All Or Nothing

The Importance Of Being Chill

I live my life in a near-constant state of freaking out.  I'm not sure if that shows on the outside or not - those of you who know me in real life will have to share - but on the inside, I am normally in some degree of turmoil.

It wasn't always like this.  Or was it?  I remember plenty of conversations where I was the footloose and fancy-free one; I've always been the type of girl who will take off, at a moment's notice, on the most random of adventures.  In fact, I seek them out.

Doesn't that make me a free spirit? 

Not really, as it happens.  Looking for chaos, whether that be in the form of a last-minute trip or in the creation of a problem where previously one did not exist, is just a way I make my outward circumstances match my inner mindset.  If I have something concretely chaotic to focus upon, I don't have to consider why my mind is always racing.  I need an off button.

In true all or nothing fashion, when I finally do relax, I REALLY relax.  I don't want to do ANYTHING, don't want to think anything, don't want to have to figure out anything.  I don't want to worry about being social, because then my mind will start spinning again, trying to figure out if this person is having fun, and what about that guy over there?  Who's he with?  Do we need to include him?  Is my house clean enough?  Was that a tuft of dog hair I just saw tumbleweeding across the floor?  I just vacuumed YESTERDAY, for goodness sake.  How much can one dog shed?  Now everyone is going to think I keep a nasty house.  Wait, did we just run out of chips?  I KNEW I should have bought more than two bags.  Oh and now what will we do?  Am I supposed to come up with something?  Because I don't FEEL LIKE DOING ANYTHING!

It's beginning to get tiresome.

I envy the ease with which many of my friends go about their lives.  They go to work, they put in an hour at the gym, they go to the grocery store, they pick up their house.  They fold laundry.  They have visitors drop by unannounced, and they don't care.  They fall asleep without a television on to drown out the noise of their relentless thoughts.

How do they do that?

I realize that much of my stress is self-inflicted.  Like I said, I almost seek out the chaos in a situation, because I am so used to being in that state that I feel like I wouldn't know what to do without it.  I made the decision to start my own retail business at the age of 24, despite being warned numerous times by many, many (well-meaning) people the statistics on small-business failure (over 90% in the first two years) and the ridiculously fickle nature of retail.  Duly noted, and then pushed aside.  I went for my dreams!  I knew it would be hard!

And holy geez, it is hard.

I guess I'm in that middle part of "living your dream".  The part when all the difficult stuff has been realized; the reasons so many people don't do what you're doing become abundantly clear, and you have moved well beyond questioning your own sanity for making the choice you did (verdict: clearly insane).  But I'm not yet to the point where I can fondly look back and say "wow, I really did it, didn't I?  I just took the leap and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best, and if I knew then what I do now, I probably wouldn't have done it.  But my goodness, am I glad I did!" 

Yeah, I could say the first half of that sentiment rings true.  But not that last bit.

At this point, I guess all I am wishing for is to be a little more Zen.  A little more in touch with myself, and a little less inclined to have this constant, relentless "you'renotdoingthisright!" bearing down on me.  I catch myself doing something totally innocuous - stepping out of the bathtub or looking at a not-quite-ripe orange in the grocery store - and I suddenly get a rush of bad adrenaline, that overwhelmingly negative something-is-wrong-feeling.  And if I don't pull myself out of it, the brief moment of self-awareness will pass by and I'll just continue about my day, now saddled with an (unnecessary) impending sense of doom.

The thing that bugs me the most is that I just KNOW the stress sneaks by me undetected more often that not.  There's really no reason to live my life this way; no reason to go from one activity to the next with a giant storm cloud brewing above my head.  Sure, some things are bad.  Some parts of my life are not the way I would want them to be.  And some of those things I can control (to a point) and some I can't. 

So what I want - what I need - is to just chill.  I need to stop the sneaky advances of stress from ruining perfectly innocent grocery store trips.  I need to try my best, and know that it's GOOD ENOUGH.  I need to allow the phrase "good enough" to exist in my personal dictionary.  And much like a good friend ended her entry the other day, this is not a "pity me, I have it so hard" type of post at all.  It's much more a "does anyone else have this ever-present feeling of doom plaguing you at all hours?" type of thing.  And if so, what do you do about it?

