Yes my dear readers, for those of you who still check back here on occasion and are left wondering if I’m lying dead in a cyberspace ditch somewhere or perhaps even hoping that I’ve finally given up the blog for the good of mankind, I am alive and well.

I stopped posting a while back partially because I was constantly overwhelmed with wave after wave of to-do lists: my mom to-do lists, PTA to-do lists, husband to-do lists, the take-photos-for-me to-do lists, help-me-with-my-resume to-do lists. It seemed silly to set aside time to post on the internet when the internet wasn’t potty-training, the internet didn’t need me to show up for a meeting, the internet wasn’t particularly interested in having me take photos of it’s kids and was most certainly not going to fail me in Embalming I.

The other reason I stopped posting was because of the content of the site. In the interests of getting along, preserving relationships and maintaining some semblance of dignity among the people I see every day, I found myself self-censoring to the point where writing seemed like an exercise in fluff-manufacture.

For instance, I didn’t write about diving into the one of the deepest depressions I’d ever experienced earlier in the year. Why would I? It’s embarassing. Especially when you consider how blessed I am in life. It seems incredibly ungrateful on my part that, with everything good and wonderful in my life, I can’t seem to pull it together for more than a few months at a time. 

I didn’t write about the decision to stop taking my anti-anxiety meds. Or the predictable return of the anxiety attacks that I’ve experienced since I was a little kid. Or the fact that I have embarked upon a new coping strategy that involves jumping off of boats in San Francisco Bay and swimming for shore, and jumping out of planes and cage-diving with great white sharks. Because my goal is to drown out Mr. Anxiety and the pansy-ass bullshit he thinks I should be afraid of. Because Mr. Anxiety can’t throw any fear my way that will be more frightening than the situations I can put myself in.

…and yeah. I realize that totally doesn’t make any sense.

I never write about running or the fact that the reason I’ve slavishly dedicated to the sport is because – for whatever reason – running is the only activity that keeps the depression at a manageable level.

I don’t write about how I’m really confused about school and whether it’s good for me to continue or if I should drop out for the sake of familial harmony. I’m also confused about what my husband likes to call The Photography Thing. And that I feel like I’m getting mixed signals with regard to my worth as a stay-at-home mom. It’s good that you’re with the kids. No wait, you should be making money. No wait, stay home. Wait, no go out and make money.

I never write about the overwhelming confusion in my life. Or my inability to focus. Or the fact that the confusion is really quite confusing. And it keeps me from focusing. Or the fact that the confusion has me confused about the confusing nature of confusion. Or, that - hey – check out that shiny thing!

I never write about politics anymore. Mostly because there is a dearth of informed people who seem capable of discussing politics in a respectful, rational and dispassionate way. On the flip-side there are a whole lotta people out there who are ill-informed and possess second-hand opinions borrowed from entertainer-assholes like Keith Olberman and Bill O’Reilly. And that these ill-informed twits weilding other people’s opinions are willing to test the limits of their lung capacity to prove that they’re right and you’re wrong.

The English language doesn’t have words to describe how much I can’t stand these people.

Mostly I stopped posting because The Photography Thing has been taking up a lot of my time and energy what with launching a website, shooting weddings, editing photos, learning all I can about my camera and shooting tons of photos in the process. This week I am shooting a couple while the husband is on leave from Iraq for a few days, creating cover art for a soon-to-be-published novel and then making a television appearance with the author of said novel this Saturday. Next weekend I’m flying out to New Mexico to play assistant to a much more accomplished and experienced photographer at a wedding there. I have a stack of CDs with photos that need editing as I type this. It’s been busy. It’s been really good.

So I guess this is a really long-winded way of saying that I am going to post when I can but the opportunities to do so are drying up quickly.

As always, I have a pretty good list of reasons I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like and at the very tip-top of that list is “Sculpting a replica of a deceased human’s head for my restorative art class”. And if you know me in real life then you can probably understand why attempting to sculpt a human head? Out of wax? Might take so much of my time.

This is partly because this is my first attempt at sculpting anything ever and partly because I am less artistically inclined than the people responsible for creating the “art” that hangs in places like dental offices and having less talent than someone who makes a few pastel-colored swipes on an otherwise bland canvas is really saying something.

