Husband walked in on me yesterday finishing off the large bag of potato chips I’d bought the day before. 
 
“What?” I said, aggressively.  “I’m eating my feelings.”
 
“Write them down!” He shouted. Which is particularly funny, coming from him, because his motto is ‘Never write anything down. It will incriminate you.’
 
But I did used to write all my feelings down.  And writing them down helped because I was able to sort them out, make some perverse sense of them  -  or, I was at least able to find the funny in them.  Lately, I’ve not felt like writing about my feelings.  I’ve felt like eating those feelings, shoving fat and sugar and salt right on top of them and squishing them down deeper into my whatever to deal with later.
 
Later is going to be a holy mess.
 
With that in mind, as I was licking the salt and fat off my fingers and smearing the chip crumbs off my face, I told Husband he was right.  I should probably think about writing again... 

And then this morning, at Costco I realized that Husband was wrong.  Why write when feelings can be smothered in dark chocolate covered mangos. 

I may have bought multiple boxes - I mean, bags.  

Let’s face it, chocolate might not fix a feeling but it sure tastes good smothering them down. 

It’s been a busy few months. What with my rehearsals and daytime performances and Husband’s recording clients, we only seem to see each other when he’s exhausted or I’m exhausted or at the vet with a dog - or three. And this roller coaster we’re on is about to get rockier. But I have picked the perfect partner to ride the stupid with. Because a week ago, I bought a bag of Clementines at Costco. Since they seem to mush if we leave them in a bowl, I left them loose in lines along the back of the kitchen counter. The next morning, I woke up to Clementine Art by Husband. .
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There’s nothing like Clementines arranged in the shape of a smiley face to start your day off right. Well, I’m sure winning the lottery might make your day much much better, but you have to play to win. And we only had Clementines so Clementine Art it has been.

I responded to Husband's Clementine face with a large, somewhat lumpy heart and we’ve been communicating in orange orbs all week. The kicker is that as we eat them, we have less and less material to work with. Sunday night, I left him a motley version of man parts – that honestly looked like it needed to be seen by a doctor quick. He responded with a tiny pair boobs – or a pair eyes if you’re not a 12yr boy. Yesterday I managed a pitiful sad face and this morning, I woke up to this:

This silly form of communication made cleaning up dog puke at 6am while lumbering about like I've pooped my own pants because my back is out bearable. Without something to smile about, life is a rough road. It's easy to sink into the mire pretty damn quick if you don't have someone to pull you out and point out the funny.

Or make you Clementine Art with carrot boobs.

Find your person, your people, your weird ones and you can make it through this stupid life roller coaster with a smile on your face. At least that's my plan.

​Twenty some years ago, before the Internet, if I had a question, I would ask my mom. And my mom would know because my mom knew everything. And if she didn’t know, or she would get out the dictionary and/or encyclopedia and look it up. Well, first she’d tell me to look it up but then her curiosity would get the best of her and she would take over. For example, once I came home and told her that during the prep for an event, a friend had told me he had a Prince Albert’ piercing. I, of course, pretended I knew what that was, just nodded and smiled awkwardly at him as he went on and on about how much his wife liked it... and then as soon as I got home, asked my mom what it was. She did not know that one so to the dictionary we went. To say both of us were enlightened would be an understatement. We could never look at that friend again without giggling.

I loved those days. They were simple. You’d have a question. Look it up. Get an answer and move on. Now it’s harder because the time sucking Internet can cause you to lose hours of your life. Not to mention that one simple question would mean subjecting yourself to a plethora of images your brain will retain for all of time. Like, for example, the images of the aforementioned Prince Albert.

If you were to look at my Internet history for today, you’d think I had some sort of physical and mental problem. My searches include the menu for Carrabba’s restaurant, the life expectancy of a dog in renal failure, what the TSA will allow as far as razors, the address for the woman in my neighborhood that needs toilet paper tubes so her kids can make a bobsled, and fistulas.

Yep. Fistulas.

