildlife.)

So my phone rings, and I see from Caller ID that it’s my brother. I stare at the phone for a minute, surprised. My brother? In the middle of the day? He works all day. How strange and random. Why would he call in the middle of-

Oh.

I let the call go to voice mail, knowing that if I pick it up, I’ll be rewarded with a frustrating round of “What? WHAT? Can you hear me now? Hello?” I call him back from a land line and get voice mail; meanwhile, he’s leaving me a voice mail. I call him again. No answer. YAY TECHNOLOGY. Frustrated, I try him one more time.

“Dad had a stroke. It’s bad. Come home.”

The next twelve hours are a blur. I blurt out to my team that I’m leaving. I get in the car and call my spouse. I retrieve the five voice mail messages I couldn’t get before. (THANKS VERIZON.)

I start chucking clothes into a suitcase (not wanting to discern what I might need for a funeral; do I jinx it if I pack a black skirt and dress shoes? or do I risk being the relative who went to her dad’s funeral in yoga pants?) while I call Delta to get my Christmas flight rescheduled. (Mad kudos to Delta for helping me out. On any given Sunday I’m typically cursing them for stranding me in Detroilet YET AGAIN, and their number is stored in my phone as Another F@#$ing Flight Delay, but they came through for me this time.) I dump a week’s worth of food into bowls and pour six bowls of water for the cats, hoping for the best as I head to the airport.

I check a bag, wondering, as it trudges along the conveyor, when I might see it again. I wonder if I will see my father again. If he’ll have passed before I get there. If he’ll know I’m there. If he’ll know who I am.

I pick at a sandwich during my layover at JFK. (Seriously, airports? I was ONE gluten-free sandwich away from STARVING TO DEATH. I know us sensitive types should plan ahead and pack our own food, but seeing as how sometimes air travel is an emergency and OBVIOUSLY it’s my dad’s fault for not requesting to have his stroke two weeks in advance so you could provide real food I could actually EAT, would it kill you to have a meal option here or there for those of us who can’t eat normal people bread? If not for that one lone sammie, I WOULD HAVE TOTALLY EATEN ANOTHER PASSENGER’S DOG. I had a packet of grainy mustard and I was eyeing the Chihuahua at gate B17. Don’t challenge me, bro.)

Hours later, I’ve aged forty years. I get to the hospital, prepared for the worst. I find my father’s room in the ICU, darkened, machines whirring and beeping. Tubes. Lots and lots of tubes. And in the center of this artificial cobweb, underneath a gray, dark cloud of wires and a ventilator, I find my father. The man who bravely swatted bees and dried tears, who fearlessly chased both bats and boys out of the house, lies there, motionless, small and shrunken and vulnerable.

…to be continued….

That’s My Note Athiest! We Empires the Bad.

Posted on November 27, 2015 by KatieComeBack

I’m long overdue for a post here, I know.

In my defense, things have been a little dark lately, and in the few moments I’ve been able to come up for air, I haven’t felt at all like doing much of anything. I’d blame the full moon I saw last week…

Actual full moon witnessed on actual commute. Sweet cheeks, pumpkin.

…or the odd weather we’ve been having…

Actual weather report at actual terminal. Fled in terror before Niagara Falls came to a boil.

…but I’m sure neither of these contributed much.

Plus, I’ve been wrapping up my annual super-busy period at work. At last count, I’ve read over 500 performance reviews, editing out “helpful” feedback and rewriting some of the comments so we don’t get our carcasses sued. Here’s a sample of this year’s gems, fresh from the school of “I wish I were kidding”:

Mark is an expert fisherman and all the customers know that. Because even though we do not sell any fishing paraphernalia, this subject comes up every time we need him to unload a truck or clean something and we hear his sudden andn intense passion in discussing his hobby in detail with anyone nearby. (Mark is kind of my spirit animal.)

Joe does the best he can with his bum hip. <cringe>

Sally is smart, but sometimes the men don’t think she knows much about our product line. She needs to find a way to service these customers better. I know she really trys. <double cringe>

And my personal favorite for 2015:

Jim is an excellent associate. He expertly fills all my holes.

<DELETE DELETE DELETE> Well, right after I copy and paste and send to all my HR buddies. Because HAHAHAHAHAHA

In my spare time <snort> I’m finishing up the last few days of Open Enrollment. For you non-US folks, the Open Enrollment period is the annual time where you can make your benefit selections for the following plan year. This time period is usually about three weeks. OF SHEER HELL.

Let me tell you how this shiz goes down, from an HR perspective:

First, you get info from your carrier about how much they want to jack up your rates. If they’re going easy on you, the screwing starts at 20%. And this year, we have the plot twist of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”.) Regardless of how you feel about that from a political standpoint, many of the insurance carriers are blaming it for additional increases of 5-10% ON TOP OF WHAT THEY WERE GONNA CHARGE YOU ANYWAY.

Yay progress.

