Six years ago, on this very day (tomorrow)...

Hi honey. Tomorrow is our anniversary, but since we'll be in Bellingham celebrating your mom's birthday, I thought I'd write this today.

Six years of marriage. Apparently, the sixth anniversary gift should be candy, at least traditionally. The modern gift is iron, but you already have several shot puts and I bought you a hammer (against my will) a couple of Christmases ago. Oddly enough, recommended sixth anniversary vacations are Hershey, PA and Walt Disney World, so I guess our upcoming vacation in WDW was meant to be, although I think the best evidence for that is the $60 hotel room price we all got.

I was thinking about our marriage the other day, and I got kind of giggly. That's seems to be my usual response when thinking of us. I giggle like I'm twelve and the boy I like just looked at me, except I'm 34 and the boy I like lives with me and I get to wake up with him every day. The comment I always hear about the two of us as a couple is that we seem made for each other, and I think that's because we're always laughing. It's kind of a miracle that, considering how easy it is for me to lose perspective on, well, everything and become so anxious and clamped down, laughter is such the predominant theme in our marriage that I can't think of us without chuckling, but in a happy, non-Mr. Burns, non-demoniacal kind of way. I don't know how you've managed to turn me into this person who not only laughs all the time but who can laugh about things I used to cry over. That's practically a miracle.

We've both grown a lot in the last year. We each took new jobs, causing our income to plummet. However, you never let the money be a factor in your insistence that I work only half time so I can sing and not want to fling myself off the roof of our house in sheer dramatic exhaustion. You've become so handy, even more so than you were before, and good Lord, am I grateful. I love that you're so competent around the house that all I have to do is ask you to auger the bathtub and it's done. You seem to take great pleasure in being "the man of the house," and I'm shocked that I don't mind. Well, not really. I like the fact that, despite what I say to the contrary at 1 am when we've been hanging shelves all day, you simply MUST screw everything into a stud. When that inevitable earthquake comes, that picture of our house on the bird room wall won't budge. Of course, I also like that I can put together furniture and such and you let me do it without standing to one side with a beer in your hand criticizing how I used your drill.

One thing that happened this last year, though, really defines for me what our marriage is, and what makes it my lifeline. I had slowly been becoming resistant to my anxiety medication, and I was putting off going to the doctor. We were getting ready for bed one night and I was particularly ornery and unwilling to put away laundry, and, while most other people would get upset or argue in the same situation, you looked at me and said, very calmly, that you could tell that I was much more anxious and upset than when my medication was working, and that you were going to harass me until I went to the doctor because you hated to see me so unhappy. You were right, and I knew you were right, and I finally went to the doctor because you wanted me to. It's funny how sometimes that's what it takes for me to do things I know I have to do. I won't do them for myself, but I'll do them for you. I'd do anything for you.

I love you, sweetie. Happy anniversary.

So many kinds of pretty.

Shelly and I went raspberry picking (my favorite, favorite thing) on Tuesday, and, while the recent rainy weather caused about half of the berries on the bush to mold (is this summer? IS IT, I ASK YOU??), we did get about 10 pounds, which is a third of what I usually pick.  I did manage to put up 15 containers of freezer jam, but I only had enough to bake one pie, with a lone bowl of fruit left over which, even after having been refrigerated, molded completely in one day.  Still, we had lovely weather and talked about musical theater and sex.  No bad can come from that.

Pretty, pretty jam.  Too bad peanut butter never, ever enters our house.  And that hazelnut/chocolate spread in the closet, Christian?  That's where it stays.

I also finished the tunic dress for my friend Laura's birthday.  She does burlesque and I wanted something that could be saucy and easily removable, if necessary:

Note the ribbon and pearly buttons. Those were my addition. I'm so creative.

The whole dress is quite lovely and I want to knit one for myself.  It would be much easier this time, as the unconscionable number of mistakes in the bottom trim pattern I found after knitting and frogging it three times got corrected when I charted out the pattern MYSELF (which took as long as knitting the dress in the first place:

But so, so pretty.  I hope she gets to rip it right off.

Domestic Goddess

Teenage girls usually rail against becoming like their mothers.  The idea of being the kind of person who wears pantyhose every day is terrifying to the "likelikelike" mentality of the 15-year-old.  Then you move out on your own and get a job that requires you to look nice every day and thusly need to iron your clothes at 7 am and then you realize that nylon and lycra are the only things keeping you from being lumpy and you understand why your mother owned 25 pairs of Hanes, the kind that you get in an egg from the drugstore.  Why were they always suntan?

