Missing for a Month?

Holy Crap it's been a while.

I have been honestly busy. Not crazy busy, but just busy enough that I don't have time to kill on the internet.
I'm volunteering at the public library on Tues and Thurs, and now at the kids school library on Wednesdays.

It is so much fun I am amazed I didn't do this years ago. I probably would have been happier if I had.

I'm still waiting to hear back about graduate school. I guess I'll find out by Halloween, but even if they don't let me in this time I know I can kill it for the Feb application deadline now that I will have two seperate library contacts to write me letters of recommendation.

That's it really. I really don't feel the need to come here and complain anymore. Things are going so well, and I am happy and busy and having fun.

I cannot recommend enough that evreyone go out and see The Other Guys with Will Farrel and Mark Wahlberg. It was the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. Carl and I are still quoting lines to each other from the movie 3 days later.

I'm still reading a lot and watching my sugar. I'm eating it everyday, but not like I used to.

On one hand I don't like really being on medication, but on the other hand if I hadn't had a break down I don't think everything would be as clear as it is now for me. I don't know that I would have figured out what to do with my life. I don't think I would have started volunteering.

Everything happens for a reason.

I Need A New Drug

It's been five months now that I have been medicated. I would like to think this is now my even keel attitude.
I'm a little hesitant to want to stay on drugs my entire life. I know I could. I'm just crazy enough to need full time medication,but there are certain things that I miss about being so emotional and anxiety ridden.

I miss music. It used to just get me right down to my volcanic core. A song could save me or condemn me in the middle of the day or at night as I fell to sleep. I could be carried away by almost any classical song, Dolly Parton, the Deftones, almost anything from the 80's or 90's and I miss that. I don't get that feeling under my skin anymore when I listen to music. Now music just feels like background. It no longer sets the tone of my day or can whip my attitude around in a heartbeat. It's probably good that it no longer does this to me, but still I miss all the emotion tied into music.

I do love the moods I have now when dealing with my children. They can drive me crazy and then a half hour later I'm laughing and joking with them as usual. I don't take their fueds and endless banter as personally. I now realize that they are just kids. They will not behave like adults no matter how much I want them to. I see the patterns in their behavior better and can shrug off the sugar induced and sleep deprived tantrums, knowing it's not really them at that moment, but just a sugar fiend or an overtired child. So overall that is an awesome improvment over myself from 6 months ago.

I'm still feeling generally numb as far as overwhelming emotions go. I would like to feel more, but know that I can't handle more. It's a horrible catch-22. I can either feel everything and be miserable, or just feel the edges of feelings and be a fully functional member of society. I have a clarity and a distance that I didn't have before. I used to feel like I was floundering and overwhelmed by everything, but now everything feels managable. I don't know that I would have figured out my desire to work with books as a librarian if I had stayed unmedicated. My mind was too muddled to figure it out. So that is an amazing outcome of taking medication.

My counting is under control and I don't overthink everything like I used to. I will never be footloose and talkative and outgoing, but at least now I can function like a regular introvert.

Overall the good things outweigh the negative, but I do miss the way I could write for 2 hours getting all the crap out of my head and onto paper. I miss being cranky and pissed off at everyone. I miss flipping off any bad driver who crossed my path. I miss crying while listening to music. I miss so many things, but I know I'm better off this way. It just takes some getting used to. Now that I don't remember as vividly how sick I really was back in March, it's easier for me to think that I wasn't really that bad. But I know this is just me transitioning from that person to a better person and missing her and still looking forward to this new better behaved person.

The Ipad as E-reader

I just finished reading my first ever book in it's entirety on an e-reader.

I've been trying to do this ever since I bought my ipad. It's actually filled with books. I've got not only the E-books ap, but the Kindle ap and a couple of other no name apps with free classic books.

I chose to read Mansfield Park. It's the only Jane Austen book I haven't read and it seemed the quickest of all the classics I have downloaded.

Overall the reading went great. My only issue was not being able to constantly see how far along I am. There are no page numbers. If you tap the bottom of the screen it will give you some strange numbers and a percentage of completion, but no page numbers. This frustrated me to no end. I like to put the book mark in the book and see my progress. This is not totally possible with the Kindle ap. The Ibook ap does not have this problem. There are page numbers on every page. As for the ipad in general as an e-reader, the pages were easy to read, the lighting and font were great. The size of the pages was even similar to a real book. It was easier to read while eating vs. a real book and my hand didn't get cramped like it sometimes does when reading huge books like Atlas Shrugged or Anna Karenina.

The reason why I have never used to ipad as an e-reader is because I have to fight to get my turn with it. The kids love to play games on it. My husband surfs the Internet constantly with it and it seemed like whenever I had it in my lap to read, it would remind everyone else of what the wanted to do on the ipad. I always felt rushed to finish a chapter so that someone else could have a turn. No one ever bothers me when I have a real book in my hand. Short of actually buying another couple ipads or shelling out for a Kindle I don't think I will read too many books on the ipad. If was just my ipad, then sure I'd read more often, but with 3 kids and a husband who loves gadgets and web surfing I don't think I'll ever be able to convince them to let me use it as a book again.

I love my books. I love to see them arranged on my bookshelves. I love the colors and the shapes and the smell of the paper. I love the portability. I love not having to charge them up at the end of the day. I like not worrying about battery power. Sure it's convenient to be able to have a book wirelessly delivered, but I still have a hard time paying money for a computer file to read. If I'm going to pay money, then I want a book in my hand and not a file that could possibly be obsolete in a few years. I want a book that I can take and sell back to a book store and trade in for another book. That isn't an option yet with e-books.

I can say I've given it the old college try, but I am not a convert. I'm not saying I'll never read another e-book, but for a while at least physical books are still going to be what I love and what I read and collect.

Eat, Pray, Love vs. Hot Tub Time Machine

I am very far from a movie critic, but I'm going to add my two cents on some movies I saw this weekend.

Hot Tub Time Machine:  I loved this movie. It was silly, funny and visually entertaining. It made me laugh out loud, but it doesn't take much for me. I love John Cusack and I loved the ridiculousness of being able to travel back in time in a hot tub with a guide like Chevy Chase. It's a great movie.

Eat Pray Love: I loved this movie too. I'm not a huge Julia Roberts fan, but I thought she did well in this movie and Javier Bardem was awesome as usual. It was a beautiful movie. I love travel movies so this one was a no brainer for me to like. The only scene that really bothered me was when Liz was supposed to seem so crazy and out of control by eating pasta. I think that was just ridiculous. Maybe people in Hollywood don't know that most of us eat pasta all the time and it is not the least bit sinful. I myself eat it at least 2-3 times a week and (this is so crazy) I'm not fat. That was an insulting scene to me, but maybe I'm not like most people. The critics kind of slammed this movie, but I hate critics. They see so many movies they don't even know what is entertaining anymore. I loved it. Go see it.

Kick Ass: This movie rocked too. I'm not into all the violence so my eyes were covered frequently, but all it all it was really cool. The 11 year old as a bad-ass was awesome. The teenager as a wanna-be superhero was cool too. See this one too.

I''ll see pretty much anything that looks remotely entertaining. But I'm getting really pissed off reading critics reviews for movies. I was so excited to go see Dinner For Schmucks, but then I heard so many bad reviews that I have not seen it yet. Why would I listen to them. I know I'll love it. It has Paul Rudd and Steve Carell in it. How could it be bad? My version of bad is so much different than a critics. I didn't really like Inception. Critics loved it. The last bad movie I saw was Kristen Bell in When in Rome. That really sucked, but I still enjoyed the scenery and the clothes. I loved Date Night. It's hit and miss with every single person. That is why I have decided to never judge a movie by what a critic says. If it looks good to me I will see it.

Here I come Dinner for Schmucks!

To Be A Librarian

I'm working on my application to U of A and trying to get all the letters of recommendation, and essays and transcripts pulled together. It's hard. They should let you in just for completing all the myriad tasks they require for application. You almost need a personal secretary to get it done.

I'm only applying to one school now. U of A has strange start times for their Library and Information Science program. I apply by Sept 1, and then school would start Jan 3. If I can't make that deadline, or don't get in, I'll hopefully get into a volunteer program at the public library or at my kid's school library and get a better letter of recommendation from an actual librarian and apply again to U of A, the U of I, and then Syracuse University for a fall of 2011 start.

The idea is to either get in at the In-State-Tuition school, or apply to my Alma-mater, or at the Premiere Librarian school in NY. I'll have to take the GRE to apply for fall admission. That is a little daunting, but I'm pretty good at standardized tests.

I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed for U of A in January though.

I just can't imagine that someone won't let me in. I am the very picture of a librarian. Most of the time I wear my hair in a bun. My entire house is covered in books. I mean literally in every room (except the kitchen and bathrooms) I have multiple bookshelves. I have 4 cats. I never leave the house without a book and usually while in the house I am either reading a book or within an arm's reach of a book. I even know the shelves at Barnes and Noble better then the employees as I often help patrons find exactly the book they are looking for and sometimes even suggest a comparable substitute. I need to go to school to get this degree. I just need to be able to convince admissions people of that.

