All About the Dog Who Came to Stay

A year and a half ago, I wrote a blog about fostering dogs, ending, of course, with Thunder, who had at that point been around for a tumultuous six months.  In the subsequent year and a half, he resolutely refused to be adopted by anyone.  And I refused to adopt him.  We seemed to mutually agree that we belonged to each other, but nothing was official.

As we've been moving over the past couple weeks, we've talked about how to transition Thunder to a new home (with a bigger yard and less stairs!), and how to change our lives so that we could still take care of his needs with a longer work commute for us both.  He had been slowing down lately, had arthritis, and couldn't do the stairs to the basement anymore.  But with the painkillers he was now on, he was seeming to become sweeter and more tolerant (well, for him).  He still loved going on walks, wanted to be nearby, and wanted lots and lots of petting.  I hadn't given up on him in the over two years he'd been around (in spite of his innate ability to be a jerk when he wanted), and I wasn't going to start now.

In my blog, I talked about how I liked fostering because I didn't have to deal with the death of a pet.

Well, that's no longer true.

My temperamental, lovable, fuzzy jerk passed away early Saturday morning, after a late night trip to the emergency vet clinic Friday night.

We'd gone for our usual walk that morning, but when Mark got home around 3:30 Thunder didn't get up.  He still didn't get up when I got home at 5:30, except briefly.  We thought he just wasn't feeling good, so left to take another load over to the new house.  When I came home later, he seemed even worse and was barely responding to anything I did, so I called the emergency clinic and took him in (with some help, since I had taken NyQuill and couldn't carry a 70 pound dog down the stairs anyway).

The vet there told me that he was severely anemic, had fluid in his stomach from bleeding internally, and that his blood pressure had been too low to register.  He thought he saw a mass in his stomach, which was probably a tumor.  I got to say goodnight to him, then left him there for monitoring.

In the morning, I got a call from Stray Rescue telling me that he had stopped breathing at 3:30 that morning while the vets were trying to give him a transfusion.  He'd had cancer that no one knew about.

I spent the next three hours crying non-stop while trying to pack.

He wasn't officially my dog, but he'd all but chosen me nearly two and a half years ago when Stray Rescue first decided to have me meet a dog "who didn't really like anyone."  Thirty seconds after they brought him in the room, he was rolling in my lap.  We've pretty much been together ever since, through heartworm treatment and failed trial adoptions and him eating an entire hambone and being the laziest dog known to man.  We've snuggled, been pissed at each other, and eventually figured each other out.

I loved the jerk.  He was my jerk.  He was my snuggle buddy, my shadow, and my big cowardly baby.

I miss him.  I miss his goofy face, and the way his butt would sway when you scratched it.  I miss his droopy sad ears when he watched us eat dinner.  I miss him curling up on my yoga mat while I was using it.  I miss his 70 pounds of snuggle crushing my sternum when he'd lay on top of me.

I'm glad he didn't really suffer.  I'm glad I got to say goodnight to him.  And I'm glad he got to go on one last walk that morning.

Most of all, I'm glad I brought home the big jerk when I'm sure few other people would have been willing to do the same.  I'm glad I took a gamble on him, and gave him the home he probably never had before, even if it was only for a short time, and even if he ultimately broke my heart in the process.

I wouldn't change a thing.

Situation Normal...

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

Wait, that's been done already?  Alright, let's try again...

These are the times that try men's souls.

That's already taken too?

Damn.

How about plain old "this sucks"?  Does that work?

Obviously I'd like to simply fill today's blog with cliched, overused, and occasionally fatalistic quotes so that I don't actually have to add on to my current To Do list (which is daunting at best, impossible at worst) and actually write a blog.

Did I mention we're still moving?  Did I mention that we're moving into a house that's still mostly full?  Did I mention we need to be completely out of our current place (with it cleaned and fixed for inspection) by the 28th?

Did I mention we have yet to send out wedding invitations?

Did I mention I'm in almost constant freak-out mode and that the sight of a calendar sends me into a panic?

I did?

Huh.

And yes, I know we'll get through it.  I know the end result will be worth the stress and the tears and the work and frustration.  I know that.  I do.  That doesn't change the fact that right now?  It sucks.  It sucks and it's hard and I want it to be over so I can get to the good part, the part where it's all worth it, the part where my life isn't crammed into boxes and shoved into a room, the part where we're not eating fast food nearly ever day in between transferring boxes from place to place.

