insists Attila the Hub. "When I said I wanted to experience you as a 'painted lady,' I didn't mean get a job doing faux finishes in Manhattan Beach and come in at the end of the day smelling of turpentine, with specks of brown and gold and green on your clothes, and streaks of 'Goof Off' in your hair."

Now he tells me.

[Purists will insist that I shouldn't blog my husband's witticisms, but please recall that California is a community property state, and half of his jokes are mine by law.

My jokes? Also mine. Fair's fair.]

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I've always loved the week between Christmas and New Year's. Even when I've had to work regular office hours, I've enjoyed the fact that offices are often sparsely populated around then and one can actually get things done: catch up on filing, or really focus on that whatever-it-is.

And when it's been a vacation week it's always been sweet, with most of the hustle/bustle of Christmas over with. There's always a cool gift or two to play with or read or wear or eat, and a sort of fat and happy contentment. I usually have some late cards to send out. (This year is no exception: as a matter of fact, since we didn't really send cards or a holiday letter this year I'll likely be producing little personalized notes and cards well into March. But so what? This way, I can enclose my business card for copyediting/proofreading without it being too gauche.)

I'm winding down, now. I'll be getting up at an obscenely early hour tomorrow, and doing my fun physical job most of the day. Feel free to tell me how glamorous my blue-collar charm is: I'm packing a lunch! I'm wearing my painting clothes! I have a cap I'll wear to cover my hair, since I tried a bandana and it just looked too lame. (I mean, it was very 1920s Eastern Europe, but how can I expect my friend's clients to get that joke? One should try to look semi-professional, even with colored paint flecks around the edges of one's clothing.)

My goals for the day: 1) learn to do something other than sanding and final light coats of polyurethane, 2) no drips, this time: B. should not have to touch up my mistakes, or he'll be losing money on my presence, and 3) no caffeine on the way home. Stopping at Starbucks twice is lovely, but I have no business having chai latte in the afternoon—either biochemically or financially. (That one is the morning is absolutely necessary.)

I'm a little sugared up, here: can you tell? I myst go stabilize my blood sugar and read something really, really boring. Then sleep, with a little luck.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:32 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I'll be finalizing my decision tomorrow on my husband's phone system. The candidates are V-Tech, AT&T, and Sony. We'll be getting him a main phone (the mother ship) with integrated answering machine, and an additional phone to go downstairs in his office. The main concerns are cost, reliability, and a signal that will go through a couple of walls and one floor.

I also need to get him a 4-in-1 printer within the week. The idea here is to get the best value, taking into account the fact that both HP and Epson make most of their money on consumables: cartridges are part of the calculations, here.

Obviously, I'll be interestsed in any extraordinarily good (or bad) experiences you've had with these brands, or any other insights you might want to share.

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. . . can be very satisfying. Two days in a row of it knocked me out, though. Who knew that cleaning and paint prep both involve lots of deep-knee bends?

The paint-prep work also means getting up early, but it's a full day, so it ends up being more lucrative. I charge $40 to clean in the Pasadena area, and $50-60 to clean in West Los Angeles/Santa Monica. Paint prep work in Manhattan Beach netted me $123 for a full day at the bottom rung as an unskilled laborer. (That is, if I learn to do stencils and specialty finishes it'll be more.)

Of course, copyediting/proofreading/fact-checking pays $25-35 an hour, but requires top-notch communication from clients in terms of what level of checking they want. Oddly enough, many publishing houses just don't know. They think they do, but they don't.

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Tired like backpacking tired. Minus the clean air. But when I finally sleep, it's going to be nice.

And I earned enough to get us a small tree, and a few gifts. So I'm stringing up lights tomorrow and buying a turkey. Yeah—Attila the Hub likes turkey for both holidays, even though they're only a month apart. And turkeys are so cheap and easy it's not like I can argue.

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. . . to learn a useful skill. Maybe. Wish me luck.

