Someone please explain this.

Now that my ex has coughed up this month’s child support (a week late), I feel guilty.  What the hell is that about? It’s not like I’m going to take the money and go to Vegas with it. It’s going to go toward things like the heating bill, the electric bill, and groceries. Do you know how much teenagers eat? Even the little tiny ones like Little Chick eat an astounding amount of food.

And it isn’t like I’m sitting around watching the soaps all day. I still work 60 hour weeks, even if I do have a flexible schedule.

I guess enough years of being told you’re a miserable failure gets that guilt hardwired in. I gotta work on the guilt thing. Maybe I should take some confidence lessons from these guys.

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14 Seconds of Awesome, Plus: I Got a Hat.

I don’t have the foggiest idea what it’s about, but I know AWESOME when I see it.

Oh, and I got a hat.

Of course, as soon as my daughter sees it, she’ll snatch it and I’ll never see it again, so I thought I better take a picture during the few hours before that happens. It’s knit from black angora yarn and is sooooooooooo soft.

This is the level of photography I can be bothered with today. Somewhere along the line I lost my passion for taking pictures. But that’s OK because I’m passionate about other things now. And my camera will still be there tomorrow in case the muse comes back. Oh, and remind me to write the post about two Asian women and Kate Winslet.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

An author I admire once said that getting published is exciting, but you’re still just as mentally ill as you were before, and I’ve found that to be true on the small scale that I’ve managed to publish stuff. And I just now realized that it holds true when you make your very first sale on Etsy. That’s right: I sold the cashmere quilt! For $100! Plus shipping! Someone in Key West, of all places, bought it.

So now I’m going to go around bracing myself for the buyer to open it, hate it, and send it back demanding a refund and saying that if I ever operate my sewing machine again, he’ll have his people find me and break my kneecaps. It’s one of my many talents: being neurotic in any situation, no matter how fortunate.

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My cat’s getting spayed today

I did take the full-time writing job with the agency in Israel, and I’ve officially broken up with all my other clients, and they’ve been very gracious about it. So I’m now in the process of closing out those projects by the end of the month.

The other big news besides that and the cat getting spayed is that I quit my weekend job!!!! I’ve been wanting to quit that job since I started doing it 2 1/2 years ago, and you can’t believe how happy I am about it. I’m as giddy as a whelk, and it means that Maury and I are free to travel now if we want to (and can afford it), since I can do my regular work wherever I can get an internet connection.

I wish I could have birthday cake today, but I really can’t have more than a mouthful without raising my blood glucose too much, so I’m not going to have one in order to keep the temptation level down. But here’s a picture of my birthday diet soda (from fountain that I’m certain they lace with crack. You can’t believe how juiced I get on this store’s diet Coke.)

OK, back to work. I have to review two movies that haven’t come out yet and that I know nothing about.

Are dogs and cats psychic?

I used to have a cat named Snowflake. He was solid white with blue eyes, and he was deaf. He could also sense when I was about to get sick. I used to have auto-immune related arthritis and every time Snowflake would insist on sitting on my lap no matter what I was doing, my arthritis would get really bad within a couple of days.

Maury and I delivered papers today, and since he and I both recently got paid, we “celebrated” by having fast food (hey, we’re still on a pretty tight budget). I will admit to pigging out, but  not with sugary stuff. I realize that french fries are high carb, but as far as plain old sugars go … I assume they’re not as bad as doughnuts and ice cream and all those other things I hated to give up.

OK, so we get home and I’ve got a headache, and I’m trying to get some work done that I’d promised someone, and my oldest dog, Nikita, who’s 14, insisted on repeatedly climbing over the gate that separates the part of the house the dogs aren’t allowed in. I mean she would. not. stop. I tried smacking the palm of my hand with a rolled newspaper because she’s terrified of loud noises, but she kept doing it.

Then I went to do some laundry, which is in the part of the house where she’s allowed, and she followed me in there and stood touching the fronts of my legs the whole time. So I got my computer and looked up “psychic dogs” and found out there are dogs who can tell when their human has dangerously high blood sugar.

I checked mine, and it was the second or third highest it’s ever been. No wonder I felt like crap. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I don’t know. That was totally out of character for her. Have any of you ever had a psychic pet experience?

Here we go again.

I haven’t been around much in the last few days for several reasons. Perhaps the main one is that I’m once again locked in a battle with my ex-husband over where our daughter lives. She’s been wanting to move back with me for over a year now. After she was hospitalized, we all hoped that she would be better and maybe be happier at her dad’s. But she grows more unhappy by the day.