Anyway, when I was 20, I didn't want a house, I didn't want to cook, I hated the idea of a yard and I never hemmed a thing.  Now, I have a house that I love a little too much to be healthy, I still don't like weeding, but I do it because I don't want to look like a hillbilly, I could cook all day long and I made a skirt on Friday night because I wanted one to wear shopping with Tina on Saturday (and I now have commissions by two fellow choristers to make the same skirt for them).  My motivation in making the skirt was that I didn't want to go shopping downtown and look slobby.  Mom always dressed up to go shopping.  She said she wanted to look nice so she could wouldn't feel embarrassed, aaaaaand that's why I did it, too.  That and I didn't want to be sneered at by the salesclerks.  I even went shopping for the shopping.  I had to buy a pair of pink and white shoes and a lightweight cardigan that would match my new skirt.  I even wore makeup and fixed my hair.  When I met Tina for breakfast before the shopping, she was also wearing a skirt and a necklace and said she didn't want to look slovenly for shopping, either.  Well done, Mom, the subliminal messaging worked.  I refuse to wear hosiery from the drugstore, however.  

In Print

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this in the last post.

Odds

For someone who doesn't enjoy gambling, I am a glutton for chance. Singing at my level is all about odds. You do as many auditions as possible and hope that, if you're singing well enough, the odds will be in your favor. If you're of a common voice type, you have lower odds. If you're a tenor, the odds are much higher. I'm somewhere in the middle. However, the odds have been oddly (hee) with me this summer and I've gotten roles from my last two auditions. Both auditions were pretty good and I feel lately that I can keep it together long enough to sing well, at least for the ten minutes in front of the panel. The performing part is great, it's just the auditioning that sucks my ass.

Christian has to keep forcing me to go to auditions. I schedule them, and then, the day of, I whinge and complain and whine that no one will ever cast me and I'm too fat and why do I bother (as I've stated in NUMEROUS earlier posts) and then Christian withers me with a glance (all while squeezing his Hard Woody (sorry, IRON Woody is the proper name according to Christian, which is MUCH better) grip strengthener so he can throw further as he never backs out of anything) and I go and then, afterwards, painfully and minutely dissect everything I've done and drive myself into the ground with my convincing description of my own ineptitude. Usually what follows is a letter or email saying that there wasn't a part for me and I swear it all off all over again. But , recently, I decided that I wanted to be a sidekick. I don't want to be the lead. Too much pressure. I want to quip from the background and be in it with the butler. My auditions got much better after that. Fewer unrealistic expectations. Seems to be working. Sweet.

Loquacious Lolly

We're trying to capture all of the words and expressions that were obviously taught to Sasha by an owner that could only have been an old man with lots of dogs and cats.

Insufficiently Saucy

I can tell you that, when I first saw a photo of a knitted bikini, I was aghast. Not only would any yarn one could use to knit such a tawdry waste of fiber lose, when wet, whatever stitch structure kitting gave it, but my God, would a knit bikini be ITCHY. While I still think knitted swimwear is utterly retarded and obviously the product of some silly little skinny dilettante knitter who wanted to give the needles a go because Vogue said it was in but didn't want to invest the time to knit anything larger than your average pocket square, I now find myself adoring the idea of knitted lingerie. Same shapes, more understandable function and less water-induced droop.

There are a couple of recently published books on lingerie and related scandalous underthings, but when I looked at them, I noticed a real lack of any delicacy and, well, cleverness in the stitches used and in the weights and textures. Everything seemed to be in stockinette stitch, which is the average stitch used in a sweater, and were made with mid-weight yarn and large needles. Now, pardon me, but, while I adore my concealing yet fashionable warm outerwear, I don't wear it to feel particularly slutty or exhibitionistic. When thinking about knitted lingerie, I imagined mysterious and complicated lace patterns that allow one to catch forbidden glimpses of skin underneath before the fabric shifts, making one wonder if one saw anything at all, all knit on tiny needles using thin, seemingly fragile yarn that is deceptively strong engough to withstand some good use. It would have to drape and have enough structure to stay put without having too much heft. In one particular book, the items depicted all looked as though they were made for Soviet brides before the Cold War ended and all the yarn anyone could get was wool from the Steppes and so the bra sets and peignoirs look as though they could be used as body armor in case the wearer got got in a stray gun fight with NATO forces. I know the authors were going for garments in the STYLE of lingerie, but the camisoles that "could be worn under a suit or nothing at all!" look as though they'd keep you warm through the cold, New England winter, with their ribbed edges and obvious lack of any kind of lingerie-like elements. Where's the lace? Where's the sense that the garment could be ripped off at any second? Sheesh, folks, I understand that we all like to think that we own pieces of clothing we can wear with everything, but a nightie that looks like the sweater I'm knitting for Christian isn't lingerie, no matter how low you make the back.

