You know how you know when its time to suck it up and join a gym to really get in shape?  When you try to stretch out your lower back and end up straining a muscle in your shoulder. No joke.  This morning I tried to do that thing where you roll onto your back and stretch your legs over your head and, um…. ow.  As soon as I can reach up to brush my hair I am so printing out a couple of free passes to the gyms in my neighborhood and going to check them out.  Good thing the only plan I had for the weekend was to lie around watching movies!

Other lessons learned today: leaving liquid gel caps in the glove compartment of a car during a heatwave is not a good idea unless you want to have a single lumpy gel cap of pain relief.  Will thinks sticking the bottle in the freezer will unmelt them back into their original shapes.  We'll see how that turns out.

I think it is safe to say that Will and I have become addicted to Hollywood Video.  We didn't plan on renting any movies this weekend but somehow we came home with three of them.  I think the plan is to watch movies in the bedroom (the room with the air conditioner) all weekend and just ride out the heat wave that's taken over Portland.

Can I just take a minute to say that our PDX apartment is so completely superior to our Roseburg apartment.  Our apartment in Roseburg was a great little starter place (with holy crap I can't believe we gave that up rent/utility costs) in most respects.  Sure only having one closet was kind of annoying and led to my development of a "I don't want to keep anything! Anymore! So help me, my closets will never be stuffed to the gills again!" complex and the neighbors liked to smoke so much pot that we'd get contact highs just from being home at the same time as them, but really it wasn't a bad little place.  What's more, it had one of the best views of downtown Roseburg that you could get.

The view could be seen through our ginormous kitchen and bedroom windows (the only windows in the place).  I think, when added together, we had 64 square feet of windows in our apartment.  This posed a little bit of a problem because all 64 of those square feet? Faced west. And, because we were on the top floor of the building, the trees didn't provide the windows with any shade.  So from one minute after noon until the sun finally set below the hills (usually a good nine and a half hours later in the summer) the sun beat into our apartment through the windows, raising the temperature of our apartment a good thirty degrees higher than the temperature outside.  This was fantastic in the winter and heinous in the summer.

Our PDX apartment is larger, has more closets and is twice as much as the Roseburg apartment, but this apartment almost never gets direct sunlight.  We are on the bottom floor and while the bedroom windows face west, they are shaded by very tall trees, so they only see an hour or so tops of direct sunlight.  The windows in the living room and dining room face North.  No direct sunlight there! Happy!  Our PDX apartment is a good ten to twenty degrees cooler than the outside temperatures and let me tell you, it is a welcome change.  Yesterday when the temperatures got up to 105, I had the fans on and sure, I felt hot but not "oh my god I'm roasting alive" hot.

Still though, a weekend lounging on our bed in front of the air conditioner and watching movies?  Sounds pretty good to me!

The scene:  Our bedroom, 3:46 AM.

The sound: The cat, horking up what sounded like a body-sized hairball (but what turned out to be a small, easily cleaned up hairball).

The sound: Me sighing as I rolled out of bed to clean up the hairball.

Will (pulling me to him as I climbed back into bed after cleaning up the hairball and saying in a half asleep voice): You deserve extra snuggles for having to clean up cat barf in the middle of the night….zzzzzz….

The scene: Our kitchen, 2:45 this afternoon, as Will is getting ready to go back to work (he has a late lunch)

Me: I really liked the extra snuggles reward last night.

Will: The what?

Me: The extra snuggles you gave me for cleaning up the cat's hairball at almost four in the morning.

Will: I did that?

Me: You don't remember?

Will: Wow, I do funny stuff in my sleep! What other weird things did I do?

Thing the first:

A few weeks ago, in desperation for something new to read, I checked Altared out from the library. It's a collection of essays on marriage and being a bride and planning weddings and it looked like it might have some funny stuff in its pages. I was lying in bed last night and reading a particularly poignant passage about how most of the people who cry at weddings are people who are already married. The writer was positing that they cry because they start to think about their own marriages and what an immense thing it is to commit yourself so fully to another person. To be honest, I was getting a little overwhelmed just reading the passage when, from the bathroom came a noise that sounded roughly like this:

"FAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

EAAAAAAAARRRRR…BLURGHGBGBGBGBGBGBGBG"

Is there a way to spell phonetically the sound one makes when a sphincter becomes so active that you can hear each movement it makes from another room?