Would it be allowable to send in the admissions people photos of my bookshelves and links to this blog?

Home Sweet Home with Rice Crispies

So we've been out of town for a while. First we were in Lake Las Vegas and then in San Diego. I'll be the first to admit I am not a great traveller, but I love to travel. I've already admitted my mad love for Rick Steves and anything else involving new strange different places, but I also have OCD which can make for a very difficult time when traveling.

I need my Rice Crispies, my chocolate milk with dinner, I need an Embassy Suites (preferably), and I need my HGTV to fall asleep to at night. If there is any interruption in my very detailed night time and day time rituals I get a little antsy and irritated. I can't handle not having my regular foods. I can't handle not having what I need when I need it.

So I can wish and hope and plan my European travels all I want, but when I think back to the two weeks I spent in France in 1993 all I can remember is how uncomfortable I was. I didn't think I would ever make it home. I lived on french bread and ice cream from street vendors. The hotels sucked and I hated the thought of all the weird creepy people in the streets who smelled. It was very traumatic in a way.

I'm torn. I would love to see the world, but I just don't know how well I could handle myself. I had a hard time at my sister's place last week. She was missing a few basic kitchen implements and a trash can in the bathroom and it was hurting my brain to think how she could live without those things. It just seemed unfathomable to me. It's weird little things like that that make my brain freak out.

Sure I keep it to myself and it makes it seem less strange, and yes it will be easier for me to travel when I'm older and not toting around small children, but for now I'll stick to planned vacations at Embassy Suites where I know the room layout and I know they have all the Rice Crispies I need right downstairs in the free breakfast buffet.

Adding to the Family

I am now officially an aunt. I mean I've been an aunt, but not to a blood relative, just to my husband's half-brother's kids. It's not the same as being an aunt to your own sister's kid. It's like if something would happen to my sister and her husband (you know in a Charles Dickens kind of way) I would have to take the little orphan in to live with me. That is so cool.

I can now say, "My neice." Which I've never been able to say before. She can come spend her summers here when she's older to get out of the city and spend some time at her Auntie Em's country house. That's kind of catchy don't ya think? Auntie Em.

If only they had named her Dorothy.

Graduate School Personal Statement

Oh the agony of trying to fit all the reasons why I want to be a librarian into only 750-1000 words.

There are so many stories to tell, so many books to quote, so many heart felt pleadings I want to include.

I'm not sure if my first attempt at graduate school application will work, but I almost want to put in somewhere that if they don't let me in on the first time around, I will apply each and every year 3 times until they see fit to see my enthusiasm for information and library science.

In reading almost all of the required textbooks for the first 4 classes I have learned that most applicants are just like me.... late to the game. Apparently being a librarian is not something people think of right off the bat after graduating from college. They meander around, raise a few kids up to kindergarten age and then figure out that what they love most is books. I should have that to my advantage in getting in.

Again I can't say how excited I am to have finally found what I want to be when I grow up. It seems so obvious after all those years of searching and checking out hundreds of library books and buying hundreds from Amazon that what I loved most was the search for the information the books that could lead me to a career and there all the time were the very books that I loved. There was the information that I craved. It was the book all along, not the writing, not the careers I was investigating, but the book itself.

Now I know I've had revelations like this in the past and thought I knew for sure what I was talking about when I found my new "career" ideas, but this sums it up perfectly........

"Books are the immortality of the race, the father and mother of most that is worth while cherishing in our hearts. To spread good books about, to sow them on fertile minds, to propagate understanding and a carefulness of life and beauty, isn't that high enough mission for a man?" From The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley.

When does school start?

I am plodding through the summer and we've still got 4 weeks until school starts and not much planned to keep the children entertained.

Every year I say I will pay for summer camp no matter what the cost, and every year here we are sitting around and watching SpongeBob while baking and making weird art projects.

Monsoon season has set it and it's too wet to play outside, not to mention the frequent lightning strikes starting fires left and right. It's a little too dangerous for children to be running around unattended.

I'm flagging on the blog posts. I'm just not feeling the writing right now. The children are sucking all the energy out of me. I miss the gym, I miss the big empty quietness of the house during the day that inspires me to write. I miss long leasurely hours at the book store and the library waiting to pick the kids up from school. I miss folding laundry at lunch time and looking at the mountain out the big picture window in the dining room while listening to whatever music I want a loud as I want.

4 Weeks! 4 Weeks! and hopefully my life will return to normal again.

Sugar and coyotes

This is Sugar.

Yes I know we already have so many cats, but we are now officially down 2 from 5. You all know Rupert died of liver failure earlier this year, well a couple of weeks ago we lost another one.

I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought was a cat fight. I got up went downstairs, turned on the floodlights and saw and heard nothing. The next day we were missing Sammy, one of the two kittens we took in from a friend last November. He wasn't small for an almost a year old cat, and he looked bigger because of his fluffy long hair, but not big enough to fight off a coyote.

I told the kids he must have run away and found a new family, but I know what I heard that night was a coyote running off with our cat. He must have put up a hell of a fight, but it didn't turn out good for him. We're upset, but he wasn't a favorite and obviously replaceable. I think we just have to know living here in the mountains that if you let your pets outside at night they can get eaten.

So anyway. I took the kids to the pound supposedly to look to see if someone had turned in Sammy and we fell in love with Sugar. I've never had an orange cat so he jumped out right away.

So far he's doing okay and helping to console Sammy's lonely brother PeeWee by fighting with him constantly.

Obviously nothing else spectacular is going on in our lives since I'm writing about my cats. I am a cat lady and always will be. If there is nothing else to talk about I can always gush about my animals. Entertaining? Not really? I know.

Feelin Fine

Things are finally feeling setteled this week, even though it's only Monday.

I think I have figured things out. I more or less know what kind of a career I want for the rest of my life and I have a plan to get there. It's kind of exciting and it's kind of a relief.

I've written so many times about how hard it is to not be an architect after all the time I've invested to become one. That was a heavy weight on my shoulders. But now that I've decided that I want to work in a library the path seems laid out neatly in front of me.

It's a clear path with very definite white gravel to follow. It's not a muddy trail through the woods.

Loan Mod Results

Final installment of my loan modification story.....

We got docs! The low down on the low payment is that it is interest only. It's not what I really wanted, but it's the best offer we could possibly get. Payments start at an amazing $1600 and then go up incrementally over the next 5 years from 3% interest up to 5% interest. After that we have no idea what our payment will be, but the interest rate will still be 5%, but then the principle will start to be added in with what remains, so payments could go huge after that. We are encouraged to pay more than the minimum interest only so that we are still paying down the principle. We will pay more, I just have to run the numbers and see what we want to add and what we can afford while things are still tight (me not working as an architect).

We are still waiting to see what CitiMortgage says. I'm still waiting on the "packet" to get things started. Apparently the packet can take 3 months to arrive. I'm not holding my breath.

Damn it's hot today. That never happens here, but I honestly think it's over 90 degrees.

Flagstaff Fourth of July Parade

Dang it's been like a whole week.

It must be because Fourth of July is my absolute favorite holiday. There are no expectations, no family obligations, just pure summer fun with sunburns, parades, ice cream, corn on the cob, and grilled meat.
So I've been keeping to myself, too busy to come here and bitch and complain.

This year in the annual Flagstaff Fourth of July parade the stars where the firemen, the Hot Shots, as they are called around here. They dress in yellow shirts, carry axes and chain saws and wear either brown or Forest Service green pants. They got the standing ovation this year and it just sent shivers down my spine. Theses are no ordinary firemen. They are the guys who get sent into the forest to try and create fire breaks in the forest fires. They cart miles and miles of hose deep into the forest to dry and soak portions of the forest that are threatened. They had just finished putting out one of the biggest fires I can remember and some of them even had singed pants as they walked thru the street of downtown with their axes on their shoulders. It was amazing.
That is what the Fourth of July is for. It's when we all come together to celebrate what it means to be an American. There may be numerous religions and political agendas paraded too, but the ones that always get me, and everyone else, are the local heroes that we can all get behind and just feel like plain old Americans.... not Catholic or Jewish or gay or straight or Libertarian or Republican, but just members of the United States, the State of Arizona, and the City of Flagstaff.

I know it's a cheap tactic, but it got your attention right?

I think I'm getting pretty serious about this whole going back to school thing. It seems entirely possible, affordable (thank to our loan mod), and exciting. I went so far today as to search Monster for what kinds of jobs are open to librarians. There are some really cool jobs out there. I was impressed. They all sounded like fun, except for the law and medical library jobs. There were even a few for architecture and interior design firms. Jackpot!

So on that note things seem to be looking up.