So you negotiate frantically between your broker, your carrier, and your executive team to try to patch together a plan that balances a value-added benefit with what the company can afford to offer. In other words, you have to offer a plan that the shareholders will agree to AND won’t result in a parade of flaming torches and pitchforks when you roll it out to employees.

Basically, you need the Tooth Fairy to bring you a purple unicorn who speaks French and juggles. Preferably a vegan one.

Next you schedule meetings and assemble books to explain benefits changes and rates. You hold your meetings, hand out the materials. Any questions? Nope, we’re good, kthxbye.

Two and a half weeks go by. Nothing else happens. A tumbleweed blows by as you frantically fix the most garish typos and correct gender pronouns on the last of the performance reviews. (You’d like to do a more thorough scrub, but the battle of too/to, your/you’re, and the over-apostrophication of every.freaking.word ending in “s” has left you exhausted and stamping them with the seal of “Close Enough.” Uncle already, UNCLE!)

Two days before Open Enrollment ends, people start to realize that the deadline is looming, and the monsoon hits. You quickly shift gears to spend fourteen hours a day explaining the difference between an HSA and an FSA and an HDHP and a PPO in between complaints about “my benefits went up 5% but my raise was only 2%.” (Which I get, but these two things are totally unrelated. Insurance is not a buy/sell retail item and it is NOT cheap for a company to offer. Want proof? Ask for your COBRA rates – that’s the true cost of the plan for the company. Then come back and complain. Oh, and you’re free to shop the marketplace and pay more for a plan with a higher deductible. Really, have a look at how “affordable” the marketplace plans are.)

</rant>

Suffice it to say I’m in the thick of my annual “lost all faith in humanity” period.

Just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Which I spent eating popcorn in the airport watching the Eagles get totally spanked.

So is it any wonder that I’m out of wine?

Side note: I drank this last week, too. It’s soooo gooooooood. It’s mead. I don’t know what mead is, other than I think Shakespeare drank it, or Monty Python did, or something, and it tastes like beer and wine made a baby that totally went to Harvard, yo. So go get some. You’re welcome. P.S. Don’t let the hornet on the label scare you. After getting about 1/3 of the way through the bottle, you’ll realize the bee isn’t menacing, but merely misunderstood, and really just needs a big ol’ hug.

The brewer is Nectar Creek. Sorry the pic is a bit blurry. It’s a big bottle. <hic>

But let me be clear about one thing. When I’m texting you? I’m not drunk. It’s simply that my phone HATES ME.

I know I’m not alone in unfortunate autocorrects. Part of the title of this post was actually from a comment on an older post – Chelise from Caterpillar to Butterfly posted “That’s my note atheist!” in a comment.

Any guess what she meant to say?

Clearly, the context cues lead you to “That’s my vote at least.” Right?

This was easy for me to translate, because my phone has given me PLENTY of practice. Let me show you.

Here’s a text sequence. I was out with Kid #1, shopping. We agreed to meet Kid #2 for dinner, and apparently he was getting hungry….

(He’s gray, I’m blue.)

OK, that wasn’t too bad. I got there, eventually.

So my son went out and shot a squirrel (GOOD, because squirrels SUCK), and it’s “later” now and he is most definitely STARRRRRRVINGGGG. I ask him where he wants to go for food. He suggests Taco Bell; I helpfully suggest some delicious alternatives.

Bonus points to him – he’s so confused, he actually used punctuation. If you have teenagers, you know how significant – and rare – this is.

Since he was a little scared to guess what I was suggesting, he stuck with leftover Chinese. (I swear, I was only asking him if he wanted something from Sheetz or from this local place called NY Deli. OBVIOUSLY.)

Later that night, Sis is out on a date. He’s trolling YouTube videos on different gamer hacks, but now he can’t find his headphones. He swore up and down he left them RIGHT HERE ON THE TABLE next to his sister’s phone charger…which was, of course, with her on her date. We’d been running around all day, so they could have been anywhere. I tell him to text Sis (in purple) to see if she has any ideas:

I’m not even going to tell you what I was trying to say here. I’ll let you guess. (OK, because I actually forgot. Even I can’t figure it out.)

But I didn’t give up. Daughter is on another date tonight, so, being the superhip mom I am, I tried one more time to text her. (Oh, and I called her boyfriend “Nemo” because he has an arm in a sling and I am a horrible person who told everyone at lunch today that he hurt it wrestling off a senior citizen in a Black Friday fight for the last $2.00 cami. HAHAHAHA.)

Anyway, we ordered Chinese (which, apparently, we do a lot) and I wanted to see if we needed to save her anything:

text

NOW I give up. Again…uncle. UNCLE, SIRI, UNCLE.

But, like I said, it’s been a rough week. In Chicago, even the pastries seem to be having some sort of identity crisis:

Actual pastry display in yet another actual airport. THE CAKE IS A LIE. A delicious, delicious lie.

So technology may lead me to some awkward communications, but a world where carrots taste like chocolate is a world worth hanging out in for a while.

Especially if THIS is how you airport:

suitcase

(Smart kid. Seriously, why didn’t I think of that?)

