I'm as astounded as you are.

I am not an easy person to live with.

Shocking, I know.

I like my house to be soothing and a place of retreat, but when I've been retreating for too many evenings in a row and haven't had time to put things away, or when I am in the process of packing and moving, the chaos and clutter makes me crabby and short-tempered.

I like quiet. When the television volume is loud, I get crabby and short-tempered.

I like it dark. When I lived at home, my mom was constantly following me around the house, turning on lights behind me so I could see, and marveling at home I navigated all but pitch-black rooms without a problem. When all the lights are on, it's too bright, and it makes me crabby and short-tempered.

I hate it when cupboard doors are left open. They need to always be closed, or I become crabby and short-tempered. And then I have to storm into the kitchen and slam them shut.

I am not good at explaining my reactions. I feel the things I feel and I will deal with those feelings by, generally speaking, sulking and pouting, and occasionally laying down on my bed and staring at the wall. I don't want to tell you why I'm mad/sad/melancholy/jealous/shy/frustrated (those are all emotions I will feel within any given 3-hour period). I may or may not want you to fix the problems. But I do not want you to ask me talk about it. Talking about it makes me crabby and short-tempered.

So it is a miracle to me that I have maintained a relationship for more than a year with someone I practically live with.

He eats whatever I put in front of him, even when he isn't hungry, and even when it's something root from the ground. He never judges me for eating both our shares of dessert. He buys me Diet Coke when he goes to the store. He loves my hair in all its various moods, and he likes it best when I am in a skirt suit for an interview or when I'm watching tv in pajama shorts and a grey tee shirt. He drives back to my house a hundred times for everything I forget when I leave, and he never calls me dumb. Every time I grab at my purse and announce another thing I left behind, he rolls his eyes at me and turns the car around. Sometimes he calls me "the living end."

Despite my repeated attempts to make him turn prematurely grey, or even to lose his temper once, he stays around. When I am incited with rage, he keeps to the corners, and he leaves when I demand it. He also sits next to me and holds my hand when I am scared. He always answers the phone when I call to tell him I'm sorry. He never hangs up on me, even when I enter full-blown Crazy Town. No matter what, he will always come back when I have shooed him away, and he knows that what I need is not to be alone, but to be with him, watching dumb movies and drinking wine. He lets me make up things to be angry about, and then he talks me down from the ledge I made.

He says his number one priority, all the time, is to make sure I am happy.

I'm not always happy, but that is because I am a terrible, evil person. I should be happy all the time, not because of all the things he does, but because he wants me to be happy so fervently and sincerely.

He's sitting right behind me, working on his AWR, making it the best he possibly can because it's something he cares about, and something he wants to be proud of. I hear him typing, and then I hear his chair move back as he reads over what he's written. He hasn't paid me any attention in hours, and I love him so much for it.

We both work extremely hard, and there's no end in sight. After school, we have to get jobs, and then we have to keep those jobs. We might get to go to sleep. Law school isn't easy, and I'm so fortunate to have someone like him both for the law school hours and the non-law school ones.

He makes me want to be a better person, so that he will be as fortunate as I am. Because I don't deserve it, and if anyone does, it's the guy behind me.

I hope he knows I love him more than anything.

We need to talk

I know, I know. It's not 100 degrees anymore! I should be thankful! I should thank the sun gods for restraining their anger and ceasing their attempts to melt the flesh off my bones! Don't get me wrong--I am more than happy to be able to go outside to walk the dog and not end it with dragging my sweaty corpse upstairs and then sitting in front of a fan to dry myself off.

But you know what? It is October. OCTOBER. And I read a lot of blogs, and I know that in other, less insane states, people are wearing sweaters and coats and boots. When I think "October," I think pumpkins and chill and SWEATERS AND COATS AND BOOTS. But in reality, I am still slogging through the day in cotton cropped pants and silk tops. NO THANK YOU.

So I'm leaving. Peace out, A to the Z! You suck. You torture and abuse me for five months, and then you torture and abuse me a little less and I'm supposed to kiss your feet. That is still abuse! Especially when I KNOW that other states are not such huge assholes to their residents. You're like a bad boyfriend and I am about to put it us on break, and then I am going to have a passionate (but cold) affair with someone who wants me to be happy - California. California embraces me AND my sweaters and boots. California doesn't take me for granted! It's not me, it's you, Arizona.

I have two more days to deal with your abusive ways, and then I will be OUTTA HERE! Haha!

Now I just have to figure out what tights I can wear with a black cocktail dress, because California is cold, you guys.

Oh, and happy one year to Boyfriend! I can't believe we haven't killed each other yet. It must be love!

The Change

You guys. I think it happened. I hit 26, and WHAMO. My body is doing terrible, vicious things to me. Why, body? I take care of you. I feed you things like brownies, but I also give you good veggies. I work you out with Jillian Michaels, and I give you days off when you seem to need it. You get Epsom salt baths, chiropractic sessions, and cuddles with Mulder. I don’t know what else you want from me, but you seem to be turning on me at an alarming rate. Stop it.

