A Miracle is Spots Turning to Squares

About eight years ago, I was disowned by my Dad.

Not that our relationship had been stellar throughout my lifetime. It had basically come to a head and, I can't speak for him, but I remember just completely being at a loss as to what to do anymore. It was like ramming dead horses into a brick wall at the point. I didn't feel like he had ever known me, much less like he had ever wanted to know me. There had been things said that made me feel he didn't feel I would or could be successful with my passions and that I should just go to business school and well, make my life a living hell so I could make a few bucks and die early. I never knew what was going on with me because he would never talk to me. The most we spoke was in the form of idle chit chat. A lot of it was awkward.

So I connected all ties with my paternal side of the family which means I also stopped speaking to my sister. I had good reason for this as well but I won't go into it. It isn't the point right now.

I never celebrate Father's Day because, well, I had pretty much let him go into some great beyond and accepted the loss. However, last week I was thinking about a lot of things. For instance, I was starting to get hit by the fact that I was finally doing all the things I wanted to do. I'd gotten my own art show. I'd been entering juried art shows in Denver at various galleries and actually getting into some of the shows. Furthermore, I've been evolving my work, the mark of any good artist, into more mediums and really expressing my life in more and more ways. I am getting my Vagus Nerve Stimulator for my Epilepsy which has been and well, continues to be a long road (though there is a destination in sight now) and this summer my Grandfather died.

I started thinking that no matter who my Dad was, surely he would want to know his child was doing okay. Even if we didn't renew our relationship. I was scared he would think I was bugging him for back child support again or wanting money or to tell him off because, in the past that's kind of how it went.

It was easier to find him than I thought.

I had a starting place in that we had received a letter from him from Phoenix several years ago. So I called information there. His number was listed in the suburb of Mesa. In the past few years I'd visited Mesa five or six times and knew he was possibly close by but wasn't ready to find him.

What I didn't know is that he'd been trying to find me for several years.

When he called back the next day, it was a different man who called. Sure it was the guy who I referred to above. But it wasn't my Father, it was my Dad. There's a difference. He was so happy I called and he said, "And on Father's Day weekend..." That's when I realized that it was indeed that time of year. How fortuitous. We spoke for quite awhile and he wanted to see my art, read my writing. He wanted to meet me. He told me about how he almost died and was laying in a hospital bed thinking about me. I could hear the changes in his voice and it made me so happy. Wounds that had been there since I was a small girl began to heal instantly. The Dad that played Janis Joplin and Pink Floyd tapes while we bumped along the country road by our old schoolhouse home was on the other end of the line telling me about the music he listened to. I couldn't believe it. Talking about music with my Dad! He even recommended an artist to me. Everyone go look up Sarah Brightman because my Dad says she has a beautiful voice. We talked about movies a bit too and how my Aunt Linda has a zillion of them. He and my Uncle have become quite close. He works for him and my Dad "has tried to take most of the stress out of my life." If you only knew what a 180 that is for him, you would know why I know miracles really exist.

I told him it isn't everyday things like this happen. I never thought it would. Truly in my head I thought he would die lonely and alone. Thus, I told him what a big person it took to change their life completely and own up to their mistakes and basically apologize for what amounts to a lot of things that affected a lot of my life. However, the words "I'm sorry" go a long, long way in this instance.

He has developed respect for me and an interest in me as a person. For the first time in my life, I truly feel like he means it when he says he loves me.

Maybe everyone takes theirs for granted but I never really had one, even when I was a kid.

But now I have a Dad.

I Wish I Had a Kite

It's times like the last few days when I wish I had a kite.

Surely, sending something decorative and beautiful kissed with a wish (though I'm having a bit of trouble believing in them right now) soaring up to meet the clouds could be a medicine for my soul.
I want to take a jar and my heart and soul inside of it, tightening the lid so they don't escape. I would place it on the grass next to me as I watched the big giant kite float about in the sky. Nothing would be inside me as I watched the kite and I could just...be.

Being emotionally exhausted, I can't decide whether or not to sleep. I don't want to but my body has to. There are repercussions for not sleeping. Severe ones. I have, in the last few days, gained my father back, thus repairing my heart in many ways, lost a chance at something wonderful and gotten insulted in hindsight, smashing the shit out of my heart in many other ways, which is a bit counter productive. I didn't get into the art show I really wanted to get into. It was really important to me and the man on the phone forgot to email me. When I called, he was very nonchalant about the whole thing, asking me to describe my work and said, "No, I don't see it i the show." It's a very prestigious gallery and they didn't even have a list of names so I had to rely on his guesstimate. On top of that my headphones broke when all I wanted to do was wallow in my music. Finally, today I found my iPod earbuds in my car after I fell out of the rolley chair at work and found out that one of my co-workers just decided to cross a shitload of my shifts off the calendar and take them for her own. Thanks. That's nice. Take money out of my fucking pocket, you bitch. You have two jobs. That's what I survive on when I'm not banking on people to maybe buy my art. Christ.

If this bitch takes my money, I can't buy a kite.

What is with people stealing from me? Ironically the only person who has given to me lately is the person who stole practically my entire life from me. It means a lot he is back but it is still stealing emotional energy from me.

Why won't the nurse for the epileptologist just return my call? I need to go through a consult with her so I can have a consult with my surgeon and get onto the table for my VNS implant. Please. Please. Someone just stop robbing me.

There is no wind anyway. So I can't fly a kite.

I don't know what to do.

Mexican Prank Calls

What does this number mean? 410-210-9898

I have had phone calls from this number on two separate occasions.

I pick up the phone and some man rapid fires a very long speech in Spanish and then hangs up. My inadequate skills with the Spanish language do not allow me to keep up with what he is saying. I catch the words "solo" and "aqui" which I know mean, respectively, "alone" and "here." He is speaking too rapidly for me to even attempt to understand him or his intentions, though, and I am left, saying, "Que? Que?" after his prattle is over. But no, he is gone.

I am, as I write this, going to call the number back. I don't know what state this man is calling from or why he is calling me. He says something different every time. Okay, hold on. I will, of course blather on about what I find out.

I'm back.

I dialed the number and this is what I get. In English. "All circuits are busy now. Please try back later."

What is going on?! Did one of my weirdo friends sign me up for some Mexican Prank Call of the Month service during a drunken stupor? Why did the message woman answer in English? What sort of circuits are these? People screaming in Spanish in the ears of poor, unsuspecting girls just trying to enjoy a nice cloudy evening? This is a business that does this? Is this like in Punch Drunk Love where they are running a porn service out of a mattress store? I never called a porn line, especially not one run in Spanish. Is Phillip Seymour Hoffman going to send his goons to beat the shit out of me because I called the number back and am now blogging about the phone calls I have received?

Wait a tic! How did they even get my number? It's a private cell phone number. When I bought my new phone, I also made sure to change numbers so I could start fresh.

Why is it that I, of all people, am the brunt of Mexican Prank Calls? Not just one but multiple Mexican Prank Calls. I would think it was Neil and Adam calling me from Mexico because I did give them a partially used phone card to take with them on their vacation in case their debauchery landed them in some trouble and they needed to call home, but a)they don't know enough Spanish to pull off this level of prattling and b)they are safely back in Colorful Colorado and not in some sort of 410 area code. I know this because I just saw them and they both have classes and/or jobs to go to, as hilarious as they think this would be to pull off. Also they probably would do it to our friend Anthony, who did not get his passport in time to join them in Mexico, and not me. On their end, I am the brunt of Borat and pimp imitations, respectively.

All I know, is they had better have said something really good. If I am getting Mexican Prank Calls, then I don't want some lame-o telling me he wants me to get out of his dreams and into his car. If you are going to do it, do it right. At least waste my time with something that would make me want to punch you with a brick and pull your mustache under your crotch. I would at least respect your creativity.

Then I would ask you how much you make because that's a pretty awesome job.

Tall Drink of Water

the trees near my house grow like wheat
sweeping the clouds
shopkeepers waving cumulus kids away
dropping seed pod penny candies
for sparrow children to gulp down gullets

neighborhood favorite featherheads.

my heart curls up on the ledge and
beats itself in time
with the thunder, dropping beats
for the rain to catch and carry away
aquatic vibrations through your faucet

please drink me up at 2 a.m. in the in between

clinging like tiny girl gymnasts to your lips
dripping from your tongue
and warming myself on that moist land i wonder
about when i dream of you on white sheets
turned on side, one foot out and waking only

at the sound of the sun hitting the ground.

you do what you do and you have no idea
you have done well
i want to take your hands and place them
in a bowl of my cool cleansing kisses
as you place your lips on my surface

drinking me all the way in.

Terror Bat (Erik Loves Terror Bat So He Can HAVE Terror Bat!)

"Vamanos," Chris said, carrying a blue laundry hamper, as I unlocked the front of my building and he, Ryan and I headed up the stairway to the second floor to lucky apartment number 7. Apartment number 7: my residence. Apartment number 7: the location of Terror Bat.