The Artificial Tang of Banana Candy

Posted on October 25, 2015 by KatieComeBack

Despite the overabundance of Christmas decorations you see in every retail shop in America, this is NOT the “most wonderful time of the year” for HR.

Why? It’s because, in addition to the normal chorus of Stupid Employee Tricks, it’s the time of year where everything is due at once. Right now I’m working on a few of the following:

Annual AAP and EEOC reporting (the latter is finished. The former? SHOOT ME. I mean, I’m all about diversity. It’s the mind-numbing minutiae of government documentation that makes all of us approach this task with the enthusiasm and vigor of preparing our taxes or heading to a root canal.)

Open Enrollment – the annual event where HR pulls you all together and shoots confusing terminology and abbreviations at you for a full sixty minutes. The end result of this meeting is the expectation that you place you order for your own personalized combo platter of a pre-tax alphabet soup that you’ll pay a couple thousand dollars for. On the menu are PPO, with or without FSA (dependent care, medical, or BOTH); OR HDHP, with or without HSA (so study those co-insurances and copays, folks!); LTD and STD, the latter of which cannot be cleared up by antibiotics, and you really DO want, just in case, and and let’s not forget to remind ourselves of the benefits of our EAP and 401(k).

(Side note – Seriously, folks. You’re probably spending upwards of $2000 on insurance – take an hour or two and READ the stuff HR gives you. We don’t print it because we are budding novelists desperate to see our names in print. We do it as an attempt to educate you on what we know is an overwhelming, confusing, and expensive topic. I’ll bet the last time you bought an electronic device, or a new appliance, you spent HOURS poring over Consumer Reports and Amazon reviews, determined to get the best value. And that likely didn’t cost you HALF of what you’ll spend on insurance. So take a stab at actually using the tools HR gives you. This is a much bigger – and more expensive – decision than whether you need a built-in ice maker or not.)

Performance Reviews: Ah…my favorite. And by “favorite,” I mean “time of year I most frequently question my career choice.” And by “choice,” I mean “where I accidentally landed after discovering that most people lack the chutzpah to tell someone when they’re getting canned.”

Anyway.

Your performance review is supposed to be the time of year where you get dedicated attention from your boss – where she actually has an in-depth conversation with you about your job performance, your career potential, and your future with your organization.

What it often ends up being is a quick meeting where you get a pencil-whipped checklist from your boss, where you were arbitrarily rated, like wine, cheese, or earbuds, on a scale of 1-5. This scale is meant to capture the full spectrum of performance, with a rating of one meaning “unable to safely operate a crayon” and five being “not only walks on water, but turns it into wine when he’s done.”

Often, you and your peers are force-ranked – this means that your company has set quotas on how many people can sit in which seats on the rank bus – so most of you are solidly in Seat 3, which is Neutral, or Neither Agree Nor Disagree, or “Does my boss even know my name?”

Suffice it to say I’m not a huge fan of performance reviews. What should happen is that you have clear job expectations, and you receive frequent feedback from your supervisor so you know EXACTLY how you’re doing every week of your job. Feedback should be an ongoing process, not a once-a-year event.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret – most managers completely suck at managing. (OK, admittedly, that’s not much more a secret than water being wet.) Most of them are pretty candy-a$$* about telling you when you’re doing something wrong.

*I tried to find another word here, because although in real life I swear like the mechanic I was raised by, I try to keep my blog pretty clean. But Thesaurus.com didn’t have ANY synonyms for “candy-a$$” – it came up empty: “Did you mean cantatas?” Uh, no. Choir peeps may SOUND all innocent when they’re blasting through Vivaldi’s Gloria, but don’t let the robes fool you – they will TOTALLY cut a b!tch. Especially the altos. Those chicks are dark.

The point here is that if HR didn’t force managers to write down how you’re doing once a year, you’d never actually know, well, at least, not until the day you get called to HR and your boss is waiting there with the exit packet.

So that’s why your company does performance reviews. And that’s also why your review tastes oddly like banana candy.

Laffy Taffy - bite-size banana - tub of 145:

Bananarama / Banana Runts - Bulk:

Banana Candy SHOULD be good. I mean – SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR. Right? It’s sweet. It has a fun, bright color that should signal a party in your mouth.

But it just doesn’t taste good. The sweetness is cloying. The flavor is…odd. Unpleasant.

And it certainly tastes NOTHING like an actual banana. It’s totally fake. I mean, it has the COLOR of a banana, and because you’re told that it’s supposed to taste like an actual banana, you eat it and play along.

But if this candy was, say, blue, and shaped like a prickly pear? No way would that shiz stay in your mouth. You’d spit it out. You’d agree pretty quickly that it was nasty, artificial crap that has absolutely no business being called food.

But when we’re told that it’s supposed to be something we normally find palatable, we dutifully nod and swallow it.

You see how this is much like your annual performance review?

It’s supposed to taste just like a banana.

Incidentally, this is how I’m feeling in my marriage lately. I’m trying to recover from the “incident” from a few weeks ago, and I’d been doing remarkably well, actually.