Why the fistula, you ask? I heard someone mention it a while back and this morning, for some reason, it popped into my head. And, since I had other things I should be doing, I totally googled fistula. Well, what I actually did is open up the computer, checked my mail., responded to my mail. check my social media, responded to my social media and THEN I remembered that I was looking up fistula so I googled it – and BAM one hour later, I was thoroughly in formed about fistulas. I also have some wonderful images seared into my eyeballs for replaying during my 3am nightmare sessions. And, because the Internet is what it is, I now know all sorts of things about Crohns's disease and perianal fistulas and anal fissures, hemorrhoids and lots of different other things that can happen to your ass.

And the ironic thing is I can’t remember who told me about fistulas! Or why I’m looking them up at 8am on a Monday but I am now apparently your go to person for everything fistula. You’re welcome. I think.

Husband and I went to a wedding in San Francisco this past weekend. Since it was the first trip away we’ve had together in five years, we added a few days on the front end and spent some time in our old neighborhood visiting with friends and family. We even managed to swing a day wandering around Carmel Valley. It was a lovely few days filled with fun and family and friends and sun, and – who am I kidding.  It was wicked stressful, traffic was nuts and there were people everywhere... but it was lovely.

I think this picture of our shower in our Monterey hotel sums up the whole experience.

A perfectly placed hole in the glass shower wall so that you can reach in and turn on the water without soaking yourself. 

Fabulous in theory, sure. But in practice, you step into the shower and the perfectly heated water hits your body, sprays out the hole, onto the floor and soaks the toilet.  Which leaves you with a wet floor, wet toilet and perfectly soggy, utterly useless toilet paper. 

Much like our trip. Lovely in theory; spend four days in the California sun seeing friends and family.  The reality; we ran about, exhausted ourselves, had little time with any particular person and now we're perfectly soggy, utterly useless, well... toilet paper.
 
The dogs on the other hand had a marvelous time at their very fancy dog spa hotel.  

So much so, I think they’re unhappy we came home. 

​Sucks to be them.  We’re unhappy too. 

​This morning I woke up at 6am and, with my eyes half open, I shuffled myself into my warm pjs, grabbed my puffy jacket and boots, and let the dogs out of their crates. With a bit of coxing, I ushered the nutters down the stairs to the backdoor and had them sit while I put a leash on Tigger the Dog and shoved a jam jar in my pocket.  I then spent a minute trying to calm them all down, telling them we weren’t going on a walk as I opened the door and hurried everyone outside – where they stopped, waiting for their leashes.  Told them all again that seriously, a walk was not happening and tried to move forward. They didn’t believe me and they whined, whimpered, barked and begged for their leashes.  I promised them I wasn’t lying and, trying not to trip over any of them, walked TTD and the other idiots over to the morning pee area.  Telling them again, too loudly for 6am, that we were totally not walking, I encouraged them all to “Do the toilet.  Come on, have a pee.”  They didn’t believe me.  I encouraged them louder.  I’m sure the neighbors love me.  Then, while the others went off to do their thing, totally pissed at me, I followed TTD around, holding the leash in one hand and the jam jar in the other as she sniffed the ground, looking for that perfect spot to do her business. When she finally found a spot that met with her liking, she crouched and I awkwardly shoved that jar under her rear mid-stream in an attempt to catch her ‘first morning urine’ for the vet. 
 
She was not impressed. My aim was not accurate. Neither was hers. It was not pretty.
 
Two minutes later, the jam jar in one warm, sticky, stinky hand, I unleashed her, let her and the other two idiots into the house, gave them all treats and then took my ‘winnings’ upstairs to disinfect myself.
 
As I write this, there is a warm jam jar of pee sitting on many paper towels on my kitchen counter and I am having a deep Zen moment of awareness. I could look at this rocky awakening as a horrible mess of a start to my day; covered in pee at dark o‘clock in 24deegree weather, with two very disappointed dogs and third who I’ve just violated. Or I could look at it as beginning my day with a win; with one thing on my long list of musts for the day – the most unpleasant thing – checked off my list before 6:15am.
 
How I choose to see this start affects the whole day – mine, Husband’s, the dogs, everyone I encounter... Who knew a morning pee would bring such an awakening.   Who wants to guess how the day is going to go for everyone around me? Am I going to be an Eeyore or an Winnie the Peeoh?
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