There’s gotta be an easier way to make money than working for it.

I actually don’t mind the job. Once I make work-friends, I’m sure I’ll really like it. For now, I’m just the new writer who rambles on because she’s not yet used to having grown-ups for company. There is no color in my cubiffice, no decor. Who knows if I’ll be there six days, six weeks or six months, so I’m kinda afraid to settle in. But within beige fabric walls, I feel blah. Especially since it feels like I drive to Dallas every morning and there is no mint on my pillow when I get there.

As I complain that this working all day thing is getting in the way of my online social life, Q reminds me I wasn’t making any money at it, which is true. So my blog design remains in limbo with unmatching fonts and unfinished headers. I have no control over my ad campaigns. I feel like I’m living with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long in The Money Pit.

Spring Break is next week and with the kids out of school and the puppy still at training camp, that will remove a little stress from me. I won’t have to inspect for brushed teeth and clean undies at five in the morning, and I won’t worry they are neglecting the dog while she’s pooping in the kitchen. I’ll leave behind a week’s worth of groceries and they will be so full from snacks, I won’t have to make dinner.

I have a birthday date with my husband this weekend. I plan to feel like a whole new person by Monday morning.

Rejuvenation in comments…

• Questions to ask a potentially new energy provider
• It’s time for me to start making money off my kids
• I don’t know what you did all day, but for me, let’s sum up
• tales of toiling in partial obscurity writing the Earl Campbell facebook fan page
• this redeemable life

It’s late, and it’s already been a long week, this whole 24 hours into it thing. I used to ask for one-word prompts in comments on my old blog, and how the words would fly around them. I asked for a prompt tonight from Q, and I had only the energy to search my archives for a post that may have used it. Close enough. Today’s one-word prompt: soft, post dated March 2007.

Boston, circa 1970

I don’t know how Churlita has all those old photos of her family posted to her blog all the time. I don’t have the patience to scan in my pictures from 1968 to the present. This one is the only digital image I have. 1970. Rocking the tangerine bunny overalls and the lemon yellow turtleneck.

This was taken while we were living in Boston right before we were headed back home to Texas. If I can get the story right, we were living in a basement apartment of the married couples’ dorm. It was at the bottom of a big hill. We have pictures of my older brother sledding down the hill. We also have summer pictures of us on that same hill having a little family picnic. I remember none of this. My actual memory, not flashes of intermittent images, begins around age three, maybe a little before.

My father’s first church was called South Park Community Parish. What a great name, eh? My dad has always been quite ecumenical and inclusive. “Parish”, to me, is warmer and more welcoming than “church”. Church can bite my butt. However, I can imagine singing softly to myself inside a parish. Blessed Assurance was my favorite hymn. I could also belt out a mean Battle Hymn of the Republic. Brandishing bayonets in the name of God with that kick-ass tune being played behind you? Victory was at hand, dude. Victory was at hand.

Earliest and best childhood memories in comments. Extra points to the ones who can still play Für Elise on piano or Twinkle, Twinkle on the violin. I still know my first chair saxophone “Star Wars” music. Every school band in the world was rocking the John Williams back in the day.

• new header sneak preview
• The Great Interview Experiment, Part I
• Fucking Grumpy
• I wish the word they call freedom someday would come
• Hello, world

Last year, my birthday went by in such a 38-weeks-pregnant haze that for the entire year, I thought I was still 40 years old. This year, in a half-effort to pay more attention to myself, I’m acknowledging my birthday 1. in advance, which I rarely do and 2. buying myself stuff, which: always.

First up: Animal Crackers, not the cookie, but the board-and-train kennel 50 miles north of us in Spring, Texas. For the past several weeks, we’ve been trying in-home training. That doesn’t work for me. An hour a week does nothing for the remaining 167, and the dog was still chewing up stuff and barking her many displeasures. Michael at Michael’s Dogs answered his Internet-listed phone number at 7 am on Saturday and told me I was using the wrong Google search terms. “Doggie boot camp” was getting me nowhere except a chewed up vacuum cord. Searching “board and train” got us to Animal Crackers dog day care by 4:30 Saturday afternoon. Birthday gift #1.

Do you remember my complaining how straight Ehren’s hair was, and then Erica stepping in with the assurance that around 8-months-old, the baby’s curls would magically appear? How right she was. I cut them all off yesterday. Birthday gift #2.

The kids are walking to the neighborhood gift shop, also known as Walgreens, this afternoon as I listen to the sound of the dog not barking and as I prepare snacks for Oscar red carpet viewing. DirecTV is offering each nominated movie on-demand for $4.99. I have seen exactly zero, so that sounds like the perfect way to spend the 8-hour wait, but have I mentioned doggie day camp? I’m just happy, for free, to see what Gabourey Sidibe is gonna wear. Birthday gifts #3 and #4.

Birthday gift #5: a day’s work in my new cubiffice. Did you know if you factor in the underemployed and those working on temp contracts, no matter how long-term (like mine), the US unemployment rate is closer to 17 percent than to the currently reported 9.8?

