(sometimes I feel also like just putting words on photos. it’s a thing.)

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy it, but in the event that you don’t, well, I do.

Things You Didn’t Put On Your Resumé

How often you got up in the middle of the night
when one of your children had a bad dream,

and sometimes you woke because you thought
you heard a cry but they were all sleeping,

so you stood in the moonlight just listening
to their breathing, and you didn’t mention

that you were an expert at putting toothpaste
on tiny toothbrushes and bending down to wiggle

the toothbrush ten times on each tooth while
you sang the words to songs from Annie, and

who would suspect that you know the fingerings
to the songs in the first four books of the Suzuki

Violin Method and that you can do the voices
of Pooh and Piglet especially well, though

your absolute favorite thing to read out loud is
Bedtime for Frances and that you picked

up your way of reading it from Glynnis Johns,
and it is, now that you think of it, rather impressive

that you read all of Narnia and all of the Ring Trilogy
(and others too many to mention here) to them

before they went to bed and on way out to
Yellowstone, which is another thing you don’t put

on the resumé: how you took them to the ocean
and the mountains and brought them safely home.

Joyce Sutphen

This is clever and proper and I give it my full endorsement. For whatever that’s worth.

Then we have this. And, I don’t know internet, you tell me. Mel Gibson, who is looking, thankfully, “more subdued”, is now responsible for his own rehabilitation. Rehabilitation for what, I’m not exactly sure. Is it rehabilitation for an alcohol problem? That would be okay. I’m for that. But if it’s rehabilitation of the racist, anti-semitic rantings of a too-rich, delusional actor slash director, then give me a freakin’ break.

Money wrecks people. It insulates them from the real world and they can’t see or feel anything real unless it’s extreme and so over the top as to not be believed. Being very rich and very famous destroys you. You are surrounded by yes-men and excess. No one tells you how stupid you look with clown makeup bronzer and that pink tutu you just had to wear to the Oscars. No one tells you that getting shit-faced drunk and spouting volatile epithets at any particular race, gender or religion is a bad idea. You just don’t get it.

But guess what? It’s not our job to teach the very rich. They are not our children we’ve taken to raise. We are not responsible.

We love our idols. We live vicariously through our celebrities. We make them who they are. But as much as we love them and love to build them up, we love to watch them fall. We love that all the more. We delight in it. A lot of people will get drunk and say and do stupid things. If we were all required to go to rehabilitation every time we said something horribly offensive, the world would be nothing but rehab clinics and support groups. Is this where we’re headed?

Then there was this, which flies directly into the face of anything even remotely resembling common sense. I’m sorry, but teens have been having sex for ages. Like patrolling heavily on that one day is going to change anything? It’s just removing one of many excuses. Instead of, “it’s Valentines day, don’t you love me?” it’ll be, “it’s Wednesday, don’t you love me?”

I like the show Futurama. The boys have been lifelong fans of the Simpsons since birth so I naturally became addicted as well. This spawned interest in the rest of Groening’s stuff. He’s funny and smart and gives good show. Anyway, the thing about Futurama is, it scares me a little bit. It’s set 3000 years in the future and there’s all these things going on that worry me. Mostly because I can totally see us going that way. I can imagine that in the distant future, Santa will be a villain. We will fear him and what he represents. Christmas will be a day of horror and trepidation. We will destroy it. We will do it in. We will violate it with all our PC, regulatory, thought police bullshit. We’ll choke the life out of it with our zealous desire to feel secure. Even if it’s false security. Especially because it’s false.

What will the police do if they come upon a young couple dining at a restaurant or walking hand in hand in the mall? Will they approach them and demand to know their agenda for afterwards? What kid wouldn’t say he’s going to have sex on Valentine’s day? What kind of stupid poll is that anyway? Was it called the poll of the completely obvious and fallible? Do they really think every one of those kids is going to say, “No, no. I think I’ll just sit in front of the internet and play with myself because I don’t have a date and no girl would ever let me touch her”? Is that really what they think will happen? They will say, “Oh yeah. You know how I roll. I’m going to bag me a whole nation‘s worth of hos that night.” Because they are all liars and also insecure.

Some might even be telling the truth.

But come on. What kind of sense does it make to pull valuable resources away from where they are seriously needed to a place that can’t possibly be policed — nor should it be.

Doing something like that would make about as much sense as being afraid of Santy Claus.

But that’s just me.

