Due to circumstances both within and beyond my control, I’ve moved. Please update your links/bookmarks accordingly.

New site: dashleysteele.wordpress.com.

I feel better; thanks for your thoughts and comments on various social networking sites. Tomorrow I will venture back into the Land of the Living (no pun intended, but I smiled again so that’s something, right?) and resume going through the motions at work (I have always gone through the motions; my grandmother’s death is in no way responsible for that, except maybe now I don’t have to pretend to care, at least for a little while), email Lauren, and come home to watch Parks & Recreation and The Office. I may even brush my teeth.

My grandmother had open heart surgery yesterday morning and my dad told me he’d call me afterward to let me know that everything was fine. The surgery would take three hours. She went in at seven a.m. Four a.m. PST.

The whole afternoon I looked at the phone. It did not ring. Something was wrong and they were waiting for one of two things to happen: she would get better, or she would not get better.

My mother called me this morning to let me know that my grandmother had passed away. She made it through the surgery but it was rough going. “She was 86,” my mom said. “Doctors don’t like to operate on people that old, regardless of their health.”

I am sad, but I am not shocked. She was 86, after all. Three kids, grandkids, great-grandkids. She’s traveled to everywhere (my grandfather was in the military) and lived through many things. By anyone’s estimation, her life had been full.

That does not make it easier.

I stayed home from work today because my monthly pains had been even more excruciating than they had ever been before. I woke up at 6 and could not move. “Something is wrong,” I thought. And not with me. I figured I would hear something about my grandmother’s surgery by then. I checked my phone, as I had a zillion point two times, to make sure it wasn’t on silent. I called into work and tried to sleep some more.

At seven-thirty my phone rang, but because technology failed me I could not see who was calling. My phone would not turn on. It was ringing for all it was worth but I could not answer. I turned it off, turned it back on. Jason called.

“Hey baby.”
“Hey. Something is wrong with my phone. It rang but it would not…”
“So you didn’t talk to your mom?”

Allow me to get a little melodramatic here and say that I knew what he was going to say. I knew the tone of his voice and could hear the sadness and compassion before he’d even said anything. He never calls me in the morning. I am at work, he is at work. Something was wrong.

“No, something is wrong with my phone.”
“Your grandmother. She passed early this morning.”
“Oh.” His voice got very small on the other end, not because he was talking more softly, but because I knew what he was going to say before he said it. I knew what had happened and partly expected it but could still not make sense of the words he was saying. I had tuned him out to process this strange information.
“I can stay home from work this afternoon and…”
I honestly do not remember what I said after that. Something along the lines of “No” and “You don’t have to.”

I hung up and called my mom. That’s what I needed to do. Moms make everything better and she would tell me that no, this had not happened and I was dreaming or I now had a crazy husband to contend with.

So I called and she answered and said “Hi, honey.”
Something was wrong. She usually says “Hello?” in a joking tone, like “Who is this and why are you calling me?” even though my name flashes on the screen.

So we talked and she told me the details and it wasn’t until she told me that she had seen my grandma after the surgery and she did not look like herself that I cried. I knew what was coming and had expected it (we had all did; we were realistically optimistic) and then it was over. We said goodbye and I came inside and fired up the computer because what the hell else was I supposed to do.

Something was wrong. But it’s okay now.
It’s okay because it has to be, because dwelling on something does not make it easier to cope with, because it’s a survival skill. My grandmother and I had not had the best relationship, and I will not say that we did now that she is no longer with us. But I realized before I moved out here that holding grudges and being angry will not help anything, that it hurts relationships by not allowing you to spend time with the people you want to spend time with.

I spoke to her the evening before she went in to surgery. We talked about a lot of things in the short ten minutes we were on the phone. She was going to have another great-grandchild, she said. But the child’s parents were not as thrilled because they already have a six-month old.
“That seems a little late to work out how the child got there in the first place, if you ask me. By number three they should have that figured out already.” Those were her words, not mine.

This is not a memorial to my grandmother by any means, nor is it a laundry list of things unsaid that I am saying now because I feel bad (mostly because even if she had access to internet in the Great Beyond she would not know how to use it). But it has helped me, as it always has, to write things out. I say more to my blog than I say to my friends because it’s more comforting to be able to talk and talk without interruptions, and because the whole “I’m sorry” conversation makes me feel so uncomfortable that I want to crawl out of my skin.

So.
That brings us to here.
Something was wrong and now it is right. And I think, without trying to be too cliche about things, that things have always been right. That life is too short, even if you live to be 86, for things to not be okay.