Then I made the decision to go back to therapy. I had my first return visit on Friday.

As it turns out, I’ve been feeding myself a whole heckuva lot of banana candy.

That whole inner peace thing I’ve been carrying around like Fall’s must-have Tory Burch backpack? Fake. Forced. Surreal.

I’ve spent the last two days in the uncomfortable spot of really feeling the feels. Oh, and eating them. I demolished a 26-oz bag of this in under 24 hours. (Add THAT to the list of “can never buy again.” Curse you, Costco.):

can't buy THIS again, either. EVER.:

For you math geeks, that’s almost two pounds of popcorn, folks. 3,640 calories.

Now THAT is one big-azz banana.

Yesterday, the hubs took me for a massage. (Which should have been nice. But all the nice things he’s doing for me lately feel artificial, too. Despite his insistence on the authenticity of his actions, I can’t accept them as acts of love; they feel like guilt gifts. Obligatory offerings. Choco-flavored maraschino-esque balls of goo.)

I cried for much of the massage. As the masseuse worked my shoulders out of my ears, I watched big, fat tears of heartache fall through the face pillow and onto the floor. I wanted them to take some of the anguish with them, but all they did was broadcast it, displaying my hurt for everyone to see.

I spent the rest of the day hiding under a cold, dark cloud that I pulled over my face and head to shut the world out.

My homework from therapy is to let myself experience the emotions I have. I guess now that the popcorn bag is empty (EMPTY. seriously @(#@#WTF*$@!!!!) I can start to do that. Dr. P encouraged me to sit with these feelings. They’re admittedly (and obviously) unpleasant. But eating doesn’t lessen them, nor make them disappear. It only postpones them. They lie in wait until you’re ready to deal with them. It’s like sheets in the washing machine. Eventually, if they sit there long enough, you’ll need to rewash them once in a while. But they won’t get dried and put away until you begin the arduous task of taking them outside to dry on the line, hanging them one corner at a time.

I hate feeling this way.

I don’t want to have these feelings any more.

I’m really, really sick of this damn banana.

But I guess if I want to really heal, I need to eat every stinking bite of it. I’ll need to force myself to choke down one piece at a time, brown spots and all.

Throwback Foodday and a Day (of Food) in the Life

Posted on October 9, 2015 by KatieComeBack

As you already know, I have some “food issues”* that I’ve been dealing with since I was ten, when a solitary comment from a friend of my brother caused a seismic shift in food’s role in my life.

(“Food Issues” = currently read: EDNOS, or Eating Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified, or, re-read: Eating Disorder, Not Committed Enough to Qualify As A Real Illness. There’s actually a whole alphabet soup of different subtypes of eating disorders – you can read about them here. I have a wardrobe full of ’em myself. A few fit me better in high school than they do today, but I keep them around and try them on once in a while just for giggles. Bulimia is the bell-bottom of eating disorders, anorexia is menswear – just when you think they start to look ridiculous on you, they come back into fashion and all the models are sporting them on the cover of Vogue.)

Before that time – when I was a kid, and didn’t know any better – food was a calm, tranquil creek. When life had some hard edges, I could visit a favorite snack for brief moments of joy and delight. (Not that life was all that dramatic when I was ten. My biggest issues were probably the indignity of having braces and wearing really thick glasses AT THE SAME TIME. Trust me – highly traumatic, especially when you’re ALSO in band. It’s the grade-school trifecta of uncool.)

Food was comforting when I needed it, and unobtrusive when I didn’t. It was like a favored toy, satisfied to patiently wait on a shelf until I might want to take it out to play.

And play I did – heartily and often, with frequent trips to the convenience store for any one of the Hostess frosted confections (or those amazing little donuts with the crunchy bits on them!) topped off with an RC Cola or a Veryfine Papaya Punch. (Which, sadly, no one seems to make any more. Boo. It was refreshing, not too sweet, and was the color of sunsets. The perfect accompaniment to BBQ Corn Nuts. I haven’t had a beverage with calories in years (except wine, duh) but I still wish they had it, because I might want it SOMEDAY, ya know?)

oohhhh….yeah, baby….

There was more. Pizza and Pepsi every Friday. Homemade Tollhouse cookies. A large casserole of scalloped oysters at Thanksgiving, and a fruitcake at Christmas, “because Katie loves them.” (As I write this, it suddenly strikes me that these were treats that Mom loved, too. I wish she had realized that it was perfectly OK to make them even if SHE was the only one who wanted to eat them.)

And there was always good food at Grandma’s house. From Dad’s mom: chocolate pudding – the kind you cook on the stove, of course – made with marshmallows and served warm, with milk, in Depression-glass dessert dishes. JiffyPop served in green glass bowls. Frosted chocolate-walnut refrigerator cookies (which, despite reading many recipes and attempting several trial batches, I have never been able to replicate.) Smokehouse almonds and 7-Up. Cashews after piano practice.

