Arizona in my Mind

I was going to hold off until I got a better scan of it but this will have to do for now. I love this photo. It is currently my most favoritist photo of right this moment. And it's even better cuz i'm in it. There are surprisingly not many photos of my brother and I together and even less where we are so epically posed. I found it while I was going through a trunk full of photos from 1977 onward, that my mom has NEVER put in albums, and is only because of me that they are now centrally located and NOT dispersed thru the house in various drawers, stacks, dusty boxes and bundles. If you are this person, stop immediately. Either honor your memories or stop the pretense. Digital files are even worse because who ever looks at those and are they organized by year and month and outing?!. Sure it's cute and like loose, devil may care, when you're in your 20's but not unlike hanging on to vesitages of youth into your 40's and 50's it's seriously just irritating. Okay, I'm cranky. It took me 2 years to organize my grandmothers photos and she had over 20ALBUMS. (aka not thrown in a box disorganized)... So in my last organizational fit (they occur very often) I began to go thru the photos because why not start now opposed to when I'm medicated and single and old and my mom isn't there anymore. You don't need photos of car shows or flower shows or faded zoo photos. Is all I'm saying.

It's beginning to effect my own photo efforts as now I am slowly behind- I can see it happening to me. I know I'm not immune. And I appreciate that my family loves to take pictures and I also take pictures of zoo animals and flowers and sunsets and trees and my cats- I can't stop myself. So maybe this post is a word of warning to me. But also an encouragement. There is after all a story you're creating. Photos are not idle. They're interpreted. They radiate impressions, and eras and class and disposition and you can only hope that when you die somebody might look on an album or a particular photo as something like personal and historical archeology- something that makes you laugh or cry or any myriad of human emotions I haven't the inclination to describe.

about the cataracts

So last week, J.Lo found out he has cataracts. Frankly, I thought he was joking when he told me, because although he IS ancient, 36 years years of age and cataracts seems unheard of, right? I've looked into it just to make sure, and it kind of is.

While I am virtually blind without my contact lenses, J.Lo has had no eye problems his whole life, has never had to wear glasses or have regular eye exams. The children should hope that they get his genes for eyesight, except not really, because now he has cataracts. Recently, he has had a lot of headaches over his left eye, which we simply chalked up as The Tumor, and/or K.Lo's tendency toward high-pitched, incessant repitition. But then it started to make sense that someone who looks at a computer all day and reads a lot and has gone over 30 years without glasses might need to make an eye appointment. So he did, and he does need glasses, but he also has, freakishly, cataracts in his right eye. Or is it "cataract," if we're talking about just one eye.

Cataracts progress quickly, and once they occur in one eye, the other usually is soon to follow. So eventually, he will need surgery for both eyes, have both lenses replaced. The surgery sounds scary and grotesque and, to a person such as myself who is completely sensitive about eye issues and formerly traumatized from having to play Bombardment in gym class without glasses, like a true nightmare. J.Lo is generally unphased, to which I say, Better him than me. They'd have to knock me with a baseball bat out if they wanted to stick a needle in my eye and shatter my lens with ultrasonic waves. Or whatever it is they do. It's something like that. The very thought of it makes me hyperventilate a little.

This surgery is pretty common at this point, and I'm not too worried about the results, other than that my father had a similar surgery once to replace his eye lens, and they messed it up, and now he has permanent glaucoma. I can't really worry too much about that, I just have to hope to hell they know what they are doing and they do it right. What bothers me more is that the surgery is commonplace, yes, but it's commonplace for OLD PEOPLE. And J.Lo is not old. So this leads me to the real issue, the question of why. Why does he have cataracts now, at this age. It could be in his family history, some long-lost relative with thirtysomething cataracts. It wasn't an eye injury, it wasn't all those steroids he took back in the 90s. Sometimes things just happen, but with something so odd, I can't help but think about it and obsessively research it until I settle on an answer. Probably I won't get one.

