Mandajuice

My name is Amanda Penelope Westmont. I am ovulating. Prepare to die.

A few weeks ago  Joel and I had a pretty intense therapy session with our counselor. I probably haven't talked much about her, but she has been a huge help. I'm not sure we'd still be together without Ramona.

Anyway, my anger.

It's still here.

Well right NOW it's not, because it's not that MAGICAL ANGRY TIME OF THE MONTH, but when the calendar page flips over again, it will be. It's like clockwork for me. And it turns out I actually get the crazies TWICE a month. Since I don't get a period, I've been guessing when I'm pre-menstrual and marking my calendar based on my anger. This month I wanted to get more precise about it, so I bought an ovulation predictor kit and it turns out I'm craziest when ovulating. Which explains SO MUCH about my anger it's not even funny.

Before anyone makes any assumptions, let me just say that there is anger and there is UNCHECKED anger. In the past I have let my anger take over and it has threatened not only my relationship with Joel, but my very existence. I'm not there anymore. At all. I've somehow managed to figure out how to recognize my angry thoughts AS THEY ARE HAPPENING and that alone gives me the ability to see them for what they are: mostly irrational.

I don't ACT on them.

Which isn't to say that the SUBJECTS I'm angry about aren't valid. Quite the contrary: my complaints are often 100% justified. It's just that on a scale of 1-10, with ten being murder and one being a car fart, when I'm ANGRY ANGRY, everything is a TEN. I don't havel level one, two, three or six anger. I lack perspective and think the world is coming to an end because of whatever small slight it is that I'm angry about.

For a while I thought I was doing better; it's been a LONG TIME since I had a major blow up. But when the angry thoughts came back last month, I just wanted them to go away. My days on Effexor (while not even remotely sexual) have become somewhat of a wet dream for me.  On Effexor my brain was SPECTACULAR. I never had any anger at all. Everything rolled off my back. I was easy to live with and almost freakishly calm. It was beautiful.

(Except not having orgasms part. Which would bother ANYONE.)

I miss that brain. And I think that's part of the reason I'm so annoyed that my anger is back: it was SO EASY on Effexor. It required no work on my part. None of the hard stuff. I've become resentful because I know what it's like not to have unwanted emotions.  Now I have to feel them whether I want to or not and it SUCKS.

Needless to say I'm not going back on Effexor, no matter how bad my anger gets. Because while that brain might not have been angry, it was also boring and nearly as numb as my clitoris. Which obviously didn't work for me.

Instead I get to work on my anger. I need to understand it if I'm gonna take it out for dinner and a movie like Joel thinks I should. So that's what I've been doing: figuring it out. So far, I've figured out that it mostly stems from power and feeling like I don't have any. Or at least not enough.

Which is why I focus my anger on Joel  - because for the first time in my life I'm with someone I'm utterly TERRIFIED of losing. So even though I'm the one responsible for it, Joel has an incredible amount of power over me. I never felt that way when I was married, so I could act/say/do anything I wanted and I never really cared if it made me less attractive to my spouse. Which is ironic because I was ACTUALLY powerless in that relationship and now I have more power than I've ever had before.

But now EVERYTHING matters. And that's what makes me feel powerless.

I had an epiphany the other night when Joel went to take Liza home. The moment his car left the driveway, I stopped humming along to the stereo and brought out my real singing voice. My LOUD voice. The one Genoa tells me "needs to be on a stage."

The voice Joel has never heard.

Because singing like that in front of him is one of the scariest things I could possibly imagine. His opinion matters WAY too much to me. So instead of singing out loud, I live in fear. I suppose it's a fear of rejection or disappointment or simply not being good enough. Even though my BRAIN knows I am enough. Joel's love is constant and kind and forgiving and even without it, I'd be okay. I KNOW all of that intellectually.

But tell that to my body because whatever it is I'm feeling, it lives in my stomach, which is ironic considering I don't really have one. I used to think every emotion was hunger and I fed those feelings all the way up to 309 pounds. Now the opposite is happening to me. I'm actually feeling the fear instead of feeding it and suddenly I'm losing weight. When I'm upset or scared or lonely or sad, I can't eat. The idea of food disgusts me even though I'm physically hungry. In spite of all the poundage I packed on with the zoloft, I'm at my lowest weight in over six years.

So that's where I am when I say I'm fine. I'm not walking on eggshells, I'm just avoiding them altogether. Because it's safe, right? Especially when the alternative is the prospect of true vulnerability, which... is a lot more terrifying than a few harmless little eggshells. So I'm quiet a lot more than I've ever been before and I bite my tongue and I try to lower my volume so I don't offend the neighbors.

But every time I shrink myself, I lose a pound and my anger gains it. My anger is getting FAT. She's gonna be an expensive dinner date when I finally get around to taking her out.

Of course none of this is Joel's fault. He's not perfect, but he's also not responsible for my fear of not being good enough for him. The words I put in his mouth are MINE, not his. I hate to even admit this, but sometimes the words aren't even mine, they're Dave's. Or my mother's. I load the dishwasher and hear Dave telling me I'm doing it wrong only it's in Joel's voice. Or worse, when Joel tries to help me with the kids I hear Dave telling me what a fuck up of mother I am. Or my own mother criticising my mothering, which was the first thing she did the last time we were alone together.