I would even go so far as to say that it has given me something to look forward to. I think a big part of my spring breakdown was me just being anxious over what to do with the rest of my life. It's a huge thing to go through school, 7 years of internship, 9 grueling exams, to be an architect and then just plain change my mind. It was altering. Being an architect is more than just a job. It really does define who you are and when I can't answer what I do for a living with something as impressive as, "I'm an architect", I think I lost a little bit of my identity. It sucks to not have a real job. I mean I enjoy working for our family businesses and I get paid a little for it, but it's not like it's my calling in life. I don't really get too excited about quarterly tax filings and payroll. It's fun, but it's not what I want to do forever.

I want to DO something myself. Sure I write and I have my rugs and my kids to keep me occupied, but I need more. Being a librarian seems like just the right thing to do. I would be surrounded by books or maps or drawings all day, putting them in to order. There is nothing boldly creative about it, but I can honestly say that I never get tired of books. I've gotten tired of writing, tired of my rugs, tired of drawing and most definitely tired of city building departments and contractors, but never tired of books.

More Loan Mod Tirade

So I'm still trying to find out the terms of our loan mod that comes with a $1630 payment. No word back yet from my negotiator who lost my docs back in April.

I've been calling all over this morning trying to find out what's going on so that I can make the July 1 payment.

I sent off one last frantic e-mail to the negotiator while I was on hold with some asinine department deep in the bowels of Bank of America, asking him to please get back in touch with me regarding my documents.

This is the response that I got back,

"I had to redo the docs and there were some things missing so your payment won’t be due till 9/01/2010."

WTF to the millionth degree.

So now I'm freaking out because in the computer system at B of A is says I have a July payment due. I'm sure my negotiator will eventually update the computer system, but in the meantime what are the drones at B of A going to do after I've not paid for the last 4 months.

I'm also freaking out because the last time we had to go back and redo the docs my new modified payments went from $2700 to $1630 and I sure as hell don't want that fabulous $1600 payment to get away.

I put all of this back into a response to my negotiator's response of not having a payment until Sept, but we shall see if he responds.

Loan Mod and Career Update

So yesterday I finally got a call from our new negotiator.
He claimed he sent me docs back at  the end of April.
I was like WTF.... havent' you been getting my weekly e-mails asking what's going on, what's my new payment and when's it due?
He apologized profusely and said he would call be back once he found out what happened to my docs and could get new copies mailed to me.
He was about to hand up and I was like," Whoa, Whoa, hold on there a minute. While I've got you on the phone I need more info!"
He claimed that our new payment is indeed $1630.00!!!!!!!!!!! and due July 1.
I still don't know the math behind that and I won't until he sends me the freakin docs.
So I guess that's good news and I'm still waiting for a callback.

In other news.......

New possible career track: Library and Information Science.

I've been researching it at the library for the past couple of weeks and then this week I looked up some masters degree programs that can be taken online or with just a week or two of residency. It looks really cool and like something I would like. I would love to work at the public library or at a school library, but even more fun would be to work at an architecture library or for a large architecture firm taking care of all of their drawing and material libraries. That just gets me all a tingle. Of course those fancy architectural librarian jobs would not be located in Flagstaff. We would have to relocate, but in the meantime while the kids are in school I would love to work at NAU.

What's that going to cost?
I could go to my Alma mater, the University of Illinois, for full online degree and it would cost around $36K.
Or I could go to the University of Arizona in Tuscon for around $10K.

Hmmmm that's a tough one. I'll have to keep investigating.

Flagstaff Fires

I know I'm slacking off this week. We are finally getting into the groove of swimming lessons and dance lessons and summer movies and it's sucking up most of my internet time. That and I really am trying to finish my rug in the next few weeks.

Also we've got these raging fires going on. This was the view Sunday afternoon from our back deck, the day the big fire started. It doesn't look quite so menacing today, but it is still burning. It has reached the inner basin of the mountain. That means that: our mountain used to be a volcano, then a huge part blew off, and there is a big hole in the middle called the inner basin, that is where the fire is now.

There are helicopters all over the place watching the fire, but it seems like they are just letting most of it burn. The area where it is now is very difficult to reach with vehicles, so they are fighting the fires on the front where it could threaten homes and letting it burn in the wilderness. Luckily the wind has died down and it is blowing all that smoke away from our house and sending it east towards the Painted Desert.

The kids were a little freaked out on Sunday and Monday. We tried to reassure them that there is nothing that we wouldn't be able to replace if our house burned down, we would have plenty of time to evacuate, our house is made of solid rock and cement, and fires are much easier to prepare for than hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes.

Loan Modification Update

I know it's been a while.....

This isn't so much of an update as it is a tirade.

I'm not going to write a lot, but just say that I am currently on hold and waiting for someone anyone to tell me what is going on with my B of A loan mod. I'm getting so many different stories about what is taking so long, what payment is due when that it is driving me crazy.

Now I've been told that there is a hold up because I have not sent in my most recent paystubs and bank statements. Well who was going to tell me that I was supposed to send those in? A B of A fairy? I freaking call in every week and now I'm told there has been a hold since May?

Charles Kerry...... have some respect for those you are negotiating for. Call and contact and reassure and tell us what the fuck is going on.

Photos of Mom

I often find that pictures of me are few and far between. I would love to have a few glossy photos of myself when I am looking my best, but as a mother that never seems to happen.

I am always the one taking the pictures or if and when my dear husband is taking them he seems to focus on the children or try and take weird artsy photos of me from WAY too close up. (See my photo on this page). Either that or he seems to get an odd angle of my ass or my boobs that make them look disproportionally large compared to the rest of my body (FYI my tits are in fact huge but my ass is not)

Everytime we have tried to have a "professional" photograph taken it looks horrible, although I'm not sure Sears or JCPenney counts as "professional".

I wonder how much it would cost to have a real photographer follow me around for a day or a week and take photos of me at my best. I need someone with a good eye and a knowledge of how to capture those awsome shots that catch the essence of who you are. I want someone to take pictures of me reading and baking and writing or laughing at something one of the kids has said or done. I just want a whole day of honest black and white photos of me as a mom. Sounds simple enough...... just a document of an ordinary summer day as a mom. The good the bad and the ugly.

The Excitement of June 15th

1. Payroll tax deposit are due.

2. I will bake something today... probably some banana chocolate chip muffins or some blond brownies.

3. Dance class starts this afternoon for my 4 year old.

4. I need to call State Farm to use our $500 deductible to get our $1200 Land Rover windshield replaced.

5. I have yet to write my 1000 words for the day.

6. I have a large shipment coming from Amazon today including many beautiful picture books of New Orleans and the new Live at the Fillmore Chris Isaak CD.

7. If I have time after all of the above I will return to my studio and do another ring on my rug. Yes I spent several hours in there yesterday which is why I did not post to this my awesome blog.

I have noticed recently that both my blog posts and my Facebook status updates have suffered due to my intake of mind controlling drugs. My crazy seems to have slipped away and sometimes I miss it. I was flying high before on my uncontrollable mind and now I am regrettably significantly less crazy. While on one hand I am grateful, on the other hand I miss my violent mood swings and the strange places my mind used to wander. On this side of the fence life is slightly less interesting, but much more endurable.

My Birthday

Today is my, big sigh, 35th birthday.

I am now officially in my mid-thirties, not my early-thirties and I don't like it one bit. I don't mind the age so much, but I don't particularly like the number. I would much rather by 36. It sounds so much cooler than 35.

I am contemplating what to do today. I really don't want to spend the day refereeing the children around the house, reading, doing laundry and applying band-aids. We need to get out and do something, but the most exciting thing I can think of involves shopping at Target, still not something I think is quite right for spending my 35th birthday.

Tonight we will go out to my favorite restaurant, have one of those delicious pizza-cookies with vanilla bean ice cream on top and my dear husband will present me with some carefully selected presents he chose from my Amazon shopping cart. That is a perfect way to spend the night, but what about the day?

Bowling, the movies, the park, a hike, the creek, Barnes and Noble? It's hard to step out of the box of habits and see what else this town has to offer. Maybe we will cruise on down to Sedona, throw some rocks in the creek, hit up a rock shop and call it a day. Maybe I'm making too big a deal of it and we should just stay home and go with the flow.

Birthdays can be so stressful just trying to decide what you really want to do with a day that is supposedly "yours".

New Orleans is calling my Name

I have had this wicked obsession lately with New Orleans, Anne Rice, and specifically the Garden District.
I have never been to New Orleans, but it has been calling my name for a very long time. It's one of those southern cities that I dream about like Charleston and Savannah, places where there are so many beautiful houses I'm afraid I might pass out from the overwhelming beauty.

I called both Bank of America and Citi Mortgage this morning and there is still no news. If they still can't get their crap together and we still don't have to make mortgage payments for July 1, I think I'm going to have to buy a plane ticket to New Orleans and give in to my overwhelming desire to walk through the streets of the Garden District.

I almost feel as if I am in a city I don't belong in here in Flagstaff since we have nothing that could be called decent historical housing. We have one house, the Riordan Mansion, that while interesting for the area, is nothing like the houses I grew up in in Illinois. I have such a need to walk in and see and feel old houses, that I am purposely depriving myself of one of my one true loves by living in a city that prides itself on it's western heritage and abundance of log cabins and railroad depots.

