My brother’s band, Tb5, just covered Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”. Check out their video. It’s amazing. I promise.

It’s horrible.

I used to love this. I would sit here, happily, for hours and hours and write all about my feelings, record all the little moments. Life was easier then. Or was it? Am I glorifying the past because it’s the past and all I can remember are the pretty pictures I posted here? I have no idea. It doesn’t even matter. I’m just so, so, so tired. I’m so tired of feeling like we’re fighting, constantly, just to keep our heads above water. And I know, I know that someone is reading this and they want to punch me in the face because whatever my stupid little suburban problems are, they are nothing, nothing at all. I know. I have so much to be grateful for. And most days I’m really good at remembering it. I don’t complain. I am grateful for the things that count. Most days. And then there are days like today when I sit on the balcony with the birds and I cry. And cry. And cry. I just wish things could be easier. I wish I didn’t worry so much. I wish I was more patient and more careful, more thoughtful. I wish I had more energy. I wish I’d made better choices when I was younger but I can’t think about that now or the mean little monster who lives behind my heart will thrash around and make me say awful things to myself.

I probably sound crazy. Maybe I am.

Things have not been going according to plan. Life has been life-y because, as they say, Humans Make Plans and God Laughs or whatever it is they say. BUT STILL. Anyway. Like I said. Most days are great. We’re fine. I’m fine. We work hard and we keep our heads above water and we’re okay. Today just hasn’t been one of those days.

This picture was taken once upon a time* when I had a dreamy job working from home. Whenever the weather was nice enough, which it almost always is, I would sit out there to work. Eight hours in front of a computer isn’t so bad when your cubicle mates are humming birds. I miss sitting out there.

For the last two months I’ve been working long hours in an office. It’s only temporary and it’s a beautiful office, but it kills me how little time there is left in a day when you work away from home. I mean, I never used to have to put on makeup or plan my outfits or shower, even. I feel like I lose hours every day just primping. It’s kind of fun, actually. I’ve never felt so feminine. But that’s not the point. The point is, from waking until almost bedtime I’m either preparing for work, working, or doing household chores. Most days I don’t get a minute to myself until after nine-thirty at night. How does that happen? Where do the days go?

While we’re on the topic, how on GOD’S GREEN EARTH do parents with fulltime jobs make it through a week? Seriously. Because I can barely manage it and I only have dogs. I don’t know how I would manage my life and my marriage if I had another human being to look after. I don’t think I would ever sleep, ever again. I’ve already given up exercising. I haven’t moved my body, except to stand up and sit down, in two months. And for the record, I’m not getting enough sleep. It’s horrible. I should go to bed right now, but then I wouldn’t get to sit here and complain about how hard my child-free first world life is.

I know there are people reading this blog who have careers and happy marriages and children and always look great and put together and I cannot wrap my head around how they do it. I feel like it would be impossible. Am I just incredibly weak? That must be it. I’m a fragile little flower. No wonder I love sitting out on the balcony in the sun all afternoon. It explains everything.

How do you do it? You super-people with your careers and your babies and your perfect hair? I want to know.

This is just one of the majillionty ways he tortures me.

F#$%ing cat.*

*I say that with love.

Me, my pops, and my baby nephew Chris, circa a million years ago.

My nephew Chris, who is more a like little brother than a nephew because we are so close in age, teaches English at a school in Japan. He gave his students a worksheet to review the grammar they have recently learned by completing sentences about Christmas in America. Here are his favorite answers:

In America, on Christmas, we enjoy… killing reindeer with a machine gun.

Many children love Santa Claus because he gives… them a unicorn.

On Christmas morning, children always look very… bloody.

This is a stocking! It is a sock to… receive presents.

This year for Christmas, Ms. Haruo wants to… go to a Haunted house.

Chris will go to America for Christmas to… kill.

Now that I know the Japanese believe American Christmas is all about violence and bloodshed, I’m confident that my traditional decapitated and mutilated gingerbread people will be the PERFECT gift for my nephew’s Japanese fiance and her family. Super!

He made squash for Thanksgiving dinner. He had to work that night, but he made this wonderful squash dish as his contribution. His love in a side dish, so we wouldn’t forget. There was a moment at the table, one moment, when everyone was eating and someone tasted the squash and exclaimed over its flavor. Then someone else had to try and soon everyone was eating squash and exclaiming, so I got to brag on my beloved, which made me beam. I adore him.

“Where is he?” They all asked. “It’s so awful he has to work!” And then they pat my cheek while I insist that I don’t mind, I’m used to it. He’s worked every single holiday for every year I’ve known him, eleven years last July. I long ago gave up on the idea of spending holidays with him. I resented it for years until I figured out that holidays don’t have to be celebrated when everyone else celebrates and new traditions can be invented every year. Now I kind of love it. He works on holidays so we’re forced to draw them out, add an extra day of celebration to the week. An extra day to feel grateful, safe, loved. An extra day to sleep in and eat good food. It turns out to be pretty fabulous.

This year we shared a romantic Thanksgiving for two on Michael’s day off. We ate meatloaf leftovers and worked on a Christmas craft project inspired by the Dia de los Muertos display we saw earlier in the month. It turns out that clay people and cardboard houses are waaaaay harder to make than you’d think. Three hours of work yielded six naked, faceless people, one house with an unattached roof and only half a paint job, and a miniature wiener dog. If we actually want a whole village we’ll be working on this every year for the rest of our lives, but then again, isn’t that what it was all about? Creating a new family tradition.

