clipping coupons, like the old lady i am wont to imitate, i was rather startled yesterdaty.  it seems the ad section of my local staunton paper had printing problems, and the black ink did not come through in the glossies, as evidenced in the coupon below:

a little weird but no big deal, right?  then, i turned the page, only to gasp when i saw this:

seriously, how terrifying is this weird orange zombie girl?

todd and i are … strained right now.  it's really kind of awful and i have a perpetual pit in my stomach, even here, at the beach, on vacation.  the week i was in SF, his grandmother died.  she'd been pretty sick the week and a half before i left and i debated not going.  he wouldn't hear of it.  as a result, i wasn't around during what was a really tough time, and i feel bad.  i also think he begrudges me being gone, even though he said there was no way i should stay.  i don't feel like we are communicating very well and at the beach with parents and a kid and dogs around isn't the best place for big talks.  

i really need things to balance back out.

while my fear of the dentist is certainly nothing earth-shattering, it is new in my life over approximately the last few years.  i think i can pinpoint when i started having the teeth-falling-out/smashed/etc dreams - soon after withnessing a car accident in which i saw one of the drivers open his mouth after impact, only to have his teeth dribble into his lap like a mouthful of tic-tacs.  or at least that's the way i remember it now.

dentophobia is extremely common, and certainly not as exotic as most of the phobias on this list, but that does not do many any good when i break into a cold sweat considering my upcoming back-to-back root canal "retreatment" and fillings.

i am strangely bitter about the fact that neither of these events can be blamed on bad oral hygiene; at least then i'd have to suck it up to take responsibility for my own actions.  but i've had tooth problems since i was a child - something about my the density of my teeth being lower or more porous or something due to a childhood high fever that happened at the same time that i had some kid illness or other.   my dad, of course, recalls nothing of this and for the 83 millionth time i long for my mother to ask questions.  but i digress.

so the fillings are because i have crappy teeth, but the root canal, get this, is because i had a crappy dentist.  how shitty is that?  i had a root canal done when i was about 10 or 11 and basically it was done in such a fashion that it now has to be "fixed" - re-done, basically.  my understanding is that of the 3 roots in my #19 tooth, the jackass only actually did 2 of the 3 roots and left one entirely untouched.  plus of the 2, one he didn't finish entirely.  and thus it is no wonder that i now face very dreaded oral surgery that i am contemplating getting completely xanaxed for.

not even the thought of tripp's old suggestion toward bettering dentistry can calm me at the moment.   although i guess that service  has a gender-bias in it anyway.

okay, i need to get over the hump of not having posted in several weeks so that i can start posting regularly again. the following items must be covered.

1) my sister, father, and i got caught in a real-life blizzard when we were in michigan for my grandmother's funeral. i have never experienced white-out conditions before and hope to never again. i definitely flashed back to the feelings i got behind the wheel during the flood and count us very lucky to only have to get towed out of a snowbank.

michigan received 16 inches of snow in 24 hours and in the height of the storm, pulled over on the interstate, i could not see my sister a foot and a half away from me as we worked desperately to clear ice and snow from the defroster at a rate faster than it was falling. bottom line: it was some scary shit and i definitely thought we might die at a couple points.

2) i have pneumonia. perhaps surprisingly, this is entirely unrelated to item #1 above.

okay, regular posting can now commence. let's roll.

i've got three shifts left at my now-beloved, ragtag little bookstore, the first of which is presently taking place. it's about 90 outside and the shy is prematurely darkening with the threat of an evening summer shower. i've got a nice weird mix of johnny cash, madonna, and the beatles in the store stereo and i'm sighing a little.

i've been reluctant to start labelling my "lasts" in BK, but jane, my shrink therapist (in our, er, final session today) encouraged me to totally go with the one-lasts (italian ice, fresh juice at second helpings) and finals (stalk and walks past the williams/ledgers*) and going aways (dinners with friends). i think she thinks i'll bottle up my sadness at leaving new york and won't work through it if i don't pointedly acknowledge my imminent departure.

i pointed out that it seems a little silly to be all nutty with goodbyes when i will be back so soon - next week, in fact, just days after my official exodus, i will be back to take care of some paperwork for a grant i was found eligible for. and i'm going to take a bus up a little earlier so i can go to one last meeting of my gilda's club wednesday night group - the most regular and dependable part of my life over the past year. i wasn't quite ready for my last one of those last night.