Mom’s parents also fed us well. Grandpa was a fisherman (who, as I’ve mentioned, used to nail salmon heads to trees), so Saturday dinner at Grandma’s place meant a fish fry, complete with her famous yeast rolls:

Man, I could eat four of those during a meal. FOUR. And one or two for snack later on. Makes me realize how innocent I was….I had absolutely no idea about the frightening number of white-flour calories I was ingesting. (Nor did it occur to me to care. Ah, youth.) My sister, the quintessential picky eater, pretty much lived off these rolls – these, plus Grandma’s deviled eggs, filled her plate for every holiday meal.

Grandma’s house also meant dessert. (Obviously. What’s Grandma without dessert?) The aforementioned rolls, with homemade jelly – strawberry, grape, or sometimes tomato. (Only once. Because yuck.) Homemade apples, stewed with Red Hots. And fruit crisps: Rhubarb, of course. Apple. And, interestingly, zucchini.

Yes, zucchini – the vegetable that you only grow if you have a TON of friends, and if that ton of friends are people you want to have avoid you all summer lest you share the crop that keeps on cropping.

Photo from https://u.osu.edu/buckmdblog/2015/05/27/veggie-vitals-zucchini-the-great-houdini/

Even if you’re not a fan, you have got to try zucchini crisp. Really. It’s surprisingly good. If you like apple crisp, you’ll be all over this.

Zucchini Crisp
 
 3-4 Cups zucchini (peeled & deseeded), cut in thick pieces.  

Cook in 1/3 C lemon juice until tender.
 
 Add:
  1/4 tsp cinnamon
  1/8 tsp nutmeg
  1/2 C sugar
 
 Cook 1 minute; will be very juicy.
 
 Mix together: 
  1 1/2 C flour
  3/4 C sugar
  1/4 tsp salt
 
 Cut in:
  1 1/4 sticks margarine
 
Press 3/4 C of mix in bottom of 8X8X2" pan. Bake 10 min at 350.  
Pour cooked squash over baked crust.  
Cover with rest of crumb topping. Bake 40 min. at 350.  
Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

OMNOMNOM. I actually made a version of this over the summer – without butter, of course, because butter is terrifying, and with honey instead of white sugar. And it was delish all the same. I promise this isn’t some cruel joke, like raisins in cookies or white chocolate in your Easter basket. It’s legit awesome. And reminds me of Grandma.

For the first ten years of my life, food was a celebration. Food was an expression of love.

Food was joy.

And then one day, suddenly, one comment turned food from friend to foe. From best friend to mortal enemy.

Food – the security blanket I turned to when craving love and affection – responded to this spasmodic paroxysm by transmogrifying from a much loved teddy bear to a hulking, sinister bully. It recruited the scale as its dictator and judge, and together, the two mocked, harassed, and tortured me.

(And you thought Decepticons were terrifying. Sure, stuff blew up, and people died. But Megan Fox was still skinny. AND HER WHITE PANTS STAYED CLEAN. I wasn’t even allowed to wear white pants until I was…well, by then I was too fat for white pants. Besides the fact that they do nothing to smooth, soften, or minimize, you also have to plan your undercrackers carefully, because you can see the print – stripes, polka dots, and baby ballerina whales – RIGHT THROUGH most of them. So no white pants. But I digress.)

So what does a day of food look like now?

Well, it looks a lot like this:

Now, normally, I don’t eat quite this much packaged food. But I wasn’t going to be home for lunch or dinner, so I had to pack food that could travel. Otherwise, dinner would likely be something predictably healthy, like baked fish and a veggie. Or a stir-fry. (And I couldn’t show you a picture of tonight’s dinner, because, well, it was SUPPOSED to be curried squash and potatoes (465 calories,) but I had 45 lives hoarded on Candy Crush, and it’s level 492, which is HARD, and somewhere between “hey, I got time” and “is something burning?” I cooked those cubes which I VERY painstakingly chopped into uniform pieces down into a gargantuan wad of bright orange wallpaper paste. Despite its attempts to resemble fluorescent mudding compound, it was actually pretty dang tasty. Just not terribly photogenic.)

Anyway. The point here is that 1200 calories is…not a whole heckuva lot of food. The breakdown:

Breakfast (178 calories): Smoothie.
Lunch (370 calories): Madras Lentils (300) and a nectarine (70).
Snack (80): Dried plums. (That’s hippie talk for “prunes.” Which your grandmother ate. I only eat dried plums. Now get off my lawn.)
Dinner (460 calories): Quinoa salad (340), cheese stick (80), clementine (40).
Snack (100): Yasso bar (frozen yogurt.)
TOTAL: 1188 calories.

And, if I stick to this very religiously (as I explained here), I can expect to lose roughly a half pound a week.

With maybe four exceptions to the 1200-calorie-a-day rule (seriously, I can count on ONE hand how many meals have been off the boat, and have one finger left over. GUESS WHICH ONE) here’s how this has played out in reality over the last few weeks:

Week 1: down six pounds (Six, yo. Salt much???)
Week 2: flatline.
Week 3: one pound gone!
Week 4: donut.
Week 5: GAINED A F%(^!N& pound (My body haaaaaaaaaaaates me)
Week 6: Lost SIX pounds (on the Ashley Madison diet. 10/10 would not recommend)
Week 7: Gained two pounds. (FML)
Week 8: Goose egg (FUUUUUUUUUUUuuu)

Hmm. Wait a sec.

