It sounds so Leave it to Beaver-ish but I don't care.

MY SON IS THE CAPTAIN OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM!

Whew.  I've been just about bursting at the seams waiting to say that.

And if that's not enough, I am eating the most amazing shrimp and avocado salad with mango dressing.  Exquisite!

See.  It's good to be me!

I have to seriously question whether or not James Madison ever contemplated the possiblity of Joseph Edward Duncan III before he wrote the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. 

Personally, I think Slade and Dylan and Shasta Groene's daddy should get to decide his fate.

Today, I'm competing for the "Worst Mom in the History of the World" award.

I'm fixing grilled mahi mahi with Key lime buerre blanc and a tomato-avocado salad for dinner.

I haven't even turned on the stove yet and Cody has quit speaking to me.  The famous "I'm not eating THAT!" followed by tears will come around 5:20 when Conor gets the news.

Imagine it.  You're at the local county fair with your husband and young daughter (your teenage son having, of course, disappeared the moment he spotted one of his friends rather than endure the horrors of an evening spent with his parents).  As you're wandering through the carnival, you spot your company's IT manager.  How bad is it to fantasize that the Gravitron he's standing next to suddenly flies apart and shreds him to ribbons?

Just wondering.

Yesterday, someone broke out the leftovers from our company picnic.  One of my coworkers helped herself to some potato salad, took a bite and said, "Wow!  That's really good!  I normally don't like potato salad.  It's too spicy."

Now, in spite of the fact that I occasionally like potato salad, I can't deny that it's one of the most bland foods known to man.  Only a step or two above plain white rice in fact.

Too spicy.

Normally, I would find that rather funny but since I've become considerably un-fond of this particular coworker over the last several months, I just find it dumb.

What is the deal with bad shit coming in clumps? 

A breakdown of the clump in question:

CodyandAlyssa are now Cody and Alyssa.  Two separate people on two separate paths.  My son is sad and I can't do anything but tell him I love him and wait for him to feel better.  I feel so freaking helpless.   I gave him tickets to the Puddle of Mudd/Theory of a Deadman concert tonight.  He's going with his best friend and I hope he has a great time and comes home with the smile back on his precious, beautiful face.

When I lived in Bozeman, I had friend named Diane.  When I got pg with Cody, I moved to Billings to be closer to family.  Di moved to Billings shortly after.  She was from here anyway and there wasn't much to keep her in Bozeman.  A couple years after Cody was born, Di had a baby and got married.  We fell in and out of touch over the years.  I last saw her a couple of years ago but recently, she's been on my mind a lot and I've been mentally nagging at myself to call her and catch up.  Yesterday, while I was looking for something else in the archives of our local paper, I stumbled across her obituary.  She died in July.  She was hyper and scatter-brained and funny and compassionate to a fault and it makes me so sad to know that I'll never see her again.

Then there's this morning.  A coworker in another location has decided she doesn't want to do her job anymore.  She wants to do something different.  More specifically, she wants to do my job.  Her supervisor has taken it upon himself to start harrassing my boss to give his employee my job or at least part of it and find something else for me to do.  There is not time or space for me to unload the anger and frustration I'm feeling right now.  Suffice it to say that I understand why some people bring guns to work.

The best part?  This particular clump of unadulterated crap all showed up in a span of 15 hours.  That's gotta be some kind of record.

It should go without saying that there are things of which you never speak when you attend a baby shower with a still-pregnant mommy but for those who didn't get the memo and are too stupid to just inherently get it, I'll roll it out for you:

Never EVER go into lengthy detail about being begrudgingly, resentfully present for the birth of your stillborn grandchild.  NEVER. 

I attended a baby shower for my best, best, best BFF's (would that make her my BBBBFF?) daughter last weekend and someone actually had the extremely poor taste to do exactly that.  What makes it even more appalling is the fact that the incredibly insensitive dolt who shouted (literally) out this inappropriate tale of whoa was none other than the babydaddy's attention-seeking mother.  That's right.  The grandma of the soon-to-be grandbaby sat in front of the very pregnant mother of her grandchild and yapped on endlessly about being there for the birth of her "dead grandson".  Aside from the fact that the time and place was horrifyingly ill-chosen, I was totally taken aback by how disgusted she was that she had to be there.  I would have sprinted across a mile of broken glass to be there for my child.  I would have made every bargain I could think to make with God if He would only let me somehow bear the pain and spare my child such devastating grief.  She just seemed angry that her daughter wanted her there so she wouldn't have to do it alone.

Stupid, redneck witch with a 'b'.

(((BIG HUGS))) Stef.  Just completely ignore that crazy old bat.  As far as I'm concerned, they're not nearly good enough for you.

(FYI Kyra - The Garden of Last Days bored me to tears.  That really bums me out because I loved The House of Sand and Fog.)

I'm going to share my latest "WooHoo!" discovery.

If you like strawberry shortcake (and who doesn't?), go get yourself the issue of Cook's Illustrated that has a picture of strawberry shortcake on the front*.  Whip up a batch.  Ignore the fact that you know how much butter and cream is in it.  Eat way more than you know you should.  Make some more.  Keep repeating until fresh strawberries are no longer available or you can't squeeze into your this-is-the-only-thing-that-fits-on-the-day-before-my-period pants.

See how nice I am?  I could have told you all about the most exquisite strawberry shortcake ever and how I made some last night and you can't because you don't have the recipe and I do but I'm not sharing it.

Now, don't waste my nice.  Make some strawberry shortcake and tell me how amazing it is.  While you're doing that, I'll make some with peaches and let you know how it goes.