Welcome To The Jungle

When I was about 11 years old, my parents decided that they were going to buy a big trampoline for the backyard.  The ins and outs of this purchase were discussed frequently, dominating dinner conversations ("when will we get it?") and shopping trips ("are we gonna buy it NOW?  How about now?") alike.   All this lead time gave my little brain the chance to fully imagine what new joys the trampoline would bring to my life.  I spent hours sitting on the top rung of our fence, leaning up against the bricks and picturing exactly where the trampoline would go in the yard, all the tricks I would learn in the first five minutes (and perfect in the next ten), and how I would make sure that I got to jump on it a lot more than either of my brothers.

And then, finally, the fateful day arrived.  It was Trampoline Day!  My brothers and I sat in the green summer grass, watching my dad pull out all the parts and figure out how it went together, asking if he needed help every fifteen seconds or so and waiting breathlessly.  The only thing that wasn't perfect was this niggling insecurity I had about where my dad had chosen to set up the trampoline.  He was situated in the grass a good 15 feet from where I thought the trampoline needed to go.  But I wasn't going to let that get me down; he was probably just setting up right there because it was convenient, but surely once he got the thing put together we would move it to the correct spot.  Nothing to worry about.

About mid-afternoon the trampoline was nearly completed and I started making subtle comments about trampoline placement.  Finally my dad stood up, stretched, looked like he was done, and I stood as well.  Now was the time!  The time to move the trampoline to the right spot and start having fun!  Just like I had imagined!  Except my dad said "okay kids, give it a go", stepped back, and my two stupid brothers clambered up onto the blue mat surrounding the trampoline and STARTED JUMPING.  And the trampoline WASN'T EVEN IN THE RIGHT SPOT.

Needless to say, this bothered me.  And needless to say, "bothered me" is an understatement.  This situation would bother me NOW, as a 27 year-old semi-adult.  As an 11 year-old, it was pretty much the end of my world, the imploding of my universe - a total mind-screw, if you will.  That stupid trampoline, the one I had pined after for weeks and weeks, now sat mocking me, letting me know that while OTHER people might be able to jump mindlessly and have fun, I would never, ever be able to enjoy its sweet pleasures.  The blue plastic mat and black bouncy surface represented every single thing that was wrong with the world, at least as far as what I knew of it.  The trampoline was in the wrong place.

So I began to plead.  I tried every approach I could think of - passive, logical reasoning, aggressive, hard-line arguments, and emotional, tear-filled appeals.  Nothing worked.  My brothers were happily oblivious to everything, just brainlessly hopping around, and my dad, who had spent the whole day setting up the trampoline, had adjourned to the living room to watch golf and was not interested in listening to me in the least.  So my mom was the only one left, and although she and I have some characteristics in common, this particular brand of obsessiveness seems to have afflicted me and me alone.  She never understood me when I got like that.

After all my pleading tactics had been tried and failed, I was beside myself.  There was nothing left to do, and yet I COULD NOT just do nothing.  So I sat and thought and obsessed over it until I came up with what I thought would surely be my trump card - I would run away.  I had NEVER run away before, or even threatened to, and I couldn't imagine a world where that (the most dire of threats) would not be taken seriously.

You can probably imagine what happened.  I threatened, I wasn't taken seriously.  I packed, I wasn't taken seriously.  I left - and then about an hour or two later after no one came to find me I came back home to see that the trampoline was in the exact same place as when I left, my mom was cooking dinner, my dad still didn't care, and my brothers were playing Nintendo.  Nothing had changed at all.  No one understood.  And my little heart broke a tiny bit that day, because I realized that there was something about me that was just not quite right.  I knew I should be able to enjoy the trampoline regardless of where it was in the yard.  I wanted to enjoy it.  I didn't want to care about correct trampoline placement.  And yet, I cared so much that I had RUN AWAY.

I don't think my 11 year-old self could process the events of that afternoon very well, and to this day, the "Elise ran away when we wouldn't put the trampoline in the right spot" story is told by various family members or friends of mine as an exaggerated personality-explaining joke and always gets a good laugh.  Because if you don't have this - this THING in your brain, it IS funny.  I mean, I get it.  I ran away because my dad wouldn't put a stupid trampoline in this certain spot in the yard.  Ha!  What a high-strung little lady I must have been.  Man!  That's funny.

Except to me, it's really not.  Because I am still that same way; that same girl who dreams and imagines things in certain ways, and then can't understand when they don't work out.  My mind is a scary place - I think in some ways it has enabled me to do things like own my own business at the age of 24 and make it through a lawsuit and fraudulent numbers and a recently-crappy economic turn and still not fail (yet!).  I just won't give up, because I imagined success, and I imagined myself as a boutique owner and not a bankrupt business warning story.  So I won't give up, I just won't.  Even when it seems like there is nothing else to do, I just won't do nothing.