The other thing that bothers me is that yes, there is a relatively simple solution to this problem, one that will be obtained once the problem gets bad enough for insurance to cover. (A note to Swing State: Which candidate is going to come up with a health care plan that doesn't require people to wait until they are half blind before getting surgery? Please advise.) But I get all panicky considering that if we didn't happen to be living in this day and age and time and place, there wouldn't be a solution, and then J.Lo would go quickly blind, and wouldn't be able to drive, work, or just plain SEE. See me, our kids, our dogs, nature, TV, EVERYTHING. Mendacious has pointed out that I shouldn't be so fatalistic, that obviously blindness is commonplace enough and I should know his and our lives would not be over. But still. It makes me tear up just a little. Then again, if we weren't living in this time and place and day and age, I too would be walking around blind, or even just having to wear the most hideous glasses on the planet, instead of contact lenses, which for some of us can be emotionally traumatizing.

Clearly, I just need to accept the circumstances as they are in front of us: it is what it is, and there is a solution. And I should be--I am--grateful for that. But still. CATARACTS.

hello new day, by m

In a rare show of family solidarity I dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly hour and voted. My mom handed me the ballot measures, bubbled in yes/no for how they would be voting, whispered that she disagreed with my father on one of them. Check. Duly noted. I scanned them over, mumbled a few questions and only felt slightly bad i was not informed going into primary like i should be, because I have parents who will tell me what's what. Sure it was light out and normal people might be getting up for work but man... I got back in the car, whining, oh god, as mom clapped, literally, and said, Yea! Family outing! We all voted! Hurray!! (Oh god mom, stop.) She walked out of the place with 3 stickers. (Roll eyes). Then I mercilessly dismissed her outfit and told her she needed a new celebratory dance. I am an awful cranky person. But my mom, she was surprised that someone so sleepy could pull together a coordinated outfit. Thanks mom. Even so early she couldn't be the least bit snarky only gleeful and complimentary. And then I told my dad I was voting for the would be destroyer of the conservative movement... nah, just joshing i'm totally going for the "mormon"I said. I'm waiting for Swing State to tell me more about him so I will feel either a. validated by my decision or b. horrified, though his nickname of Count Chocula seems a bit biased.

Of course in our blog book our political voices... um, get deleted. Since this is something Pen and I rarely talk about and if only very politely. Pen is consiliatory and I am musing which is a testament to how much we write to each other with TenderLovingCare. But we can take it, our more brazen grr feelings. But then it's like watching the news and neither of us like our blood pressure raised or our anxiety levels. Which is why I'm not totally shocked when after posting about my ennui she posts about tv. Though reading them out of context it's actually quite abrupt and shocking. Like woh what. it's like a dose of buckuplittlecamper. But then I remind myself we're really not one brain even though reading the mass of pages it seemed to me we were. And I still sort of forget/am freaked out by the fact she has kids. I saw a picture of her on her "other blog" and I squinted and went do I know her? There she is, having all these life experiences without me. The nerve!

So now i'm up waiting for the sun to reach the garden bed where i'll be working. And I start French II TODAY.

(The caps thing is still a serious problem. I had to correct the entire paragraph above. And my spell check is totally NOT working.)

well, damn.

Sometimes, gravity just wins? I mean, this shelf has been up for man, I don't know, a year and a half? I can't even remember when we put it up, and J.Lo is pretty darn methodical with hanging things on the wall. Minutes after lunch today, there's this big crash and the sound of glass shattering. N.Lo is down in the den in his swing, and all I can think is please whatever is, don't let it have landed on the baby?! It didn't, thank heaven, but I can't tell you how much this couch, in all of its ghetto glory, gets used during the day. Mostly by the dogs, but J.Lo plays video games there, K.Lo watches movies there, I've been known to nurse the baby there. It just would have been bad, had any of us been there at that moment.

