through a day, and in and out of weeks...

It is our last week in Bakersfield. Instead of packing up our suitcases for a summer vacation in upstate New York, we are packing ourselves permanently back to the Pacific. Despite the excitement of going home and settling our family, I've found time to be wistful and sad about missing our trip to the lake this year. In planning next year's trip, we've had to accommodate the fact that Mike's father has moved down to North Carolina, and our promises to visit him are met with wary stares across each other. Which of us would be more likely to crack, with only a short car ride and a midnight Lifetime moment between us and certain disgrace? I assured Mike that I would keep him staked in the yard on a chain, so not to worry. I think he plans to lock me in his dad's basement.

One day of work left, one day before the movers take all our worldly belongings and leave us in an empty apartment with a litter box and a fridge full of half-empty condiments. I've enjoyed it here; though the first months were slow and sad, my job and co-workers were brilliant. My first apartment, failed romance, nightlife disasters, misty days in the mountain redwoods, the city lights and fragrant foods of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle... it's been a good place to tend wounds and wait for everything to clear around us.

At work, it's business as usual; pulling toddlers out of the shelves, helping old ladies decipher the handwriting on their book club reading lists, leading preschoolers in choruses of quacking, and shushing myspace teens. My best query recently was, "I need to know what temperature I need to incubate peacock eggs", and the worst was, "If it's 11:59am... and it turns 12:00... is it pm at 12:01... or at 12:00?" The most disconcerting was, from a breathless-sounding elderly person on the phone, "I need to know more about TIA... [insert my long researched explanation of symptoms] oh, it's a small stroke? Ah... I've gotta go." o_0

I'll miss my library.

DV at TJs

Tuesdays. Payday, and no work until 12pm. As I dropped off Gavin at preschool, I asked him if had any requests from the store while I was out. "Oh yeah," he said, gripping his pants, "I was wondering if you could buy me more shorts that are easy to close, like these." He showed me the clasp at the front, a departure from the standard snap or button closures he struggles with every day in the bathroom. "Ok, I'll try," I promised. Of the three things on my list - cat carrier, jewelry box, and alternative-clasp size 6 shorts - I thought the last would be the hardest to find. Wrong! After two hours wandering around Target, I ended up at the checkout with several pairs of the easy-clasp pants (also various underpants - boys might have no clothes selection compared to girls, but girls don't get glow-in-the-dark underwear) and no pet/jewelry isolation units.

"Find everything you need?" the cashier asked, looking through my head.
"Well, I couldn't find a jewelry box."
"A large one or a small one?"
"Either. Any."
"We only carry jewelry boxes at Christmas."

I shrugged and paid and huffed back to the car. If I had more time and endurance, I might have tried all the nearby stores for the unattainable boxes, but I decided to just stop by Trader Joes for food.

My TJs shopping strategy has always been very simple; if it looks good, throw it in the cart. TJs is no place for lists and budgets and practicality. I had just thrown frozen creme brulees into my basket and decided my stamina could hold out long enough to get me past the cupcakes when I suddenly made a complete ass of myself. An employee was standing attentively by the freezers, looking behind him and calling to someone. I glanced in the direction he was calling, and became the very thing he was standing guard for; the idiot who might run through a melted puddle of ice cream before the mop arrived. My slipper hit the puddle, my foot flew out, the basket clattered to the floor, and I fell down gracelessly on knees and elbows. The clerk looked horrified as he helped me sit up and realized I was pregnant, and I huffed for a moment to collect the damage report before letting him pull me to my feet. Normally, I would laugh in embarrassment and keep going, but this did not happen. As I gathered my basket, people were yelling across the store to ask if I was okay, and I realized that I was about to start crying, even though I was not particularly upset. I needed to make a run for it. I took one step when an old man said, "There's still ice cream on your shoe! Wait!" and the employee ran off to get a paper towel. "No, that's ok, I'm fine -" I tried to move again, and the old man put his hands up, "You'll slip! Wait, there's ice cream on your shoe!" Shut up, shut up, stupid concerned nice old man! My eyes started burning. The employee skidded back in with paper towels and went at my shoe, so I kicked it off and let him wipe it, then thanked him hurriedly and skittered around the corner. Cupcakes be damned, I needed to get out of the store. I got halfway through the register, wiping at my leaky eyes as if I were just working out a speck of dust, when the manager popped up at my elbow. This was too much, and I started really crying. "It's ok!" I croaked at him as word spread from the frozen aisle and people began yelling Is she ok!? across the checkout stands, "It's just hormones, I can't help it!" They offered to carry my bags, to sit me down and serve me water, to take my phone number, and I waved them away as I frantically punched in my pin number and took my receipt from the confused cashier. The clerk who had witnessed my fall pressed an open box of kleenex at me, so I pulled one out. "Take the whole box!" he said, which made me laugh. I waved the tissue over my head and ran for it with my bags.