I hate that I neglect the place for so long. I fill scores of notebooks with inane drivel. It’s quality, inane drivel. Stuff I’m sure the rest of the world is desperate to hear about. I keep telling myself I should open the notebook and jot some stuff out, but when I open the notebook I am reminded of a million things I need to get done for work. I start out bargaining with myself. I’ll do twenty minutes of work and then write for a full hour. It never works. By the time my head pops up and I wipe the drool from my mouth, I realize too late that I’ve been working on forms and policies and applications for four hours straight. Writing isn’t an option then. Writing isn’t even possible then. The last thing I want to do is spend more time at the laptop.

I cling to this place in a way that means I am serious about it. I don’t want to let it go. I think about closing the door and I become dedicated to its survival. I’m like a little kid swearing, with renewed vigor, that I will take care of my puppy and feed it and bathe it and take it for walks every day from now on. I go about it with such feverish defense that one would never know how it scares me. It’s a good puppy and it’s smart and cute, but it’s such a big responsibility. Such a reminder of my failed pursuit of enlightenment.

What happened to my ambition was, I kept getting sidetracked and then forgot that I was going for something. I lost the thread somewhere along the way and it slipped away from me.

I’ve thought of reviving it. Administering creative CPR. What I thought I would do was, I would come up with a hook. I decided I would turn a gimmick in the form of serial content. I would make myself be disciplined about posting regularly. This never happens. Instead, what happens is that I get the big ideas and then pat myself on the back for a well-conceived plan and then file it away in the never to be done bin.

Still, I don’t want to abandon it. I don’t want to walk through the day like the living dead, hungry for a syllable or a well-turned phrase. I have a distinct distaste for pouring my heart out in public and no desire to change. It’s not about therapy. I leave a lot out when I tell the stories. I embellish and edit the boring stuff out. It’s not about the truth. I don’t think it’s hurting anyone. It’s just an outlet. An occasional, once in a while kind of outlet. I guess I’m okay with that.

Okay, we’re done here.

To be clear, I don’t agree with dogfighting. I love my pooches and if someone was to hurt them they would quickly find a stiletto to the crotch as their reward. But OBVIOUSLY, not everyone feels that way. Michael Vick, for instance? Okay, look. He came out and said, “Dog fighting is a terrible thing.”

What? Bullshit! I call bullshit. You were doing it. You hosted it. Don’t insult my intelligence and tell me you think it’s a terrible thing. You clearly don’t see anything wrong with it, you damn fool.

Don Imus, okay? It’s rude to call someone, anyone, a nappy-headed ho, Don. You should know better. But guess what? You’re a freaking SHOCK JOCK as well as a giant tool. That’s your thing. It’s your gig. You meant it to be amusing and funny, albeit darkly funny and inappropriate. Why the bloody hell are you doing the apology circuit now, kissing the ass of that degenerate bottom feeder better known as Sharpton?

FFS, this is what I would like to see:

Press: Dogfighting? Really, Michael Vick?
Vick: Yeah. So what? I don’t think it’s wrong. I don’t agree with the law. I did it. I got caught. So fine me, imprison me, whatever. But I did what I did and I’m not sorry.

Press: Racist, misogynistic humor, Don? Why, oh why?
Imus: Oh STFU. Have you never listened to my show? Grow a sense of humor you P.C.-loving troglodyte.

Just once. No back peddling. No lip service. Just honesty and unflagging, unapologetic admittance. Will it get you in trouble? Probably. Will you most likely lose your job and a lot of money? Most definitely. But at the end of the day you’ll have your self respect and dignity and you’ll maybe win a few new fans who appreciate the lack of bullshit being slung their way. It wrecks me.

Ha ha and oh well, not in my lifetime. This culture of fear we’ve created is just too appealing. And nobody wins. Nobody.

Did you know? Sheep can detect other sheep faces like humans do. They can remember up to 50 sheep faces.

If in my car during an assault, in the rain with the radio blaring, then my thoughts turn to those of fancy and things get decidedly more interesting.

Funny how when you’re 22 and premenstrual, feeling the ebb and flow of a million different emotions tugging a thousand different directions you find yourself huddled around a campfire, surrounded by your closest friends. The radio cranking out mellow tunes to set the mood. Maybe the woods about you are thick and heavy, dripping with rain and the unfamiliar sounds of nature. Maybe you’re drinking or high – such things don’t seem so consequential to you then. You light up a cigarette and follow the conversation into the lofty heights of Coltrane versus Monk, Nietzsche and Kant, Superman versus Batman. Such is the uninhibited, carefree essence of a twenty-something on the cusp of reality.