Other news: my parents are coming this weekend! We will be going to look at trees and rocks and water. We’re going to spend Saturday & Sunday at the Oregon coast, and to get there from here means driving through Redwood National Forest. So trees! That’s fun, right? Looking at trees? I’ve never been a fan of nature, but from what I hear these are some big honkin’ trees. And so after that it’s the Oregon coast, which is really just water and rocks, not to be confused with the beach. Beaches you can play in; the water is warm and sharks lurk over the crest of every wave and that was part of the fun of it all. Coasts are for looking at and trying not to freeze to death while taking in all of the Natural Beauty. Woohoo! (But really I’m excited. I have never seen a coast that did not have condos built into it or was overly populated by pasty tourists. Nor have I ever seen a tree as big as a skyscraper. New adventures all around.)

Edit: I took a shower but did not wash my hair as I don’t know how I’m going to wear it tomorrow. If I want it curly but it is just washed, the curl will not hold. Also no fish for dinner. Jason is picking up Arby’s instead.
Can I tell you a little story about that, about the Arby’s? There used to be not too far from us. Not that we ever ate there too often, but it was nice to know we could if we wanted to. So maybe three weeks ago we decide that we really want some Arby’s. We drive there and on the way I am dreaming of roast beef sandwiches and curly fries. Jason pulls into the parking lot and there is no Arby’s signage anywhere. We were the two most confused people in the world. What happened? Where did it go? Did Arby’s close? DEAR GOD DID ARBY’S CLOSE BECAUSE I WILL HAVE TO MOVE. And then I saw a sign, a handwritten little gem of a thing in one of the window/doors: We have moved to Stewart Ave.
Well shit. Stewart Avenue was across town and who wanted to drive all the way across town? It’s called fast food for a reason, folks. So we picked up some Subway instead and I tried to imagine it was a roast beef sandwich but I could not fool my tastebuds. I have been craving this stupid sandwich since then and tonight I can finally get the hell over it and move on with my life.

I have never had a clear cut plan about my career path. I changed my major five times in three years, and, after four years of college, finally settled on getting my AA just to be done with the whole mess. College was not in my best interest. I’ve often thought about going back to school, maybe to become a nurse, and then I remember that I didn’t like college. I loathed it. I hated the homework, the large classes, the mandatory chapel, the cliques, but most of all, being in college only served to remind me every single day that I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was supposedly working towards a degree but that seemed so far off, so in the future, that it didn’t seem real. Kind of like saving for retirement does now (don’t you worry, though. I’ve got a 401(k)).

No one was more surprised than I was when I landed a corporate desk job. I always thought of myself as too vivacious, too creative, to be stuck behind a computer typing numbers all day. Is this what I was going to do for the rest of my life? Am I stuck in the land of office jobs? Will I never again be a part of a team, lending my talents to serve a bigger purpose? Will there ever come a day when I will be called upon to do something exciting, or is reconciling statements all I’m good for? I’m obviously qualified and good at my job–you don’t survive three rounds of layoffs without that little ego boost–but it’s never a job I really wanted to be good at. I was afraid that if I was good at it that I would be stuck. Forever. And every job after that would just be more accounting, more data entry, more annoying pantsuits. All because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had the opportunity to go to college but wasted it because I couldn’t make up my mind.

I still have no idea. I have no long term goals, a fact I lamented to Lauren in a moment of extreme panic. Is it okay that I don’t have long term career goals? Everyone around me seems to be in school or done with school and I’m… well. I’m in Oregon. With a corporate desk job. And a husband. A husband who makes all of this, the job that doesn’t satisfy me, the internal struggle I face when I think about an actual career, the fact that I cannot wear pajamas to work, okay. He is the most supportive husband I’ve ever had and I adore him for it. It is not easy to deal with my long-winded ramblings about Work and Life and Things In General. But he listens and gives advice and cracks jokes. His sense of humor has a way of completely turning around a conversation, and for a while I forgot why I was even worked up in the first place.

There’s also the Husband thing. His work and school schedule give us maybe two hours a night to spend together and I’m not going to waste those hours updating the stupid internet (Internet, you are not stupid. Please, baby, I’m sorry. Why you gotta be like that?).

Except.
I kind of like blogging. I was rereading some of my older posts the other day and realized that I didn’t have a lot going on then, either, but I managed to update every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. And some of it was funny. Maybe I got older and lost my imagination, my ability to form coherent and engaging prose. Or maybe I updated in an effort to woo a certain someone I met through this blog (cough cough, Jason, cough) and now that I need not woo anymore, my need to constantly update has gone by the wayside. Or maybe I just had a more entertaining job.

