Aw, Super! RIO's Got A Blog and Now We'll ALL Be Sorry!

Some Guy Ran By Here Looking Totally Green...

2010-02-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

My mother accidentally dropped a container of Brunswick stew on the sidewalk near the front of her workplace. The bottom busted out. Stew went everywhere.

She picked up the container but decided to leave the stew and screw with people. Out of context, it really does look like puke. She and her work buddy were howling with laughter all day long because people kept coming in shouting "Oh GROSS!! Someone threw up outside!!"

The two of them contemplated dumping more stew in the exact same spot the next day (grounds keepers cleaned it up) so people would be both puzzled and freaked out again, like magically reappearing barf was plaguing the department.

And she wonders where I get this behavior from.

My Thursday

2010-02-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Spent the night coughing so badly that around 10:30 AM, Jaye made me call the doctor and get worked in. Dad came by and drove me over there. I think it worried him a lot when I called him out of the blue at work sounding so tired and rough. It's nearing 2 years ago to the day when Jaye and I were hospitalized, and Dad began his two week long vigil by our beds.

When Dad and I arrived at the doctor's office and got out of the car, in an unconscious motion, he reached his hand back for mine, like when I was a little girl. That almost made me cry for some reason. I wrapped both my arms around his arm and smiled as we walked across the parking lot. This time of year makes all of us anxious and afraid. It's been plaguing me and Jaye since this January, when, two years past, things started to go to hell and we didn't know what to do. When Dad reached for my hand, it reminded me of him walking around with me in the grocery store, too weak and gaunt to hold myself up, buying baby food for me. I relied heavily on it for over a year. I've never seen my father so close to crying.

We went inside the dr's office. I chatted up the nurse who was wearing Dolce and Gabbana prescription glasses. They had "swagger". I likes 'em. Anyway, when I got on the scale, I could see the silent anxiety in my father's eyes. When I told him "117.2", he looked visibly relieved. He looked reassured by my blood work too.

Waiting in the exam room, he showed me, on one of the many posters, the structure and function of the upper respiratory system. Quite informative. Though I must say I was a bit distracted by the "anterior view of the gallbladder." :-\

The doctor told me my lungs were clear so it was an upper respiratory/asthma problem. Got some thing to try. While we were at the pharmacy, we bought some Sudafed and I joked "Okay! I'm going home to freebase now!" which brought a nervous tittering laugh from the pharmacy tech and a HAHAHASTOPTHAT look from Dad. Ahee!

We talked about everything as usual, in the car, on the elevator, in the waiting room, driving back home, stopping at the pharmacy -- the hideous fate of Emmett Till, the Woolworth sit-ins in Greensboro (Dad recalls feeling very embarrassed by the bussed-in racist hillbillies antagonizing the black folks), the PBS documentary about Wyatt Earp (you know I had to talk about that), car recalls, nursing home and hospice policies (Dad is an occupational therapist), my magical couponing abilities (ok, that was mostly me bragging).

Auntie texted Dad: "Snow, sleet, rain, freezing rain - sounds like a 'cover your ass' forecast." We all laughed. Later, I saved Jaye from a spider by attacking him with the vacuum cleaner, but with a heater, the air filter, a lamp, and a laptop computer plugged in already, I blew a house fuse. Jaye and I stood in the dark giggling.

At least the spider was dead. *muscle flexes*

Yeah, I Know. More Cat Pictures.

2010-02-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

MoxieMan with his winter coat. We suspect that his father was a Himalayan.

Dear Fat Peaches in a box. I'm rubbing her and she's thrilled, even though she looks like she's trying to fight her way to freedom.

You won't take ME alive, coppers!

I want everyone to see Dear Fat Peaches' double chin. We're calling her Jabba the Peach, Pudge-a-potamus, and the Chubb-a-nator.

Snow Day Activities

2010-01-31T15:41:00.000-08:00

*Have not been able to sleep through the night in months. Dry asthmatic cough robbing me of my sleep. Back to the doctor, I see. Tired to the point of derangement.

*Mom and I were trading taunts yesterday evening. She was in her recliner, I was sitting in front of the space heater warming my lizard body.

"If only you were closer!" she threatened. "I'd poke you with my foot!"

She waved it around as close to my face as it reached. I glared at it, rolled over, and pushed on her foot with my foot. This lead to a shouting yelling laughing foot pushing war - me, bracing my other foot against the fireplace hearth, trying to push her over in the recliner; she, bracing against the armrests of the recliner, trying to mash me into the carpet.

Jaye rushed out and blurted, "YOU TWO ARE LIKE MONKEYS!! NO TOUCHING! NO TOUCHING!"

Mom grumbled at her, then at me. She got up, walked into the kitchen. We have a curtain up in the doorway to retain heat in the living room. She pulled this curtain shut behind her. I jumped up, crept to the doorway, and waited with my face almost touching the curtain. I could hear Mom returning. She threw back the curtain and screamed in surprise. I burst out laughing, then fled as she chased me through the house trying to hit me with her orange Popsicle.

Jaye: "I SAID NO TOUCHING!! GAAAAH!!"

A Few of Our Favorite Things, Part Two

2010-01-24T15:00:00.001-08:00

Kabuki Jaye...

This rates as one of the best scores ever. Bought at such a low price, Jaye should have been arrested for robbery. Satin corset top with boning. Detail shot showing the pretty red orange dragons against the gold background.

The corset top in full length.

Jaye's retro-gorgeous shiny patent Guess heels. As usual, she scoffed at retail prices.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

2010-01-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

This is the back detail of my Diesel satin baseball jacket. An art deco woman embroidered across the entire back baby blue back panel.

I got this jacket for $40 years ago because it was the only one left and it was in my size. It reverses completely to plaid cotton and I have to force myself to not wear this jacket constantly because I don't want the satin to rip up and die an early death.

My favorite cotton fitted houndstooth sweater. Scored for $15. You can't see the very fine Lurex threads in the black.

A gorgeous rayon chenille fit-and-flare peplum jacket that our older sister Scout discovered in a thrift store and couldn't pass up. She gave it to Jaye. There was an ugly matching skirt that came with it, but it went missing years ago. Covered buttons. Minor shawl collar. The color is deeper and more vibrant than the picture shows.
Circa early 1960s.

