Category: The Ugly Truth

Sep 01

Heeeere, Ducky Ducky!

I woke up today and realized that I feel like I’m behind on Life.

Can you do that? I asked myself. Well… I suppose you can, because it appears as though I have.

It’s surreal, almost– I sit here and I’m watching this amazing life happen around me. Events move past me, through me. I’m there, and then just as quickly, I find myself grinning ear to ear in the aftermath, wondering to myself quietly if this is all some happy, hazy memory. Or maybe a dream.

We had our engagement party this past weekend, hosted by Rosa and Maxine– it was amazing. It was the perfect night, with perfect friends, and perfect weather. It was enchanting.

Now I’ve spent three days with my head against the grindstone, trying to hone and perfect my design skills. I’m revisiting and rehashing and brainstorming on my writing sample. I’ve thought about edits I want to make to the thesis I wrote almost two years ago. My creativity hasn’t been this alive and active in a very, very long time.

It’s exhausting.

And creativity responds very poorly to order. It’s like trying to teach ducks to march in line, on schedule.

This is the first time in my life where I’ve had to create accountability for myself. It’s not something I’ve ever been good with. I’m great at coming up with good ideas and terrible with seeing them through all the way to the end. It’s a lesson that I very quickly need to learn. It’s a lesson that I’m very quickly learning.

Nobody ever bothers to tell you that your mid-20s are full of changes. There’s no manual, no indication that Baby Steps are gone forever, no road signs anywhere that say, “Huge Leaps and Bounds Ahead.”

I’ve produced more work this week than I ever have during any other week in my life. I’m just obliterated, and creatively drained, and completely hazy, and blissfully proud of myself and the steps I’m taking into this crazy new phase of my life. I’m doing my best to restore order– to get all the technicolor ducks into a row.

Until then, please don’t mind the clutter. Or the paint splats on the wall. Or the semi-discombobulated chatter. Or the water fowl.

Good things to come. All good things.

-MM.

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Posted in The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth, Working Girl

Aug 13

A tickle in my throat.

I almost smacked a bitch down on the Staten Island Ferry landing Tuesday afternoon. As a general rule, I am not an overtly confrontational person. I, like most New Yorkers, will communicate my displeasure with my peers through a hefty dose of icy glances and lots of passive-aggressive sighing. It’s a code we abide by, the universal and tacit language of “You are pissing me off.”

For the most part, though, I understand that we all have bad days, and sometimes we are not at our best, and if someone shoots you an icy look when you already feel like crap, it can send the day into an irreparable downward spiral. More than once I’ve cried to James {who is excellent, and never even implies I may be too sensitive, even when I am} that people in this city are so horribly MEAN. I never want to be the one to send someone home crying, so for the sake of empathy, I usually handle my displeasure with Awful People by taking a huge dose of Suck It Up.

Not today.

Today I choked {fine, on air, but STILL, not breathing is not breathing} while waiting for the ferry back to Manhattan, home of the gloriously snobby, who never would have done anything more about my coughing fit than take a courtesy step away from me, lest I be a contagious leper.

But there was this couple behind me. And they were so damn obnoxious. I first overheard them and all I could think of their banal conversation was, “GOD I hope James and I do not sound like that when we talk in public.” {I’m sure we do, which is why I’m now shuffling “Captain America” and “1970s horror film” into our “Private Discussions” folder from here on out.} The guy, especially, was ridiculous. Condescending and self righteous and just loathsome. He kept stomping his Haviana knock-off and demanding to know how long it TAKES to disembark a ferry. GOD.

She was no better. Her voice was nasally, and her hair was over-processed bottle-blonde. To each her own, as far as style goes, but you could tell she wasn’t naturally unattractive. She made herself unattractive in her choices of makeup styling and improper dress for her body type. {Yea. I admit to wearing leggings for pants today, but you can bounce a quarter off my ass. So, I don’t think the look is overtly inappropriate because I can carry it off.}

I was ready to let them just be– not turn around or shoot them a look. Whatever, right? Besides, I was too busy choking.

The coughing fit lasted longer than it should have, admittedly, because I tried to stifle it. Toward the end, I thought I heard the guy make a bitchy comment about “swine flu.”

Uh–pardon me?

