A mild dual call to action:

1. I need a new standard birthday gift for a kid. My current standard is a set of Lowe’s watercolor pencils (18 per box at $4.99), a Lowe’s watercolor paper pad ($4.99 for 25 sheets), a set of 3 Lowe’s paintbrushes ($1.99) and a pencil sharpener where the shavings are contained (usually under $1.00). I also occasionally add a coloring book or two. I like artsy kid gifts that are quiet, self-contained and which require no parental effort.

Suggestions? The watercolor pencil gift works for both genders, which is important to me. I estimate that I have given this gift at least 30 times in the past 18 mos, which is crazy, isn’t it? It’s time for a new gift because we’re starting the next round of birthdays.

2. More importantly, I have a friend who is female. She just turned 35. She is unmarried and she is a catch. She is career-minded and smart and funny as all hell. She is also cultured and pretty sophisticated (far more so than I will ever be). She was raised in a great family and has two brothers.

She needs a man.

When you reach a certain age, I think this becomes hard. We (she and I) both celebrated birthdays a week apart (I turned 35 last week.) and we lamented, a bit. Or, when she lamented, I said, hey, I have so much white hair and she said, “Yes, but you have a husband and two children.” And I shut up at that point and offered fried food and a bloody mary lunch any day she chooses.

She asked for a man for her birthday and at my daughter’s riding lesson that same day, I think I found one, potentially the last heterosexual, exceptionally wonderful man in the southeast area. I and a host of women who think this fella is a catch and I am working on a meeting. He’s fantastic.

But, just in case my potential man isn’t the perfect match, do you have a man for my friend? Do you know the last truly exceptional heterosexual gentleman in the southeast area? If you do, let me know, because I know a gal he might like to meet.

She has no idea I write here. I might link her tomorrow.

1. Last week, I cracked the itty bitty tippity top bone in my right hand pinkie finger when I slammed it in the window part of the wayback of my vehicle while closing the wayback after getting 10 dozen sugar cookies (boxed six per box, for 20 boxes) for teacher gifts. Also, it cut through my fingernail. I almost vomited up an expensive lunch on the spot, but I neither puked nor cursed loudly. I did get a tetanus shot, a finger splint and two lortabs for my trouble. It wasn’t funny right when it happened, but when everyone made me go to the doctor’s office and I resisted having my vitals taken (”I don’t have pneumonia! I just need you to x-ray my finger, this one, that’s blackish purple on top!”), I felt like I was there for a splinter.

When the doctor told me to come back the next day to have my finger drained if the nail turned black beneath the cut (from the cut down to the nailbed), I promised that if that happened, I would vomit immediately after I looked at it and come straight in. Fortunately, no medieval torture was necessary and my finger (”pinger broken?” per the Crabcake, who cannot say the “f” sound right now and also says “pire pighter”) is now funnier than ever and also possibly a bit crooked, per two coworkers who are just giving me a hard time.

2. My boss found out that I am leaving before I told him, which makes sense. I have done everything but take out billboards, after all. So, last Thursday, I typed a terse, three-sentence memorandum of resignation, giving no reasons or bits of lying “thanks for the great experience.”

I was told that a memo isn’t acceptable and that I needed to write a formal letter. I turned that (got it down to two sentences) in on Friday afternoon.

Today, I was told that my letter isn’t right and that I need to redo it in the style of the sample resignation letter in my inbox, with proper inside address and salutation. The Husband suggested that I shit on a piece of paper and say “HERE is your fucking letter, people.” Really. The letter is going in my file. They’re acting like it’s for publication.

So, yeah. That’s me right now. Trying my damndest to resign from a job and typing with one slightly wonky finger and full of sugar cookies.

I declare today to be two-bloody-marys-at-lunch Friday, worldwide!

(Are you pleased that I have just given you special dispensation to down two spicy, tomato-juicy–and therefore healthy/lycopene-full–drinks at lunch? You should be. I have only recently decided that workaday lunchtime beverages are propah.)

(Only recently being about exactly two weeks ago, but who is counting.)

Randomness:

1. I finally remembered to call the school library where I’d applied for a job yesterday to tell them to take me out of the running. I left a long, sappy message for the principal to tell her how excited I was about the school, the library and the position and about how I wish them success and all that crap, but that I accepted another job somewhere else and that my librarian friend might contact them about the job. Then, when I got home from work, the rejection letter for that job was waiting! Perfect!

2. I put together a front and a back for a large quilt in 5 hours Wednesday night. The quilt needs quilting and binding, but it’s pinned together with the batting and it was a feat of time management and creativity and is almost wholly a result of the fact that one of my favorite movies that I am ashamed to love was on in the middle of the night. I love The Skulls with slightly abashed glee, along with its younger brother, the second Skulls, but I’m not a fan of the third one. You gotta know when to quit, people. I love the movie but I am embarassed that I love it, you know? Staying up til after 2 a.m. means that I went to bed at 8 p.m. last night. I think that combo means that I am old.

3. Son, here is a list of things that I promise will not bite you because they cannot bite you because they do not bite: the sky, the moon, the sun, the stars, the grass, my car, any car, the big trucks that pass us on the road (along with the ambulances, dump trucks, vans, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, and convertibles), the ceiling, our house, any house, any building, the road, our swingset, any swingset, the bushes, the flowers, the trees, the mailbox, any mailbox anywhere, any restaurant, any shopping center, any piece of mail, any item of reading matter, the television set and any show on the same and/or any item of food, any cup or drinking item and any serving or eating utensil. These things will not bite you because they can’t.

Here, son, is a list of things that might bite you, but probably won’t: me, your father, your sister (but don’t pull her hair), your peers (but don’t pull their hair, take their toys or bite them first), your teachers, random teachers, pretty much any random adult or child or infant you see in passing, most birds (including the ones that nest in the bushes by school), our dogs, our fishes (but if you stick your hand in the tank at feeing time, George O’Malley will snuffle at your hand because he’s a ginormous pigfish), most of the time our cat (but seriously, leave her alone, okay?), most other dogs and cats, most all birds and animals, most horses (but be careful) and other barnyard/farm animals, most of the creatures at the zoo (some only because they can’t get to you: don’t kid yourself, boy–if that tiger could get through the massive plate glass walls, he’d eat you as a midafternoon snack and then feast on me for his pale, bloody mary-soaked steak dinner).

The penguins, however? The ones with the sign in front of them that says “will bite?”

The penguins will bite you.

The rest of the free world will not.

Rest easy, Crabcake. No one will bite you, mostly.

4. Horse show tomorrow. Ballet recital Tuesday night. By Tues, we will have been to freaking ballet four times in eight days. I don’t even like ballet; I just take my daughter so she will walk into fewer walls and trip over fewer invisible bumps in the world than I do and she’s been doing ballet for three years now and she’s still as big a damned klutz as I am, so why all the money? Where is the graceful return and geezelouise, leave me alone until August when I will begin all this pink-tighted nonsense all over again, anyways, complete with my yearly registration fee (that I somehow ended up having to pay twice in 2006, so where’s the “yearly” in that?) check in hand.

5. Did you know that there are Clarice Bean chapter books? Get them.

6. In case you were wondering, after “bloody marys lunch Friday” comes “parenthetical-free weekends” (but not really).

I am fatter by scale but still lighter by happy.

So, tonight at a fancypants celebratory dinner out,* the Husband said he thinks I am like the Bee Girl, at the end of the video, when she finds all the other bees, about the new job.

And I might have teared up, at which point he said, “I didn’t think the metaphor was that great,” at which point I said, while tapping on the wine glass already half-empty in front of me, “I had bourbon to start,” at which point he said, “I think I will drive home.”

But, I do feel that way. I also feel like taking a bubble bath and reading my funny grownup Nancy Drew book before I start on I am the Cheese (Cormier), which I have never read before.

* If you ever want to upset your 6 yr old to the point of near tears and much clutching at you as you try to leave for a grownup dinner, just have your husband call it celebratory and let her think there will be a partay where everything will be chocolate-dipped and delicious. Yeah.

In the space of two weeks, I have interviewed for two jobs, been offered a third job via telephone call, and accepted the job I really, really wanted yesterday afternoon.

It did all work out for the best.

For the first time in my adult life, I have accepted a job about which I feel 100% excited and comfortable. I am doing the right thing. I made the right choice. I can’t wait.

It doesn’t start yet.

I think I had two resolutions at the start of this year. One was to simply improve. I’m checking that one off, halfway. The second was to run a marathon, but after the miserable sickly first few months of this year, I am going to hold off on that one. Maybe next year. I am, at least, going to start competing with a friend in Atlanta–we’re both using the Nike ipod dealies. Well, I will be as soon as my shoes get here.

Driving home from work yesterday, I felt physically lighter. I think some sort of hefty internal angst weight has fallen away and it feels damn good.