AnnieF

San Francisco is totally doable for me, especially in July when there will be (almost certainly) no snow over the Sierra. Make it so! :-)

My mother has since told me that she thought we were nuts, that the whole thing seemed crazy to her. She's right; I really don't know why we thought we needed to get married, but we did. We've teetered on the edge of things going badly, but mostly it has worked out. Luck, and effort, heh. :) So jelly about the meetup. I've had the pleasure of spending time with buffyjunkie, who is awesome, but not Harvester or JHeaton. We need more meetups, y'all! Or a transporter. Did we ever assign the transporter development job to someone specific? Someone should get on that, soonish. ;)

So much of it is luck. And yeah, we've worked through some rough patches, went to a marriage counselor a few times, said the scary word "divorce" out loud. But in the end we work well together, probably in part because we've made each other who we are now, y'know? I've been with him since I was 20. We were such babies when we got married, so there's no way that we haven't helped mold each other into the grownups we are today. The toughest thing we have going on right now is our 15- year-old being horrible, and we'e on the same page with how to handle it, so things are pretty good."I'm a little friend, I'm not your only friend, but I'm a little glowing friend, but really I'm not actually your friend, but I am..."

If all y'all had gotten married back when you met your hubs, then you'd be able to put up the high numbers. Mr F and I are coming up on 25 years because we made the extremely ridiculous choice to get married when we were 21, instead of waiting responsibly and maturely like you guys. Where's your recklessness, jeez? ;) I find the Beatles are excellent for car singing. Thanks to my dad, I always know the lyrics (true story; the first time [out of two total occurrences] I saw my father cry was when John Lennon died. The second was his mother's funeral, so there you go). Mr F and I will often sing VERY LOUDLY along with They Might Be Giants, too, much to the chagrin of the kids. Who can resist "Particle Man" at top volume? "Universe man, universe man, size of the entire universe man..."

Is there anything more annoying than a 15-year-old child? I'm starting to doubt it. Happy anniversary, Erratic and Kory. Your marriage is old enough to vote and serve in the military! (Mr F and I have been making this goofy comparison for years -- "Our marriage is old enough to drive!" etc. We're at the point now where our marriage should really be trying to finish grad school, heh). I have my car back, finally. And I'm now officially at the point where putting more money into this car doesn't make sense. Damnit. I'm going to not think about this problem for a while. Maybe it'll go away. ;)

Baseball teams I hate: LA Dodgers, because the are the Giants' traditional rival. And NY Yankees, because they epitomize all the things that annoy me about baseball, heh. (Sorry val, ;)) Baseball teams that are SO ANNOYING: Red Sox, like cko says; Angels (rally monkey will never die for me, that fuckin' thing, grr); Cleveland, because they're hanging onto that damn racist caricature logo. My kids are on week two of spring break, and I'm really fortunate that this is when my car broke down, since when the kids are in school, I do a lot of chauffeuring. But we've been stuck in the house since Thursday, blergh. My car supposedly will be ready today, so my fingers are crossed. Pain has been pretty bad. I don't mention it too often because boring, but yeah. It's there all the time. Before I had chronic pain I would never have guessed "boredom" as one of the drawbacks, but there it is, front and center. Every day, always the same. Never a break. It's fucking tedious. Anyway, vibes to all. I hope things are wonderful in your part of the world, wherever you may be. As a wise man once said, no matter where you go, there you are. :)

Was anyone actually keeping a list of "things we said that need to be on a t-shirt? 'Cause this needs to be on it. Happy Easter to those who celebrate. This year, because the Easter Bunny has not had a car since Thursday (fuel pump), there are no baskets prepared for the F-ster and F-let. But since they are both well aware that I am the Easter Bunny, we're going to get discounted candy after brunch at grandma's. Score! :)

Your myopia is completely understandable, Erratic. You'e waiting for a huge, life-changing thing to happen. If I were in your place, I would be a wreck. And it's shitty that your caseworker is ignoring you. That's horrible. :(

Ha! That is hilarious. And "dipso," man, there's a pejorative that doesn't get much use anymore.