It was a cool purple vase that was shattered to bits and pieces, as well as a big globe-y candle holder filled with red hots for V-Day. There's my Martha Stewartness being smashed to pieces. And can I also just thank Baby Jesus that I recently purchased a dustbuster to try and clean up all this mess? Although I think I have glass in my hand, and I worry about errant shards being discovered months later in a most unsurreptitious manner. That happened to me once. I'm glad I haven't been feeling very symbolic lately; otherwise, this incident might have bothered me more.

true to form

But mendacious, I'm so proud of you for using the caps. It will help us in the long-run, and save us from any capitalization-related tantrums.

Okay, so another one of our findings while on hiatus is that I, Penelope, tend to shy away from Serious Life Matters and blog about TV instead. I hide behind reality TV in the face of what's really happening. I know. It's shocking. In fact, I have even "responded" to some of mendacious's more serious posts with TV posts, maybe to lighten the mood, or to passive-aggressively protest the discussion of real life issues?

On the other hand, mixing fluffy pop culture items in with more serious tidbits is (I think) part of what makes our blog interesting and fun. So I don't plan on stopping with the Survivor assessments, the ANTM recaps, the Penelope Must Lists. We certainly don't want to be All Maudlin, All the Time, now do we?

Case in point: I found out last week that my husband, J.Lo, has cataracts in his right eye, probably soon to be followed by the left eye. Cataracts! Surgery and everything. In the past, I might have totally foregone a thoughtful post on the matter, completely leaving Blogdom in the dark and saving nothing at all for posterity. I probably would just blogged about the ridiculous and yet highly entertaining episode of Celebrity Apprentice that we watched over the weekend. But now, all the wiser to my defense mechanisms and seeing the error of my ways, I will blog about BOTH. Soon. Give me a break, I've got two very high-maintenance children to attend to at the moment.

Spare Time

This is what I mean when I claim I haven't been productive. Over the last 2 months I've been systematically melting down all the candles I haven't used for years and I melted them all over the living room table. I've gotten good at making wicks out of matchsticks, pine, and general debris like magazines and matchstick covers. It's amazing how wax feeds and subdues the flame. And all the candles passing in and out of existence... There has been some flooding... onto my sweatpants, mostly the floor, once my dog Bodo. He was sleeping, didn't sense the wax flood starting at his chest hair. I finally just a few days ago was able to break it down to the last white candle- a small island, and throw the rest away. Hours upon hours, movie after movie, obssesively directing the rivers and building up the bonfires. I can't tell if this exercise was beneficial or destructive when the time produced something so intensely brief and temporal. There is after all very little left.

Miscellany

You think just because we come back on a friday means were going to blog on the weekend?! I guess. Sure okay. For you guys- since we've been gone so long. Currently the Mariachi music is blaring and mom has called the opcays. You see going through (It's murder trying to write with caps by the way.) the blogs has taught me that somethings never change. Other things, god i can't fucking concentrate. It's too much. Who cares really. Pen needs to finish her edit and I need to finish my website and I've already gone through all the boxes in the attic, which seems to have developed into an annual tradition. I got rid of one box, have a giant poster of darth maul and a life sized carboard replica of r2-d2 which need a home. Anyone? I'll take pics later. I don't know why but i'm compelled to go through every box i have and look for things to throw away or put back out. Thrown: red pants, a fake street sign "merecedes strasse", a plate with embossed angels on it, 2 empty lemonade bottles, a hideous sweater from "your parent's 80's christmas party", hideous plate from turkey, beach mat, old brown box alarm and radio... Kept out: small basket, chinese balancing balls, guatamalan coin. Now i can get back to more serious things like complaining about my sore foot, and charging up my credit card and boring you with pictures of hikes and goodness knows what, maybe tea or old BBC shows like Sapphirre and Steel and the fact that the letters on my keyboard are wearing away.