As if my own insecurities about my profound lack of ability weren’t enough, I have friends who feel the urge to nudge me over the proverbial edge. For instance, a girlfriend stopped by the other day to pick up a lens she had left in my camerabag. On her way out she gazed at the progress I had made and declared, “It looks good.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Yeah. It’s your friend’s head your creating right?”

“Yeah.”

“The black girl?”

“My subject’s Filipino.”

“Oh.”

Sound of running. Front door slam. Tires squealing.

I can’t wait for this semester to be over.

Since that time, however, I’ve noticed that I rarely write about my experiences in school.

For instance, before the end of last semester I was granted the opportunity to participate in an embalming at the coroner’s office. Now, while the experience was fascinating and I’ll admit that I very much appreciated and enjoyed the opportunity, it brought to the fore an ethical dilemma:

Where is the line between “acceptable disclosure” and “encroaching on the privacy of the deceased and their family”?

On the one hand, it seems apparent that a discussion of embalming should be limited only by the public’s tolerance for details of something that most find frightening and unsavory. On the other hand, morticians don’t practice in a vacuum. The subjects on which they learn and exercise their talents were at one time real, live people deserving of discretion. Also, lest we forget, the deceased will most often be survived by friends and family members whose pain would only be exacerbated by a lack of discretion regarding the treatment and care of their loved one’s remains.

So, when I was asked to join one of my professors and a few other students at the coroner’s office last semester I found myself on shaky ground blog-wise. Obviously, there are many details that simply should not be shared. Period. In the event of a cataclysmic lack of judgment, each of us were given a packet of information that explicitly stated as much.

However, while discussing specifics was out of the question there were more general facets that I personally find fascinating and believe worth sharing.  I had a grey area.

In the end, I decided so long as I had even the smallest doubt about sharing an experience I would refrain from doing so. After all, when a person dies they are no longer capable of speaking for themselves, defending themselves or voicing a preference. They are completely vulnerable, and the last thing I want to do is exploit that vulnerability. So I censor myself now and will continue to do so in instances where I have doubts.

These doubts are not helped at all by the constant blurring between the “real world” and the atmosphere created at school in which my classmates routinely discuss things that would send most people scurrying for a barf bag. You don’t have to be a super-genius to be aware of the fact that what is normal and mundane inside the funeral industry has the potential to be regarded as macabre and disgusting by people outside of it.

Hopefully that will clear up the questions I’ve been receiving from folks who e-mail me to find out what is going on in school and to ask that I write more about it. I will definitely make an effort to return to my former focus on school – because really? It is a very fascinating field to go into with a lot of very cool stuff the share. I just ask for a little patience in return as I negotiate my way through a potential blogging minefield…

For the rest of you – who are by now bowing your heads and thanking the good Lord above that you weren’t on my list – here is The Matulich Family Newsletter that I threw into the mix. I’d plead laziness for reprinting the dreadful update here instead of a regular post except that the hundreds of empties on my desk and at my feet tell a different story. Anyway. Here goes:

Well what can I say? 2008 has been most awesome! And fabulous! So super-duper, in fact that I would like to exhaust my supply of superlatives and exclamation points just to convey how this! Was! The! Bestest! Year! Ever! Because that is what one is supposed to do when one sets about to write a “family newsletter”!

Charlie turned 8 this year and entered the 3^rd grade. He has become a real champion speller, which I totally counted on since – duh! – I have a degree in English and everyone knows that grammar and spelling skills are capable of crossing the placental barrier. But you know what I didn’t count on? His precocious nature and nascent verbal skills turning him into a font of useless corporate jargon.

Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to ask your 8-year-old how his day at school was and receive an answer like, “Dude, mom, my teacher was totally impressed that I’ve made great strides to elaborate in a solution-oriented manner so as to more adequately harness third grade platitudes that aren’t necessarily mission critical.”

“Huh?”

“Well, that’s lunch. Gotta go. Headin’ out for a hit-and-run with Mrs. Woods vis-à-vis the ‘tetherball situation’ on the playground at recess. You know, brainstorm. Develop a new paradigm. Engage in a little out-of-the-box thinking.”

Well at least I still have one normal child in Sophie. Or at least I think she’s normal At 3 years of age she has yet to develop a strong enough grasp of English to convince me otherwise although I’ll conced that she has a worrisome habit of licking windows.