Truth. We've exhausted all the other options, and it really does seem like his issue is...he's 15. So, we've just got to wait for maturing to happen. Whee. Yup! Can't you wait until you have teenagers, Erratic? They are soooooo fun. Super duper awesomeness, all the time. SO FUN!!! :P

Isn't "Birdman" about acting? I think that's your answer right there; actors are the largest voting bloc in the Academy, and they can be a rather narcissistic bunch. (Can be. I know it's not all actors, but I think that the ones that are members of AMPAS maybe had a bit of tunnel vision on this one.) I'm happy to hear stories of children being delightful (go Tiny C! I wish I'd had a friend like her when I was the victim of that kind of exclusionary behavior in 2nd grade). I need to know that children are a net positive, because right now I am having the WORST time with the F-ster. He's 15 now, he towers over me (approaching 6'2"), he thinks he knows everything, and he's such an asshole. He won't take responsibility for his own education; we've talked until we're blue in the face about needing decent high school grades to get into college, he says all the right things in response, and then nothing about his behavior changes. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. (I'm just ventingand don't really need suggestions. It's likely that whatever gets suggested, we've already tried [doctor? Check. Therapist? Check. Change his diet? Check. Etc etc]). Thanks for letting me put all my "aaaahhhhh this parenting thing is haaaaaaaard!!!! on the page. :)) Wishing hard that things would happen already for you and Kory, Erratic.

I think it's ableism, pretty much. We as a culture are very bad at dealing with and accepting illness, aging, and death. I very much get where you're coming from, cko, because sometimes I get that stuff aimed at me ("Oh, you can't walk around too much? That's so sad...") Well, you know, maybe it isn't sad so much as it just is the way it is. Stigma about illness and aging is more painful to deal with, sometimes, than the actual being sick/getting old. Let's embrace our differences. :)

MS is very much like this. In numerous ways, it's like aging, just decades ahead of schedule. I hope your Lady Cassandra saga will soon come to a close, KPC :)

My mom's b-day was also yesterday (happy belated, b-day peeps :)). She turned 70, and she's having a hard time with it. She feels like being a person in their 70s seems so much older than a person in their 60s. I think perception-wise, she's kinda right. Ugh. I tried to empathize by mentioning that I thought I might feel weird about turning 50 (4 years away), but that was a mistake. If her daughter is 50, that means she's ancient. Oops. Oh well. I tried. ;)

Of all the songs here, the one that had to earworm me was "Brand New Key"? Brain, wtf. I feel as though I shouldn't even know it (I was 3 when it was a big novelty hit) and yet, here we are. Guess I'm going to have chirpy verses about rollerskates in my head all day.

The site has it already figured, romantic idiot -- when your birth song comes up, there's a link right under the title that says "Want to know what song you were conceived to?" "Kiss on My List" is a good one. From high school, because I am Old, heh. ETA: jinx! ;)

Yeah, how young are some of y'all? ;) Yes indeedy, I totally did this. My first batch of records included Journey, Foreigner, Eagles, Pat Benatar, Styx, Aretha Franklin...and I can't remember what else. It was so exciting to get the package with all the albums in it. So freakin' enormous- looking now. Ha. I think I was 12 or 13 when I did that, and my tastes were pretty all-over-the-place. But it was fun.ETA Styx and Foreigner make me think of the concert that jaz and I went to. The one where we went Def*. I miss her. She still owes me a dollar. :'-) *ok you probably remember or got it but Def Leppard also played (they were the headliner, in fact, and they totally fuckin' rocked).

My conception song was "Green Tambourine" by the Lemon Pipers (which, ha, no, my parents were not that groovy). I always kinda liked Eddie Rabbit. He had a cute beard, that's what comes to mind when I read the name. And his songs were catchy. . That is hilariously awesome. Very on-theme. Heh.

It makes me slightly happier to learn, via Hostile's link, that the #1 song on the day I was born was "Hey Jude." Alrighty, I'm okay with that. My kids are stuck with Mariah Carey and 50 Cent. :/

The dress thing is interesting; I mostly see it as blue and black, but if I go out in the sun and come back in and look, it appears white and gold. Our eyes are some funky shit, yo. That story was wonderful, Barphe, and I'm glad it worked out so well. :) Leonard Nimoy's death is making me really sad. Here is his final tweet: "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP." Indeed, our wise friend. RIP.

No-Doz is caffeine tablets. You're supposed to take them internally, but to speed up the caffeine delivery process, we would crush the tablets into a fine powder, make lines, and snort them. Poppers are different; that's amyl nitrite, comes in liquid form, you inhale it and it gives you a very brief, intense headrush and feelings of euphoria. Only lasts five minutes and then you have a headache. Not my favorite either. It was really popular at raves, which again, not my thing. Poppers always seemed to go along with Ecstasy, IME. That's a drug that I didn't try, amazingly enough.

I used to snort No-Doz*, when I was waitressing at Sizzler. Hurts like a motherfucker, but boy howdy do you get a bump. Everyone at that Sizzler was on something; cocaine was also around, but it was far too expensive, plus the one time I tried it, I didn't like it. I'm not an uppers kinda gal. A couple of us young poor waitresses did the No-Doz thing, though, to get through double shifts. The manager was a cokehead, and a couple of the chefs were all 'roided up. Man, the 80s were weird. *I think this datum suggests that my parents were far too late with the "drugs are bad" speech. I was also already a budding alcoholic at that point; sometimes the lines of No-Doz (and sometimes, but not very often, crank, aka crystal meth) helped me work when I was hung over. Heh, it is so weird to think about this stuff now, it's like talking about another person. I'm glad I'm on the other side and can clearly see that I am an addict, duh. Wish I hadn't had to go through all the yuck (getting sober from booze, getting off opiate pain meds, which I was abusing because addict) but hey, it's life experience, right? Knowing that my kids might inherit some addictive tendencies from me, Mr F and I have done what the experts recommend, which is to be upfront and tell the kids that this is a thing that they should be aware of and watch out for. They've tried lots of different kinds of booze, and so far the reaction has always been "that is disgusting, why do people drink this?" And the fact that I use marijuana for medical purposes has kinda taken the shine off of pot for them. It's that stinky medicine that Mom uses for pain, gross. I really hope neither of them ends up having to go through what I've gone through. Earl, does your horse have a favorite Tic Tac flavor? (Mine is wintergreen. That shit is delish. ;) )

Would it work that quickly? It's only been a week. I hope the dry mouth abates and that it works for you AnnieF.Lessee if I coded this correctly...victory! Hee hee, I take it where I can get it. ;)Anyhoo, yeah, it's too early for any results from the Wellbutrin. I'm looking at mid-April -- tax time, is how I'm remembering. If I don't feel much better, the doc'll up the dose, 'cause what I'm taking now is the minimum. It doesn't help that my older son, the F-ster, is really challenging right now. He is 15. It sucks for him, it sucks for us. Adolescence is so fun. Crossposting, whee! I gotcha, KPC, and no, no other side effects. So, yay? Heh.

That's pretty much what Tic Tacs are. They come in so many flavors now. When I was a kid I think there were two types, both minty. Now there's all kinds of flavors (mixed fruit, orange, cinnamon). I have combined the orange flavor with the cinnamon flavor, as an experiment. I do not recommend this combination. ;)

Wellbutrin (the antidepressant I just started) is giving me cotton-mouth. This is the main side effect mentioned, so it's not unexpected, but blergh. I've started carrying around Tic-Tacs. It's like being a newb stoner, heh. (Cotton-mouth is one of marijuana's main side effects, but the more you smoke, the less that happens. Because I am a big ol' medical pothead, I don't get cotton-mouth anymore. Having cotton-mouth is like being 16 again. Ha!) Big vibes to all, apply as needed. ;)