Earlier that evening, I had finally arrived home, ready for bed. It had been a hard week. I finally got my art samples and application in to secure a spot for a covered booth at the Arts Picnic this summer. I set up a display at Chase Bank for Rozene's Festival of Art Festival samples, arguing with one if the tellers over whether or not you could put thumb tacks into stone pillars. I was "against." I think there were other things like my head almost exploding with stress concerning various things like jam bands being played at high volume at work and getting pissy responses when I asked my coworker to turn the radio down or to quit being loud because i couldn't hear the people on the phone or the customers asking me for synthetic urine. These were just the little things. And just Friday. So the rest of the week, which I won't eve go into, was just this vice grip on my patience and by Friday you could put a fork in me because I was done.

Back to me finally going home after a nice dinner of pan seared Tilapia soft tacos on corn tortillas and a cup of delicious coffee and ice cold water. Man, I like having coffee again. Even if it's just in small amounts. After that, I stopped at the corner of historical downtown and had my cards read by this amazing lady and end up talking to her for awhile and am beginning to relax. She has these dogs and they aren't annoying and always has popcorn around, which she puts fresh herbed butter on it. Possibly lavender? I'm not sure. Either way, it's always comforting to chat with her. It's about a block from home and when I finally left, I walked to my car amongst drunken booze hounds fondling each other and drooling margaritas on the sidewalk and I am glad I am not them. I remember when I was younger how much more cool it seemed. Now they just seem like runny, gross paintings of hustlers and whores, really. They don't seem to care about anything except holding each other up and getting a paw full of flesh while they're at it, mistaking it for affection.

Once I get home I'm too tired to do anything but fall into bed. I have my shawl around me and I'm about to reach over and turn out the light when: what I first think what was a bird came nonchalantly flap flap flapping into my bedroom, circling once and then landing on my curtain rod, right above the end of my bed.

I believe, "WHAT THE FUCK?" came out of my mouth as I jumped up into a huddled squatting position, looking at my cats who seemed mildly interested, almost as though a blob of potato salad had been thrown at the wall. Nothing too exciting to them. They stared for a moment and then apparently decided there was a better time to be had curled up in the clawfoot bathtub; that, in fact, this bat was nowhere, man. I yelled at them, "Come kill it!" This was, however, before I had determined it was a bat. I still thought it was a fat bird. It is spring, you know. So, I was on the phone with my Mom telling her there was a bird in my room because I thought she would think it was funny when I noticed the bird was hanging upside down.

I screeched, "It's a bat! It's a fucking bat! I have to call...I don't know, like someone. It can't be here! I gotta go!"

Next, I dial Ryan. He answers a mild-mannered hello and I continue in screech mode, "There is a BAT in my bedroom!"

Ryan, I can see his face sort of go blank as he says, "No there isn't."

I say, "There sure as FUCK is."

So now Ryan is getting a little bit more weirded out, which is ironic because he loves Spiderman and Spiderman got his powers from a radioactive spider. Ryan, is, however, practical and he started rattling off crap he was going to gather and told me to come pick him up. He asked if I had a net. I said, no, but I would make some calls.

On the way over to pick Ryan up, I called Chris who well, has this great focus. He's also very dependable if you can break him away from his hardcore blinder induced routine. Which a Terror Bat will do. It turns out Chris does not have a net. He asks if I have a hamper. I do not. I also do not have time to explain to Chris about how sometimes my house and I go to battle and currently the house is winning. He tells me to call him if we don't get the bat because "he thinks he could take the bat."

Will do.

When I pick Ryan up, he has added a fire extinguisher to the mix. This excites me as I wonder what this will do to the bat. However, I do not want the bat flying around. I do not want bat hell to break loose. I also do not want the bat to fly up into the top of my closet where it could possibly just make a home and be a Terror Bat guano sprinkler and we could not get at it. There's this tiny attic-like spot with a tiny entrance in the top of my closet where I store a bean bag chair. I do not want Terror Bat discovering that potential Bat Cave and taking a clever gadget-building butler up there and building a crime fighting division and stinking things up. I will burn that closet down.

Ryan also informs me that his plan is to hit the bat, knock it out and then throw it outside.

I look at him and say, "That's it? That's not going to work. You're just going to piss it off or you're going to stain my wall with bat stain."

Finally, I realize, I am going to be no good, as much as I like to think I am a badass. I can be but not with bats or snakes. Or large oversized goldfish. Or super large insects, especially Junebugs (oh so gross). Thus, I realize it's time to call Chris in.

I tell Ryan this and I think his manhood is a little insulted. But I inform him he's just going to yell at me and we'll be here all night. Which, it turns out later, is kind of what he wanted. He was so bored he was kind of excited about the bat and was hoping for a good two hour Scooby-Doo adventure.

When Chris gets there with his hamper, there is this slow motion moment where I am imagining the Bionic Man theme as he leaps up onto my bed in his soccer shoes and, without a flinch traps Terror Bat. I hear a little squeak, Chris tells me to throw the painter's cloth over the hamper, he tells Ryan to secure the edges and hold onto the sides because there are those little holes in hampers and then we all, in slow motion, Reservoir Dog style, it seems, take the hamper outside.

Chris said, "He's weirded out, man"

I chimed in, "Ditto."

When we got outside, I saw a side of Chris I have never seen. He had turned off the uber blinder focus guy and he was carefully turning the hamper onto the dewy grass and he shook out the painter's cloth. He looked into the grass and then up into the trees.

"There he goes. He's gone," he said, softly.

Ryan received a high five and I, a hug. Then off into the night with his light blue hamper, same as he ever was. Layers, like an onion.

You never know certain things about yourself or the people you know until you meet the Terror Bat.

My Friend Neil and Adam Ate These in Mexico and Made Them For Me!

See, this isn't an exact recipe and you can certainly tweak it how you want. That's sort of how it goes, I guess. Here's what was going on when I arrived at Neil's house, expecting some blackened hot dogs and ruffled chips (I didn't care, I was hungry and even asked if I needed to stop and get some potato salad).

When I got there, Neil's lady friend, Hallie, who I think is fabulous, had her entorouge (sp?) mashing up guacamole, Neil's housemate, Chris had a friend Javier who was just finishing up some cactus salsa, which delighted me because I'd not run into anyone my age who would eat cactus unless under my duress. This salsa was wonderful. These guys work at their other housemate's (not present) restaurant, The Wing Shack and had procured a stash of hot sauce from said establishment. There was queso, made by one of Hallie's gals. I helped Neil wrap the hot dogs with bacon (pay attention, this is a key point--which I will repeat, lucky you) but we later agreed he should have wrapped them with the pre-cooked bacon you can buy in packages. Although I think it turned out fine. I"m not sure what he was worried about and frankly, I don't think they have pre-cooked bacon in Mexico, or at least where Adam and Neil went. Then I carmelized some rings of onions. As Neil went to grill the dogs, we got out the mayonnaise and the sour cream. Yes, I said mayonnaise. So, following is how you basically put together a Mexican Hot Dog:

Bun

Mayo and Sour Cream (I skipped the sour cream but the mayo is a must...that's how they make them...unless you are the Cadillac of Stephanies. Then skip this step and stick to sour cream)

Carmelized Onions

Bacon Wrapped Grilled Hot Dog with the yummy grilled hot dog black crap

Guacamole

Queso

Salsa (I highly recommend making a homemade salsa such as the cactus one. i have a recipe for pumpkin seed salsa that would have done well also. I DON"T reccomend crappy run of the mill salsa as this is not a run of the mill hot dog)

If you have the stomach and mouth lining, try the hot sauce. Apparently, you can't do this unless it is HOT sauce. I can't do this. I enjoy tasting my food and not burning my lips off.

Note: I heard the term "stacking" being thrown about. I think this refers to eating two of these guys in one go. This brings you mucho respect from other guys, I guess. Or people around you.

Enjoy. Seriously, I'm a hot dog buff. I know a lot about them, have once owned a PBS video on the making of them and I collect Weinermobiles. This is what happens when someone nicknames you Weiner. Plus I just really enjoy them and have fond memories of them. This is just one more.

Enjoy!

Scrabbulous

Hey! It's one of those nights where I just don't sleep. It's not that I really mind them because I get writing done and I usually find something amusing in my attempts to entertain myself.

I should point out that these nights usually occur after I have driven myself NUTS with activity and doing things. These past two weeks would definitely qualify. I almost had a mental breakdown (not literally, folks, it's cool) yesterday, trying to cram eleventy billion things in the universe into the span of about eight hours. I finally had to start eliminating things that just weren't physically possible if the festival was going to happen and I was going to remain free from women's prison on several counts of homicide. I don't think women's prison is as sexy as guys think and I'm just not into butch chicks who want to trade cigarettes for sex, so I'm glad I just did what I could. I might point out, that I am also not into trading men things for sex either. One of my neighbors who was drunk once demanded that I life up my shirt when my friend and I were rough housing. I don't know him that well but I used to wait on him several years ago at a small restaurant and he kept saying stuff about never knowing his waitress was "like this." Ummmm. Your waitress? Okay. So, to cap, I don't trade women cigarettes in prison or out of prison for sexual favors and I don't lift my shirt for drunken neighbors or the male type.

