EEK. You all over-estimate me and my abilities! Look at you telling me to sell NikkiZ’s clothes at a consignment shop! I’m scared of those places - I can’t do that.

You see…I’m scared of a lot of things I’ve never done before. The average person would follow this up with “…like skydiving, bungee jumping, snorkeling…” But not me. Nope. I’m scared of the mundane things I’ve never done before. Like getting something altered.

I’ve never gotten anything altered before. (Other than my wedding dress, of course, but that’s easy. They do it at the store you buy it from.) I don’t know where to go or how to ask. Do I wear the item I need altered and do they pin it for me? Or do I pin it myself? What if I pin too much? Too little?

There are definite protocols to getting something altered, and I’m scared if I do it wrong, I’ll look like an idiot/moron/fool. Then - all of the seamstress people will laugh at me when I leave.

The same goes for consignment shops. I don’t know how to use one! And what if I take in something that is obviously not going to re-sell. Will they yell at me? Mock me?

Other things I find intimidating:

• Ordering wine. Will the waiter know I’m ordering the wrong wine for my food? Am I allowed to just say “something pink”? How do I pronounce the wine? What if there are no prices? Can I ask how much it costs?
• Valet services. Is it stupid to use a valet when I drive a piece-of-shit car?
• Test driving cars.
• Upgrading my cell-phone. I know how to use mine, I’m scared of the fancy ones with their “blue tooth” and “ring tones.”

So, why don’t you come to Huntsville and walk me through using a consignment shop. Or better - why don’t you tell me what mundane thing you’re afraid of.

(MrZ is scared of drive-thru banking. But don’t tell him I told you that.)

I’ve been trying to keep a good tab on NikkiZ’s clothing that she has outgrown. I bag up the stuff I don’t want to keep for (a) future children or (b) sentimental reasons. I box up the items I’m keeping and will put those in the attic sometime. Hopefully before NikkiZ has kids of her own. But I doubt it.

(Don’t you love how casually I threw in the “future children” concept? Almost as if I didn’t struggle for two years to have NikkiZ and I’ll be able to just have another one as soon as I decide to.)

The bagged items are piled up in the corners of NikkiZ’s bedroom. I’m saving them for that Illusive Yard Sale I keep saying we’re going to have. It’s something I’ve been threatening ever since we bought our house last Spring. I guess having “a yard” to have “a sale” on inspired me. I started adding clothes LilZ grows out of to the pile of yard sale stuff as well as some of the items MrZ has approved of getting rid of since our closet system collapsed.

And by “approved of getting rid of” I mean “hasn’t worn in 5 years so automatically gets put in the yard sale pile.”

Now what we have is NikkiZ’s room becoming overrun with bags and bags of old clothes belonging to one of the four of us. I don’t feel right having a yard sale until I have more to offer than just clothes (they don’t sell well). I’ve been walking around the house trying to find other crap to sell, but we don’t really have a lot of extra stuff. There’s the high chair from hell, of course, but other than that - we don’t have a lot to spare. I don’t want to have a crappy yard sale, because I completely respect the institution of the Yard Sale and I don’t want to dishonor it.

LilZ and I go yard sale-ing all the time. Is that a Southern thing? Or does everyone do it? Where you just get out early on Saturday and hit yard sales in your area. Last weekend we saw someone selling burned CDs with handwritten labels like “Brandy,” “N’Sync,” and “Beyonce” on them for $1. I found that incredibly hilarious on so many levels. We also saw the same electric neck massage device (picture this, but from the ’80s) at two different yard sales. At one, it was priced $15. At the other? $2. I think you can learn a lot about the quality of the device based on that occurrence.

Every once in awhile, we stumble upon the Perfect Yard Sale Find - but most of the time? It’s just us walking around and making fun of the crap other people have to get rid of. It makes me feel better about my own yard sale pile when I see what other people have in theirs. I seek solace in knowing I have never purchased any green wicker wall-hangings or floral print toaster covers. My yard sale pile only contains items current within the last few years.

If there’s one thing I don’t need in my life - it’s being judged by my yard sale.

BAH. Yesterday sucked. Could you tell? I mean, S.U.C.K.E.D. I’ve been a poor single Mom, going to college full-time and working full-time and still don’t feel like I ever was under as much stress as I am now. Which means my stress threshold must have lowered significantly in the last eight years. So - I will use this week’s Thursday Thirteen to allow me to vent the really lame things I’m stressing out about.