This is all my baggage. My shit. I know the only person I have to be good enough for is myself. I have to silence all the other voices. I have to sing out loud and not give a shit if I'm completely out of key.

I know I'll get there, but sweet Jesus on a pogo stick, it's no fun at all.

Review of Michelob ULTRA Light Cider (I like booze!)

I almost NEVER write paid reviews, but this time I made an exception for one very obvious reason: the product involved BOOZE. And even better, it involved a type of booze I actually enjoy drinking! Hard cider!

Michelob ULTRA Light Cider to be exact. (Visit their website here.)

Visit the Michelob ULTRA Light Cider review page on blogher.com.

We all know I’m a lush. It’s not like I try to hide it. (I’m also not an alcoholic. Alcoholics go to meetings. I go to parties!) (I stole that line from a friend of Bill’s I used to date.) But as much as I love me a five o’clocktail, I’ve never been much of a beer drinker. It’s too heavy and tends to interfere with food, rather than enhance it. So I always, ALWAYS opt for hard cider instead. Fortunately, I’m lucky to live in a city that has a multitude of breweries with their own cider recipes, most of which I’ve tried.

Michelob ULTRA Light Cider definitely lived up to its name. It was by far the lightest cider I’ve ever tasted. Which was perfect because I’m hypoglycemic and I really have to watch my sugar intake. This was the first cider I’ve ever purchased that actually had the nutritional information RIGHT THERE ON THE BOTTLE. Most other ciders are oblique at best about their contents, nutritional or otherwise. Sometimes it’s even difficult to tell whether or not they’re gluten-free. (Michelob ULTRA Light Cider IS.)

I liked that Michelob ULTRA Light Cider had only six grams of sugar per bottle. That’s nothing, so I really didn’t have to worry about my blood sugar spiking or dropping. And I’ll be honest: I was eating a burrito for dinner and I totally had a second bottle. We finished the rest of the six-pack after a ten hour yard work bender that Sunday. It was the perfect thing to drink after mowing the lawn. Do you like cider? Which favorite summer meal or activity do you think would go best with Michelob ULTRA Cider?.

Good Things, Take 47

1. My job. I love it HARD. We're getting busy and I can spend 8 hours bending over tweezing pubes in high heels and I drive home full of energy and the most obnoxious sense of joie de vivre ever. I have never loved my day job more than I love being a Brazilian waxer.

2. Natalie Merchant. Why do I not own any of her albums?

3. The "Madonna" channel on Pandora. Fer realz.

4. Fleetwood Mac.

5. Days warm enough that my spaghetti straps get to come out and play.

6. The awesomeness that is dyeing my own eyebrows (and my clients!). Not having to shade them in is saving me the most difficult part of my makeup routine every morning. So, like, you know, ONE WHOLE MINTUTE.

7. The most recent season of Mad Men on iTunes. I love Joan. I will always love Joan. I will also always covet her wardrobe and her posture, but never her dress size because it's the same as mine.

8. My BFF Sara just graduated from dental hygiene school! I am so proud of her I could spit. I can't wait for her to clean my teeth!

9. WE GET TO GO TO THE BRIDGE TOMORROW. For Father's Day! Remind me to stuff my purse with tissues. I just re-read my original post about that church and cried again. It made me cry that much harder because of how much I adore my Bridge People now that we've gotten to know them so much better. Definitely the best people we've met along our church journey. (Which we would TOTALLY continue, if not for the COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT we're getting from a certain religious website/blog host that can suck it with their dentures IN.)

10. My man. We're rapidly approaching two years together and we're only getting better with age. He infuriates me and maddens me and yet... a single text message from him and I'm more smitten than that stupid bitch in 50 Shades of Grey.

11. Summer! It has arrived! I can't wait to explore Portland with my kids. All three of them.

12. It feels like my life is coming together in a way it never has before. It is REALLY REALLY hard. Impossible even. And yet I've never been more satisfied or challenged or desperate.

Easy is for the birds. And not the kind that chase Tippi Hedron. Real life is gritty and scary and wonderful.

I only wish I'd met it in my twenties.

High times!

About a year ago Joel became a partner in a start-up. He and two of his colleagues decided to start a medical marijuana shop and lo, The Aurora Clinic was born. One of the partners is a doctor, the other is the money guy and Joel is the business development director. He's also the managing partner.

Before I go on, I should probably mention that NONE OF THEM smokes weed.

Which is totally their competitive advantage. With most of the other card clinics in P-Town, you get a contact high just walking through the front door. At Aurora, you get a clipboard, a doctor who actually gives a shit and absolutely zero blacklight posters of marijuana leafs.

(Or Bob Marley.)

It's pretty much EXACTLY the opposite of what you were thinking when I said "Medical Marijuana Clinic."