Believe it or not I am getting to my point, which is, after leaving a bunch of annoying comments on my friends' pages, I was trolling around from Internet site to site looking at stupid shit because I knew if I got up and started reading I would just stare at the same page for seven hours. Just because I"m up doesn't mean I'm at a level of comprehension I am at during the day when I've had sleep. At this time, I was looking for some internet radio stations to listen to, which is sort of hard to sort through all the shit, and found what was possibly the most ridiculous piece of bizarro ever. It is www.freesoothingmusic.com. When you see it in the google list, you think..."Ahhh...that sounds nice, maybe it will help lull me to sleep."

Not only is it hideous music but some of the titles include the following:

Just Came Home? Cheer Up!"
"Memories of Those Lonely Days"
"We Say Wow Wow"
"Sadness"

And the "soothing" hits just keep coming!

There were some different links to click on such as: Sleeping Music, Dinner Music, etc. However, these are not additional playlists. If you click on them, they are just google links to sites where you can buy motorcycles and soothing crap like that. Possibly the funniest part or the most fucked up part was a little scrolling box saying these soothing sounds were just the start of this wonderful site! Soon to come were other genres, too like rap! And southern fried rock! They take requests, too and if it is available on the internet (cross your fingers) they will try and add it! Don't get your hopes up, though. I can never download music from the Internet. Nobody does that. That's like saying you can upload photos and post them on your friend's Myspace. Whatever. I'm just going to get on my hoverboard and zip on over to Michael J. Fox's house.

From there, I thought, maybe I would like to play an Internet game. I'm not into role playing....games. I hate solitaire because it's boring and I'm not good at cards anyway, except my brother is trying to long distance train me at Texas Hold 'Em and that's going alright. I found this Scrabble site, though, and was stoked because I love this wooden tiled game and generally whoop ass at it. Apparently, these people take it up a thousand notches and have quit their jobs to play Scrabble online day and night. I played one or two good games but they have you on this timer and this freaks me out. Scrabble is not a timed game. Bobby Fisher? We don't care where he went. At one point, I was playing some Australian who was giving me another reason to want to release the snakes again (the reasons just keep stacking up, man). This nerdalicious jerk went by the handle of scrabblesid and I had like 24 seconds left and I was trying to get my word together in time so I could earn some more seconds and points. scrabblesid chooses this point to become talkative in the little chat thinger and is thanking me profusely for giving him the highest score of his lifetime! Well, you have to answer or these dorks get pissed and ban you from the tables (gasp) so I am like, "you're welcome, whatever, blah blah" and he JUST KEEPS thanking me, emphasizing his thanks, trying, I think not to sound like a jerk but sounding like one and being a poor sport who is coming off like some sporto who just thanked me for the best blow job he ever had. I was thinking, in my head, "Quit sucking your own cock, asshole, I have 10 seconds to get the word hug up on the board!" I almost won against this chick with a really bad ranking but I lost by five points because she came up with a real humdinger that I really thought she made up. However, the site doesn't let you do that, so apparently it was a word. Although, I thought worl was a word. I guess not. I swear it is, but I am going to look it up. I swear they go against some regular Scrabble rules. So I call Shenaningans on this site on some accounts.

Retroactive Travel Blog: Tangible Destruction of My Childhood

Note: I realize this is dated in May. There are reasons I'm posting it HERE in July. If you are one of the 1.5 people who read my blog and you don't already read it on Myspace, then enjoy the newness. Otherwise, skip this one, dude.

May 4, 2007

We stay overnight at the Comfort Inn in downtown Denver so I can attend the Regina Spektor concert with Amy and Ryan (a birthday present from them) before we leave for Idaho the next morning and Mom can ogle the room service waiters who she suspects are pinch-hitting for their lazy, pot-addicted sons who skip out on work as they look more like mountain climbers with wind-blown hair and sun-kissed cheeks, bearing chicken and andouille sausage quesadillas on fancy trays with tiny jars of condiments and linen-covered trays.

Upon my arrival to the Comfort Inn later that night after the concert, or the big fancy building the Comfort Inn sign appeared to be attached to, I am confused, as are Ryan and Amy who had kindly escorted me the block and a half from the Paramount Theatre. This is not the Comfort Inn of my childhood years: the scummy surfaced pool and sweaty night clerk wearing a wife-beater with yellow stains along the arm seams who, surely as a budding adolescent, I could have dated and started my drinking career early on. However, the Comfort Inn we were standing in, or should I say the marble floor we were standing on, was full of smarmy hipsters, a fireplace, ridiculous amounts of lily arrangements, carefully groomed valets (whom I immediately suspected were having anal sex in the back of the cars because I once knew a guy who was a valet and told me stories about the seamy side of the valet world which included such activities) and conveniently, an all-night room service menu which adjusted its offerings according to the time of day it was. 3 pm? Sandwiches with potato salad and an appetizer menu with dessert offerings at the bottom. 2 am? Burgers and appetizers. Lots of fried items. Coffee. Very perceptive. One item was consistenly available, though: the 1/3 pound American Kobe Beef Burger. Kobe Beef was a meat I had only encountered on the Japanese version of Iron Chef. I immediately ordered it, despite its $14.00 price tag. However, an assortment of nuts was priced at $8.00 so I felt justified. This was also American Kobe Beef and not knowing if that was a type of cow that lived primarily in Japan and maybe they imported just to this Comfort Inn and fed it lilies, I just went ahead and ordered it. Iron Chef! It was delicious and also came with little jars of condiments that must have just been born in a condiment nursery. They had a complimentary piece of tape across the lids, which I appreciated, much like I appreciate the strap of paper across the toilet in hotels. Yet, at 4 a.m. the Comfort Inn became "This Kobe Beef is coming out one of two ends" Inn and I was so tired I fell asleep in the bathroom, wakin gup a half hour feeling somewhat better, but I decide to take a Zantac to cover my bases anyway.

Cinco de Mayo

The alarm goes off and we get our wake up call. At the same time. This is possibly the most annoying thing I have ever heard aside from an air horn at a sporting event, which is one of the reasons I avoid sporting events. That, and sports.

And so it begins.

I load up on my sedatives per doctor's orders to prevent the panic attacks/stress freakouts that tend to cause seizures. I am travellng to a town, population 400 and change with no emergency medical service. No hospital. And, in the worst situation, no mortuary. Upon rearrangement of my carry-on tote bag with the clouds and crow (homemade and pinned on) on it I find that: a) I have neglected to pack my journal; b) the headphones I grabbed to replace my lost iPod earbuds do not fit what I thought was a universal headphone hole, but no, Apple makes their earphone hole slightly larger than others; and c) I have brilliantly left my camera's memory card stuck neatly in the side of my laptop, which is sitting neatly on my coffeetable, two fucking hours away. To top things off, when we arrive at the airport, we are informed we are four minutes late for check-in and to try the skycap who is a nice man who helps us out, but upon arrival in Boise we find our luggage has been lost anyway. However, some guy who got there an hour and a half early lost his luggage, too so it wasn't the skycap guy's fault. He really did try. We also almost miss our flight to Boise because, as skycap guy says, "the gate is about a mile down the concourse." No shit! We are hyperspeeding down the concourse and down into what appears to be Middle Earth. I do think I see a Hobbit running a Starbucks kiosk as we whiz by and I simultaneously shout over my shoulder to my Mom as I see her nemesis, the escalator with no stair option approaching, "Just run down it like stairs!" because we have zero, literally, zero time for her tendency to hold onto the handles and flatten out to a horizontal position, tapping her foot on the metal lip of the edge of the escalator for like an hour. I can actually hear our names being paged for final boarding as a final warning shot so I book it to the gate so they don't close the doors on us, breathlessly gasping, "THAT'S US! THAT'S US!" to the rotund woman in a skin-tight United uniform who does not look amused. My Mom finally catches up and the woman scans our tickets and we blaze down the jetway ramp of Arctic air, only to be greeted by our flight attendant who waves us through nonchalantly.

We are seats 7A and 7B. That means window for me so I don't puke monster everywhere and as we huff and puff up to them, we find some laze bag stretched out across them. I suppose he thought it was safe to make himself a little napping site but he must have seen the look in my eye that said, "Look, man, I don't have much left to lose but my teeth. So if you want to fuck with me then fucking do it or move." Now," because he scampered back to 9B and immediately sat upright and began flipping through a Skymall magazine.

I should mention we have not had time to eat yet and I was ready to eat the laze bag alive. Our flight traded the snack service for a few extra rounds of trash collection because we apparently caught the Hobo Roundabout Flight to Idaho. You also cannot have souvenir plastic wing pins with weakling fasteners. The FAA banned them after the whole 9/11 debacle because apparently some hobo might make a weapon out of a can of Snap-E-Tom and said wing pin, splashing the tomato juice in laze bag's eyes, causing partial temporary blindness, allowing him or her time to jan the bendy wind fastener pin into his fatty man boob and cause a slight sting, rendering the flight...inconvenient. Thinking about how I tried to get one of these pins on another trip, I decide to see if this is indeed the case. The flight attendant seems amiable. She is youngish, my age or so and maybe a mother or could want children some day.