But that same quality/flaw (however you choose to view it) presents itself in EVERY area of my life.  I, very unfortunately, have never figured out how to lasso the obsessiveness and parlay it into useful projects only.  My whole life - my whole world - is dominated by this same mindset.  And obviously in the 16 years since the trampoline incident, I have learned that not everything works out exactly how I envision it.  Small things go wrong, big things go wrong.  You have to roll with the punches.  I fight myself a lot, and usually I can figure out my obsession enough to transfer it to something useful and/or get over it.  But sometimes, just like that trampoline, I get completely fixated on something, and I can't - WON'T - believe that it has to be the way it is.  I will take a set of facts - hard evidence - and no matter how much I try to let the reality of the situation set in, I end up thinking it could be different.  Maybe I read it wrong!  Maybe things have changed!  Maybe a new angle will fix everything!  I refuse to believe that I can't change it; that there's nothing I can do. 

Because if there's nothing I can do, then what will I do? 

The L-Y-D

So.  This one is gonna be short and sweet and (hopefully) heavy on the reader advice.  Did you hear that, Internets?  I AM ASKING FOR ADVICE!  May God have mercy on my soul.

I am about to take a little vacay.  And I'm gonna be gone for a while.  And all throughout the planning process, I have been thinking that I would bring Lydah with me.  There's a whole lineup of doggy activities waiting for her at our final destination, and I think she would be in absolute heaven.

So as the departure date has grown closer and closer, I've started getting my ducks in a row, if you will.  I called the airline, to make sure there weren't any dog-related regulations I hadn't been able to glean from my obsessive online researching, I took an inventory of Lydah's travel supplies, to make sure everything was safe and secure, and I called the vet, to make sure they didn't have any last-minute recommendations for me.

Oh, and that call, my friends - that last call is where this whole thing fell apart.  You see, I LOVE my vet.  I really, really do.  He was our last-ditch effort when Lydah just kept getting sicker and sicker, and he not only fixed up her torn ACL (and WITHOUT surgery!), he also got her stomach all healed, found a food she would eat, spayed her, and is responsible for her TWENTY POUND WEIGHT GAIN.  And if you've ever found yourself in the position of trying to FORCE a sick animal to eat, every day, just so that they won't die - this type of vet is a savior.  He really did save her life.  And I am forever grateful to him for that.  However!  As a result of me having to take Lydah to SEE this vet for some super specialized treatments that, at one time, had me coming in TWICE A DAY, EVERY DAY, the vet and his wife love Lydah almost as much as I do.  Which is great, right?  I mean, it really is - who doesn't want their vet to love their pet that much?   You get EXTRA SPECIAL care.  And, as I've just found out, extra special advice.

Me: So, I'm going to be traveling with Lydah in the next week, is there anything I need to do or bring for her that I may have not thought of?

Vet:  Traveling?  Oh, how nice!  Where are you going?

Me:  Location.

Vet:  OH MY GOSH, YOU AREN'T GOING ON AN AIRPLANE, ARE YOU??

Me: .....ummm.  Yes?

Vet:  Oh, please tell me you aren't going to put that poor dog on a plane.

Me:  So, umm...that would be a bad idea, then?

And then the vet proceeded to tell me all the reasons that would be a terrible idea, how I would be needlessly endangering the life of my dog, how traumatic and stressful it would be for Lydah, how horrible the conditions would be for her, and how it would be just like rolling the dice with my dog's life.  Then the vet's wife told me how she used to work for an airline, and saw not just one, but SEVERAL dogs die in transit.  And then she or another airline employee would have to go tell the owners that sorry, your dog is dead, and then the owners would be inconsolable, but the airline isn't liable, because the customer had to sign a release, and DID I KNOW I HAD TO SIGN SOMETHING SAYING THAT LYDAH MIGHT DIE??  Did I?

So. 

Needless to say, I have backed off the whole take-Lydah-with-me idea, and am now completely confused as to what I should do.  I mean, OBVIOUSLY I don't want to needlessly endanger Lydah's life.  I would honestly never forgive myself if something happened to her that I could have easily prevented.  However, I also don't want to live a life of fear, where all of the sudden I won't drive if it rained even three hours ago and the roads might still be wet.  And neither me nor anyone I know can ever taste cookie dough again because WHAT ABOUT THE SALMONELLA, AAAGGGHH!  I don't want to be that person.

So what say you, readers?  Do you have any advice/experience/knowledge to share?  Because this girl is confused.  And really, even if you don't care about me all that much, it's for Lydah.  How can you resist that face?