Maybe I am mistaken, I thought. But no, I distinctly heard him make another, more audible and more articulate comment about swine flu, and then the blonde giggled.

I looked up at the doorway out to the loading docks, which at the Staten Island side of the ferry are retractable glass walls. As I was in front of the horrid couple, I could clearly make out their reflection. And what happened next got me so angry I couldn’t help but stand up for myself.

In the reflection, I saw him pantomime slowly hitting me in the back of the head with his umbrella. Blondie erupted into giggles again, as he pulled his arm back and repeated the motion. I had just, JUST regained my composure and I have no shame in admitting I used my first breath to whip around, look him in the face and say, “I can see you in the door’s reflection.” I held his eye contact long enough to watch his pudgy, white cheeks flush crimson.

He shrugged, nervously but indignantly. I could tell he was embarrassed for getting caught. I thought it was settled so I broke the glare and turned back around. But LO! He muttered something again about swine flu!

I whipped back around and said evenly but assertively, right to his fat crimson cheeks, “I’m not sick. I was choking. I apologize if that was inconvenient for you.” I shot his blonde girlfriend a look, to drive the point home, and started to turn back around again, when she actually had the nerve to mutter in my direction, “It’s not illegal to hold an umbrella.”

I summoned all the composure and contempt I could muster, locked my eyes on hers and glared so ferociously I could feel her soul quiver. “Neither is coughing,” I stated strongly, in a solid, we-are-not-negotiating tone.

That did it. Both remained silent for the next 60 seconds, before we boarded the ferry. I shook the whole ferry ride back to Manhattan, and called Maxine as soon as I had disembarked to scold her on how awful her people are. She commended me on refraining from both violence and cussing.

It’s true. I was assertive, not overly aggressive and completely in the right. It’s one thing to bend over backwards if your fiancée wants to fill the kitchen with smoke and burn the tips of his fingers off so you can put wax seals on engagement party invitations. Whatever. In life, I understand that you have to pick your battles or you’ll perpetually find yourself railing against the world.

But it’s something else entirely to be a doormat because people who don’t have any decency assume that they intimidate people who do.

No, sir. Not the case.

I’m sure they spent the whole ride to Manhattan talking about what an awful bitch I was, being so sensitive to their fun. I don’t care. I hope one day they learn to understand how their words and actions can be insulting and hurtful, how hard kindness is to come by and how we all choke in public {literally, metaphorically, whatever} eventually.

When it happens to them, I hope they are sent a person who shows them empathetic kindness– someone like the gentleman who sat next to me on the ferry and gave me a bottle of water because he saw me coughing.

But until that day, I hope their freakin’ flip-flops break. God some people are SO MEAN!

-MM.

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Posted in The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth

Jul 27

Incoherence.

It was one of those mornings when James woke up snappy and cranky, and then Moose escaped the basement, which made James more miserable (and Moose, once caught, was miserable) and by 7:40AM today I was ready to throw Tuesday against a wall and kick its kidneys in.

Hi. I haven’t had my coffee yet today.

I’m meeting Maxine (in Brooklyn… Brooklyn…) today to eat food and do girl-stuff. I’m not sure, exactly, what that puts in store for me, but I know it’s more fun than watching the cats chew on each other. So I’m down. Plus the last time Maxine took me to Brooklyn, we ate at Sea, which is easily one of my favorite Thai places now because their mojitos unabashedly get you wasted on the first drink. Or, maybe that’s just me, but through the fuzzy memories I clearly recall having an excellent time. So. Brooklyn: 1, Manhattan: 2,476. But who’s counting.

Moose is still having a hard time retaining any attachment to the word, “NO!” so I must go attend to that, as he has once again almost pushed the video-phone camera off the downstairs television.

I’m just going to open the downstairs windows and whatever cats can jump up and get out, good riddance. (Please note, Elephant’s rotund shape prevents her from such anti-gravity feats. Moose, however, would likely be gone in a heartbeat.)

..*Eurggggghhhccccoooooffffffffffffeeeeee*…

-MM.

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Posted in The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth

Jul 03

Meatball and Sauce

You may or may not have heard, but Fish passed on into the Great Sea Beyond last Thursday evening. It was a quiet, uneventful passing (I think. I came home and for the first time in his 2 year life I witnessed what he would have looked like had he really been dead on the bottom of his bowl all those times it turned out he was just napping). Needless to say, I was {{devastated}}.