findings, by m

Good Afternoon. We apologize for deluging you with words after a month gone. And with no flashy new spins or whistles. The second week we were gone my heart got all achy for the blog. But then as with most neglected things I upped my netflix que, started drinking and tried to fill the hole with anything but words. By now I'd been so long away that I couldn't remember what it was to blog or why and I drank less and started working out more. Then I started getting twitchy and as pen and I phrase it "spirally" as in downward because having now been out of work for a month not all my problems were spontaneously fixed, not all the things on my list were crossed off, and things were stacked up high in my mind and i couldn't quite see my way clear to be excited about the blog or to study for french and all i watched was MurderSheWrote. Pen insists my malaise might be due to watching copious amounts of SixFeetUnder but I insist that my mom not having life insurance is up there along with my dad being an asshole along with the kitchen and the bathroom being a shithole along with it being winter along with our book not being finished or me not wanting to work or my waistline or my age or my single status or well just about everything i could suck into the dark matter vortex. Because one thing like not working might be the event but all these other things become echoes until the horizon is chalk full of a whiny gooey mass. Though the upside of rain is that the drought is over and that the paint that got into my hair is water soluble, i think... and that the sun is out before you know it and Spring around the corner. Just writing that in this little form makes me feel all sorts of grounded and normal. I can feel myself being more productive already.

january, by pen

Someday, I may or may not blog about the following. It's some of what I would have blogged about in January. Maybe someday you'll be treated to an explanation, maybe you will not.

-One day while it was raining, a teenaged boy, possibly deranged, likely just stupid and teenaged, walked backward down the street for several long paces until I could see him no more. Our corner is apparently a magnet for crazies.

-I wear socks inside the house with no slippers or shoes. Does anyone else do this and also, as a result, have exceptionally dirty-bottomed/holey socks? What is acceptable Sock Protocol. Or am I a total Sock Slob.

-I haven't really been exercising consistently as I aspired to after having Baby 2. But, I don't feel like a complete lump, I'm not eating total crap (only intermittent crap with several bouts of fruit), and so I don't feel too terrible about it? I would like to tone up. I'd like to do more aerobics. But I read once that Kate Winslet, who is beautiful and lovely, is not consistent with her exercise either, that she just does it when she has the time/drive, and so at the moment I am content to subscribe to this same philosophy.

-I saw "27 Dresses" with Mel, incidentally while the boys went to see "Rambo," and I loved it. In one scene, Katherine Heigl is ferociously cleaning her dishes, and says something about harnessing her chi. Perhaps this is what I am going for when I clean to make myself feel better, to reestablish control in some twisted way? Maybe I can just euphemism it all and now say I am harnessing my chi. I've blogged about this topic before, but I can't find the post to link it. Probably you wouldn't have looked at it anyway.

-Heath Ledger died. Mendacious commented that this is a terrible waste of hotness, and I have to agree. It's also just a terrible waste of talent and life.

-We needed to replenish our fish population, as we were down to maybe 9 fish. I swear I don't even see them die anymore, they are just one day dead, eaten, obliterated, and recycled into fish poo. But whatever. Anyway, I bought 5 new sunfire or sunset or sun-something-whatever Platy-whatsits from this guy at Petco who talked exactly like Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock. I mean seriously, if Jack McBrayer had longer, darker hair and worked at Petco in ILM, he would have convinced me to buy all 4 of the one type of fish so one wouldn't be left behind--and then accidentally scoop up another variety and convince me it was entirely okay for that one to be in our tank all by himself. Does he get commission from fish sales? Does he know that he has completely contradicted himself on the subject of so-called fish loneliness? I know not. Anyway, the fourth Platy-whatsit that Kenneth the Petco Fishmonger made me buy died, but I can't even bring the body back for a refund because of course it has disappeared.

-Paige is coming back to "Trading Spaces." Fired 3 years ago, and then invited back by new execs. I never really was on Team Paige, but as I haven't watched "TS" in a long time and suddenly Paige is back, I'm feeling nostalgic and might reconsider.

-The Writer's Strike isn't over. There's a few new good shows on, such as "Breaking Bad," but mostly, TV is a wasteland. There was a really great Strike Survival Guide in EW Magazine. I would have talked about that, if we were still in January.