Either way, here are some things you can read between my sporadic updates:
She Likes Purple. This is my most recent internet discovery and dear readers, she is flipping adorable. Kind of like Dooce only not so… um… something. More toned down, perhaps? And relatable? If Dooce is the Angelina Jolie of the blogging world, then She Likes Purple is the Jennifer Garner. Yes, she’s still pretty awesome and you would probably swallow your tongue if you ever met her, but after she showed you how to make the perfect margarita or ranted about how Texas summers fucking suck, you’d realize that yeah, you could hang with her.

What Would Tyler Durden Do? This is my favorite celebrity gossip site. The writing is hilarious and sometimes there’s pictures of naked famous people so win-win!

FML Other people’s sucky lives that are more amusing than anything.

Yesterday my friend and I went to the pound and that was a huge mistake. Cutest. Puppies. Ever. Too bad (or good) our apartment does not allow animals or I would have gotten all of them. For dinner we went to Jay & Meg’s and guess who the hell got a new puppy (hint: Jay and Meg) and it’s been puppy central in my head for a full 24 hours and I cannot take it anymore. I dreamt about puppies and dogs last night. Can we afford a dog? Yes. Do we have the space required house a dog? Not so much. There is a dog park in town and we’re both able to come home for lunch (and Jason’s schedule permits him to be home for long stretches of the day during the morning hours) but there’s still the whole “no dogs in the apartment thing” and I wonder if I can tell them it’s a seeing eye dog. Can we get evicted for raising a seeing eye dog? Not just in this case, but what if we were legitimately doing it? Would they throw us out for doing the Blind Citizens of America a favor?

I’m not sure what we’ll do today. I feel the beginning stages of ickyness in my ears and throat so hopefully I am not getting sick again. Just to be sure, I drank an Emergen-C and plan on taking some Zicam when I finish up this here blog. I nipped that thing in the bud.

You know what else nips? Puppies.

Jason ran to the store to get some bread for dinner. While he was gone, the doorbell rang. I opened it, and a small Mexican man with an insulated lunch box greeted me.
“Would you like some tamales?”
“No, thank you.”
And he smiled and walked away.

I did not know this was a weekly occurrence until Jason came home and asked me if the tamale man had come by.
“He comes by a lot?”
“Yeah, every Friday. You’re never here when he stops by.”
I expressed delight in this door-to-door tamale service because I had never had a tamale, and what could be more authentic than buying them from the tiny Mexican man with an insulated lunch box? Also, why had my dear husband never told me about the tamale man before? This whole time we’ve been cooking on Friday when we could have just eaten tamales? What is wrong with him? I hope the small man comes by next week and I hope that Jason remembers to buy some tamales for us so we can try new things. I’m all for trying new things. Especially if it gets me out of cooking.

I have been married for roughly four months and so far I have noticed no difference in our day to day routine now that we are married. I do not think these first few months of marriage have been any harder than when we were not married. Also I do not buy the notion of a honeymoon period. Those are my thoughts on that subject.

Lately I have been all about pizza. As some of you may remember, I worked at a popular pizza chain for three months to fund my move to Oregon. Up until a few months ago, eating pizza was not an experience I ever wanted to go through again. The thought of pizza made me nauseated: the dough, the toppings, the hot and melty cheese did not seem appetizing. In the past week I’ve eaten pizza three times. What happened? I have no idea. It’s all I want to eat.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to not chop off my hair. I got it trimmed and re-colored in February but have done my hardest to resist hacking it off near my ears. Since I have succeeded in this endeavor, the hair is kind of long(ish) (for me) and I now find long brown hairs everywhere: in my bed, in the car, on my clothes and once in my coffee cup while I was eating oatmeal. I didn’t mind much because it was early in the morning and I had just washed it. I have never been more aware of my hair than I am right now.

A quick rant about the entertainment industry: I saw the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are and yes, it looks very great. But why must it be made into a movie? Is Hollywood so low on ideas that they must capitalize on beloved childhood favorites? Maybe that’s why the Twilight series was such a hit: someone finally had an imagination and told a good story. I’m not so much a fan of the books, but it got people to read again, something that hadn’t been done since Harry Potter. But then both of those books became movies, and while they were very financially successful, it really made me rethink the movie industry. I’m glad that there are people out there who are able to recreate a story in an innovative idea and still retain important aspects of the books, and if stories are good then they are just plain good and those that don’t read or don’t like to read shouldn’t have to miss out on them just because the story happens to be printed. But it seems like mostly a) the authors are the ones with the creative juices and movie execs commercialize their imaginations and b) books aren’t made into movies until they are popular. Those are my thoughts on the subject.