Job for my Clone

http://jobview.usajobs.gov/GetJob.aspx?JobID=90412226&aid=79134553-31810&WT.mc_n=125

The Bureau of Land Management is hiring a Wild Horse and Burro Specialist in Washington, D.C. I actually lived among and researched wild horses in college, and I meet the minimum requirements for the job. How strange that I would qualify for this job, that I have great friends in Washington D.C. and I would enjoy living there. I can almost see a parallel life...

But I have a Norah Jones Rage Against the Machine kind of love, the kind of love where the Zac Brown Band makes me get all nostalgic when I remember yesterday at 5:00 in the evening when The Old Man grabbed my ass and did the dishes and made me remember romance is about day-to-day love.

I'm ridiculously blessed that I have my man and my family. I'd never let wild horses drag me away.

Chick Lit

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129423107&sc=fb&cc=fp

My sister brought this interesting NPR post to my attention. There is no such thing as "chick lit." Writing about home and feelings and relationships is valid.

In other news, I'm so busy that today as I was driving the kids to daycare I had a brief moment of terror because I thought I had forgotten to put my shirt on. I looked down, and indeed, I was wearing a shirt. Score.

That Bastard

Work tried to follow me home so I stopped the car and yanked his manicured tweezed lotiony smooth cuff-linked self out of his car and beat the shit out of him and left him bleeding by the side of the road.

Noggin. Nodding. Punkin Head. Lash Whip.

At four o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, I fell asleep on the floor with my legs folded under me. The next thing I remember The Old Man is beside me telling me I had crashed to the floor and hit my head.

I was beside the Baby's crib, waiting for her to fall back asleep. I must have fallen asleep in a weird position, gotten up too fast to take a shower, and then passed out.

The nurse on the phone told me to go the emergency room because they didn't know why I fell. When I tried to tell her that I knew why I fell, she didn't listen.

So I didn't go.

But I went to the doctor yesterday. Headaches and dizziness and trouble concentrating.

He said I have concussion and whiplash. And to take Tylenol every 6 hours.

So there is no moral to this story. Other than don't kneel on the floor and then fall asleep and then sleepwalk to the shower.

Now I have my guilt trip for my daughter. I was only in labor with her 3 hours so I can't use that one.

"You made me so tired that one night I got concussion and whiplash." That'll be a good one in twenty years or so.

I'll have difficulty concentrating, headaches, dizziness and slower reflexes for a while. So mess me with don't.

Like Blood From a Stone

My mind is completely blank so I'm wringing out a post just to exercise my writing muscles.

If I had a million dollars

If I had a million dollars

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy me a house.

With a huge pantry

and the dryer and washing machine upstairs next to the five bedrooms

and a five car garage

and a playroom

and a convection oven

and a library with an over-stuffed chair and some sort of rare book in a glass case in the middle, like a signed original copy of Alice in Wonderland or The Hobbit

and a tower on the roof for star-gazing

and hardwood floors and carpet

and a wing for the dog with her own couch to sleep on

and a hot tub

and an archery range.

Ankle Biters

The horrid thing about giving birth was that the world expected her body to retreat into a certain round softness. Fran ripped the pins out of her hair and tossed the long strands aside, then hiked up her skirt and went down on all fours in the grass behind her garden shed. She did ten push ups, quick. Her first baby was only six months old but Fran wanted to shed her alien layered slabs of fat. She jumped up and studied herself in the shed's window. She saw no difference. All she had to show for her exercise were two bites on her ankles from the little black ants that managed to crawl unnoticed up her bare feet.

There's nothing sexier than a woman's ankles. And a red-checked skirt haphazard in folds, and dark brown hair flipped over one eye. Fran in the sunlight posing in front of the shed window - unaware that Oliver was inside the shed searching for his old favorite hammer to fix the creaky stair - was to Oliver tastier than moon pie and cold milk.

Later that evening they made baby number two.

Stress Relief

The downside
to modern social rules
to self-restraint
to an emphasis on tact
and understanding
and temper control

is

that I must beat
the shit out of
the poor men
who challenge me
in my dreams.

Ah, but it feels good.