I can pore over my Dover Victorian house plan books, and check out every architectural picture book at the library, but it's not the same as walking into a huge historical home with light fixtures, door hardware, and woodwork that smells of history and well-crafted housing. Oh it's giving me the shivers just thinking about it....metal push button light switches, butler pantries, back staircases, leaded glass windows, banisters and railing that seem to go on for miles, libraries, the front hall, hexagon tile floors, and built in dressers, creaking wooden floors, worn carpets, deep verandas and sun rooms and sleeping porches.

Oh I need to see an old house before I melt into a puddle on the floor.

Summertime

It's hot! Finally!

We ran into town this morning and it was 94 degrees.

We came back home and at our house (800 feet higher than town) it was only 83.

Get this: the roofers are supposed to finish today. It's only been exactly 6 months to the day since the roof ripped off back in December. They are not the quickest roofers (all 2 of them) and the weather has not always cooperated with them, but still, damn, that is a long time for a new roof.

I've been able to wear a skirt for the past 5 days in a row and have not once needed my fleece to warm me up in the morning.

I know this post is boring and pointless, but it is warming up my typing fingers for writing later. You are my warm up audience so deal with it.

Life is pretty boring in general right now. Nothing is going on. We are still waiting for paperwork from both banks for the loan mods. It's summer and the kids are home. There is nothing much for me to do but to read and write and try and keep the kids somewhat occupied so that they don't kill each other or eat too much sugar. It's a boring life, but it's very easy and predictable. Knock on wood.

Vertigo

No, not that kind of vertigo.

I had a really nasty bout of the real thing yesterday afternoon. My eyeballs were rolling and everything. I made the mistake of trying to lie down to stop it....... don't do it. Things roll even harder when you put your head down, or sideways, or anyway but straight up and down.

I'm hoping that this is just another nasty side effeact of my Citalopram... either that or I have a nasty ear infection or a brain tumor.

It sucked big time. If you've never experienced it, think about how you feel after you get off a violent roller coaster that does a lot of spinning. Usually you're fine after a few minutes, but vertigo goes from anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Mine was the few hours variety yesterday complete with rolling eyeballs, nausea, cold sweats and heavy breathing. I haven't been that sick in a long time.

Luckily I passed out upright on the couch for about 45 minutes and woke up perfectly normal.

I was hoping to be able to cancel my med check dr. appointment this week, but after that episode yesterday I'll have to go and report my sick brain.

Damn this is difficult.

Fuck Yeah!

It has recently come to my attention that my children are avid cursers. Last night at a neighborhood bonfire I was discussing with the other mothers and I was astonished to learn that my kids are the only ones who repeatedly use the words: shit, dammit, and on rare occasions, the f-word.

Now I'll be the first to admit I swear a lot, and obviously they have picked it up from me, but I blame their father entirely. After spending his entire childhood growing up in ghettos all over LA he picked up quite a colorful vocabulary.

Me, being the demure mid-western girl that I was, had never had a potty mouth till I started hanging out with him and his other potty mouthed friends.

I honestly don't care if my children curse. It doesn't bother me one bit. They keep it inside the house and know not to speak like that around other adults. As long as they know it is not appropriate language I think they understand how and when to use the words.

A great example of this was yesterday when a friend of my 10 year old stopped over unexpectedly and before inviting his friend up to his room my son said, "Wait just a minute I have to change the song I'm listening to." He was listening to RockStar by NERD which uses the f-word prolifically. He knows and he understands. I think that means that despite my lackadaisical parenting when it comes to swearing, he is still a good kid despite his colorful vocabulary.

After the Holiday

We just spent another jam packed weekend in the OC. The beach, Hero's, Irvine Lake Park, a baby shower, the Peterson Auto Museum, and the Grove all in a day and a half. I'm exhausted and still catching up on sleep as are the children.

Today I'm a little frustrated. I know I really only write this blog for myself, but some days it's a little frustrating to see that I have only 3 regular readers, and I usually only have about 5-10 new site hits a week. I know it's better than it was a few years ago, but still sometimes it's a little disheartening. I think I'm interesting and I think more people would think so as well if only I knew how to get them here. I suck at advertising and I'm not much of a people person to just go out and shamelessly self-promote. Most of the time it doesn't bother me, but sometimes I wish I had an audience.

Today is the day I start writing for reals. I'm going for 3000 words everyday except the weekends. If that works out to too much I'll drop it to 2500, but I'm going to shoot for the stars to begin with. If I can keep up with that I should have 120,000 words by the time school starts and then I can try and edit it into something publishable. Today I also start brushing up on my magazine/freelance skills. The goal is to submit something every 3 weeks.

If I'm not going to be an architect I've got to start doing something productive before I start to lose all my abilities to converse with other adults.

TMI

Yes I know I post all the juicy details of my life here, but why? Why do I do it?

Sometimes I even ask myself that question. Who likes to talk about their mental illness? Who likes to talk about their financial status? Especially when it is in or near the toilet?

These are things that fascinate me. That's why I talk about them. If I could find other people who talk about the same things I do here, I would read that blog religiously. But not to many people want to share their dirty little secrets. And that is literally what these things are to some people.

Will I ever run for political office? Will I ever need to hide the skeletons in my closet? Probably not. So I don't see a reason to keep all this juicy info to myself.

If I can help one other person to realize that they are not alone then I'm doing some good here. A loan modification should not be embarrassing. It should be liberating. And watching me diagnose and then treat my mental illness is fascinating. We all have issues and if more of us talked about it maybe some of us wouldn't feel so alone.

I can look around in the afternoon at school pick-up and think that all the other mothers are perfect. They have good jobs, never feed their kids frozen food, read stories every night to their children, pay all their bills on time, get 8 hours of sleep a night, never fight with their husbands, and always volunteer for school activities, or I can realize that is not possible. They all have their issues too, they just keep them to themselves.

That's why I write here. It's supposed to be too much information.

Upping the Dosage

So now I'm going from 10 mg of Citalopram to 20 mg a day.

If that doesn't work I will probably have to switch to a drug that is more specialized for OCD.

I say whatever works to get the job done, lets go for it. My doctor told me this could be a long process to find just the right drug and dosage to even everything out. She did also recommend going to see another therapist that specializes in OCD.

Arghhhh. I just want my mind back. It's like fighting myself inside my brain and it literally does drive you crazy. I've never felt more mentally ill.

It's like I've gotten back half of my brain and now it's a battle to the death for the other half.

Citalopram Update

The last few days my head has been feeling fuzzy. I dont' like it at all. It's like that feeling you get behind your eyes when you eat too much sugar on an empty stomach. Everything is muddled and intense at the same time and there is a dull ache in your brain. Now that the Citalopram is in full effect I think I'm in the place where all my mental issues are supposed to be under control.

What I have noticed is that all the horrible anxious and out of control thoughts are gone. The drugs are working wonders at keeping my anxiety at bay.

The icky parts that are left seem to include the uncontrollable part of my OCD. My version of OCD was intimately tied to my anxiety. I developed the OCD to control my anxiety. I count things to distract my brain from thinking about things it doesn't like to think about. Now that my brain is not clouded by obsessive anxious thoughts there is less for it to do, so to compensate my OCD seems to be going on a counting frenzy. I can't seem to walk by anything without counting it. I can't chew without counting. I can't see a short line of text without wanting to count the letters. I count the shadows on the road as I drive. I count the power lines and the mile markers as I pass them.

I can't remember if I always did this or if it is just more noticeable now and it is bothering me. It is literally driving me crazy. I am trying to stop it and I think that might be what is giving me the headaches. I am wrestling with my brain to stop the OCD that was a coping mechanism and is now just a horrible habit.

Luckily I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning to try and figure this out with a medical professional. Hopefully she will have a different drug I can try, or something else that will still my mind long enough that the counting habit goes away. She did tell me that this particular drug does not work for everyone. Maybe it's best for depression or anxiety, but not for OCD. I just hope she doesn't tell me to continue to see a psychiatrist. Those guys are freaking expensive at 1-2 sessions a week at $80 a pop.

In other news related to my Citalopram.... my previous issue regarding a more personal issue worked itself out wonderfully this past weekend. I can check that side effect off my list.

Do I love Bank of America?

Internet is fixed. It must have been one of our four pesky cats that loosed a cable. It only took me an hour to figure it out.

Massive WTF to Bank of America today. I was making my regular Monday phone calls to get my updates for the week from Citi and B of A. I called Jowanna Hill's number first and someone else answered the phone. She said she has Jowanna's old desk and that she couldnt' tell me anything and gave my the regular customer service number to call. After about 20 minutes on hold I was told some very strange information. My new payment isn't going to be $2740/month it's going to be $1630/month. What the hell. That math just doesn't make sense and I'm pretty good at math. I asked the guy to double check a bunch of times but he kept telling me the same thing over and over again. The interest rate is 3%, yada, yada ,yada, all the terms, but I insisted that 3% of my $534,000 loan balance does not work out to $1630 including $294 in taxes and insurance. I have no idea what kind of math they are doing, but I'll wait until I see that paperwork to believe it.