Thirteen Things That Are Making Me A Wee Bit Anxious Lately

1. There are stressful “issues” at work that I wish I could talk about but (a) It would bore you to death and (b) It would bore me to death.
2. NikkiZ is refusing to eat cereal, the ONE thing during the last month we could always guarantee she would eat, even when she was sick. Since she hates fruit, I’m going to have to give her teachers squash to feed her for breakfast. Yum. Squash for breakfast.
3. LilZ is suffering from an inability to remember anything I ask him to do. EVER. You know, like bring home the lunch box that he left at school a week ago. (My Dad likes to call this affliction, “Being Just Like His Mother.”)
4. There’s a constant war waging between Zoot - She Who Can Do Everything Without Asking for Help and Zoot - If She Doesn’t Get Some Help Around the House She May Kill Someone
5. I’m still trying to lose the last 5-8 lbs of pregnancy weight that I’ve been losing and gaining back bits and pieces of for about 2 months now. I’ll be like, “Yay! I’m almost there!” and then binge for the next week putting it all back on. I know my pre-pregnancy weight is just a random number and if I’m this close I should be happy. BUT - it’s the number that will make it OVER. I feel like until I reach that number on the scale, I’m still “carrying pregnancy weight” and I just want to be able to know I’m done with that. It will be a year in six weeks, I need to reach the goal by then.
6. I have my 5K on Saturday. Can you believe me, the queen of EXCERCISE IS EEEVIL, is running a 5K on Saturday. EEK.
7. So much TV. So little time.
8. One of my long time best friends may be moving to Las Vegas. This makes me very sad. She is only a short drive away right now, and where I may not take advantage of that as much as I should? It was nice knowing she was that close. Las Vegas is a wee more than a weekend drive away.
9. NikkiZ seems to have successfully transitioned to sleeping through the night. This fact is NOT stressing me out. However, she is doing it In. Her. Crib. I miss her in bed with us so bad. I sleep HORRIBLY now. I know that sounds moronic to those of you who don’t co-sleep, but if you co-sleep - you understand, right? I miss her.
10. There’s a certain baby’s birthday coming up soon and I guess I should, maybe, plan her a party? I guess?
11. My house. There are so many things I need to be doing in my house. Carrying up the stuff to the attic that I’ve been putting of for six months would be one thing. Let’s don’t discuss the closet on the floor or the books boxed up for the last year.
12. I still haven’t begun to read the Series of Unfortunate Events books and the last one comes out in a few weeks. I MUST READ THEM ALL BEFORE THEN. Why? Because I told myself I would. And Myself gets very angry when I don’t do things I tell her I’ll do.
13. I have an anniversary coming up. I have no ideas for presents and very little extra cash to spend on the ideas I don’t have. What is the 3rd anniversary? Traditional: Leather. Contemporary: Crystal/Glass. MrZ always gets me stuff that follows the guidelines but I can never think of anything good that does. So I always get him something lame. Like a book. Well, last year I gave him a baby, but you know - it’s usually a book.

it’s one of those days. work is so busy i don’t have time to eat. when i go to feed nikkiz i realize i forgot to bring her refill of wipes. i have to go to target to get some, taking away from precious work hours trying to finish a project that is taking way longer than it should. work is stress. stress is work. the baby is crying and whining and needing to be held all day. she has refused to eat cereal every morning this week, meaning she’s starving when i go to feed her for the first time. i leave work not having completed anything i should have completed by the end of the day. long drive home. had to run by target (again) to get milk and orange juice. finally home. lilz forgets to do his chores for the fiftieth time this month. i freak out and yell a lot more than i should. laundry is waiting. dishes are waiting. the baby still needs to be held. lilz’s chores still need to be done. i snapped at mrz and he snapped at me. it made me cry, even though i snapped at him first. the baby still wants to be held so i can’t use the shift key. i apologize to lilz for yelling, only to yell again a few minutes later. it’s hot in the house and the baby keeps crying. the dishes still need done. laundry needs to now be moved to the dryer. dinner is almost ready. the baby is still crying. even though i’m holding her. she is probably stressing by proxy.

one of those days.

Cagey sent me something in the mail yesterday and she had included a hand-written note. I sat there looking at it, and felt feelings I haven’t felt since I was in school: I was jealous of her handwriting.

She has such pretty handwriting! Growing up, I was always envious of girls with pretty handwriting. I mean, I’m the one with the pen habit I couldn’t quit, I should have been given the gift of pretty handwriting. Why did those girls - who didn’t even do their homework - get that gift? It was WASTED on them!

I blame this for why I never successfully kept journals. I would have a pretty journal, and write pretty things in it, with pretty pens. BUT - it never looked pretty because my handwriting wasn’t cute. I would try so hard to change it, but what happened was that I just became one of those people whose handwriting never looks the same. Every time I sign my name, it looks different. If you scroll through my calendar, it will look like several people write in it. Several people with REALLY UGLY HANDWRITING that is.

This is also how my college studying technique was developed. I would find myself hating looking at the variety of chicken-scratch notes before a test, so I would re-write them and try to use nice handwriting. Even if it wasn’t pretty, it was at least all consistent if I did it in one sitting. So, before every test, one of my studying techniques was to re-write all of the notes I would study from.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Given my love of pens and blank journals, I might have never needed to start a blog if I liked my handwriting. And it only takes a quick edit to change the font on the page when I get bored. Blogging: Perfect for Those with Ugly Handwriting and Fickle Taste in Script.