Among the Buganda people of Uganda, the widows of a deceased king have the honour of drinking beer in which the dead king’s entrails have been cleaned. True story.

At the time, of course, I was too stupid to enjoy it. I was plenty intelligent, but I was young and naive and lacked the confidence to fully realize what I had. I had the smarts, but not the confidence to know what to do with the smarts. I was full of useless knowledge. A veritable font of wisdom and no where to put it.

Then, suddenly, I’m a thirty something with the confidence but without the smarts. All that knowledge I had has just been swallowed up by the noise of a million different things that have to be done, none of which include a fire pit in the middle of the woods, a joint or discussions of Nietzsche and Thelonious Monk. Superman and Batman, perhaps. But Kant? Definitely not.

This is the way the world works. We get to the place in our lives where we look back, take inventory and realize “Oops! I may have left some things behind back there. In my haste to evolve and grow up and have children and get a job and make a living and get the casserole on the table — I didn’t take care.”

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day. Every day.

You don’t know what you’re missing, not being a woman. You just don’t know. We awake one morning, a caricature of our former selves, in a fog of regret and longing. We ache for a quiet place and a pencil that doesn’t feel heavy when we sit down to write. Words that flow. What we long for, we give away. We sacrifice and pray the voices aren’t silent forever, the ones that whisper romantic notions from time to time — lending small comfort.

But suffering is overrated and we are not interested in being martyrs. We are content with our lot. It’s just that we always thought it was a life to come when in actuality it is a life that has already passed us by. Now, more than ever, we have the whole world at our fingertips. More opportunities. More knowledge. More everything. Except time. All the anti-aging serums and microderm abrasion mini peel whatchamahoozits the market pumps out day after day to fool us into thinking we’re actually combating those wrinkles and lines that mark the passage of time? It’s a sham. Still it goes on. Tramples right over the top of us. You can’t stop aging. You can’t stop time. Better to sit back and enjoy the ride. Let it come.

I’m of a mind to let those romantic notions sweep right over me. Let them wash me away in a sea of blissful ignorance. Or agony. Or joy. Or whatever those notions may bring. Why should I fight them? I’ve only got so much time to enjoy them and no good reason not to.

Fact: If you put a drop of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

Did you know? What a romantic idea!

A thing about getting old is: it doesn’t get any better.

I find myself waking earlier and earlier every morning. Doesn’t matter what time I went to bed. Last night I made a bad choice. Wrapped up in a blanket on a love seat in my room, I surfed the web, drank iced tea and watched Matt flip channels on the television. We talked about politics and laughed about the asinine and got into a weird deep, philosophical discussion about how, if you could send your body back to another time — but not actually GO back in time, just, you know, your body would revert to another time in your life when you were in better shape would you do it and would it matter because what if you just made all the same mistakes over again that got you to this point in your body where you have this scarred and messed up body but wait — what if you could take with you the memory of what got you to that body so you didn’t repeat those mistakes and — anyway, you get the picture. It was a weird existential discussion that went on way longer than it should.

Next thing I know, it’s nearly 4 a.m.

I know! What was I thinking? Now, normally, that wouldn’t be a problem because it was Saturday night and I had nowhere to be this morning. But since I’m old and give out, I can’t sleep in like I used to. In the olden days I could have slept in until 4 p.m. today and all would well. Yeah, no. This morning I pop awake at my usual time and wonder who died in my head and why my soul feels crushed.

I only tell you all this because I think you should know. I only tell you all this because, if you can at all help it, don’t get old. All kinds of things suck about it.

No, I’m still not over him. Time has not healed any wounds whatsoever. I know what “they’ all say and “they” are all liars.

Nonetheless, today, I go see a new therapist. Not out of disloyalty to the old, mind you. It’s a different kind of therapist and therefore does not count as “moving on.” This is a couple’s therapist. She deals with couples. Pairs. Duos. In other words, she means nothing to me. It’s not “like that.”

Matt and I are going in for a tune up. This, in therapy-speak, is necessary to help “strengthen our relationship” and give us “the tools to succeed”. It will also better enable us to “engage in positive parenting” as well as “set a course for a healthy financial future.” In reality what that means is we’re going to talk to somebody cause we’re tired of fighting about money and disciplining the kids and we’re sick to death of fighting about fighting and we’re dumping it in someone else’s lap. Ta da! Therapy! Yay for insurance!