Sitting in the car, I saw shreds of skin hanging off my knees and started sobbing. Sobbing with deep, gasping hitches like hadn't done since last summer. At least that time I had been properly upset. Irritated, I started the car and the radio blared to life.

And the daaays come and gooo but my feelings for you are foreeeeever!

"I'm FINE!" I yelled at the car.

Fine or not, I drove home crying, walked in crying, put down my bags crying, tried to explain to Mike why I was crying while crying, and finally laid down on the couch and let it putter out on its own. We watched Beowulf (blaarg) and counted off my contractions until it was safe to say we would not have to name the baby "TJ" or "Organic Rice Cream".

And so Tuesday became Holly vs. Hormones, and I lost. Stupid Tuesday.

Self destruct activated

2 weeks and counting. We decided to ship the car back home, and then waited to see if it would spontaneously explode as a result. Indeed; no sooner had we arranged the loading date and paid the deposit than the driver's side window fell thunk! into the inner workings of the door. Great.

 Mike tore off layers of door, located the snapped pieces of window guts, drove across town to get the replacement part, spent all day drilling it in, discovered it was the wrong part, couldn't get the right one from any of the auto stores in town, ordered one online, and we resigned ourselves to a few weeks of tempting thieves with our open window. All of this distracted us from noticing that the car was up to something worse; when she ran out of gas in record time we chalked it up to the auto parts scavenger hunt, when she took longer starting on ignition we were too busy talking about the window to really notice. Just as we ordered the part and settled into the wait (a time we might have then noticed these underlying developments), Gavin began vomiting and running a fever, I began having contractions 15 minutes apart, and Mike got a cold. No problem; we smothered the ailments with fresh cookies, laid up in front of crap movies, and were back up and running the next day. As I returned to work and Mike took the still-recovering child on errands with him to mail the prodigal guitar (an ebay fiasco unto itself), the car seized its moment. With a farewell bing of the fuel light, it died in mid-intersection. Mike, while graced with physical dexterity and manly fix-it-ness, is not so skilled in crisis management. Although I sent in reinforcements and issued motherly decrees on negotiating the situation with a sick child, he showed up almost an hour later with none other than Dance Class Girl. I had a dog once who made little squeak-growfing noises when she was unhappy (say, after a 5 year old had trussed her up in play doctor bandages or she had eaten all the chocolate bunnies from the easter baskets). This is the same noise I make whenever Dance Class Girl appears. She is a sweet, good-hearted, pretty girl. The kind of girl you want to push off a ledge. Mike looked like I had his balls in my fist the whole way home, although truth be told I am too fat and sleepy these days to be fussed much with any of this. Cascading disasters are entertainment unto themselves. It's nothing if not a sign that change is truly underway, at last!

I wrangled a ride to work today, only to realize I had not brought any lunch. Boss offered use of car, which I am too stupids to drive because it is stick (in the zombie apocalypse I am sure I could dig up my high school stick skills and make a run for it, but I'd rather not practice on my boss's car in lunch traffic, however similar to zombies the doctors milling around Starbucks may be) so I found myself waddling to the Marketplace in the 98 degree afternoon, sticking to the shady side of the street and admiring the glimpses of red craggy mountain in the distance. Applebees was the closest food source, so I decided to luxuriate in the a/c with my book and an overpriced Weight Watcher entree. The waiters seemed stumped by my presence, staring first at my stomach, then at my book, and repeating, "One?" long enough that I had to laugh. The singleton restaurant experience isn't the mythical movie moment I supposed it to be. I sent Mike a message to assure him I had survived the walk. A bit later I was enjoying the murmur of afternoon lunch chatter (relationships, money, food) and finishing off the tilapia, when a familiar voice made me look up from my book. Gavin stood in front of me, and for a minute I couldn't understand what I was seeing. Mike grinned behind him, catching my knee-jerk expression of guilt as I determined whether or not I had been caught doing something bad. (I had not.) "We fixed the car!" Gavin exclaimed; climbing into the seat next to me, accepting a piece of broccoli, and ordering apple juice from the startled waitress. "It was a fooooose. Fa-yoose." "Fuse?" "Yep." Brilliant! Very pleased with Mike, and with $40 fuse, and with happily heat-flushed little boy with apple juice. They dropped me back off at work, and now we have just to cruise into the weekend - to poolside barbeques, Battlestar, and lazy knitting (am presently mangling a stuffed snail).

Eye of the storm? Who cares! We have ribs!