As maddening as this roller-coaster ride has been, I guess I HAVE lost ten pounds in eight weeks.

Whoa.

I BEAT MATH.

I’m…MAGIC.

And a magical being needs magical hair…right?

So I treated myself to some color today:

Color makes me happy. Color brings me joy.

AND IT DOESN’T WEIGH ANYTHING.

Unfortunately, it isn’t cheap. Neither is a bad shoe habit. Or new clothes. Or all the nose rings I want from RockYourNose (which you should check out – her stuff is amazeballs.)

But with all the drama as of late, my ego has taken a beating. So, while I haven’t found the exact recipe for the perfect frosted chocolate-walnut refrigerator cookie, or a palatable low-sugar, gluten-free fruitcake, I think it’s perfectly OK to indulge in some pretty, shiny things here and there.

Little morsels of joy, fat-free.

The Gray of Storm Clouds, the Tarnished Silver Lining

Posted on September 23, 2015 by KatieComeBack

In our last episode (OK, the last three), Kate was struggling with her spouse’s recent revelation that he established an account on Ashley Madison two years ago.

So, for any of you who haven’t bailed on this leaky tugboat…here’s an update. Sorta. It may just be more blommit.

I love that word. Blommit. Super-big puffy heart it so hard. And I love you guys, too. MWAH

I am still largely numb. There are occasional brief bouts of anger, and there’ve been a couple of tears…but apparently, I’m still in shock. What he did is so incongruous with the behavior of the man I married – the man I THOUGHT I married – that I’m having trouble reconciling the two.

Sometimes, I even forget for a while that this is actually happening.

Emotionally, anyway.

Physically, it’s a different story.

I feel raw. Hollow. Like my soul has been in a horrible motorcycle accident; I’m covered in road rash on the inside, the smashed fragments of my heart staining the pavement a bright red. My mouth tastes of metal. My stomach randomly churns and dips as if I’ve been blindfolded and thrown upside-down onto the Gatekeeper at Cedar Point. I’m exhausted, yet wide awake. I spend much of my day feeling like one does the day after a bad stomach flu. Drained. Empty.

Weak.

Sometimes I am weak, sometimes I am strong.

I am strong because I am demanding the space and time that I need to think this through. I am weak because sometimes I still want to hug him and hold his hand.

I am weak because I realize this sends mixed signals. I am strong because I don’t care. The final decision is up to me, when and if I make one, regardless of how he perceives I am feeling today. Regardless of what HE wants.

I am strong because I’m getting myself tested, and requiring him to do the same. I am weak because my gut tells me that this isn’t necessary, because he’s telling the truth. That he never met any of these women. That nothing physical ever happened. I desperately want to believe this is true. Every fiber of my being tells me he isn’t lying. But that’s the same clearly faulty intuition that completely missed this was happening in the first place. IT WENT ON FOR FIVE MONTHS AND I HAD NO IDEA. (Sporadically, he says. But the window was open, so SOME sulfur must have blown in.)

I am strong because no one at work has any inkling of the internal chaos I’m carrying. (I even finished that blasted EEO-1 report – EARLY – go me! Although of COURSE now that I’m DONE I see they extended the deadline A WHOLE MONTH. I put in 3 hours on my day off and NO ONE THOUGHT TO TELL ME I HAD 31 EXTRA DAYS?!? <stabs air wildly and sprouts hissing rattlesnakes from scalp>)

I am weak because I don’t trust any of my family or friends enough to share this burden. And because saying it aloud will make it real, and I don’t know if my heart can sustain the blow.

I am strong because even though I had previously quit going to therapy, I made some new appointments today. (And he’s going to pay for them. OBVS.)

I am weak because I still love him. And because part of me thinks we can fix this, and a bigger part of me still wants to.

Is there any chance at all that he’s telling the truth? Is it possible he was just window-shopping, clicking on the pretty things he’d like to have and adding them to his cart, only to abandon them by closing the browser instead of clicking “Complete Order”?

Does it matter?

I am strong because I’m keeping to my exercise routine. I ran yesterday and today. Although I am weak because I’m just not eating. My body simply doesn’t want it.

My run times are suffering – badly. I’d been doing a 9:20 mile, and this week it’s been 9:45-10. Ouch. (Side note: The fact that I think a 10-minute mile is “bad” is freaking hilarious. I spent most of my life being completely unathletic, and I am realizing as I’m typing this that I sound like an ex-smoker telling tobacco users that they smell bad. I’ll slap myself FOR you, so you don’t feel you have to do it.)

<slap>

So, as I write this, it’s Tuesday, and that means…

…it’s time to face the scale.

I mentioned in my last post that I was pretty sure I’d lost some weight this week. After all this, that’d be a definite plus, right?

