So my BF is driving me nuts. Certifiably, pull-my-hair-out nuts. We've been friends for over 20 years, with a few breaks here and there, but over all, it's been good between us.

And it still is. Don't get me wrong. I love her dearly, but she talks a lot. A LOT. Fine, that's not news to me, it's just part of being friends with her. I get it and accept it.

She recently changed jobs and now that she's running her own business, she's got hours upon hours to chat, because what she's doing can be done while gabbing. That's all well and good, but she seems to expect ME to want to chat the day away too. No. I got shit to do, you know.

Or do I? Since I'm a stay-at-home mom with one in school full time and one in school every afternoon, she somehow assumes this frees me up to talk and talk and talk. Some days it does, some days it doesn't. Some days I'm not doing much but I don't feel like talking for hours on end even if I can.

So we fell into the routine of chatting for half an hour or so every morning, right after I drop my oldest at school. That was fine. This half hour has stretched into an hour or an hour and half. Oy. And now she calls or texts in the afternoon after I've dropped off my youngest, in my precious few hours I have to myself to work on my latest novel. And sometimes she calls after dinner. She feels free to text me at all hours between 7 am and 11 pm. I'm not even kidding, she text me at 11:16 pm last night to update me on her dog, the one's who's had tummy issues recently. Seriously. After 11 at night. "Good news! She pooped! Soft, but not the runs!" Well, yippee-fuckin'-skippee.

I was up, and I saw that, but I did not reply.

Now, I really should grow some balls here. We're working Moms in our thirties, for Christ's sake, not 16 year olds on summer break. I should tell her, 'Love ya, but I got shit to do.' But it would hurt her immensely. I'm so scared of hurting her feelings that I cringe every time I see it's her calling, because quick conversations with her do not exist. There's no way to have a 10 minute conversation without feeling rude when I cut her off to announce that I have to get going. I always hear the unmistakable hint of let-down in her voice if I try to make a break for it any time before at least an hour's up.

So I'm taking the coward's way out...not picking up the phone when she calls outside of the morning, and not calling her back for a few hours, even if I'm sitting on my ass watching Judge Judy. But I can't not call her back soon, because she knows I'm home. I live in the country, and aside from grocery shopping once a week and a few scattered, quick errands here and there, I'm home. If she suspects I'm not at home, she'll text me. And text me. And text me. Even if I don't reply.

I feel like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. This has been getting progressively worse the last month or two, to the point I want to stick a screwdriver through my ear rather than listen to another half hour of prattling about her dog's acupuncture visit. Yeah, I'm not kidding. She loves animals, as do I, and does rescue, so in an hour long conversation, you can count on at least thirty minutes of it being about the dogs. Every time, just about.

So this morning I took the first step to reclaiming my time. After 45 minutes, most of it about her dog's vet visits for prolonged upset stomach, I pried myself loose mumbling something about needing to cut back on my phone time each day because I really needed to spend more time with my youngest before she starts school full time next year. She seemed surprised, but took it well.

A first step in reclaiming my free-from-constant-gabbing time? Perhaps. Time will tell. In the meantime, I'll try to grow a set. Because I love her, but enough is enough. But it's as much my fault as hers for allowing it to get this way. Time for a change, because I want to enjoy our friendship again, not feel like she's some leech in my life.

Because right now, that's exactly what she is.

Well, this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen as of late. I just noticed that my cousin's wife, a supposedly mature, grown woman in her 30's, made a facebook page for her dog. Her. Dog.

Okay, fine. People love their pets, myself included. And I'm sure she's not the first, nor the last, to do something so damn stupid. But wait, it gets better.

Not only does the dog have her own page, she responds to people's FB posts. Their normal, written-by-a-human posts. Oh, and she makes comments and posts to her 'Daddy', a.k.a. my cousin.

"Daddy, I'm gonna fart on you when you get home!" "Daddy, I want steak for dinner tonight!" "Daddy, can we go to the park this weekend?"

It makes me pray that someone crashes FB. Seriously. It makes me wish the dog gets hit by a car. Not-so-seriously. It's not her fault her owner's acting like a douche, so I can't really wish her harm. She's a dog, after all, and I actually love dogs. Not-on-fb-dogs.