 

Full-On Randomness

When I notice that something's running out, I get really nervous and turn into Hoarder Girl.  For example, the other day I walked into the bathroom and saw that we had one square of toilet paper left, clinging to the empty cardboard roll.  And my first reaction wasn't "ugh, why won't Cody just put a new roll on when the old one runs out?" or even a light-hearted and less-naggy "hmm, hope I have a extra roll in the cabinet up here".  Rather, my brain immediately turns into some sort of high-tech toilet paper calculator, frantically tabulating every spare roll of toilet paper in the house, where each roll is located at that very moment, and how much longer we can last on that much toilet paper without running out.  I have to have at least a 3 roll comfort zone, so that means subtracting 3 from the total.  If, at the end of these intensive calculations, I am anywhere near ZERO TOILET PAPER, I have a mini-panic attack and vow only to pee until I can make it to the store.  Once I obtain a brand new pack of toilet paper (or whatever it is I was running out of), the countdown begins anew.  And my brain does all of this on its own, without any conscious effort or acknowledgment from me.

Lydah is getting spayed tomorrow.  Cody has been incessantly referring to this as her "vagectomy".  (Oh, the creepy Googlers who will find my site now.)  I am somewhat concerned about this surgery, as we have what you might call a "doggy diva", who yelps and flinches at the slightest thought of pain or discomfort.  Some people have to worry about keeping their pups from running around all crazily and trying to rip their stitches out.  We have to worry about Lydah's precarious mental state, and whether she's about to fall, head over heels, into a full-fledged canine depression.  I've heard they make Doggy Prozac.  If this is true, I may be their next (ridiculous) customer.

My brother and I were chatting online and he said he wanted me to bring him my parents' camping tent the next time I came out to visit.  Because he is my brother, and some things never change, my gut response was to tell him that I was keeping the tent for myself, although I haven't been camping since I was about 9 years old.  I just didn't want him to have it without me being difficult, even though I could easily borrow any number of tents if the urge suddenly struck me to go set up camp in the woods, surround myself with bugs, drink nothing but stale, warm canteen water, eat something scraped out of a can, and eventually degrade myself to the point of using the bathroom behind a tree.  Camping.  Why do people VOLUNTARILY lower their standard of living for vacation?  It's like hey, I live in a HOUSE, with a ROOF, and RUNNING WATER.  And for the privilege of all these things, I work every day so that I can pay my bills.  And now that I have worked hard all week and have some time off, I know what we should do!  We should pack up a tent, take it out to some secluded area, work really hard to set up a campsite, and then sit in the dirt all weekend.   It reminds me of that scene in Office Space where Peter Gibbons is talking to his neighbor, Lawrence.  Peter is considering the question "what would you do if you had a million dollars", and after some thought, he says that what he would like most is to do absolutely nothing. 
"Nothing?" Lawrence asks.  "Hell, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing.  Take a look at my cousin, man - he's broke, don't do sh*t." 
That's how I feel about camping.  If you REALLY like camping, then why are you working anywhere at all?  Why do you have a bank account, or a car, or a mortgage?  Why not just quit everything, buy some supplies, and go live in the woods in a tent?  Wouldn't that be easier?

And with that, I'm out.  Not to go camping though.  No, I'll be taking full advantage of all the modern-day luxuries I have on hand this weekend, like flushing toilets and that big metal box they call the refrigerator.

Have A Glass Of Wine For Me Today

That title should be a song.  Is it a song?  It just sounds kind of melodic.  Somebody get on that.

Today I am celebrating, because it is the anniversary of the store.  Of store ownership.  Of business ownership.  Of not going completely bankrupt or completely insane (although some may disagree with the latter, but to them I say it was inevitable; perhaps the store brought it on sooner, perhaps not).

Anyway!

Today marks the start of our third year in business.  Cody insists that to mark it as such, I am not being completely forthcoming with myself.  He says it is the store's two year anniversary.  I think that since this is my third July, and will be my third holiday season coming up shortly, it is a glaring shame to not mention the word THREE in there somewhere.  To say TWO, it sounds so much less, like I've hardly done anything really, just two years of all this work.  When no, this is the third time around for all these things! 

And yet, I can't say it is our three year anniversary.  So I have to say vague things like "We're celebrating the start of our third year!" or "Our third year starts today!"