Pretty Shiny Things I Found at a Junk Shop

2010-01-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

All appear to be of 60s, maybe 70s vintage.
Deep green bracelet, light brown necklace, iridescent flower pin, and a pair of immaculate clip earrings that we use as shoe and sweater clips for that 50s/60s vintage feel.

Shoe Blog

2010-01-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

I got these back in the early 1990s. The very last pair at the mall, my size, white leather, hugely discounted. SCORE.
I bought the chiffon checkerboard laces a short time later.

My twin sister Jaye's thigh high red boots. Also gotten for next to nothing.

My T.U.K. creepers, itty bitty girlie sized. Bought many years ago. Back in the 80s, I fell in love with Ducky's white creepers in "Pretty in Pink" and vowed to have a pair of my own one day.
On the floor: my boot chains. Also bought in the early 1990s. Got them for nothing because a chain was missing from the left strap. Go me. A fashion statement and a weapon in one.

A circle of Sauconys. The navy blue ones belong to Jaye. The other two are mine. Gotta brag: scored them all for 30 bucks each. Lie in wait for sales. We needed sneaks big time, but waited for the right time. High five.

My highlighter yellow Madden spikes. Bought for me by good friends of mine for Christmas one year.
They match nothing and therefore go with EVERYTHING.

These are black leather boots I've owned since the mid 1990s. Actually, mine finally died, and Jaye let me have hers. What a generous gnome she is.
The spats: those are a DIY project. I was given these hideous looking 1980s vintage opera length prom gloves to do with as I willed. The satin was lightly stained with what appeared to be pen ink too. I decided to piece them out and -voila- I made spats. Stitched on seed beads and pearl buttons.

My yellow leather Bronx boots. Again, a gift to me years ago. I wear them with everything.

Southern Gothic: Smoking Gun

2009-12-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

Jaye and I have been helping my 86 year old grandmother, who was adopted as a baby, find out where she came from. She had enough helpful information to go on, and we've been making really good forward motion.

When I called her yesterday, she gave me an ominous tip.

"I've never told anyone about this. No one. Not even your father or aunt or uncle. I've been sitting on this since the day I heard it..."

Grandma was sitting at home with her foster mother when Maddie (that was her adoptive mother's name) looked alarmed, muttered something under her breath and handed Grandma the newspaper. What she read next shocked her so deeply she never spoke of it again...

March 8th 1938: An elderly man named Mr. P got into his car, drove over to another man's house - a man that was considered a friend, a man that Mr. P picked up frequently to drive to work. He was carrying a loaded gun. Mr. P shot his friend to death on the old bygone Valley Road, then turned the gun on himself. The coroner's report stated: "Suicide, gunshot to the heart, death 1:30 pm..."

"That was my biological grandfather," my grandma said, quietly. "To this day no one knew what caused him to do such a thing. There were rumors."

"Rumors?" I asked. "What kind of rumors?"

"A love triangle. The victim's wife was unharmed."

I called my father. He was stunned to hear it, but then slid into a rolling morbid laugh (I know where I get THAT from...) and blurted, "Tennessee Williams..."

"No," I said. "Faulkner." After a pause, "Merry Christmas, Dad!" I blurted sarcastically.

"HAHAHA! Merry Christmas, daughter!"

Southern Gothic strikes again...

Unsafe Speeds Leads to...

2009-12-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as I was walking up the stairs, I somehow managed to fall, but NOT let go of the railing so I swung wildly into my sister's room while crashing into a GIANT just opened pack of toilet paper in the hallway just like a race car plowing into the track-side safety bales. Rolls went flying. I found myself half buried in them, laying on the floor and giggling in confusion.

My mother commented dryly, "Glad to hear you're not out of toilet paper."

Arts and Crafts

2009-12-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Last night, I found a pair of Mom's underwear lying on the floor of the laundry room. She must have dropped it while getting her clothes out of the dryer. I brought it into the living room and held it high aloft like an exotic animal pelt.

J: "She's gone to bed already! Let's put them on her recliner, mash them flat and draw a smiley face on the butt!"

M: "Huzzah!"

I did this, and the next morning after I woke up, Mom gave me the skunk eye, muttered, "I saw what you did!"

"We're jerks," Jaye said, then started chuckling because secretly Jaye likes being a jerk to old people who unwittingly drop their underpants on the floor.

The Meaning of Release

2009-12-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

Release...

[quote]1 : relief or deliverance from sorrow, suffering, or trouble
2 a : discharge from obligation or responsibility b (1) : relinquishment of a right or claim (2) : an act by which a legal right is discharged; specifically : a conveyance of a right to another having possession
3 the act or an instance of liberating or freeing (as from restraint)
4 : an instrument effecting a legal release
5 : the state of being freed
6 : a device adapted to hold or release a mechanism as required
7 a : the act of permitting performance or publication[/quote]

****************************************

I asked my brain what was needed. It gave me this word in my sleep.

True deliverance, not a stop gap, not a substitution meant to mollify a crying child. Not a vapor that burns away in the sun. No more stealing sanity, snatching at the threads that were meant to blanket you. No more pretending to safety. No more pretending at happiness at the sight of the unblushing cardboard flowers and platitudes. No more gulping fear like drowning water. No more listening out for the heavy boots of those who mean to hold you down. No more quieting terror and anger with the oblivion of hope springing eternal.

A real cure. A real motion in time and three dimensions. Digesting death before it digests us. Rising from the ashes. Raising the force needed to stop the assault, the infection, the wasting. Kicking a hole in the prison walls big enough to admit liberation. The effective force.

A ransom bearing your name.

Your name.

How can we shed sorrow? Tares growing in the wheat. All the same. All leaping from the same ground. Inextricable from ourselves. How do we remove what no longer has a blunt physical form and has transformed into shadows and a play of light only? A chemical spirit racing through our veins. Part of our blood and life now. How can that be excised, that sorrow, that bone-deep desire to weep out what has no words, no shape, that hides like a fugitive abused animal inside us, that has no voice beyond our own halting imperfect advocation?

We're indivisible from what silences the flame. What suspends us, great mocker of onward-marching time.