overall, i think jane made some good points, but i just haven't really felt into the whole goodbye thing, other than about gilda's. i'm planning no going away party or last blowout before i leave the city. i have been talked a little into dinner with people tomorrow night at red bamboo, my favorite vegetarian place here, and that is really all i want. she pointed out that i'm not being a traitor to todd or my decision to move by being sad about leaving, which hit a nerve somewhere. i did warn him last weekend that should (ha) i get emotional in the next week during this transition, that it's not a reflection of him.

part of me is scared, too, of going into total meltdown mode as i did last year this time when i moved here. it was so scary and i felt so out of control; i can't help but think i would do most anything to not have that happen again. i figured everything would fall into glittery, sparkly place once i was finally in the place i had always wanted to be, physically. and i worry that try as i might to resist it, the persistently romantic side of me that tends to take over has the same pie-in-the-sky hopes for living with todd. i'm not trying to force pessimism on myself by any means, but rather trying to be realistic about my expectations of what will happen once i am where i have always wanted to be, relationship-wise.

raise your hand if you think i should just shut up and stop analyzing.

yeah, me too.

* i must note this report of my obsession's move out of brooklyn, also. i swear coincidence!

An important word of caution to any fathers-to-be out there:

Newborns may not immediately recognize the difference between mother and father. That is … the functional difference.

Yeah. I think you see where I'm going here.

I'm kicked back on the couch, my new daughter sleeping soundly on my chest. She stirs slightly, then raises her now-alert eyes to mine. We share one of those wonderful moments of connection between parent and child as she raises her little head ever so slightly of my chest…then…

…she quickly drops—-no, dives—-her head back to my chest. It is at this moment I experience an odd sensation which my male brain had trouble fathoming. Then: Did she just … latch on?!? It would be at about that very moment my tiny daughter began to suckle with abandon.

"Suckle" of course is the wrong word. Think "shark attack."

Of course, you can't just break that sort of vacuum seal. Something might implode. Like my chest cavity. She proceeded to get angry at my lack of lactation. And as my family does not raise quitters, she starts to suck … more … vigorously.

Thankfully, the nice lady with the real boob juice rescued me before she drew blood or sucked out an internal organ.

Lesson for the day: They might appear cute and helpless. Be warned. Fear babies.

a post is long overdue. i've travelled a decent distance from my sad haze of the week, and it's important for me to put that out there. i don't want to present an entirely skewed vision of me or my life by posting primarily when things are not going peachy-keen.

i'm in VA for yet another weekend, ostensibly for justin and dre's wedding but also, of course, to see todd. i am constantly obsessing over this relationship and realizing how hard it is for me to simply just go with it. he makes me feel so secure and happy and i have more fun with him than anyone else, so i know it's not completely illogical that i want to spend as much time with him as i can, but i am constantly scared at the same time to allowing myself to get comfortable, lest it all just disappear. it's a shitty mindframe to have and i want so badly to work on it. sometimes emotionally i really feel like complete damaged goods.

the wedding was really quite lovely and of course worth none of my pre-event fretting. the weird high school reunion anxiety disappeared after a couple of the best mojitos i have ever tasted, and it was a really nice time. with time though and a few more mojitos, being surrounded by all this coupleStuff i got moony and eventually found myself in mingo flying back down I-95 to richmond to spend another night with todd. completely not my plan, completely not necessary as i had just spent 16 hours with him that day and the night before, but completely something i could not not do once i got the idea in my head.

are relationships always so scary, or is this just me and my post-losing-mom issues?

i don't want to only post about my relationship stuff, either. i know i do too much of that and i fear i'm just not as interesting to read as i once was. tripp recently said i am more boring now tht i don't talk about hooking up and sex and whatnot any longer, but i am certainly not going to post about that with todd (other than to say i am very satisfied and it is quite lovely). i guess i could write more about physical things when they didn't … matter. or when they weren't part of something important. does that make sense?

in theory, my self-aborption should decrease proportionally to the number of hours i will be at work now that i have accepted a job part-time at the independent bookstore in my neighborhood. also thinking number of interesting stories should conversely rise proportionately. but of course, math is not really my thing, is it?