the sky is a firey pink

billows of gray clouds swirl, dipping and diving.

i need to feel that there are much larger things in the universe than getting my tooth pulled tomorrow (the coundown on the right is wrong). and there are. but maybe those things aren't helpful in calming my nerves. i feel like tilda swinton's character at the very end of michael clayton. i feel like my face could start shaking at any moment and i could drop dramatically to the ground. i wouldn't be nominated for an oscar for it, though. can i just have a little mini break down?

it's not just the tooth. but i don't think the tooth is really helping any. my boyfriend is a million miles away, there are staff meetings, business travel, health insurance, global warming, software training, the world without us (read it), logins, oil change, carbon emissions, brake check, voldemort, who i've been ignoring. worse, i've let her come between me and my nephews, dispite my promises to be an adult about it. i haven't seen the boys since before christmas. and i missed a birthday. then there are the ever present nurdles.

i haven't found a dentist to install the titanium screw into my jaw, the $2,500 screw that will hold the $1,500 fake molar. scratch that. i have found a dentist, but i found a cheaper dentist, then i called the more expensive dentist and told him i found a cheaper dentist, then i drove by the cheap dentist's office and i have realized that more money=a higher sense of security. duh. but i guess i had to figure it out myself. would you rather have a titanium screw drilled into your mouth while sitting in an overpriced fancy dentist's office with a view of trees and grass? or in what looks like an old house in the middle of downtown santa ana? you'd save $600, but you'd be sitting in what used to be grandma's bathroom getting a stainless steel tooth drilled into your mouth with something bought at sears. dramatic? me? no. so.... i gotta find a way to tell dr. expensive that i love him and don't want to ever live without him and please drill a titanium screw in my jaw.

here's how i'm seeing tomorrow go. i wake up at 5:30 am. can't fall back asleep. drift off to sleep around 7:45, only to have my alarm go off 15 minutes later. take my nice little blue pill--valium, not viagra. sister picks me up late. i whimper to myself all the way to the dentist office, and collapse in a tilda swinton heap in the lobby. what if i'm so wound up i make myself nervous? what if i choke on my wommit while he's pulling? what if he tells a joke and tries to be funny and i laugh and the shiny tool slips and slices my mouth open?? what if i got my dates mixed up and i'm worked up for a detraction that's happening on tuesday instead of tomorrow? wow, holy lord almighty. i can't even keep typing this i'm already freaking out. okay. soo.... onto other things.

perfectly and sweetly. and perfectly again... i do not worry about my relationship with phill. we are happily committed, truly and completely. he and i, with six, make three. i have my sisters. the one i was born with, and the ones i have adopted, and the ones that have adopted me. i have such great friends, and the warm boobely bosom of my family. nurdles be damned. life is fucking good. but still, there's that tooth.

this, this post being my 100th post. here are my guts.

i heard that the national delurking (already calming down now) day was a little while ago. i'm gonna tell you a little secret:

i love mom blogs.

they are SO hilarious and touching and true. osmosister got me into them. not that she said, here you have to read these. i found ohthejoys through osmosister. i think i found bossy through a comment she left on ohthejoys. i might have found greek tragedy through nytimes.com? i think i found sweet salty through finding zen. wow, i really sound like a stalker. i hope i'm not pissing anyone off by posting your blogs here. and i hope i'm not scaring any of you. please let me know. i should also tell you that i get my daily fix through google reader. so i probably hardly ever show up in your sitemeter, but i chuckle daily with my cup o' joe. and i forward some posts to a few friends as well. i don't personally know any of you. and i really feel like a stalker with this delurking thing. i don't usually comment, but i read 99% of all of your work. can one delurk through their own blog? i'm jealous of your high comment count, by the way. i admire all of you and your willingness and ability to bare your souls so sweetly and heartwrenchingly on a nearly daily basis. i swear i'm not a stalker. but yes, i am.

i recently found this blog...wow, i don't even know where. i don't google these blogs. i click on them through other blogs. you're an awesome writer, clink. congrats to you and the ring.

i subscribe to two dad blogs. laid off dad (nytimes link, i think) and dad gone mad. have you two ever met? one of you yahoos mentioned bossy in one of your posts. it was like i was looking in a mirror looking at itself, looking a a blog. or something.

it takes balls to write about all the things you write about. all of you. i admire you for that. there are a few posts here that i'm proud of. but my soul hasn't hung out in front of you nekked or anything. not very often.

another confession: i follow stepmom blogs. since i'm in the research and planning phase of being a stepmom (the career girl's guide to becoming a stepmom is on my nightstand), these blogs offer insight, tangles, truths, dirty feelings, clean shiny feelings, relationship highs and lows, and... shock of all shocks... some stepmoms and biomos are friends. totally weird.

i googled stepmom blogs and hit the jackpot. she has a forum, a monthly stepmom profile, and has seen stepparenting from both a child and stepmom's perspective. i especially like this post, which describes the stepkid shuffle. stepmoms are talking about it in her forum. i got a taste of this confusing behavior when phill and i had his daughter, six, over the christmas holiday. six asked me "did you know my mommy kissed my daddy? A LOT?" "yes, six. i know that. everyone knows that." she looked at me, incredulous "how does everyone know that?" why would she be telling me this? a few days prior, we had officially come out to her as being together. but what's her motive? why is she telling me that her dad, my boyfriend, has kissed someone else? i mean, i KNOW he's kissed someone else. but man, it's a punch in the gut coming from his daughter. i keep telling myself she's six. she's just six. she and i continued coloring and watching iCarly. but still.... man. that sucked. i am the adult, i am the adult. i know it's going to happen again, she's just six.

she was watching me put mousse in my hair one morning. "why are you putting that in your hair?"
"because it makes my curly hair not so frizzy."
"my mom likes frizzy hair."
"that's cool. that's nice. this keeps it from being reeeally big and huge."
"my mom has really big and huge hair. and she likes it."
"that's nice, that's cool." i mean, what do you say to that?

i found simplicity who is the stepmom to lori's kids and they are friends. kathy and jill are doing the stepmom/biomom friendship and blog thing over at the doughtie houses exchange. i read the wicked stepmom and the evil stepmother (who are neither wicked or evil). i haven't found any biomom blogs. i mean, besides the biomom blogs that get along with the stepmom. i've found the stepmom blogs that bash the biomom, but no biomom blogs that bash the stepmom. hence, stepmothers are perfect. the. end.

of course, smelly and miller and workwife and osmosister you can find in the links to the right as upstanding members of my crew. smelly and miller, you gotsta step up.

and because mother earth is a woman, i introduce you to eco-chick herself. i found her through bossy? seriously, i can't remember how i found all of you.

i need to feel my hair take root in the earth between blades of grass. i need to watch the clouds swirl, i need to feel small underneath them. i need to feel the earth rotate on its axis and watch the stars stand still; to dig my hands into the roots of this planet as we all spin through the universe together.

the sketch i did, it all makes sense now. the face is a calm center in the eye of the hurricane. i want to be that face, to feel everything swirling around me, to be that calm center.

a glass of wine while distracting myself with a post with the promise of a valium in a few hours hasn't hurt either.