Where can such power emerge to birth us into this brave new day...

Who do I seek, who do I beg, debate -destroy- for the title. Who has possession. Where am I warehoused? Where does my soul lie frozen? Tell me where and I'll punch through the ice until I bleed.

The sense that I'm being asked to accept what does not make me happy, what does not fill the void drives me upright in the bed in fear, pollutes my dreams with grasping need. Where is this beautiful world where determination is finally enough, where bravery and unrelenting love prevail, where whatever is within the sound of voice will know that I will be there shortly no matter what I have to fight and stand down on the way to meet you? Where is this place where the enemies slain cannot resurrect and stalk again?

Release tailored for me. ME. Where is my liberation. What will take the shake and tension from me, the rage and pacing, the fathomless grief buried in dark cold flame, the mute thwarted scream as Patience itself shatters from the blows of implacable impassivity. Release into the arms of more than this... more than THIS...

What will raise the Titanic from the depths? Can she be raised without falling apart? Fate thrown from her. Thrown from me. Crawling all the way to freedom on our hands and knees, believing against the odds that we WILL stand again, we WILL feel life returning in shocks into every inch. Dry bones raised - remembering how to live again- from the bleached field of loss and death.

No more bashing myself against the glass like a trapped moth. How does this window open... show me how. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to reach what makes me jump out in vivid color. Tell me how to reach the high shelf. Tell me how to stitch my immaterial person to that distant bright noise of laughter and stability. Tell me how to seed the clouds so I can rain and rain and rest. Tell me how to bring down the lightning. Tell me where to find my perfect kiss, the spark in my eyes, the sound of my own name stirring the air.

I am not a lost map to nowhere. I am not the long sleep amidst the thorns.

I am not forgotten?

When Arthur Returns...

2009-12-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

The new medication has worked to the point of bringing me back up to levels of "normal" I never thought I'd see again.

I once told my mother that trying to grasp health and normalcy was like all those crazy people who wait for Arthur to come back to Camelot, and you wait, and you wait, and soon you get so used to waiting, all you know how to do is wait. Then Arthur comes striding through the door and you don't know how to react to this moment that was really never supposed to happen because all you know is hope without substance - hoping for hope's sake simply because you *must* push forward, you *must* wake up and find a reason to move, to stay sane.

I remember the first time I was able to eat ketchup again. My food had been bland and monotonous for months and months. I was gaunt - most of my bones poked through. My skin looked and felt like a lizard. I hurt all over. I had trouble breathing. I had trouble moving. And here was this ketchup, and after fighting for my life for an eternity, I tasted the ketchup and could not finish my food because I started sobbing with relief. It was this blinding bit of normalcy coming back and emotionally I collapsed. I had to grieve my experience. I still do, every day. I don't take for granted what I can do now.

When I first started to get sick as a teenager, when things were falling apart in my family and our lack of money went even further down hill, when there was barely a ray of light, I started to cave in. I became so depressed that I could barely move or speak. My mother and I sat in silence at the kitchen table. She kept looking at me, worriedly, but saying nothing. Then finally, she said, "Are you giving up?" I said nothing. She began to provoke me, goading me until I exploded. I threw a cup across the room and it shattered.

"Is this what you want to see?!" I shouted.

"Yes!!" she said, standing up. "Yes!! At least then I know you're still alive in there instead of curling up and dying!! My Rio is a fighter!"

[I'm glad she pulled me out... I was going down the drain... They both know when I go dead silent and stay that way that something is desperately amiss and that I'm fading out. My mother is used to me being a little fiery dragon, so when my fire goes out, she worries.]

I don't feel so much like a fighter as a gladiator, forced to face down the teeth and claws. I seek peace and solace, and there's that hope that another Arthur will return in that form.

Two Swords

2009-11-15T17:42:00.000-08:00

"Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world." - Lao Tzu

I'm trying to be open. Or should I say, I have no illusions about having a choice in the matter. My eyes could never close tightly enough or long enough to shunt the truth away.

I wish I could see the warrior in myself. I read about ancient Rome years ago, and a certain type of gladiator called Dimachaeri - "two swords". They fought with no shield. I always saw myself and Jaye as two swords. We fought back to back many times, and even slept that way to show fear our faces. I've mapped roads into deep cold and darkness with her help. I question the kindness of now. I feel the quiver underfoot and question foundations of solid rock. Can I trust it to hold me up? Is it the pulse of the living earth in the bedrock or an impending failure I feel rising through my legs?

Where can I go to still myself? Where can I shut off the answers that bring more question and uncertainty? Is there an ordinary world? Is there lasting peace? Does God care. Does He.

An entire week has melted away without my notice.

I've been feeling really silent and withdrawn, and I haven't been online at ALL since Sunday. Feeling bad hasn't helped, but mostly it's because I feel faded out and have nothing to say. I didn't even realize so much time had passed. I've been lost up in my head. Remotely viewing. Caught and suspended between times. It's as if I've lost my mooring and am drifting.

The outer world doesn't seem to exist. I feel disconnected in a way that has caused me concern and bafflement, though I know where it must originate. The bafflement comes from which string to pull in a ball of a multitude of strings.

It's strange. I'm not afraid of it, but I can't seem to get loose either, or care to try. I'm just floating. I'm on mental walkabout where conversation is impossible because there's no one around but me. I feel like a ghost.

There are too many triggers, too many things on my mind to even begin to focus on just one, like being attacked by hornets - it doesn't seem to matter which one of the horde stung you.

I have felt this way before, a few times, usually in the aftermath of something truly horrible or exhausting. I just power down and go dead in the water. Talking to me is hard, even in person, because it's as if I'm not even there.

I remember once when this happened - it was, as I said, after something terrible and upheaving - my mother saying to me, "Go back to fishing, Peter..." (After Jesus was crucified and the apostles scattered, everyone felt at ends and shaken. Many of them went back to what they knew, sort of a consoling reboot, I suppose. Peter went back to fishing.) I sat for hours and hours every day saying nothing, writing or drawing.

I feel like silence is coming out from me.

