Mandajuice

Today's horrifying epiphany: WHAT IF OPRAH WAS RIGHT?!

Last week started off pretty rough for me and that meant that on Tuesday and Wednesday, I ate almost nothing until after 8:00 at night. I even had the existential experience of stopping at the grocery store on my way home from work and being so utterly overwhelmed by the idea of food that after 20 minutes of wandering around triggering automatic freezer lights and staring blankly at lunch meat, I turned around and walked out empty-handed. I only ended up eating that night because Joel took me out to dinner. The following night, I only ate because my friend Terry BROUGHT me dinner.

So it turns out the more upset I am, the less I eat. I've been upset a lot lately because I'm feeling my feelings. Trust me when I say I hate that phrase as much as you do. I know it sounds all douchey and new agey, but I mean it in the truest sense: I'm PHYSICALLY feeling my feelings. I'm letting them happen and not trying to push them away. Instead of saying "I'm not going to think about [insert bad news]! I'm just going to march forward like everything is fine!" I'm acknowledging that sometimes I get bad news and it makes me feel like shit. What's worse is that because of all this therapy, I completely understand WHY I feel like shit. It's all starting to make sense to me.

So, naturally, when I went to therapy on Friday, we talked about my weirdorexia. Ramona's not worried about the weight loss so much as she's worried about how I'm not eating even though I'm physically hungry. She asked me a bunch of questions and I explained how the more chaos I feel in my brain, the less likely I am to want to eat. That I literally feel sick when I'm upset and even though I'm hungry, the idea of food disgusts me.

She suggested that maybe that just might be... progress.

Then she wondered if maybe I'm losing weight because I'm getting better.

What if all this work I'm doing (which I may or may not have mentioned SUUUUCKS!) to get emotionally healthy is doing EXACTLY WHAT OPRAH SAID IT WOULD DO!?!?

Oprah's theory (and the reason she's always been against gastric bypass surgery) is that the obese tend to overeat to fill their emotional holes and that as soon as they figure out who/what/when/where/why those holes exist, they magically lose weight. I maybe sorta suspected she was right (and also that she was pretty fucking lucky to have the most famous therapist since Freud at her beck and call). My push back was that who knew WHEN I was finally going to get my shit together? Or if I could even afford it? Therapy can take YEARS! What if I died from the complications of my obesity before I figured out why I was eating?

So I flipped Oprah the bird and had surgery.

And I got back down to my "normal" weight. I never dealt with my shit; I just couldn't eat enough to be obese anymore. No, it wasn't easy and yes, it took balls, but it was approximately 736 percent less painful than therapy has been for me. 

So Ramona wants me to deal with my shit, which is how she broke my brain on Friday...

You know how you have this idea in your head of how much you weigh? Or what size you are? It's how you picture your true self, even if it's not your current size. Even if it's not the size you're supposed to weigh. Just the YOU size, you know? Usually it's the size you were in high school.

For me that size has always been a 12/14, which on my frame means around 180-185 pounds. I think of myself and have ALWAYS thought of myself as a double-digit girl. It's just who I am, right? It doesn't even bother me. I'm comfortable with that size. It was only after I got bigger that I felt like I wasn't "myself." It's also why stepping on the scale this morning and seeing 169 felt really weird. Almost too small. Not me.

But what if my "normal" weight isn't my normal weight after all?

"What if the REAL Amanda is actually a size six?"

Wait, WHAT?!?!

When Ramona said that I was, like, whatchu talkin' bout Willis? Because Amanda CAN'T be a thin person. That's just not ME.

Then I realized there are plenty of 5'7" women who are a size six. Or eight. Or TWO!

But I can't even imagine myself as one of those women. Which has probably been one of my problems all along. NO ONE has ever conceived of me as a small person, much less myself.

I have absolutely no clue if it's true or not, but it's a brain-breaking train of thought, isn't it? Maybe the combination of therapy and medication is finally making my brain healthy. What if my healthy brain is also a SKINNY brain?

What if after shedding Matryoshka doll after Matryoshka doll in therapy, the real me is that tiny doll in the middle? 

You know, the SOLID one.

Crazy!

FRIDAY, FRIDAY, FRIDAY

Last Friday I woke up with sex hair. Which is only different from beach hair in that it's less curly and more freakishly mullet-like. The only reason I mention this is as a way of illustrating that my day STARTED OFF great.

I watered my fro into submission and left the kids with Joel to go to therapy.