WTF? I'm not above the occasional 'look what my crazy/cute cat/dog did!' post. But now I have to see the g.d. dog 'responding' all over FB? Can I send her a puppet or something to speak for her instead of her dog? Because as much as I hate puppets, it would probably be less annoying.

Dogs are dogs, folks. They're a part of many of our lives and we love them. But they're DOGS. They can't post on FB, and their lives are not lacking if you don't post 'for' them. In fact, your posts-made-by-your-pet are degrading the lives of the rest of us. Thanks.

I'm off to see if there's a way to block the damn dog's posts. I'm not 'friends' with her, but as her Mommy and Daddy and I are friends and share some mutual 'friends in common', the damn dog's posts still show up frequently.

At least she's an old dog. Maybe I should just look forward to seeing her obituary online in the next year or two. But then, I fear, a new, younger dog will just take her place. Because my cousin and his wife will not be dogless for long, I'm sure, and this stupidity will begin anew.

Crap.

So I'm joining the no-poo revolution. No shampoo, that is.

Apparently I'm rather susceptible to any suggestion on Facebook involving vinegar. It started with the 'make your own natural cleaner!' post. You know, the one where you soak your choice of citrus rind(grapefruit, orange, or lemon) in white vinegar in a Mason jar on a sunny windowsill for two weeks. After 2 weeks, you cut it in half or so with water and there you have it- a great, all natural cleaner. Tried it. I'm not yet convinced that it's better than plain vinegar, but it sure does smell a hell of a lot better.

Then someone posted some blurb about uses for apple cider vinegar, which I couldn't have cared less about. At least until my eyes got hung up on the 'make your hair shiny' bit. What's this, eh?

So to Google I flew to get the gist of it. 1 part apple cider vinegar with 3 parts water, dump it in your hair, let it sit a minute or two, rinse with cool water. Allegedly it makes your hair super shiny and soft. I couldn't wait to give it a try.

In my search about apple cider vinegar, I discovered that many folks are washing their hair with baking soda. Yup, baking soda. Mix into a paste with warm water, apply, let it sit a few minutes, rinse with water, follow up with apple cider vinegar rinse. A far kinder, natural alternative to the shampoos and conditioners I had been using that were chock full of nasty, harmful chemicals.

Now I hate to admit this anywhere, ever, but I have a serious scalp issue. It's seasonal, but that's plenty, thanks. Every fall through spring, I get nasty dandruff. Some hairdresser once informed me 'You don't have dandruff, you have dry scalp'. I don't give a damn what it's called, it's nasty white flakes that nothing will get rid of. NOTHING. Not dandruff products, oils, special brushes. And my scalp itches. Constantly. I've even considered seeing my doctor about it, but frankly, I think I would die of shame. So I cope with it as best I can, and it sucks. But according to what I read, this baking soda/apple cider vinegar routine could solve this.

Karma must have been smiling on me, because I had both baking soda and apple cider vinegar in the house. So I tried it. Round 1 of baking soda wash and apple cider vinegar rinse? My hair was gorgeously shiny and silky, yet oddly dry at the same time, too. I think perhaps I stripped out all the crap my usual products had been depositing so I could get a 'real' feel of where my hair was at, moisture wise. I still had some minor flake-age (it's September, and just beginning to make its usual appearance), but I was optimistic. It was only the first round.

Okay, I was on to something here. I have the kind of hair other women -think- they would kill for. Super thick and super coarse. I have enough hair for three people on top of my head (seriously), the kind that hurts because it pulls on my scalp if it's in a tight ponytail for too long. It looks like something straight out of a shampoo commercial when I take the time to give it some good attention, and it looks like a nightmare if I don't but leave it down (trust me on this one). Good attention takes so much time, I rarely bother. I don't have an hour a day to fight with it, so it usually gets thrown up in a clip or slopped into something held in place with an elastic. I have so much damn hair that I can't afford to get it professionally colored, because it costs me 2-3xs the 'normal' amount because one vat of mix does not begin to cover it, no.

I remember, when I was 18 or so and could spend my money on whatever, sitting in the chair at the hair salon, just about to get it colored. The package delivery guy was on his way out, and when he caught sight of me, he stopped behind me and told me, "Don't. Cut. That. Ever." Either he wanted to bang the hell out of me so he could be buried in my cascade of hair, or he wanted to kill me, shave my head, and glue my hair onto his Betsy Blowup Doll. Either way, he was clearly a fan.

So, back to the au natural hair routine. It was fabulous, fantastic. So I decided to keep it up. I also decided to try not to wash it more than twice a week. Hey, I'm a stay at home mom, I can do that.

Round 2 I did the same, then brushed a smidge of tea tree oil through my locks. Bingo. Super shine, soft, hair-commercial-here-I-come. Then I had to ruin it with a boxed hair color. The greys were getting bad, really bad, so this part was non-negotiable. My hair got great color from it, but it also got pissed off and didn't feel great anymore.

Round 3. Back to loveliness. No flakes, and my scalp isn't bothering me. My hair is back to its pre-coloring fabulosity, and the greys are gone besides. I'm a total convert. No more over-washing, no more expensive products that really do more harm than good. My hair and scalp are already thanking me, and my wallet will, too.

So if you're not happy with your hair's current state, consider giving it a try. It sounds kind of crazy, but it works. And no, I swear you don't stink to high heaven of apple cider vinegar. That's what the rinsing is for.

Oh my. What an absolute shit storm for Best Selling author Shey Stahl. Word has it she has plagiarized big chunks of her latest release, For the Summer, from a fanfic writers' piece (and yes, the ' goes there, because it was co-written).

Now, let me first say that I've read neither book/work. I went into this whole drama with an open mind. I mean, with all the books out there, some are bound to be similar, yes? But then I read what folks were saying about it...and read...and read, and I gotta say- the similarities are astounding. Too astounding to be coincidental. I'd like to think that it was completely accidental, that the fanfic piece so riveted Shey Stahl that she accidentally let too much of the overtone of it into her work.

But I can't convince myself of that. Too many passages, too closely written. No.

I'm simply disgusted. So many, myself included, write and publish and dream  of someday being a best selling author. But I'll be damned if I'll do it illegally or unethically. Using someone else's talent, sweat and tears to get me there is not only just plain wrong, it's disgusting. It's like drowning a basket of kittens, or shoving an old lady out of your way to get the last seat on the bus. It's low and despicable and makes my toes curls in a bad way. 

Will this make Shey Stahl a has-been? I don't know, but it should. Someone who steals someone else's intellectual property shouldn't sell anything. Ever again. Ever. But it's not up to me (though it should be, like everything else, IMO). I see folks have been busy calling her out on Goodreads and Amazon, and while I generally frown upon the 'wild dog pack' mentality, in this instance, they're right to do it, as I see it.

I'm guessing the lawsuits to follow will be epic. Anything she ever writes again will be scrutinized, page by page, word by word. As it should be.

As of this writing, it looks like ALL of her works are off of B+N and Amazon, and her FB author page has been pulled down.

Doesn't look like innocence to me when you run with your tail tucked between your legs. Doesn't help her case at all. I imagine her publisher made that call, because this shit storm is about to run down hill to them, I suspect.

There's no pride in 'succeeding' by stealing, so what's the point, really? Just my 2 cents, folks.

So my epic (read: sad, but a big deal in my world) night did not go according to plan. At all. And I'm very remorseful about it, because I can never get it back!

Last night was my long-awaited viewing of the movie World War Z. I love zombies. I mean LOVE zombies. Books, shows, movies...you name it, I love it if it deals with my rotting undead or infected friends. Needless to say, all week long I've looked forward to watching the movie with my hubby once the kids were in bed. I wanted to spend my Saturday evening with Brad Pitt, the Infected, and a nice glass of wine (or three). Oh yeah, and my husband. Yeah.

It should have gone as planned. Really, it should have. But my BF called all wound up about something with her ex-husband just when we were about to start the movie. I'm a bitch. I admit it. I didn't pick up and let her leave a message.

"It's me. I know you were going to watch your movie and all, but if you get a chance, give me a call. It's important."

Well, crap. Brad and the zombies would have to wait. I mean, I'm a shitty enough friend to make her leave a message, but not shitty enough to ignore it when she's says it's important.  Turns out, it wasn't important, just weird and sad, nothing earth-shattering, and damn it, she could have waited to tell me in a day or two instead of knowingly interrupting my big night. Which she totally knew she was doing.

So once that conversation was done when I begged off (I told her I could talk for 10, told hubby 'Give me 15', but spent 22 minutes on the phone), we finally begin my beloved, long-awaited movie. The lights are dimmed, the candles lit, I'm clutching my wine glass in one hand and my pillow in the other because it's going to be scary, ya know.

I couldn't watch more than 15 f'in minutes at a time. The dog wanted out, the cat wanted in, hubby was passively aggressively suggesting that maybe I could make us a snack...but wait, there's more. Hubby was surfing online, some crap about getting his permit to carry a gun in the neighboring state of MA. That's all well and good, but can we discuss that shit NOT in the middle of my precious World War Z?

Fine. I wasn't freaking out. I was rolling with it. The movie was thus far awesome and I was way too wrapped up in wondering what would happen next to take the time to debate putting my pets, and husband, on the free section of craigslist.

The 5 yo Lil Miss starts whining from her bed. Her throat hurts, she complains. Hubby and I try every trick in the book to get her back to sleep, from a drink to a song to finally Advil. No dice. I even lie in bed with her until she's asleep again, but the little monkey springs awakes and cries the moment I shift my weight to make my escape.

Naturally we're at, like, the beginning of the end of the movie. Where it's scary and tense and edge-of-your-seat but I've got shit to do, you know. Shit I don't want to do, shit I just want to go away for another twenty minutes.

Finally, in desperation, I relent and put Lil Miss in our bed, where she promptly settles down and falls asleep immediately with a triumphant smile on her face. Damn, she's good. I finished my movie, and my snack, and lament over my lost perfect-movie-and-wine night that was so totally ruined by the rest of my life. I can never see that movie again for the first time -le sigh-.

But one good thing did come of it. Hubby was totally looking to get some, and figured we could have a good time, what with me and my wine and all. I would have been game, initially, but when I've been trying to watch a less-than-2-hr. movie since 9, and it's now after midnight, I'm worn out.

So, Lil Miss's unexpected trip to our bed was a totally welcome cock block in the end. Hubby didn't get his sex, but I didn't get my wine-and-a-movie escape as intended. So no one got what they wanted, exactly. Oh well.

I still haven't seen the movie 'Magic Mike'. Maybe I can chloroform the kids, and hubby, some future Saturday night and have my magical, uninterrupted, relaxing evening then. Because it sure as hell didn't happen last night.

So leprosy week has seemed to come to an end, more or less. No, I did not actually have leprosy, I just looked like it. Due to a lovely combo of pre-period severe acne coupled with a cold sore outbreak, I had (count 'em) 4 massive red, splotchy zit sites on my face and a lovely raw lower lip that went through various stages of scabbing. Oh, and half a dozen angry little red zit sites on my right lower neck, just to round it out.

It was highly attractive and led to me wishing I could lock myself in a bell tower for the duration. But there was homework to oversee, kids to pick up from school and feed, and a husband who only vaguely knows where the washing machine resides, so the bell tower idea was out.

I have managed to keep my face-to-face interactions with the rest of humanity to a minimum except for last Friday when I was forced to show my nasty face at the public library or forgo our weekend movies. I hadn't been in there in months and months, since hubby usually pops in to pick up/drop off stuff on his way home from work, but naturally it just didn't work that way last week. Because I looked like a dermatology experiment gone horribly wrong, of course.

There at the desk is one of the cheerful-nice librarians, who knows us all well. She commented how she hadn't seen me in soooo long while doing her best  not to stare at my eroding lower lip or my volcanic acne that even Cover Girl and Loreal could not so much as diminish. I muttered and avoided eye contact and wished the ground would swallow me whole. She did lighten the mood, however, when she laid out two of our reading choices side by side with a big flourish.

"I just had to chuckle when I see that this (points to Joe McKinney's 'Flesh Eaters' with the graphically decaying zombie on the front- come to think of it, I think I bore an uncanny resemblance to it at the time) goes home with this (points to cheery, sunny, Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House in the Big Woods').

Bonus points to her for holding back on suggesting I also borrow 'So You've Got Flesh Eating Bacteria...Now What?' or 'When Your Face Is One Massive Infection- for Dummies'.

Now it's a week later, my zits have calmed down to a dull roar and my lip just looks a little irritated. I'm not a super-vain woman. I've even been known to run out of the house without brushing my hair because there just wasn't time to do so, but it was bad. Really bad. I thought that acne was for teenagers and as I generally only break out in cold sores a time or two a year in times of extreme stress, I don't know what the hell that was all about. I'm neither a teen nor under extreme stress and while I will get a few smaller pimples before my period, that was, like, 4 years of pre-period acne all lumped together. Is it too much to hope that I get a free pass on that for the next 6 months? Probably.

All I know is that if the 'Perfect Storm' of skin/visible health issues on my face could not converge all together at the same time ever again, I'd be okay with that. May next month be better, or movies at the library be damned, I'm hunkering down 'til it clears. Local public, you're welcome.

So today is just tough. There's no particular reason for it, but I often suffer from mild to moderate depression, and today feels like a moderate to severe day. One of those days where I want everyone and everything to just go away and leave me the fuck alone. It just feels like the simplest little daily tasks require herculean effort on my part.

Again, nothing in particular triggered it. I just woke up wondering how the hell anyone could expect me to let out the dogs and get the kids cereal, never mind piece them together and get them to school. I managed, somehow. I should add that with one in 2nd grade and one in K, and no bus service for our 1/2 day K program, I make 4 trips a day back and forth to deliver and pick up my younger ones every day. I have to be somewhere with someone at 8:45, 11:50, 2:30 and 3:35. It's a royal pain in the ass that makes my day bleed away, but it gets done. But it's tiresome.

I went grocery shopping this morning, as I always do on Thursday mornings, and I knew, as I stood at checkout, that I look like shit today. Not the 'under the weather' or 'not quite put together' looks like shit, that very lovely, special, dead behind the eyes looks like shit. The kind where I don't have the strength to muster chitchat with the cashier or do tough stuff like, you know, make eye contact with people around me because it's just too damn draining. The looks like shit where I'm sure that people can tell something is really wrong with me by just looking at me. I look 'flat', dead behind the eyes, because I feel hollow inside today. I've seen folks like that, and I know that today is just my turn, apparently.

So I get my groceries and head home with my 5 yo daughter in the back seat, happily chatting away. Naturally it's not even the kind of chatter you can phone in your response to with some 'Oh?' or "Uh-huh's, it's the kind that requires concentration and responses. I silently cried for half the ride home because I had no idea how I was going to force myself to get all of the groceries inside and put away. I just wanted to crawl into bed, throw the covers over my head, and sleep for 6 hours, and leave everyone else to sort their own shit out without me.

But I don't have that luxury (who does, really?). I have children and pets and a husband depending on me. I somehow got the food in and put away, and even got my daughter to K on time. Now I've got a blessed 2 hours to myself. I'm an indie author, and I should be pecking away at my newest work, but I just can't. I want to, I really do, and I know that I should as I've barely done anything in the last week, but I just plain can't. It's like the part of me that's motivated has been held down by the part of me that just wants to sink into nothingness, and while Motivated Me's kicking and screaming, Nothingness Me is still winning. At least for now.

I used to 'juice' frequently. Hell, I've even done 10 day fasts of nothing by homemade juice. It's been a while since I juiced at all, and my weight has been creeping up a bit (up 8 lbs in a year). So I need to get that shit straight. Weight aside, I feel like Superwoman on the juice, with tons of energy, and happy, too. I'm sure it's my body rejoicing that it's getting the stuff it needs since my regular diet isn't exactly balanced. It could be better, it could be worse. But I definitely feel better when I'm juicing.

So I got tons of stuff for juicing today. I'll take off some pounds and hopefully get my energy and ability to do more than just exist back. Because today, that's how I'm feeling. Like it's a monumental task to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But I'm managing, and I'll manage tomorrow too.

But I don't want to just 'manage'. I want to feel, to be happy, to look forward to things, to not be daunted by usually insignificant tasks. Tomorrow is another day. Until then, I'm gonna watch some crappy daytime TV and play some Candy Crush Saga. I'll be okay, just not today.