A Good Day with Henry Ford

2009-11-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, my dad came by and picked me up so I could slalom around in his 1995 convertible Mustang to see how I liked the car. The clutch is tricky (modified) so I guess he expected that I might need some break-in time with it, but no. It was so on, it couldn't be off. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's drive the heck out of a car. It's in my blood. Once I get a steering wheel in my hand, I'm gone, baby, gone! I don't know what it does to me, being in a car, but I come alive, and by the time I got home, I was glowing all over. Dad said we could borrow the Mustang until he sold it, which is fine and dandy by me! I've been a little high ever since. I can't describe it. I have such an attachment to cars that it goes beyond just a utilitarian thing or a thrill. It's why I became a mechanic. Some indescribable thing in me.

When I get to manhandle a V8, I turn into a beast. My dad was riding shotgun (which he never really does ever) and I could tell he was proud of me. It's because of him that I took to cars like a piranha to water. There hasn't been a car yet that I couldn't drive and I'm proud of that. It really is an S-like fusion between me and the car. I get the "feel" of it, orient myself and then I'm off like a bat out of hell. My first driving test ever at 15, the DMV lady told my mother, "That child can up/down shift and accelerate through turns. You'll have NO problem with that girl."

(I wish I knew how to float the rear-end through a turn though. I need to pester Helpful Bear to show me how.)

We stopped in the empty subdivision we were tearing around in to get an up-close look at a very old huge oak tree. We got out of the car and walked around the tree and were marveling at the sheer size and expanse of it's canopy, and pointed out places where the limbs had fused together and re-branched all over the place. I stood on a gnarled root and patted the tree and said, "Hello, tree! We live next door!" My dad laughed at me, then said, "Hey, look. A deer." It was standing not too far away in the old clearcut left by the power company. Interesting.

Things Jaye and I Did Together Yesterday

2009-11-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

1. watched "The Young and the Restless"
2. ballet-danced to hold music
3. were chased by a palmetto bug

1. [Scene:]

M: "That Billy Abbott. Needy much?"
J: "Adam and Sharon are totally gonna do it."

2. [Scene:]

J: "I'm in the queue on hold. Watch them hang up on me..."

[hold music playing on speaker phone]

M: "Say... is that Swan Lake... no... The Nutcracker..."
J: "Sugar Plum Fairy." [arches her arms, rellevee]
M: [joins in unison, pirouettes]
J: "Now, turn in reverse!"
[pirouetting in reverse]
[line goes dead, music stops]
J: "See! Hung up on me!"

3. [Scene:]

[Twins at the computer, heedlessly goofing off]

Lalalalalablahblahblahlalalalalblahdeblahlalalabla hblah!!

M: "Ack! A palmetto bug!"
J: [leaping from the computer chair] "Where is it?!" [sees it] "EEEWWWWW, gross!!!"

[the palmetto bug begins to charge at us]

J: "#@%*&$!! It flies!!"

[Twins shriek like alarmed monkeys]

M: [climbs up onto the exercise bike]
J: [scuttles behind the computer chair]

[Nasty villainous bug advances brazenly]

[Twins shriek like alarmed monkeys]

M: [swearing] [climbs up on mother's bed frame]

J: "I'm gonna throw something at it!"
M: "What?! Jaye, gross, don't!! ... something?"
J: "Something!"
M: "Like what?!"
J: "I don't know!"
M: "Wait! It's going behind that storage container!"
J: "Where is it?!"
M: [eureka] "Ok! It's gone! Run for it! GO GO GO!"

[Twins flee the room shrieking like alarmed monkeys]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

J: [shuts the bedroom door behind us] "There! We're safe!"

[bug comes staggering out from UNDER the gap in the door after the humans]

M: "It's still chasing us!!"

[Twins shriek like alarmed monkeys and flee upstairs with the phone to call for back-up]

[phone mother]

[Mother laughs mockingly because she's got an unholy deal going with the bug underworld and is unafraid]

[Twins sit upstairs and sulk until she comes home from work]

Fambly Togethernesses

2009-09-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

From Rio's diary...

Thursday -- Awake and unwell. Curled on couch. Jaye is now awake and is smooching my head... Overheard from the next room: My mother crowing in a silly manner about how great her lime Popsicle is, and my sister informing our physics professor friend that his neutered dog's compulsion to mate with orange juice containers and car tires was a combinant sign of scurvy and wanderlust.

Friday -- After reading a short article from the Victorian times about how printing presses would save the world, Sis and I amused ourselves by writing silly stories back and forth:

Me: There once was a Victorian girl named Prunella who was very negatively charged so when she fell into a black hole, it evaporated. Moral -- Don't drink cordials and drive your printing press.

Jaye: There once was a Victorian girl named Charles who was diagnosed with hysteria but really it was because she was a boy. Moral -- Liqueur causes your children to heedlessly use printing presses.

Sunday -- Mr. Smooch managed to shove his paws beneath the back glass door, pop the lock and swing the door open. He marched into the house cool as you please as if he belonged there. HOME INVASION KITTY....

Mom continues her fad of eating tons of canned corn. We tease her about it.

Me: Some poor chicken is being cheated out of his dinner.

Mother: (facetiously) But, honey, what use is it to him? Everyone knows that chickens can't open cans.

Me: (blank stare)

Jaye: Ahee hee hee!!

Cirque-squirrel de Soleil

2009-07-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

My dad told me on the phone the other day that he'd finally discovered the key to the mysterious rapid-emptying of his bird suet feeder. Behold, the glory that is nature... Dad said the thief would hang by his back toes, then curl up to get more food, before dangling down again to eat, like so:

Squirrels are like criminals - they put a lot of energy and effort into being lazy. Also they wear tacky fur coats.

Rudie Can't Fail (And Neither Can Peaches)

2009-07-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

Gifted a copy of "Essential Clash". Much excitement. It has some of my favorites on there, like "Straight to Hell", "Train in Vain", "Rudie Can't Fail", and "Bankrobber". It would be darn near perfect if only it had "The Call Up", but I'm not complaining too loudly. A word of warning, the double CD case is a nightmare. I had to pry it open with a small screwdriver and that, of course, didn't go as elegantly as prying with a small screwdriver sounds. I have trouble listening to the Clash sometimes because I still can't wrap my brain around Joe being dead.