To say that it took something away from the effect the books words were having on me is something of an understatement.

Thing the second:

Later, after said sphincter had apparently recovered…

"ARRRGGHHH! You did this on purpose!"

"I did what on purpose?"

"You left the IKEA catalog in the bathroom!"

"………that's a bad thing?"

"Yes! Because you knew I'd open it out of curiosity and now I can't stop looking through it!"

Nothing super important has happened today, but I am getting itchy at leaving the blog un-updated.  So, do I pull a Seinfeld and post about nothing?  Or do I just let it go and wait until something worth posting about happens?  I know I'll have material to write about tomorrow since we're being forced to go to have been invited to Will's company's annual picnic.  Apparently there will be Volleyball.  I'm fine with volleyball…as long as they don't ask me to play it.  Here's what I sound like when I play volleyball:

"Yours! Yours! Yours! Yours yours! Ow!"

Oh my God! I suck! Here is some important information that I forgot to blog about:

Today is my neice's 16th birthday.  Seriously.  This whole her growing up thing? Should not be allowed.

So Will and I have finally set a date for the wedding.  It is looking like September 12 of next year.  I was thinking about putting up one of those big glittery countdown things that you see all the time on Myspace, but in the end I decided not to.  I'm still not sure if I decided not to because those things are gaudy or because having one on my blog would FREAK ME OUT. So yep.  With any luck, in 397 days I'll be married!

And my neice? Is 16. 16! It's Outrageous!

I have something of a bandwagon aversion.  Maybe its my contrary nature, but something in me is naturally suspicious when something becomes instantly popular by a lot.  I tend to stay far far away from things that are overnight sensations, which is how I managed to last this long without seeing the Lord of the Rings movies…

Until last night when I watched the first one with Will. I promised him, when we first started dating, that I would watch the movies with him in return for watching something of mine (I do not think I will ever get him to watch West Wing, but I'm gaining some ground on Veronica Mars).  Last night we finally sat down with the first LoTR movies.

The movie was fine.  I liked it enough.  I kind of wish that Will had told me beforehand that we would be watching the "how am I retired? I was only 30 when we sat down to watch this thing" version of the movie because seriously? it was the movie that would. not. die.  The Postman felt shorter.  The third Matrix movie felt shorter.

And I think it's a sign of my television-ness that after the movie I turned to Will and said "if they kill Charlie I will kick some dark horseman ass!" when the credits finally started rolling.  Also? It was kind of hard to watch Viggo and listen to his thin thin voice without saying "why the hell does the baseball player from 28 days sound so goddamn much like Kristin Chenoweth?"

Next Sunday we'll watch the next movie.  I can't wait to see what my reaction to that one is going to be.  Also? I got a great big kick out of the end of the movie, as the credits were rolling and Will exclaimed, "Cate Blanchett is in this movie?? I didn't see her! Where was she?" Will is not so good with names.  Or faces.

I think that I am going to have to start posting in the mornings, before I start working.  This whole "I'll leave blogging for last because I enjoy it the most thing" has led to a total slow down of my posting because you know what?  After spending all day trying to be creative for other peoples' purposes? I am tapped.  I sit down with the computer and go "ummmm………nah.  Maybe tomorrow." Which, yes, makes me sucktastic.

In great news but also related to my lack of posting time is Will deciding to hang out with me in the evenings instead of holing up with WoW.  This is a phenomenal development and I do not want to take it for granted because he could get sucked back into the WoWverse at any moment.  I love hanging out with Will–and the last few days have been movie madness in our house.  We have watched: Secretary (guess who chose this one), Juno, Hellboy, The Bucket List, Charlie Bartlett, Shoot 'Em Up, Gone Baby Gone and Catch and Release.  Our movie consumption rate is starting to rival those evenings in college when nobody had to work or had rehearsals or study groups and my roommates and I would go to Blockbuster and load up and watch movies until we all passed out.  Good times.  For these eight movies (I'd seen Hellboy before, but wanted to watch it again because Will hasn't seen it), I have to say that my two favorites are Juno and Gone Baby Gone.  Gone Baby Gone kind of reminded me of The Life of David Gale.  It could end a few times and been okay but it sucks you back in for a little while longer and then when it does end, you have a total moral delimma to solve for yourself!  As Will put it "Hello, gray area, nice to see you again!"  If Will doesn't get sucked back into WoW we might actually go hiking.  Hiking! On purpose! With Will! I could faint!