*Unfortunately, you can't just go to the website and get the recipe unless you want a membership (first 14 days free!!).  They're not nice like Epicurious/Gourmet/Bon Appetit who let you access bzillions of recipes for free..

I've been busy.  Really, really busy.

That's not entirely it, tho.  Several times, I've started an entry about something and haven't been able to finish it.  I've barely been able to start it.  I still haven't quite learned how to live with the truth of it.  I still haven't learned how to not be crushed by it.

I was eight and a half when my little brother was born.  I still remember the night my mom went to the hospital to have him.  I woke up in the middle of the night to hear her screeching a string of obscenities that probably scared me out of a good year's growth.  My dad took us to my grandma's and then hauled the shrieking, swearing banshee that had the day before been my mother off to the hospital.  In the morning, my grandma told us that we had a baby brother.  My sole focus became the moment when I would finally get to see him.

He was born in the summer so my mom had made plans to send my sisters and I to stay in Butte with my aunt for a couple of weeks while she and my dad settled in and adjusted to life with a newborn in the house.  We had to leave on Sunday.  I was horrified by the thought that they may not be home from the hospital in time for me to see him before we had to leave.  My grandma promised she'd take me to the hospital to see him if they weren't out before we left.  Luckily, they made it home and on a beautiful, sunny Sunday in July, I met my baby brother, Chris.  It was love at first sight.

Quickly, he became the center of my universe.  He was the best toy any almost 9yo girl ever had. When my sisters and my friends had baby dolls to play with, I had a real baby.  I dressed him in my Chrissie Doll clothes.  He fit in my toy baby buggy and my doll crib.  His first smile, his first laugh, his first steps... all were directed at me.  We lived in a two-bedroom house and by the time Chris was a few months old, my mom had moved him into my and my sisters' bedroom.  I got up and changed him at night and got him his bottles.  After a while, I started bringing him to bed with me when he woke up.  He slept better and therefore, so did I.  By the time I was 9, I knew that no matter what else I did with my life, what mattered most was one day being a mom. 

As the years passed, my love for my brother grew.  When things got so bad that I thought about running away, I stuck it out because I didn't know if I'd ever see him again and I couldn't bear the thought of that.  When we came to town for school activities, I always made sure to bring him home a present.  When I was in high school, I started waiting tables after school and on the weekends to earn money for clothes and school activities.  At the end of my shifts, I would cash in my tips and what ever change was left, I would bring home and give to Chris.  Soon, he noticed that I kept all the dollars and gave him change.   I started giving him a choice between the change in one hand or the dollar in the other.  He always chose the dollar.  It didn't matter how much change was in the other hand.  He would pass up 5 dollars in change to take one single dollar bill. 

My relationship with my brother has been a big part of my life.  My love for him has reached far beyond the typical sibling relationship.  I've loved him like he was my own child.  I've always known that there's been a special bond between my brother and me.

My brother got married a couple of years ago and started a family right away.  My nephew, Christian, was born the day after my mom died.  We went to my dad's last summer because my brother and his family were going to be there.   I don't even know the words to adequately describe what it was like to meet my brother's son.  Christian looks so very much like my brother did at that age.  I fell in love all over again.  I dreamed about the thngs I could do to make sure he would always know who I am and that even tho we live far apart, I love him. Then, this year, my nephew Gabriel was born on Conor's birthday.  How funny is that?  My brother, whom I love more than life itself, has a child who shares a birthday with one of my children.  It was just one more little indicator of the specialness of the relationship between my brother and me.

A few weeks later, my sister and I got together for lunch and a little shopping.  Ever since "the lump" scare from January, we'd been trying to make a better effort to spend time together.  She's one of my best friends.  I'd even been thinking about how long it would take for me to save up enough money to take the two of us to HI for some child-free, husband-free, super-fun sister time.  We'd just left Montana Harvest.  We were driving to Target when she said, "I'm not trying to sound like I'm bragging or rubbing your face in it or anything but Chris and Nikki asked me to be the godmother to both of the boys."  I couldn't make sense of what she'd said.  It was like she'd spoken to me in Japanese or something because for the first few seconds, I couldn't understand what I'd heard.  It just simply would not register.  When I finally got it, it was like all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the car.  I couldn't breathe.  We got to Target and I went straight to the ladies room and cried.  It's been months since it happened and I still cry when I think about it.  It still hurts like it did then.

I still don't understand any of this.  I don't understand how my sister - my friend - could be so happy to accept something she knew would cause me so much pain.  I don't understand how my brother, who I've adored for more than 3 decades, could so easily shut me out.  The one thing I do understand is that the only special bond that existed between my brother and me was the one in my head.  It wasn't real and everyone knew it but me.  I feel stupid and foolish and so deeply, gut-wrenchingly hurt.  I don't know how to settle into this new family reality that I find myself faced with.  My sister was the easiest part actually.  She just quit speaking to me.  Maybe it was for the best because I don't know that we could ever get back to where we were.  Or where I thought we were.  It would appear that I was way wrong about that too.  My dad and my brother just try to pretend like nothing happened.  I think my brother has an idea that it hurt me more than he suspected it would and I think maybe he does feel a little bad about it but he calls now and then to tell me about his new house and how his job is going and he just doesn't talk about his kids and the whole time he's on the phone, all I can think is, "What do you want from me?  Haven't you done enough?"

I wonder if there will ever be a day when I can think of this and not feel like someone just slapped me in the face.

That's how many hours I worked last week.  I'm on track to work that many this week.

Stupid acquisition.

I'm tired.