Dear MJ,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I disconnected my old phone number a few days before my birthday, so if you texted me anything thats the reason I didnt respond. Also, I lost my old phone before I transfered all my numbers, so I dont have yours, or else I would call you. AND, flake that I am, I lost your address too. I feel pretty horrible about not being able to contact you directly. Hopefully you will see this in the next few days and email me or something.

But I digress...

more ingenuity.

I have been seeing shaved ice shacks all around town and get a bit teary remembering how gross you think it is that I like cream on my snow cones. I wish I could be celebrating with you. I havent had one sip of the hard stuff. Maybe its my subconscious wanting to wait till I can drink with you. Maybe Ill have some shots tonight. My parents are gone for the weekend, so I could potentially get trashed without fear of retribution...on the other hand: waking up at 6:30 with a hangover to take care of the fat screaming one doesnt sound appealing. Ill just have a Irish Coffee, or something thereabouts.

I am envious of your freedoms, and hope you fully abuse them tonight.

In more mundane news: I learned/taught myself to crochet. Ive been fiendishly making dishcloths and washcloths for my mother. My baby (Who is actually a toddler now since his first birthday and the fact that he can walk now.) likes to use them as hats. He doesnt say much in the way of english, but somehow picked up the word "Death". He scoots around pointing at people and things whispering, "...death...death...death..." and then giggles.

He is so my son. Mom is concerned.

So other than drinking and general celebration, I think you should count your accomplishments and the fact that you havent died yet. Not saying you lead a risky life, but people die is all sorta of weird and unexpected ways. You seem to have managed to avoid all of them.

How are you? Where do you work? Same place? How is your husband? He is always so painfully polite. And Whiskers? still puking on things? The house; Im sure its nice to have your very own building. What does your hair look like? Mine is well on its way to mermaid status (almost touches my boobs). Read any good books lately? 

Here is a unipegasuar. 

I love and miss you and hope to see you within the next 3 to 5 years. If on your 26th birthday I havent seen you I'll fly to your house and demand we have tea. and crumpets.

 I found out that crumpets are very much like small fluffy pancakes. 

Cheers.

I live in my parent's basement...

Just like I did when I was in high school. So imagine my slight discomfort and utter amusement at the thought of having alcohol in their house. I did a bit of drinking in my high school days, mostly ending in massive amounts of vomit. I even had the occasional slip up of coming home not totally sober. I new well enough that if I was going to be misbehaving I better not do it at home.

You would think that after years of good behavior I would have no qualms about drinking in or around the house. Especially with it being legal and everything. No such luck. My dad even asked me why I hadn't bought any beer yesterday. Good question Dad. Maybe it was your excellent parenting. Or maybe it was that time my brother and I snuck back in the back door from a party at 4 a.m. and you and mom were sitting on the couch waiting for us. Points to ponder.

My ever attentive partner in crime whisked me away last night to the nearest liquor store (Right next to Albertsons because we're classy. We might as well me drinking Jack out of a coffee mug... like my brother does. How fitting.) so I could fulfill my legal right and American obligation to buy alcohol on my 21st birthday. I went on autopilot and got a small, very clear bottle of Absolut vodka. I had no idea it was made in Sweden, land of eternal snow and blondes and cheap furniture. 

Now its sitting on my night stand. 

I opened it this morning and licked to top of the bottle, just to sample it. Vodka smells like hand sanitizer and make my breath heavy. It tastes the way my nose feels when I breathe gasoline for too long. It made me feel like a dragon, breathing heat, weighing down the air...   

Being an adult can be so surreal.

cheers. 

Drinks anyone?

Tomorrow is my 21st birthday. I remember distinctly on my 18th birthday having my picture taken for my new ID thinking, "I cant wait for the next three years to be over!"

Now that's ingenuity. 

Oh how the tides have changed. See, back then I was waiting for my first semester at college to start. I was going to be living with my best friend without parents or rules or any common sense whatsoever! It was going to be like every college movie I had ever seen: parties every weekend, too many friends to count, and passing all my classes without studying. I was finally going to get over my shyness and my geekiness. I was going get out of the shadow of all my cooler friends. Everyone was going to love me.

The truth is that I was poor as dirt, didnt have enough discipline to write my papers, ended up getting in a nasty disagreement with my friend, dropped out of college two months after enrolling (thereby loosing about 2500$) and moving back home. To be fair: I was brand-newly engaged, so in hindsight I think if my now husband had not been in the picture, I would have stayed and worked things out.

Three years later my priorities have changed drastically. By no stretch of the imagination did I think I would be married with a kid right now. I dont even like kids. I love my son, and maybe two other babies, but thats it. I cant stand kids. Married? I got married when I was 18. Who the hell does that?! This isnt 1954. When I was pregnant I got that you-poor-thing-your-probably-still-in-highschool look from everyone whenever I went to Wal-Mart. 

...Seriously?

Im not interested in parties anymore. I dont care about how much I can drink before throwing up, and if Im being perfectly honest that amount is pretty small. I am not a fan of drugs, being around people doing drugs, or people telling stories about drugs. People without jobs dont impress me. People whose vocabularies rival my own do. The kinds of things that are important to me now are my son's daily meals, paying the mortgage, mastering my darning skills because we cant afford another pair of the kind of pants my husband wears to work. Ive become an excellent cook because we dont go out to eat anymore. My interests have changed a bit as well. I dont care so much about my hair or my clothes. Knowing about more obscure bands than anyone else is completely worthless to me. My political beliefs have evolved, though I dont want to discuss them here. While I am still a fan of books, writing, knitting, and good movies, most of my previous concerns seem petty to me in my new life.

