Today would have been my daughter’s 18th birthday.  Not the little one who keeps me on my toes but my first born daughter, Abby Annette.

I was going to write a post like this last year but my son totaled my car four hours after getting his drivers license and I ended up posting about that. You can read it here if you want.

Abby Annette was diagnosed with spina bifida and anencephaly about a week before she was born. She never had a chance.

I had been experiencing contractions that were strong enough to bring me to the hospital but like a car that makes a noise until you bring it to the mechanic they stopped as soon as I got to the hospital. After the third trip down there and seeing how big I was the doctor decided to do an ultrasound.

Because I had been down to the hospital so many times, and it was getting to be routine, I sent my husband off to his meeting. I could tell something was wrong by the look on my doctor’s face but he wanted to wait until my husband returned. I’m sure you all know I wasn’t going to stand for that.

I heard the words and the explanation and I understood that my daughter was going to die. I however, was not going to cry at that moment. I would later but I knew if I let go I wouldn’t be able to stop. I bit my lip and started singing a song in my head. A song we must have heard on the way down to the hospital. Justified and Ancient by KLF featuring Tammy Wynette of all things. I didn’t like the song and I could only remember the chorus, and I didn’t quite “get” the lyrics. In fact to this day I have no idea what the song is about. All I know is that it distracted me enough to keep me from losing it.

All bound for Mu Mu Land
All bound for Mu Mu Land
(hey)
(hey hey)
All bound for Mu Mu Land (justified)
(hey hey)
All bound for Mu Mu Land

I thought it was Moo Moo Land. Which struck me as somewhat amusing.

When my husband arrived I told him what was happening. The doctor came in and told us that for now the contractions had stopped but due to the circumstances they wouldn’t try to stop them. They told me I could go into labor at any time. I asked if I could drink and they said yes.

On the way home I made my husband stop at the gas station to pick up a pack of cigarettes for me, then I made him stop at the liquor store.

When we got home we started making phone calls. I made one call. I called my father and told him what was going on. We lived next door to my parents, if I made the call in my kitchen and my father picked up in the kitchen I could see him. I told him what the doctors had told me, that the baby had spina bifida and anencephaly and that she would most likely die within minutes of birth.

My father was a doctor. He questioned me about the diagnosis. He wanted to make sure they had said anencephaly rather than hydrocephaly. Hydrocephaly is an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain, it is a common companion of spina bifida but it is treatable and the baby can live. With anencephaly the child is born without a forebrain and can not live. I explained that I had not gotten the diagnosis wrong.

That was the first time I had ever heard my father use the word “fuck”.

I asked my father to make the calls to the rest of the family. I didn’t have it in me to explain to everyone. I also asked him to tell my mother even though he suggested I do it. I couldn’t deal with her at that moment. My mother had short term memory loss as well as other brain damage from a stroke when she was 29. I couldn’t tell her the sad news and then tell her again and again and then comfort her for not being able to comfort me.

About ten minutes after hanging up with my father my brother called me. He didn’t say much, just that it sucked and then we sat there on the phone for about 15 minutes not saying anything. There was just nothing to say but it was comforting to not say anything with him.

The next night my brother stopped by with a lasagna and his daughter. My husband was the gate keeper and tried to keep them out. His heart was in the right place, he thought seeing my niece, who was only a year old at that time, might upset me. My brother wasn’t having any of it and forced his way in the house. My niece ran into my arms and though I did cry a little it was because she was such a wonderful sight to see. My niece and I had bonded from the moment she was born, I was the first person besides her parents to hold her. I was her aunt Nenny. Seeing her was and always is one of the best things in the world. They didn’t stay long but wanted to stop by to say hi. My brother mentioned that my sister in law was going to stop by a little later.

When my sister in law arrived we sat in the kitchen and smoked and drank. We cried too. I was playing a waiting game and drinking was probably not the best thing considering it relaxed me which prevented me from going into labor. I am forever thankful to my sister in law for sitting with me night after night. She had a family to care for, she had work, she had a life to get to but she spent each night of that week with me.