I only found one piece in a magazine aimed at the young, hip knitting audience that will work for the intended purpose. It's a knitted lace sheath that looks like a flapper dress and will be given to my friend who recently completed her Burlesque course. I did have this glorious notion of knitting delicious and inspiring underthings for all my friends' birthdays and such, but to do so, I'll now have to turn my hand to designing, as well. The stuff I've seen wouldn't inspire anything but a cross-country snowshoeing jaunt.

Vocab.

Things Sasha says:

Sasha
Pretty bird
Come here
Go away (mainly said to me)
Goodnight
Here, kitty, kitty, kitty
Step up
Arrrrrr
A variety of other, unintelligible words we can't quite discern

Things he does:

Barks like a dog
Shakes his head and growls, as though playing with a rawhide toy
Meows
Clucks

All shall hopefully be taped soon.

Wrong again.

Sasha is a boy. Break out the Stogies.

Repercussions

We got one of those calls last night that I live in terror of, the bad news phone call informing me of some problem that will cost an assload of money and my peaceful slumber. Our insurance company, with whom I've had my car insurance for 18 years, has been bought out by another company and that company will not cover me because of my driving history. I now have to go with a "high-risk" insurance company that will cost double per month and makes me feel like a serial drunken driver. Last year was a very bad year, indeed.

Approved!

Our adoption of Sasha was approved by the Exotic Bird Rescue, so now she's ours, all ours!! Mwah ha ha ha! Hee. So happy.

The Crazy

While Christian and I are developing a certain reputation for, um, insanity from the ever increasing fauna in our home, the last thing I want is to actually be considered bat-shit crazy. I have a whole passel of nuts in my brain, due to the panic-ishness of my genes, but I started taking medication four years ago to keep the crazy in check, and to keep Christian from coming after me with a kitchen knife after I had finally pushed him to crack with my constant paranoia and hysteria (although, without the uterus, could what I have actually be called hysteria?). However, the crazy started seeping back in about six months ago. At first, I tried to take it in stride and thought that, despite all evidence pointing to the notion that I was becoming resistant to my med dose, I could handle the symptoms. There were, after all, perks to this new state, namely that the bedroom once again became more than a room in which to sleep. Sorry, family who doesn't want to hear that, but it's true. However, the resistance has gotten more pronounced in the past two months or so, and when the meaningless crying and crushing headaches began, I thought it might be time to up the dose. It was only the other night when, at rehearsal, I had a vision of Christian walking in the door holding handfuls of dead birds because I had let something happen to them and throwing them down at my feet in front of all my opera colleagues and screaming at me that he was leaving me, that I fully understood the importance of the appointment I had made with my doctor to discuss treatment options. We're all glad now that the dosages have been upped.

Little losses.

We lost one of our frogs, Buxtehude, today. He was the smaller of the two White's treefrogs, and never really thrived as he should have. He lived for the last three years in the vivarium in the kitchen with Squinky, who, I think, may be a food hog. I wonder if maybe Buxtehude simply couldn't compete with el Chubbo for the bugs we give them every night. It's next to impossible to tell with frogs, unless blood work or an xray are performed, what ails them, and the numbers of vets who will perform diagnostics are few and far between. We have no idea how old the frogs were when we got them, but I assume at least a few years, as they were fully grown. Buxtehude didn't show any over signs of illness, no red legs, no hard abdomen, nothing to indicate encroaching demise. As soon as I saw him in his cage this morning, struggling to move, I removed him and soaked him in purified water over a heating pad, but it was too late. He lasted until about a half hour ago, when he finally passed to the great eucalyptus tree in the sky.