It has also been fun to slowly convert Will into my movie genre list.  There is no "funny" in my world.  There's "stupid funny" "wry funny" "pee your pants funny" "sweet funny" "chick funny" "smart funny" and "man humor."  I have similar breakdowns for the Drama and Action genres as well.  Why only have three categories when you can have thirty? (plus, it makes choosing movies easier)

In completely unrelated news, today I made my very first loaf of homemade bread! When I woke up today I didn't plan to make bread, but I was looking through these recipe cards that showed up in the mail and one had a recipe for "easy" bread so I went for it.  The hardest part was getting enough flour into the dough that it didn't stick to the cutting board I was using as my "lightly floured surface."  I have decided that, in the cooking world, a "lightly floured surface" actually means "heavily coated with flour."  At any rate the bread turned out well and I am kind of proud of it.  Now I want to experiment and see what kinds of bread I can make with this recipe.  Also? kneading? totally awesome arm workout.

So.  How did your weekends go?

Considering the weight of my last post, this one is going to seem a little trivial, but I'm having a hair problem.

Last year, right after I went freelance full time I got my hair cut at one of the many many hair cutting places in the Roseburg "mall" (if you've been there, you'll know why that deserves to be euphemized). I sat down, knowing that I wanted my hair to be quite a bit shorter because I knew that it would be a while before I could afford a proper haircut again. So, I told the lady that I wanted it a little bit above my shoulders and to have fun with it because I wasn't too picky about the style. This resulted in hair that, instead of being a little bit shorter than shoulder length became hair that was just about chin length…which was much shorter than I wanted it to be (not that I'm Kayan* or anything, but still, there was a considerable difference).

Instead of being annoyed, I decided to be grateful. The shorter hair meant that I was using less shampoo and quite a bit less conditioner and that has saved me quite a bit of money over the last fifteen months as my hair has grown out. Now, though, my hair is longer (it now comes to just below my shoulder blades) and not only am I using more shampoo and conditioner to keep it clean, the time has come to switch from the cheap brands of shampoo to the more expensive Pantene-esque brand. Why? Pantene is the only brand of shampoo I've found over the course of my thirty years that keeps my hair fairly hassle free. (Yeah yeah, it's horrible for your hair, blah blah)

Two days ago I picked up some Pantene Icy Shine (or whatever its called) at Fred Meyer. Who doesn't want super shiny hair? Plus, when it comes out of the bottle it smells a tiny bit like fruity kool-aid. But! But! After I washed my hair with it, my hair took on that…smell. That horrible cheap, overly perfumed shampoo smell. Gross! So I went to Target and bought a different kind of Pantene shampoo and, again! Smelled okay right out of the bottle but after washing! Phew! Yuck! Don't stand too close to me; I smell like the old ladies who used to work the Lamonts discount perfume counter attacked my head! I'm kind of wondering if it isn't the conditioner, but I'm too lazy to go back to the store.

Also, I feel kind of jerky buying a whole new bottle of shampoo or conditioner after just one use of the other kind just because it smells funky. I mean, seriously, how often do I leave the house?

Of course, when the smell of your own hair makes you gag, something needs to be done.

So–what kind of shampoo/conditioner do you use? Particularly for a head that is too full of baby fine hair that tangles when it comes into contact with oxygen?

*how many points do I lose if I admit that I had to look that up?

There is still a little part of me that gets caught up in the whole…notion? of being a writer. I fantasize about writing these wonderful and eloquent posts while something classicalish plays in the background and the camera zooms slowly in on me contemplating and then tapping out my wisdom and…whatever. It's very "end of every movie about an author who finally sits down to write their masterpiece"-like in my head when I think about writing these posts. Almost never do I visualize myself writing them from my couch while sweating profusely from having just gotten home from an afternoon of running around the West Side of PDX, my sink halfway full of dishes, dinner yet to be decided upon, clutter abounding, etc.