Cody wonders why I can't say the words TWO or SECOND in relation to the event.  I tried to explain it to him using this as an example.  He immediately understood.  Or, at least, he understood that he doesn't understand, but he knows what happens in instances like these, when I am grasping at the last remaining shreds of mental stability, and he insists that I behave rationally.

Because, you see, the thing I didn't explain in that story linked to above was this:  After I completely destroyed my hair with the always-disastrous home hair coloring kit, and after I stared at my hair for what seemed like hours in the mirror, mumbling incoherently, and AFTER I tied my hair up in a scarf to go to sleep, just so that I wouldn't have to look at it anymore and could therefore pretend that it hadn't happened, Cody tried to rationalize with me.

"Why are you sleeping in that scarf?" he asked.

"Because.  I have to.  Don't talk to me about it.  I can't look at my hair," I responded.

"But you'll be sleeping,"  he reasoned.

"I CAN'T!  DON'T MAKE ME TAKE IT OFF!  I CANNOT TAKE IT OFF!"  I screamed, as an insane woman might.

"Ummm....ok.  Why don't we take a deep breath and count to ten?" Cody suggested.

"No!  No....please don't make me count to ten," I begged. 

For some reason, when I get really upset, my brain puts every bit of normal conversation into the "demand" category.  I always end up pleading with people not to make me do whatever it is that they might have just randomly said.  For example, you might say, Elise, I'm hungry.  I think I'll make a sandwich.  And I would respond with something reasonable like Nooooo!  Don't make me eat.  Please don't make me eat a sandwich.  It's lovely.  Wanna hang out sometime?

"Well, let's just count to ten.  Ok?  We're gonna count to ten.  Ready?"  Clearly, we hadn't been married long at this point.

"No!" deep breath "No!!  Noooo.  Ok.  Okaaay..."  I tried to harness my completely out of control brain.

"Good, here we go!  One.....two... count, Elise."

"Threee......f-f-ouuuurr...." at this point I broke down into tears.

"Umm....ok!  That's enough counting!  Uh, Elise?"  Cody had not ever seen me cry, to this point.  And I'm crying about my hair, of all things.  And counting to ten.

So, when I reminded Cody about the hair story, known around these parts as "Remember When You Made Me Count To Ten" he let up on the whole THREE YEAR vs. TWO YEAR thing.  He's gonna let me have it.  And I'm taking the word, and making it mine.  Three.  Third!  Thrice! 

It's much better than two.

So celebrate for me tonight!  Have three drinks.  Or three desserts.  Three of something, anyway.  We all deserve it.

From Sea to Shining Sea

Well, hello!  I'm back from Mexico.  And I'm not too sorry about it, either.

I mean, it was great, don't get me wrong.  I could have spent a week in Branson, Missouri, or Sweetwater, Texas and I would have thought it was great.  A week off, anywhere; that is pretty much the crux of the situation for me.  If I don't have to work or talk to anyone unless I feel like it for a week?  GOOD VACATION. 

And the resort we stayed at, wow.  It was like, the nicest place I've ever seen, much less stayed.  There was a giant spa that took up the entire first floor of the building we were in, with massage rooms and saunas and steam showers and Swedish showers and cardio rooms and weight rooms and incense rooms and stretching rooms and meditation rooms.  It was freakishly nice.  I spent quite a lot of time inside the spa.  Even though most of the women got naked way too often for my comfort level, and were, well, way too comfortable with their naked level, in general.  I don't know what my problem is, but I just can't get naked in front of a bunch of strangers.  I try, I really do.  I berate myself internally, offering words of wisdom to myself such as What, are you scared?  Everyone ELSE is doing it! and Get over yourself already, and just get naked, you chicken.  No one is looking at you!  I spent the last 15 minutes of every workout telling myself that this time, THIS TIME I would do it.  I mean, it probably feels great, right?  Just walking around all naked, not caring about, you know, cellulite, or weird tan lines or what your boobs look like.  Jumping into the jacuzzi, feeling the water swirling around, free of those cumbersome five square inches of fabric involved in most bikinis.  It would be enlightening!  I'd feel better about myself!  And on the flip side, if I DIDN'T do it, I'd look like a total freakshow because I would literally be the only one wearing a swimsuit.  I'd be the Mexican spa version of an Amish nun.  If the Amish had, you know.  Nunneries.  Do they?

Alas, I never actually went through with it.  Thursday, I was so confident in my Getting Naked decision that I actually smiled smugly to myself while I finished up on the stair-climber.  Hah, I thought.  Glad I'm over that.  I pity the old me, caring about such trivial matters.  In fact, I don't even have to think about this anymore, the decision is so made.  I'm like, whatever, naked!  I don't care about you.  And then I got to the jacuzzi, prepared to unwrap my towel and ran back to the lockers for my swimsuit.