We talked about how important it is to remind myself that in real life I'm not half the fuck-up the voices in my own head tell me I am. It was a really good session. I'm making progress! Woot!

It was also the most expensive therapy session since the birth of Freud.

Because when I walked out, my car was gone. It'd been towed by the city of Portland for unpaid parking tickets.

Not ticketed. Not booted. But TOWED. In under 56 minutes.

I ended up canceling all my appointments that afternoon because it cost me two paychecks (one Joel's, one mine) and an entire afternoon in court to get my car out of jail.

Talk about being a fuck-up!

It turns out that when you get really poor (like I was last summer) and you have to divide your tiny income up into URGENT expenses (like electricity, gas and water) and NOT SO URGENT expenses (like unpaid parking tickets), the tickets end up at the bottom of a shoebox where they breed and multiply with late fees.

Apparently it turns out they don't just magically disappear!

Your car does.

And then you cry a lot in front of a judge because even though you've sent off the paperwork to the state of California, they haven't yet released the title to your car. You might even spend three hours of your life convinced that no matter how much you pay, they will not give you your car back even though your divorce decree says it belongs to you.

Joel's reaction was markedly different than I expected. All he said was AMANDA! Then he left my kids with our closest friends and spent the entire day (not to mention every dollar to his name) bailing me and my (our) car out of trouble. Even though he knew the only reason my car got towed was because my Oregon trip permit had fallen out of my back window and I had forgotten to tape it back up. (I'm waiting for the title so I can register the car in Oregon and get new plates, so it's trip permits until then...)

No fight. No I TOLD YOU SO. Just... let's do what needs to be done. He put up with my absolutely TERRIFIC mood, too.

It was a horrible day.

And it was a great day.

Because when we got home, twenty of our closest friends came over to help us eat the ridiculous quantity of lettuce I thought it was a good idea to plant earlier this spring. We made more of a dent in our booze stash than the lettuce garden, but I'm not complaining. 

I got to feed a new friend's newborn at our backyard campfire while talking about parenting with our landlord while Joel waxed poetic with his gay BFF while the kids roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. Even though Alex had a VERY VERY unfortunate accident with one of his friends involving a hammer and stitches, it was poetically perfect.

Ugly and sweet. Terrible and fantastic.

Business as usual.

Anorexia Weirdosa

I really have no idea how to talk about this except to be blatantly truthful:

I've kinda maybe sorta stopped eating. A little.

Shhhh! It's no big deal! Really!

At first I chalked it up to simply losing my appetite or maybe it was a side-effect of the Wellbutrin or maybe even the idea that since I'm working through my shit in therapy, I'm FEELING my feelings instead of silencing them with cheeseburgers.

My sister hates it when I say this, but I'm saying it anyway:

I CALL BULLSHIT. On myself.

I'm not eating for one reason and one reason only: I don't want to.

Case in point: I spent approximately seven straight hours pulling weeds in my garden on Wednesday. My friend, Sara, was here keeping me company and helping me decipher weeds from vegetables (not so easy when you've let your garden go to shit!). I'd offered her lunch when she first arrived, but by about 3:00 she was finally hungry. I think her exact words were, "I need my salad now, bitch." (I love her.)

So she made herself a big-ass salad with lettuce from my garden and homemade ranch with fresh croutons and chives. I, however, didn't eat any of it even though it looked really good. Even though I was starving.

Then, because she loves me too and knew I needed it, Sara pretty much forced me to eat something. I ate about a half cup of leftover risotto and put the rest back in the fridge. I was easily hungry enough to finish all of it. I just didn't want to. Eating even that much made me feel gross.

Regretful.

This has become a pattern for me. I almost never eat at all when I'm at work, which can often mean I eat nothing until after 9:00 at night. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a foodie, so when I get home I'll usually spend an hour or two making a mean dinner for the baldman.

(We just got a bunch of giant zucchinis from the lesbians next door and last night I stuffed them with sausage, mushrooms and fresh herbs from our garden. As I'm writing this, the leftover stuffing is cooking down with a dozen fresh tomatoes as sauce for the fresh pasta I just rolled out. Don't worry, I STILL LOVE TO EAT!)

But I can only eat a tiny bit before pushing my plate away (which is normal for me since I don't technically have a stomach). Honestly, the only time I really eat is when I've had a cocktail or a glass of wine because it loosens me up enough that my self-control falters.

Because control is what this is all about.

Duh.