So I invent a child. Her name is Mabel. She is bi-lingual. I base her father off a friend of mine because I can't think of a fake guy. My Mom is wondering why I have to have all these details. I tell her women like to talk about children and I have to know these things in case she wants to chat me up. So Mabel is five years old. Her father manages a restaurant and plays on two travelling soccer teams and speaks fluent Spanish as a second language. He majors in International Studies at CSU and has been teaching her both languages since she was born. Mabel also adores kites. Thus, she has decided she wants to be a pilot and travel all over the world and I promised I would try and get a wing pin for her. Her favorite color is blue. Like a pilot's hat. She attends a.m. kindergarten and enjoys show and tell because I take her to thrift stores on Saturdays and let her pick two things with her allowance. She is taking cello lessons. Right now, she only likes to wear overalls, shorts and pants types. Her favorite bird is the sparrow. Mabel's middle name is Annie because both her father and I love that name. That is my mother's name and that is his favorite sister's name.

I enjoyed having a daughter for five minutes. The duration of the beverage service. That was really all I had the attention span for. The flight attendant did not have the wings but the daughter scam got me some inside info, which I intend to use in the future. Thanks Mabel Annie...whatever your last name is.

I decide to remember how Ben tries to end things on a good note. My flight has been interspersed with a few of those rainfall tear leakings. So I think in my head I am grateful for the book "Catcher in the Rye" and that I am finally reading it. It's amazing. I love Holden Caulfield's name. My uncle plays the mandolin, the guitar, the piano and the fiddle. I will get to hear one of those during my trip or more. Maybe while saying hello to my grandparents where they sleep in the mountains with the trees growing over them while sipping on one of my aunt's ever present Diet Cokes.

After my uncle Marshall, aka Marshall, picks us up, he thoughtfully whizzes us over to Best Buy so I can get ear phones for the iPod and a camera memory card. There is paper to be had at the Market Basket in Fairfield, where we are going. We stop at a Burger King and I am so hungry I actually eat there. I have a chicken sandwich and a Coke or something like that. My Mom gets a kid's meal and an awesome Spiderman toy which she hands over to me because she doesn't get who Sandman is or why it's so funny that he is a spinning top.

May 6, 2007

I have been dreaming so vividly during this trip. I think people have been visiting me in my dreams. Although the only person I can remember is Ben, though there have been others. I think my friend Andrea has been there, too. I dreamed Ben was describing Egrets for hours to me and I was fascinated and puzzled as well. There is a dream for each night. I wish I could remember them all. I think my grandparents are coming to me as well. They are like a second life or a second part of the day and so real and intense and they mean things.

Today there has been a lot of sleeping. We are just very relaxed as though we are calming down. For me, I think I am resting up for the next day when I know I am going to Granddad's house for the last time. When I am not sleeping, I am trying to keep busy. There is a lot of talk about the new house my Mom is building and I want to keep on the perimeter of that, which of course, I feel guilty about, but I can only make peace with one thing at a time. It is a hard thing to hear when I am dealing with the destruction of my tangible childhood. Thinking about all the textures, smells, sights, cold tiles on my toes, everything I could count on coming "home" to becoming a pile of dirt and rubble. I equate the job of bulldozing this house over to the job of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. I can't imagine who would climb in the seat of that machine in that town. I went to the Market Basket to get ingredients for hummus. It was a bit difficult as I believe it is mainly run by local teenagers who don't know what pitas are. I had to use dried minced garlic which didn't ruin it too much. I located some original flavored Sun Chips that would suffice. This is a place that has Trapper Keepers but no garlic. They have "Elk Heat" for attracting sexy elk but no chammomile tea. I tried to go to the coffee shop very early in the morning to get some writing done because I knew my family would be meeting up there but I underestimated my Mom and Aunt's getting up early abilities. I had five minutes of alone time in the coffee shop before they came in. This is a great coffee shop and I sat in the same chair, I realized, that I had when I wrote my Granddad's eulogy the morning of his funeral.

After coffee, we went back up to my aunt and uncle's house, officially known as the Red Ant Rancho. I showed my cousin Jeff some of my pictures and discovered he had a Myspace, which delighted me because now I can keep in better touch with him. Plus I saw him curse on here, so I feel comfortable in keeping in my normal course of existence on Myspace. Which is stupid that I wouldn't feel comfortable, but you know, it's my first family "friend."

May 7, 2007

My trip now seems like a dream. Surreal. It seems alternately magical and nightmarish. I have discovered the rest of the family still thinks I am moving to Idaho when my Mom does. This is all my fault. I guess, being sort of selfish and living in my bit of independence where it is hard for me to let people in on my thoughts and I forget to tell them things I think "I need to tell so and so this" and then just assume I told them. So, then, just being so anxious, afraid, sad, teary, full of dread and mourning concerning this trip, I just projected the idea that I suppose they just knew. Maybe my Mom was talking to my aunt and it came up. I don't know. I just thought they knew. They didn't. So, as a result, several awkward moments came up where I was forced into revealing not only that fact, but also that I was not returning until the new house was built. I had a quiet conversation later with my aunt Barbara, my uncle's wife, as opposed to his sister Barb, about why I could not stand to see any sort of rubble or blank spot or skeleton of the new house in the place where 209 Camas Avenue once stood with the name O.M. Ralph was burned into a wooden plaque on the front of the house. As I was gathering things I wanted, my last chance to peruse what I might want from the estate, like my Grandmother's chenille blanket I slept under as a child and my Granddad's director's chair, amongst other things, my Mom was in the kitchen cleaning for some fucking reason, what they were going to turn into a pile of dirt anyway. Yes, it makes me angry because it's ridiculous because they are pre-wiping away my first and favorite kitchen. They took away the exploding peaches, the frozen, unwrapped peaches. All these things my Granddad was keeping for memories. It was like they were his refrigerated scrapbook. They cleaned out the fridge which we are throwing out anyway. I stood outside taking pictures of everything, including the white clapboard church next door that no one ever used and I was always fascinated by, and I thought, "Why don't they just take what they want out of it, the furniture, the cabinets, etc. and when they're done, just control burn it?" At least there would be some ceremony to it. I would return for that. Not for a pile of memory rubble. As they continue cleaning the kitchen, I am in and out asking if anyone has claimed the records or this or that and no one is listening to me and if they are, my Mom is admonishing me that I cannot take this on the plane and that everytime we come I do this. I take all these things. This breaks my heart because she is so caught up in her building that she has forgotten that this is my breaking down, my undoing of the only home sweet home I have ever known. This is the last chance I have to gather. That, there are mailboxes and kind relatives who will store things for me. Jeff must have heard this and seen the look on my face when I came back in the living room because he said, seamlessly, "Hey, put aside the records you want and I'll make sure they get where they need to." I thank him and turn back quietly to stacking some pillows my tiny child head slept on ona chair I want eventually when I will sleep facing someone who will count as my adult family. I get a lump in my throat as I touch the pillows and the chenille blanket as I think to myself that even if I never get this and I never have this, because for certain I will never have children, that at least I will have the comfort of the chenille and the pillows. Then I cannot breathe and I picture the whole house caving in and I am still in it and it crumbles like carboard and glass is folding in and the Burpee's seed clock is falling toward me, along with the bookcase full of every documentation of my childhood, the only place where pictures of me as a child exist, displayed proudly. It is all falling to dust and the attic is falling in and the bats in the attic are flapping everywhere and I am screaming. I don't want them in my hair but they are flying away but the whole attic is filled with guano and it's coming down to me and everything is literally shit. All I can hear outside is cheers for the new house. I am crushed. So is the house and no one knows I am inside and those monkey masks are in the kitchen which they cleaned but all the beautiful bottles they never touched are broken and the cat magnets have been pressed into the Earth and the wood stove is bent and stooped like an old man.

I take a deep breath and look at Jeff. He is reading a book on the shelf. I go outside. I turn the bell on the middle of the door as I always do as I leave and walk down the steps. One time someone carved me a duck, or that's what they said it was, as we all sat on the steps and watched the fireworks in the park.

Jeff and I both take what seems like thousands of photos of the hose and the endless textures of it. He finds a perfectly preserved squirrel in the wood stove in the living room and we pose it with an acorn and look into having the high school principle preserve it. Apparently, he has a background in taxidermy. We name it Andy, as in "Take your pal Andy with you!" We venture into the shed and I also find, literally, a 40 year old beer. It's top is bulging but it has somehow survived the elements and seasons all these years. I don't even think they make this beer anymore. The top is encrusted with dust and ant carcasses. I will bring it to my friend Ryan. It surives the airplane ride as well. That's a hearty beer.

Intermittently, there are heart-wrenchingly wonderful moments. My family surprises me with champagne, a cake with Clifford the Big Red Dog on it (who we bud the Hysterectomy Dog because I was on the peds ward at the hospital when I had the hysterectomy and received a stuffed Clifford dog from one of the nurses when they were donated to the unit by Kohl's. It sits on my bed to this day) and a present of a strange carbonated espresso drink called Bibicaffe in tribute to my brief stint as an employee of Starbucks. We then watched old home movies from my Mom and her siblings' childhood on the 8mm projector, which I took photos of, and I saw my Grandmother in color and in motion for the first time ever. I shot what seemed like a thousand photos from those three reels and, as the trip goes on I am finding more and more ways to hold onto and preserve my childhood home in small artifacts of my own making, including a small stuffed weiner dog you are supposed to autograph but I have drawn and written poetry on its every crevice regarding my goodbye. It is wearing the last of my Granddad's ties.