Which, can I say? What kind of B.S. scam are they running anyway? I’m not going to go off on a tangent here, but it took us about nine million different phone calls to seven million different people where we were treated to 30 million various versions of the same 30 stories or so before we managed to find out if we were covered or not.

Don’t worry. We are.

So, this is the thing though. Our appointment is in …what time is it? 30 minutes. I’m nervous. What if I don’t like her? All I can think about is her office. I’m neurotic. I get this. I know this about me and by now, you probably do too. But there was a reason I was with the same therapist for nearly ten years. His office was comfortable.

I liked the brick walls and the funky statuette artwork things on the windowsill. I liked the ivy climbing the bricks. I liked the clock he kept moving to various places around the room — I’m pretty sure just to mess with my head. I liked the calendar that always displayed the wrong month, the comfy couch and cozy chair. I liked his roll top desk and ugly carpet. I liked it all. I had grown accustomed.

I can’t bear my soul in an uncomfortable office. If the chairs suck I’m telling you right now you can just forget me giving up the goods. Since it is couple’s counseling, I shared this anxiety with Matt in an effort to allay my fears.

Me: I’m worried about the seating in her office. Is that weird to say? I know. That must sound weird. It’s weird, right?
Matt: It’s a little weird, but hey.
Me: I have to be comfortable!
Matt: What would you like it to be, optimally?
Me: I don’t know. I won’t know until I see it and then it’s either wrong or right.
Matt: Well, don’t be afraid to make it how you like it. I mean, you don’t have to say ‘I am weird but I need the chairs like this.’ unless you want to. But I’m sure she doesn’t mind making it comfy for you. I’ll follow your lead. Sound okay?
Me: mm hmm
Matt: I’m worried too. I mean, what if she falls for me? I won’t be trying to, but if I mention about fixing the stove — and then what if how much of my brakes are left comes out*? What then?
Me: I — just don’t know.
Matt: Don’t tell me…poison pill kiss.
Me: I, uh, suppose I can turn the lights out when I leave you two alone in the throes of passion on the couch before I go? That’s the least I can do.

So, as you can see, he was a big help. But worse, what if the chairs don’t suck? What if it is a comfortable office? I mean, you know, not comfortable enough to make her jump Matt right then and there, but comfortable. That might even be worse. If that happens then I might start blabbing my guts out and that can’t be good for anybody. I mean the part about the office being comfortable, not the part about her jumping Matt’s bones. Neither one of those things would be good, but I’m pretty sure the latter won’t happen.

Here’s how it will go: Matt will listen to me ramble on for one, maybe two sessions. He’ll quickly realize I’m nothing short of a cuckoo nutbar with serious issues that I managed to somehow keep hidden and repressed in the absence of a therapeutic force in my life. He’ll run for the hills screaming for his life. I won’t blame him.

Has it been thirty minutes yet?

He wants me to go to therapy so I will open up. He thinks I’m holding back.

Holding back? Of course I’m holding back. I’m insane, you idiot. Don’t you remember last night when we were eating pizza and some pizza grease went dribbling down my chin and I didn’t know, so you told me about it and I tried to look cute and sheepishly grinned while wiping it away with a napkin? Well, I have cringed internally and resisted the urge to bash my head against a brick wall literally every five minutes since you told me that. I am racked with self-doubt. I have panic attacks. I’m claustrophobic, germ-phobic, phobia-phobic. I’m terrified of monkeys, dolls, bridges and the dark. I talk to the walls, I talk to the dogs — and expect them to answer. I carry on complete conversations with myself in a British accent on the way home from work, discussing my utter failures as a girlfriend, mother, daughter, sister and employee. Every time I enter our bathroom I race to get out as fast as possible because, for some completely unfathomable reason, I have serious issues with bathrooms. Not public bathrooms like normal nutjobs, but our own, personal bathroom. Why you might ask? Well, as previously mentioned, I’m completely insane. There, I stopped holding back. Are you happy now?

My thirty minutes are up…somehow, I think the seating arrangements will be the least of our worries.

*The stove was broken and Matt repaired it. With no help whatsoever and without burning anything down or electrocuting himself even. Really. Just ask him. He’ll tell you all about it. Also, he got his car back from its 70,000 mile checkup today and found out his brakes have hardly any wear on them, which is his excuse for hardly never, ever using them. These two things alone are reason enough to go to counseling.

11. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month-old baby.

brilliant! you can rest assured that the author most certainly has had children. or at the very least a very unhealthy relationship with fruit.