On the News, Again. Couponing.

I think I must be in some cosmic alignment right now.

I stopped at the grocery store for a couple items I couldn't get last week and bam! Someone from Channel 4 news asked if they could interview me for a piece on couponing. Can you believe it? I just barely started using coupons when we got back here to Utah. Money's tight and all that, so, you know, every bit of savings counts. The main thing about couponing is if you have a budget–when you only have $75 dollars to spend on groceries, finding coupons means you can fit more into that budget.

Crazy, I know. That's how money works, kid.

You know, before Corbet was born and I was working, I didn't have time to care about this stuff. But now I just sit around all day being lazy, watching crap shows like Rachel Ray and Anderson (I like both of those shows and they're not really crap, that was sarcasm), and eating bon-bons.  It's true. So I can get more bon-bons for my money if I clip coupons.

Anyway, so, last November, around Stoker's birthday, while I was at the Gateway mall in SLC, I was asked by a Channel 4 reporter if they could interview me for a piece on Johnson's Baby Wash. Whoever did the piece erroneously called me Nicole Smith. SMITH? Come on! Welp, anyway, my married last name is as common as Smith, so at least they remembered that it was a common one. Nice work.

So, if you look up the interview, Corbet looks adorable. He was riding in the Baby Bjorn and he had on his cute crocheted hat one of his aunt's made him. That was the best part of the interview. Corbet. I'm sure they asked me because he was freaking gorgeous.

I worry (of course there had to be a worrisome element to all this cosmic awesomeness) that these two interviews (if they even actually use the footage of me today) will accumulate to my fifteen minutes of fame and after this, no more. It would be excellent if rather than news interviews about random household concerns, I was being interviewed because of my profound blogging wit, or because someone had made a movie based on my socially critical short story, Life Feeds. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Either way, at this point I'll take the news interviews about couponing and Johnson and Johnson's cancer causing Baby Wash for the sheer excitement of being asked about my intriguing life and stirring opinions.

Had a Dr. Who Dream Last Night, But that's Hardly the Point

Last night I was driving to the cafe to do a bit of writing. It was dark, and now that I'm in Utah again, beautiful. Listening to songs from the official soundtrack to the piece I'm working on as I drive helps me get in the right frame of mind, so of course I was listening to the official soundtrack. The lights from the city make the sky glow and the trees are all skeletal black frames against the bright sky. It was a serene moment, but there was something missing.

Angst. Oh yeah. ANGST! Where has it all gone?

Then I realized, my son was born last June and so now there's always something to live for. He's this brightness in my life that pushes away all that crappy darkness that sometimes closed in on me. And that feeling of desolation was always worse during Utah winters. But now I am home, Utah is my land, and these are my people, here. I have a son and a husband and I don't have to feel that loneliness the harsh winters could always generate for me.  Not anymore. Weird. I never thought, back in the day, that I could feel so much more lightness.

A brooding, black and white shot.

Corbet at 5.5 months. He gets handsomer every day. Handsomer?

Maybe it's just a result of fewer hormones, or maybe it really is that I have someone who needs me more than anyone has ever needed me before.

Having a baby is difficult, no questions there, but it's also the greatest thing to ever happen to me. Sometimes I feel like the Grinch, and just looking at Corbet makes my heart swell to ten times it's original size (I may have mentioned this before). Honestly, I wonder if it could ever make my chest burst, because it feels that way.

Speaking of this, I met this girl the other day who's about to have a baby. She's married, 24, and somehow, SOMEHOW, she's going to give the baby up for adoption. What?! No idea how this works or how someone makes a decision of this nature. I mean, I can imagine a couple of scenarios, but I can't understand how she could go to full term and, with a father for the baby nearby and everything, simply put him into someone else's hands.

I told her it was cool that she'd have the baby and everything, because that's better than the alternative (my opinion after having had my own), but wow. That's got to be crazy. All that effort. That time. That energy spent growing the baby, and boom, you give it away.

The only thing that made those nine months of hell worth it was to know that I'd have a baby at the end of it. I had no idea how it would feel to have a baby and everyone said, "You can't imagine how much you'll love him till you have him." And they were right. Now that I know better, there's no way I could have just given Corbet away.

In any case, here I am, old and without angst. But not without crazy passionate responses to the insanity of the world. Go figure. I'm exhausted already. I have no idea how I'm going to make it to ninety-four. Wish me luck!

Best Doctor ever. In a snowstorm. Wait. Is that Utah?

p.s. Had an awesome dream last night. Flying. Etc. And I was Rose Tyler for a bit, then the Tenth Doctor. And did I mention there was flying? And it was a new episode of Dr. Who with the Tenth Doctor. If I keep having awesome dreams like this, I might make it to be an old woman.