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and thinking, "that's it. I'll need to rest a lot, but I'm able to at least function now." Flu effectively over.

That conviction is generally followed within minutes by: "holy shit; I'm exhausted. I'd better get back to bed."

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We flew back in Wednesday evening, and spent the day yesterday getting re-acquainted with our home—in as physically passive a way as we could manage it.

I did end up going to a clinic while I was in Honolulu. Actually, I was taken there by a husband who didn't like it when I tried to throw up into the hotel trashbasket. (Nothing happened, since my tummy was empty at that point. The incident may not, however, have been the erotic high point of our relationship.)

Now I'm on Tamiflu and an anti-nausea medication. I still have the flu, but the symptoms are easing up at a rapid rate, so I'm semi-functional aside from being very tired.

Posting may be sporadic until the last of the virus has been driven, screaming, from my body.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:05 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Joy: Are you panicking?

Attila the Hub [blandly]: Sure.

Five minutes later:

Joy: Are you still panicking?

Attila the Hub: No. I stopped.

Joy: Well start up again! If you respected me, you'd panic. At least make yourself useful, and try to figure out what I'm going to forget, so I can remember it!

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It's gotten to the point where my snot is nearly solid. I'm wondering what sort of projects around the house I should tackle with it. Shame to let it go to waste, you know.

I think I could make bricks out of it.

(Whaaaaaaat?)

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I'll be here until further notice.

If I feel well enough tomorrow, I'll go to see the latest Harry Potter movie.

If I feel well enough the next day, I'll roast a small turkey.

In any event, blogging will be light until I'm good and darned ready to surface.

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I must admit that all the fumbling around is inconvenient—particularly now that I'm in my 40s and have separate driving/computer vs. reading glasses.

But I love wearing glasses almost as much as Goldstein does. Both my pairs are unbelievably cute. In fact, even my supermarket sunglasses are unbelievably cute. Come to think of it, I'm pretty freaking unbelievably cute.

Of course, not everyone likes wearing glasses. Too bad, and somewhat incomprehensible to me. Of course, much of life is just like that.

I seem to remember waking up 20 years ago in a dorm room in Poughkeepsie to the exclamation, "look! It's snowing." So I looked.

And then I heard a somewhat wistful remark: "I wish I could do that."

"Do what?"

"Just look. Without having to do anything else."

Well. Now he can.

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"Well, she's settling in," I reply. "It was a big move from the Bay Area to L.A., but she certainly has more space where she's living now, which is a good thing."

"Has she found a church down here?"

"Well," I respond, "I know she went to her local Unity church; I'm not sure whether she liked that as much as the one in the Bay Area."

"Why doesn't she go back to her old church in Santa Monica—the Unitarian one?"

"I dunno, Dad. I think the Unitarian church is a bit conservative for my mother."

Then I told him my favorite Unitarian jokes. If you're really nice I'll share them with you sometime, too.

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"We're guaranteed to get a baby placed with us soon," my husband insists. "After all, we're broke."

He has a point. We need a crib, and a few obvious items: bottles, diapers, onesies. I'm shopping hard, and won't spend a dime more than I have to (beyond ensuring safety issues, of course).

We're gravitating toward an Ocean/Underwater theme, though the Night Sky is still a possibility. (Pale pink and blue are icky anyway, and some of the pastels in many nurseries give me the creeps. Duckies will be acceptable; bunnies are under review.)

As a style snob I do have guilty pleasures, of course: in my personal life it's Mary Englebreit, and with respect to my baby it could turn out to be "classic Pooh" items based on the original Ernest Shepard drawings for the real A.A. Milne books. Those are colorized in pastel shades, and might not fit with the oceanic theme. We'll see.

But here's my real baby furniture/layette question for the night, directed at the parents out there: Are my husband and I supposed to share a diaper bag? Do I get a reasonably masculine one in black or denim blue or some such, and whoever has the baby for the afternoon takes that along? Or will we each have a diaper bag preference? Can I get one for myself that's more colorful than the average guy would carry around?

