Goodness of Vacations Can Be Measured in Just How Many Waffle House Stops You Make

For the record, I did 3 in 3 days.

My Life is a Table

Every now and then, I get the urge to move. Move myself, move my body, move my life.

And since I know that it's not exactly practical to pick up and start a new life in Wisconsin, I respond to that urge in any number of ways. I buy a new outfit I don't need. I get a tattoo. I clean my office. I exercise. Occasionally, I move my apartment around, though there's barely room for the small amount of crap I have to be reconfigured in new and interesting ways.

Last night was one of those nights.

It started with a TV that I am "TV-sitting" more or less indefinitely from work. It's a huge TV and comes with a DVD player. I have at home already a very tiny TV that everyone I know laughs at, but that I think is helping me to develop keener eyesight as I squint to make out what those crazy kids from "Hell's Kitchen" are doing on a screen half the size of a postage stamp.

So I moved the tiny TV to my bedroom and put the massive one in the living room where I could instantly begin worrying about it falling over and crushing Baby Girl to death in a tragically ironic meeting of materialism and mass media and gravity.

But I digress.

The point is that this new monster in my living room made me feel antsy. Unsettled. The way I've felt in most aspects of my life, lately, now that I think about it.

And having no money for a new tattoo or an idea of what to permanently stamp myself with this time, I decided to move furniture. Not even a lot of furniture - just one piece, in fact. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but it symbolizes a lot, I think.

I pushed my dining room table up against my kitchen wall so that there's only room for 3 seats at it. I set it up as a desk. I put my little book-a-day calendar on it. I put my French workbook and flashcards on it. I put my little "pen pot" on it. I put my iPod dock on it to await a new baby iPod that I'm hoping the iPod stork will bring some day. I put a space on it for the new baby laptop I'm hoping the laptop stork will bring some day. I put my work in progress on it: articles I want to write, articles I want to read, books I need to do my research on. I put my bills to be paid on it.

If you're thinking that this maybe leaves no room to eat on, you're absolutely correct.

This slight change in the Space That Is Dirty Girl says these things:
1. Baby Girl and I are just going to eat at the coffee table from now on, since she loves eating there anyway (and I don't turn on the TV - I think she just likes her little chair that is just her size at the low table, and I like sitting on the floor, and who gives a fuck where we eat, anyway? She still gets her veggies).
2. I never have anyone over for dinner. I love to cook and I love to cook for people, but I just don't currently have the kinds of relationships with other adults that allow me to make dinner for them and use my matchy-matchy placemats, as much as I'd like to.
3. I have designated a space for me to exist in outside of my relationship to my child or to the TV or my bed (though I wouldn't mind fucking on my newly-defined desk).

It already works great, by the way - last night, I balanced my checkbook and drank a martini on it.

It's Not My Birthday, But I'm Dressed Like It Is

Last night, on a whim, I slept au natural.

I don't usually do this - it's too distracting, for one thing - and it just usually never occurs to me.

I have no idea what brought this on, but I was struck by the fact that one's one squishiness is much more readily apparent when one is lying on that squish and every slight movement makes the squishy...well, squish.

I've come to the conclusion that sleeping in the buff is overrated unless there's a second party in my bed. But maybe that's just me...

Dirty Girl's Hierarchy of Needs

I often feel like my life is just breaking down around me. Not in any huge psychological way, but in a largely physical way.

My digital camera has been on the fritz for months now - it appears to be frozen with a cache full of pictures of the back of my head as I attempted to get a clear shot of my true hair color without actually showing my face. I haven't been able to take pictures or mini-videos of Baby Girl for weeks now. Every time she does something cute, I'm reduced to screaming, "Wait! Wait! Please, just put it on hold and come back to it in a few weeks when Mama's raise kicks in!"

But even worse than that is my iPod. I've had my iPod for about three years and have loved it. It gives me the energy to work out. It makes me feel like I'm living in a musical. But it happens to be dead. It's long past the repair stage of the game - I'd pay as much to buy a new (nano)* as I would to fix up my 30G (that I don't really need 30 G of).

