I’m back I think. I needed some blog decompress/think/brainstorm time.

A long time ago I was able to speak freely and openly here. I wrote in great depth about depression, how hard it is to be a single parent, funny little stories, EVERYTHING. Over the last two or so years I’ve had to start seriously censoring myself and remain “politically correct”. This wasn’t because I wanted to say things that shouldn’t be said, it was because I was surrounded by people that were drama hungry and couldn’t face the truth if it walked up spun them around and slapped them in the face with a wet trout.

I am NOT perfect, I am FAR from perfect. My life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies and cute little stories and happy, happy, joy, joy and, frankly, I’m fucking sick and tired of having to NOT POST the “bad” because people have nothing better to do then email me to start bullshit drama, follow me on twitter, flickr, blogs, message boards, WHEREVER THE FUCK ELSE, just hoping I’ll “slip up” and say something they can attack me for. I’m tired of taking the time to write out my feelings and thoughts and then not hitting the submit button because people are going to be all OMG SHE’S BLOGGED AGAIN AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT SHE SAID!!!

You can attack me all you want. Whatever. I’m really not going to deal with it. If you email me, it will be deleted and forgotten (unless it’s particularly funny in which case I’ll post it here so everybody else can laugh at how pathetic you are along with me), if you DM me on twitter I’ll unadd you, if you PM me on a forum, I’ll block you, if you message me, I’ll block you.

But understand this: aflux is my blog, my writing, my thoughts, my “domain”. If I want to mention how lame you look to obsess over girls online, I will. If I want to write in depth about how I’ve been struggling with depression, I will. If I want to rant about motherhood, I will. If I want to write about how Ben and I stayed up all night fighting, I will. If I want to write about how lame you look when you post a picture on flickr flipping me off, I will.

So, I’m not saying that my blog is going to turn into a fountain of negativity, but it will be a River of Truthiness. Finally, it will once again be what I’m REALLY thinking, how I REALLY feel, what’s REALLY going on in my life. Hopefully those of you that know and love me will see this as a good thing and I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you all and welcome the conversations we’ve had.

But those of you who DON’T think you can handle me being ME, or that I might just not agree with you, or I JUST MIGHT mention what an asstard you’re being or have been in the past, then I’d say your best bet would be to back up and walk away at a quick pace so as not to allow the long reach of my foot to make contact your ass on the way.

*deep breath*

Yep, I’m back.

*Title quote: Mark Twain.

I need a bit of a break. And I hate to do the whole dramatic OMG HIATUS thing but I just need to step away from the blogisphere for a bit. No, this isn’t permanent. It might be a week or a month or longer, I’m not really sure at this point… But I will be back eventually.

I just don’t feel like I can share every part of me right now and it feels kinda like a lie to try and post superficial nonsense when I want to say a lot more. Unfortunately my blog has become more public than I’m comfortable with. While I know there are a LOT of you out there that support me without judgment, there are those that would use my words and feelings against me and I’m just not up for it right now.

I don’t know how active I’ll be on twitter or message boards. Right now I’d say little to none but I’m honestly just not sure. I know that I’ll probably stay active on flickr but I’m this close *holds fingers an inch apart* to making it primarily friends and family only.

So um yeah. I love you all and I’ll miss you all and in my absence, go visit all those awesome girls in my sidebar.

Later, Interwebz.

This post is pretty much going to consist of me being a whiny bitch and all poor me and FEEL SYMPATHY AND PAT MY HEAD AND TELL ME EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY.

Okay?

Good!

So work has been HELL. Like, actual flames and pitchforks and varying rings of suckage. Based on the people surrounding me I’d say I’m somewhere below the water in the 5th ring surrounded by a bunch of sloths… which is the nicest way I can find to say it short of yelling, “I’m surrounded by MORONS.” Which wouldn’t be very nice. Tempting, but not nice.

I’d go into more here but the LAST thing I need to add to the stress is to walk into work and find out I’ve been dooced so I’ll just say that I’m doing the work of 1.5 people, literally, and leave it at that. Like, my productivity last week was 167%. Individually. For the week. Hell.

Lets see, what else?