Captain Slack and Fandragon dropped off some Ramones a few weeks back too, so I'm rather delighted. Yay, music!

And I promise this is the last you'll see of Peaches for awhile, but it was just too funny not to share. I was talking on the phone with Dad and happened to look out the back door. What a nutter. She looks like she's been shot with an elephant dart.

Mizz Peachz, Maxxin' n' Relaxxin'

2009-07-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Tell me she doesn't look kinda chubby. I went outside yesterday to help Mom bring in some heavy things from the car and I stopped to pet Peaches and I swear it was like squeezing an overstuffed pillow. Of course, she loves being squeezed because she's a freak like everyone else around here, but good grief, kitty, time for some Spanx, I think.

In other news, I feel really sick and can't believe I'm awake.

Tough Times Call for Cat Pictures

2009-07-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Mom's been having problems. I called to talk to Dad about it only to discover that Dad had a heart/chest pain episode that morning. Ever have those moments when you stop pacing and just clutch your head like it's going to explode?

I encounter these entities, Mom's acolytes, on my pacings; they're always so happy to see me:

Mr. Smooch, Esquire

MoxieMan

Bonhomie Bucketfaints

Sassy Cat

Rio Goes to the G.I. Doctor

2009-07-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, well this might turn into a large post (you know what it's like when I go out in public...) *turns on Dead or Alive's "Round and Round"*

I'll break it down into points of interest.

1. First of all, they didn't have my appt. listed. ANYWHERE. I was a good girl, didn't throw a fit, waited until they got it sorted and I was seen anyway, and by the doctor that my GP recommended, so all was well. No need to blow up on the good working people of the office for an error.

Scene: Me and Dad waiting with a very nice nurse who's entering my info. into a computer. I make the observation to Dad that her shoes look very fast [inside joke between us and Dad -- he bought new running shoes that are very swanky and have netting and shiny bits all over them, and I said they looked very fast, to which my father said facetiously, "I can jump high too." It was like being on the playground again.] The nurse says to me that she has twin nieces and that they look very much alike.

"But the really interesting thing is when they look at each other, like they know what the other one is thinking and they communicate with these looks..."

My father shook his head. "Never play Pictionary against twins. Here..."

He pulled a pen from his pocket, sketched two ovals and two little squiggly lines on the side of my paper tote bag. "One of them drew this, and the other one said, 'It's a lizard!'..." We all laughed, and I said, "I was going to say that looked like a lizard, Dad..."

He narrowed his eyes and I laughed sheepishly.

2. Got 7 vials of blood drawn. Various things -- genetic marker, celiac, enzymes, etc.

Scene: Me, waiting. Listening to the nurses discussing a form, and a gentleman from Rex Hosp. coming to collect bags full of samples. I couldn't place his accent. He sounded "gulf" but not. I finally asked him where he was from, and he smiled big, said, "Virginia!" though he's been in NC for 30 years.

"You have a very distinct patois," I said. He's got to be coastal then. We have folks down in the coastal plain of NC who sound similar to him. Like when he said "cancer center", it sounded more like "cansuh centuh". Neat!

3. I also teased the phlebotomy nurse until she was bent laughing and slapping her leg, mostly with the gruesome idea of marrying a 90 year old for his money.

"You have a daughter there," she said to dad.

"Yes, she's a lot," he said wryly, herding me into the next room to get my diagnostics so we could go home.

4. Out in the parking lot, we discovered a slip of paper under the wiper of the car. It was a handwritten note reading "How to get saved" with instructions to read a certain passage in Acts, then go to Temple of the Pentacost in town (complete with phone #) to get baptized.

"They smell heathen on you," I said to Dad.

Jaye on a Moped versus a Liger

2009-06-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

Last night, Jaye and I saw two grizzly bears fighting.

Jaye: "They're the ultimate killing machine. What if a grizzly bear fought a lion? A tiger? A Moose?"

Me: "A hippo would take it down."

This lead to grizzly bears versus golden eagles, a toucan, and an owl. According to Jaye, this is how the latter scenario would transpire:

Bear: RAWR!!

Owl: HOOT!

Bear: RAWR!!

Owl: HOOT!

[36 hours later....]

Bear: RAWR!

Owl: HOOT!

It would be a draw.

But what about a more difficult scenario? What about Jaye naked on a moped but wearing a helmet, versus a liger?

Things to consider before making your answer:

*The moped is a standard issue 80's TOMOS with a full gas tank of about 2 gallons and a range of 40 miles per gallon, and Jaye is creating no wind extra wind drag by being free of clothes

*The Liger has had no circus training, cannot ride a moped, does not have a license to legally do so, and has no where important to be at the moment of this challenge

*Both he and Jaye have had a nutritious breakfast, adequate sleep, proper hydration, and will not be involving law enforcement at any time

*The Liger may or may not be open to new experiences

*Jaye has plenty of gas money stuffed in her helmet

Poetry Happy Sparkle Fun Timez

2009-06-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Last night, I discovered a pile of unused business reply postcards that Mom and the ladies at the college had been using as scratch paper. I decided that I was going to decorate them and mail them to her and her friends just for fun. I dragged Sis into the plot and we decided to terrorize Mom and her co-worker friend with nothing but truly awful "Roses are red..." poems.

We came up with several that were really cringe-worthy.

Jaye's contributions:

Roses are red
Violets are flowers
I often believe
I have magical powers

Roses are red
Violets are furry
When I take off my glasses
You look really blurry

Me:

Roses are red
Violets are purple
There isn't a word
That rhymes with purple.
(Except maybe hurple)

Roses are red
Violets are sunny
I need a Ferrari
Give me some money

Instead of committing first class mail fraud, I left them in her purse to find. She thought they were hilarious. We decorated them like serious Hallmark cards so the messages were rather a shock.

Yeah, You Heard Me

2009-06-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

In the course of my writing like a writing thing that writes writingly, I looked up a few alternate words in the computer's dictionary (possibly words to replace "write"), and I was mildly amused to find that the word "mad" as in "lunacy or madness" comes from the same root as the word "mutate".

The next time I'm feeling crazy, I'm going to tell people that I'm mutating.