Since I'm all SELF-REFLECT-Y lately, I finally had to admit to myself that I'm doing this on purpose. I LIKE not eating. I'm getting off on it. It's like a happy little serotonin party in my brain every time I skip a meal. When you grow up overweight, not eating is a good thing, right? For the first time in my life, I'm completely in control of the one and only thing that has ever made me feel like a huge disappointment. In fact, I'm PWNING it.

Food is my BITCH, y'all. 

As someone who has been food-obsessed her whole life and who ate her feelings all the way up to 309 pounds, let me be the first to say that THIS IS REALLY FUCKED UP. I recognize that. My therapist recognizes it. She is worried. So is Joel.

But for now, I'm just riding it out. I'm taking my vitamins and forcing protein shakes down my throat whenever I get a headache from lack of calories. I have TONS of support and (contrary to the belief of some of my commenters) plenty of wonderful real-life friends on my side.

But the reason for all of it is pretty obvious: my brain has never been more chaotic. It's busy in there (here?) since I'm finally acknowledging all the voices and letting them wash over me instead of shoving them away so I don't have to listen to them. I'm actively trying NOT to control or stifle my feelings or thoughts for the first time in my life.

So it makes a lot of sense that as a control-freak, I'm making up for it in other ways.

The strange thing is that this is NOT about my body. Sure, I like watching the number on the scale get smaller and smaller every day because I've been conditioned to think weight loss is better than crack, but I was honestly HAPPY with my weight. I liked my size 14 body. I was weird that way. I even liked my wardrobe. 

Another month of this shit and I'll need a whole new one. This morning I weighed 171. A month ago I weighed 183. Two months ago, it was more like 190. I think I might already be pushing a size ten (which hasn't happened since I went on Weight Watchers in high school.) Today I pulled out a pair of $100 jeans I haven't worn in a year because I thought they were too tight. They're already too big and doing that annoying saggy-ass thing:

I realize this is NOT. GOOD. It's not healthy. But I think it might just be part of the process of figuring everything out. The good news is that since I started as a person who was NOT AT ALL SKINNY, I have plenty of time and poundage to figure it out. I'm not going to fight it. If I'm still losing weight six months from now, feel free to go all FIFTY SHADES on me and stage an intervention. Until then, I'll just sit back and try not to enjoy wearing clothes I haven't worn since high school.

Girlstuff: Review of Dove's New Bodywash

Here we go with another product review! This time it's a beauty product and I chose to review it because: 

A) Free body wash! (Duh)

B) This body wash's claim to fame is that it helps tone your skin (in just one week!) and lord knows I have a LOT of extra skin that needs toning.

C) I'm an esthetician, so skin care is part of my jay-oh-bee.

D) SWEEPSTAKES!

There are usually only two things I care about in a body wash - scent and packaging. I prefer beauty products that smell clean rather than fruity or vanilla-y because let's be honest: I don't want to stink like a stripper. I just want to smell clean. Dove Visible Care delivered on that point. It smells soapy and fresh.

I also loved the packaging:

Mainly because I like gravity. I have zero patience in the morning and I hate having to turn over an almost-empty bottle of shampoo/body wash/whatever and wait for it to come out like ketchup. I almost exclusively buy products that sit on their own caps.

As for the visibly toning? I think it might actually be true. I mean, let's be honest, I'm not sure a body wash is technically capable of toning your skin, but this one contains a lot of Vitamin E, which makes sense. That's what I used on my stretch marks and what I still use on any scars my kids get. This product definitely left my skin feeling moisturized, which is probably the most important thing you can do for your skin anyway.

Have I mentioned that as a professional waxer, I have to repeat this little blurb to evey new client I see?

The best way to maintain your Brazilian wax is to exfoliate and moisturize. Because if the top layer of your epidermis is DRY, the hair can't get out and instead will grow back under the skin causing ingrown hairs.

So using a body wash like Dove's visible care basically does both of those things. I almost didn't need to put any lotion on after my shower. I also used it to shave my legs and it left them feeling even smoother than when I steal Joel's super expensive shaving gel.

I also love that the instructions on the back of the bottle read:

How to use: Squeeze onto a wet pouf or washcloth...

I'm totally going to start instructing my clients to exfoliate with a pouf! I usually suggest using a washcloth or loufa, but pouf is way better.

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You're Okay

On Sunday we went back to The Bridge.

[In order to truly understand this post, you should go read Crystal's blog post with the notes she used for her talk. You will not be disappointed.]

