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I forgot I had a blog.

Not really, but I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to it lately.  I’ve thought a lot about how this or that would make a great topic, but I haven’t much felt like typing.

Lots of good things have been happening to people I love, and plenty of good has surrounded me in the form of people and places.  I switched offices, you know, and work with a new team now.  While there were some wonderful people on my old team, I am chuffed at how well this new one gets along.  I have generally liked most of the people I’ve worked with as coworkers, liking a few well enough to make lifelong outside friends with them, but this is the first time I can think of that I genuinely like every single one of my coworkers as people I would socialize with outside of work on a regular basis*.  I’m happy to see them come in every day, and sad to see them go.  It is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.

Enjoying my coworkers so much means that I’ve enjoyed my job even more.  I already liked my job.  I have a great job that allows me to talk to people and help people, and lets me be creative in weirdly structured ways, and forces me out of my comfort zone (I could do without that part, but then it wouldn’t be Work), and I get to go home at night and give my full brain to my family because I can leave work behind when I lock that door.  My job was already good, but now I find I have even more zest for it.

I also have a really sweet office space now, with gorgeous quantities of natural light and free entertainment in the way of squirrels, birds and random human beings who gather outside my office window for their smoke breaks.  Those random human beings do not know how much of their conversations I can hear.  It reminds me of when I had an office on the second floor of a large building.  I was located toward the back of the building, overlooking the parking lot.  From my vantage point, I could look down and watch one particularly amorous, young couple…coupling**.  They thought they were hidden from view, and might have been on ground level.  Little did they know.

Anyway, here I am being happy and naturally lit in my lovely, natural light filled office

*This certainly does not mean they feel the same way about me, though I should hope they would!  I am imminently likable.

**No, I didn’t watch for long.  Just long enough to suss out that the man wasn’t attacking the woman as I had first suspected.  It was a little too National Geographic for my tastes.

I am a big fan of Shirley McClain the Actress.  I know nothing of Shirley McClain the Human Being, and this book was the first I’d met Sachi Parker, her much neglected daughter.  All I knew of McClain was her body of work and her self-disclosed adventures with aliens.  I had no idea that she truly believed Sachi’s father was a spaceman, or that the man who raised Sachi was a clone of her biological father, left on Earth to confuse the Russians.  But once you learn that, you realize that McClain isn’t just a seriously flawed parent, she is a seriously delusional person who truly believed she was helping save the world, or at least NASA.

I am going to save you a lot of reading.  This book was written after Sachi Parker discovered that her mother had blocked her from getting several acting jobs.  She straight up says that she decided to write the book to expose her mother as being a competitive, cutthroat actor, who wouldn’t even lift a finger to help her daughter land a role, and who slapped down several roles that her daughter might have landed.

It wasn’t the neglect (McClain only saw Sachi on summer holidays and some breaks, and once forgot to pick her up from boarding school), the emotional abuse (starvation interrogation tactics), or the general nuttiness (McClain arranged for her daughter to lose her virginity while she and a couple of sex therapists waited outside the room) that makes up Sachi’s complaint (though they do make up 3/4s of the book), but it was McClain’s refusal to help her along in the entertainment industry that broke the camel’s back.  And when you know your mother is crazy, is that the bone you choose to pick (and speaking of bones, how do you even begin to begin when you know there are three people waiting outside the door?)

Long story short regarding Sachi’s parentage:  “Paul” Parker met and convinced McClain that he was a spaceman, who had a clone called “Steve”.  He said that when he and McClain married, they would have to live apart because he would be in outer space, but that “Steve” would be staying on Earth to confuse enemies of the US space program.  When Sachi was born, McClain sent her to live with Clone Steve in Japan, then funded “Paul’s” space missions with $60k a MONTH until Sachi made the big reveal (in her adulthood, after finding out what her mother believed) that Clone Steve was actually using the money to fund his exorbitant lifestyle (apartments in Paris, Hawaii, LA, as well as several homes in Japan, yachts, mistresses, etc.)

Sachi insists that her mother truly believed the space clone story, and says that just before her father’s death, he admitted the long con.  He admitted he had strung McClain along with the story that he was in outer space, and his clone was raising their daughter.  Now, for me, once you have told the world that your father is a class A conman, who may have just perpetrated the most complex, long running con in the history of romantic usery, and once you have told the world that your mother believed you were sired by a spaceman, and raised by a clone, you lose all right to complain that your mother cost you acting jobs.

The first 3/4s of the book are great.  Good story-telling, bright prose, and–you know–Shirley McClain.  The last quarter is all sour grapes.

3 out of 5 stars for being entertaining, but awfully self-indulgent.

I had a fantastically perfunctory and gloriously impersonal lady doctor visit today.  Best kind to have.  No awkward conversation.  No weird commentary.  Just the up-top, the down-below, and I was out of there.  Five minutes.  No lie.

But to get to the five minutes, I had to wait for fifty.  I was 15 minutes early and the doctor was 20 minutes late, and they had to get all my vitals before the exam.  C’est la doctor’s appointments.  Since it was the same waiting room I spent hours in over the course of Thor’s percolation, I had plenty of time to reminisce.  I came to this conclusion:  One of the reasons I find it so disappointing to have had only one pregnancy/child is because I was so ignorant and afraid through the first one.  I think that I could be learned and less terrified, more able to enjoy the process with a second one.

The roller coaster is terrifying the first time.  It’s a thrill the second time.

Then again, the second time makes me throw up, so…

I had another thought when a 400-year-old woman hobbled out of the exam area while I was waiting.  It went like this, “What a cute, little lady.  She must be 400 years old–SWEET CALVES OF MERCY! I THOUGHT YOU GOT TO STOP COMING TO THIS PLACE ONCE YOU’D MADE MENOPAUSE!”  Guess not.

My new office is less than half a mile from where Thor was born.  I drive past his point of origin every day and I think, “That’s where my baby was born!”  I can’t help smiling.  You know, I thought that was the best day of my life, but every day of my life since then has been even better than the one before it.  Sitting in that waiting room, I thought about the first time I heard that heartbeat.  The first time I saw actual limbs on a sonogram.  The day I realized I was one of those women (though I had sworn I wouldn’t be) who would trade her eye teeth to be induced.  Ha!

I had a good, happy life, and a good, happy pregnancy, but when Thor was born it was like someone had turned on a light switch and showed me I’d been living in the dark.  Every time I drive by that hospital, I remember how fortunate I am.  I remember how blessed I am, and I am grateful.

I love that feeling of all-consuming gratitude.

It gets me through doing homework with the boy 😉