If you don't see either of us until April, this is why.  We don't have time.  We don't have energy.  We have a house to buy, a wedding to arrange, an apartment to clean, and an ex to frame for any damage.

We're swamped.

The Pretty Stressed Girl

As I begin to type this, there are approximately 16 tabs open on my browser.  To be fair, some of those have to do with books I want to read and cakes I want to eat.  And one of them is this blog. But a lot of the rest have to do with things that are seriously stressing me out right now.

And do I even begin to describe how many tabs it feels like I have open in my brain?  Because it's way more than 16.

The ironic thing is that never before in my life have I been so invested in self-care, in methods of relaxation and mindfulness.  I've been doing yoga almost daily since the middle of January.  I've been taking a relaxing bath (complete with wine) every Friday for about a month.  I've been taking care of my skin, drinking a lot of water, and we've even started throwing in some lavender aromatherapy melts into our nightly shower.  I should be blissfully relaxed, floating around on a pleasant-smelling cloud of divine and glowing happiness.

Instead?  My shoulders have ached for days.  I've developed frequent headaches.  My appetite is rapidly deserting me.  Mark's blood pressure is way up.

Why, you ask?  Why on earth are two such usually-happy and fairly content lovebirds so rapidly descending into a state similar to a dangerously frayed wire?

That's an easy one.

A.  We're buying a house.

B.  We're moving.

C.  We're getting married.

Did I mention this is all happening in under 60 days (for the most part in under 30)?

Excuse me while I hyperventilate, laugh a little too loudly and a little too nervously, and then go hide under the covers until people stop asking me questions.

Okay.

I'm breathing.  Really.

...

Totally breathing.

Shockingly, not everything has been going according to plan.  Mainly that while buying a house from a family member certainly has its many perks, it also has a very significant number of downfalls.   A very, very significant number.

Right now, the apartment is in a state of disrepair.  My books (over 20 boxes) are packed and gone, we have a list of furniture we're (hopefully) moving over tomorrow, and I have a LOT to go through, get rid of, organize, and pack.

I am ridiculously looking forward to this all being done, to finally being in a home of our own, married, and living our life together full time.  I'm excited about hanging up pictures, about a new oven and fridge, about having a garage, and about getting to set up a home together in a new and fresh place.  I'm thrilled to no longer have to deal with a rental company and to get to come home to my love every single night.

I'm also panicking about getting it all done in time, worrying if something else is going to go wrong, trying to pick a caterer for the wedding, needing to finish up invitations, and and and...

Right.  Breathing.

Ultimately, I do believe everything is going to work out.  I do.  It's going to be stressful as hell in the meantime, but I believe we'll get there.  We've made it so far, right?  We've made it through almost a a decade and a half of friendship, through my divorce, through losing my job, through my learning how to be a stepmother-in-training, and through over two years of mostly living together.  What's two more months of last-minute major life changes?

(Not coincidentally, everyone has decided that if we can make it through the next two months, we can definitely survive marriage.  Nothing like trial by fire, am I right?)

Mark asked me the other day how we got to this point.  I told him that 13 years ago I showed up at a community theatre audition, that's how.

Okay, it might not have been quite what he was asking, but it's true nonetheless.

I never could have dreamed that we would be at this point.  I never imagined that my completely insane love-at-first-sight reaction at age 18 would lead to a second marriage, a move back to Illinois, to buying a house together.  The most I hoped for at the time was that he thought I was cute and that he wouldn't notice that I was the most awkward girl on the planet.  I'm ridiculously lucky in that I've gotten all that and more.  (Okay, he's probably realized I'm the most awkward girl on the planet by now, but at least he doesn't seem to mind too much.)

Am I more stressed than I've been since my divorce?  Yes.  Have I cried?  Yes.  Am I going to cry more?  Probably.

But is it all going to be worth it?

To quote one of my all-time favorite lines of dialogue, "Abso-fucking-lutely."

And Many More?

I have no idea how it happened, but I turned 32 this past weekend.

I'm not going to say I'm old, but I am going to say that I turned 21 eleven years ago, and that seems... impossible.

I mean, look at that kid.  She's a baby.  She has no idea what the hell is in store for her.  I have to fight the desire to shake her, quite frankly.

But, a lot (and I mean a lot) of time has passed since then.  I got married, got divorced, and am about to get married again (because I'm apparently a very, very serial monogamist).

Eleven years is a long time, and now?

I'm 32.