The first morning we were here I broke down in tears and explained to my Mom why I was having such a hard time. I told her I was trying to respect her space and her new era, her rebuilding but I feel very alone in my loss and so it' s terrifying. Although I know she has not forgotten this, she is understandably caught up in all the building and planning ideas and the strange sniping pattern we have temporarily developed and has been popping up more and more frequently. I refuse to fight in front of my family but I am sure I will eventually put my foot down and we will have to rock the boat. That's the way you do it.

I hate this.

I am leaving tomorrow. Leaving this town indefinitely. Leaving my family indefinitely. I cannot bear to come until something is in the old house's place with good energy. Still, though, I feel on the outside. My Mom goes back and forth from "This room will always be your room" to making a comment one day to "This isn't YOUR room." Where do I belong then? My home, my only real home base will be gone soon. As I sit and finish this up, I look at the suitcase still sitting in my living room, mostly packed. After all, who really cares if it sits there until I wear all the clothes in it? I had a place to go in my life where ultimately things mattered. People made ham and cheese eggs in the morning. Scrabble tournaments broke out.

Nut bread was made.

Not anymore.

I have to make all that on my own now. As Granddad would have said, "Tie on your apron strings." While incredibly sexist, it says a lot about my life right now. How do I do this though? I'm not a round peg that fits in the round hole.

I suppose I need to know how to open the door Ryan made for me. The hardest door ever. As he says, "It's not always the most obvious way in." This door does not even have a knob and it's roughed up. At least it's tangerine colored. But how the fuck do I get in?

May 8, 2007

I'm home. I'm tired.

For Philatelists' Eyes Only (Unless You Really Mail Things)

NEWSFLASH: (along the lines of things that anger me like time zones)

WASHINGTON (May 11) - It will cost a bit more to mail letters and parcels starting Monday. A first-class letter will go up 2 cents to 41 cents.
But there is also some good news - folks will be able to buy "forever" stamps that remain valid regardless of any future increase. Forever stamps? Is this like rent controlled apartments? So I could use my grandmother's stamps and they would be okay with that? Maybe they are trying to just clear out the excess stamps from all the desks, which would be nice because I ALMOST bought a bunch of stamps to send out the artcards to people yesterday and I would have had a little bit of a jipfuck on my hands, especially with the ones going to Japan. What are forever stamps? Why would I buy the more expensive stamp if I could just have the cheaper stamp that would stay at the same value "forever." The general stamp buying public such as myself does not generally understand much about stamps so the forever stamp is juts going to stymie us further. If you put a picture of a bomb on it or Iraq with flames coming off it or maybe a tank, you could just trick a bunch of shitheads into buying it no questions asked. Or, OR! if you put like a pink ribbon on it or something for the soccer moms, that would probably work. But don't call it a forever stamp. No one really gets what forever means. Mostly we just hear an echoey sound effect with it in our heads and get confused or sad or if you're dating someone for three days you start doodling the word forever on a notebook with their name and your name on it.

While the new rates take effect Monday, most post offices are closed on Sunday so officials say items dropped in a box that won't be collected until Monday should have the higher postage on them. How do we GET the higher postage if we miss this tidbit of info and happen to drop a bunch of mail into the post box after the pickup time thinking it's still .39? What happens then? Where are my forever stamps? How much are those? Is there a flat rate? What's the deal here? Is is just a card you swipe that counts as one stamp FOREVER? Can I pass it down to well, like other people's children? Or my nieces and nephews? Here, Billy, you're at the age where I want you to have my forever stamp. I can't write anymore and there's no one here to take my mail to the post box so you take the forever stamp and write some nice girl and get a dog or a cat or a snail. You'll make a nice life with your forever stamp, won't you, Billy? Won't you? And could you go buy your Aunt Wendy some milk? My bones are so brittle.

On the other hand, when rates change the agency usually allows a little leeway, and it doesn't plan a rash of returns for insufficient postage. Gee, that's big of them. Since they still haven't told us what the fuck a forever stamp is and they're springing this two cent hike on us. I know they're excited but it's not like I get a raise at my job everytime the stamps go up or garbanzo beans are raised six cents a can. You know? Maybe they could make a forever bean, too. That would help the world out a lot more.

Postmaster General John Potter has said that even with the higher prices the agency expects a deficit this year as it struggles to compete in a swiftly changing communications market. Yeah. Because it's free to email and text. We all love getting mail but let's see if I mail one letter to each of my Myspace friends (I'm using you all hypothetically because I'm too lazy to count the people I see everyday and really I see some of you everyday but then I would have to decide if I would send this person a letter or are they just a well-wisher...so I'll just do Myspace friends since it's just a calculating thing) at .41 times 86...that equals out to $35.26. That's just one letter each, assuming I don't need extra postage and that you live in the United States, which you all don't. So, tacking on and extra coupla dollars for the UK and Japan, well that's like $40. So if I sent you each one letter a month, that would be more than my light bill. Not that I would mind and frankly I could cut out a couple of bands, Bill Murray (not that I want to cut him out, he just won't give me his address), one celebrity and a couple people I just plain wouldn't write to anyway. We could get it down to half I think. I would still write to you. Which is cool, so if you want, I've found that it's fun to write in those Blue Book Examination Books and then mail them to people. Last night I wrote a little story in one at my local coffee shop while talking to my friend Ambrette. Who wants it? I'm going to keep buying them. They're like a quarter.


For most people, the first-class rate has the greatest impact, covering cards and letters. USPS, you are ruining my life. What I really want is just an acknowledgement that you are spending all of these pennies on Fudgesicles or possibly Chipotle. It's fine. I just want you to admit it. I resisted Chipotle as well. For awhile. Then I was forced to go one day and I found out they had barbacoa and I could get it in a rice bowl. I never resisted Fudgesicles. All I want is for you to say it. Just own up to your actions. Put the men in government.

Regifting

My family has a funny, but brilliant, way of trying not to hurt people's feelings when they receive gifts they absolutely loathe. Instead of risking hurting the gifter's feelings (we're really very nice people and we love giving gifts so the last thing we want is for someone to have that "oh dear god, my present was horrible!" feeling) and having them spot their gift elsewhere, say by regifting or donating it to one of our local thrift stores, we find a spot we know they will never ever go. I'm talking a spot they may even fear! Then we bury, shove, throw, whatever action is appropriate here, the object into said location.

Case in point: I am writing this on a chilly Tuesday morning. I recently returned from trip to Idaho and while there found a robe in my Granddad's shed. It has this fantastic white pattern on it that is much like two arcs interweaving. It's a tiny white pattern on black material. There is a bit of sunfading on the bottom of the robe which I really like. It means it has spent some time aging. I thought it might be my Grandmother's because my Granddad had this beloved blue robe that you couldn't pry away from him. My Grandmother was quite classy and this robe is a piece of fantastic work. I thought maybe he put it in this box in his precious shed, along with the bulging can of 40 year old Buckhorn Beer he forgot to drink, to save it from the trips to Goodwill or whatever when she died of Leukemia when I was about two.

When I returned to my Uncle's house, though, to show off my fabulous prize (you can wear this robe with jeans, too! It's fucking cool!) my aunt Barbara, his wife, not my Aunt Barb, his sister, inspected it and said, "Oh yes. This is the famous robe."

Puzzled, I said, "Famous robe?"

She laughed and said, "Yes. From Ruth."

After I threw up a little in my mouth and finished being shocked at Ruth's, my grandfather's somewhat pixilated and wholly irritating female companion toward the end of his days, odd winning in the lottery of taste, I said, "I found this in the shed."

My Aunt lost it and had to brace herself. We both suddenly realized my Granddad, the kindest man on Earth, who was constantly fighting off Ruth's efforts to dress him (and at one point enraged the entire family across the nation by getting it into her head that she was going to redecorate my Grandmother's curtains which she was in the middle of making when she died and my Aunt Barb finished. They are somewhat of a family favorite and we all collectively hissed and bore our teeth from whatever state we were in, claws extended and ready to attack if she touched Grandberta's curtains or the wallpaper that so extraordinarily matched them). This robe was apparently, at one point, the source of a large shenanigans wherein Ruth decided Granddad's precious blue robe would no longer suffice. Mind you he was in his nineties. Personally, I don't think this is the time to be caring whether your blue robe is getting threadbare as long as it covers things when family and friends are over, you know? Which it did.

Our beloved patriarch apparently, in the end, to keep peace, accepted the robe and took a stroll out to the shed, not unusual at all and Ruth certainly wasn't about to go out there--she barely tolerated his amazing house anyway. She liked to carry pictures of her ginormous eyesore of a residence in her wallet, not her "boys", which she referred to as her mansion but really was just a large home with a stuffed dog, as in taxidermy, not child's toy, in her sitting room where no one ever sat. I slept in the Lime Green Room once and really when I say slept I mean I say I lay on my back with my eyes wide open for several hours until the sun came up and we could leave.