Despite my internal anguish, the spa was great.  The pool was huge.  The ocean was beautiful.  The weather was perfect.  I read six books, slept at least 12 hours every night, and drank copious amounts of coconut rum.  And had a few margaritas for good measure.  So you might be wondering why I was ready to come back.  It wasn't because of my drive for success (which exists in my imagination, much like the tooth fairy), or my workaholic tendencies (which are largely nonexistent altogether).  It was, dear readers, because I was starving.  Literally, my stomach eating itself in desperation starving.  I actually think I am now nutritionally deficient, because of my week-long sojourn to Mexico.

I'm terrified of eating in Mexico.  Too many stories of disgusting and horrific gastrointestinal ailments combined with a mild but still kicking case of OCD and an already weak stomach equal a week of Elise eating pretty much nothing.  And then of course, I'd get so hungry that I'd have to eat SOMETHING, and then that something (which would usually be chips and salsa or a hamburger or some other completely unoriginal and boring food item) would inevitably make me feel sick.  And then I'd not eat anything again until I was similarly starved.  And the cycle would repeat itself.  By the end of the last day of vacation I was dragging my half-starved, sunburned body up the stairs to our building, feeling dizzy, nauseated and hot.  And full of a burning hatred for Mexico.

I just don't understand why they can't get it together on the food and water circuit.  I mean, their resorts are beautiful.  They have huge, multi-million person cities, with viable businesses and commerce and everything else.  They're connected to the United States, and certainly have plenty of resources with which to work.  So it makes no sense to me that they would just kinda give up on the whole "safe water" deal.  I was talking to Cody about it during the week and decided that it would be much like if I continued to own my store, but when I noticed that the ceiling tiles were falling down and injuring customers, just decided, ehh, I can't be bothered with that.  Shop at your own risk, customers!  I mean, the tiles usually don't kill anyone, you know.  Just kind of minor head injuries and some bleeding.  No biggie!  As a country, this is apparently what Mexico has decided.  Sure you can visit, and sure our resorts and coastline and architecture and natural foliage is beautiful.  Enjoy!  Just don't, you know.  Drink any water.  Or eat anything raw that might have been in contact with the water.  Oh, you had to eat something?  And now you're horribly, violently ill?  Hmm, well, at least you're not dead!  Come back again soon!  Viva la Mexico!

Ugh.

All during the plane ride on the way back home, I talked to Cody about what the most Americanized meal possible would look like.  Steak and potatoes?  Some kind of casserole?  Obviously it would have to involve both Fried and Fattening.  We touched down in Dallas, got in the car, started driving past all the chain restaurants that flank the sides of pretty much any major American highway, and tears nearly came to my eyes. 

"It's so beautiful," I said.

"What, the acres of concrete?"  Cody asked.

"No, all these restaurants.  They're all here, for us, and I can eat at ANY ONE OF THEM," I replied.

The safe eating and drinking choices, they are endless.  And that, for me, might just be the American Dream.

Moisture-Starved And Crazier Than Ever

Lydah (the dog) is doing fabulously.  The crate-training works like a charm and she no longer yips through the night.  Now she busies herself finding the ONE thing left on the floor that she's not supposed to chew, and, well.  Chews it.  I think we got ourselves one special dog, because her extrasensory perception about what we DON'T want her to do is pretty amazing.

What?  I can't chew the desk either?  This place is crazy with the rules.

Anyway, on to other subjects.  We're building a screen porch on the back of our house.  Want to see it, halfway done?  Ok!  I'm happy to oblige.

That's what we've got done so far.  And by "we", I mean "Cody".  And by "got done" I mean "I'm from East Texas, y'aaaaal".  All I've done is help hold some boards and caulk.  Oh, caulking.  It might very well be the bane of my existence.  When we built the house, almost all the caulking duties fell to me.  I'm not sure if it's because everyone just really hates me, or because I am woefully inadequate in doing...well...anything else.  But either way, I had to caulk EVERYTHING.  Do you know how much caulk is in your current residence?  Do you know how many tedious, excruciating man-hours it takes to GET that much caulk in your current residence?  I DO.

So, the screen porch.  It falls to me to get the thing caulked.  Actually, the day before, I was instructed to make a run to Lowe's and buy the caulk, along with some other items we were running short on.  This is never a good plan, sending me to Lowe's with a really non-specific instruction such as "buy some caulk.  Make sure it's weatherproof".  Have you been to Lowe's and looked at the caulk aisle?  The possibilities are endless.