James took care of the whole thing, the awful flushing and the explaining to his parents and the putting me to bed. Fish was more than just a fish! He was my thesis-writing buddy! He watched movies with me (as in, would swim to the part of the bowl where he could see the screen and cocked his head so his little Fishy eye could take it all in). He survived three moves, two kittens, an extended vacation and a cable guy who actually knocked his bowl over. Fish made it through.

“Can I get a new fish?” I sniffled. James said I could. I reasoned through this. I was very heartbroken, but I wasn’t foolish. If he was going to go ahead and agree to things to cheer me back up I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what else he’d be open to. “Can I get a shark?”

No.

“Can I get a hedgehog?”

No.

“Can I get a baby guinea pig? I WILL SURELY PERISH WITHOUT ONE!”

No baby guinea pigs, either. But he did agree that Fish was more or less irreplaceable, so instead of insisting I just go out and spend $2 on a new Beta fish (that I have a lifetime supply of food and water treatment for already) he let me go out and spend $50 on a whole new setup for two goldfish (including a giant plastic diamond that you can’t see in the picture, but it’s there, and it makes me happy).

It took a couple days for them to earn their names.

Me: “What about Snuggles? Or Fluffy?”
James: “I like Fluffy.”
Me: “She doesn’t look like a Fluffy.”
James: “I’m naming mine Scorpio! It’s Nick Fury’s code name!”
Me: “You can’t do that! None of my favorite characters have cool code names! … None of the characters I like are even super heroes and I can’t name my goldfish Pepper Potts!”

Last night I was giving the happy little boogers their nighttime snack and I realized that I really like them. They make me happy to watch. They’re colorful, and if you dim the lights they’re happy to lay on their little diamond and nap. I like pets that nap. It gives us something that we can have in common.

“They still need names,” I reminded James.

James: “I’m naming mine after a mobster!”
Me: *blink, blink*
James: “Yeah! Like Joey the Meatball!”
Me: “MEATBALL AND SAUCE!”
James: “THAT’S IT!”
Me: “But is yours Meatball? Or Joey the Meatball?”
James: “Joey the Meatball can be his full name, we’ll call him Meatball at home, though.”
Me: “Yeah, well. Mine’s a badass. She just goes by Sauce.”

Ladies and gentlefins: Joey the Meatball and Sauce.

-MM.

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Posted in Mine All Mine, The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth, True Life: I'm Surviving Suburbia

Jul 01

With Distinction.

Someone, somewhere, once said, “There’s a big difference between quitting while you’re ahead, and just quitting.”

That person is very, very smart. They would probably agree that my choices, lately, have strategically played right into their very smart utterance. You’re all, “What? What’s she saying? Metaphor?”

Nope. Literal.

Last Thursday (a week ago today) I put in my notice at Tretorn. My last day will be July 18th. (And Kindle is mostly to blame, and I’ll tell you why later.)

A week later, I type those words and it terrifies me. Mostly because James pointed out that I’ll no longer have insurance, but partially because Going Back To School For Real, Full Time is a very serious undertaking. One that I need to now buckle down and get moving on.

I’m going for my MFA in Creative Writing. This announcement has split people right down the middle, into two schools of reaction. Reaction 1: “You write?” Reaction 2 (of which my mother is the tallest standing member): “Well, kiddo, it’s about damn time.”

If you’re in the first reaction pool… Yes, I write. I like to think I do it rather well. Better, anyway, than I can say I bowl. Also better than I am at doing math in my head.

If you’re in the second reaction pool… Well, I know. And I’m sure you’re also thinking about all the stories I’ve told you, and all the support you’ve shown me, and all the times you wondered why it took me a week to respond to your e-mail, only to get a novella in your inbox, one it took you a week to then read, but you forgive me because it was so excellently written. Let it be known, People of The Second Reaction Pool: I could not have done this without every single one of you, or without every single little nice thing you’ve ever said about me or my writing. (And, sure, some of the mean things. Because it gives me stuff to write about.)

I know what you’re thinking now… But why leave Tretorn?