Last week I alluded to something that was bugging me and I promised to talk about it when it was done and now it is done and, for now, all is right with the world. This is what is important, in case you don't have time to read a whole big thing.

To talk about what was bothering me means that I have to talk a little bit about a lot of things that I don't usually talk about–not so much because I am uncomfortable talking about them but because I feel like I should be over so much of it already. But, sit tight. Here we go.

I think the quickest way to describe my ascent from birth into adulthood would be to tell you that, quite simply, life kicked the ever living shit out of me. Repeatedly. Really hard. And left bruises. It seemed like every time I turned around I was moving, my circle of friends was changing drastically (if not completely), I was being faced with yet another "chance" to "prove" myself (and subsequently failing and hating myself for a while because it took a long time to learn that there are just some people who won't ever be satisfied) and somehow, just when I'd start to feel even remotely okay or safe, the world would turn upside down and I'd have to start over from the beginning. This is how most people's formative years and early twenties feel, I know. I'm no different, but for my experience, growing up was really really really really really hard.

And then Abbott died and the fallout from that happened. And suddenly I realized that all of the "hard" times I had previously gone through were nothing (nothing) compared to the road I had to travel. That road? Almost did me in.

So–after all of that, let's just say that I have trust issues. And spiritual issues. And sometimes I still have panic attacks. And if anybody wants to give me a gift certificate for some therapy, the holidays are only a few months away.

The thing is, since moving home a little more than four years ago, my life has done nothing but improve. Right now, I'm in a good place. I'm engaged. We're sketching out a plan for our future. We're living in a great city and both have friends and family nearby (this is not so much a blessing for Will, but that's another story). Those bruises we all get from growing up are turning yellow. I'm to the point where I'm starting to feel grateful that growing up wasn't easy because all of that hard stuff kept me from becoming a judgemental twinkie. I miss Abbott, but most of the time it feels more like wistfulness than outright grief. I am trying to move beyond all of the crap and embrace the good. Go team Me.

But sometimes, sometimes it is hard to stay with the positive and that's what was bothering me last week. Will's trip was coming up and all I could think about was "what if he gets into a wreck?" "what if he gets hurt?" "what if…he dies?" And so, in the quiet moments I would start to freak out. And then I would get mad at myself for freaking out. And then I'd get mad at myself for getting mad at myself and you get the idea. Just know that I can have a full fledged panic attack so quietly that Will can sleep soundly next to me while I work through it.

I don't want to harp on my past. I don't want to be all "oh woe was me, poor me, I had a hard life." Because, honestly, there is a reason it's called the past and, compared to some people's lives, my life was a cakewalk. I really don't want it to look like I'm blaming anyone or any specific thing for my neuroses and I know that dwelling on things is only good for the formation of ulcers. But every once in a while, in spite of my best efforts, it gets to me. I get scared. I get scared of Murphy, of fate, of God. I get scared that I'll have to go through it again and I start to imagine it and I? Have a ridiculously vivid imagination. In addition to getting scared about terrible things happening I also feel scared that saying my fears out loud and trying to talk through them with someone will make them happen (because, obviously, the universe revolves around me). So I get quiet. And I look for distractions to keep me from obsessing.

Will is home now. He had a fantabulous time in Bend and I'm glad he got to hang out and with the friends he only sees online (except for one, who lives in the area and drove over with him). I'll talk more about how I passed the time while he was gone in the next few days because this post? Wowzers. Novel. Self Indulgent Hamlet Soliloquies R Us. The short of it (ha!) is that I feel better. Will had fun. He suffered a horrible sunburn that will be hell when it starts to peel, but other than that he is healthy and safe. And, most importantly, he is home now. He's sitting in the other room, playing Wow, and for these five minutes all is right with the world and I'm not panicking anymore.

This isn't a new cycle. I know how to work through them (and always feel kind of silly when its over), but I'm glad that the next one (hopefully) won't be for a while.