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  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
  • More short cuts
  • Smol Ketchups
  • What’s the opposite of green juice and deep breathing
  • Living through it all online
  • The Change
  • 18
  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

1. We replaced our too-dark, too-big kitchen table with a lighter, smaller one:

(Eventual to-do: get rid of that ill-placed white expanse above the counter, which divides the kitchen, makes it so you have to duck in order to have conversations, and puts open doors right at forehead-gouging level. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this cabinet!)

2. We had our first Sunday night family dinner at the (MUCH easier to clean) table: scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon. Everyone was happy.

3. The boys went to a birthday party which was held at a deeply awesome gymnastics center:

4. JB installed new closet hardware in Riley’s room so the doors no longer fall off their railings whenever you look at them.

5. I bought two Christmas presents, stocked up on wrapping, and ordered our cards. It helped shove that panicky oh-Jesus-December-will-straight-up-kill-me feeling back a yard or two.

6. I made everyone suffer through my annual attempt at a holiday photo. It was … difficult. Let’s say that. IT WAS SERIOUSLY FUCKING DIFFICULT.

7. I deep-cleaned behind the toilet. We shall never speak of that again.

What did you get out of the way this weekend?

I had always wondered how, exactly, it happens. We start out the night in our proper positions: me under the covers with my head on my pillow, the cat curled in in a ball down at the foot of the bed. In this moment, all is right with the world. But at some point in the evening, things change. There is a usurping.

In the wee hours of the night, I come swimming out of a deep sleep to find my face pressed into a seemingly endless expanse of fur. I reach out blindly to readjust my pillow, but I’m trapped in an alien hairy landscape. Somewhere, a mildly irritated muscle twitches, and a tail slaps directly across my upper lip. I mustache you a question, the cat seems to say. Why are you disturbing my rest?

I heave myself upwards, spitting out tufts, and unceremoniously dump the cat back where she belongs. In the round fleece-lined bed I specifically purchased for her comfort, which rests at the foot of our own bed despite its unstylish appearance and tendency to collect pine needles. But as soon as I fall back asleep it happens again. Over and over throughout the night, until I give up altogether. I wake up the next day curled awkwardly like a shrimp, my face cranked sideways to find some non-pelt-infused breathing space.

Later, I resentfully use the hose attachment on the vacuum to clean my sheets and pillow, which look like the aftermath of a particularly vigorous waxing session.

The other night I was still awake when the Great Takeover happened, and I admit I was impressed with her technique. Rather than stepping her way up the bed, which might alert me to her presence, she makes her move in one sudden, silent, no-impact leap. A 5,000 FPS camera might accurately capture her approach, but I don’t stand a chance. There’s nothing to do but wait for the inevitable, and floss the tail-hairs from my teeth in the morning.

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