Mosquito Hawks: Nature's Assassins

2009-05-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

Up late against own volition. We've formed quite the habit of watching "Poker After Dark" because of this. (Also, my weird little crush on Antonio Esfandiari.)

Up later because Jaye was getting sick and I rubbed her back for her.

Up even later because *I* couldn't get to sleep. Too nauseated. Even on phenergan.

Awoke, took my pills, limped downstairs (yeah, S.I. joints going off again), battled more ants (that's what I get for not ritually bagging up the trash every night), did some writing, called my Medicaid officer about a mailing I'd received.

You know you're down South when your Medicaid officer never fails to call you "Miss Megan" and gladly spends extra time on the phone with you just shooting the breeze and deciding on the best method to divest your kitchen of giant black tree ants. I'm really being a very good girl. I have a horrible bug phobia so this thing with the ants has been a real test of my mettle.

After writing, I decided to take a break so I went outside for some fresh air and watched Peaches sleeping beneath her favorite tree in the dark earth of a fairy ring. Bonhomie, our giant grey tabby, a very polite sensitive gentleman, greeted me with one quiet chirp and walked down the length of the porch railing to stand at the gate where I could easily reach him. I stroked his soft ears, listening to him purr, as we enjoyed the shade of the house and a remarkably cool breeze.

I've gotten into the habit of rubbing my Mom's cats. Makes me feel calmer for some reason. After such rub fests, I have to wash the hair off of me, so it's into the shower, but something funny happened the other day (citation: bug phobia).

Shower scene, about 10 minutes into said shower, to the tune of "Should I Stay or Should I Go?":

Me: (blithely oblivious and covered in suds) "La! Lalalalla laaaaaaaaalalalalal!!"

Big Bug: *flit flit flit*

Me: (turning to rinse my back) "La lalalalalaaa!" (catching sight of the Borg) [shriek]

Big Bug: *flit flit flit*

Me: [shriek] (flapping of arms and shower curtain)

Big Bug: *flit*.... *swirl, swirl* .... *flitflitflit*

Me: [shriek] (squirting liquid soap on invader like Greek fire)

Big Bug: *decease*

Me: "Ma!"

Mom: (appearing showerside) "Yes?"

Me: (pointing) "What is that...."

Mom: (staring at it) "More like 'was'..."

Me: "C'mon, lady! I can't see..."

Mom: "Hmm. Mosquito hawk." (dryly) "And you've deftly killed it. Good job."

Me: (glaring) "Getouttahere!"

Everyone's a critic.

Cameras Hate On Me, So I Push Their Buttons

2009-04-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

Black Horses

2009-04-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

***I apologize for my absence, everyone :( - after a bout with a stomach virus and then food poisoning after that, I've been eating phenergan and trying to get back up to full steam. For those asking, Dad is better but still having trouble with angina.***

I had a dream two nights ago that's lodged in my brain like a bullet.

A black horse galloping like mad across desert scrubland. He was covered in sweat and dust, but he wouldn't stop running. I saw myself there on the edge of dry hot nowhere, feeling hopeless and sad. I turned around and saw him distant. He wasn't tired anymore when he saw me, and I knew in my mind that his relentless push all along was to get to me. No matter what, no matter how far he had to go so we'd be together again. When we saw each other, the hopeless feeling just fell away. He wasn't tired anymore when he saw me and I wasn't scared. That's when I woke up.

I've dreamed of the black horse before. Many times. He's always taking me somewhere, or keeping me safe. He's never dangerous, scary or negative. His eyes are human, like he understands what I'm saying, and what's best for me even when I don't. He's some sort of caretaker, belonging to me in a strange way, and most importantly, he never gives up or tires or stops.

Almost a decade ago, a woman of great mystery told me she'd had a dream of a black horse with its head being held, that it was stomping the ground and struggling violently to get loose. She said she knew in her heart that it was me, and to "hold on"...

Southern Gothic - More on My Hallsville NC Family

2009-03-16T20:07:00.001-07:00

I have something interesting to share. I've discovered some very valuable information on my family, my mother's side to be exact, along with piles of pictures from the 1800s.

I told you before that my mom's family (her mother's branch) hail from a little place down in the swamps called Hallsville. I went there once or twice. It's a crossroads in a backwater. We had to crash through the woods to reach the cemetery where my forebears are laid.

Hallsville saw a lot of activity in it's day, mostly turpentine and saw mills. I'm pretty much related to just about everyone who lived there, if not by blood, then by marriage (several times over in some cases).

Anyway, I ran across a first cousin, Thomas James Armstrong... (Hall, Sloan-Sheffield, Sheffield, Armstrong). He left behind a picture and a history of his life in that area. I knew it had to be old because he referred to the area as "Limestone". That was the original name before it shortly reverted to Hallsville (named for my 5th ggf William Hall, d. 1825).

It was something of a head-trip for me because in his history he mentioned both people I knew only peripherally and people I was directly related to (again, sometimes more than once or twice related - go ahead with your Southern inbreeding jokes). McGowans, Sloans, Sheffields, Halls, Armstrongs, Sprunts, Pearsalls, etc. Typically cotton and corn planters. Ran turp or saw mills.

I began glancing over Thomas's history and noticed immediately that it was nothing like the dry kinda uppity version of life related by Benjamin Hall which I also have in my possession (typed out by him on onion skin paper). Both men lived in Hallsville. Might have known each other too, though Thomas was older. Both of them are my immediate cousins.

Apparently, Thomas's dad suffered as an invalid for many many years as the result of a sudden paralysis (sounded like typhus to me, a sort of paralysis that sets in after being bitten by an infected mosquito). Not an uncommon occurrence, esp down in the swamplands.

Thomas spoke of poverty, illness, and also the little things that went on in daily life that were funny or comical. He sounded like an extremely emotional and sensitive guy. His family wasn't the typical starchy stiff-upper-lip Victorian types. At his dearly loved 16 year old sister Susan's sudden death, he said that his brother Hugh, father Edward, and Uncle David cried like babies to lose her. She told their father that if he moved, he had to take her with them because she couldn't stand the idea of them "leaving [her] there". And they did. They dug her up and took her with them. Both sick and painfully sweet.

Southern gothic enough for you?