Last week we had our first 100 degree day here and SURPRISE! Our AC was dead. We woke up to a power surge a few weeks ago which fried the control panel in the oven (I was reminded we are still waiting on the part today when I went to turn on the over and NOTHING HAPPENED and I ended up ruining my potatoes trying to cook them on the grill) and we never thought to try the AC! We went through two agonizing, horrible days with no AC. I had actual sweat. Like, ON MY BODY. *shudder*

The guy came out to fix it Saturday and apparently the power runs from the breaker, to the furnace, to the AC. So it was actually the HEATER that was broken and it wasn’t allowing the AC to come on. Makes perfect sense to me! Actually it doesn’t but I pretended that it did when Ben explained it to me.

So YAY! We have AC!!! Except we’ve only had to run it for like, AN HOUR over the last few days, because as soon as the damn thing was fixed the temperature dropped and it was BEAUTIFUL outside.

Oh! Something good!

Really good actually!

Ready?!

We finally got to use our tickets for Beauty and the Beast! The tickets Cassidy’s Papa and Nana Cherie got her for Christmas. It was AWESOME. It’s so cute when Cassidy watches something like this and gets REALLY into it because she’ll start to mimic the movements of the people on stage. Generally, the LEAD girl. She did it during the Hannah Montana movie, and then this too. It’s like she wants to burn it all to memory and the best way to do that is to.. DO IT.

I never say anything to her or tell her to stop because if she’s THAT into something, I can’t help but get just as into from watching her. It’s awesome that stuff like that is still so magical to her because getting to see it through her eyes gives me a reason to be 9 all over again and in awe of Belle and the story.

So okay, it wasn’t ALL bad. Still, if you want to pat my head and tell me it’s okay I won’t discourage you. I might even offer you a glass of wine and a seat beside me on the couch to watch House. Only one though! Don’t be greedy!

Yesterday I took my mom to Tyrolean Inn for dinner for Mother’s Day. It’s really cool to get to hang out with my mom like we’re old friends over a glass of wine. Well, I had beer but still.

As Cassidy gets closer and closer to that age where I stop being her best buddy and start becoming the #1 enemy, it’s comforting to know that one day we’ll get to be friends again. And that one day she’ll take me out to dinner for Mother’s Day and when the bartender recognizes her but can’t place her she’ll respond, “That’s probably because I’m sober.” It might not have been the best thing to say in front of my mother but it WAS THE TRUTH. And I couldn’t tell what the slight smile on her face meant for sure but it totally reminded me of the I-love-you-even-though-you-are-SO-GROUNDED look. Suddenly, I had the nostalgic urge to turn around and slam a door in her face just for old time’s sake. Instead we sat down and had a really nice dinner and laughed and gabbed and drank and enjoyed ourselves.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

It pains me to write this because I really liked Hoda before today but: What the fuck were you thinking?

Seriously.

I always liked to believe that reporters were given a bad rap. That when people claimed they were taking things out of context, or that practically no background work had been done prior to a segment, that they were just over exaggerating or being whiny jackasses. But today you pretty much proved that the douchebag reporting reputation that has developed on network television is 117% true. You get an extra 17% because seriously, Kathy Lee Gifford? Whoever thought THAT was a good idea deserves an extra 17% of COMPLETE FAIL.

When you interviewed Heather Armstrong today on your show it was clear to me from the very beginning that both of these common failings were true. First Hoda mentioned a passage from one of Heather’s blog posts saying:

Hoda: “You wrote on your blog that you worry that your daughter will resent you because all of her business being put out there…”
Kathy: “Potty training and all those things that are kind of private.”

Well Hoda and Kathy, had you taken time to ACTUALLY READ THAT BLOG POST you’d have quite possibly also mentioned the rest of the passage that explains EXACTLY how Heather feels about it and, in fact, thinks in the long run that Leta will CHERISH all those stories.

From furniture Elhovothat dooce post:

You will resent me for your curfew and the fact that I will not let you leave the house in that mini-skirt. You will resent me for showing up to your school in my pajama bottoms and for raising my hand in a PTA meeting when I hadn’t brushed my hair. You will text message your friends to tell them that I am the most horrible person on the planet because I’m forcing you to study for your exam in the morning. You are going to think that I cannot possibly understand what you are going through, and you will slam the door in my face.

Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

If that doesn’t profess the exact opposite of what Kathy Lee was trying not-so-eloquently to imply, that how dare you think about writing about your daughter online and *gasp* POSTING HER PICTURE, I don’t know what could possibly GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD short of getting in your face and shouting it through a blow horn.

Had Kathy taken FIFTEEN minutes of her time to ACTUALLY RESEARCH the topic and the person who she was interviewing she might have actually walked away from the interview without looking like the stereotypical, uneducated, assumptive “reporter” that she’s trying to play on TV. And if I had a dollar for every time that I was at my grandmothers and was forced to listen to Kathy talk about her sweet, precious Cody on NATIONAL TELEVISION I too could quit my day job and find something else to pass my time. Like publicly slamming other mothers from my make believe pedestal way up there. *points up*

Both of you are mothers and today you failed your fellow mothers across the nation. You could have turned that segment into a resounding statement about the exploding growth of a community of beautiful, powerful, motivated and brilliant women bloggers. Fellow mothers banding together to form a wave of support for complete strangers, for the mother down the street, for the mother sitting silently on the park bench, for the mother quietly suffering from postpartum depression, for the mother who’s so confused and upset and doesn’t know who to turn to… but instead you chose to go the sensational route.

Seriously. Shame on both of you.

-Anna (proud mommy blogger) Hirsch

Remember that project I mentioned in the last blog and how it was only going to take a few more days and then I’d get it up and share it with the world? Well, I figured that I’d add some content and wrap it up this weekend for a BIG DEBUT on Monday and… then I was bitten by the Spring Cleaning Bug and spent the majority of the weekend scrubbing floors, throwing things away and organizing my socks by color order.

I get the OCD like drive to CLEAN AND ORGANIZE and NOTHING is safe. At this point I have my bedroom, bathroom, closets, desk and laundry room CLEAN. Clean but not completely organized the way I’d like them to be. So I’m going to continue with the initial cleaning spree this afternoon and hit the guest bedroom and bathroom and then eventually move downstairs. After the whole house has been obsessively washed (Seriously, I actually do the toothbrush to the baseboards thing) then I’m going to go BACK through and get rid of MORE stuff that didn’t make it out the door in the original sweep.

I’m tired of having so much STUFF. I am a complete pack rat, I can admit it, but there comes a point when ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Like, that parking pass from San Francisco that was sitting on my nightstand from dinner a MONTH ago? Why was I keeping that?!

Plus! I’ve been getting some cute things for the house from Etsy that I want to get hung up, pictures from Maui LAST YEAR, and I bought new ink to get up some pictures from THIS year, and wedding pictures and SO ON. But I just CAN’T hang pictures in a dirty room. I just can’t. I get out the nail and the hammer and as I go to swing, the shoe laying in the corner is like:

Shoe: OMG WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! DON’T YOU SEE ME LAYING OVER HERE JUST… LAYING!
Me: Stupid shoe. Do you see what you’ve turned me into!?

Sometimes I think I should keep these internal dialogues to myself. heh

In closing, I’ll leave you with Cassidy and her cute new haircut and her orange smile. She might not look as much like me as I’d like, but dammit I’m raising her to love and cherish her crazy side. It’s the least I can do.

PS - A HUGE thanks to the Intense Debate crew who got my comment links to work in IE. Those guys are SO GREAT about communication and customer service and if you haven’t tried it yet, please go and do it now!

Comments links are showing up in IE again! The folks at Intense Debate seriously rock!

My iPhone was stolen.

Okay, I know. I just heard you gasp and felt the disdain as you painfully exhaled and shook you fist at the sheer injustice. No, really.

It happened about a week ago and at the point in time I realized it was REALLY gone, I actually felt the machine rip the connection out of the back of my skull, flush me down the toilet and I was being woken up aboard the Nebakanezer shaking in the fetal position. It was really horrible. Seriously.

So I’ve lived the last week with no cell phone. I connected the 8525 up to our WiFi and browsing with it was like getting out of a Ferrari and being forced into a Geo Metro. It was slow and clunky and only had one browser available at a time and I had to click 14 different times to get Windows Mobile to check my email and I JUST FELT SO DIRTY.