I guess the answer depends on that whole singleton vs. twins question. I've been suspecting lately that we might have to settle for a singleton, but Attila the Hub is correct: we're broke. Which would make twins a good deal more likely, if you accept that the Universe/God has an excellent sense of humor.

The idea of how much money the first year of parenthood is going to cost makes me crazy—especially after all the infertility treatments, and the adoption fees themselves. But any project can be approached with a spending plan, and I shall simply have to make one up, and find the money to get what we need.

For some reason, I feel it's going to happen in the spring, though there's simply no way to tell at all.

Posted by: Attila at 01:41 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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It was freezing here in the hills near Pasadena last night. And by “freezing,” I mean “55 degrees.”

ItÂ’s almost too cold to drink gin and tonics. Almost. I may have to switch to dry mini-Manhattans alternated with room-temp water. I like gin and tonics because I can make ginless tonics as well . . . hm. I could always try some sort of scotch and soda variation with cheaper whiskey and room-temp soda. IÂ’ll see.

Or I could just drink hot Tension Tamer tea with five or six valiums dissolved into it.

[Honey, whaaaaaaaaaaaat?]

Posted by: Attila at 12:21 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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1 um...it is NEVER too cold to drink G&T's

Posted by: Darleen at November 12, 2005 01:47 PM (FgfaV)

2 Hills near Pasadena? Some of the happiest years of my life were spent in Sierra Madre. And Manhattans are correct under any circumstances, though I prefer doubles to the "mini" version. ;-)

Posted by: Mr. Roberts at November 12, 2005 09:38 PM (kcbRI)

3 It's important to remember than I'm a small person; that's why I like to mix my own drinks . . .

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 12, 2005 11:09 PM (jCk4g)

4 I repeated this joke at a party this weekend, and some guy tried to "correct" me about what the freezing point was. I mean, let's be fair: some people have a Y chromosome and a sense of irony. But some . . . don't. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 13, 2005 11:13 PM (jCk4g)

5 Since it is well below 55 right now in MT you have my deepest sympathy... NOT. At 55 it is still golfing season but I don't have any black balls to find in the snow so I'm stuck dreaming of next spring. By the way,... I always prefered hot butter rums on days like this. They even keep the fingers warm. xy chomobaby

Posted by: Jack at November 14, 2005 09:32 PM (b4Nv4)

6 So you're telling me that when you go outside you don't simply put a flannel shirt over your T-shirt to wear as a light jacket? Next you'll be telling me there aren't any palm trees around, and houses are available for under a million dollars. How gullible do you think I am?

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 15, 2005 01:03 AM (jCk4g)

7 Pretty gulliable, today I left my house sitting on 30 acres (considerably less then 1 mil) dressed in only my "T" shirt. The thermometer read about 25 F but there was no wind. And the trees around here have needles on them. The rest used to have leaves but the leaves are all on the ground. Do palm trees every lose their leaves?

Posted by: Jack at November 15, 2005 02:17 PM (6FeBQ)

8 Please note; I meant I was not wearing any jacket when I said 'only wearing my "T" shirt'. I did have pants and shoes too.

Posted by: Jack at November 15, 2005 02:38 PM (6FeBQ)

9 Wow. It sound beautiful; I almost wish I could see it, but I'm actually a bit of a weather wimp. I'm sure you hadn't guessed that. Palm trees are a little like evergreens (which we actually have a few of on our property). They're never without some covering, but when the wind kicks up--especially out here, where the air is so dry--the "fans" dry up, detach themselves from the trees, and blow around in the streets. (Keep in mind that SoCal is a desert with a thin veneer of real soil. We steal water from Northern California and Arizona to keep our cities going.) My mother once made a Christmas tree out of some old palm fronds: she attached several to the wall, decoreated them, and placed a train set below. It was a fun Christmas tree.