It should come as zero shock that this wasn't the first time we've been back to my favorite "church" since the death of our Year of Sundays blog, nor that it definitely won't be the last. I'd had a rough week (obviously) and knew that no matter what Crystal decided to talk about, it would be something I needed to hear.

And because no story is complete without me dropping a sexual reference into it, I just want y'all to know that we forgot to set our alarm and completely overslept, which forced us to choose between making it to our good friend's sermon on time or getting our usual Sunday morning rocks off.

We chose The Bridge.

So basically The Bridge is better than SEX. (WITH JOEL!)

(Or at least worth a lazy late afternoon rain check).

Crystal's talk (which I refuse to call a sermon because it totally wasn't one) was about - OF ALL THINGS - voice. It was basically about singing out loud, a topic with which I've been struggling recently. She started by talking about being in an abusive marriage and how when she got out of it, she went a little buck wild and had fun and that she thought she was TOTALLY FINE AND OKAY simply because she'd left the marriage.

Obviously, much like me, she was NOT okay. Neither of us was fixed just because we left.

We were both left with what Crystal calls "the hand over her mouth" and what I think of as The Voices.

When you have that hand over your mouth, you learn to scream a lot so people can hear you. Even then, your true voice is muffled. And when you finally take the hand away, like I did after my divorce, you keep on screaming for a while, which is EXACTLY why this blog has been so up and down for the past two years. I'm still screaming, even though the hand is gone.

But I'm only screaming so I can hear MYSELF.

So here's the part where I over share. Crystal gave us a writing assignment, which naturally tickled my cockles. On the front of a piece of paper I was supposed to write the bad stuff The Voices tell me. Crystal wanted us to choose one word to describe our negative voice, but I'm all PUNK ROCK, so I just hyphenated three words instead:

NOT-GOOD-ENOUGH

I underlined it. Because it's how I've felt my entire life.

Then beneath it, I wrote all the things I fear are true about me. The things the people who were supposed to love me have reinforced my whole life. The things I'm still terrified might be true. The things that keep me from being my true self.

Crystal then asked us to string them all together into a more elegant soliloquy of self-flagellation, but I wasn't able to do that.

Hers read:

Worthless
You are Shit-on-a-stick
Ugly
Incompetent doesn’t even begin to tell how
Useless you are.
Forgetful in every way.
Burdensome with your
Drivel.
You fucking suck.

Don't you love that the pastor's wife has such a potty mouth? If nothing else, this should totally explain why I heart The Bridge so hard. Crystal went there and was gritty and ugly and beautiful.

Anyway, even without the sentences, I was proud I could at least write my list.  Now that I've had time to reflect, I could easily add more to that list, but I'll spare you.

I'm terrified that I'm:

• Too loud
• Selfish
• Obnoxious
• A Bad Mother
• A Bad Daughter
• A Bad Wife
• A Liar
• Lazy
• Embarrassing
• Flaky
• Unreliable
• A fraud

The hardest part for me is that I've been blocking all of this for so long. I've been faking it my whole life, pretending everything was FINE. I'M SO OKAY!! Just look at me (and my 309 pounds) I'M FINE!!! LET'S JUST PRETEND EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL. But now that I'm not so fine anymore, my brain is not a pleasant place to reside. I self-reflect to the point that it's basically a never-ending film reel of self-flagellation. I'll have a feeling, I'll easily locate who/what/where it came from and then I'll beat myself up for still feeling it even though I intellectually know better. 

Thank you, therapy!

Goddamn it (pun intended), it feels like a rabbit hole I'll never climb out of. My fingernails aren't sharp enough to claw my way out. Yet. 

The good news is that I know I'm smack dab in the ugly part. I'm not hopeless. I know I'll get through this muck and be who I'm meant to be. Let me say that again:

The only thing I want out of life is to BE MYSELF.

It's the first line of the mandafesto: BE WHO YOU ARE

I think the subtext of that is: AND DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR IT. To anyone. Ever.

Sadly I'm not there yet. I'm too afraid of scaring off the man who fell in love with me SPECIFICALLY for my manifesto. I'm no Alanis Morisette, but I'm pretty sure that's more ironic than rain on your wedding day.

But my GUT voice? The one Crystal was trying to remind me of? It's there. I know her. I know her SO FUCKING WELL. That Amanda is my best friend. She's the one who's gotten me through all the crap. She's the reason you're still reading this blog and the reason I've never been suicidal.