I’ll leave the rest of my birthday up to Q, hoping at least some of it involves new shoes and, um, stuff.

• Cynically Tagged
• the day Martin Luther King Jr called Jesus Christ a jerk and they wrestled for control of the Xbox in our living room
• that internal error 500 message was trying to kill me
• It’s hot in here
• Five questions from Q

Jon Alex finally made the wordle. School bullies and history projects will do that, even as the teenage sister and infant brother do their best to invisibilize him. He’s celebrating by spending the night with Grandpa.

• first day of school
• I am such the sucker for first Christmahanukwanzaakahs
• while you are sleeping
• apropos of nothing
• Sanity Check

The American Psychiatric Association is considering a change in the DSM-V from the term “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability.” In twenty years or so, the nastiness of “retard” will be replaced by the nastiness of “dissie” or something equally, derivatively caustic because it’s all about context and less about terminology when it comes to referencing those who are different and, possibly, conceptually, lesser human beings than we are.

I hate the term already, and I only heard it for the first time yesterday. Do I go around calling people by their diagnoses? Hey, there’s emphysema guy and his wife benign tumor lady. Their kids schizophrenia and dissociative disorder star on the local team of potential psychopaths and eventual domestic abusers. They bought a new car last week; it smells like sudden death from cardiac arrest.

I know the DSM is a medical reference that happens to be adapted for use by non-medical professionals. I’m not complaining about medical labeling since we need our doctors to know what to call that thingie growing sideways out of our other thingie. It’s the un-doctors who work for the state or window shop at the mall or sit next to my kids in class that concern me. We give them labeling license and it doesn’t stop. It grows worse. We get pejoratives and epithets like lame, retard, cripple, and dissie (you heard it here first) which get lumped in with racial, ethnic and sexual orientation slurs. It’s not enough to change the name, we’ve got to change our way of thinking, and why hasn’t Obama fixed this, yet? He’s had a year.

There is a post here on my blog that gets a lot of search engine attention from universities. In it, I complain about potential employers Googling interviewees and finding something offensive and non-hire worthy on their blogs or Facebook pages. I don’t know if the hits I receive on it are from people agreeing with or disagreeing with my position, but I find it interesting how quickly our snapshots, our mall photo booth filmstrips become our entire media portfolio within seconds.

To wit:

I had a bit of a back and forth with a daddy blogger who offered me a reciprocal publicity relationship—fringes, you pub my cause (oh, and help me rewrite all my marketing material) and I will link to your blog from mine—until I asked him to visit my blog to make sure he understood who I was. Writer, mom, occasional user of the word fuck.

Go figure, that last one eliminated me from consideration. As did, perhaps, our free fringes discussion about sex. With our partners. In our own homes or cars.

It’s the Internet, goddammit. Behave yourself.

• PTSD is a bitch and a handy excuse for my enabling tendencies
• fringe friday fellowship—comments edition
• fringes—the interview [originally posted on floodflashes.blogspot.com]
• 10 questions to ask your mother
• It’s 1 AM, I’m sleep-deprived and really stressed out over money

Wow, I am tired. I’ve fallen asleep three times writing this post. Cranky McCranky Pants let me get zero sleep last night, and that BHM project finally killed me.

Help me decide, please. Do I pay 20 bucks for eight wallets (do you know anyone who knows anyone who carries wallet photos?) and a 5 x 7 of the baby or should I find a cute little settee and have at it with my Olympus?

You won’t hurt my feelings if you choose the school photographer. If I’d remembered about picture day, the outfit would have been cuter and less playgroup-y. Some kids wore their glamour shots garb; I just don’t have the energy for such shenanigans.

Force your opinion on me in comments. I’m taking a nap before my morning commute.

• Pepper v. Miss Dorothy
• Head start
• 40 minutes ’til lunch and other tales
• caramel, milk chocolate, strawberry swirl
• hey, it’s friday!

Rockin' Adobe Fireworks as all third graders do

No, Henrietta Lacks is not really kicking my butt. Seriously, how could she? Her cells may be immortal, but, well, hey: MLK and Jesus did have a fight in my living room yesterday, so anything is now possible.

It’s hard being in third grade again working on projects. And playing video games while researching for the presentation board. And watching American Idol paying close attention to how much Ellen DeGeneres has aged since the last time you noticed 15 years ago. Watching the baby. Counting down the days until puppy training boot camp when the dog will be gone from you for two entire weeks. T-5 days. As an eight-year-old, you are witness to a full life.

Ehren is getting promoted to the toddler room two months early, and this is just like the time his momma skipped fourth grade on her way to her current trajectory of seven jobs in ten years. Writin’ our own ticket as we board the Super Train, baby. Eat our Heisman Trophy-winning Rhodes Scholar dust.

• posting by night light using my iPhone
• bikes, friendship & music
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• So here’s what I’m thinking
• I am not a doctor or a miracle worker