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 15, 2005 10:02 PM (jCk4g)

10 If we get some real snow here I'll send you a picture. It is pretty,.... till you have to start shoveling it off the walkway. The palm Christmas tree sounds interesting, still prefer the pine and the smell, espesially in the fireplace. By the way, you are on my blog list, the name is what got me.

Posted by: Jack at November 16, 2005 07:03 PM (W9cbS)

11 The only thing I love about snow is looking at pictures of it. California, famously, has lots of Washingtonias - gorgeous tall palms that actually don't shed their fronds once they're dead. They can make a skirt of rustly dead fronds all the way to the ground even when they're 50 feet tall. Here we got a lot of hurricane pruning with Wilma - the wind rips all the fronds off sometimes. But the palms don't seem to mind. The plants themselves bend with the wind so well they almost never snap in half. When they do it's a scary sight, something that gives us the willies just to see. I defronded my 20-foot queen palm when we were still undecided about whether to try to raise her back up. She came down in the hurricane and landed on the orchid tree and then the roof. We came so close to chainsawing my pretty queenie. But we hoisted her back up instead with my guy's Kenworth big rig. She's already growing new fronds. AND!!! Mr. Jack, we have deciduous evergreens here! Bald cypress and pond cypress actually drop their needles for the winter. But never fear! we also have odd shaped pines called slash pines and longleaf and loblolly, who never make a cone shape but are well-behaved in the Keep your Needles field. We make Christmas wreaths from pine branches wound around with lots of Spanish moss.

Posted by: k at November 17, 2005 03:58 AM (M7kiy)

12 Whoops, forgot the most important part: The temperature right now is 70 degrees. The high will be right around 80 today. It'll do that for a week or so then drop about 5 degrees when we get this cold front coming through. :p

Posted by: k at November 18, 2005 03:01 AM (6krEN)

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I'll be working at my occasional on-site job today and tomorrow (and very likely the first few days of this coming week).

This will have deleterious effects, on 1) my blog, and 2) my lifestyle of complete and absolute indolence.

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When I woke up today I looked in the mirror and was delighted: my hair was so thoroughly mussed it was standing up in places. My lips were slightly chapped, and stained with blood around the edges. My teeth were covered with dried blood.

I looked far, far more like a vampire than I usually do—even when sleep deprivation aggravates the natural dark circles under my eyes.

I got up, preparing to creep up behind my husband and surprise him. But, tragically, he was out to breakfast with a mutual friend.

I should have trotted down to the local coffee shop where I assumed they were meeting, still in my robe, and loomed suddenly over their booth. But fear of arrest held me back.

I'll probably always regret this decision.

UPDATE: Attila the Hub thinks I was on the right track, but suggests it would have been better to run into the restaurant shrieking vs. trying the stealth route. He assures me that he and our friend Jack would have offered me a cup of coffee and a place at the table.

That's my honey.

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I've decided to take a walk on the wild side by going gauzeless for 30-60 minutes.

You know, when I was young I feared there would be fewer thrills available to me in middle age. But no!—setting the gauze aside for a short time after oral surgery. Does it get any better than that?

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I had my fourth/final wisdom tooth out this morning. I was too cheap to spring for general anesthesia (besides which, I thought I should remain awake to handle the challenging task of breathing through my nose).

Consequently, I'm just sitting here bored and hungry. Some questions come to mind:

1) Do they make "junior size" gauze squares that are less likely to constantly trigger my gag reflex?

2) How much blood can a person swallow before he/she gets nauseous?

3) How, exactly, am I supposed to eat with a big hole in my mouth? I mean, I get it that I'm supposed to go for stuff like yogurt and oatmeal, but how do I avoid getting food particles into that little canyon in the back of my mouth?

4) When they say, "use the Vicodin if the pain gets too strong," don't they really mean, "take a whole bunch of pills at once if you're so bored you can't stand it"? It kind of sounded like that to me.

I'll see if Ike can entertain me; it's going to be a long day.