"Our gut voices were created to shout light into the darkness, bring liberation to ourselves and others.  Our gut voices were created to make people laugh, bring joy in the midst of heartache, to bring freedom where there is not.  This is way more exciting shit than the loneliness and self-hatred the other voice brings."

This exercise seemed easier for Joel than me, mostly because he wasn't crying the whole time. His gut voice told him to look out the window. He should be PAID (handsomely) to look out the fucking window. To read the Atlantic Monthly and surf the Internet and lose himself in thought because THAT'S where his genius blossoms. It's where his ideas are born and his ideas are worth a king's ransom.

It seems harder for me. What IS my purpose? I feel like I wear far too many hats, all of which I love too much to pick one singular purpose. I'm a mom. And a writer. And a lover. And a Brazilian waxer. And a damn good cook. And a chicken owner. And a woman who likes to dress up and wear makeup and who changes her hair color a lot. I'm more open about my inner life than most people I've ever met. Joel doesn't call me The Notorious TMI for nothing!

But all of that? It's just me trying my good goddamnest to BE OKAY with being me. Which is both my most difficult and most important destination. I think we all want to be okay, right?

After the ugly part, Crystal had us flip our papers over and write what our own voices were trying to scream through the hands that were covering them. (She actually had us scream OUT LOUD what the voices were saying, both with our hands over our own mouths and then, if we were brave enough, without them.) (Joel and I were both brave enough.)

It turns out my inner voice is screaming:

YOU'RE OKAY

And the only thing I could think of to write under that was my manifesto, which I looked up on my phone as a reminder. (Then I set it as my iPhone wallpaper because it felt appropriate.)So my voice is simple and clear. It says:

You live your manifesto

(not just hang it on the wall)

and that TRUTH

helps others live theirs.

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.

Being there at The Bridge on Sunday proved one of Joel's favorite truths: you can only be in the right place at the right time if you actually show up.

I'm glad we did.

My favorite part of that Sunday, however, had absolutely nothing to do with me. (SHOCKING, I know.)  As we were hanging out afterwards and ordaining Crystal so she could give a blessing to an out of town attendee (ORDAINED BY ATHEISTS! How can I not love this church!?), the food church began handing out sacks of groceries to the hungry like they do every Sunday. This week's bags were filled with bread and berries and fresh produce and random Oregon-grown goodness of all kinds. But then I noticed that several people were also walking away with big cellophane-wrapped bunches of fresh flowers (donated by Trader Joe's).

Just get that image in your head because my phone sucks and it's too dark at The Bridge for me to take a picture:

People who are hungry enough to line up outside of church every Sunday for a sack of groceries walking away with not only food, but flowers.

Flowers for the hungry.

It was so beautiful, I cried. Again.

Summertime and the living is... not bad at all.

The kids are back and they're already driving me crazy, so all is good in my world.

We're actually REALLY enjoying our summer. The trip down the coast was perfect.

Joel made the most excellent bonfire ever and about five minutes after we finished the last of our s'mores, the tide came in and put it out. (Which was probably for the best since HOLY CRAP does he build a big fire!)

We watched fireworks over the Pacific Ocean.

And vowed to come back and actually eat at this sushi place on Highway 101.SURPRISE! It turns out I have a raging fear of heights. I almost didn't make it up to the top of the Astoria Column. We were supposed to throw a balsa wood airplane from the top and watch it disappear, but the gift shop that sold them was closed, so we just celebrated the climb with a kiss.
And then watched the fireworks from a pub on the Columbia River.We also did some antiquing and I found this awesome 1930's vintage vibrator. With attachments! Unfortunately, even though it still worked, I didn't buy it because it was $65 and I'd already exhausted my sex toy budget for the month. But man, what a find!
We came home to a lettuce EXPLOSION in our garden. We're talking LETTUCE. LOTS OF IT. And honestly, the best I've ever tasted. Of course, I've spent much of the summer thus far at work. We're busy and I love it! I'm so lucky to have Valerie as both a friend and a boss.
I'm working on my post about our trip to The Bridge on Sunday, but it's a big one and I'm crazy busy with the kids. Stay tuned.

Lesson learned (the hard way)

Yesterday I had to drop my kids back off at their dad's after only seeing them for 24 hours.  We had a really great Sunday and despite my anxiety about taking them to an outdoor concert with 100,000 people, they managed to surprise me with their awesomeness at the Blues Festival. We danced! And sang! And they got soaked in the waterfront fountain! 