After perusing the caulk aisle for, I don't know, 10 hours?  It felt like it - I found some polyurethane caulk.  It was in the Specialty Caulk section, and spoke to me in large red print, guaranteeing me that it would be weatherproof, waterproof, stain-proof, tear-proof, crack-proof - basically, the Most Indestructible Caulk Available.  I figured there couldn't be anything better (and I am nothing if not a Maximizer), so I bought it.

The next day, after my caulk purchase had been sufficiently praised (read: Cody looked at it and said Geez, I guess we won't have to worry about water coming in through the cracks....of the SCREEN PORCH), I set forth to caulk.  I got the caulking gun, prepared myself emotionally as best I could, and squeezed the trigger of the gun.  Nothing.  Maybe I didn't sufficiently poke through the plastic tip, I thought.  A search for longer and pointier things ensued.  I found an old sprinkler flag - you know, those extraordinarily dangerous objects you use to mark where your sprinkler heads are?  In case you've never seen one of these beauties, they consist of a little 3"x4" plastic flag attached to a 2' long sharp metal stick.  It could certainly, as we've all been warned about, poke your eye out.  Anyway.

The sprinkler flag worked beautifully.  It came out covered with Indestructible Caulk, and I walked back out to the porch.  I pulled the trigger again, and NOTHING came out.  "Cody, I think the gun's broken," I said.  "Here, why don't you try it."  This is famous Elise Speak for I don't really have that much interest in this project and on top of that it has presented me with a modicum of difficulty.  Why don't I quit and you do it instead.  Unfortunately, the longer Cody knows me the less susceptible he is to this tactic.  This time was no exception, and all he did was grab the gun from me, pull the trigger, and hand it back to me as shiny white caulk came curling from the tip, saying "Huh, looks fine to me.  Here ya go!". 

Unhappy with this result, I mustered my strength and tried again.  This time I pulled the trigger of the caulking gun as hard as I could, and to my dismay, a tiny, minuscule bit of caulk squeezed out.  As I sat back on my heels and surveyed an entire porch's worth of caulking, I began to realize just how fun this project was really going to be.  I also had my secretary cancel everything I had on tap for the next 6-8 weeks.

"This caulk is REALLY hard to squeeze," I informed Cody.  "I'm not sure what the problem is, but this is going to take FOREVER."

"I think it's because you got that crazy super caulk," Cody replied.  "Why did you get that crap?  It's like polyurethane or something.  Wasn't there anything different?"

Wasn't there anything different indeed.  Only about 100 different options, and of course I had to find, with my eagle eye of doom, the one kind that was not only Indestructible, but also Impossible To Work With.  Why don't they put THAT on the tube?  In big red print?

Well, it was too late for woebegone revelations at that point.  I had to soldier on.  Two hours later, my hands were 100% covered in polyurethane caulk, about half of the porch was weatherproofed, waterproofed, stain-proofed, etc., etc., ad nauseam, and I was going insane.  You might (and with good reason) think I was losing my mind because of the sheer monotony, the insipid tediousness of the caulking project.  I admit, the amount of actual caulking accomplished in the two hours I had been working was discouraging, at best.  But that is not why I was, in effect, coming unhinged.  No, that was because my hands were dry.

Did you get that?  My hands were dry.

It is a little-known fact about me that I go absolutely crazy if my hands aren't really, really moisturized, like, ALL THE TIME.  When we were building the house, and would spend hours and hours on the worksite dealing with sawdust, and grout, and concrete mix, and bricks, and all sorts of other substances that are, as a rule, incredibly DRY, I would have to have a large bottle of lotion on hand at all times.  Otherwise I would slowly spiral downward, out of control, and into a land where licking and spitting upon my own hands seemed a welcome respite.  No one wants to see me there, trust me.  So by the end of the house project, there were probably no short of 12 bottles of lotion, all dispersed strategically through the house, ready at the moment for me to dash inside, panicking, and pump the sweet, sweet moisture onto my hands.  I'm like a really sick crack addict, only with Jergens® Extra Dry®.

Some days I would get really moisture-obsessed, and would spread the most Extreme Lotion Ever, the kind that is made for like, Eskimos and People Afflicted with Cracked and Bleeding Skin, all over my hands and wrists, slap on some work gloves, and happily let my skin marinate all day long.   I cannot stand chalk, or chalkboards, or any kind of natural stone or brick that has any kind of dry and dusty feel.  I can't handle lumber, or concrete, or dirt or sand....ugh, even writing about these things is making my hands feel like they are curling up into shriveled claws and dying.