I sent an e-mail to my new negotiator to see if he could clarify in the meantime.

Citi still has their heads up their asses. Every time I call they say that no one has requested that the packet get sent out to me, but now since I called they will send it out now. Ummm, that is what I was told last week. There is some crazy crap going on over there. I thought B of A was bad, but CitiMortgage has absolutely no clue. It all seems to be double talk. I've called every week for the last month and still no one has sent me the mysterious packet that will make my loan modification go through. It almost seems as if they are stalling. I am now officially supposed to get the packet 7-10 business days after may 31st. Yeah like that makes sense.

This is weird too. Every time I call in to the Mortgage Assistance department, while I am still on hold waiting to talk to someone, an agent from the collection department calls me. This has happened for the past three weeks.

Needless to say so far I love Bank of America especially if my new payment is indeed $1630. That is insane.

No Internet Connection and my Ipad won't let me write in the text area. I hope to have this issue fixed so that I can blog today!

San Francisco Peaks and Calm Mind

I did it. There is a new more season appropriate photo in my header. I will admit though that this is from last summer. There is still a little bit of snow on the tippy top and I didn't want it in my new spring photo. So there you go. Yeah!

I thought I'd write a little bit more about my new clear headed outlook on the world.

If you go back and read through some of my old stuff you will notice that my mind is muddled. I knew it was muddled and it bothered me tremendously. I could not decide what to do with the rest of my life. I have my rugs, my architecture license, my fabulous blogs and that nagging thing in the back of my head that has been telling me to write for the past few years, not to mention the other crazy notions on being a real estate agent, a librarian, or a mail carrier. What to do has been a central problem in my mind for a while. I think it is part of what made me go over the edge a couple of months ago. It was too much for me to decide.

Now that my head is more of a calm lake than a raging river I can see things much clearer. It has become painfully obvious that I need to write and only write as my main vocation. I would not die happily if I did not get out what I want to say. I have stories to tell and ideas to disseminate. If there is one thing I would want to look back on my life and say that I did it would be to publish a book. Books are my life (besides my family). There isn't a day that goes by when I don't pick up at least 5. They are my passion. And let's talk about how excited I am driving back from dropping the kids off at school or coming back from the gym when I sit in my car and dream about what I'm going to come back here and write about. It's my favorite thing to do all day. I've written lists of things that I want to write about here on this blog and on my other writing blog. It's like all the extra stuff has been wiped clear of my head and I can see the things that matter most to me. I'm not focusing on what will make me money or what will be easiest. I am focusing on what will make me the most satisfied mentally, on the thing that will challenge me the most, and what will make me feel like I have done something with my life. It's writing. It's reading and I can't fight it off any longer.

The drugs work!

2nd Loan Modification Update

So technically we have modified our first mortgage. I still have yet to hear from Jowanna at B of A. I have nothing to make a June payment (no pay stub or paperwork) so I'm just gonna wait that one out and see if we get something to make the July payment. The last time I spoke with someone over there they said that my first trial payment wasn't due until July 1. I like that plan so we'll stick to that unless I hear from Jowanna.

Now the 2nd mortgage is with CitiMortgage. I did not make the April or May payments and they have been hounding me something awful to send in a payment. I'm taking all the collection calls and usually stumping the reps with my double talk, vast knowledge of the banking system and the home loan modification system. The collection people will try and tell you that if you don't make your payments it will ruin your chances for a modification.... Lie. They will tell you that a loan modification is not an excuse to stop making payments......Lie. They will tell you that a loan modification will not take your back past due payments and roll them into a new loan......Lie. Their sole purpose is to get you to send in a payment RIGHT NOW. Ignore them. It's a second. They can't touch you and with the drop in home values most second mortgages are now unsecured loans. There is no equity or anything to back up the smaller 2nd loans. They will lose all of their money and any chance to get it back if they try and foreclose on you in a non-recourse state. Those pesky little collection agents don't know any of that crap. They will try and talk you in circles. One of them even asked my if my family and I had made plans to move yet? They've got balls, but no cock. Don't let them rattle you.

So in addition to dealing with collections department at Citi I have also been talking to the Home Retention Department. I've been getting the run around over there since March. They were telling me that they could do nothing until I had finished my loan mod with B of A. I called as soon as I got the modified numbers from Jowanna and gave all the info to Citi. When I called back a week later to check on my status they had no record of me calling in the week before. I gave all the new info again and was finally told that with the new numbers from B of A I did in fact qualify for a modification from Citi and that they would send me a packet in the mail. I'm still waiting for that packet. I have sent them nothing more than the application, no bank statements, no pay stubs, no tax returns.

I called again on Tuesday to get an update and find out where my 'packet' was. I was told it is still in transit but did I want to know my new payment amount!!!! What? Apparently the system over at Citi is a little different than at B of A, either that or the 2nd does truly just copy what ever the first mortgage holder does.

So Drumroll Please........

The final numbers are 1st Mortgage:     $2440.40
                                2nd Mortgage:      $466.29
                      Taxes and Insurance:       $297.00

For a grand total of $3203.69


Previous numbers were $3803.73, $855.22, plus taxes and insurance for a total of $4955.95

That is a savings of over $1700 a month in interest. Over the life time of the loans we will save over $300,000 in payments.

It is totally worth all the headaches and collection calls and waiting and time. Do it yourself before it's too late.

I got Nothing for you

I was going to write a post about our upcoming anniversary this weekend, but it reading it over it sucked ass.

So I deleted it and this is what you're getting instead..... nothing.

I'm not feeling it today. Nothing is tickling my brain that needs to get out.

I may head over to my other blog and go on a tirade about trying to write for magazines. I must find a way to make money sometime soon and that seems like a good way to use my dope writing skillz and my vast architectural knowledge together to make a little ca$h.

Ipad vs Kindle vs Sony Reader

While in Vegas this past weekend I was able to check out a lot of new technological advances in the e-reader realm.

Let me start by saying that I am a bibliophile. I love, love, love my books. I love the way they look on my shelves. I love the way they smell. I love the feel of all the different kinds of paper between my fingertips. I may not ever be a true convert to the e-reader technology, but since it is book related and I'm seeing it everywhere it was definitely a technology that I wanted to try out.

My experience is small, but I have a definite opinion after trying out some of the options.

The Sony Reader sucks. It's tiny. When the pages 'turn', (a better word would be 'change') it hurts my eyes. The screen morphs from grey with black text to black with gray text and then back to regular grey with black text. The screen is so tiny too that you have to change pages like every 20 seconds which means that the constant color change morphing of pages gives me a headache. I couldn't get used to it. Also the button for turning pages is on the side and I didn't like it at all. I just couldn't picture myself cozying up to this tiny metal piece of equipment.

I could say almost the same thing about the Kindle, but it is a little bit more technologically advanced and a little bit more elegant. The downloading capabilities are cool. I love my Amazon just as much as I love my books. The vast majority of my books are delivered to my door by Amazon so it would be an easy step to just let Amazon deliver all my books wirelessly to my Kindle............ except that........

I have an Ipad and it kicks ass. The main draw back of the other e-readers is the limited Internet usage. If I am going to carry something around all day it might as well be able to do other things beside just look at books, otherwise I would just carry around a book. They don't have Internet connections either.

But the Ipad is a tiny amazing thing that multitasks as much as I do. The coolest  thing about the Ipad and the IBooks is that the books actually look like books. The pages are a familiar sight. It's not gray. It's white with black lettering. It's bigger than the other e-readers and the page sizes match an actual book. The coolest thing about the Ipad book reader is that you have the illusion that you are actually turning a page. You use your finger and swipe it across the page and the page turns just like in a real book, or a very accurate simulation. There is no strange screen jump, just as smooth transition from page to page. Not only can you download apps for copyright free books, you can get books from Apple and download the Kindle app for free. This ties my into my two favorite places on earth..... the Apple store and Amazon. It's downright amazing the crap I can carry around on my Ipad. Why would I ever get something that can only read books like those other e-readers? On my Ipad I can bowl, play air hockey, read Oliver Twist or The Lost Symbol, organize my day, check my e-mail and find out the latest Celebrity news.

Now I've had my Ipad for about a month. I'm not using it to it's full potential. I've downloaded a few books and actually bought a few with the Kindle app. Reading the books is another story all together. It still feels awkward to me. It's not the same as a book. I like to stop in the middle of reading, put in my bookmark, close the book and see how far I've come. This is not possible with an e-reader. There isn't as much of a sense of progress thru a thick text. It's more like a never ending cascade of pages. I'm going to keep trying and see if it grows on me. You really can't beat the convenience of the Ipad, but it is a transition from real books. I will never be able to give up the thrill I get from waiting for the UPS man to drop my books off at the front door, cracking open the box, and fliping thru a new book. No e-reader can substitute that thrill. The books are instant, but sometimes the actual books are worth the wait of 2 day shipping

Bellagio Fountains

Okay, so there wasn't too much debauchery this weekend in Vegas. The above photos show 2 of my favorite places..... the Bellagio Fountains and the atrium at the new Palazzo hotel.