He’ll work Christmas Eve and Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. We’ll wait until his next day off to celebrate together, the two of us, alone in our little home with the beasts and their endless shedded tufts of hair. We’ll cook if it sounds like fun or we’ll order in. We’ll nest. We’ll watch holiday movies or go adventuring, build tiny dream homes out of cardboard and hot glue or spend hours in bed. Whatever we do won’t matter as long as we’re together, uninterrupted, happy and in love.

This is my fourth week linking up with Just Write. You should totally link up too.

I baked a strawberry pie. Someone who ate a piece wanted to know if I’d made it. I answered in the affirmative, of course.

Friend: Did you make this pie?
Me: Yes, sir!
Friend: How did you make the crust???
Me: With unicorn magic and fairy dust.*
Friend: THIS IS THE BEST PIE CRUST I’VE EVER EATEN.

*I did not tell my friend that, in fact, the pie crust was made by Pillsbury. I’m probably going to Hell.

We hosted our first family dinner on Saturday. I made turkey meatloaf, roasted red potatoes, and a nice green salad. I also set the fanciest table I’ve ever set in my young little life. But it’s nothing in comparison to this:

My mother’s holiday table is what my kitchen table aspires to be when it grows up.

She made these beautiful turkeys out of pinecones she’s been saving for fifty-five-ish years. Her mother found them on a vacation in 1956-ish and thought they looked just like turkey bodies, so my mom has been saving them all these years to turn them into Thanksgiving decorations. Next time Mike wants to know why our linen closet is stuffed full of craft supplies I rarely use I’m going to say, PINECONE TURKEYS.

Even her hors d’oeuvre table was gorgeous.

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without the Sylvanians! In this scene, a friendly native bearing gifts of friendship approaches a wary pilgrim. Not pictured – our fireplace mantel, where a Puritan minister teaches the natives about Jesus.

Mike made a wonderful squash dish that was the belle of the Thanksgiving ball, next to the turkey and my grandfather’s infamous wild rice stuffing. Even Valentine wanted this squash. If you behave, dear readers, I’ll share the recipe later this week.

What were the highlights from your Thanksgiving weekend?

Wasn’t that awesome? Don’t you feel great now? Is that not the happiest song you’ve ever heard in your entire life? The perfect feeling to start a long weekend with, am I right?

In my head she’s a little girl. Three or four. Her eyes wide and pleading, “Mama, play with me!”

“I’m sorry, Baby. I’m fixing dinner. Papa will be home soon and I’m hungry! Would you like to help?”

She peels the garlic and breaks heads off brocoli stalks. “They look like tiny trees!” She is gleeful. I’m in awe of her strong little hands and the pleasure she takes in such simple tasks.

And then I chide myself for being so stupid. Getting lost in childish imaginings. Children are not in the picture. Not now, not for years, maybe never. Maybe because you never know and maybe because it just seems impossible. The other day I asked Michael, “How will we know?”

“When I have a job and we have health care and we’re ready to buy a house and we’re not worried about paying bills every month. Maybe then.”

Maybe we’ll wait until we’re in our forties and adopt. I can see myself, like all those women I watched in Manhattan with long silver hair and ethnic children. I could love any child I held in my arms, I know that.

By now I’ve peeled and chopped a whole garlic bulb, but I don’t care. I sprinkle it over the vegetables, slide it into the oven, set the timer. I over-season everything. Fresh cracked pepper makes raw chicken black. Kosher salt, onion flakes, garlic powder, oregano, basil, sage smells like pee but I sprinkle on three-times the amount you would anyway. The chicken will come out of the oven crunchy for spices but I don’t care. I like it that way. Just like I like my food burned crisp. Everything tasting like it came out of a campfire. Smoky.

I reach for another beer. Dinner is in the oven but Mike won’t be home for three hours at least. I’ll eat alone while I balance the budget. Wait up for him. Reheat a plate for him. Press my face into his neck while he eats. Breathe. So glad he’s home.

This is my second installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments, begun by Heather of the EO. You should totally join in.

Mike and his wiener, NYC, February 2008

Last Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of Theo’s adoption. I unearthed this email, sent to Dopey less than a week after we’d brought him home, and oh! the memories that flooded in…

We did adopt little Theo and he is fitting in beautifully. I was worried it would be over-crowded with another little furry body in the house, but it’s not at all. He’s very sweet and mellow and the cats act like they don’t even notice him. And Val is really warming up to him. She lays on her back and nibbles his paws trying to get him to play with her. He sniffs her and then curls up on my lap or Mike’s lap – which ever lap is closest. Then she comes over and sniffs him and curls up on top of him. It’s cute.

When we first brought him home, he did not bark, he did not play, he did not sniff trees or chase cats. Rescued from a puppy mill where he lived his entire life in a chicken-wire box, he did not know how to be a dog. However, he did know how to eat a bowl of dog food in less than fifteen seconds, puke it all up, then eat it a second time. That was lovely. He also knew how to mark which dog bed was his – by pissing all over it. And he knew how to take a giant dump in our bed. (Though, to be perfectly fair, he only did that the very first night we had him home.)

It’s been remarkable, watching him bloom over the last four years. Where once he was a silent shadow who shuffled along with his head hanging low, now he bounds through our home with confidence, leaping in happy circles and howling with joy. This year he started playing with toys. I was shocked the first time I saw him wrestling one of the plush squeaky toys Valentine loves, but now it’s a daily activity. In July, he initiated a game of fetch with me, for the first time ever. I was so startled and so happy I cried. But the biggest accomplishment of all? Our little wiener is finally, FINALLY, after FOUR YEARS, finally house-trained.

Bravo, Theo. Bravo. A very happy (belated) adoption day to my favorite hairy wiener.