decisions

not so long ago, the gravity of my decisions amounted to red vs. white, taxi or metro, bourbon or irish, drive or walk, spain or the czech republic. not so long ago that i can count the months backwards on a hand, or maybe two.

hubby and i've been talking about life insurance since well before we got married. we have a mortgage, expectations about a life with both our salaries, travel plans. and now, we have another life to pay for. so the time came to really pull the trigger on upping our life insurance to appropriate amounts.

and as unexpected as it shouldn't have been, there came a question i'm still not prepared to answer. secondary beneficiary. this time it's not just about who gets the money if hubby and i tragically die together. it's about who we trust to raise our child. how are we supposed to answer that? how am i supposed to answer that?

i mean, shit, there've been plenty of times i genuinely struggled deciding between red and white, resorting to the flip of a coin to adjudicate for me. and now i have to choose another flawed human being, probably paired up with an even more flawed human being, to raise my child as i would have. or at the very least as well as i would have liked.

and until i can even wrap my mind around the gravity of that decision, i don't think i can actually make one...

~k

another year gone

hubby and i broke in the new car on a road trip to the windy city for the holiday weekend. we spent new year's eve day hanging with friends while our teams (ucla and u of i) played each other in a most uncelebrated toilet bowl game, and then he went out with our friends that evening while i opted for a cozy night in bed cuddling with miss scarlet.

it's not that i planned all along to bow out of spirited celebrations or that i wanted to be anywhere but in the arms of my love when the bells towed away another year, but i just couldn't do it. i couldn't go "out".

twas probably because i spent the entirety of the afternoon at a football-watch party around merry people drinking and laughing and having a good time, and whilst i wasn't not having a good time, i really felt out of place. i can't drink. i'm in a time and place in my life with nary a space for frivolous thoughts. and frankly, as much as i love being pregnant (another blog post), i don't love having the same fucking conversation over and over and over again with every single person who sits down beside me.

it goes like this, "so, when are you due?" [i answer]. "do you know if it's a boy or girl?" [i answer]. "oh that's so exciting!" [i agree]. the end.

maybe it's my fault. i mean, i am pretty much consumed by baby thoughts and i am carrying around a soccer ball sized belly. maybe it's their fault. they don't have kids. they've never been pregnant. they don't know that i'm still a real person underneath that big belly and behind that wine glass of sparkling juice. or maybe it's just that we're all in an in-between phase of life, some of us coming, some of us going, all of us moving around in different shades of gray, not remembering what it was like to be in their shoes or knowing what it's like to be in mine.

or maybe it's no one's fault. it's just life. and with life comes change. and isn't change all about figuring out how to maneuver through the unknown? i think that sentiment pretty much sums up my 2011... and the start to my 2012...

~k

what and when happened?

i've been reading some random old blog posts, and discovered something most unusual. it seems that my tales, tone, terms, and syntax were much more flavorful when i lived in los angeles.

is it because i now suffer irreparably by this horrendously inhumane seasons thing? is it because i'm old and my life has become boring? or is it because i live in a time and place where adventures don't just fall into my lap as they once did? and is any of this fixable or is it my fate to be boring and old?

~k

the irony of time

i just saw a commercial referencing "back to school," and can't get my arms around the fact that summer is nearly over, any more than i can that zip's wedding wasn't a year ago. i mean, 6 june was only two months ago, even though it feels like it was 12. kinda like the fact that monday was five days ago, when feels a month and a day ago.

and it's not just the immediacy of time that feels so ironic. maybe it's just natural to wake up one day to find it all blending together: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. maybe it's normal to count every second in one direction with such focus that the ones the other way no longer add up. or maybe it's time's ultimate riddle to always be on the other side of fair.

~k

24 hours in vegas

yesterday afternoon, after spending the morning nursing a hangover the likes of which i've not known for days a plenty, i hopped a flight to vegas with six of my k street friends. for those of you who live lives absent lobbyists, you should know that they are some of the coolest, funnest, most interesting, lively people to ever walk the earth. fun is not only guaranteed when hanging out with lobbyists, but taken to a new level. so just think about what vegas must be like with the k street crowd...

we took a limo from the airport (awesomeness!) to the palms, and after dingdong debbie at the check-in desk finally figured out how to check seven people into four rooms, we walked the 4-mile hike to the other palms to get to our bad-ass rooms!

but picture this elevator ride. two of us were women (see young, fun, _hot_ women). the rest of us were old, white, married dudes, and whilst i love them dearly, they might, at first glance, seem a wee on the dorky side. anyway, we were all in the elevator with a hottie guy about my age, and when our boys departed the elevator on the 28th floor, young hot guy turned to my friend and me and said, "really? those guy?"

we were momentarily speechless. but it was fucking brilliant. and my girlfriend and i will laugh about it until the end of time. "really? those guys?"

for the next twelve hours, we had a BLAST with "those guys"! we drank entirely too much, ate entirely too much, and lost ourselves at the craps tables (where incidentally, some hot ass spent the whole night blowing me kisses and making somewhat inappropriate (albeit not unwelcome) comments about my own hotness). getting up this morning, knowing a flight was imminent, was, we'll say challenging; one whiff of the wrong scent and i woulda tossed my cookies from here to high hell.

but i'm home now, and walking out of LAX -from anywhere- remains one of the great joys of my life... all-in-all, the weekend was well worth the pain i feel today, and the attention from the fairer sex went a long way in my rejection recovery process.

~k

exhaustion

i have been traveling now for almost a month, and i'm about to drop. i'm having a blast, i've been having a blast, and i will keep having a blast. two more days is all i have to get through.

i think i can. i think i can. i think i can...

~k

a friday tragedy

17 years ago today, also a friday, on a dark rural road in southern illinois, my car was totaled. along with my back, my spinal cord, and my mobility. half my life. and though it doesn't hurt as much as it did those first few years, on anniversary days like this, when my memory returns to that night and the days and weeks that followed, i feel what's left of that loss.

and in a coupla words, it fucking sucks.

~k

weekend mystery

i've been drinking since i was a teen-ager, so i kinda feel like i should have it figured out by now. but for some reason, the last three times i've gone "out", i've lost an entire day to a hangover.

what am i doing wrong?

~k