If I could spend the whole evening in a deck chair on the promenade around the Bellagion fountains I would be one happy camper. Unfortunately I would probably gets trampled by the masses of people carrying 2 foot long drinks along Las Vegas Boulevard. If you've never been to Vegas, it's not like it is in Oceans 11, it is never deserted in front of the fountains. You never have enough elbow room and you always seem to end up next to a drunk girl with her tits hanging out, or some stinky old people. Brad Pitt and George Clooney are never there. But even with the throngs of people it is still my favorite place in Vegas. If you're lucky they play a cool song like something from Frank Sinatra or Elvis, but no, not this time for us. It was a crappy show tune. I can't even remember the name of the song, but I was so disappointed. If I wanted show tunes I'd go to New York. This is Vegas. As Carl said, "I wonder if they ever do any Black Sabbath?"

So we're back. I only bought 1 pair of shoes and nothing else. I was impressed. I spend some time at Bauman's rare books, ogled the Versace and Gucci, and Kate Spade windows, and wished for the day that I could drop $750 on a pair of shoes or $4000 on a bag.

Now back to real life. This is my last full day to myself until school starts again next fall. I need to find a way to get the best out of it, so I probably shouldn't be sitting in my office all day.

Vegas Baby, Vegas

So yes, again we are travelling to Las Vegas this weekend. For people who don't gamble we sure go there a lot. It's fun. There's a lot to look at. I love the faux architecture. I love to people watch. I love the food. I love the window shopping. I love to get dressed up and walk around. It's kind of like an old school promenade. It's like the Bath of the 21st century.

I'm going to eat all kinds of sugar but try and not have any soda. It's all about cakes and pies and donuts this weekend with maybe a little ice cream thrown in as well. Thank god for Spanxs!

I will try and post a blog post tomorrow, but hopefully we will leave early and I'll run out of time. That will put me one blog post behind my original goal, but I think I'm going to keep blogging daily. I've always got something to whine about and I like to daily writing. I need to get in that habit.

I am however going to go back to writing on my second blog again, Reading and Writing at 7000'. I gave it up for a while, but rather than bore some of you with my extensive reading lists, and mindless literary tirades I will post them over there instead of here. Get the link from my profile page because I'm too lazy to post it in here.

Till tomorrow, or till Monday. I'll bring back some pictures of all our Vegas debauchery.

I won't do that again

That just seriously drained my brain. I am not political. I would much rather argue about whether Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are really dating then talk about anything that is on the real news.

I'm just not that person. That must have just been a brain fart. I will not do that again. That just seems like it will set me up to get a lot of crazies posting back about how I don't know shit about the situation. Well they would be right. I have an opinion, but it is no more right or wrong than anyone else's opinion, but I'm not going to argue about it. What is your opinion is yours, and mine is mine. I won't try and change yours and I'll keep mine. End of story.

Whew. Now tomorrow I'll get back to posting about my rad trip to Vegas this weekend to celebrate my being a mother for ten years to a cool little kid.

My Take on Arizona Immigration Issues

What to write about today? I've been very good about posting every day, but today I've got nothing that is itching my brain that needs to get out.

I could write about the Arizona Immigration thing, but I'm not that political, I don't know all the facts, and I don't see what is bad about taking people who are here illegally out of the country. We're not shipping them off to concentration camps to kill them as some people are comparing the 'asking for papers' to Hitler. We are simply sending them back to their country. They can come back, just come back legally. You can't really compare it to the pilgrims and indians either. This isn't the sixteenth century. It's the twenty-first. Big difference. We all have our own opinions about what is right and wrong. I personally don't mind if there are people here illegally as long as they aren't causing trouble. But I would think that the people coming here illegally, since they are doing it illegally, might have no issues about doing other things that are illegal as well. Just my opinion. I also think most cops should be too busy to ask every brown person for their papers.

We are pretty isolated from these problems up here in Flagstaff, but as I understand it, in Phoenix and Tuscon, there are lot of issues with school over-crowding and second language programs that are made worse by an influx of illegals. Whether the solution is sending them all back to Mexico, I don't know.

I think I understand the bigger issue is about our rights as Americans and getting asked to prove that we are really Americans, but isn't is the same as when you get pulled over and get asked for your driver's license and proof of insurance. Cops are allowed to ask questions. That is kind of their job, and then they enforce the law. This just seems like the same thing to me.

Why does it smell like Band-Aids in my office?

I"m still meaning to get a new photo for the head of this blog, but damn those 40 mph winds. I couldn't even go out on the back deck if I wanted to. There is dust, birds, trash (albeit clean trash since it's recycle day) blowing around, and I'm serious when I say that the wind chill is around 30 degrees. I'm not going out there until it's sunny, 75, and the wind is under 5 mph. The windows are rattling and moaning, the chimney is howling, and there is a horrible negative pressure in the house that is popping my eardrums. Yes it's that windy. Who knew mountains are windy? Obviously not me.

So I'm still loving my new drug altered brain. I'm serious about the writing thing again and now I honestly believe that I can do it. My idea is still fabulous even though I have PMS. It still seems compeltely possible for me to get a book published. I know I've said this before, but now it seems like something I can achieve easily. I'm not talking myself out of it anymore. If I had to sum up the benefits of taking an anti-anxiety drug.... I would say that my brain doesn't talk back to me anymore. It was an unruly 14 year old girl that bitched at everything that I wanted to do. "Are you crazy?" "You are not serious are you?" "You are so not cool enough for that." And now it's a beautiful 3 year old who never throws tantrums and would do anything to make me happy...... "We're gonna do what?" "Yea! I'm so excited." "Is there going to be ice cream?"

I absolutley love it. Why does it smell like band-aids in my office? I have it all planned out. I've got a research schedule and book reading list for the rest of this month, as well as character sketches to work on. Then next month I start writing. I've already written the first three chapters. I need to plot out the rest of the book and I am good to go. I will write all summer and then edit and rewrite in the fall when the kids go back to school.

Since we are still low on funds my rugs will move to the back burner. Once I finish the purple one in the studio I'm going to take it around to some local consignment galleries here and in Sedona and see what happens. If and when it sells, I'll get started on a new one and keep going until I have enough funds to launch bigger. But in the meantime I am going to focus on writing and just work on the rugs as a creative outlet.

I've got a plan! Life is good and it still smells like Band-Aids.

Another Vegas Weekend

I'm not going to write a crap load today. I'm working. I'm PMSing and it is perfectly under control. Other than the kids being especially annoying I am totally in control, but craving chocolate by the mouthfuls. It's gonna be a good week and then we head to Vegas for the weekend.

Who takes a 10 yr old to Vegas for his birthday? We do, and it's going to kick ass. Gun ranges, go carts, and Circus Circus. I know. How white trash can we get? I'm hoping to skip most of those activities and head to the rare book store at the Palazzo and shop at Caesars.

Till tomorrow.

Modification Update Again

So Jowanna Hilll seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth again. That and her email address is coming back as undeliverable. WTF. I was going to go back and see what my good friend Louis had to say about this, but before I did that I ran across an e-mail he had sent me which listed the phone numbers of other negotiators who work with Jowanna who I should contact in case I can't get a hold of Jowanna. All of their phone numbers were out of service. Double WTF. So I called Louis and left a message. Still no response from him, but I am currently on hold trying to get some info from a generic B of A representative.

This all started because I got 2 bills from B of A yesterday saying that I was late on my May payment and that I either needed to pay an extra $515/ month into my escrow account in addition to my mortgage payment or that I could make a one time $2040 payment to catch up on my delinquent escrow.

This was baffling since Jowanna told me not to make an April or May payment.

Okay, so the official word from B of A is that I should just keep waiting for Jowanna. She does still work there. She is still assigned to my file. I should only do as Jowanna says. I was told that if I do not hear back from her or get a statement in the mail for the June 1 payment then I should call back for further instructions.

This gets complicated some times. All of the info that is sent to me in the mail contradicts the info that Jowanna and the bank tells me. Always call. Things will hopefully all work themselves out in the end.

My Happiness Project

So I finished The Happiness Project yesterday and overall I loved it. The thing that jumped out at me the most as far as happiness resolutions go was.......Be Gretchen, or to phrase it for me....... Be Emily.

I tried to not buy books for a week, but is that any way to make me happy? Hell no. It's who I am. I buy arm loads of books. Do I need to cut back? Definitely, but there is no way I can go cold turkey. Me not buying books is like me not drinking chocolate milk. It's in my DNA. I have to be me and that includes buying books and drinking chocolate milk.