But you built a house, you say.  You live in the world, you point out, where things like dirt and chalkboards exist.  And to that I say, yes, you're right.  You're absolutely right.  And I have found ways to co-exist with these awful substances, these terrible blights on humanity.  I carry at least one bottle or tube of lotion with me at all times.  Need hand lotion with SPF?  I've got you covered.  A little aloe-vera for that sunburn?  Let me get my purse! 

However (and back to the original story), the polyurethane weatherproof waterproof blah blah caulk that was covering my hands was not allowing ANY moisture through.  It had promised me, back in the Specialty Caulks section at Lowe's, that it wouldn't break ranks for water in any form and it wasn't about to lose face now just to pander to my obsessive compulsiveness.  I ended up pouring about 2/3 of a can of paint thinner all over my hands in quick, successive sessions, scrubbing my skin with a wire-tipped brush, and screaming for mercy, for someone, please, to have mercy on my tortured soul.

The caulk is gone, but I think I lost a little bit of myself along with it.

Yet Another Reason Why A Baby Is Nowhere In The Foreseeable Future

Meet the newest member of the family:

Six-week old German Shepherd puppy, name is Lydah, and she is like the Queen Eminent of Barking and Yipping Really Loud All Night Long.

So, I'm kind of a zombie right now.  In fact, every time I type "now", I end up typing "nit", which, while it seems like a great word and everything, and is fun to say (NIT!  Try it!) isn't really what I mean at all.

I need puppy training tips.  Especially on getting them to sleep through the night and not like, ruining-them-forever kind of tips.  There are, umm, I don't know - MILLIONS of tips for doing these things, all over the Internet and in books.  Hundreds, and hundreds of books.  Did you know that?  "Don't ruin your puppy," they all proclaim, "it's harder than you think!"   "You're stupid," they shout, "and likely not to handle this well!"

But she's just so dadgum cute. 

Still, help?  Seriously.

190. No! 189!

So, I've been checking my email obsessively today.  For some reason* I keep my inbox number at 189.  Gmail - Inbox (189), it tells me, every time I point my little arrow cursor at the minimized box.  5 seconds later?  Gmail - Inbox (189, still. Quit it).   And then I leave the room for what seems an exceptionally reasonable amount of time, come back, and it still says Gmail - Inbox (one eighty-freakin-nine.  Seriously, you JUST checked me).  I sigh and stomp out of the office and Gmail rolls it's eyes when it thinks I've gone and whispers to Yahoo mail "she's checked me like 87 times in the last 10 minutes.  Umm, lady, get a grip - no one is emailing you!" and laughs uproariously.  And Yahoo mail wishes that it didn't suck so bad and tries to think of something clever to say, but just as it comes up with the perfect witty aside, Gmail is unavailable, being checked again.  By me.  189.  My nemesis.

I actually do get emails on a pretty regular basis.  They give me a slight reprieve, because I'll frantically dash back into my little office in between customers to see if the magic number has changed, and hey!  192!  And then I maniacally click on the box and see that...nope, not the email I'm waiting for.  And so, instead of doing the sane and normal thing, which would be minimizing the box, remembering that now 193 means a new email, and going back to my customers, I have to read each email RIGHT THEN, and make sure that my inbox once again only contains 189 unread emails.  Because 189 is the number I have to see; 189 is the number that still allows me hope, 189 is the number of eternal promise. 

Sadly, this has not been going on for only one day.  Or even one week.  No, I have been doing this for approximately three weeks now, the obsessive checking, the frenetic hasty reading and then deleting, the demented practice of maintaining the mystical 189.

I am thinking, somewhere in that part of my brain that tries to rationalize my insanity, that once I receive this email I am waiting for, I won't have to keep my inbox on 189.  But there's no guarantee of that.  No, for all I know I may be sitting here next year, posting about hey, remember last October, when I thought it was weird that I felt it necessary to keep my Gmail inbox on 189?  Hahaha, that was funny, because OBVIOUSLY IT HAS TO STAY THERE.  189.  Duh.

Someone help me.

*I'd venture to guess that you might have figured out the reason by now.

As I Sat, Pondering The Many Ways In Which I Might Fail

I came upon this (compliments of Gary Larson's The Far Side):

(cartoon removed upon request of artist)

I think we all know which type I am.  In fact, I referenced my personality type in these exact terms not long ago.

Which type are you?