-Katie Holmes is a vapid, Stepford-wifey space cadet, as fully apparent in a YouTube clip mendacious sent me. I was in denial, hoping she'd snap out of it, but now I'm just completely disappointed and missing Katie of yesteryear.

-Mendacious told me at some point in our project discussions that I have true talent for repression. I'd like to discuss this someday... something about the duality of my snark. I have notes on the matter. But it's not January anymore. So all I can provide is a Maybe and a Someday and a We Will See.

It's good to be back.

findings, by pen

Hello BlogNation,

We're back. We missed you! I might have missed you more than mendacious, I can't be sure. My compulsion to share all the boring details of my life only increased over the past month, whereas mendacious still seems hesitant? But this yin-yang-i-ness is typical of what we found while kickstarting our book project(s). Rest assured that in a month's time, I won't be able to think of something to blog about for the life of me, and mendacious will be all about it.

What we did during our hiatus: mendacious compiled all of our brilliant blog posts from the past 3+ years and whittled them down to something readable. Which means she read it all and was able to get a sense of our progression, and note themes, threads, and startling facts such as my apparent absence during 2005. It's really not that startling to me, because I know where I was and what I was doing, mainly puking my green guts out while pregnant with K.Lo and working at the evil corporation of VZW. And buying a house, moving into that house, and not blogging. After initial edits, mendacious passed along the blog copy to me, so I can read it, and I'm still reading. I know, it's sad, but we're talking about nearly 600 pages here, and I'm a slow reader, and hello, I have an infant and a toddler and a husband to tend to. Excuses, excuses.

Here is what we have accomplished: I think there are a few long narrative projects hidden in our blog, and this year it is our goal to develop them. My personal opinion (please weigh in) is that mendacious' job saga in particular is worth persuing, and she needs to pluck all job posts, dump them in a Word document, and take a good look. Also, mendacious and I will be working on a project together, as we have always dreamed of doing (like for real), by creating sitcom-like episodics from our blog matter. Because we are TV junkies, this project truly matches with our sensibilities, and will in fact be an homage to our favorite show forms. Does that sound all full of hot air? But no, seriously, picture it: a book featuring the characters of mendacious and penelope, with their (mis)adventures presented like a TV show, a three-act structure, and then End Scene. The blog-matter will provide the material for these episodes. You're so jealous.

You can think it's stupid if you want to, or overly ambitious, or still lacking a hook. But really, it's going to be a lot of fun, in the way that it will play with form and also (most importantly) celebrate us and our lives and our friendship, and also you, our BlogNation.

Here's what else we found:

-In the old days, mendacious and I struggled a lot to find our blog voice. Many times, and still to this day, we wrote a lot of stream-of-consciousness mumbo-jumbo, oftentimes in all lowercase. We're going to try to quit that. For the masses' sake.

-We also struggled very much in the beginning, in our Post Grad-School Purgatory-Like Existence, with the legitimacy of blogging, and whether it really "counted" as writing. Or at least I struggled. By now we (I) know it does, at least the way we do it.

-Mendacious and I used to blog back and forth a lot, each with a different spin on the same topic, and/or like we were having a conversation. We'd like to try and do more of that, from here on out, because it's fun, and because we are co-bloggers, after all.

-Some of our early blog posts could have been written yesterday, and some of them seem 10 lifetimes ago. This realization was shocking, and kind of sad, and kind of comforting all at once.

-Especially in the beginning, but still to this day, hardly anyone comments, and we both find this frustrating, mainly because we are complete narcissists and attention whores. This lack of readership and appreciation is really beyond our control, however, and we realize we need to get over ourselves. To some extent. Not really.

There are more blanks to be filled in regarding our absence, what we did, where we went, what we learned, and where we are now. But I will leave those blanks to mendacious for her return post--mainly because it is late, and my mind is mushy. See how that works, though, setting up the perfect lead-in for m?

For now, we are back, we are refreshed, we are ready to go.

Now, who wants to talk about the Gauntlet? Yeeeow!