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1 1-3 I can't help you with. But 4 sounds good.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 03, 2005 01:46 PM (QriEg)

2 Water Pic! That's what they used to tell me when I had mine out. Eat soup! But stuff still gets in The Big Canyon! Squirt it out with a Water Pic! It worked good. OTOH, I had 'em out when I was 10 and 11, 2 at a time. And that was quite some time back. So it may not be the Current Thinking.

Posted by: k at November 03, 2005 05:45 PM (M7kiy)

3 Oh! Forgot some. #1 - Take the given gauze pad and cut it down to size. If you're worried it's not sterile any more, dunk it in alcohol and let it dry out. Or, nuke it. Microwaves are totally underrated as quickie sterilizers. #2 - Depends on the person. It is, however, perfectly ordinary animal protein. #4 - Since my own health problems bore me to death, I can really relate to this one. Unfortunately, sometimes all you can do is sit it out. TV, reading, whatever, but your ability to absorb and use that stuff is limited because you're Not Well. Whereupon, making time pass by sleeping through it is good, too. As long as you don't have sleep disorders holding you back. Sheesh! Gets complicated, don't it though?

Posted by: k at November 03, 2005 05:53 PM (M7kiy)

4 Actually, it's coming along fine. Though I do imagine if I'd had a general I could have had a nice nap this afternoon. I've started cutting the gauze squares in half, which seems to work perfectly. I don't have a water pik, but I seem to remember when I had some weird complication after oral surgery in my 20s that there was a little cheapie device they gave me for irrigating the hold. Maybe I'll ask when I go to the drugstore tomorrow. It might be my imagination, but I think some of the little Split Pea Pea Coats are floating around back there. (Unless it's that weird little flap of skin.) I'm actually feeling good enough to go to writer's group tonight. Not that I want to; I'd rather stay home and feel sorry for myself. Oh, well

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 03, 2005 06:25 PM (x3SIT)

5 No water pick!!! Dry socket, remember? Gentle rinsing with salt water. Just let the water sit there and roll over the socket. I apologize for obsessing about your hole! Really!

Posted by: Darrell at November 03, 2005 10:18 PM (EihMh)

6 Darrell, you'll need to watch that--you're getting close to a line, there, and if you fall off the edge of the earth there will be monsters waiting for you. Like my husband. I'm permitted to rinse my mouth as of 10:30 a.m. tomorrow morning--no brushing or rinsing for the first 24 hours, although they didn't say I couldn't drink water, and I do admit to letting it swish over Attila Canyon, due to my pathological fear of food particles lurking there. It sounds like the dry socket problem could be related to overuse of the gauze--especially since I tend to chomp down on the dressing when it's there. Fortunately, the bleeding has subsided enough that I probably won't need any more gauze after tonight. So with a little luck there won't be dry socket this time around.

Posted by: Attila Girl at November 03, 2005 10:45 PM (x3SIT)

7 I am told... It really was a genuine attempt to get your mind off your surgery. Unfortunatey, eight-grade humor is all I have in my arsenal. It's amazing how little a person can learn in the 37 years since. Just try not to disturb what forms in that socket for a couple of weeks and you will do fine.

Posted by: Darrell at November 04, 2005 09:15 AM (Q2qAx)

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. . . yesterday, more or less in front of my cousin and his wife. The good news?

1) I talked myself into staying over at her place one more night, so I could continue to enjoy my cousins' company. I'm not so sure I stopped being mad, but I stopped acting mad. I even managed not to say, "no act of mine this weekend should be construed as meaning I don't hate you." This required me to remind myself, over and over again, that I'm 43 years old.

2) Neither one of us got mean in the heat of argument, though we're both more than capable of it.

3) I continued to help her move into the area near the L.A. Airport.

4) I acknowledge that I have all kinds of base emotions WRT others, and they will continue to trip me up. I can even—sometimes—consent to be kidded about my failings. For me, this is astonishing progress.

Live and learn. Excelsior.

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