Well, let’s be really honest here for a second: I was never going to Grow Up to be a retail store manager. I was going to learn how to do my job the best I possibly could, then transition into a corporate setting where I could develop training programs. I wanted to work with Cate Hewett, who has (since her departure from PUMA) morphed from my Professional Mentor into my Life Idol. (Coincidentally, thanks to e-mail, I get to work with Cate anyway, we just chat about writing and getting married, two things that she likes as much as I like.)

Cate left the company. James got the job at Marvel. I learned I was no longer eligible to work on Special Projects for PUMA, and anyway James was not thrilled with the idea of me Globe-Trotting for the first 11 months after we were married.

Fair enough.

But then we also moved to the Suburbs (which is sort of OK, I’m still sorting it all out) and I’m suddenly Getting Married (actively, it’s an active action you take, over the course of 500+ days, that requires a lot of time and thought and feelings about things like doilies and stationary). And then one bad thing happened at work, and then another. And then another, and before I knew it, I suddenly didn’t feel safe there anymore. I felt like I was being attached by people. People who used to be My People. While moving to the suburbs. With my Future-In-Laws. After realizing my professional trajectory with the company was likely not going to happen.

I think “dysphoria” is the proper term for how I felt, though I probably spelled it wrong.

I was quite miserable for quite some time, studying things I would not be using in the career I was no longer going to chase. I was giving up Manhattan, and My Own Space and (most traumatically and recently) My Last Name.

It was a lot. And I was, put simply, good at my job but no longer actively engaged in it. At least not the way I had always been engaged in my work, which is to say that I used to spring out of bed in the morning, thrilled at the prospect that I got to spend the whole day helping people– wait for it– shop for shoes. It, really, was the perfect job for me through this phase of my life.

This is where Kindle comes in. If PUMA wants to blame any one thing on my departure, they should call Kindle Headquarters and give them the business. I put the Kindle App. on my iPhone and LO! Did you know that Public Domain books are free?

I started reading again. I read Around the World in 80 Days. I re-read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I read Sherlock Holmes (almost all of them) and The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz and Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck.

My imagination yawned… stretched itself out again. Perked up. Asked for some coffee. And then for a pen.

I sat down and wrote for the first time, and I could feel my voice struggle a little to get the words on paper without them feeling clumsy, or bumping into one another in a jostled sort of way. But it was all there, my creativity and my language and my funny, odd sense of humor. My characters, who had I guess been napping all this time, were just as charming and chatty as ever.

I realized that I didn’t want to work in Retail as a Store Manager anymore. I have nothing against Retail, and I’m immensely, incalculably grateful for every single day I was allowed to spend at PUMA. But it is very much time for me to start the next chapter of my life.

So I put in my notice and filled up my Kindle. I’ll worry about insurance later. I have a couple more weeks to figure out how to roll over my 401K. I’m starting from scratch. I thought it’d be a lot more traumatic than it is, but instead, for the first time in a very long time…

… I can hear the breeze whispering stories into my ear, and the clouds take on shapes I’ve been blind to for so long. My heart beats faster when I come up with a really good snippet of dialogue, and my imagination just runs and laughs and spins and jumps. It’s free.

I’m free.

And that’s not all! But, I’m not in a place where I can blow the rest of my plans up to everyone yet. For now, I’m getting applications together and looking for a part time job, where I would like to specialize in Excellent Customer Service.

I’m also giving myself two full weeks off, from July 18- August 1. Because I am so far past Exhausted that I wouldn’t even know the breaking point if I were able to sidle back up next to it.

Yes it’s scary and a little, perhaps, immature. But if I don’t chase my dreams now, I’ll always be too timid. I’m not allowing myself any more space to do things that aren’t specifically What I Love.

Well, What I Love and, also, laundry. Because someone always has to do the laundry.

xo

-M.

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Posted in Book Worm, Domestic DemiGoddess, Mine All Mine, The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth, Working Girl

Jun 25

All about PMS. (Seriously.)

There is this very clever country song by Miranda Lambert called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend wherein she croons this excellent little gem of a lyric:

“Cause, Baby, to a hammer… everything looks like a nail.”

Hello, PMS. Thought I saw you coming. I woke up this morning ready to rip the head off anything that looked at me funny, looked at me at all, was in my immediate vicinity, crossed my path or happened to be in my eyeline.