After a week and no contractions the doctor decided to induce labor. He started my on Pitocin. A lovely drug that makes your uterus contract. At the rate they were giving it to me they anticipated I would go into labor in about three days. Three days would have brought us to March 25th which happened to be my husband’s birthday. I suggested we wait a day or two to start the whole Pitocin routine but my husband said he didn’t mind if everything happened on his birthday. He was not convinced that it would necessarily happen on schedule.

The doctors and nurses had briefed us on how the delivery would most likely happen. If the baby was born alive they would do everything to make her comfortable but the general consensus was that she couldn’t feel anything. They said she wouldn’t be able to live more than a minute or two beyond birth.

The baby had been active the whole time. I could feel her kicking and hiccuping up until the night before I went into labor. I was sitting in my kitchen by myself. I hadn’t felt any kicks for an hour at least. I tried to make her move by pushing on my stomach, something that had always worked before, but it didn’t work this time. I knew she had died. I didn’t tell my husband. I don’t think he was home, but I am not sure at this point. I just didn’t.

The next morning we went into the hospital for another dose of medication and the doctor decided to hurry things up just a bit more by inserting seaweed sticks into my cervix. Apparently the sticks then expand and dilate the cervix causing labor to begin. I’m not entirely sure how they work because as he was inserting them he broke my water. Because of the birth defects I was carrying a lot of extra fluid. As bad as things were at that moment it felt wonderful to get rid of some of the pressure I was feeling.

I was in active labor for no more than half an hour. There were no monitors wrapped around my belly. The whole room was incredibly quiet. After she was born the nurse cleaned her up and took her foot prints. I was checked to make sure everything was okay. At some point the priest from our church came in the room. I wasn’t fully there. I was in Mu Mu Land. Trying to hold it together so I could get out of the maternity ward and go home.

Shortly after a nurse came in and dressed Abby Annette in an outfit with yellow bunnies on it and some booties that had been knit by someone who hung out at the hospital or something like that. I couldn’t understand why she was dressing her up until she pulled out the camera. She posed the baby with toys, in my arms with my husband standing beside me and in several other positions. It was surreal. I didn’t want pictures. The nurse said maybe not now, but one day I might. She took four or five Polaroids and two rolls of film.

I didn’t want pictures. At that moment I just wanted to move on. In my minds eye my daughter was an adorable little redheaded girl. In reality she was not. She had many birth defects that are probably part of the whole neural tube defect. Her spine had not closed, she had very long limbs but this was an optical illusion due to the fact that her head didn’t exist beyond her face.  She had what the nurse called a cleft pallet. In reality she had two mouths. I kept laughing because the phrase a face only a mother could love kept running through my head.

And I did love her. I knew her as only a mother could. I had already planned her life out. She would be smart, funny, beautiful. She would grow up to do the things that she had a passion for. She wouldn’t settle for anything less.

We tried to donate her organs but they were too deformed to be of any use.  After making arrangements with the funeral director we were allowed to go home. Because the hospital was expanding the regular entrance was closed. To get out we had to walk through the children’s hospital, the cancer ward. As bad as things were at that moment I knew they worse for someone else.

The next week, hell, the next month, was a blur. We made all the appropriate arrangements. I received flowers and cards from friends and family and from people I didn’t even know. I received one of the nicest and most heartfelt cards from the cashier at our neighborhood grocery store. The kindness of people never ceases to amaze me.

I held it together for the most part. I was busy making arrangements, canceling my baby shower and just trying to get through each day without screaming at any pregnant women or moms walking down the street with baby strollers. I probably could have used a little therapy at that time.

My husband and I decided to bury Abby Annette in the cemetery where his mother was buried. This was one of the few things that made me happy. I had never met my husbands mother, she died when he was 15, but it gave me great comfort to know that my daughter would be with her grandmother. She couldn’t be buried next to her, she had to be buried in the childrens section of the cemetery but it was close enough. As a mother I felt as if I had let her down. I wasn’t sure what I believed as far as an after life but I felt horrible that I wasn’t there with her to take care of her. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t know how to be her mother given the circumstances. Having her grandmother there helped a lot.

My husband and I didn’t talk about any of this. Our marriage was already ending I just refused to see it. I had held it together pretty well I thought. I knew I would eventually have myself a good cry, maybe for a couple of days, but I wanted to get through all the ceremony first. I didn’t want to make anyone more uncomfortable around me.

