Bleck

I don't know why, I just feel really blah. Maybe it's the heat - it's oppressive right now. Walking outdoors is like walking into a steam bath and not being able to get away from it. Inside isn't so bad; we're managing to keep the house pretty cool -- but partly by keeping the curtains closed, so it is darker than normal. Like being in a cave.

Today I need to:

• go to the store and get stuff to make lasagna
• make lasagna
• finish off current laundry and do two more loads
• make up the guest bed (Tony's mom will hopefully be stopping by tonight to pick up more of her stuff)
• write up at least one review for the site
• post two interviews on the site
• work on art show stuff

There's tons more, but that's the basics. I need some motivation.

About to be peeved kitties

I have to give poor Harley and Grace a bath today. They are in desperate need for one. The flea stuff I put on them did nothing. I'll have to go to the professional strength stuff. In the meantime, it's bathtime.

I'll try to get a picture after, when they're all ticked off at me.

Tired

I don't think Tony comprehends exactly how much smoking bothers me. I said something this morning and he took it as a dig at his mom, but it wasn't about her. I am just sick to death (no pun there at all) of smoking. I can't stand that my mom is smoking again. I don't understand it. Smoking is one of the stupidest things a person can do. Maybe the stupidest thing. And, if you're a smoker reading this -- yes, I do mean you. You can act as offended as you want to, and I'm sure you will. That's the thing with doing something that you know is stupid -- and you have to know, what with even the cigarette companies doing PSA's -- he who doth protest too much, as Shakespeare would say...

Smoking is what brought my sisters and me into this world as premature, sickly babies. It's what kept me sick as child and prone to bronchitis later in life. It's the thing that brought a hospital bed into our living room when I was a teenager and the thing that killed my father -- as painfully as possible -- when he was just 54. The smell of it, to me, is the smell of death. Every time I breathe it in, I feel like a part of me is dying.

Smoking will kill you. And it won't be a nice easy quick death. And it isn't just you that it hurts. That's the part that pisses me off the most -- smoking hurts everyone around you. Smokers always want to just make it all about them. But it isn't. It hurts all of us. Not just the people that breathe in the secondhand smoke, but anyone you know that cares about you. You think we like watching you die, cranked up on morphine to take away the pain, your tobacco-stained fingers scrabbling across the hospital sheets as you search for one last nicotine fix when you can barely even breathe and can't even hold the cigarette to your mouth by yourself?

If I offend you, fine. Maybe you'll think about it. If you're like any of the smokers I know personally, you won't. Instead you'll just get all pissed off and holier-than-thou. You probably didn't even read this far. Whatever. You know what, it's your funeral and not mine. And I do mean that literally.

Yeah, me. The girl with no father to walk her down the aisle. The one who someday will be doing another bedside vigil at the side of her mother or mother-in-law, people who are already unhealthy and wonder why. The ones that are already dying inside.

Sorry to anyone who stumbled by looking for a little bon mot about writing or whatnot. This is the "venting" part of my blog. This is stuff that's been stewing inside of me for years and lately it's been very near the surface as the mother-in-law has been chainsmoking since she's been here. Our front porch smells like an ashtray. Our third floor, like stale tobacco. Every day, a reminder.

I'm just tired.

Mini Me

Well, it's official. I'm shrinking. They did a bone density test on me and even though I'm not technically old enough (it usually starts later, like after menopause), my bone density is below normal levels -- in other words, osteopenia (but not, as yet, osteoporosis). That's just great. I started out at 4' 11 1/2" and now I'm down to 4' 10 1/2". I cannot afford to shrink any more.

So I'm now on a serious increase-your-calcium-intake kick.

I'd say more, but it's just depressing. I'm too damned short to shrink any more.

3 AM and fur balls

Gracie had her first fur ball throw-up episode last night. At 3 A.M. In bed. I guess it was a good thing it was just me home and not Tony too. Poor girl. Then she tried to cover it up by pawing at the covers.

Luckily it was on the blanket we use to sleep under and not our actual bedspread. I have no idea how I'd clean that. I'm guessing the culprit is the new healthy "weight maintenance and hairball help" cat food I got for them. I was thinking it prevented fur balls...maybe it actually facilitates them.

I was up half the night thinking anyway. Writing in my head. It always comes out like that, a lot of stuff that never makes it to paper.

I'd just finished reading Sarah Dessen's Just Listen (came out earlier this year). There are three sisters in it and at one point, the middle sister reads aloud something she's written at an open mic poetry night at a cafe. Something about her and her sisters.

I am the middle sister, but I've never felt like one. There's too much age between us all. At first, I was the youngest sister, with an older sister 10 years older than me. Then, 7 years later, I was the oldest sister. With 17 years between the two of them, I don't know that they even feel like sisters, at least not in the sense that you normally read about.

We had a very non-normal childhood anyway. Not like anyone's childhood is normal, but when your parents travel art shows for a living, things are different. When you always live somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but then travel around to all kinds of different states and towns (who all look the same from the middle of an arts & crafts show), things are just not the same as what other kids have.

When school was in, I was often left alone at the house and Pam was sent down the road to stay with her friend Lily. Sometimes she'd be there with me too, and I'd be the "adult" of the house (I say that very loosely). I'm sure that child services would have been all over us if they'd had a clue.

Then dad died and everything changed. And stayed the same, I guess you could say. At any rate, getting back to my original point, I've never felt like the middle child that everyone always talks about. The one who's always stuck in the middle; never gets to do anything first and is no longer the baby. Shoot, sometimes I felt like an alien in my family anyway (though I suppose that's a classic middle child thing).

Anyway. There was no point to that rambling, just something I was thinking about last night.

Trigger, Whoa!

We didn't do anything for the 4th of July, really. We wound up watching When Harry Met Sally (one of the two best movies of all time, the other being The Princess Bride). It was rainy and gross out anyway.

Tony's dad and Janet came to visit briefly while Tony's mom was away visiting his sister Rikki. Poor Janet was really sick, so we didn't do too much -- took them on a brief car tour of downtown and to Churchill Downs. That was about it.

And tomorrow is when I think my mom comes in. Busy times. And today I dropped Tony off at the airport at 5 AM -- he'll be back on Friday. I'm completely wiped out though. I just haven't been sleeping well at night lately at all. Some of it is my own fault, but some of it is just me laying there going "ugh. So....sleepy." but not falling asleep. I feel like a zombie.

Today is another nasty rainy day, which makes me that much more sleepy. I did manage to announce the last month contest winners (around 11 PM one night). I really need to get all of the prize mailings together next. Hopefully later today, maybe after my doctor appointment.

Yawn. Double yawn.