I finally bit the bullet and took a Maxalt to ease the marathon migraine I had had for 36 hours. Though I was deeply attached to it, thoroughly attached to it, even, I thought it might distract me if I brought it to work with me today. Again. (Because it made yesterday a living hell.)

10mg Maxalt, meet my coffee-breakfast. Coffee-breakfast, you play nice with Mr. Maxalt. Everyone gang up on the Migraine! GO!

45 minutes later I staggered into RiteAid Pharmacy, dying– dying– because my mid-section was trying to rip itself in half. WITH KNIVES. And anger. Oh, the anger. And why was my heart beating so fast? What? I can’t– I can’t hear you, over the sound of my insides slamming themselves around. Can you speak up?

I dragged myself to the pharmacy counter (bypassing the candy aisle, where things could have gotten really ugly because they put “wrappers” on their chocolate, claiming them to be “defensive barriers against pathogens and contaminates” but we all know it’s just an Evil Male conspiracy to make the chocolate harder to get to. And any PMSing woman has no problem eating through a wrapper, if it comes to that. I promise.).

The petite, smiling pharmacist sidled over and beamed, her voice ringing like Christmas bells, “How can I help you?” I slapped my Maxalt packet on the counter.

Me: “I took one of these already, for my migraine. Now I need to know, desperately, if I can also take Midol.”

Her: “Hmm…” *sizes me up, realizes I may be dangerous* “Well. Here’s the thing. You can take this with Midol, but I would avoid any Midol that says for bloating or for fatigue.”

Me: *has this woman ever had a period before?* “Ok. Hm. Which ingredients should I avoid, specifically?” (I was pretty sure I was still able to read, through the searing pain in my mid-section. I could just eat any bottle that didn’t have INGREDIENT-X in it.)

Her: “Caffeine.”

Me: *staggering, almost falling over, reeling with vivid flashbacks of the morning, when I washed down my Maxalt with a whole cup of coffee* “Caffeine?”

Her: “Yeah, caffeine can be rough with Maxalt because it tends to make your heart race.”

Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my own heart slamming in my eardrums, can you repeat that?”

No, just kidding. I really said…

Me: “Yes, I can see how that would be a complication… SO I shouldn’t have taken it with coffee… and I should wait to have my second cup…?”

Her: “Uhm… yeah.” *pointing to my iced lemonade* “I’d also avoid cold drinks because they, uh… adversely affect your body’s ability to… you know… get the process going.”

Me: *blink, blink*

Her: “You should just stick to warm beverages, and apply heat to the area. It’ll get circulation going and make your day… and your week, even… a lot easier to handle.”

Me: *gasping from the floor, where I was writhing in pain* “Gotcha. Motrin. Warm liquid, even if it’s 95 degrees and balmy. Heating pads on top of that. Yes?”

Her: *chipper* “Yep! All in aisle 10!”

Me: “Great, thanks!”

I grabbed the PMS tools she prescribed, plus enough absorbency material to dry the island, should Manhattan decide to sink today, and somehow made it to the counter. I laid it all out for the sales clerk to inspect. She raised an eyebrow at me and craned her neck to the side, all attitude.

Sassy Black Checkout Clerk: “Whoooo-eeee. Honey I know that you’re having a rough mornin’! You need chocolate with that?”

Me: “… Got any vodka?”

SBCC: “Haha, ooh, we have a live one! My wife woke up this mornin’ feelin’ the saaaaaame pains! Mah sympuh-thies!”

Me: “Your wife has my sympathies.”

SBLCC: “She almost killed the brand new air conditioner.”

Me: “I almost killed my Fiancee.”

SBLCC: “Whooooo-eee! You win, dearie.” *packs all my things into a not-see-through-bag, out of common decency* “You try not to kill no one now. I don’t wanna see your pretty face on the news tonight.”

Me: “And good luck steering clear of your wife! I don’t want to see your face in the headlines either!”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I started my day today. One perky pharmacist who told me to stop consuming my lifeblood– coffee– and one Sassy Black Lesbian Checkout Clerk who made my whole week a happier place to be.

Universe, I will accept this as your peace-offering. We’re good.

-MM.

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Posted in The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth

Jun 23

Hyperventilation.

Y’all wanna see the photo that lead to my unraveling this morning? Great.