We had a small funeral, just immediate family. I don’t recall what the priest said, I wasn’t really listening. I was just singing the Mu Mu song to myself. When my sister in law saw the casket, the tiny little casket, she lost it and started crying. This set me off and suddenly we were both bawling our eyes out. Something my stoic family just didn’t do. Of course it set all the women off who were in attendance.

I don’t remember much that followed the funeral. Life returned to normal for everyone else but me it seemed. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had quit work in anticipation of being a mom. I could have gone back to work but that didn’t seem like something I was ready to do. I decided to get pregnant again. My husband wanted to wait but I wasn’t going to not be a mother for long if I could help it.

He didn’t understand. When mother’s day rolled around a couple of months later he didn’t get why I was so mad at him for not making any kind of deal about it.

“But you aren’t a mother” was his defense.

I’m pretty sure I was. I gave birth to a child, I named her, I buried her. That makes me a mother in my book. He didn’t understand and really wanted to wait but when we had to put down my dog only a few weeks later I think he knew, as I did, that having another child just might save my life. And it did.

My son was born less than a year later.

If you are still with me I’m wrapping it up.

Like the bag I have of all the cards I received and the rolls of film I never developed I never know where to put her in my life. When people ask me how many children I have, I tell them two. I don’t mention Abby Annette because for the most part it isn’t something I want to explain. It makes people uncomfortable and it makes them sad for me. When I get to know people better I have no problem telling them, it just isn’t something for acquaintances.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my first born child. It isn’t something my ex and I discuss but it is a bond that we have between us. My children know they have a sister but it isn’t something that comes up in everyday conversation. Life goes on.

Around the time that Abby Annette died, in fact only a few days before, Eric Clapton’s 4 year old son died when he fell off a balcony. I don’t recall it being in the news at the time, though I am sure it was. He wrote the song Tears in Heaven for his son. That song pretty much sums up everything I have tried to convey here.

And it’s much better than Mu Mu Land.

* It’s funny what no longer seems pertinent but I should say that the neural tube defects could have been caught in a series of tests in the first trimester. I chose not to have the test. I figured I was 25 and healthy and if something was wrong we would deal with it. I never imagined that they would or could discover something like this. I was thinking about Downs Syndrome. I knew if I took a test and it revealed something was wrong I would be faced with decisions I didn’t want to make, nor was I willing to make. When I found out I asked if they terminating the pregnancy was a possibility, if I could have a c-section. I was told that that would be considered a third term abortion which my doctor was not permitted to perform. He could induce labor but he could not terminate the pregnancy. I was also told that a c-section was not a possibility because there was no reason for one. It was shortly, only a few months later, that it became public knowledge that taking folic acid supplement greatly decreased the risks of these kinds of neural tube defects. Now breads and other foods are supplemented with folic acid. I should also note that I had had a miscarriage before this pregnancy. Knowing that, I was put on progesterone to help maintain the pregnancy. I had been on Clomid to get pregnant and I was also on Lipitor at the time of conception. I don’t know if there is any correlation to taking a statin and birth defects but they now they say if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant you shouldn’t take them. While in the hospital I was approached by an ambulance chasing lawyer. I told him to go to hell.

Please don’t feel sad for me. I got 8 1/2 months with my daughter which is something no one else had. If this hadn’t happened I would not have my son who was conceived five weeks after Abby’s birth. I don’t know why things happen I just know that sometimes they do. I have been blessed with two wonderful children and I have an angel looking over me. Not everyone can say that and I feel pretty lucky.

One more side note. When the diagnosis was made my brother suggested that I shouldn’t bother playing the lottery since I already hit my one in a million chance on something. Actually the odds were much better something like 1 in a 1000 if I recall correctly. In those five weeks between pregnancies my ex and I went to the opening of a casino in our area. I hit the jackpot three times winning over $10k. I haven’t bothered to play ever since.

I was asked to write a guest post about the top ten things men do that drive women crazy. I came up with the standard ones, leaving the toilet seat up, farting, hands down their pants, that kind of thing, but I couldn’t come up with ten and my post went horribly in the wrong direction. The post was rejected and I was given a different topic to write about.