I thought I was looking a bit thinner these days. I mean, I believed I could actually see a difference. And that NEVER HAPPENS. This morning I went as far as to take some pictures, because it felt like a pretty dramatic loss, and I was thinking I would have a physique I could actually show off a bit. <strut strut>

But when I looked at the pictures, I saw this fold here and that bulge there, and promptly hit delete. Must have been an optical illusion. I should know better than to trust my vision at 6 AM, before I’ve had any coffee. HELLO.

It was time to face the music. Numbers don’t lie. Let’s get today’s.

I went for my ~~slog~~ run. I came home. Peeled off the sweaty running togs.

I dust off the scale with the broom (because I have three cats, and hair weighs something. So does dust. Can’t be too careful when you’re letting an inanimate object set your mood for the week.)

(Quit looking at me like that. I KNOW you have your scale rituals, too. Shave first? Pluck your eyebrows? Visit the restroom for one last hurrah? Yeah, I’m on to you. <points finger-scissors at eyes, then back at yours>)

I step on.

I look down.

HOLY FREAKING FAINTING GOATS BATMAN.

I LOST SIX EFFING POUNDS LAST WEEK.

ALL HAIL THE ASHLEY MADISON DIET!

Seriously, do they need a new spokesperson? I hear they’ve had some publicity issues. And I have WAY more mass appeal than that Jared ex-Subway clown. (Especially now. Couldn’t set THAT bar much lower.)

All kidding aside – I know I need to eat. After living on swallowed angst all weekend, I’ve been trying to force myself to eat one good meal a day.

But I’m struggling.

I don’t want to eat because I want to lose weight. (That’s a given.)

I don’t want to eat because starving myself will hurt my spouse. A sweet, slim revenge for what he did to our marriage, a full dish of piping-hot guilt stew to go with that regret roll he’s been noshing on.

I don’t want to eat, because I normally don’t want to WANT to eat, and eating when you don’t want to ACTUALLY eat seems like a waste of a perfectly good gift horse.

I don’t want to eat because my heart is screaming that it’s hurting. It screams so loudly that no one can hear it. Eventually, maybe they will see the screams.

I don’t want to eat because I want to disappear, fading gracefully into the ether, drifting off to a place of peace where no one hurts.

Is that weakness, or strength?

Does it matter?

My spouse says he’ll do absolutely anything to keep us together. He’s had a taste of what it might be like to lose me, and it’s wrecking him. I can see he’s lost weight; I can see the anguish in his eyes and feel it vibrating from his very core.

He’s terrified. Absolutely frightened.

(Good.)

I have agreed to try counseling with him. I have also insisted (as I said above) that he get physically tested. He didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t protest “but nothing happened”- he understands why I ~~might not~~ can’t believe that right now. He even offered to go to a Christian counselor (remember, he’s been a fairly hostile atheist, so him seeing a Christian counselor is kind of a big deal.)

What else should I ask for? What would YOU ask for? What would you need him to do?

Am I an idiot for giving this a chance?

I know that doesn’t matter.

As long as I’m at peace with whatever I decide.

Speaking of peace, here’s a giant chicken. BECAUSE GIANT CHICKEN.

He lives at the Farmers Market. I have no explanation.

Bawk bawk, homies. Thanks for hangin’.

The Future’s So Right…. I Gotta Get Weighed

Posted on September 12, 2015 by KatieComeBack

I love a good challenge…gets me off the inertia couch and writing…SOMETHING. It generally ends up being a word salad, but salad is good for you, right? I like to think my word salad has lots of crunchy, salty bits, a bit of sweet, and a deceptively creamy dressing that is miraculously fat-free. But I may be dreaming.

Speaking of dreaming…fattymccupcakes, who is going to be my new best friend if she ever moves here (that’s not creepy, is it?) nominated me for the Future Challenge. So thanks for the mental shove, chica. (And if you haven’t picked up her blog – she is freaking hilarious. So you need to totally go read her.)

DA RULZ:

Thank the blogger who nominated you.
Next, link back to the original creator of the challenge, Dreams and Movie Screens, so they can see how far their challenge has spread.
Then, share 5 things about your future.
Finally, nominate 5 bloggers to share their own future.

So, about my future….

Photo borrowed from http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/aug/03/can-the-future-affect-the-past

The challenge didn’t say I had to be totally realistic. (Not that I’m a great rule-follower, anyway. Speed limits? MERELY A SUGGESTION.) But I think it makes sense to chuck your desires at the universe. You can look at it as a goal to reach for, or a dream to follow, or some woo-woo hippie-dippie full-bore shot at The Secret.

Either way, I can’t help but believe that thinking positively does me more good than embracing gloom-and-doom. (Remind me of this in the middle of the night when my mind is racing maniacally to the tune of “the EEO report is due this month and I have to read 500 reviews and book flights for November before the holiday traffic takes all the good seats and someday my cats will die, my parents will die, and what if my kids or the hubs dies, they’ll ALL die someday or maybe one of my flights will crash and none of this will matter except then how will my kids buy shoes and why can’t I sleep EVER and my run tomorrow morning is gonna SUCK if I can’t get more than four hours of sleep and will my knee hold out, because if it doesn’t I am totally doomed to be fat forever and….” Do you know this one? Sing along when we get to the chorus. Anxiety always suckers me in to attending the after-party, and there’s no mental Uber to give me a ride home at 3 AM.)