It’s from the many million of photographs that I’ve been looking at for my Inspiration Boards. In looking for Inspiration, what I found was Oh my God, I’m getting married and I NEED LANTERNS TO DO THAT! Martha Stewart says so. Lordy, does she say so.

Then I realized, after looking at this photo:

… that I’m not sure if there’s a way to put paper bugs on anything and not have it look like something that I made myself.

Mallory, it is something you’d be making yourself.

Shut up, OK?

And, Oh my GOD, do Mad Hatter Tea Parties have PAPER BUGS AT THEM? I think one hosted by Martha would. Lordy, it would!

That’s when my jumpy little mind found its way into Mason Jars.

Now, if you know me, you know I tend to accrue Lots of Stuff. Stuff is everywhere. I use it to nest (read: I pile it up around me and it makes me feel safe. My desk? Covered in Stuff.) Usually, my stuff is Post-Its and Pens. I love both equally, and can never be too far from either.

To store all my Glorious Stuff, I have adopted a tendency to find and fill Mason Jars. With all my Stuff. Magnificent, Marvelous Stuff. Mason Jars and coffee mugs, anyway, and in college there were never less than two of each, on my desk, crammed full of any writing utensil I could find, nestled between stacks and stacks of Post-Its.

Mason Jars are something that I love because of Mimi– my father’s mother– and her open-aired country style of decorating when I was growing up. Most beautiful flower arrangement I ever saw? Daisies in a mason jar on Mimi’s table. She had ceramic milk jugs, too, but you can’t fill pens with those. Not in a way that lets you retrieve the pens, anyway… So I stuck with Mason Jars.

MASON JARS.

I realized that, if I was going to do lanters– potentially even with PAPER BUGS– I needed to have MASON JARS!

But was that more for the wedding? Or for how I want the home to look after the wedding? Could it be for both? Can I put mason jars on a table at a wedding? Would I then have to fill them with paper bugs? Oh God! What if I put tea lights in them instead? Or, also?

Paper bugs would catch on fire. What is wrong with you?

Good question. I realized, as I was Googling “Can I register for Mason Jars and Paper Bugs?” that this was completely out of control.

I have Brideitis, where I am wholly overwhelmed with everything that needs to get done in the short 506 days left before the wedding.

To cure me? I am closing my laptop… and walking away. I am making myself wait 72 hours before I order anything– even mason jars– and consulting The Groom on all choices because he will most definitely tell me when I cross the line into The Deep End.

Also because if I order 200 Mason Jars, he’s the one who has to find a place for them in The House after The Wedding. So, I guess this one time… he gets a vote.

-MM.

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Posted in Gettin' Hitched, The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth

Jun 16

Queen Elephant

Elephant has had a grand old time adjusting to her new house. Where I find myself clumsy in the space and lost in the kitchen and homesick for my own family more often now, Ellie wasted no time in making herself right at home. Little monster.

It’s true– living with a new, different family is a challenge. There is a certain level of domestication that, having been on my own for so long, I simply lack. Dishes sat in my sinks for days, sometimes a week through college. Fish hates clean water because the concept of it is entirely foreign to him. I don’t even want to tell you where I used to keep wet towels, because “piled up on the floor” is the best case scenario.

I have over 200 pairs of shoes, and I haven’t changed body-size for a decade. I work in fashion, so every quarter for the past three years, I was given a whole new wardrobe. And Lord, did I make shopping into a sport in my heyday.

I haven’t even mentioned to you the books. I have a confession: I have kept every single text book I’ve ever had to buy, right back to my SUPA Biology book senior year of High School. Paperbacks! Classics! Theory! Essays! Techincal mumbo jumbo! And the very best sampling of For Dummies, if I do say so. Between my wardrobe and my bookshelf, there was nothing I couldn’t solve with five minutes of rummaging.

Put simply? I have always had a lot of stuff. I kept it everywhere, and anywhere, and sometimes in neat piles, but mostly not. It always made the empty spaces I moved into and out of feel more like a surrogate home, while I nursed my aching, homesick, country-grown roots that I had ripped up without thinking, when I came to this city in the first place.

Home is something you take for granted right up until the moment you realize you have to make it for yourself.

And it’s twice as hard because James has half the crap I do. So he is already cometely unpacked, with a shiny new flatscreen HDTV.