Needless to say, I was immediately on board with this idea and it has warmed my cockles to see how excited Joel is about building something out of nothing. All the marketing he's spent a year tweaking is finally paying off and the clinic is amazingly busy. They're already looking into a second (and fifth) location. But as I may have mentioned in my last post, staffing has become a bit of an issue. Since we lost all our non-medical staff last week (karma be damned), Joel and I have spent every waking moment answering phones, filling out paperwork and trying to decipher office systems that neither of us has ever seen before.

It's been fun!

The truth is I LOVE clinic days (we only see patients on Wednesdays and Fridays) because they are CRAZY and I basically don't get to sit down for long enough to write my own name. I love interacting with the patients and seeing how grateful they are when they walk out the door. I know not everyone believes in medical cannabis, but tell that to the guy withering away with AIDS who hasn't had an appetite in two years or the 72-year old woman with a back injury who gets hauled into detox at Kaiser for a morphine overdose.

Marijuana is medicine. It's more effective and has fewer side-effects than narcotics. It's really that simple.

So yeah, I'm happy to pitch in, even without a paycheck.

Of course, today was my first NON-clinic day and man, am I WIPED. I spent eight hours figuring out databases and excel spreadsheets and newsletter passwords and when I got home at 6:30, I realized I had NO IDEA how I'd driven there. I had become a total brain-eating zombie.

All I can say is that I have NEVER EVER been more grateful for my vagina job. I can spend eight hours a day bending over tweezing ingrown hairs under a mag-lamp and I'm not HALF as tired as I was after sitting in a super comfy chair staring at a screen all day.

Today confirmed that quitting my office job was probably the fourth best decision I've ever made.

(The first was gastric bypass surgery. The second was leaving Dave. The third was Joel.)

One of today's highlights was when an old guy walked in hoping to get an appointment and our temp (who is already a fucking ROCKSTAR) was helping him, I walked out to see if she needed me to answer any questions. He recognized me from the website or maybe from Joel's newspaper ads and said, "Oh! I was hoping to see you here!" (wink wink!) Oh how I love me some dirty old men.

When he asked where my white coat was it made my day to say, "I'm not a doctor! I don't even WORK here!"

Because no, I don't work here and I'm kinda glad I don't, but I'm THRILLED to be a part of the clinic. It feels like a family business and a start-up all rolled into one and even though I can't stand sitting in a chair all day, the clinic itself has my entrepreneurial genes humming. Joel is brimming with ideas and some of them are pretty fucking great.

Oddly enough, neither of us thunk up our dream jobs ourselves, but it turns out we're both busy doing them.

Futurephobia

I'm feeling more than a little lost in the chaos of my life these days. Between an over-scheduled social calendar, three kids, the end of the school year, my job getting busier, emotional drama (which, let's be honest, constantly hovers around me like my own personal pig-pen cloud) and the fact that Joel lost his entire office staff this week, I honestly have no idea which end is up.

I just know we're busy.

And that I need a nap like a whore needs a washcloth.

Instead of sleeping, I've been waxing like mad, begging my friends to pick up my kids for me, memorizing all the qualifying conditions for medical marijuana in the state of Oregon and learning how to read charts and well, I'm just super! duper! extra! fantabulously! glad our therapist was able to fit me in for a personal session tomorrow morning. Then I'll go straight back to training an Adecco temp how to run a medical office that I only JUST TODAY figured out how to make work myself. (BARELY.) Then my afternoon will be filled with more vaginas.

But I'm totally not complaining! All this craziness is good.

I love my work. I love my clients. I love my man.

I love my children. I love that I got weepy when I was volunteering last week because the end of the school year is like one giant reminder that my kids are getting older.

(Things like Kindergarten concerts don't help.)

I love that every time I have an hour to myself, I set the stereo out on the back steps, blast the Talking Heads channel on Pandora and work in the garden until I'm covered in dirt and sweating like a pig.

(We're attempting to battle the weeds with a layer of cardboard covered with straw. I'll let you know how it goes if I ever finish it.)

I love that we paid rent on time this month.

I love that I LOVE our house. It's old and hoopty and impossible to keep clean, but it's short-bus special in a way that makes it the best place I've ever lived.

I love that there are two fifty pound bales of straw sitting on our patio right now.

I love that I now know what it looks like when chickens go "haywire." (They go BATSHIT for straw!)

I love pitching in at the clinic. I love how well Joel and I work together under pressure.I love how good it feels to be a part of building so many things: a garden, a family, a home, a waxing business, a start-up.

It's all crazy-making, but I spent so much time after the divorce focusing on RIGHT NOW and not looking to the future that I forgot how to dream about bigger and better things. I think I became futurephobic - almost as if any time I started making future plans or thinking about "when we [fill in the blank]," it meant I wasn't happy in the present.

But I've never been happier.

The building ITSELF is making me happy and I'm grateful to Joel for reminding me that thinking about the future doesn't always have to be scary. That even in the midst of all the chaos, we're still building something. Together. And when it gets shitty like real life so often does, he pulls me out of the moment and starts talking about the dream house we're gonna build in Hood River some day.

Which is a hell of a lot better than thinking about the past.