Side note: I’m one of those peeps who copes by attempting to take control by taking action. (Which kind of explains the whole eating disorder dealio.) So, for example, if I’m having a craptacular day at work, I peruse job boards and send out a couple of resumes. To that end, I actually have a plan in place should something happen to my spouse: I’m selling off most of my belongings and moving somewhere warm – probably Arizona – but I’ve been eyeing this little town called Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. There aren’t many jobs there – most of them are entry-level – but housing is cheap, and I’d use this as an opportunity to simplify and scale back. Plus, the neighboring town is called – get this – Elephant Butte. Which makes me giggle, because mentally, I’m still twelve.

Barring tragedy, though…given the canvas I own and the paints I have, here’s how I’m sketching out my future:

Financial Health: I’ll have sufficient funds to retire more than comfortably by age 55. (OK, admittedly a stretch. 65?) And by “comfortably,” I mean I’ll have enough to both travel AND to make Christmas really special for the kids and grandkids. (Of which I’ll have four. NO PRESSURE KIDDOS.)

Physical Health: I’ll be in excellent shape (relative to most of the US – not planning on doing an Ironman or any of that cray shiz) and quite active. Since I’ll be retired, I’ll have plenty of time to work on my landscaping, as well as go hiking and biking as weather permits. And I’ll still be able to complete the airport sprint (when you have 15 minutes to get to your gate 1.2 miles away) at a dead run if I need to. My knees and hips will be in top form, and my bones will be strong. People will marvel at my energy level, and won’t add “for your age”, because they know they’ll get a fierce roundhouse kick to the cranium. BOOM.

Spiritual Health: I’ll be at peace with myself and with the universe. I’ll still read a lot, and talk up the issues, because that’s how we learn, right? The grandkids will seek advice and guidance from me because of how grounded and non-judgmental Grandma is: cool and calm, untroubled and relaxed, dynamic and feisty. (See “roundhouse kick” above. I don’t ever think I will suffer fools well. That ain’t in my DNA.)

Mental Health (#1): I’ll have found my voice and stood up to the bullying taunts in my head that tells me I’m not enough. I’ll know that I AM enough. I am whole and complete and have value.

In the future, I’ll be able to believe it – and I’ll live my life that way.

Mental Health (#2): I will finally be at peace with my body. I will have forgiven myself for taking up so much space, and will issue my thighs a pardon for their genetic makeup.

No. Wait.

Forgive?

What was the crime, exactly?

I guess I have a way to go before I get to this Future place. But I knew that; that’s kind of why I’m here.

But, try as I might, I still can’t envision a future without a scale in it. I can’t wrap my mind around how to exist without it. It’s easier to picture other what-ifs, like my relocation contingency plan above.

I’ve made some attempts at getting better – I’m working on some healthier habits, and tried therapy. Well, for a while. I haven’t been totally consistent, other than when I fall, I’m trying really, really hard to get back up. And I usually do.

Photo found at http://lifeasadivorceddad.com/category/hurdles/

The funny thing about failing at life? If you look outside your lane, you see you’re not the only one sprawled on the cinders. There’s camaraderie in life’s pileups. That’s why we lean on each other in the blogosphere, right?

I think the key is to keep going. And if we don’t like the direction we’re headed, we can always turn around. Or start over.

Photo borrowed from http://www.grassrootsfitness.ie/wordpress/index.php/kickstart/starting-line/

We can only really start from where we stand right now, right?

I’m putting on my sneakers, my knee brace, and my zaniest running capris.

The door’s open. I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, visualizing the finish line so I have a better chance of crossing it.

I’d like to invite these five bloggers to step into the TARDIS* and share their own futures. Have at it, ladies! 🙂

*This isn’t my typical genre, but the kiddos got me hooked, and for the record? I am TOTALLY TEAM TENTH DOCTOR. In fact, I had a dream about David Tennant the other night that was so <cough> detailed and explicit, I couldn’t look the hubs in the eye for two whole days. Anyway, if you haven’t watched, take a gamble and add it to your Netflix queue. At the very least, you’ll understand all these vague pop-culture references that erupt on your Facebook feed. And you’ll never look at angel statues the same way again. <shudder>

Carrots in My Carryon

My emotional baggage is packed with food

Tag Archives: depression

The Purse of a Person

Dissecting the Funk Frog

Sharing the Joy Bauble

Jell-O Salad…the Leftovers (Part 2 of 2)

‘Tis the Season to be…Gelatin (Part 1 of 2)

That’s My Note Athiest! We Empires the Bad.

The Artificial Tang of Banana Candy

Throwback Foodday and a Day (of Food) in the Life

The Gray of Storm Clouds, the Tarnished Silver Lining

The Future’s So Right…. I Gotta Get Weighed

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