Once out in the shed, we pieced together, he just shoved it in some box, maybe fiddle with some crap out there like he liked to do, then went back inside and ate some nut bread or called someone down the street. Maybe he poked at the woodstove or called my Uncle and told him not to let my Cousin Jeff into the liquor cabinet or into his Toblerone cache, which he kept for his rocky road candy making.

In the end, I am thoroughly enjoying the robe. Ruth never saw it again. Maybe from wherever she is now, she can see me sitting, telling you this story and is twisting her giant rings and sighing heavily in irritation.

Whatever.

I like it. Someone's enjoying the piss out of it.

Into a Ten Gallon Hat (Short Story)

"No!" he said, running after the woman.

But she was gone.

The damage was done.

The banana peel she let slip so easily from her potassium-filled monkey fruit lay there on the sidewalk, filling the sidewalk with danger in every direction.

He clutched scratchily at his short, razored hair which grew at several lengths. As long as they were short lengths. He could feel the impending slippage and scraping of flesh on concrete as he stooped to stare at the banana peel just...sitting...there. It looked like the tee-pee in the Indian Village on the side of Highway 20 his parents had taken him to as a child in their Vista Cruiser. The Vista Cruiser always seemed like the largest car in the world for a family of three people and he tended to roll across the back seat when he father took a corner particularly sharp.

The whole Indian Village had smelled of urine. In fact, the sidewalk, today, in the hot sun, smelled the same way but now the tee-pee was smaller. He scritched and scratched at his hair which had the look of a badly mown lawn and thought about how this little yellow fruit tee-pee was no less menacing than its Highway 20 counterpart.

His parents had struck up a conversation with the chapped and cracking man at the gift shop who owned the place and wore a ten gallon cowboy hat.

"A ten gallon hat, boy," the man had said and smiled like a bat cave with teeth that almost flapped. He had stared at the tee-pee for hours, thinking how it wasn't real and how many people came through here thinking this was what a tee-pee was: a large, yellow, urine-soaked cone of lies. He turned, leaving size six Chuck Taylor All-Star high top foot prints in the fine sand and went back inside the gift shop. The man waggled his teeth at him, making him wonder about gallons of hats and why someoone would think you could liquid measure them. Well, you couldn't. Just like that wasn't a real tee-pee.

"You could probably pee ten gallons in that hat," he'd said and shoved the door back open, tinkling a cow bell on the handle, succinctly making his exit and his point.

Who would it be? he thought as he stared at the banana peel and then up and around at the foot traffic. Most of the people were just a blur in their suits and $200 haircuts and jumpsuits and small children with safety pops jutting out of their sticky mouths. It wouldn't be a child. Too low to the ground. Too alert.

It would be someone with slick shoes. Broken in. He stood up and practiced sliding his foot, trying to get a feel for the fall, maybe trying to make it easier to spot the person and warn them. He could certainly relate. His shoes had great potential for such a fall. It was lucky he was the one who actually saw the banana peel dropped. He was automatically on alert.

He kept making sliding motions on the sidewalk, then thought he would put his hands on his hips and swivel them as though to alert the persons with the same types of shoes who would slip on a banana peel.

"Danger!" his arms and feet seemed to cry to all the slick-heeled, wing-tippe, thrift store bought shoes passing by at top speed. He added a bit of a turn to his swivel, a bit of something he saw his ridiculous neighbor do on the lawn every morning as part of his equally ridiculous excercise routine.

Glide left and swivel and turn.
Glide right and turn and swivel.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Glide, left and swivel and turn
and-

"Oh Fuck."

His hands went up in the air as his right wing tip glided too far to the right and collided with the peel of radiating danger.

The scent of urine became more pungent as his humiliation, all ten gallons of it warmed the crotch of his pants.

A pair of black Mary Janes clicked to a stop next to him and his eyes swiveled to the goose-pimpled legs rising out of them.

"Did you just slip on that banana peel?" the shoes said.

He reached back and felt his head where his hair was smoothly matted with a bit of blood.

"No. I peed in a ten gallon hat, " he replied and lightly touched one of the legs with his index finger.

Tequila Tea in a Dark Room

I sit in garters in this dark hotel room with crows crawling around

In my best I love Grandpa mug I drink Tequila in my tea

My legs clad in stockings no one sees

Kicking at the floor a thousand people tread on every week

My heels just want to waltz again



The room is dark but the crows are moving in unison

Feathered heads, a blanket pecking at my bed I cannot sleep in

I sip my tea so bitterly but I like how my head feels heavier

My head is heavier because of Tequila tea not pills or tears

The cold of the table supports my half naked, lonely, sexy form



I left and drove twenty miles away to sip this Mexican tea

I whisper "No puedo, lo siento" into World's Best Grandpa's Mug

My 8mm memory can feel the lips I cannot have and those bleary queries

All the candied ginger I keep in baggies because I have become a sick fool

The ones who want it, they just want "it" and I can only sink into my head



The crows crawl and in this dark room it is cooler because the heater broke

Tequila Tea makes me want to lay on the crows as they carry me on black

I don't have the energy to let anyone but the crows touch me or talk to me

They know I am here, in my heels, my garters and curled hair for them

Drunk off my disappointment in the world, my stagnance and the heater.

Thank You, Mr. Wizard...

Don Herbert, known better to you and I as Mr. Wizard, died yesterday at the age of 89 of Bone Cancer.

I could go on and on about Mr. Wizard and how much I love him, but rather I will do what I do when most people I care about pass on. I will share a memory of them that makes me smile to celebrate their life and my experience with them and their time in this small patch of time.

Obviously I loved to watch Mr. Wizard as a child but I don't remember much of what I watched. However, he popped into my life again a year ago during the hullaballoo of my cousin Todd's wedding. My Aunt Barb and I were having a quiet moment, sitting at ther kitchen island before everyone was up, drinking coffee and eating bananas. Her son was going to be married and I think she was feeling nostalgic for the little boy who was really growing up for real, making a family of his own.

As I reached for a banana out of the fruit bowl, she said to me, "You know how you're really supposed to eat those, right?"

I looked at her, puzzled, saying, "Well, you peel them?"

She held out her hand for my banana and I handed it over. She held it in her hand, holding it by the stem, and began peeling it in three even strips, then returned it back to me, with the stem as the "handle."

"You eat it like the chimpanzees," she said. "I remember Todd and I watching Mr. Wizard and he showed us that. That way, the stem acts as a handle and the banana doesn't fall off while you are eating it."

I was in awe. At the time, I had been trying to eat more bananas and actually been quite irritated at the troubles I was having with the peeling of them and the bananas falling off constantly. I also abhorred the way the stem just dangled unevenly to the side while I tried to eat it. While I wanted more potatssium and a handy on-the-go snack, the banana seemed like so much work.

Yet, with my Aunt's advice, via Mr. Wizard, I can now eat bananas like the chimps. Brilliant.

Thank you Mr. Wizard, wherever you are.

I love you.

My Russian Housekeeper is a Ticking Biological Clock

My housekeeper, if she never spoke, would appear to be a sweet, blonde, twenty-two year old girl who kicks a house into shape.

Unfortunately, she constantly speaks.

This sounds like an asshole thing to say. As in, "I don't want the help talking to me. Please! I am so much better than her!" Quite the opposite. It's not that I don't want to talk to her. I would quite enjoy it if she hadn't developed the habit of taking on the role that most people complain about their various family members taking on. You know, harrassing me about the status of my love life, what am I doing with my career, etc. You get the idea.

Yesterday was quite the ear bleeder.

It was hotter than a broken sauna on the surface of the sun yesterday and still I managed to drag four ginormous bags of laundry to be dropped off and washed (yeah, sorry I AM NOT going to sit in a hot landromat and do that when I feel like the stickiest of all sticky Katamari balls--there are just some things I'm willing to pay for on some days) and get my business cards printed out. The guy printing them was an early twenty-something drummer from a semi-hot stuff local band who everyone pees their pants over and I'm not sure why. He's the only non-snotwad from the band and he did a great job and printed them on the spot. I don't have the heart to tell him his band kinda sucks and that he's really the only good thing they have going for them. That, and their homemade dinosaur heads that are sorta played out anyway. I hope he goes on to bigger and better things because his band mates, well, I sort of see becoming characters from "Requeim For a Dream" when they realize they were big guppies in a little clear mug.

Once I get back to my apartment, things seem to be moving along nicely. The cleaning has progressed to my living room, where I endure a lecture on how, in Russia people who are as cluttered as I am well, they are pretty much mutants who drool and are not allowed to mate or shop in the same stores with the rest of the population. This, coming from a country who came up with Yakof Smirnof. Thanks, but I'm going to take that with a grain of salt as a) I happen to live and do most of my work in the living room and I will clutter it how I want and b) if you weren't so good at cleaning, you'd be fired by now because you still, after six months cannot dial the right phone number to get me or find my house on the first try. So let's not get into a pissing contest. After all I'm paying you two dollars an hour more than you normally charge as well. That's how much I enjoy my clean apartment and don't want some nimrod rifling through my shit and stealing things.

I decide to go take a nap/read my new book.

I discover I have nodded off when, from across the apartment, (it is unclear from whence the screeching Russian accent is coming from), I hear, "Wendy?"

"Yes?" I yell back, kicking my feet on the bed in what can only be described as GRRRRRRR.