He’s also Home. He knows where the towels go, and where the ziplock bags are, and how to get to the upstairs bathroom at night without having to turn the lights on. He sleeps through the midnight car alarms and the water sloshing through the air conditioner, because it sounds familliar. Jen coming home late and door hinges creaking and the sound of the house as it sighs itself into the night, they’re all his lullabies.

Mine sounded like wind through the trees, and reeds squealing as the lake breeze tickled them, and crickets. It’s a symphony, a country night. It is an opus I know by heart– that’s how I know it’s so far away. And this place, however warm and loving, however similar is not yet the same.

The first thing Elephant did when we let her into the bedroom, still strewn with boxes and piles and memories of our old life, was weave through the mess and climb up to the bedside table, set beside the window. She daintily shoved the alarm clock and lamp out of her way. They both went crashing to the floor; Ellie knows how to make an entrance.

And she knows how important it is to have a Home Base when everything else won’t stop spinning.

I just scratched her head and opened the window wider so she could smell all the air had to offer her. She pressed her little face to the screen and settled in. It is her place in the world.

This strange new world.

This weekend, I’m clearing off my desk. I’m snapping my Home Base into place, and hopefully the rest– (the wet towels)– will follow.

-M.

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Posted in Book Worm, Domestic DemiGoddess, The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth, True Life: I'm Surviving Suburbia, Warm Fuzzies

Jun 15

Dear iPhone 4

Dear iPhone 4,

For the love of MERCY, please let James just order you. Or I swear, so help me GOD, I am putting him on a plane to Apple HQ first thing tomorrow morning, without giving him coffee or a bagel first, and before he’s been able to have his morning pee.

On top of that, I’ll send Moose with him, and if you’re not yet acquainted with that monster of a feline, let me just tell you, politely, that he has only just come off a 24-hour punishment cycle for attacking my wedding gown. Moose, unlike James, will be given plenty of coffee before I send him to you, and nary a sedative. He will also be deprived of his morning constitutional, though, and alas, he is mighty particular about where he does his business. I’m sure any of your offices would do, though, under the circumstances.

Please make no mistake, these are not threats but promises. Additionally, if the situation is not rectified in a timely, efficient, polite manner… Well, I’ll just have to phone around a bit until I get your direct line.

And then I’ll give it to my mother.

And then, iPhone 4, you will rue the day you withheld yourself from James.

It doesn’t have to be so, dear phone. Just surrender yourself to my most miserable fiance, and all can be right in all our worlds.

Adieu,

Mallory

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Posted in Family Shackles, My People, TechNerd, The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth, True Life: I'm Surviving Suburbia, Warm Fuzzies

Apr 25

Time for Miss Mallory

I have been having an awful, awful past couple weeks.

Life is fine, it’s not that. It’s a me-thing. An emotional growth-spurt thing. One of those turbulent periods of self-reflection, self-loathing, self-acceptance, self-improvement.

Lots of self-stuff. Selfishness, I suppose. I have a bunch of contracts we have to sign this week for the wedding, so our photographer and our venue are locked in. Once that’s done, there will be a big post.

And there’s the me-stuff, which I need to work through a little more thoroughly, but that I will likely humbly talk about, because well… That’s the point of this site, right? Talking about myself?  Right? What? Where am I?

As you can tell, I’m a bit out of sorts. Little trouble sleeping. Little trouble eating. Little trouble focusing. I have four more weeks of an online class, then a small break, and… Life is a little whirly right now.

I’m working on all the fun things I have to tell you, I promise. (All the not-fun things, too…)

It will take a couple days, which is a couple days longer than I wanted, to get it all together. I just ask patience, as always. Life is a bit much to handle in real-time these past few weeks. And, I suspect, the next couple as well.

This week, I have to commit to taking a little Time for Miss Mallory, so I can get my head on straight and my heart back in place, beating at a normal rate again.

Does that sound OK? I hope so.

In the meantime, James just announced that he’d like to take up cleaning off animals that were affected in oil spills, because he saw a Dawn commercial. So, wish me luck with THAT, too.

Let’s get together again, say, Friday? Sound OK? I hope so.

xo,

MM

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Posted in The Moxie Chronicles., The Ugly Truth

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