It is an interesting idea to think about who I really am and just try and be that person. It's harder than you might think. There are so many ways that we all try to be things that we are not. In retrospect, I was trying to convince myself that I didn't need help with my anxiety, but I have a problem and it's much easier to admit that that is who I am then to try and deny it and suffer in silence.

I might want to be a real estate agent or a veternarian, but deep down that is not who I am. Try it. Think about who you want to be and try to be versus who you really are. It's challenging, but then it all seems much clearer and you can let some things go.

Anyway, I'm doing pretty well on my whole no sugar diet. It has morphed into not much sugar. I did take the kids out for ice cream yesterday and I got a cone too. I tried to stave off my Oreo craving by having some Cookies-n-Cream. It's not the same.  So I'm going to have sugar, but not like I used to. I still drink my chocolate milk, but I'm trying not to do it every day. I'm still eating cookies, but only once every few days. It seems to be working.
I realized after about a week of no sugar and not much white flour that I was going to starve if I continued to eat that way. So I am eating better, but still having normal food. Heck I've already lost 4 pounds just majorly cutting back on the sugar snacks.

And I decided as far as my books go, that I will try and just buy 2 books a week. That seems pretty reasonable. Technically 2 a week, or 104 a year is about all I can actually read in that time frame. We'll see how that goes. Today I bought 6 books, yesterday 2, and the day before 10, not including the 4 that were delivered from Amazon. It really is too much. I've run out of shelf space, again.

Citalopram and Me

I seriously need to get a new picute of the mountain for my header now that almost all of the snow has melted.

Now let's talk about drugs.

For the past 3 weeks I've been taking 10MG of Citalopram every day. It is usually used to treat anxiety as well as depression. I think it's a close cousin of Zoloft, but less expensive since it is offered in a generic. Yea for $3 prescriptions at Target.

Now I was told by my doctor that it can take 6-8 week for the drug to take full effect, but I have noticed a difference right away.

I used to get so aggitated driving anywhere and for the past week or so either the number of stupid drivers on the road has dramatically decreased, or they just aren't bothering me anymore.

I used to get home from the grocery store or home from picking up the kids in the afternoon and feel utterly paralized when faced with what to do first.... should I wash my hands first, should I go pee first, should I take care of the kids first, should I put the eggs in the refridgerator first, should I turn the heat on first. This was so hard for me it mentally hurt. Now when I get home that struggle in my head is completely gone. It's obvious what I need to do and I'm not going to wait for my bladder to explode while I do other things I think need to be done first.

I used to aggonize about going to bed at night. Carl would be asleep and it would be just me, my thoughts, and the TV. I had to wait until I was fully asleep before I turned off the TV, or just put the thing on sleep timer. I was scared to death to try and fall asleep without something to distract me. Now I can turn it off when my eyes are getting heavy and fall right asleep thinking pleasant thoughts instead of, "What if the earth loses gravity tonight?" thoughts.

I used to have a hard time during the day (Mon and Wed) when I am home alone. I was starting to shop too much becuase I didn't want to be home alone with my thoughts. It was keeping me from getting things done that needed to be done. I was obsessivly checking Perez and Facebook, now I can go all morning/afternoon without checking and can wait until after dinner to check them. It was keeping me from blogging. Writing is one of the scarriest things you can do when you are afraid of your own mind. Hopefully now that my mind and I are making friends, we can start to get some more writing done.

Now this a big one and somewhat sensitive....... the drugs seem to be making it harder for me to reach an orgasm. WHAT?? Did I just say that? Yes I did. I don't ordinarily indulge in too much sexy talk anywhere. It's one of those subjects that is just between me and my husband, but I thought that this was important enough to note. What if someonne Googles Citalopram looking for it's side effects, sees my glowing review of  the drug and thinks, "Wow this is the drug for me!", without knowing that is does have some less than stellar side effects.  Now I'm not saying it's impossible to have an orgasm, but just that I've tried all my usual tricks and gotten nothing so far. I'll definitely be trying harder to see if it's an all or nothing kind of thing, or if I've just got to try harder to get there.  So far it doesn't bother me too much. Months from now if I am still unsuccessful I'll want to switch drugs, but for now it almost seems like a worthy sacrifice for my sanity.

Life seems a hell of a lot less scary than it was last month. My hormones will be ramping up this week so this will be the real test of the drug. Can I go through PMS and not freak out as usual? This will be the weekend to find out. I'm starting to get excited about projects and the summer and writing and blogging and my rugs. This is the me that I have been missing. Writing seems easier when my brain is not fighting with my hands.

May Loan Modification Update

I bought some books. Too many books. I made the mistake of going to the library, coming home with a stack of amazing books, and then jsut for fun looking up the books on Amazon and Abe books. I found 7 of the books that I had checked out for only $1-$3! I had to buy them. It takes the stress off of having to read them all before they are due back at the library. How can I turn down an amazing book for only $1 (plus S&H). So I will not make that resolution to not buy books for 2 weeks. I can't do it. I made it through the weekend only.

Loan update. I still haven't heard back from Jowanna on adding the escrow account. I'm wondering if we are actually going to have to make our June 1 payment. It's been nice to not have the payment for the past 2 weeks. We'll see what she comes back with. She may not be the most prompt in returning my calls, but I now know that she is working on my stuff even when she isn't calling me every day.

CitiMortgage now is becoming a thorn in my side. I started the paperwork with them as soon as Jowanna got back to me on the terms of our modification. I let them know what the terms are and was told that they could do nothing until my paperwork with B of A was finished. Finished? Final paperwork and new signed mortage papers could take up to a year to get. It seems a little strange that they would wait that long to start their 8 month process for modification. I would understand if they wanted to wait until the 3 month trial perios was over, but final paperwork seems a little strange.

We haven't paid the CitiMortgage 2nd mortgage since March 1. I am officially on the shit list for Citi. I got a very confrontational phone call from one of their people last night. He was just plain rude and told me that he couldn't believe that I was so nonchalant about missing my mortgage payments. I clarified that it was just my 2nd mortgage I was missing, that I was aware of the credit rammafications, that I had every intention of paying back all the money that I owe Citi plus any late fees, that I was in the process of going thru the loan modification process and that as soon as my payment was modified I would return to making my payments. He was livid. After a while, after I had proved to him that I was an intelligent well informed consumer, he calmed down. He had been yelling at me about how I needed to be proactive in the modification process, and that the modification program was not a substitute for making payments. He didn't scare me one bit and I'll tell you why.....

Citi is in the second position to be paid after Bank of America. I currently owe $590,000 on a house that Zillow lists as worth about $475,000. If Citi was to try and go ahead and put the house in forclosure  they would get nothing because B of A would get paid first. Forclosure would make them lose the $70,000 I owe them. If on the other hand they harass me for payments while I am trying to go thru the modification process and wait, they will get all of their money back, minus a little bit on the lower interest rate. It is in their best interest to wait. I'll put up with the phone calls and continue to be nonchalant about the whole thing because I know what is going on.

It's frustrating, but these new drugs are like little miracle pills for me. Instead of getting pissed off and hanging up or yelling at these customer service people like I usually do,I have been calm and accomodating. It works wonders.

More on my happy pills tomorrow and the sacrifices I am willing to make to be happy and normal.

Daily Blog Posting

Another new resolution I will try for the next 2 weeks....... Daily Blog Posting. I used to do 3 times a week and now I'm lucky if I get more than 1 a week, so to kick things off right and get things going in the right direction I'm going to try and write something interesting each and every day (excluding the weekends of course).

So far I made it through the weekend without buying any books. I am however going to the library today. It's who I am. I need the constant flux of new information or else my brain will shrivel up and die.

The lastest topic for me to research is historic house preservation and archaeology. I think I just may have found a way to mesh my lust for houses with my need to write. It's a little top secret so far, but I think I may just start moving ahead on writing that book I always talk about. I even have the first few chapters written and who the hell knows it could be a fabulous series of books, but for now I am going to research my ass off. I want to do this right. It's such a good idea I think I might even be able to sell a fiction book series on just a proposal and a couple of chapters. I know. I must be high. I can dream though. But really the idea is THAT fabulous. I know I would want to read the whole series and isn't that what it's really about..... write a book that you yourself would actually want to read.

Other than those two fabulous things this week, I am also reading The Happiness Project. I wasn't too sure of it at first. It's another writer from New York with a year long project that could very well change her life. I've read a lot of them, but this one is kind of cool. So far it blends all of the various self-help theories into one year long manifesto on how to change your life. Everyone's Happiness Project can be different depending on what you want to work on, but the author really tells all kinds of fabulous intimite details of her life while she works on what, for her, will be HER Happiness Project. I love all the juicy details.

Day 1 of two week continuous blog posting complete. Till tomorrow.

The Fight Against Oreo's

Some days this whole no/less sugar thing is a real bitch.

It's Friday afternoon. I should be able to throw down a few Oreo's right? The temptation is there. I know I will feel like crap afterward, but this taste is what it getting me. I want that creamy chocolately goodness in my mouth. Talking about it isn't making it any better.

