Negativity at its least positive

Yeah, could someone explain to me again how these people look forward to the cold? And why? We have finally reached our temperature norms here and the natives are frothing at the corners of their chattering mouths. By this weekend, the temps without windchill will be in the negative teens.
As if the teens weren't negative enough.
And MN'ans are gleeful at the idea of ice fishing and corralling themselves to the winter carnival.
You know, the Darwinist in me wants to say that the bitter temps weed out the dotards and ne'er do wells, but from my experience, it merely gives them the chance to sequester themselves in the warm confines of their lairs and regroup for the coming battles with the sun and mosquitoes. .. and each other.
And me, for that matter. Ohhh, I long for the days when the climbing summer sun initiates the street racers and the cadaverous skin from its winter slumber.
The Progeny are losing their little minds. Sawyer just started saying "Guess what?" and Riley is certain that the dining table is merely the second level of the floor- ripe for dancing on and anxiously awaiting the return of all of the balls in the house.
Note to self: must build indoor gymnasium into dream house. Right next to the atrium. Upstairs from the Dungeon of Despair. Outside- a few yards from the house proper- will be housing for all my minions.

Back on topic. I hate this weather. Love the winter fashions, hate their necessity. Love the sunsets, hate the lack of a working sun. Want to flail the next rosey cheeked welp that tells me that this is nothin.
This is not nothin, this a whole lotta negative- and it's positively fuckin cold damnit.

Big Ben! Parliament!

My mother will be leaving the cozy confines of New Jersey on Friday and making her way cross country (with her irritating and loyal Bichon) to Minnesota. She is packing up her belongings and keepsakes and going where her daughter and her grandchildren live: in the Frozen Tundra.
She has lived there her whole life. It is a different culture out east, a different mindset. The people look and sound different. The few times she has come out here, the very same complaints spewed forth that did from my very lips the first three years I lived out here: THIS SUCKS. It's cold, the food sucks, it's cold all-the-time, everyone is blond, the mosquitoes, no one has ever heard of a panzaratti, the food sucks, serious lack of public transport, the people talk funny, the people talk slow, the people drive slow, the people walk slow, the people just look slow.
So I've been here over six years and in that time I have come to appreciate the standard of living, the social programs, the lilac-lined highways...
and the slow people.
But during her visits here I wanted to choke her with her own sock. I had gotten over the Midwest's shortcomings and learned to live as one of them. How anyone put up with my constant comparisons between East and Midwest is beyond me. And yet, not. Me and the kids flew out there for my (ahem) thirtieth birthday in November and we ate like royalty. Ahh, the food. How fortunate for the palettes of them all that the Irish, Italian, Greek and Jewish decided to set root out there...
Now she's on her way here.
I know the first few years are gonna suck for her. In Jersey, nearly every little street corner in her town is occupied by some cute little Italian family and their little shop. The town we grew up in was bucolic: the houses were miles apart, our driveway was an acre long and every place in town was owned by people whose kids went to the local high school.
That is a blaring difference i have noticed out here. The big box.
Of course you've got your Wal-Mecca and your Target in Jersey, but they are more the minority. Even the malls are populated with locally owned private shops.
My whole family has gone to the same butcher for more than half a decade. I feel so guilty for her relocation. I was dying to get out of Jersey my whole life and see the world, to see people who weren't stepping over each other to get ahead. So for my mother to be with her closest kindred, she must move. I wish i had a way to make it up to her.

But I gave up my deep Jersey Italian roots to come to Minnesota where our kids will receive a better education and enjoy a little space.
It will take her a while to acclimate. She's coming here to be with her family, the important parts of it, anyway.

I mean, just the other day, my husband had to pull over to the side of the road and make an impromptu repair on James. Within the 15 minutes he was pulled over, four people stopped.
Regardless, it will be an odd balancing act for her. To pine for the comfort of home and to be elated at being a major presence in her grand children's lives.

On how to over exhert your grey matter

So I am currently studying for my Series 6 and 63 securities licenses. Upon passing the exams, I will be able to instruct people on how to not be poor like me.
A severe case of do as I say and not do as I do .... you say?
Damn straight.
Just because I know what to do with money, doesn't mean I have the money to do anything with.
So anyway, having to study for this big of a test at the age of 30 is a somewhat daunting task. I am tapping recesses of my intellect that were long dormant. I used to be a book learner and an apt test taker. A decade or so of the working world and motherhood has taken its toll. I am now the hands on gal. So much so, that my previous predilection for sequestering myself and absorbing all materials osmotically has given way to a need to sit and watch things being done. I used to hate those people. Get some damned imagination and picture it, poseur.
Yeah, age has robbed me of my imagination and visualization.
Whatever. I'll trade that for a nice rack any day. Bitches.
Speaking of rack, I have been longing to resurrect a long forgotten hobby I indulged in in high school: photography. Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone now has the digital bug and considers themselves the next Leibowitz. Fuck that.
I'm talking bare bones photography. Dark rooms, noxious chemicals, artsy experimentation. Of course, the darkness and dankness and of course the explosivity speak to the goth in me.
More on "the goth" at a later date.
I have one week before classes begin and my thoughts keep drifting to more pleasurable activities... things that don't make me feel, oh, i dunno. Fuckin Thirty.
My kingdom for a Long Island, a cuban and a new camera.

The second coming of the Apocolypse

So my first incarnation of this site suffered from a severe case of TMI. I spewed info about previous romantic relations, marital foibles and the inner workings of the deep recesses of the connundrum that is my mind.
If you glean anything from the shortfalls and errors from others, learn from me. My oversharing nearly ended my marriage.
If you or someone you know has taken to posting to get out all the inner demons, think twice. Please.
Ohhhhkay, soapbox sufficiently stowed....