It's awfully hard to truly get attached to pets that are so fragile. We keep them and observe them and wonder over them, and hope that they do well with the meagre resources we can provide. We read everything we can on their keeping and we obsess over research published in the herp journals. It works sometimes, and doesn't others. Amphibian keepers are an optimistic bunch, though, so we keep trying. I know the zoo raises their own bugs for their herps, as that's the only way a large enough variety can be provided to keep them as they would be in the wild, but we're lacking a few of the resources (and space) they have, so we buy our little tubs of worms and pots of crickets and powder them with vitamins. Our vet is extremely against keeping any animal in the home that eats insects as there is no way to give them a wide enough spectrum to keep them hale, and I'm beginning to agree with him. We are lucky with Gus, the turtle, as his species is indigenous to North America, and it's easy enough, from all the observational research, to feed him a complete diet. That, and box turtles are stubborn and tough. I wish the frogs were, too.

Toasty Toes

Squee. And I hate my voice. Ugh. So whiny.

The long, long journey home.

Our home was inspected by the Exotic Bird Rescue volunteer on Friday, and the volunteer said she was embarrassed to be inspecting us as our house was so clean and that approval was a given. We decided to take immediate action and drive down that night to Eugene, so we could fetch Sasha the next morning and be back by afternoon. I had already purchased her travel/quarantine cage, so we'd be ready to go as soon as we were given the good word.

The drive to Eugene was hellacious as we got shunted off the freeway in Portland due to poor signage and couldn't get back on due to a wretched festival that had clogged the streets with drunken idiots and blocked the freeway on ramps. We drove around downtown for almost forty minutes until we just gave up, got on northbound I-5 again and got off and on in a less congested area.

We made it to Springfield, where we were staying, at around 11:30 and checked into the Motel 6 in which I had reserved a room the second the inspector told us we had passed. It was cheap, and never, ever again will I let that be the deciding factor for a lodging choice. The pillows were tiny and flat and stank of cigarette smoke, the mattress was wretchedly uncomfortable and poky with aggressive springs and the towels had been soaked in bleach flogged against stones long enough to give them just the right texture to flay the flesh from our bones.

We got up with the wake up call and were more exhausted than when we had gone to sleep. We raced through breakfast and got to the coordinator's house at around 10:40. Sasha was out and waiting for us, and we wrote our check and ran. Christian held Sasha as he sat in the back seat until we reached the freeway, and he then put her in her cage to keep her safe.



She was so quiet and content sitting with him that it seemed a shame to put her in the cage, but it's simply not safe to have a loose pet in the car on the freeway. She took to her cage with a equanimity that was utterly unexpected and allowed us to feed and scratch her through the doors. For a bird purported to have cage aggression issues, she was remarkably placid. She hardly uttered a peep the entire ride back, and had no trouble stepping right up onto her beloved's finger to carry her in the house when we arrived home at around 4:30. We took the snakes upstairs to bask in the heat and set Sasha's cage up on the desk at the foot of the bed.



It's far too small for a bird her size to live in permanently, but it's just her quarantine cage for a month, and then she'll be moved to the large cage in the living room, next to the muffinhead.

She has been so silent as to almost be eerie. We've taken her in and out of her cage and outside and into the shower and all over and we're waiting for that damn shoe to fall from the sky. She's been too good. It just can't last. Our hearts are lost, though, so it won't matter if she decides that our fingers are all she wants to eat.

Take another little piece of my heart.

Dusty Springfield said it best. What tiny part of my heart that wasn't owned by a cute boy residing in my house or in Mark's is now in Oregon with Sasha.



We drove to Oregon on Saturday, hitting Powell's and Torrid in Portland for some tax free shopping before spending the rest of the day with aunt Marianne and uncle Gene at their place in Molalla (and watched Little Children, which is not a movie one would normally watch with ones father's sister. We have an unusual family). At Powell's, we found a used copy of the seminal macaw book with an author annotation and signature. I really do wonder who would sell a book that was a gift from a famous author with her signature and personal note inside. I think I'd carry it around with me and work it into conversation. We're good at doing that with bird topics. I'm sure none of you have noticed, we're so subtle. It's like a Jedi mind trick.

We drove to Eugene on Sunday, checked into our $50 Priceline hotel (woot!) and contacted the intake coordinator at the Eugene Exotic Bird Rescue, at whose house Sasha is living. Being whiny city folk, it seemed like we drove forever to get to her country house. Oh my God, why can't people live in the city?? We pulled into the drive and saw why they can't live in the city, namely the rows upon rows of donated cages waiting to be needed for surrendered birds. The sound was unmistakable, the cockatoo scream that you can hear three counties over coupled with the stream of Amazon chatter and giddy macaw chuckling. We could see one of the loudest perps through the window of the bird room as we walked up as he ran back and forth on his perch and shouted at us, like a white, fluffy guard dog. And she had those too, five of them, from the tiniest, squishiest little Chiahuaha EVER (squee) to an enormous, elderly shepherd who had the saddest face ever put on a mammal. And 22 birds. Say that with me. 22 birds, seven of which were the coordinator's own pets. She fosters some of the birds that are surrendered or rescued and socializes them to the best of human ability before they are adopted or given to rescue aviaries. 22 birds. And y'all think we're nuts.

The coordinator got Sasha out of her cage with a handheld perch as she, like many birds who have passed from hand to hand (most parrots will have an average of eight owners in their lifetime), is cage aggressive. However, once out of the cage, she was the sweetest, prettiest little muffin head I've ever seen. She was fairly tolerant of us on that first day, and we spent about two hours holding her and talking to her and bribing her with treats.



Mmmm...carrots, lucky girl.

The coordinator graciously offered to give us the class required to adopt when we returned the next day so we wouldn't have to drive down for it later in June. We had a take home test and an application to fill out together. We did quite well, I might add, and better than most, apparently. Thank God the hours of reading all the contradictory literature in aviculture has served some purpose, because my vet doesn't agree with most of it.

We returned to the coordinator's house the next morning after checking out and eating breakfast at the Original Pancake House (mmmm, coconut pancakes), next to a famous UofO athlete who had little boys clamoring for his autograph as we left and after a visit from the Oregon Duck and his girl, who are supposed to look like Donald and Daisy but actually looked like the Mexican knockoffs we saw on our Mazatlan shore excursion from the cruise.

Anyway, we returned, took the test and spent more time with Sasha, where I found that I am only a mere incidental compared to Christian. I'm quite jealous, actually. She showed such an obvious preference to his broad shoulders and manly scent that she would leap off my hand and onto his if he got within feet of me. Well, Cyril likes me better. Nyah.



After the test and visit, the coordinator told us that we were just the kind of people who should have Sasha in their home. We were thrilled, and only have the home inspection hurdle to overcome before we can get her and bring her home. As it turns out, one of the board members/home inspectors was in Seattle over the weekend and could have seen our home and allowed us to take Sasha with us when we left. Sigh. Regardless, the inspector from Olympia should be calling us soon to arrange a time to run over our house with a white cotton glove. Thank God we're mostly tidy. I can't bear to think of what would happen if they decided we just seemed too sketchy to have the little fluffy bunny head. However, I think we're keen. We can provide written testimonials.

One of several men with whom I share a shower.

I read a hilarious article a while back about the realities of bird ownership, and, until two weeks ago, thought that the answer to the question on bathing would forever describe how our birds felt about our attempts to get them wet. When we would try to approach any of them with the spray bottle or bring them to the shower, they would shiver in terror and fling themselves to the floor. Once we got them into the shower, they would clamp down their feathers so tightly that the water would merely bead up and roll off, like off of a freshly waxed car. But, as one of the most important things that a bird owner can do to help keep their birds' feathers in good condition is bathe them, we kept trying.