But I have no money. I am negative broke this month. I also need to place an order for new contacts, I need new bearings for my skates. I could use some new pants to fit my ever-expanding derby butt.

But apparently, my needs don't fit the typical need structure. I'd be perfectly happy starving to death under a flimsy piece of cardboard outside the public library downtown as long as I could listen to Afroman's "Because I Got High" while I wasted away.

So I may be laying out money I don't have very very soon for a product I absolutely, without a doubt, need.

*I'm facing difficulty in purchasing said iPod. Since I work at a university, I should be getting the education discount, which, despite all my technological savvy, refuses to show up on the order page. I've talked to customer service, removed all cookies from my computer, tried everything. No discount to which I am entitled. Oddly enough, our campus also has - and I'm totally serious here - a vending machine that dispenses iPods. While I have some major concerns with sliding my credit card into a machine for what is a Very Expensive Metaphorical Bag of Doritos, the lure of having my new iPod in time for my noon workout is very, very strong indeed.
**Update: Apple no longer allows the education discount to apply to iPods. Fuckers.

My Heart Is an Unripened Strawberry

10 Things That Are Still Good

1. Brie
2. The fun of cleaning out my ears with Q-Tips
3. Getting into my car after it's been in the hot sun all day and feeling that awesome dry heat for 5 glorious seconds before it makes me uncomfortable
4. Baby Girl
5. True Mom Confessions
6. The lyrics to "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You"*
7. Making out in stairwells
8. Flip-flops
9. Rollerskating
10. Mix CDs that people make for me

*I needed the shelter of someone's arms, and there you were...

Aw, Now Ya'll Done and Made Me Feel All Loved

Thanks, kids. I appreciate everyone's kind words...

You'll be relieved to hear that I played hooky from derby practice last night (Hi, ladies! Sorry I skipped! Not really!) and bought fauxshi (the sushi made at my local grocery store) and a great bottle of wine and then stayed in, ate, drank, and sat in the hottest bath I've ever drawn and read in this month's Cosmo how to have better orgasms and more of them (advice, I'd like to point out, that I don't actually need).

I cleaned my apartment a little - cutting down on clutter literally is good when you can't clear the shit out of your head. I took out trash. I watched "The Next Best Thing" on TV - and I typically loathe reality TV, but my dislike apparently doesn't extend to shows involving bad celebrity impersonators. I had a very bizarre dream (stress-induced, no doubt) about living in a house where someone had killed their whole family - apparently, I was sort of Jennifer Love Hewitt (just call her "Love") in Ghost Whisperer. Understandably, I didn't want to live in the house.

Don't worry, this blog isn't about to become the forum where I tell you what I dreamed last night. No one has the right to make other people listen to what they dreamed the night before except spouses; in fact, this might be the only reason I can see that is a really truly good reason to get married.

Anyway, I'm keeping on keeping on. What else can you do, right? It's all just life...

Now We Are Two

Babygirl has hit the terrible twos, finally, after months of actually being two. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she just now got moved into the two-year-old class at daycare. She's come into her own.

She spent a thirty-minute car ride last night alternately singing, "The driber on bus MOOB ON BACK! MOOB ON BACK! MOOB ON BACK! Driber on bus MOOB ON BACK! All fwoo toooooown!" and yelling at me, "DON'T TALK TO ME, MAMA!" To which I responded with a very motherly, "I didn't want to talk to you anyway!"

I swear, our mother-daughter relationship warms the heart...

Revolting Picture Ahead Alert!

I adore rollerskating. Even when my knee pad slips upon impact after I get sent to the floor by an opposing blocker.



Even when I pull down my knee sock after coming off the rink to discover that the skin that was formerly attached to my knee is now attached to the inside of my sock.

Good times, people. Good times.

Went to a Party, I Danced All Night, Drank 16 Beers and I Started Up a Fight

I heart roller derby.