Ok, here’s the deal. I’ve been suspicious for a long time. A few months ago, I wore a boatneck vintage-inspired dress, and discovered that between the time I was wearing a bra to the time I looked at myself in the mirror fully dresses, I had sprouted the shoulders of a linebacker. Those had not been there before! I figured it was just the cut, and then I swore off boatneck sleeveless dresses. Then there are my feet. I sit for too long, I stand for too long, I wear heels, whatever, and they blow up like I eat nothing but salt.

But then. I put on a dress that I bought last year at H&M. When I bought this dress, I was eating very yucky food, because I was in Austria and they REALLY like pork and fried things. I was not feeling very good, if you know what I mean, because I’m more of a chicken breast and steamed zucchini girl, but they don’t have such things in Austria. But on a side note, maybe they did, because one night I ate something that was simply labeled “vegetables.” They were breaded and fried, and I had no idea which species of vegetable they were, or even if they were vegetables, because sometimes the German language likes to take a word you know and then have it mean something completely different. I think they’re just being really passive aggressive in their bitterness over World War II, to be  honest with you. But I digress. My point is that when I tried on this dress, it fit! It was a holy miracle, because dresses are usually too big for me in some way. Not this one! It fit perfectly. I even wore it a couple months later, back in January or so, and no problems. I loved this dress.

So when Boyfriend and I were going to go out for Phoenix Restaurant Week, I pulled out my pretty, fitting H&M dress, ironed the baby up, and put her on. But… what was this? I had to suck in my gut and hunch over awkwardly to get the buttons over my ribcage to close. I was perplexed. I had been eating Lean Cuisines and salads, cutting out fat, and watching my sugar intake. According to my most recent doctor’s visit, I had not gained an ounce in the last year. If anything, I was gaining muscles with all the strength training I was doing with Jillian Michaels, but I was not gaining mass. It was more of an over all tone kind of thing.

These are the things I explained to the dress as I struggled to get it buttoned. The dress, she did not care.

Once those buttons made it through the button holes, they made it very obviously how much they were straining. I straightened up and marched out of the bathroom. The dress was not going to win. She was not going back in the closet. I refused to believe I had outgrown this dress for whatever bizarre reason that did not seem to be affecting the way anything else fit. There was no way my RIBS had gained weight. Nope. Get it together, dress, we’re going out.

So then I ate. And in the car home, I had to unbelt and unbutton myself because I momentarily thought the dress would rebel and start suffocating me. Don’t tell anyone. Boyfriend rolled his eyes at me, but what was I supposed to do? Cease breathing because this dress clearly had a vendetta against me for forcing it out of the house?

That was a couple weeks ago. Now, keep in mind, I have been wearing dresses and skirts this summer because it has been a temperature that is successfully approximating the temperature which I imagine hell maintains. So the jeans have been hanging out in the drawer, waiting for some index under “melting skin.” This past weekend, I knew I would be sitting in my house and by now I was just sick of all my other clothes, so I pulled out my Sevens and ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I had to tug and tug and tug to get them over my hips. I was aghast. I immediately grabbed several other pairs from the Jeans Drawer and tried them on. Each one was noticeably difficult to get over my hips. Here’s the thing and I’m gonna be open here. I know every square inch of my butt. That sounds weird, but my lower body has been a point of contention to my self esteem, and I have spent an accumulated number of hours staring at, poking, and pinching my butt and thighs. I do squats, lunges, and leg raises nearly every day. See, I know there’s a point where your body has started going downhill, and when a lady needs to put more effort into the workout to get the same results. In fear of this time, I have been adding to my workout, doing different workouts, and eating more carefully.

I know for a fact that my butt has not increased an inch, and that my ribs are still very visible under my skin. So why is this happening? I’ll tell you.

See, when a lady reaches a certain point in life, her body decides that she needs to be preparing to have a baby. It happens when she gets her period, obviously. (I’m not gonna mince words here, guys. There’s no “Aunt Flo.” We bleed from our vagina for several days. Get used to it.) But THEN, in her mid-twenties, apparently, her body decides more changes are in store. Her ribs expand, her shoulders broaden, and her hips widen. AND IT SUCKS. This had always been a vicious rumor in my world. It was what older women said to me when they noted how bitty I was. “I was that skinny once,” they say, “but you try having four kids and see what it does to you.” I was not going to have four kids, or any number of kids, so this seemed misdirected. But here’s the dirty truth – you don’t even need to get knocked up and push a watermelon out your coocha. It happens anyway! Your body just starts acting like it’s pregnant! We are not pregnant, body! And if you keep acting like this, it makes me distrust you and then I decide we’re never going to be pregnant because this is obviously the crap you’re going to pull. What’s next? Is my uterus going to stop sloughing that crap off and start hoarding it for a phantom fetus? Am I going to turn into a rabid nester and start swooning when I walk by a Baby Gap? Am I going to get random pregnancy blindness? (It’s true! Look it up!)

I haven’t been getting much sleep for a whole bunch of reasons, which I’m sure I’ll document here once they’re dealt with, but honestly, as I toss and turn and worry and grimace, my last thought before I fall asleep is always, “Body, whyyyyyyyyyyy?”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to football tryouts. I hear the Cardinals need some help, and I might as well put my quarterback shoulders to use for someone.