It's not ancient, but it's by no means young.  And I'm fine with that.  I like my age, I like myself, and I like my life.  I like what I've accomplished, particularly over the past few years.

And I (still) like my birthday.

Last year was probably one of my favorite birthdays ever.  I had a fabulous, low-key party and spent my entire birthday day with Mark.

This year?  Things were a little different.

For starters, my family met Mark's family for the first time for a birthday lunch.  It... well, let's just say it did not quite go as planned, and leave it at that.  That lovely experience was followed up by seeing Trolls with Mark, Kaylee, and my parents.  (Cute movie, bit too long.)

Then I went home to get ready for the Prohibition Party, a long-standing event that my friends Jessica and Chris throw every year.  This year it happened to fall on my birthday, so Jessica got me a cake.

And by cake, I mean the best cake ever.

Seriously.

Being the birthday girl, I decided to wear something a bit fancier than my usual costume of a slip and a see-through lace dress.  So I crossed my fingers and slipped into my great-grandma's wedding dress.  And it actually fit... kindof... if you ignore the fact that it doesn't fasten up on the side.  At all.

Not one to give up so easy, I pinned together one of my furs into a makeshift sleeve, pinned that to the dress, threw on some pearls, grabbed my champagne, and managed to socialize for almost four hours.

Sunday was birthday brunch, followed by a well-earned food coma and Kaylee wanting to come over and give me my birthday card, followed by the official start of packing up the apartment I've lived in for seven years. 

And then on Monday Mark had the day off for our now-traditional birthday adventures.

Which... also didn't quite work out the way we planned, as the Contemporary Art Museum was closed.  So?  We walked around IKEA (which is basically some strange form of modern art itself), had lunch at Crown Candy Kitchen, and later had buffet.

It obviously wasn't the most remarkable of birthday adventures, but I'm not complaining.  We're both under a lot of stress right now with preparing for both a move and a wedding, so a low-key and unremarkable day was probably more along the lines of what we needed.  And all I really wanted to do was spend the day together (and get a BLT at Crown Candy Kitchen), so mission: accomplished.

32 definitely was not a bad birthday, in spite of all the reasons it could very well have been.  I got to dress up, have amazing cake, and go home whenever I was ready.  I got to spend a day with the love of my life.  I got brunch and so many lovely and thoughtful presents from my lovely and thoughtful friends.

I'm a little older, a little wiser (I hope), and about to embark on one hell of a life adventure with a guy who makes me feel like it's always my birthday.

I could do worse.

Where Did You Get That?

I don't feel like blogging about anything of importance today.

I don't want to talk about politics.

I don't want to talk about the stress of buying a house from a family member (which is considerable).

I don't even want to talk about the few wedding decisions we have actually managed to make lately.

I'm a little stressed out, a lot tired, and fighting off varying levels of anxiety day by day.

So.  Where does that leave us?

Well, last week I talked a lot about selfies, and self-confidence, and how I haven't repeated an outfit in now-nearly three months.

And that leads nicely into a question that I get a lot: where do I get my clothes?

Well.

The answer is, really, all over the place.  I have an unhealthy love of ModCloth, first of all.  But I also shop a lot at Target.  And pick up the occasional piece at WalMart.  I sometimes order a few things online.  I frequent vintage stores, estate sales, yard sales, and have plenty of clothes that I've owned since college (and even high school).  People give me clothing.  I have, at this point, a quite literal clothing horde that I've accumulated over the years.

Clockwise from top:
button-up shirt from college, sweater from Target, vintage store dress, ModCloth dress, mini-dress someone gave me.

However, the vast majority of my clothing comes from one place: Goodwill. (Thrift stores in general.)  Mark likes to tell me that I have a $10,000 dollar wardrobe for less than 1/3 the price, and he's probably right.

I love Goodwill.  I love the possibilities.  I love the fact that you might walk away with nothing, or with a whole new wardrobe for sixty bucks.  I love that I got a brand new $70 skirt there this past weekend for $3.50.  $3.50!  I love the fact that there are so many buried treasures just waiting to be found hiding between hangers of 80s dresses (which, admittedly, could be a treasure to someone who is not me).  I love how freaking cheap it is.  I love the fact that it always turns into a weird internal rationalization and debate about what is and is not "worth it."  I love that I turned down a pair of green heels this weekend because they were $8.

(Like, whoa.  Let's have some self-control there, missy.  $8 heels?  Not on my watch.  ... these $6 ones are cool, though.)