"How old are you?" the Russian accent yells over cleaning noises.

"Twenty-nine" I respond, knowing this can go nowhere good.

(Background tidbit: she is twenty-two and has only lived here a year and a half. She is married, no children. She goes to school at the local university and has several side schemes such as a cat condo construction business. I have flyers should you need one built. They're actually quite cool and decently priced.)

"Are you going to have childrens?" she asks from somewhere in the house as I am hanging my head over the side of the bed in torment.

"No." I say, choosing short answers as the best way out.

"No!? She says, incredulously. "You know, if you cannot have them, you can adopt."

I sigh heavily, which she cannot hear over whatever the hell she is banging around.

"Lilia, some people are just not meant to have children and I am one of those people."

"Really? That's so weird!" She exclaims, I'm sure thinking of the outcast and mistfit I would further be in her country, possibly even having to move in with Yakof Smirnof. Although his house is probably immaculate, being Russian and all.

There is some silence in which I think the conversation is over and I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the trains in the distance. I should not have gotten too comfortable.

"Who is going to take care of you when you are old?" she yells from what sounds like the cat closet in my living room.

I decide to just lay it on the line.

"Oh, my friends. Or you know, maybe my cousin and his children he will probably have. He's definitely having a lot of children."

"Your friends?" she says, like I have said Satan instead of my friends.

"Yes, whoever is the least infirm takes care of the rest. That's what we have agreed upon. We're building a compound. Spouses are welcome if they are cool with drinking and random cartoon watching and quiet reading time. And just other crap."

I can hear her thinking. "But how do you know you will still be friends with these people?"

Thank you, oh people or whatever runs the universe. YES.

I answer, "How do you know you will still be married?" (Oh snap, I say to myself, mentally high fiving my brain)

Silence and the sound of a broom.

I turn over and go back to sleep. Ahhh, sweet silence.

Bear in mind it is virtually impossible to offend her. She really doesn't pay much attention to what you say to her. She just sort of talks at you. So while it sounds, again, like I was being an asshole, it was just a quick way to end the damn conversation I didn't want to have and really was none of her business in the first place.

I suppose someone in my life has to harrass me about this crap. I was living on easy street to long with such a nice family who let me live how I wanted and accepted me for whatever I was and cheered me on even if I decided to wear one of those hats with the propellers on it. In fact, they would love that.

I guess everyone has to get it from someone. Luckily, I only get it in small amounts from a twenty-two year old Russian who builds cat condos for low, low prices.

Who Is My Favorite Fairy Tale Princess?

Who is your favorite fairytale princess?

This, the nice people at Caress soap company, ask me.

I figure a lot of people don't answer their carefully thought out question. I know I usually just stare at ads like this with incredulity and then move on to leaving neato comments on my friends' Myspace pages. Today, though, I thought I would take some time out for Caress and answer their question.

The options (I'm working from memory here, which we all know my little misfiring synapses fuck with, so bear with me, however, this is basically what they are) are as follows:
* Cinderella (um, NOT a princess, but I smell a Disney theme)
* Snow White (technically NOT a princess, but a rags to riches story)
* Sleeping Beauty

I think there was a fourth one but she probably wasn't a princess either. You get the idea.
It's a moot point because I didn't choose any of them.

I chose me.

Yes, I selected myself as my favorite fairytale princess. I know what you're thinking: "Gee, in love with yourself much?" Well, no, but I do tend to live in my own little world, but as I'm telling you this I just thought about how fairytale princesses do too. So. Moving on.

The reason I selected myself is because the more I thought about it, I have a lot in common with fairytale princesses. Oddly, enough. I mean, I wouldn't have thought about it but I really do in that Kennedy/Lincoln sort of way. Permit me to illustrate:

I have had my experience with the step-parents. Let me tell you, for the most part, just by the very dynamic of trying to combine families that grew in different environments, this is a breeding ground for evil right off the bat. I was, in a sociological manner of speaking, "lucky" enough to, at various points in my life, get to live with both a step-mother and a step-father. Check this out. Not only did I have a step-mother but her children had red hair. Yes, that's right. The proverbial red-headed step-child. Everything they say about them? It's all true. Every word. I'm not exaggerating. They are little bitches. AND: they put deodorant meant for your underarms on their feet. PLUS: they get upset when you are old enough to date your favorite New Kid on the Block and they are not. This is just a drop in the bucket. They are also tricksters. One of the brothers tried to charge his sister to lay in his window to get a tan. It worked for about fifteen minutes when I went and told her they have sun for free outside. Thus, illustrating the stupidity of the red-headed step-child.

On the step-father side I possibly have something even better. He had a carefully groomed handlebar mustache. I'm not making any of this up. I really wish I was. AND: the entryway to the kitchen had saloon doors. PLUS: he built a large safe, oh the size of a small closet, which he kept by the cat bowls, right off the kitchen. He was a thin line away from tying women to train tracks. Speaking of which, he did have a computer game called Railroad Tycoon. Weird. He also had one of those black and white conductor's hats and his hobby was gambling and gold panning. He was evil, pure evil, though. He had this habit of staking me out at the top of the stairs to his room and then when I would return home from my friend's house, leap down the stairs, ninja-style, and commence screeching about nothing and everything in the universe, including blaming me for (hold on, I just threw up a little in my mouth) he and my mother not having sex anymore. *SCREAM* This was one of his favorite accusations to casually bring up in conversation, say, while we were wrapping a nice present for my Mother. Or doing the dishes after dinner and letting my Mother just hang out and wasn't it nice we were doing this and by the way you know that...*SCREAM* ALSO: he had this fucking weird habit of stealing my bath poof and throwing it away. It took awhile before I figured out I a) hadn't left it in Washington D.C. on a class trip, b) left it in the cat's vision c) hallucinated that I had one in the first place. When approached about it, his answer? "What is it anyway? Brilliant!
(Mom is single now. Yay! Don't know about Dad, but well, the red-headed step-children are definitely not around)

One more thing, in fairytales, children are often banished. Step-dad, made me go live with Dad and the red-heads. I returned, an angsty teenager full of well, an intense desire to spend large amounts of time in the darkroom at school listening to Tori Amos and selling pictures of "cute" athletes to cheerleaders. Then. The writing. Then. The job at the movie store where I thought I was ruler over the entire town's entertainment source. But I digress.

Sometimes, a spell is put upon a fairytale princess and she goes crazy. One day I couldn't stay awake in poetry class in college. I just couldn't do it. I love poetry! This is absurd. Everytime I would go in there, I would just...nod...off. Eventually I stopped fighting it. I believe this professor, with his overheads and his hypnotically dim lighting put a spell on me with what was allegedly "poetry" but what I now believe to be a Crazy Spell. It was a few weeks later that I left school completely because I said to my Mother, from under my bed clothes, "I cannot move and I would like to put my brain in a jar for a vacation." She went to work, terrified I'm sure, and when she came home I had not moved a muscle, was staring at the same spot on the wall and said, as she stood quietly in the doorway, "Do you have the jar because if you don't I think we should get one or go to the hospital." We went to the hospital. We, in fact, went to the hospital twice more in the next two years because sometimes spells are really hard to break. You should know spells are like anesthesia. They stay in your system for quite a long time. Crazy spells, well, there will always be parts of it floating around in your brain. You can clean some of it out or shoosh it with medication, meditation or special therapy but you have to be very dedicatied. You have to be your own sentry. You have to maintain your own tower and that's okay. I don't know if Rapunzel was a princess but I think she had a Crazy Spell. Ironically, I am currently growing my hair out. I think it is because I am ready to let someone climb up my hair. Plenty of friends are allowed up the stairs, but only one person climbs up your hair.

A lot of this sounds horrible, I know. When you think of a fairytale, and I think the nice people at Caress forgot about this, you forget how really violent and terrible they are. The original ones are sort of the original horror stories.

In the end, though, something magical happens. I feel that magic. You can see it in my eyes. I always say, and this is strange because I am not scientific at all, that the pendulum has to swing equidistant in one direction as it does in the other. Sometimes, it even swings evenly.

I don't believe in happily ever after, but I believe in progress not perfection and beauty in imperfection. Which, in the end, THE END, which can also be the beginning and ONCE UPON A TIME, can also be happiness. A labor of love.

To Be A Part of an Orchid

I have this orchid.

I don't know anything about orchids except that they are the most beautiful flower in the known universe.

It was doing well, sporting lavender blooms you could almost touch when you thought about them. In the last month, though, they started dropping off one by one, despite its care and diet of orchid food. Its temperature was kept warm and a spot reserved for it in just the right light. Yet, as the days went on the blooms dropped like flies until i had just three. The very next day, they too had fallen onto the cloth covering the table. A smattering of blossoms, as though it were fall in my little bedroom garden, from my orchid made my heart ache.

The orchid is not dead and for all I know this is just what they do. Possibly, this is the cycle of the orchid. Far be it from me to look up how orchids work. I must instead experiment like I do with everything else, toying and trying, running the process of elimination into the ground.
The orchid still has beautiful green leaves but I am a little sad when I look at the stick that jets out of its bulb. I don't know what is to come of it. Orchids are so magical to me. Will it come back? Is this just what it does? Or is an orchid one of those things I must admire from a far?

