Arriving

Moving blows. My expectations of gross incompetence from the U-Haul corporation were more than realized, my knee feels like it's facing backward, everything took much longer and was more grueling than expected.

However.

We now live in an extremely cool great big old house with sunlight and air movement and everything, the weather is gorgeous, the lake is stunning and it's a five-minute walk down to the shore, and we've already gotten to watch two amazing sunsets over Lake Superior. All in all, we're coming out ahead so far.

Leaving

Eight days until we move. I guess the insomnia portion of the stress must be setting in, as I've been awake for an hour and yawning like crazy, but as soon as I lay (lie? that particular word's never been one of my strong points) down I'm wide awake.

All things considered, we're actually in pretty good shape for the move. We're probably about 80-85% packed, the house in Ashland is ready for us, and we've got the next week pretty well planned out. But because I am a congenital worrier, I'm not relaxing. For one thing, I'm afraid there won't be a truck for us when we go to pick it up. We're renting a U-Haul, because we don't really have any other decent options, and they tend to do their U-Haul thing, which is to not have the truck you reserved and then just kind of shrug and pretty much tell you to go pound sand when you ask why the hell they bother with reservations and do they think people just rent these things on a whim, like "Oh, let's rent a U-Haul and circle Madison 6 times on Sunday; it's supposed to be a beautiful day," and what the fuck do they expect you to do now? I'm hoping that doesn't happen.

Also, I'm thinking about how different it will be to live up there. We're going from a city with a population of about 220,000 to a town of 8000, in close proximity to bears and wolves and fishing boats and a lot of forest. Kevin doesn't like it here in Madison, but I kind of do. Not enough to talk him into staying, or even necessarily to want to stay here permanently myself, but it's a nice place to live.

I'll miss the farmer's market, which is the best of any I've ever seen. I'll miss Glass Nickel pizza and Lazy Jane's scones, and the Tex Tubb's taco palace, and sushi, just in general. I'll miss Mickey's Tavern, the Crystal Corner, the Paradise. I'll really miss Em and Corey and Ike.

I will not miss the co-op, where everything tastes like self-righteousness. I won't miss traffic or spending 20 minutes in the car to get halfway across town--20 minutes in the car in Ashland will put you 2 towns over. I won't miss the crowds at the farmer's market, which make it like a weekly excursion to a Ukrainian bread line. I won't miss the undergrads, or the freaking Badger games in the fall. I really won't miss the heat and humidity.

I have high hopes for Ashland. I wonder if moving somewhere with the idea of permanence makes a difference in how well it turns out. I guess we'll find out.

Ow.

You know what I hate? I hate it when you're in some crappy, dimly lit bar and as you're walking to the door to go home, you trip over the completely unmarked, dark-carpeted four-inch step that visually stands out from the rest of the floor in no way, and you completely bite it, going down hard and sending your purse flying, and the nice gay man who helps you up has that "Oh, you poor drunk" look in his eyes, and you know that everyone is thinking "Hey, have another!", and you want to put on a big flashing sign that says "I'm not even close to drunk, this is a poorly constructed floor!"

But there are no such signs, and it doesn't matter now anyway because the end result is the same--an Ace bandage and ice on my swollen, jacked-up knee. If the pain is equivalent to the level of damage done, moving in two weeks will be lots of fun.

Oh, Rush, you appalling specimen, you.

Rush Limbaugh, who just signed a 400 million dollar eight-year contract, refers to himself as "talent on loan from God."


Really.


If God exists, I desperately wish he would do something about all of his douchebag hangers-on. I highly doubt that any deity worth his or her salt would want an angry fat man in his third marriage, with a penchant for hollering about declining morals while popping illegal OxyContin, serving as his or her PR guy.

Dear honored sir (or lady)

In the last month or so, my email account has suddenly been flooded with spam. It's kind of funny to see what exactly is being targeted to me and speculate on where they got the notion that I'm interested in the things they're selling. To date, I apparently:

-shop extensively at Wal-Mart
-have won several lotteries in various African nations
-am the last hope of Nigerian royalty looking to safely transfer their ancestral treasure out of the country
-am single and solely interested in an interracial relationship, with either Asian men, black singles, black men, and black women; I am evidently feeling experimental these days.
-have already finished nursing school and am looking for jobs in Oklahoma
-might be stupid enough to click on a link sent to me by persons unknown to divulge my personal information in order to "FIND OUT NEWEST CREDIT SCORE!"

It's quite a combo platter, and if all of these pitches were applicable, I would actually make a very fascinating dinner party guest.

Adopting A Better Attitude

So, if you go to the blogs on my MySpace page, you'll see a few that mention that we can't have kids. We don't have a final, word-of-god statement on this yet, but as far as we know, right now that's the situation. For the most part, both Kevin and I are pretty okay with this, at least insofar as we're not upset that we can't have "our own" baby. Adoption is not a lesser choice for us, and we just want to be parents. There are definitely downfalls, like that it's a pain in the ass, and it's really expensive, and we wanted to have a baby by now and it will be several more years, but you know, we'll deal.

So I really haven't been one of those infertile women who hate all pregnant ladies. But...it's still kind of hard sometimes. I watched The Business of Being Born the other night, and, propaganda aside, it made me kind of sad that I won't have that birth experience. Another friend just told me she's pregnant, and I'm absolutely thrilled for her, she's a wonderful person and will be an amazing mom. But I can't say I didn't feel a little twinge of envy.

And I don't think that's such a bad thing. I know some people dealing with infertility who are so angry and bitter that they become the self-designated arbiters of who "deserves" a baby. Someone who's had a miscarriage deserves a baby more than someone who got pregnant easily with no problems. That kind of shit. Honestly, it's incredibly sad to see. Infertility sucks, and it isn't fair that some people get to be parents a lot easier than others. But if it takes someone until their twenties or thirties to see that life can be horribly unfair, I would be willing to bet all of my Tom Waits albums that they have an awful lot of other things to be thankful for. I'm sad that we won't have a kid for several more years. But not sad enough to lose sight of everything else. Not sad enough to forget that I have an incredible husband. Not sad enough that I can't be happy for my friends who are getting pregnant and having kids. Not sad enough that I believe that I deserve a baby more than anyone else who wants one.

Vewy Scawy

The other night, Kevin and I were sitting out on our balcony when we heard the sound of wind in the trees by the railroad tracks, about 500 yards from us. It came toward us like the demonic force in the woods in “Evil Dead”, getting louder and louder, until it was roaring, sounding like hail hitting the ground. Then it got silent, Kevin and I looked at each other, and next thing we knew, the tree in front of us was bent almost to the ground and we were getting blasted with an enormous gust of wind. There was no storm, no severe weather alert, although we were both half-expecting to see a funnel cloud off to the side. It was extremely disconcerting.

We probably won’t be spending much time out there after this coming weekend, not because of the Straight-Line Winds Of The Undead, but because of what our last few weeks in Madison will entail. Kevin switches his work schedule to the opposite end of the week and my job ends after this week and (surprise surprise) the temp agency is very un-encouraging about my prospects of short-term work for the next four weeks. This unfortunately means that my stellar husband will have to pick up extra shifts to cover the loss of my paycheck, which means that he’ll be at work or sleeping for most of July, which means I will be handling all things moving-related. Sucky all around, but it’s temporary and before we know it, we’ll be in our new house, running out to the sidewalk to catch a glimpse of Lake Superior any time we want. Good stuff.