Since I do not live with a man anymore, at least not at present( and the 17 year old boy doesn’t count because I am raising him not to do those things, though he does anyway), I wasn’t able to come up with any more than those three or four. And they all seemed really petty to me now, though they did drive me crazy then.

But I wonder what things men and women do that drive each other bonkers.

Here is the original post:

There have been a million articles written about the things men do that irritate their women. We all  know that leaving the toilet seat up, clipping their nails anywhere but the bathroom, spending the weekend on the couch with their hands down their pants and performing  Dutch Ovens are things that drive women mad. Which is probably why men do these things.

Let’s face it, men, specifically married men, have gotten a bad rap in the last decade or so. They are usually portrayed as big dumb oafs on sitcoms and television commercials.  They stumble through life not knowing what to do. Thankfully they have their smart wife to steer them through life’s challenges.

I’m not going to perpetuate that myth. I love men. I do. And my track record of two marriages and two subsequent divorces proves it. At present I have been single just long enough to appreciate all the great things about men.

Now that I am single I have to kill all the icky things myself. If a toilet gets backed up I have to plunge it out. My last ex husband was a phenomenal cook, I ate well when I was married. So what that he couldn’t put a dish in the dishwasher to save his life, I had a three course meal prepared for me every day we were together.

If something needed repairing my guy could do it. Sure I had to nag all the time but isn’t that what he wanted me to do?

Even though I am divorced I haven’t lost the ability to look and act pathetic when something goes wrong. I can convey that ineptness over the phone and my ex husband will come over and fix just about anything. As long as I have cold beer in the fridge.

Not too long ago I was given a glimpse of what a great guy my ex husband really is. I was having surgery and he offered to hang out at the hospital and wait to see that I was okay. He took the day off of work, drove me to the hospital, waited for hours while they prepped and performed the surgery and then waited in recovery with me while I came off all the drugs they used to put me under. He didn’t even bring a video camera to capture all the bizarre things I was saying.

It gave me great comfort to know that someone was out there waiting for me, that someone cared enough about me to take a day off of work and watch game shows while I had surgery on my girlie parts.  He wasn’t obligated to do any of that. When he stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up the necessary feminine protection products and purchased them himself, I was reminded of what a great guy he really is.

We women forget that about our men. We complain to our girlfriends that all they do is hang out in the garage, go fishing with their friends, never spend enough time with us, never stroke our egos enough and all those other top ten things they do to irritate the hell out of us. When they do the little things like buying tampons or plunging out that backed up toilet we often take it for granted.

I’d take nail clippings and Dutch Ovens any day.

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Since Lola jumped back into the dating world I have been thinking about finding a mate for myself. It’s been a fleeting thought, here and there, throughout the years since my divorce. I have dated but no one seriously. There seemed to be all kinds of good reasons not to get involved with anyone. My divorce took two years and it brought out the worst in me. I was angry and when angry I tend to attract the wrong kind of guy.

After my divorce was finally settled I moved, was job hopping and busy finding my way. Dating just seemed like one more burden that I didn’t want to take on. Last year I decided to give it another try but then life interrupted that plan and I never made it a priority. It didn’t help that the few dates I did go on were somewhat( okay, horribly) disappointing.

Fear is another reason I haven’t jumped back into the dating pool. You don’t go down in flames twice and think to yourself, oh, this is a breeze, I’ll just get back on the horse again. While it might be easy to blame my choice in mates for going down in flames the truth is it takes two to tango and I contributed to the death of both of my marriages. About 2% is my fault. That might be a conservative estimate. Regardless, I don’t trust anyone to get too close anymore.

For the most part this hasn’t bothered me. Being a single mom I don’t have a lot of free time so when I do I like to spend it with a book or watching a show from start to finish. I used to be fun. I used to do things. Now, I have to raise to kids and that can sap a lot of energy from anyone and I am not the most energetic person to begin with. The holidays are the worst but even they are getting better. I don’t feel as if I need a man to complete me. I am complete on my own and am happy with myself.

Which means I am no longer angry, in fact I am at peace, and it is probably time to go out and meet someone.

Except.

Now I blog. Unless I meet a man who blogs, who also happens to live in my hometown, it isn’t going to work. There is no room in my life for a boyfriend and a blog, let alone four.