So taking them back to their dad the next day was hard. I've learned my lesson about how long I can be away from them. Two weeks is officially my limit and sadly, we still have another week to go. I usually joke that whether I'm getting my kids or dropping them off, I always look forward to Mondays, but this time I just wanted to cry.

And as soon as I left the driveway, I did.

Then I somehow managed to get through most of the day without ruining my makeup, right up until Genoa called before bed and told me SHE'D been crying because she missed me, too, and I totally lost it.

Of course it certainly didn't help when she told me my parents were due the next morning to take her and her brother to a water park resort for the next four days. (They went behind my back through Dave.) (Again.)

Cue the Ugly Cry:

I cried so hard when I hung up the phone that I think I ruined one of Joel's good shirts with my mascara and unfortunately, I still haven't really been able to stop for more than an hour at a time. I'm basically a giant oozing eye-socket.

I'm not sure why it should hurt me this much because there's nothing I can (or would) do about it, but it does. I can't tell if it's because this is the longest I've gone without really seeing my kids. Or the sting of the betrayal? Or maybe it's the incredible saddness I've been lugging around since letting go of my parents.

My vat of grief is as deep as ever and every time I start crying, I feel like a bird swimming through the Exxon Valdez. I have a hundred things to mourn, but right now I'm just crushed that my parents get to kiss my kids goodnight and I don't. 

I really, really miss them.

Ode to Sam Hill

I finally found
a moment.
One of those elusive bastards
I've been after for years.

We were driving along the coast
having just finished a hike to a hilltop lighthouse
and a discussion about how people probably find beauty
wherever they're planted.
But who are we kidding?
We live in Oregon, not Kansas.

Stan Getz was my winsome co-pilot
along with two tweenagers who refused to look up from their cellphones
and, of course, my baldman,
who described the day as "gauzy,"
which was characteristically acute
until the sun came out.

Which it did on our way South to Florence,
a town that's less a West Coast version of Italy
and more a relentless sand dune
where Fred Meyer sells crab nets
next to the Kraft singles.

So I wasn't really headed anywhere.
There was no other place I needed to be. I was just
going.

I had both hands on the wheel when it happened
and I lost myself in the concrete flesh
of Highway 101,
leaning into each TURN AHEAD sign
like a kiss from a woman way out of my league.

I didn't even notice the soap bubble of my moment
until my phone chirped a text message
from a client looking for a French bikini wax
and it popped.

Because I had no idea what a French bikini wax even was,
only that, like the road,
it had something to do with a woman's curves.

Then the opening credits started scrolling again
and the words returned to ruin my moment
like they always do.
So now I'm writing about a magnificent stretch of Highway 101
when all I really want is to chase the dragon
of time
until I can feel it from the inside again.

Going Coastal

I'm week two into three weeks without my kids. I miss them HARD y'all, especially since they've been such a challenge for me lately. I've been feeling like a massive motherhood failure and not seeing them (except briefly for a couple days in between) is both a blessing and a curse. How can I flex my mom muscles and work on being more there for them if they're not actually HERE?

(More to come on this topic soon because much like my anger, I need to write about it before I can figure it all out).

In the meantime they're at their father's house, which is pretty much the best place for them to be because I refuse to waste my hard-earned money on explosives. They have more fun at dad's for the 4th anyway. They get to blow shit up with their cousins. I get a break to get my shit together. It's a win-win.

It's also our summer vacation week with Liza, so we took a couple of days off and Joel took us to the coast. I'm posting this from the wifi at our super secret Oregon Coast hotel room, at which we only arrived after several tweenage EYE-ROLLING visits to the best wineries in the entire universe.

I used to think I hated red wine, but SWEET MERCIFUL BABY JESUS IN A MOSES BASKET, I love it so. Oregon Pinot Noir has entirely changed my world view. (Although that is not a pinot noir, it's a pinot noir rose.) (We bought it anyway.)

See also: my hair is very short!

And Oregon is HIDEOUS, as always.

After all that wine tasting and (completely sober) driving, we made it to our hotel, where I made fresh razor (AND BACON) clam chowder with foccacia, fresh-grown caesar salad and Domaine Droughin Chablis. I could have died happy right then, but there was a pool and a hot tub and it's been a while since I tried to swim competitive laps in my halter-top swimsuit. (PS - IT DOESN'T STAY UP!)

What I'm saying is: Happy 4th of July! I'm bitter-sweet happy with my own independence and I can only hope the same for you and yours.