Swamp Ass died in his sleep last night.  He is preceded in death by the many other pets that have died in my care (All of natural causes except that suicidal fish.).  He is survived by Killer and Tux, his feline siblings who never once realized in the year he lived with us that they could EAT him.

Services will be held tomorrow wherein I will most likely get drunk by myself and cry over a rodent.  A rodent that I only adopted because I was cranked out on anxiety meds but who made the last year hella more enjoyable.

Forever and a moon ago I posted a video of my oldest nephew and some of the phrases we had taught him.  The crazier segment of the Internet has found it.  Boy do they have some things to say about racism, bad role models, and quite a few who think that my nephew must be an out of control hellion with a potty mouth now that he’s older.  And then there are the people who see it for what it is, hilarious.  I find myself wanting to respond back to the commenters with the reality that you can’t know from a few seconds of video.  One, Zachary is an exceptional kid with pretty fabulous manners, and is in fact doing nothing but obeying his elders in that clip.  Two, we aren’t racist, and don’t have hang ups about race so race never occurred to us when teaching him those phrases.  Three, those are so not the worst words he knows, and yet he knows that he’s not even allowed to call his cousin “stupid” because we have managed to teach him right and wrong.   And four, most importantly, holy shit it’s hilarious to make children do your evil bidding.  You don’t even want to SEE the hand gestures we’ve taught him!

This is one of the best physical manifestations of what I feel like most days.  And I’m okay with that.

(This was taken at Mikey’s going away party.  Since he was moving to Kazakhstan, home of Borat, we some how ended up forcing everyone to wear mustaches.  Good times.)

I’ve always been interested in politics, more then my peers.  But this year I have, admittedly, gone crazy overboard.  I’ve been listening to podcasts since the primaries.  Almost two years.  Two LONG mostly ANNOYING years.   I can’t tell you the number of times a particularly annoying statement has caused me to SCREECH out loud at my desk.  I’m the crazy girl with earbuds in yelling at her iPod.

It feels weird knowing that today it ends.  The anticipation of this is more then anything I have ever experienced in my life.  While I’m some what confident the outcome will be to my liking I’m also so very, very nervous.  Just a shot of the Virginia polls moments ago made my stomach lurch.

This is especially bad because I have ingested a large quantity of chocolate today in order to keep my nerves under control.  The night may end in puking.  Let’s hope it is of the celebratory variety, if there is such a thing.

Three incidents of dorkdom:

One, I have my own website.  Check.

Today I checked the CNN mobile site from my cell phone (Which I do 19 times a day, minimum.  Even while I watch CNN.) and they had switched over to the Electoral Count in preparation for tomorrow’s election.  I squealed with joy.

Sentence I actually uttered while in a discussion about Facebook “I’ve thought about joining only because there is a show on NPR that I love that has a page…”  About that time I trailed off leaving silence to settle in over the dinner table.  I am a nerd, and it’s become impossible for me to hide it.

The best part of my weekend was getting to talk to my friend Mikey, who joined the Peace Corps and shipped off to Kazakhstan over a year ago.  I miss him.  A bit more then I even expected to.  I’ve tried a few times to write about him, or what talking to him now is like and I can’t.  It’s too… something.  There’s no distance from it.  We have another year of him living on the other side of the world to get though.  And after that it’s all still unknown.

The physical distance was bridged a bit because he got himself a webcam.  This time I got to see his smirk when he called me a geek for blogging every day, see the light in his eyes while everyone joked like we used to, and see the seriousness I’m not used to when he talks about life there, and away from here.  Even better then seeing the boy I miss so much is to see how he’s changing.

It is DAY ONE of NaBloPoMo and I almost forgot.  It’s been so BUSY.  I had to wake up, read a book, take a nap, watch The Office, go on a walk with the neighbor.  Now I’ve forced myself to actually get out of my pajamas and go to a party.  God.  So busy.  Without me to hold down the couch I’m not sure what would happen.  The earth would spin off it’s axis.

So, thirty days, thirty posts.  We’re going to try this again.  I hope I have the stamina.  I’ve aged 58 years since last November.  I had to use a calculator to do that math.

This is not going to go well.

As I sit here waiting for someone to come visit me and alleviate my age induced boredom I some how found myself looking at widgets.  WIDGETS.  That word is fabulous.

Any way, I’m grabbing up these widgets like the last pair of shoes in my size on SALE and then I realized that I don’t have any recollection about how to get a widget into the plugin directory.  And I’m pretty sure I don’t remember who my hosting company is. 

Damn.  I really have ignored my hobby for a long, looooong time.  Or the dementia has settled in.

Shiny new widgets are just as good as actual content, yes?  Sure.

RP:  It was really hard for me to get over you.  Maybe I haven’t completely let the idea of what our future could be go yet.  But our present is not working for me.  You know me too well to treat me like you did.  You are far too old to be playing these games.  I’m too old for games.  As angry as I am about the last seven months I still can’t get you out of my head.  I can still feel the jump my stomach did the first time you really looked me in the eyes.  That day I saw in your eyes exactly what is so deep inside of me.  Where did that boy go?

Reggie:  I’m not exactly sure how we ended up here.  Have we not been down this exact road before?  We’ve passed this mile marker, I know that.  Why are we back here?  Is there more to us, or is this just convenience?  To be honest I don’t know the answer to that myself.  I feel like there could be more, but I also know that we don’t have the guts to explore.  We can’t be honest with ourselves, which is amusing to me because my favorite thing about you is how at ease I feel when I’m with you.  I put up with everything, I ignore what bothers me, because of how relaxed you make me, and your ability to make me laugh.  But if what you did bothers me on another level maybe I can’t have anything with you.

X:  Oh, I get it.  You got a wife and a child and the future we had planned.  The day we both ended it my future dissolved before my eyes.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to come to grips with, the complete loss of my path in life.  And here I am again.  You get a wife and a baby and I get a stroke and infertility.  The new future I imagined for myself is now vanishing.  Is this why you’ve made an appearance in my dreams?  I don’t care how many times you ask, I’m NEVER going back there again.  Living through my life crashing down made me the person I am today.  A person that I am proud of, most of the time.  It made me a stronger person.  As soon as I come around to remembering all that then I can believe that I will get through this.

U:  Do you exist?  Is there anyone strong enough, determined enough, to put up with me?  Some where under the crazy and the health problems there is a person that I’m struggling to get back to.  What’s the point if there’s no one who can deal with me at my worst?  If you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best.  And some day?  My best is going to win this struggle.  I believe in that about as much as I believe in you.

Seriously.

Originally uploaded by Erin!

Some day I’m going to have this printed and hung in my office.

I’ve been saying that exact thing to myself for months now.