I think the reason is simple: she’s lonely. She rattles around in that big house without her dad there most of the time, without a pet, without being allowed to have people over (which I totally understand. I wouldn’t want her having kids over here if I wasn’t here.) Her father is has a high-level engineering job that demands more than a 40 hour work week, plus he belongs to two jazz combos and is in two plays. He’s pretty much never home.

For awhile he was more generous about letting her come over here, but in the past couple of weeks, he’s gone back to his hard-assed controlling ways. She could not have made it clearer to everyone: me, my parents, her dad, her grandparents, her aunt and uncle, and pretty much every medical professional she met while she was in the hospital, that she wants to live with me. She loves her dad, but she wants to be with me. Bottom line.

Her unhappiness has been so great lately that it’s crossed my mind a couple of times that maybe it isn’t a lawyer I need, but maybe the Department of Children’s Services. Then again, with a 16-year-old, I don’t know what would constitute neglect.

Maury and I went to my lawyer’s yesterday, and my ex is going to be served with papers, if they can ever find him. If they have to, they can serve him at work, which I think would be one of the most satisfying cases of schadenfreude in history.

So, it’s all about to hit the fan once again. While I don’t think he’ll harass me as much as he used to since Maury’s around, he’ll start back in on the fact that I’m “crazy” and a terrible mother. Sometimes I think he would rather see her homeless and living on the streets than with me. I never knew one person could contain as much hate and rage as he does toward me. It’s a little scary, but I don’t feel like I have any choice. I love her so much. Last Sunday when I took her back to her dad’s house, I cried on the way home thinking about her being lonely in that house not knowing when her dad would deign to come back.

It’s all very stressful. I woke up today with a nasty headache and sore throat. I could probably use a nap. And some good vibes.

Oh, if only I had the gates of hell handy so I could cool down

It’s typical August right now where I live, which means don’t go outside and pray the central air conditioning system holds up. And drink lots of iced tea.

My son got back from a week in West Virginia where his stepbrother got married. They made him wear a tux and everything. I hope someone sends me a picture. To my son, “formal” means you wear socks with your sandals. I was glad to have him back home, and glad that he got to spend a week with the other side of the family.

I tried moving the box o’kittens into the dining room, but Munchy immediately started moving them back to the closet. Oh, well.

Work next week looks doable, but heavy. I have a bunch of stuff about Switzerland to write for a travel website, and some marketing articles for my client in Israel who is rather picky and high strung, but who pays me every week.

I have a couple of fashion blog posts, one of which my cat Coconut helped me write. Here’s an excerpt:

“Fashion can be purchased easily, but style cannot. Style is eternal and does not depend on income, age, or physical assets. Here are some tips on looking great every day, because style never takes a day off.poiiiik”

Weird thing is, I’m the one who wrote “poiiiik.” Coconut wrote the rest.

My current to-do list for my London client goes something like this:

1. Write parts 1, and 2 about international roaming charges.

2. Write part 3 about international SIM cards

3. Learn differences between international and non-international SIM cards.

4. Find out what the hell a SIM card is.

Maury and I have been talking about moving to the pacific northwest after my daughter starts college year after next. I wasn’t sure how my son would take it, but now that he knows it’s a possibility, he has told me that he wants this house when we leave.

Which, I must admit would make life easier on several counts: we could leave some of the menagerie here, he could rent or buy the from us, insulating us from what could still be a crappy real estate market in 2011, and I know that he’s cool with my living 3,000 miles away. You know, in fact, he seemed rather happy about the idea of my living 3,000 miles away. Little ingrate.

Stay cool, and send any northerly breezes in my direction, please. And remember:

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*facepalm*

Often, my work requires me to rewrite things that have been written by people for whom English is not their first (or second or third) language. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing English. But it seems to me that if you don’t know English, you shouldn’t try to write in English with the aid of an Internet translator.

Just today, here are some of the phrases I’ve had to correct:

“jogger up” (runner up)

“emperor sized bed” (king sized bed)

“hardback your tour” (book your tour)

“clout dab in the middle” (smack dab in the middle)

“high aspect suntan security” (high SPF sunblock)

Oh, well, at least it’s slightly entertaining.

In other news, I went into my usual “I must have just been imagining it all along” state of denial that I go into whenever I feel better after being sick. The latest incarnation was thinking that last week’s high and low blood sugar readings were just a fluke and enjoying a breakfast of homemade waffles and syrup. Bad idea. Now my blood sugar is high and I’m wondering how fast I need to type for it to count as “exercise” and get me some insulin going.

However, I did make some homemade no-sugar limeade yesterday that’s awesome. One of the stores had limes 10 for $1, so I still have enough to make another pitcher when this one runs out.

Remember, my little chicken nuggets: It’s summertime (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere), so don’t forget your High Aspect Suntan Security. Or I’ll slap you clout dab in the middle of your face.

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