How will I explain to him that I have to visit a million sites a day? How will he understand that everything he does is very likely going to be published on my blog and then commented on by virtual strangers. Strangers to him, not to me, you guys are family. But how is he going to understand that? Will he understand that when he tells me a secret I will keep it to myself, never to mention it to anyone, except all of you? I don’t think so.

I should have found a mate before I started blogging. I am sure that when a spouse becomes a blogger it is covered under that for better or worse part of the vows. If I became a blogger after I met and married him he would have no choice but to accept it, begrudgingly maybe, but accept it he would.

Who wants to get involved with someone who eats almost every meal in front of the computer? Who wants to get involved with someone who is constantly checking email to see if anyone commented? Who wants to get involved with someone who looks at stats all day long, even though she really doesn’t understand them. Who wants to get involved with someone who runs around the house mumbling things like keywords and bounce rate under her breath? Who would understand that when Google publishes their page ranks it’s the same thing as having tickets to the Super Bowl when your team is in it?

No one, unless he is another blogger and then there would be competition.

Who has the better theme? Who has more followers? Who has more feed readers (he would)? Who has more comments? I’d have to double my bandwidth.

Another blogger wouldn’t work for those reasons and because no one would go out and get things like groceries. We’d both never wear anything but sweats and showers would become optional. Two bloggers don’t make a right.

I’ve decided if I am going to get involved with anyone he is going to have to be a computer geek, but not one who blogs. A geek who spends his days in forums about databases, MySQL, PHP, CGI and scripts ( I have no idea what these things are, I just looked at my cpanel). He will have to be a guy who can lose hours of his life online learning things that will ultimately benefit me.

My first ex husband is a real estate agent. Yeah, I dodged a bullet there, though I completely missed his successful rise for nearly a decade. He had no tech skills and even worse no mechanical skills. If anything broke I had to fix it, or make the call if I couldn’t. My second ex husband is an electrician. He could fix things, anything. It was great having him around because if something broke I wasn’t allowed to fix it. He could also cook and enjoyed doing so. But he didn’t understand my attachment to the internet and I wasn’t blogging then. Even though he could fix anything he rarely did. He started considerably more projects than he ever finished, our marriage included.

No, the kind of guy I need to find is someone who has not seen the sun in decades. Someone so pasty white I will look tropical standing next to him. Someone who can explain things to me when I announce “I don’t get it”. Right now I am covered, my son is that kind of geek. However, he leaves for college in a year and a half so I don’t have a lot of time to meet a geek. And it isn’t as if they are easy to find. You don’t meet them at the bars or coffee shops. I’d have to find them online and sadly I don’t speak their language. I need someone to set me up.

Guys and gals, I need you to find me a geek. The only requirement I have is that he not live in the basement of his mother’s house.

Instead of turning into that crazy cat lady, if I don’t find a mate, I will be that crazy blog lady.

*Hat tip to Mrsblogalot for inspiring this post.

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Not too long ago I was talking to my ex husband’s wife, my son’s step mom. This is not a rip on the new wife post so don’t get all I hate my ex husband’s new wife on me.

I like this woman. If I was going to be replaced by anyone I couldn’t think of a better person to replace me.

Of course, she didn’t replace me, at least not in my son’s life.

Anyway, I was talking to her not too long ago and we were discussing my son. Let me backtrack just a bit. When my son started school I needed a before and after school daycare for him and his step mom offered to do just that. She never asked me to pay her or reduce the child support her husband was paying to me. It saved me tons of cash and tons of worry. I am eternally grateful to my ex husband’s wife.

So we were talking about my son. I don’t remember what the conversation was about, probably my son’s current hair color or something. In the midst of this conversation my ex husband’s wife says to me:

“You did a great job raising the boy. It couldn’t have been easy on your own but you did a wonderful job raising him into a fine young man. You should be very proud.”

I responded by telling her that she and ex#1 had a big hand in it as well and they should be equally proud.

Credit is also due to ex#2 who played a huge role in my son’s development.

Her words meant a lot to me and they roll around my brain at times.

When ex#1 left us I was terrified. I had no idea how I was going to raise this child on my own. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever been as scared as I was at that time in my life. In addition to getting a divorce I had to move. Our life was constantly changing and I worried all the time that my son would have all kinds of issues because of our unstable life.