Goodwill is so very worth the effort, I believe.  True, you have to be ready to spend time flipping your way through hundreds of hangers.  And you have to be willing to try practically everything on (or at least 6 items at a time).

Note: it helps to have a significant other who sits outside the changing room and gives you the thumbs up nearly every time you open the door.

It also helps to know what you're ideally looking for.  By this point, I know what I like.  I know what generally looks good on me.  I'm also drawn to certain colors, patterns, fabrics, and styles, so it's easy to quickly recognize something I'd potentially like as I'm skimming through the aisles.  Polka dots?  Absolutely.  Bright orange?  No.  Pink Ladies jacket?  Hell yes.  90s floral? ... Not on your life.

There's never any harm in trying something on.  (Well, unless it's too small.  We've all been there.  No one wants to be the girl struggling alone in a dressing room to get out of a dress she had no business trying on in the first place.)  Sizing aside, Goodwill is the absolute perfect place to take a risk.  Nowhere else do you have the sheer variety of styles to experiment with.  Why not take advantage of it?  No one has to ever know that you tried on that bright green mini-skirt, unless of course it looks amazing on you.

For example: I would not normally have tried this dress on.  No regrets!

So yes.  I obviously enjoy and support Goodwill, since they're definitely not paying me for this blog post (though they probably should).

And to answer a frequent follow-up question: yes, I would love to go shopping with you.  You just can't let me buy anything.

... unless I really love it.

But First, Let Me Take a Selfie

Before he left, my ex said that I was vain.

And, considering the fact that I've taken at least one selfie every day for over two months now, I can't easily argue that he was wrong.

(He also said that I was selfish, which is pretty rich coming from the guy who insisted that I essentially buy back the car from him, even though we'd bought it entirely with my money, but hey.  Divorce sucks, even if it's worth it.)

But the fact that I willingly take and post selfies, and that I honestly like (and sometimes love) how I look in said selfies is such a long shot from where I used to be.

Growing up, I was incredibly unhappy with the way I looked.  I was this awkward, gangly thing with a crooked back, a big nose, pale skin, small boobs, and (to quote my mother) "dishwater blond hair."  All around me, it seemed, were these gorgeous specimens of post-pubescence, girls who were (quite literally) blossoming into women, girls who wore more than a training bra, girls who had boyfriends and were popular and blonde and perfect.

And then there was me.  Awkward and nerdy and desperate for the right kind of attention (or, perhaps, the wrong kind of attention, as the case may be).  It is, honestly, painful to remember how desperate I was, so desperate and clueless that I actually one time wrote out a list of ways I could be more popular.  This list included things like "be the first to answer all the teacher's questions right," so you can clearly see how successful I was bound to be in my quest for popularity.

I put Sun-in in my hair.  I stuffed Kleenex in my bras.  I stared in vain at my nose, wondered how in the world I could hide such a horrendously prominent thing on my face.  I thought that if I somehow I got a tan that I would look more like one of those girls, instead of being this pale and unpopular ghost with a schnoz.

It probably goes without saying that I didn't really date much.  I had a brief relationship my freshman year of high school (which I regretted as soon as it began), and a very-slightly-less-brief relationship in college.  I also had a not-relationship-relationship with my current fiance', wherein we would see movies when I was home from college and make out afterwards but never actually "date."

Of course I had many, many crushes, starting with being "in love" with my pastor when I was in the third grade and going from there (more often than not with someone at least vaguely close to my own age), but very few actually reciprocated in the way I longed for.  This goes a long way to explaining why I married the first long-term boyfriend I had when I couldn't think of a reason to break up with him.  For most of my life I could barely get a guy to so much as look at me.  And now someone actually wanted to be with me?  And marry me?  God only knows that might never happen again.  It wasn't like I had them knocking down the doors.

Self-esteem, or the lack thereof, is a bitch.  Because I was still that awkward, gangly girl that I used to be, even though I was dying my hair occasionally and had finally started to grow into my nose.  I was still desperate for attention and love, though now it was most definitely the wrong kind of attention.

Let's fast-forward a few years, shall we?  I started dressing vintage, started taking pole dance classes, and basically found my own self-esteem amongst the wreckage of my life.  You know the story by now, if you know me at all or have been reading this blog.

Am I still awkward?  Hell yes!  I might be less gangly than I used to be, due to a love of tacos and cupcakes, but under my red hair I'm still the same dishwater-blonde nerd with a big nose, pale skin, and (not-quite-as) small boobs.  I'm still not blonde and tan and perfect.  I'm not anything resembling perfect, and God knows I never will be.