And the way Thomas wrote it, it was enough to break your heart. Like life meant something dear to them.

I received these pictures from someone else, but I do believe they had their origin with Stephen Pearsall who went through the mighty task of transcribing Thomas's narrative. The top photo is Thomas. The bottom photo is his son Edward who died at age 23 from the wounds he received at the close of the Civil War.

Phun in the Photo Booth

2009-03-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

Me, a friend, and Sis, photo booth, Aladdin's Castle, Crabtree Valley Mall, 11 July 1992. Note my huge earrings. I told you they were huge and I meant it.

Me (in lighter fedora), Sis (in darker fedora), and a friend, photo booth, NC State Fair, October 1987/88....

I have a ton of these booth photos.

Excuse You, I Was a Fashion Plate, Okay?

2009-03-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

Jaye and I wound up in a hilarious conversation right before bed.

"Remember the crazy stuff we used to wear?" she asked.

Oh I remember all right. I have remarks in my 8th grade year book about how giant my earrings were. It was a thing with us - the giant earrings. If they weren't going to touch my shoulders or gouge someone in the eye, they were looked upon with disdain.

White feathers
3 linked metal stars (used to entertain Shorty's baby brother)
Giant puffed heart doorknockers
Pageant style shoulder length white vinyl and sequins
Enormous wire hoops that could double as a choker in a pinch
Silver parrots
Silver cross in one ear, studs up the other, ear cuff with a blue feather hanging down

You get the picture.

Anyway, Jaye and I were talking about the giant earrings, and then I said, "Remember the contents of our purses? It had to be enough to get you and a girlfriend through a nuclear winter or city-wide fire fashionably." This was the 1989-early 90s era.

Purse contents:

*perfume
*1 or 2 extra pairs of earrings
*lipstick and mirror
*pads, tampons, Midol
*chewing gum and a pack of crackers
*hair brush and scrunchie/bar clip
*change for a pay phone
*keys (complete with giant keychain collection) to stab would-be attackers to death if travel sized Aqua Net Concrete Doom Hold didn't do the trick

Perfume, of course. At the time, it was Jovan Musk for Shorty, Love's BabySoft for Jaye, and Navy for the Rio. You had no idea how sophisticated I was wearing Navy, people. All the boys thought I was quite womanly. *haughty nod* This was changed up with such amazing horrors as Electric Youth, Exclamation, Emeraude, and various migraine inducing things from Avon.

The extra earrings were meant to give one a polished look no matter what one was stuck wearing. If your girlfriend was woefully underdressed, you could spot her some earrings. Fashion crisis averted.

Lipstick used to ride around in these little Chinese silk embroidered mirror cases we would scoop up from the dollar store by the handful. I think my sister had no less than 58,000 of them. The lipstick was in keeping with the times - brick red, brown, or in my case, blanched unflattering pink. Yay!

The girly products speak for themselves. Starting your period unannounced meant you had to do the honorable thing - go off and die. The code was to never allow yourself or your girlfriends to spring a leak.

Chewing gum, for awesome breath. Crackers, to save you from a drop in blood sugar should your parents never wish to pick you up from the mall ever again.

Hair brushes, scrunchies and/or bar clips, for hair emergencies. You had to rein in that high ponytail somehow. Or tame the feared "ridge" -- a uncontained section of hair rebelling against your scrunchie or bar clip, standing up in ugly defiance like the spinal cord of a stegosaurus. It took no little skill to kick that monster back into line.

[Pay phones. What are those?]

Keys weren't meant to go unaccessorized either. See comment under "lipstick". Mine was so heavy and ginormous I could have beat an entire ninja army to death with them.

The purses themselves were worthy of note too. I had a bright purple leather one, a red nylon ripstop version, a black leather bag so deep that I became the "would you hold this for me?" girl. I was a walking pharmacy.

The time after getting our drivers' licenses was a time of adventure and screaming.

Shorty drove a temperamental snubnosed VW Vanagon that Jaye described as "like flying the Millenium Falcon", with all it's rattles, squeaks and moments where you had to punch it back into working order. We loved that van - you could sit a variety of places according to one's whimsy.

I remember us heading back to Shorty's house one night, rocketing down the highway and getting stuck in the mass of stoners letting out of lazer Floyd. The van began to overheat. Shorty had to keep shutting off and restarting as we inched through traffic. Finally, we made it to a Walmart, discovered all the water/coolant had boiled out. We had enough money on the three of us to run into the store and buy the only water they had - spring water. Ah! The Vanagon was happy.

It Does Amuse Me So

2009-03-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

Jaye and I have somehow managed to pick up a stomach virus. With all the cleaning and hand-washing we do, I'm still flabbergasted as to how that happened. I'm really careful because I absolutely abhor being sick, especially on top of chronic problems. I kinda want to go around now kicking people who don't wash their hands (kicking, so I don't have to touch their Typhoid selves.)

So we'll do our catching up when we can.

Until then, I leave you with Nannerpuss. He's delighted by pancakes, as we all should be.

Magic Mark Gives Us the Bad News

2009-02-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

Magic Mark used the world's longest most obscene pipe snake and STILL couldn't get it to fully clear. He asked me if anyone had lost something metal/solid. I was like, "No..." O.o and he said, "Whatever it is, it's in the s-bend INSIDE the porcelain. Not in the pipe. And it's not budging."

I looked at Mom, she looked at Jennifer, we all shrugged, totally baffled. Magic Mark said that he'd retrieved a cell phone and someone's dentures just like this before. That's nuts. I don't make phone calls or take out my go-to-meetin' teeth on the john.

He and his dad have done a lot of work on our house. They're very fair and do a great job, so I believe him when he says "This is DOA."

We have no choice but to replace it. Mom's going to have to take out more loan money at the bank and I'm going to try and help her offset the cost with the money all you guys have sent us.

Maybe The Goats Were on a Generic

2009-02-10T18:50:00.000-08:00

Monday was a long day.

I had an ultrasound done to check my heart. Long story short: my gear is good, my wiring is faulty.

So I've been sent home with beta-alpha blockers to calm my nervous system. The INTJ cardiologist, the same guy who put the stent into my dad's heart, came out into the lobby and watched "Green Acres" with Dad and Jaye while the nurse ran the test on me.