Eventually, it stabilized.

Last night my son and I were in the kitchen eating guacamole. Avocados were on sale and I had picked up four of them. I used two to make a fresh batch of guac. As I was making it my son opened a bag of chips and started dipping the chips into the guacamole. We were discussing a rave he is going to this evening. This discussing included talk about drugs, drinking, driving under the influence and doing other stupid things. A discussion we have had too many times to count.

I trust my son. He is a smart kid and he knows I trust him. He also knows he doesn’t want to lose that trust.

While we were talking we finished the guacamole. Instead of finding something else to do we continued to talk in the kitchen. I have a hard time just standing still so I made another batch of guacamole. We stood around talking and eating more chips and guac.  We both had things we wanted to do, I needed to do some work on the computer and he wanted to clean his room so he could go to his rave tonight. We both made our way to the couch and collapsed in a heap of guacamole and lime chips overload. We watched a little TV together and then called it a night.

My son is 17, he has one more year of high school and then he is off to college. Days, or nights, like these are numbered.

As a single mom I have given up a lot, and a lot was taken away from me. I don’t have much of a social life anymore. When I got divorced the first time, all of my married friends dropped me like a hot potato. I was no longer invited to any social gatherings, which probably hurt more than my ex husband leaving me.  I was suddenly broke so even if I had been invited out I couldn’t have gone, though it would have been nice to be asked.

I pissed and moaned about it for a while and then found a new life. I started a business, I met my future ex#2, and made new friends.

Rinse and repeat.

I gave up a lot for my kids and I wasn’t always happy about it. Had someone given me a crystal ball, to show me how it would turn out, it would have been much easier to accept. Looking back it was all more than worth any sacrifice I made.

There are only two pictures of my son and me together. That’s what happens when you are a single parent. There are few pictures because there is no one there to take the picture.

I wish there had been more pictures to document our life together. It’s not too late to get a tripod and start taking them but that little boy has grown into a man and there won’t be anymore pictures of me carrying him.

Which is probably as it should be, he can carry himself now.

Do you text, or txt, message? If you are under the age of 30 you probably do and don’t think twice about it. If you are over the age of 30 you probably struggle a bit with the whole thing.

I do text message. Reluctantly. I don’t really like to but in some cases it is the only way to communicate with people in my little world. My son has a cell phone but the school scrambles the phone lines during classes. They aren’t able to do the same with text messaging. So if I want to get a message to him during the day I have to text him. Ex#2 is not allowed to talk on his phone during work so I also have to text him if I need to get a message to him. My brother just prefers to use text messaging so if I want to talk to him I have to text him to call me.

I am one of those people who writes out every word in a text message. This is probably why I don’t care to do it all that often. typing with one or two fingers on a tiny little screen takes patience and concentration, two things I lack.

Today I had to text Ex#2 to remind him to take our daughter to an after school activity.

Me: Will you take M to her music lesson today after school? Let me know, thanks, J

His response: k

Just “k”. Presumably that means “okay” but who knows, he could have hit the keypad incorrectly and sent it off on accident. Not likely but you never know. This is my baby and I want to know that she is “k” at all times. I don’t think communicating in English is such a bad thing. Lord knows her father and I don’t communicate all that well to begin with so I don’t think I am asking too much.

Of course I am, that’s probably the biggest contributing reason we are divorced, we are not able to communicate, but I can always hope can’t I?

My son is a different story altogether. I text him something in full English and he knows he must respond the same way or I will not respond to his text messages in the future. I have taught him well, if I do say so myself.

Me: Did you hand in that note I gave you to the office today?

Him: Yes, mom. I did it as soon as I arrived to school.

Me: Thank you, honey.

Him: You are welcome, mother.

There might be a little sarcasm in his text messages but since I can’t hear his tone of voice I am assuming he is just a lovely and polite son.

He doesn’t text this way to his friends. He is bilingual.

Him: r u driving 2 robotics?

Friend: no rn’t u?

I can’t even make a decent example of real text messaging. My fingers and my brain just won’t get on the same page, but you get the drift.

