As a friend of mine from Georgia used to say, “it’s hotter than a whore in church.”

The humidity is killing me, everything is so sticky and my hair looks like I’m going to an audition for Godspell.

At least Alex gets to have some relief from the heat.

The neighbors went away for two weeks and were oh so thoughtful when they left their car in our parking space. They also left us a note thanking us for watching their property, mind you they never asked us to watch it to begin with, but, oh whatever.

We’re getting up at Dawn’s crack tomorrow to drive to the associate’s niece’s graduation party tomorrow. I can’t believe how time flies. It seems like only a couple years ago she was wanting to hold my hand as we walked around town. It also makes me feel old to say something like that, c’est la vie.

I’m so tired that I can only think of posting this song:

Warning: this post may be so annoying that you punch yourself in the face half way through.

I thought my insomnia was mostly cured after Alex arrived almost a year ago, however, lately I’ve started having problems again. It would seem that I cannot stop the internal dialogue when it’s time to sleep. I can be exhausted and barely able to keep my eyes open, but as soon as I turn off that light - the Chatty Cathy switch gets flipped in my brain and it’s over Johnny.

We found a fantastic herbal remedy that worked like a charm for awhile but over the last couple weeks I’ve started waking up around 3:30 a.m. and finding that going back to sleep is a daunting task as Chatty Cathy picks up right where she left off a few hours earlier.

Making matters worse, the reason I’ve been waking up at 3:30 for the last week is often because I’m having a nightmare. They started the night we watched I Am Legend. Of course the week prior we watched 28 Days Later which had already teed my overactive brain up to endlessly ponder what I would do in the event that I was one of the last people on Earth running for my life. So duh, what did I think would happen when I watched another apocalyptic mutant movie anyway?

Well, I didn’t expect it would give me nightmares like I was a little kid or something. The last time a movie gave me this brand of nightmare was in second grade. The nightmares lasted an entire year after a babysitter let me stay up past my bedtime and watch some mummy movie with her all night. It got so bad I dreaded going to sleep, I literally couldn’t shut my eyes without seeing the mummy.

I realize this is stupid (but remember I cannot control my thoughts), there was something so utterly hopeless and absolutely chilling to me about the movie, that it instantly burned an image/idea into my brain that I cannot get rid of. The first few days after seeing it, when I’d go to bed I had no control over repeatedly going through the movie scene by scene and deciding what I would have done or analyzing why Will Smith’s character did what he did. It’s like when you get a song stuck in you’re head and it won’t go away.

I find this problem I have so disturbing that I’ve actually sought professional help in the past, (clearly they were no help). For example, a couple years ago when watching an episode of the Sopranoes, there was a name casually mentioned in a conversation that I’m going to try not to remember here, anyway, the name got stuck in my head on an endless loop. It became a maddening mantra for weeks. Sometimes I’d have to yell “stop it” out loud to try and break the repetition. Freak.  I’ve got a brain that skips like a broken record, like it or lump it I guess.

Back to I Am Legend, there were a few things in the movie that I thought were very illogical that I know I should write off as artistic license and move on but I just won’t allow myself to let go of it. Actually, illogical isn’t what I’m looking for here but I can’t think of the right word, it’s close but not quite. Maybe inconsistent or incongruous? Now you see how I work, I’m going to obsess over the word I’m looking for all night while I try to sleep. Damn me. (I’d give you an example from the movie but I hate people who tell me things that happen in movies I haven’t seen.)

So anyway, get this, the movie gets so stuck in my brain I decide to look it up online to see what other people have to say about it, dumb move #1. Next, I find someone who posted the alternate ending and… I watched it. Uh, hello you dimwit!!! Is anybody home? Good job genius, let’s dig up more awful things to think about, remind me again how those horrible mutants look and act because I’ve almost gotten the image out of my mind, I need a refresher, brilliant!

At least I liked the alternate ending much better than the one they actually used in the movie and oddly enough, there must have been something about it that settled an issue in my mind because I stopped rehashing it every night while trying to go to sleep, unfortunately, the nightmares remain. Maybe I’ll just take a Lunesta tonight and see if that doesn’t get me through to the morning.

P.S.
I decided to see what the internet had to say about my repetitive thought problem and here’s what I found:
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a anxiety disorder that about one million people in the United States suffer from. Those suffering from the disorder have repetitive thought, images, or ideas that they can not get out of their head.

Now, if I just found that in two seconds, why did the “professionals” have no idea what I was talking about and make me think I was an idiot? Whatever.

We’re back from our first vacation with Alex and, well what can I say about vacationing with a little kid…….uh…….hmmm……..it’s different. Technically, it’s not that much fun a lot of the time and the travelling part totally blows, I used to think it blew before but I was wrong, now it blows. I must say, never going out for dinner while you’re on vacation stinks (ok, we went out one night) and being housebound trying to get an overstimulated toddler to try and take a much needed nap is exasperating especially when you desperately need to take a nap yourself. I can’t blame him for being so excited, my mother provided him with a wonderland of toys and fun, it was very cute.