Came home. Discovered my mother's bathroom toilet is behaving badly. We needed to call the plumber ages ago but couldn't afford it. Even now we're debating what fix to make. The toilet takes priority.

My bff Athena called that night.

We had a long and involved conversation (including a near-miss with death in a motorcycle accident only days ago). Kids, wear your helmet and body armor.

Toward the end of it, she said, "I may have an interesting fact for you!" (I wowed her with "a penny costs 1.67 to make..." to which she responded with a stream of profanities about our financial system...)

She said, "Have you ever heard of fainting goats?"

I was astonished, "I just made a joke about fainting goats today at the doctor's office."

She started howling. "No! No way! No, you didn't! Arg!! I hate you! I love you!"

It was a very strange moment. I can't believe she brought up fainting goats within hours of me making a joke about fainting goats. Perhaps we're channeling each other.

I'm feeling pretty demoralized in general. I have to hold so many things together, and when I forget, I get fussed at even though it's impossible for me to get everything right ALL THE TIME. I can't be perfect. I can't. "You should"-ing me into the ground, you have no idea how unfair that is. I'm fighting SO HARD right now. SO HARD. It's not ME failing. It's TOO MUCH. It's too much for ANYBODY.

I rely heavily on my memory and I'm starting to get huge blank gaps, as if my brain is saying "I'm exhausted. You've got to give us a break..." and yet I can't. We're having to intensely research Jaye's heart medication (b/c her generic was recalled, causing an upheaval you wouldn't believe - it's a popular drug...) and Mom's (because HER generic was switched to something utterly useless, which we got worked out, but she's also got the beginning of osteo, so we had to find her a supplement that had calcium and D but was also cost-effective and easy to swallow b/c she chokes...), and you know, I'm just DONE.

DONE.

None of my pants fit. That's what happens when you go from too thin to healthy. Wouldn't be such a source of anxiety if I could easily replace them, or just go to a store and try on pants. New clothes have to be washed before I put them on or I get sick.

YAY.

So I feel shabby and not like myself at all.

Me and My Funky Spleen

2009-02-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

First point of business, I wanted to thank everyone for their sensitivity and kindness about our kitty. It was an abrupt and very upsetting situation, and I want to share my family's heartfelt appreciation for their concern. It meant so much to us. <<<>>>
********************************************************************************

I went in for my MRI. And because I forgot to triple check with my doctor's nurse and Rex hospital, I had to do it unsedated. That was tricky at first. I started to freak out a bit. I'm like trying to lead a horse out of a burning barn without a blindfold when I get in tight places sometimes. Hence, why I hate elevators so much and refuse to be in one unless I have to or unless someone I know is with me (like my goat or mini pony barn buddy? How lame am I?!)

But luckily, I had the same tech who helped with my MRI last year to the month, and he said, "What's the plan?" and after a moment of defeat, embarrassment and frustration with myself, I said, "Screw claustrophobia. I gotta get it done." So he said, "Shut your eyes tight. I'll run you in really fast, and don't open your eyes until you get to the end, okay?"

It worked. I went through the test with no trouble.

I said, "I know you! John Wayne!" and he laughed and laughed, and said, "You're the diesel mechanic!" His name is the same as a character John Wayne played in one of his finest Westerns. Last year, I saw his name tag and blurted that out (because I'm a Blurty McBlurter who Blurts Stuff) before I could stop myself. But hey, at least he remembered me because of it. As he and a co-worker prepped me, we chattered away about music (I remembered from my last chat session with him that we were both retro culture and music geeks) and movies, and I was annoyed that I forgot the bluegrass band he recommended as soon as I got home. I told him I'd rather talk to him while I was in the machine than listen to Waylon Jennings (he was quite flattered :)...) but he had too much to do (I had droopy bunny ears about that :(...)

Anyway, I managed to go to my Happy Place (complete with Shooter McGavin kissing Grandma) and just counted my way through it. I was there to see what was up with my spleen. The MRI from last year showed the oddest tiniest scattering of immune cells all over my spleen, and no one could make sense of it. The Mayo Clinic decided after some head scratching and probing that it didn't seem like cancer, but just to be safe, another look was warranted, so I was trying to be a big brave girl, fight my fear of being in the hospital and just DO IT. (Lollipops should fall out of the sky now.)

When we got home, Dad and I said hello to SassyCat who was rubbies-whoring herself to anyone with fingers. She wasn't sure about Dad at first, but when I picked her up and presented her to him, she was thrilled to discover that he was, in fact, a cat rubbies god-like person that she THREW herself in front of shamelessly at least three times to prevent his departure. He was laughing and patting her and trying to say good-bye, but she had an aggressive blitzkrieg plan of attack and had our father stymied for a good 10 minutes with her hostage-taking fluffy charm/assault.

Leon is Dead

2009-02-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

A few nights ago, our pedestrian affable orange tabby Leon showed up with blood pouring out of his mouth. He looked AWFUL. We gave him goat's milk because he couldn't eat, and then got him to the vet. My mother called this morning to let me know the prognosis: that Leon had been hit by car. His back leg was injured and bleeding. His jaw was shattered and missing teeth. I felt so sick. The vet said his odds for recovery were poor, so he was put down.

Angry cursing and crying aren't great ways to start the day. I hate lost causes.

Bad Planets Align

2009-01-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

Something weird and completely unfunny happened to me yesterday.

I was sitting on the floor by the space heater trying to drive a chill from my body. I was eating corn flakes from the box, feeling childish, and listening to the news with half an ear. During a commercial break, I happened to glance down and saw the phone book open near me. Mom had been looking up a pharmacy and left the book on the floor. I love scanning the pages for hilariously bad surnames (when I'm under the influence of my better angels, I'll post them and we'll all have a laugh), so I started reading down the list, but my eyes stopped on one name.

In a rush, I felt REALLY sick.

There he was. My nemesis.

All consoling thoughts that he was far away and long gone suddenly vanished. I sat there feeling slapped. Like what were the odds the book would fall open to that listing. I felt like I'd just learned a terrible secret that I didn't want to know.

That guy who could see through me. I could see through him. