I got stung by a bee yesterday! Right on the big toe. Three strides from my back door and the poor bug collided with my unexpected foot and gave up his life to poison me. I pulled out the stinger right away. Brett immediately slapped some cooling Iowa mud on the area, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t work great – the redness didn’t spread the way I’d expected it to. But today, it hurts! Bee stings. No good.

Brett’s home and I’m so stoked to see his cute freckled face. He smelled terrible from being on the train for half a million years, but nothing a quick shower didn’t fix. He had a great time, and half the muscles in his body are sore from all the bike riding he did. He had Ron’s Harley for cruising around, and then a group of ’em went out dirt biking two days in a row and clocked a couple hundred miles. He had so much fun he’s almost gidddy.

But back to normal: Jimbo’s out here now and they’re sitting at the picnic table drinking cans of Budweiser and going over plans for their next gig. The house, believe it or not, is a Stapathya-vedic number called (you’re not going to believe this) THE SUNFLOWER. It’s an ugly box like all the S-V house plans I’ve ever seen, utterly absurd looking in rural Iowa. When Brett pointed out the house’s name to me I said, “Why not call it THE GAY ANAL SEX? Or how about THE FAG’S FEATHER BOA?” Jimbo chuckled and Brett gave me a look that spoke volumes – one of those ‘oh it’s such typical roo bullshit I can’t even be bothered to say anything out loud fer Chrissakes’ looks. Snort!

The train was due in at 10:31 AM but didn’t arrive until 2:38 PM. It was a few hours late departing, too. I’m amazed any business can stay in business when everything they do is late. Even I try to stick to my standard twenty minutes of tardiness; I rarely venture into the four hours late category!

It was great to pick my hubby up, it was great to be hugged and kissed, it was great to see Stella – who I’d taken with me – notice Brett as he pulled his suitcase toward us as we sat in the grass by the platform.

After hearing about all the fun he had, I secretly want to move to Colorado. The houses Ron and Josha have are apparently on great properties with killer views, and there’s the great weather and the beautiful vistas and the sage and the pine… I love pine. I miss pine. I love mountain weather, all cool and clear. I want to go out there with him next time!

My baby’s back. I’m so glad.
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His train was four and a half hours late, but my baby’s back after a swell vacation! Yay!
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It’s Thursday, which means my ‘official’ work week is done. Which basically makes it my weekend already! Whee!

It’s Thursday, which means my ‘official’ work week is done. Which basically makes it my weekend already! Whee!
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The weather is weird. It’s getting down to 45 at night. It’s breezy and dry during the day; it’s like living in Eastern Washington. Clouds roll in at dusk. To go out after dark I need a sweater. Today I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, corduroy pants, and socks. Of all things! Socks! In August!

Last night I stood so long gazing at pantry and refrigerator, I decided I must not really want to eat anything there and went to town for a meal alone with a book. I drove home as the day ended: the sky was brilliant with strange and wonderful colors and the clouds were a ridged deck above the fading sunset. At the horizon, the light was golden, and strangely green and yellow, and above it a slender band of orange and red, and still higher it faded to a million shades of chilly blue. It was cold enough I ran the heater in the Jeep. I felt all the bittersweet pangs of late Autumn, that almost-depression of year’s end. And it’s only August! The crops aren’t even in yet, and I feel like it’s the week after Halloween.

Strange, strange summer. We’ve only run the A/C six or seven nights, and I haven’t once been swimming in the triangle pond.

—
I still miss Brett. It’s so strange not having him around. I’ve been lazy, taking my own little vacation; aside from paying bills and a few dishes I haven’t done any chores. No dusting, sweeping, laundry, or even cooking. It’s fun, but lonely.

Joe’s around to keep me company, but I’m not in roommate mode any more I guess: a roommate is neat, but a roommate is not a husband for comfort and companionship. It is nice to have an evening chat with somebody, though – without Joe I’d probably be downright melancholy between the weather and an empty house.

Stella moped for two days, then righted herself. Dogs are plastic.

—
I’ve still only received three logos and three pictures from my latest web client, and haven’t gotten much done. I’m hoping he’ll innundate me with content and I’ll be able to crank out the rest of the site this weekend, before Brett gets home.

—
I am so tired of my hair falling out. It’s becoming obvious now; even with perfectly clean, dry and fluffy hair my scalp shows in several places because my cowlicks are now too light to fall right. My hair is so thin I had to buy smaller scrunchies as the older ones would just fall out. I don’t have any fuzzy down around my forehead anymore because it fell out and quit growing back. If I pull all my hair into a ponytail and twist it, it’s the thickness of an exexutive pen. It’ll be the thickness of a pencil in another few months if nothing changes.

It’s astonishingly distressing to be going bald at 35. I really don’t like it. I don’t like it for the usual reasons of vanity, but also because my head’s always cold. Without that thatch of new hair coming in, without that underlayer of short hairs, every breeze goes right to your head and makes you chilly.

Good thing I can knit myself all the hats I’ll ever need for the winter, I guess.

I’m going to get some Evening Primrose Oil; it’s supposed to help with the hormonal conversion going on (it has something to do with testosterone) which causes follicles to shut down and fall out. It can’t hurt to try. And Friday, I will be aggressive: I will call doctors until I find one who will make me an appointment and give me the blood tests I want. Period. As much as I hate having to be aggressive or even rude, I will find a clinic to sell me the services I want and not what they decide to give me.

At least I feel fine, aside from horrible, debilitating cramps every month. I haven’t been having the mental/emotional problems of last year. Anxiety and depression are horrible, awful things, and no one should have to live like that. (I might be mildly depressed, I suppose, since I don’t feel terribly social, but if so it’s depression so mild it doesn’t come with any self-doubt or grief or fear or any of those other paralyzing problems. I might just be old enough not to want to have the same conversations over and over again, or just lazy! LOL!)
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Here’s my cute hubby (and Jimbo in the background). He called me this morning; he sounds all relaxed and mellow, and he’s having fun in Colorado. He’s currently sitting on Ron’s porch, enjoying the view of the valley, and waiting for Josha to come pick him up.

I guess Ron had to go into work to get a few things done today, but will take the rest of the week off to hang with Mr. Brett.

It’s so weird not having Brett around! (But I have a Joe to pester me, so at least I’m not lonely. Heh.) It’s mushy, but I miss him terribly.

Barb dropped by Sunday and hung out with for the evening; we sat at the picnic table and chatted. She is so the most ideal mother-in-law and I am so not worthy! We talked about Brett’s sister’s in-laws and they are, apparently, quite capable of being complete freaks.

The more I hear about other people’s in-laws, the more I worship Barb. She has some special mom power that makes you know you can depend on her and that she’s always there, but the woman doesn’t have an intrusive bone in her body. She doesn’t judge, or control, or nag, or anything. She’s my idol, I swear. She really believes in her bones that her kids are people, capable of having their own experiences and requiring their own space. Comparing her to my friends’ in-laws, I really have to wonder what it is that keeps so many parents from ever noticing that they’re intruding on their kids’ lives and essentially belittling their abilities to function as adults. I mean, how can you not know that your kids don’t want you over three times a week? Or that they don’t really want to be required to hang out with you whenever you want? Seriously.

Anyway, Brett did call me this morning, and he was in the middle of a sentence when his phone died. I waited a few minutes, then called him back and got his voice mail. So, I didn’t get to tell him he’s adored but I did get to chat with him for a bit and he sounds great, the cutie.

Nothing better for the health of a marriage than time apart, by God!
——–

My baby’s gone for a whole week. Sniff. I miss him!

Put him on a train last night, and sent him off to the tender mercies of the Colorado crowd. I’m so stoked he’s finally going on a vacation, since he hasn’t had one in three years. He seemed visibly relaxed the moment he decided to go – the man desperately deserves some down time.

All he does is work, really. We don’t have much of a social life any more (being too old now to survive much of one, I think) and my man does work hard for a living… and he dutifully gives his money over to me, and I pay bills with it. It’s got to get a little stale after awhile.

But the good news is that he’s probably at Ron’s house by now, getting hugs and smiles from old friends, maybe having a real beer at a microbrewery, and feeling that wonderful feeling of having discretionary cash in his pocket and being on day one of being on vacation for a whole week.

The weird thing about being with someone day in, day out for seven years is this: I can feel it as he gets farther away. It’s weird. I can always feel it when we’re seperated, but somehow when I’m the one traveling the pang is less intense – probably because I’m occupied with the new environs.

Last night, as his train moved farther and farther away, I started to miss him. It sounds somewhat maudlin but I’m trying to express an experience more than a feeling; I can tell when my husband gets far away from me. Once he was off doing something, I don’t know what, maybe fishin’ or something or picking up materials for a job, and they got lost or disorderly and ended up in another state, and I already knew he’d been many hundreds of miles away from me when he came home and told me about it. I could feel it. Or perhaps a lessening of it? Something. I can feel a pang once we get a certain distance physically from one another.

We’re not phone people, so in the past when one of us travelled we didn’t even speak on the phone, but I asked him to call me once or twice to check in and he smiled as if he were pleased I wanted his attention and he said he would. I’m looking forward to hearing that relaxed tone of voice when he calls, that “I have no responsibilities for days!” kind of voice. He’s certainly earned it.

Bo and Joe commented that Brett already seemed to have put a load down, that he looked as if he’d already been on vacation, when we stopped by 1-Stop yesterday afternoon and he told them he was catching the 7:21 PM California Zephyr to Denver in a few hours.

He was long overdue for a vay-cay, that man o’ mine. (And I get the whole bed to myself!)

…Joe seems to be moved in. He has his desk set up, and the boxes in his room are piled neatly. We moved the rifles into another storage area. He slept here last night, at least, but that doesn’t really count toward moving in as much as you might think, since he crashes here on average of 1.5 nights a month.

He’s off now cleaning his old house with Josh, I guess.

I was hoping to work on the Grand Orleans Hotel site, but they haven’t sent me much. I got three pictures last week I can start with, but no content. So I guess I’ll putt around with it and see what I can do with what I have so far.

I’m reading a wonderful book today called The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman. Yum. It’s gorgeous prose and a scene in it was so well written and beautifully expressed that it actually made me cry. I’ll cry at the cheesiest movie, but words on a page have to be exceptionally powerful to make me weep. It’s rather exciting to read something so stirring.

In fact, I think I’ll go read more. Ciao!
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