Speaking of Sophie, 2008 has been a banner year for our girl, who has developed quite the fearless streak: she talks readily to strangers (particularly those with candy), jumps off tall objects and will try anything once provided it appears adequately dangerous and will give Kris and I a heart attack.

Side note: my dad has made a habit of pointing at my daughter and saying to me, “See? That’s what you get for jumping out of planes and swimming with sharks.” Then he giggles maniacally.

Anyway, Sophie has learned how to use a toilet, count to twenty and can even distinguish most colors if the color is “red” and I prompt her sixty-seven times. We plan to spend 2009 working on shapes. Specifically shapes that involve hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs. Also, we’re hoping this is the year she finally gets the hang of online poker.

Kris has remained loyal to his years-long endeavor to Stay Indoors And Never Leave The House Again. To this end, my dearly beloved has managed to add roughly 1,600 more hours of programming to our TiVo. Of course, this does not count the episodes of Dr. G that I managed to sneak onto the season pass between Battlestar Galactica and every UFC pay-per-view since the sport was invented.

When my hunka-hunka burnin’ love is not watching nearly-naked men make each other bleed or serenading me from the shower he has been filling in for  his boss, who had a double-lung transplant several months ago

(I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a single lung transplant. I just like to throw in the word “double” because I am horribly insecure and I have a habit of trying too hard to sound smart.)

I guess it’s only fair to include myself in here.

In my constant quest to disprove the theory that really messed up people do, in fact, seem fairly normal until we open our mouths to speak, I have spent 2008 steadily increasing my Zoloft dosage. This is partly because my offspring resemble howler monkeys and partly because I secretly like it when Kris rolls the pills in peanut butter and then holds my mouth closed until I swallow them.

When I’m not pulling carpool duty or helping kids with homework I can be found working out or in school where – just this semester – I received the opportunity to participate in my first embalming.

So yes, the hands that touched this newsletter have been all over dead people.

…and if that doesn’t bother you then you are probably my brother Matthew.

I’m sure I could go on and on but that’s all I’ve got for now.

Oh, and the fact that the players of one game favor t-shirts featuring sports teams and the players of the other favor t-shirts that say “All your base are belong to us” which, when you get down to it, is kind of the difference between contestants on Wheel of Fortune and those on Jeopardy!

Where was I? I don’t remember. Not that it mattered since my train of thought has long since been derailed by the eight ball of coke sitting next to me on the couch. Ok I kid. About the drugs, not the train of thought. I mean, the various trains of thought that go through my head really are derailed quite regularly but not by anything as exciting as cocaine seeing as how I have two kids who do that for me now.

…and now I have no idea what it was I sat down to write about.

See? Kids. Sure, they net you a nice tax deduction but it’s hardly worth it when you take into account the accompanying dementia.

Um… Run to Feed the Hungry is this Thursday before Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, running! Only three weeks left of school before finals. Yeah, mental breakdown! My friend Patty and I have formed a two-woman marathoning team for CIM on December 7th. Yeah, pain! Finals are coming up. Yeah, brain leakage! I’m taking a ton of photos for a ton of organizations and loving every minute of it. Yeah, digital photography! And! I’ve been “randomly selected” to participate in my first ever embalming lab on Monday. Yeah, cadavers!

So! Who has ten bucks that says my professor will have to peel me off the floor as soon as someone lifts an artery?

I now return you to your regularly scheduled net surfing. I’m going to just sit here in the corner and play with my unnecessarily large beach ball and try to remember why I sat down at the computer in the first place.

We are disconnecting our house phone.

Not that we really wanted to disconnect our house phone. It was served us well over the years by taking calls for me when I intentionally left my cell phone off for days at a time forgot to carry my cell phone. Truly, up until the last couple of years our dear little house phone can be accused of nothing more substantial than not dropping calls from relatives asking for money.

During the last couple of years, however, the black-hearted mutants that populate the hell known as The Telemarketing Industry have made our poor little cordless their bitch. We receive calls from jackasses who want us to subscribe the SF Chronicle, buy their home security systems, vote for their candidate and take their damned surveys.

We receive phone calls at night after we’ve gone to bed and in the morning before I’ve had my coffee. Phone calls come in while I’m in the shower, in the middle of making dinner, trying to concentrate on homework and during my daughter’s nap. We have gone from a ratio of 10:1 personal-to-telemarketer phone calls to 0:1,562,201 personal-to-telemarketer phone calls because our family and friends have not bothered to use our house number since I’ve began a therapeutic regimen that involves answering the house phone with an air horn.

Last week my husband and I had had enough. We called the phone company and had our service disconnected. In order to let everyone know that we would be going to a cell-phone-only household I composed the following e-mail:

I apologize in advance for the mass e-mail but it’s the only way I know how to get a change of phone number out to everyone

As of November 30th Kris and I are disconnecting our house phone. I am proud to admit that this decision was made hastily and with very little deliberation some moments after the 5,864,021st call from someone with a fake Western name and impossible accent who is very much wishing that I could be answering a few questions? And then quite possibly be buying an item of interest that I had not been seeing before?

Anyway, the portal between our home and telemarketing hell must be closed. Therefore I’d like to give everyone our cell phone numbers:

Kris: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Steph XXX-XXX-XXXX

Please feel free to drunk dial us at 2AM. Just don’t sign us up for anything that will result in more “surveys” or phone calls from some guy in Calcutta who calls himself “Kevin”.

Then I hit “send”. But only after blind cc’ing everyone in my contacts list because my contacts list should just have those that I regularly e-mail, right?

Nooooooooooo. You know that saying? The one that goes “When you have sex with someone you’re having sex with every single person they’ve ever had sex with”? Well, Google mail’s contact list is kind of like that. Gmail has this nifty way of keeping every single person you’ve e-mailed, been cc’ed on an e-mail with, or even casually wondered about in your contacts list. This is completely handy for people who love to use their e-mail to warn humanity about the dangers of AIDS-infected needles in movie theater seats but not so good for people like me who frequently fail to look before I electronically leap.

Oh yes. I am to humanity what the Hubble telescope is to the space program.

So no sooner had I hit “send” than this nifty little missive with mine and my husband’s cell phone numbers goes whizzing around the planet several times, to mystify and irritate no fewer than one third of the earth’s population. In return for my efforts I received a deluge of responses with the line “Do I know you?” and several other people informed me in less than polite terms that my e-mail address was being permanently blocked. A few others responded with humor – an act that was much appreciated in the aftermath of my own ineptitude.

After I realized that I had mistakenly e-mailed nearly everyone in the western world I began to look forward to the receipt of each “Status: Undeliverable” message because each of those represented at least one less person who would think that I was a total idiot.

…and now for something completely different:

You asked for it so here it is… more additions to the f-list meme.

Thanks to all those who wrote up their own: Wendy, LL, Sparrow, Malathion Man, and Cazzie.

…and a hearty apology for leaving out some of my favorites: Lee, Lori, Maeve and the Berzerker Librarian who lives in my hometown. Now go and post your f-lists! And this badge! And link back to this post! And then tag five people!

…also, residents of southeastern Washington, Idaho and Oregon really should consider stockpiling Cipro. Not that I would know anything. I’m just a nebulous blogger from Northern California who most definitely never receives e-mails from eco-terrorists who post on Peregrine Falcon chat groups or culture deadly strains of bird flu in the ad hoc lab they’ve created in their their parents’ basement in Pullman, Washington.

Just sayin’.

At any rate, I’m surprised. Like, really, really surprised. How many f-lists have been submitted? Too many to post here. How many times did I, personally, make the f-lists? 90% of the time. To that end, I don’t think I’m stopping at stockpiling Cipro. I think I’m going to also collect a small-arms arsenal and booby-trap my home.

But the f-list has its detractors, not a few of which have e-mailed me to express their disappointment that I would electronically piss in their Cheerios. So for those who seem to have misunderstood the concept, I offer you an olive branch in the form of a definition:

F-List, defined: The f-list isn’t about hating people or animals or inanimate objects that offend the senses by being coated in pink “fun fur”. The f-list is simply an expression of an individual’s frustration with receiving a daily hammering by overzealous activists, the media, and various and sundry jackasses.

For instance, perhaps you’re a normally kind and compassionate person who loves animals but has had it up to your eyeballs with these insane morons from PETA who make specious arguments equating the life of a dog to that of a human. You have two choices: you can fabricate a pipe bomb in your garage and head over to your nearest PETA headquarters or you can compose an f-list and put “Rabid animals rights assholes” on it. The upside is that you don’t end up in prison for off’ing someone who really deserves it. The downside, of course, is that you don’t off someone who really deserves it.

See? The f-list keeps people out of prison.

Also, I have to say that I’m more than just a tad surprised that the whole f-list thing has gone the way of the dreaded meme (somebody get Grundir on the horn STAT!) But since I’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity to whore my site to anyone nor have I been the type of person to deny that modern life has its share of aggravation, I invite everyone who wishes to do so to post their own f-lists, link back to this blog and post this badge:

Here are a couple of folks who have already posted f-lists and linked back to my blog along with a few who have now received the dreaded “tag” and must post f-lists of their own (insert evil laugh here):

LL – Who has since removed the post. Damn her!!! (pumps fist in air)

Cynical Bastard

Lori

Pirate

Blondie

Janet

Malathion Man

Sparrow

Wendy

At first the additions to the f-list were completely logical magnets for the hatred shared by every rational human being: the Lakers, speed bumps, inventors of shows like Sorority Forever because really, how could you watch an episode of Sorority Forever and not want to punch the cast, creators, producers, network execs, advertisers and every sorority girl within a fifty mile radius square in the jaw? Hell, I wanted to stick myself in the eye with a red-hot poker for the sin of having sat through it without throwing my television into the street.

Anyway. So somewhere between adding item #21 (Kobe Bryant) and item #3,284,091 (sorbitol) I realized that I had become significantly more chipper. It would seem that when one burns so far through a list of stuff that one would like to drop-kick off the face of the earth that one is resorting to sugar substitutes and films in Esperanto that one can have feasibly purged oneself of homicidal urges that make one a threat to oneself and others.

Also, it helped that in the course of reading through comments and e-mails I was treated to te f-lists of others and will include them here:

Kaylia’s F-List:

Bosses
Micromanagers
The Stock Market
Radical Rights
Radical Lefts
Makers of the Push Up Bra
Expiration Dates That Lie
Anonymous Comments And Those Who Leave Them
Starbucks
Closed Minded Nutcases
My Pile of Dirty Laundry
My Pile of Clean Laundry
Country Music
American Idol
Political Commercials
Emo Kids
Dress Codes
Bottled Water
Mechanical Pencils
DHL
People Who Refuse to Wait Their Turn
Drivers Who Refuse To Wait Their Turn
Any Driver Who Has Ever Hit A Pedestrian
That ASSHOLE Who Hit Me Last Week

/deep breath/

Josephson’s f-list is, reportedly, me.

He didn’t submit an f-list but I can guarantee that my brother would agree with Josephson.

Malathionman took the f-list in a new direction and included every disease-free female in North America who looks tolerably well without the assistance of a paper bag over her head.

Jay’s f-list is unique in that it brings together ESPN and the Amish:

ESPN
The NFL
Reality TV
The Weatherman on TV
The Amish
TV Political Analysts
TV Sports Analysts
TV Financial Analysts
All TV Analysts of any kind
Kids
Shirtless dudes in Wal-Mart
Political ads (especially local politicians and their pathetic attempt at humor)
People who engage in the Mac v. PC argument
Joe the Plumber

April was too nice to post an f-list although I would be willing to bet she secretly harbors nasty thoughts about styrofoam.

Tracy’s f-list crushed me with her hatred of Prius’s but then she invoked Dr. G and won me over again:

1. The handful of parents at my kids school who have made it so the kids can’t wear their costumes to school on Halloween day or have Christmas parties or pageants – so now we have to have “Winter Party” instead.

2. Prius owners – because unless you crushed your old car you have accomplished nothing. Your old car is still on the road and now you have added another one.

3. Actors/tv shows that use their sitcom/time slot to make their personal political statements. If I wanted to see/hear that I would be watching CNN or Fox. Please give me a warning at the beginning of the show that you are going to throw this in my face so I can go watch something else like Dr. G Medical Examiner.

4. The welfare system

So dear readers I am asking again – for the sake of election year therapeutic purposes – are there any more f-lists out there? I’m collecting assignments in (checks imaginary watch) 48 hours.

…and now I’m off to a weekend at the ocean for a little environmental therapy of my own. Read you in a couple days!

Um, yeah. It would appear that our friend doesn’t have a particularly strong sense of self preservation.

…or a wife who shies away from forwarding photos. For this I am grateful since – if she had considered the ramifications of distributing this – she might have considered the possibility that it would end up on my blog and refrained from hitting “send”.

Just do it. Indeed.