Perhaps the naplessness was the hardest as the days passed because his disposition became less and less stable as his exhaustion grew. We usually went to the pool a couple times a day because that was essentially all we could do and he loved it so much, but even that was cut short the last couple days as his fits became too frequent. It was a retirement community after all, the oldsters weren’t too psyched to have a screaming kid in their serene pool.

One morning we made it out to the botanical garden that my mother volunteers at, I finally had a chance to use my camera and took a pile of photos of plants and flowers. I have no real interest in shooting plants and flowers for the most part but it was better than nothing and I wasn’t sitting in the house listening to Alex scream in his crib. He seemed to enjoy running around the garden too so it was a pretty good day.

I’m happy that Alex and his grandparents got to enjoy each other’s company and have some fun together, that was great.

I’m so much more exhausted than when I left and I have no idea how or when I’m going to catch up. I guess I’m a little bitter, sorry, I haven’t had a vacation in three years. I’m just so tired.

Over the last several days I have been receiving an unbelievable amount of spam on this blog. Each day the number increases dramatically to the point where  today alone my email inbox had over 5,500, yes I said 5,500 comment notifications which were spam (so far anyway, I haven’t checked in the last couple hours, I guarantee there’s about 400-500 more in there already).

In the hopes of slowing this attack down, I just installed James McKay’s Comment Timeout plugin which will supposedly close all old posts to comments. As of 11:50 pm, it’s not working and comments are still being allowed in. I also need to figure out how to delete zillions of unwanted B.S. comments from just about every post I’ve written, not that it actually matters in the grand scheme of things but they bother me, a lot.

Frankly, I’m ready to just delete the whole f’n blog entirely and call it a day. It serves no actual purpose, so why bother.

Man this pisses me off.

I spent Easter weekend with my sister in NYC. The main purpose of the visit was to take advantage of the birthday present she gave me which was an appointment at Devachan Salon in Soho. So what’s the big deal about this salon you may wonder, well it is devoted to the cutting and caring of curly hair.

This place was worth the trip and I can’t imagine what a let-down it will be to get a haircut from a regular stylist now. Why more places haven’t developed specialized methods for cutting curly hair is beyond me. It was so weird to step into this place, look around, and see only people with curly hair. There was one fool getting her hair styled straight and I couldn’t figure out why you’d bother when you could have that done at any old salon.

Here’s my sister getting worked on:

Dorky me, taking my own before photo while I was waiting.

The way they cut and style hair is completely different from any haircut I’ve ever gotten. The attention to detail is amazing as they cut each curl individually. Equal attention is paid when it is time to style it. I’ve never left a salon thinking they did a good styling job before, but I left this place thinking “crap, I won’t be able to recreate this” instead.

In conclusion, if you have curly or wavy hair and are going to visit or live in NYC, go to Devachan and get yourself a haircut. Your hair will never look or feel better.

I don’t have a good after shot, this dressing room mirror reflection was the best we did and it was after we had gotten wind-blown all afternoon. The only downside to the haircut is that I lost four or five inches so it doesn’t make it into a ponytail now:(

It was fun, although freezing cold, out at the duck pond today. I’d like to say Alex enjoyed feeding the geese and ducks but it actually made him mad because he kept trying to eat the stale old duck bread and had a fit if you tried to take it from him to give to the birds.

I got a lot of cute photos of Mama and the wee boy, but when it was time for a photo with me, what did we get…..

Yes, it was time to have a fit. There was no more bread and how mean were we for ending the fun. We’re evil I tell you, evil.

We distracted him from the ducks with a bridge and had some fun there until I couldn’t feel my fingers any more. When it was time to go, there was another fit and at least ten minutes of screaming and tears on the way home. At least it would seem that he had so much fun he hated it ending, it was probably worth the trauma (not to mention the 5 lbs of goose poop stuck in the tred of my shoes).

Well it was a day full of words for Mr. Alex. He was a talking fool and tried his best to copy words I was saying which he hasn’t really done that much of up until today.

He was all about “Piggy, doggy, mommy, cookie, cheese and knees” to name a few.

And, drumroll please, a bonus word for bluberd:

My father has recently experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss. One day, out of the blue, he just totally lost the hearing in one of his ears. This has disturbed him greatly and frankly who wouldn’t be a little upset.

The thing about it that’s making me very sad is that it seems to have changed him. I don’t know if it’s a permanent change or not, but he’s different. He’s normally a pretty feisty bastard but over the last few weeks he’s been somewhat soft, very kind, warm and I hate to say it, but almost sweet. If it weren’t brought on by the fear of death I would think it was fantastic. The conversations we’ve been having make me miss him so much.

Even though he’s only 72, I know it is because he sees this as a step toward the inevitable physical decline into death, a reminder that he’s in what he’d see as the last phase of life. My grandmother (his mother) was similar. I remember from the time she was in her 60’s until she finally died near 90, when I saw her and it was time to say goodbye she’d hug and kiss me, give me some piece of jewelry she had on and tell me it may be the last time we’d ever see each other. That’s about 30 years of predicting your death. Wow that must be exhausting, not to mention a strange burden to put into a child’s mind.

So I’m feeling a bit nostalgic and wishing I could travel back in time every now and then. I’m wishing I was laughing in the backyard being tossed around by my father and getting to ride on his shoulders.