I know why I can’t text like a teenager. I’m not one. I learned how to type in 7th grade with all the other girls in my class. Boys didn’t need to learn how to type since they would have women to do that for them. I type faster than I think. This should be obvious if you have read any of my posts or comments. I get ahead of myself and if someone talks to me while I am typing I have to hit the backspace key until I find where my thoughts were interrupted.

In my head I can’t make the switch to text messaging lingo. I can’t say R when I mean “Are”.

I blame Prince and his Revolution for this. He started using U instead of “you” decades ago. His song “I Would Die for U” is probably the first record of text messaging making it into everyday language, and we didn’t even have text messaging back then.

Damn you Prince.

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I was blazing through the season.  I put up my lights and started decorating the house for the holidays, I watched animated Christmas specials from the 70′s with my six year old, and enjoyed them more than she did. I baked and baked.

And then I hit the wall.

I don’t know what happened except that the reality of the season probably took over.

I start out each holiday season the same. I have high hopes, I believe.

I watch Lifetime holiday specials. And I never watch Lifetime.

You know the kind of movies I’m talking about. The hapless single (usually widowed) mom who manages to have a successful career going but has been unlucky in love. Somehow a stranger ends up at her doorstep a few days before Christmas. She takes him in (she is a successful businesswoman with the common sense of a fruit fly of course), and he ends up cooking wonderful meals for her and her young son (who just needs a guy around to make his life perfect), fixing her German car when it breaks down in the middle of traffic (all the while she is telling him that she can handle it herself), and looking great the whole time.

Eventually (Christmas Eve) they fall in love and live happily ever after.

I hate these movies.

But I watch them anyway.

I watch them because I figure maybe I am doing something wrong and I can learn from these movies.

So far no stranger has knocked on my door, if one did I would let him in and show him to my kitchen and then introduce him to my truck and my kids.

But so far no man, studly or not has knocked on my door looking to change the life of a single mom.

I am the Charlie Brown of the holiday season.

I have received three Christmas cards. One from my aunt, one from my brother (who couldn’t even bother to sign the photo he sent) and one from my paper delivery person (with a conveniently enclosed self addressed envelope).

I understand that Christmas cards are like blog comments. If I want them I have to send them out, the year before.

Last year sucked(there are too many posts to highlight from last year but it culminated in my washer, dryer, furnace and dishwasher breaking down in about three days time and I was severely broke. I think a toilet overflowed flooding the basement too. It really sucked)  and I never got around to sending out Christmas cards so I have been axed from everyone’s list.

Which really sucks because it took me years to recover from no cards after each divorce.

I’d been sending out cards to people who dropped me, family included, for three years trying to recoup the amount of holiday cheer I used to receive. And I was there last year when all hell broke loose and I dropped the ball.

I still haven’t sent out my cards this year because I’m not really sure who to send them to. Do I continue to send them to people who don’t send them to me? Do I start using the phone book, choosing random people in the hopes that I haven’t sent them too late this season so I get some back?

I don’t know.

So I sit here and watch Fargo. I am watching Fargo because Armageddon is not on tonight ( a sure sign of the apocalypse). I love the movie Fargo. I don’t need any translation, I speak Minnesotan.

In an unrelated aside, the CEO of the company I used to work for in Seattle used to hang out by my desk and talk to me because he loved Fargo and couldn’t get enough of the accent.

If I see one more commercial for Kay Jewelers (which I am sure I will) I am going to go postal. Not that it would make any difference since I am alone when I see these commercials and unable to go postal on anyone but the dog and he doesn’t deserve that.

But they piss me off.

So do the car commercials this time of year.

Does anyone really buy someone else a car for Christmas?

If so I have been doing it way wrong.

I’ll get over this. Tomorrow I am going to get a tree with my daughter and my ex#2. It sounds like a great way to spend the day. Tree farm, six year old who complains about everything and an ex spouse. Oh and it’s really cold.

I’m grateful that the ex will do all the heavy cutting and heavy lifting. Once it’s in the house, however, he will take off and I will be left to get the boxes of ornaments down from the attic, untangle the lights and after the novelty wears off for my daughter, left to decorate the damn tree alone.

I will get through this, around the day after Valentine’s Day of next year.

I can always watch Die Hard, it’s a great holiday film, Bruce Willis has hair, and they don’t talk with a funny accent.