On a recent morning when Cyril seemed particularly dry and dusty, was losing a large number of feathers and was bristly with new ones, I thought I'd help ease his suffering a bit by drenching him to the nostrils. Apparently, molting is a pretty crappy, itchy process and the water helps to soothe the skin. I brought him into the bathroom with me on his portable stand and set him on the edge of the tub. Now, ever since I taught him to wave for a treat, he picks up his left foot and touches his beak whenever he sees something he wants. He also turns around in a circle, just like we taught him, thinking logically that a treat will follow, that smart chicken. So, I'm in the shower, and he's waving and spinning and leaning towards the water, which I'd never seen him do, so I picked up the perch and brought him close to the spray. He spread his wings, fluffed up all his feathers, opened his mouth and stuck his head underneath the showerhead. He delightedly shook and fluffed and flapped and squacked and drank and was so happy that, when I tried to move him so I could take a shower myself, he kept yelling and leeeeeeeaning and flying back to me and tangling himself in my hair. I must have held him in the spray for ten minutes. Of course, Christian was in Whistler for a work trip, so he missed the little show. I kept hoping that Cyril would want to shower again, but in the times that I had brought him to the bathroom since, he hadn't shown much interest, until yesterday. I always say good morning to the birds as soon as I get up, and I noticed that Cyril seemed twitchier than usual, so I got the perch and took him to the bathroom, hoping that he'd want to shower. As soon as I set him down on the tub, he started to lean and wave and turn. When I turned on the shower, he fluffed up and started to pace, so impatient. I picked him up on his perch, got in and stuck him under the showerhead. Thankfully, Christian was home this time and caught the bliss on film:

He refused to leave the shower until he was so wet that his tail feathers were dripping. You've never seen anything so scraggly as a wet parrot's ear hole. I then, of course, had to give him a little blow dry, which he also loves, and, like a dog, tries to eat the air as it's blowing in his face. I only use the low setting, of course. He was still slightly damp when I got home. I'm hoping that I can get him to run through the sprinklers this summer.

I know.

I know! Geez, I've been working on a painfully horrifying enormous grant that is due next week but will most likely kill me beforehand due to the stress of it and not being able to sleep because I dream about trainee tables taunting me because no one ever wants to give me their information and I have to beg and promise cookies and ask my bosses to go after people to find out from where Bob Smith recieved his bachelor's degree thirty years ago and I've had La Boheme which will seemingly never end either because this is the longest opera run in creation and I really hate this show anyway so it's just torture to hear the same shite over and over again five nights a week (at least the money is good) and we have birthday parties and baptisms this weekend and a cheese festival that I'm probably going to have to miss although that makes me cry because I love cheese more than life itself and we have to go to Eugene next weekend to meet Sasha and I'm taking the following week off to recover but I have a travel class I don't know if I should reschedule because they only happen every few months but I want to stay in Eugene to take Sasha to the vet to get her checked out (we can't have her if she'd make the poopers sick) and I haven't had the time/energy to vacuum and Mom and Dad are staying with us this weekend and oh shit, I forgot to change the bedsheets in the guest room and I haven't planted the tomatoes, pumpkins and cucumbers we bought last weekend and they're going to die and WHEN THE HELL will I get a chance to do that? Oh yeah, NEVER.

Project Object

I could spend the rest of my life just knitting for the boys.



With models this cute, I could make a killing selling baby knitwear. I love this little sweater. Love. It. I wanted to carry it around with me in my pocket and take it out occasionally when in a bad mood. Of course, the hat was too small for the giant head. I think I should start taking orders now.

A birdly update.

I've been emailing back and forth with the coordinator of the Eugene Exotic Bird Rescue about Sasha, the second mini-macaw they have at their rescue. She is tame, but somewhat cage territorial, as many birds are. That's an easy fix, though, with patience and persistence. Samantha, it seems, will need special care for the rest of her life as she has never been handled or trained. She would, unfortunately, be beyond our capabilities as bird owners. We have made plans to travel to Eugene over Memorial Day weekend to meet Sasha and be interviewed for taking her home. Adopting a rescued parrot is not for the timid or easily intimidated. We have to sit through a rigorous cross-examination, have a home inspection and attend a pet care/behavior class in Oregon before we can bring her home.

I'm always nervous when contemplating getting a new pet. I don't want to neglect Cyril or the little poopers, and I don't want to keep adding to the zoo to satisfy some inner need to be loved. I also don't want to be those people who don't have a square inch of home not occupied by an animal of some sort. I think that ship has sailed, however. The new cage for the little ones is, of course, massively humongously oversized, and removes any sense that we had decor in our house before we started decorating with feathers and poop. I simply cannot wait to remodel. We're going to build a sun room onto the back of the house, behind the kitchen, where the bird cages will go, surrounded by plants and chairs and near a dedicated sink. This plan is all that's keeping me going right now. I can't live in a pet shop forever, despite all evidence to the contrary. I just hope everyone will still want to come over. I'm getting a little embarrassed.