I decided to not even activate a new SIM card for the 8525. I’d just try to live through the nightmare of being detached from the entire world for as long as it took me to come up with the $399 to replace it. Then I decided to make all the money online because I felt like an asshat because TECHNICALLY, I left the phone on the sink in the bathroom and I realize that it’s completely my fault that it was taken (well, my fault and the theiving bitch face that took it) and I’m not going to dent the bank account because of my dumbassness.

Then my mom INSISTED on buying it for me. Seriously.

Mom: So it never turned up?
Me: Nope, I’m just going to raise the money to replace it.
Mom: Come over, I want to take you to the Palo Alto Apple store and buy you a new one.
Me: Absolutely not! It’s YOUR birthday! I’m not going to let YOU take ME shopping on YOUR birthday!
Mom: I’m 60 years old, but I will STILL BOX YOUR EARS. I want my kids to be happy. That’s what I want for my birthday.

Ooooookay. So we went to Palo Alto and I got my mom some really cute earrings and lunch and… there are no iPhones in stock. ANYWHERE. In the entire Bay Area. At all.

She ended up ordering me one later online but I’m wondering if I should have waited to get one because clearly if they are out of stock at so many places, ESPECIALLY in the stores that surround the Apple complex, then they are obviously about to drop a new phone. I’ve read rumors of 3G and built in GPS but damn… I don’t think I can go a month or two or three till it comes out. I’m dyin’ over here.

Anyway, again, I’m sorry that I’ve been so quiet lately. I’ve been working on other projects and now that they are getting closer to completion I’ll have more time available again to stop neglecting aflux. Ohhhhh, did you see how I dropped the OTHER PROJECT bomb to leave you all guessing at the end of the post? Oh yeah, I did it! Is it killing you yet?

Yes, I’m alive. Yes, I’m a total asshat for not posting in so long. I don’t really have an excuse except that I know when I sat down to write The Maui Post it would have been like 75 paragraphs and 98,954,837 words and: DAUNTING.

I just don’t think I have the attention span right now. But things! They have been happening! Like, THINGS!

I promise, cross my heart, hope to die, that I will get a REAL post up for you all tomorrow. In the mean time, how are you all? What’s new with you? How about this crazy weather? Leave a comment and let me know!

*hugs*

So, I color code everything. At work I have the same form but for three different tax ID’s so to make it easy to identify when I’m ALT tabbing faster than the speed of light, they all have different color bolded fonts. When people see this they immediately ask me to email them because they see how much easier it is. Then there are the people that take them and use them and then SAVE THEM to MY shared drive account with THEIR info.

LEARN HOW TO USE SAVE AS, PEOPLE. Save it to YOUR folder on the shared drive, or YOUR hard drive. But don’t change MY FORM and then save it so that when I open them all in the morning, they are all WRONG.

GAH! So I come in this morning and before I even have time to grab a cup of coffee, OH LOOK! Somebody changed my form again! I happened to have that form sitting on my desk because it was a stat request and they all have pass across my desk so I can sign them before checks can be cut.

Me: Hey, coworker. I just wanted to let you know that the CB form is available in the S drive in a CB folder so you can use that one and save it to your own S drive folder or your hard drive.
Her: Okay?
Me: Well, you used mine, and I just wanted to let you know.
Her: No I didn’t.
Me: Oh, because my form has been changed and has all of your information on it.
Her: I didn’t use it.
Me: And the information from a patient account you worked yesterday.
Her: I didn’t use your form!
Me: Okay. Well somebody used my form and submitted it and then noted the account with your name then.
Her: I didn’t use your form.
Me: I have the form in my hand with your signature on it.
Her: …

So I password protected all my forms. Even the one’s I don’t really care about because: ACCOUNTABILITY. Apparently nobody has it any more and I’m creating a weak spot on my desk from continuously pounding my head against the same spot.

Over and over.

Daily.

*Title Quote: Robert Orben

Reese started a cool meme called Macro Monday. I love love love macro photography and will take any chance I can get to put that 100mm lens onto my camera. I figured since I took this shot this weekend of Peanut I’d use him for my first submission.

This little guy is a constant ball of loving energy. He is so sweet and loves to play and cuddle and sleep under your covers. Amber and Lupe kept threatening to send him home with me and seriously, if Ben would not have COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT, I’d have totally stolen him and brought him with me. Although Amber and Lupe act tough, I know they’d be lost without him around because you can’t spend more than 2 minutes with this dog without completely falling him love with him.