But none of that means I can't be totally into myself and the way I look.  I wish more people were, honestly.

So yeah.  I take a lot of selfies now.

So what?

I'm thrilled to be in a place where I love myself, where I can have fun with what I wear and how I look, and where I can inspire my friends and acquaintances to send me their own selfies and to express themselves in ways they might not normally.

Maybe taking so many selfies is vain.  And maybe it is completely insane that I haven't repeated an outfit in two and a half months.

But I'd rather be this girl than the one I used to be.

I wish someone would have told me, all those years ago, that I was beautiful the way I was (all elbows and knees and nose), that I shouldn't try to fit in, and that I shouldn't settle.  I wish someone would have told me to worry less about being popular and more about being myself.

But I guess I got there.

Eventually.

So yeah.  I take a lot of selfies now.

And I'm not about to stop.

A Tale of Two Credit Cards

The truly amazing thing about my ex-husband is that, even more than two years later, he can continue to fuck up my life in new and remarkable ways.

Many of you know that Mark and I are attempting to buy his grandma's house.  To that end, we applied for a home loan and had our credit reports run by the mortgage company.  Honestly? I wasn't worried.  I had (I thought) no debt outside what I owe my parents.  I had (I thought) no credit cards attached to my name.  (All this was in accordance with the divorce papers, wherein, for the sake of getting rid of my ex, I agreed to pay half of 10 grand in debt that I didn't even know some of the origin of, on cards that were opened before we married.)  I've paid all my bills on time for over two years now.  I have a steady job with a consistent and decent income.  What could go wrong?

Ha.

Never, ever, ask that question.

What could go wrong was ten years ago I married someone I shouldn't have.  I married someone who could not be trusted with money and yet insisted that he be in charge of paying all the bills (in spite of my repeated requests to take over some of the bill-paying when my phone would be turned off from months upon months of the bill not being paid, or when I would get calls from credit card companies looking for past-due payment).  I married someone who (as I discovered) actively hid credit card bills from me, all the while insisting that I exist off an "allowance" of $160 a month.  Moreover, I married someone who literally stopped paying his bills after he left St. Louis.

Really, that should be completely beside the point.  I could care less what he did after he finally got the hell out or how he ruins his own life.  I got several debt collection letters in his name and gladly forwarded them on to his mother's address.  Whatever.

What's pissing me off is that my name was still apparently attached to two credit cards as an authorized user (one of which I have literally no knowledge or record of), which were eventually closed and written off as bad debt.

And therefore my credit score is down.  Significantly.

Needless to say, I was upset.

... Upset may not be a strong enough word.  Frustrated, maybe?  Angry?  Pissed off, perhaps?

Now, I may be biased, but I believe my anger (and that is, I have decided, the best word for it) is pretty justified.  I paid off "my half" of the credit card bills, after all.  I've been responsible and self-sufficient and managed to keep my life together in the middle of a divorce and losing my job.  And what do I get for it?

Bad credit, that's what I get.

I get a reminder, in the middle of a meeting with our loan agent, of what my life used to be like.  I get that old familiar feeling of anxiety tightening in my chest.  I get insomnia and bad dreams and, insult upon injury, I lose my appetite.  I get to dread the possibility that I will actually have to talk to my ex and convince him to call a credit card company to get my name off these damn cards.

I realize, of course I realize, that this could all have been avoided if I just hadn't gotten married 10 years ago.  Or if I had insisted on being an equal partner, like I should have.  Or if I hadn't been so pathetically naive.  Or if.  Or if.  Or if.  I could (and have) lose sleep over or ifs.

Anyway.

Long story short, after digging through fascinatingly horrifying old bills and paperwork last night, I called the credit card companies this morning and got my name taken off the cards.  It was... surprisingly painless?  I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in the meantime I'm just hoping it really was that easy.

So?  There's that.  And even if getting cards deleted off my credit report isn't the best thing ever, it has to be better than having my name attached to two bad debts.

And now I can move on with the process of buying a house, moving, and getting married.  And I can be unendingly grateful that that life is no longer mine, that I have a fiance' who leaves chocolate in my lunchbag when I'm stressed instead of notes about how we don't have enough money to pay rent, who puts up with my moods instead of telling me I'm a bitch, and who doesn't think it's beneath him to actually do chores or cook or clean.

Am I laying it on a little too thick?  That's just because I really need to keep him around.  After all, he has a better credit score than I do.