It is a dream of mine to successfully grow my own orchid. I love plants and have finally achieved my goal of maintainng a handful. I am even growing lavender from seeds. Yet, orchids are something so much more meaningful to me. I want to be able to cultivate something so near to my soul and know that I was able to put the effort into it. Not because I gleaned the information fom a book, but because I was in tune with what it needed and by being observant and passionate about its existence.

I want to look at my orchid and know I am a part of its beauty

My Landlords Sold Me Out

I have lived in my precious second floor apartment for three years now without much reservation concerning the folks who own the restored historical building that contains my abode. Sure, it took a year to get a doorbell because they didn't want to disturb the original bank of ye olde mailboxes (the door to mine has fallen off making my bills welcome to anyone wants them) but finally relented because I begged and begged, making the case that people have had to resort to shouting at me from the grass below, disturbing the neighbors. Not everyone I know has a cell phone, making it difficult if we are planning to get together and without a doorbell on a locked building, it's quite the conundrum. So still the yelling continued.

One year later, the doorbell appeared.

However, it was wired into what I later figured out was about three other apartments. When one of my friends rang the doorbell, three other apartment doors on the bottom floor whipped open and I had to race them to the door to head them off at the pass, reassuring them it was for me and not some weirdo. Or I got used to just peering down the stairs to see if it was one of my friends. It got to the point where I just told my friends to call me when they arrived. Or if I had a date, I would just do the same or explain that if a bunch of guys tried to answer the door not to be alarmed. It wasn't that kind of date. I was constantly explaining the stupid doorbell.
That, and when it first appeared it was constantly scaring the shit out of me.

I would be fast asleep at 3 a.m. and the doorbell would ring a few times, startling me out of my dreams. I would be disoriented and horrified, thinking there was some sort of emergency. I would run down the stairs only to find no one there. This happened about three times before I figured out that people, in our non-smoking building, would be leaning on the mailboxes, sucking on their cigarettes, and their elbows would lean on my doorbell and then by the time I contemplated what the hell was going on and shoveled myself into some clothing and shuffled down the stairs, they had gone back inside. Another problem is that my neighbors just pile the mail they don't want on top of the mailboxes as opposed to throwing it in the trashcans in their houses, which they return to after checking said mail. Therefore, there is a raging epidemic of their shitty mail getting stuck under my doorbell and setting it off and I come home to incessant ringing. This happened to the person across the hall from me while they were on vacation but it was before I had figure out all the evils of the doorbell I had so coveted when I first moved in, so for one week straight I could hear their doorbell ringing OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER...etc. I pretty much stayed out of my house as much as I could for that week.

So the latest jipfuck I get besides well, the attic not being well insulated and my self-proclaimed conservation loving landlords who dig jetting around in their odd compost powered vehicle and letting their tenants either pay $200 heat bills for itty bitty apartments or get their heat shut off because they would rather eat, is and I quote, "An Exclusive Invitation for YOU to GROW RICH/STAY RICH." All twelve tenants of my building have in their hot little hands, printed with their first names, two VIP tickets, valued at $199, to a Grow Rich, Stay Rich Wealth Conference run by super geniuses (I know this by their super cool hair cuts and high cheekbones that only people who grow rich and stay rich can possibly maintain) Linda Woolf, Trevor Woolf (Oh! Double wealth! DING!), Matt Madsen and Randy Crane (He isn't smiling...maybe he needs a girlfriend or is just so smug because his crotch is covered in ladies and that's why it's a head shot). I apparently have to call now to activate my VIP seat or someone else will get it? Hmm. There is an exclamation point so this must be true. Well...I get to pick what hotel I get to go to and plunk my ass down in an uncomfortably upholstehered chair with metal legs while I drink coffee with a red stirrer straw and eat stale cookies to remind myself how much I want to grow rich and stay rich so I never have to live like this again. The most attractive location, of course, sounds like the HyattRegency Tech Center-Denver because then I will see people with blackberries and PDA's and bluetooths (teeth?) and microwaves on their head and toasting things in their jackets...all sorts of technology that will make me want to...grow rich and stay rich.

The reality is this: my landlords sold their tenants names out. That is a big fuckwad thing to do and I am going to go take a major shit in their little conservation mobile they drive all around town. And then I am going to go put something with radiation on that tire swing I covet that swings from the tree on the front lawn I always trip on and fall on my face when I deliver the rent the insures my privacy and that I will not get bogus tickets to get rich quick schemes. Maybe I will just eat an entire bag of my culinary nemisis, rye bread, and puke into thier mail slot. It would land right in their foyer.

When I get home I will sell their names to several porn sites featuring anal sex. With catalogs.
Moral: Don't fuck with me just because I live under your roof and you gave me a doorbell. I will fuck with you back and still pay the rent with a smile.

Bathroom Drains and Variances Thereof

When I'm out and about running errands, eating, lurking in video stores for discount DVD's and what not, I am most definitely the person to ask where the nearest bathroom is. I have come to realize cash registers emit a frequency that agitates my bladder upon entrance to any store which requires any sort of browsing, lurking or waiting around.

Usually when I go out to eat it's on the way home or I go to someone's house to slouch around and make really witty comments or, on some occasions, sit silently and end up dozing off because of a very boring movie having been shoved in for viewing "pleasure." Thus, I don't usually take usage of restaurants' facilities. In general, I'm not a fan of public bathrooms unless I really have no option. Let's face it. People are disgusting and they act more disgusting in public than they do in their own home for some reason. Possibly because they know there are people being paid to clean up after their non-flushing, drippy, toilet paper throwing, non-hand washing asses. "Oh! I can weigh myself and get a personal message and free lottery numbers on this scale, though! Score!" Yeah, that's one contraption this gal ain't touching.

However, in the last couple of days I have used a couple of public restrooms and one of them was at Red Lobster. I drank a lot of iced tea and had to make water before I left the premises. I was in the smallest stall in the universe which, to make matters worse, opened inward, so I had to scale the top of the door and swing over the door and land on the back of tank. Luckily, I was wearing my Kaf Kaf flip flops with great foot grip, sold only at your local Greeley head shop and just as comfy as your $70 Berkenstocks (not that I don't own a pair of those, mind you, but they aren't that geared for scaling bathroom stalls). Once in and utilizing the loo, I notice the drain in the floor located to the right of my foot. There seems to be an inordinate amount of fuzz, like lint and dust bunnies, as well as tips of straw wrappers that oddly didn't seem to match the type I received with my iced tea, and other odds and ends. Now this wouldn't seem so odd except the bathroom smelled of roses. I even commented on this to my Mom in the next stall. We enjoy critiquing bathrooms through the stalls. Sometimes other bathroom goers will chime in as well. Sometimes. Also the floor was immaculate so it wasn't as though we were in some sort of seedy rest stop with crap drifting all over the floor into the drain. I made an observation about this to my Mom who could not see the drain but she was busy having problems getting her fair squares out of the dispenser and there was some sort of pounding noise going on. I didn't want to get involved, not being the handy sort. At worst she has gotten to the stage where she carries napkins in her purse and I wasn't worried about her.

Then, today I was at Kmart getting a new rug for my dining room and some kitchen towels because somehow I have none. I have no idea where they went. They seem to go the way of my socks--one use only! This annoys me because I enjoy kitchen things so immensely more than socks. Kmart is weird to me and I think it smells a bit like stink bugs. I don't understand the people who do the buying for the clothes department. I'm not exactly sure who is going to believe that a woman wearing a quasi-camo shirt with the word "ARMY" spelled out in rhinestones in a brush script font is actually in the Armed Forces but that person is not me. Nor am I going to fork over $14.99 for it. I thought it was hideous when Kathy Ireland was involved with Kmart but they seem to have driven even her off and well, I don't know who is her heiress to the women't clothes department but they seem to either live in the jungle or sell real estate.
Yes, we are on our way to the bathroom. But so is all this crap as the bathroom is located wayyyyy in the back in the layaway department. I loathe Wal-Mart but at least they have bathrooms both in front and back of the store. Fuckers. They're evil and brilliant. At some level. Kind of like Martha Stewart. How did they not team up? How is her wagon still hitched to Kmart's dim star?

Meanwhile, wayyyyy back at the bathroom, I once again find myself staring at a floor drain. In this case, I have sort of had to wade through paper towels, odd items drifting around the floor, making sure to keep my hands at my side as I peer into the stalls to find a toilet that has managed to be flushed, oddly difficult in today's discount shopping world, and enjoy entering a roomy stall that opens outward. As I'm tapping my foot and waiting for things to happen (I get stage fright sometimes) I notice how immaculate their drain is. It appears that they might even take a toothbrush to it or get the ShopVac out. Screw the rest of the bathroom. The drain is where it's at.

This all seems so odd.

In a place that smells oddly like urine and Fig Newtons, the drain is immaculate, while the rest of the bathroom looks like hell blew through on a roadtrip to well, hell and threw all its snack wrappers out the window in this very spot. On the other hand, a rosy scented eatery with flowers or whatever was in the vase on the sink counter, was filled with filth and grime.
It just goes to show you how you can't judge a person by how they look.

You have to look at their bathroom to really tell