Usually when I get this sugar craving I pop a couple of my gummy vitamins. I figure the vitamin part counteracts the high fructose corn syrup of the gummyness. It keeps me from eating those Oreos or the pink and white sprinkled circus cookies. Damn! Why do I even have that crap in my house?

The sacrifice is obviously worth the fight. I'm skinnier. I feel better and I must even say that I am still wearing my tight Lucky jeans even though I am home for the day and have every reason to put on my sweats and call it a day. The pants feel fine and my head feels like a normal person.

My next task is to not buy any books for 2 weeks. Recently my book addiction has been kicked into high gear with the influx of extra roof insurance funds. I've been on a 10 books a week kick which I know I need to cut back on. I've run out of shelf space and my to be read pile is rubbing elbows with me now on my desk while I type. I'm gonna go cold turkey until we get back from Vegas in 2 weeks after my oldest son's birthday. I'm going to try and go that long without buying any new books or even checking out a pile from the library and just see what happens. It's kind of scary, but it's a small goal I think I can easily conquer. Buying books is an obsessive thing for me and I'm trying to stop being obsessive.

No Books and No Oreos. What the hell am I thinking?

Am I Normal?

Starting to write again is the first thing on my list of To Do's now that I'm starting to regain my saneness. The first question that pops into my head is whether or not I'm a better writer all crazied up or with all of my senses? I've written all my life and I would argue that I've been varrying shades of crazy my whole life. Are the two related? Do I write more or less when I'm grounded or when I'm spinning off of walls inside my head?

It seems like I only write about being crazy when I'm decidedly not crazy. When I'm in the midst of a anxiety laden hormone induced craze I seldom if ever regocnize it. Things so normal and get so out of control. Did that person just cut me off? What was she insinuating by that comment? How many ceiling tiles are in this room? Have I thoroughally researched which hotels to stay at in the Lake Como area of Italy for when I take a trip there... someday? How many ceiling tiles were there? I better count again.
That is/was my normal brain function. At the time though it doesn't seem strange. It seems like a normal day in my head.

Luckily for me I started charting my crazy. I was marking the days that seemed to send me over the edge. There was a distinct pattern. I noticed that things were not getting better permanently. They would just recede for a week or two and there flare up worse than before until I cracked and decided I HAD to see a doctor to get my head back on straight.

It's frustrating to realize that you're crazy, have been crazy, and will probably always be a little bit crazy. I can change my diet, I can take pills, but it will always be there in the background waiting for me to slip.

It's such a different view out of this window.

There are things that I want to do that I cannot do when I am trying to fight my mind. It had become such a battle and now it is a habit to not get things done. As the drugs sink deeper and deeper into my head I will gradually get all my abilities back and be able to take over the world in a Martha Stewart like fashion, or maybe more like Jen Lancaster or Heather Armstrong.

Step one is take the drugs.
Step two is write more.
Step three is shop less.
Step four is sell some rugs.

The world is my oyster.

Psychadelic Drugs

I think I am finally beginning to feel the effects of my mood altering drugs. It's been almost two weeks and I feel a lot more EVEN. That's the best word I can think of to describe this feeling. I can think my scary thoughts and they just slip right on by instead of my mind seizing on them and devouring them until I am sitting in a corner trying to count the floor tiles repeatedly.

I can sit at my computer and actually get stuff done without getting so easily distracted by Perez or Ancestry.com or just spending worthless hours surfing Amazon for the next book that I MUST read.

Now this could just be the regular even keel I float on these two weeks when my hormones are pretty level.
Next week will be the real test. That's the week that I start to slip into PMS, slowly but surely starting me on an internal rage that lasts usually 2 weeks. If I still feel good by next Friday then the drugs are working.

As far as side effects go, I've been a little nauseous and had weird splitting flashes of pain in weird spots in my head. Of course those could be related to the significant absence of sugar in my diet as well. Those two don't bother me so much as the much more often complained about side effects of weight gain and certain frustrating sexual side effects. Time will tell on those two.

Hopefully I will also be able to write here more often and find some nice range in between totally stark raving mad and typical boring drugged housewife.

Sugar Free Me

While I would never say I was overweight, I would say that my ideal weight is at 130 and not where I usuallly hover between 135-138. It's not enough of a difference for me to really make the effort to eat less. I love my curves and I am probably just as afraid of being too thin as I am of being too fat. I go to the gym at least 3 times a week. I'm fit and healthy so the extra 5 lbs never bothered me. I would always think to myself that I should really cut out the Oreos, candy, cookies, ice cream, and marshmallows, but I never was really motivated to do it for the weight.

On the other hand, now that I know all that sugar was seriously effing with my head it's been a sinch to cut it out.

My point here is that the weight was not a motivating factor, but the crazy cure motivation is pure gold. I am (was)  seriously sick in the head and a good deal of that seems to have been caused by a serious overdose on Easter candy and my addiction to marshmallows and M&M's. I never would have guessed that, but after a mostly sugar free week, I feel a million times better.

Am I reading the wrong magazines? Have I been missing something all these years? Why does the media seem to focus on cutting out sugar to lose weight and not focus on the mood altering affects. Sugar is a drug and for people like me that are very sensitive to alterations in mood it's even a very addcitive drug. Now I'm not advocating cutting it out altogether. I'm still gonna have ice cream once a week and I'm gonna still have a cookie now and again, but never again will the above listed items be a part of my daily food intake. I feel like an idiot for never noticing the effects of sugar on my mood. HELLO! It's like a light has been turned on in my brain and it seems so simple, but no for the past 3 years I've been shoveling in sugar like it was going out of style.

It's hard some days to not reach into the Oreo bag like I usually do after lunch, but if I think it will help me be a normal person again then I'm all for having some Wheat Thins instead, and as a wonderful side effect I might finally be able to stay at 130! Which if you think about it is really more like 125 since 5 lbs is taken up by my 34DDD's.

Mega April Update

Sometimes life gets in the way of internetting.

First off Rupert died last Wednesday. We brought him home and he still wouldn't eat. I took him back to the vet and the doctor said there wasn't much he could do for him short of months of $$$$ hospitalization and even then he wouldn't be the same cat. He had withered away to almost nothing, but I didn't have the heart to be the one that made the euthanization decision. I left it to Carl. He is an amazing man. He even held Rupert while he fell asleep. It's a lot quiter around here without him and I get a little teary when I type his name into our computer as the security password. (I probably shouldn't have broadcast that).

Birthdays Birthdays and Easter. That always seems to get in the way of me sitting down and writing like I really want to. Also it's field trip season here in Flagstaff which is such a time suck.

Maybe I should just list all my crazy update points.

1. Bought my almost 10 yr old a phone. I said I never would, but he is getting hard to keep tabs on.

2. Bought my dear husband a radio for his delivery truck. He is so happy. It's the best birthday present I've gotten him in a while.

3. Still waiting to hear back from Jowanna at B/A. The numbers she quoted me did not include taxes and insurance. I sent her back to set up an escrow account and see if she could include our current taxes due.

4. I'll probably save this for another longer post, but I had a major meltdown on Sunday/Monday. After seeing 2 doctors this week we have come to the conclusion that I suffer from PMDD, which while laughable in pharmaceutical commercials, can actually be a real thing if you already have diagnosed OCD and anxiety disorders. My hormones are fluctuating on 2 week cycles that are jacking up my ability to control my regular crazy with my PMS crazy.

5. I will now be taking an anti anxiety medication to level my moods and also will be cutting back on all refined sugars and flours (simple carbohydrates). Needless to say these two items are found in almost all of my favorite foods. This will be a struggle, but if it means no meds eventually, then I'll cut out my cookies and ice cream and french bread with butter. I'll limit them to only being consumed on Saturdays. I've got to have cookies and donuts and ice cream and pancakes at least once a week.

That's it, but it seems like a lot. I'm going to start this year over again starting May 1. I've been all kinds of crazy this year. I've been letting my anxiety get the best of me and it has been keeping me from doing the things I really want to do with my life. Money is not holding me back. I am holding me back. I can do anything. I have done anything and everything already, I just need to get back to being that person again. I hate taking pills, but if thats what it takes now, then I will. I can only fight my crazy by myself for so long. I'm strong, but I'm not invincible. The stress of not working and the loan mod have taken their toll and I need a life preserver to pull me back onto the boat. I know that's a corny metaphor, but hey it makes sense here.

Carl and I have been saying this a lot this year, 2010 will be a year of change. We are seeing it everyday. We may not lose our house. I'm not going to lose my mind, but things are going to change and for the better this year.

On a lighter note..... I think I might have to start watching Glee. I'm not a big fan of theater production and that type of song and dance, but when I saw this video http://perezhilton.com/2010-04-14-in-case-you-missed-it-211 it made me want to start watching the show. That and I was thinking I would pay someone a lot of money to produce a video of me recreating a Madonna video. That sounds like a great idea to me. Jane Lynch looks fantastic. How did they make her look so good. She sounded amazing too. I want that!