My son is most important to me.

  q2wr2e234cvfddAEZCZaezds DX  

Just now he crawled onto my lap to help me type. What a nice boy. Although he did try to bite me after I put him back on the ground. 

So tomorrow I will be celebrating my 21st year of life. I will not be having a party. I will be going to dinner with my husband and probably having a mixed drink while I eat. For most of the day Ill be playing with my toddler. Golly, he's a toddler now. I dont feel so young anymore. Ill probably have cake with my parents because mum insists on having cake on birthdays. What a ridiculously nice woman.

As for my friend who I once lived with: I miss you desperately every day. 

As for my other friend who lived with us, who I never got into too many fights with: I hope you didnt die in the floods. And yes, I miss you too. 

cheers.

My body hates me.

I might have Celiac Disease. I already have Diabetes, which mucks up my food consumption and ruins my body and makes me sick all the time. And I already have cataracts and retinal neuropathy, making it hard to read what Im typing. On top of all that I went to the doctor yesterday and found out I might have another autoimmune disease. 

Ive been have all these horrible unpleasant intestinal problems for months, but its only been the last week that Ive been sick enough to see someone about it. Since having my son Ive gone through Tums and Pepto like the apocalypse is already upon us. I almost always attribute my illnesses, no matter what they are, to my diabetes. Thats why I waited so long before going to the doc. Whole lot of good that did me. If it is celiac, my small intestine is probably worn paper thin by now. 

The good thing about this disease is that the cure simply a diet change. I would just have to stop eating gluten. No pills, no injections. Gluten is the elastic protein in wheat that makes baked bready anything soft, spongey, basically not a rock. I just have to stop eating all my favorite foods. No more muffins, pancakes, bread, pasta, hostess anything. Im glad that it isnt something worse. I know it isnt for sure yet, that the tests havent come back yet, but the symptoms I have are pretty definitive. 

If it isnt celiac, well...I have no idea whats making me so sick. 

Fuck. Im going to miss pancakes. 

I am an 80 year old man.

I recently found out that I have cataracts. You those you who dont know what that is, let me break it down for you:

In the simplest terms a cataract is  clouding of the lens of the eye. Generally, in healthy people, cataracts only form later in life. Most of us have seen an older person with cloudy pupils. When the cataracts cloud the entire pupil, the eye is completely blind.

I have cataracts because of my diabetes. After my pregnancy I took very poor care of my blood sugar. Bad blood sugar does a million horrible things to the body, but I had the great misfortune to develop a couple pretty bad eye problems. Poor blood sugar forces the blood vessels in the eye to expand and contract in unnatural ways. The vessels in my eyes have also begun bursting. This is bad.

Regardless of the above information, there is good news. Cataracts can easily be removed. A simple surgery and all is well. Once I have the surgery my eye doctor said I wont need glasses either. Ill have normal vision!

I thought Id post about this because Im sitting on the couch watching a movie and I can barely see the tv. Its only 10 feet away. I feel old.

Ive also fallen in love with Zooey Deschanel.

toodles.

I went to the Doctor today.

I have a psychiatrist. He's a pretty super guy. I started seeing him irregularly in 2007.

I went to see him yesterday, as I do most springs. I have what could roughly be described as severe cyclical depression. Every spring I get violently depressed, so I make an appointment to go see Mr. Doctor. I usually end up on some kind of antidepressant (or some other kind of med), which does its job for a few weeks, then I feel better and stop taking the pill. Or I cant handle the side effects so I stop taking them. Antipsychotics tend to make me really really tired, so I cant really take them for long periods of time.

So Far I have been on Lexapro (several different times), Zyprexa, Geodon, one or two other pills I cant remember, and now Lithium.

What is Lithium? I can hear you googling as we speak. Let me save you the trouble. 

Lithium is first an alkali metal. It can be found on the periodic table right under Hydrogen. It is a naturally occurring substance that is mined. Lithium salts are used as mood stabilizers. 

I was prescribed Lithium to help counteract certain unsavory side effects from antidepressants...mainly the side effect that makes me want to jump off tall buildings.

I have to take one pill twice daily by mouth. I will develop hand tremors, increased thirst, appetite loss, and possible thyroid issues. I figure these are all better than hating myself and wanting to die. 

My name is Alice and Im heavily medicated. 

Alice, you've been duped.

Hi Alice,

I work with Accreditedonlinecolleges.com, where we just published entitled "50 Quintessential British Novels"Considering this overlap in subject matter with your blog; I thought perhaps you would be interested in sharing the article with your readers? If so, you can find the article here: (http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/50-quintessential-british-novels/).

Either way, I'm glad to have come across your blog. It's very refreshing finding a site that explores Literature in such an interesting way. Thanks again for your time!

Sincerely,

Emma Taylor

I got this in my email this morning. How fucking special.

Now I know at least robots named Emma and Larry enjoy my writing. If only I had a thing for geeky female computers I'd be set for life. Kinky. Expect a nice St. Patty's Day post later.

toodles.

UPDATE: APRIL 14 2011

Hi Alice,

I work with Onlinecollege.org, where we just published entitled "15 Most Famous Cafes in the Literary World"Considering this overlap in subject matter with your blog; I thought perhaps you would be interested in sharing the article with your readers? If so, you can find the article here: (http://www.onlinecollege.org/2011/04/13/15-most-famous-cafes-in-the-literary-world/).

Either way, I hope you continue putting out great content through your blog. It has been a sincere pleasure to read.

Sincerely,

Carol Brown

This is getting old.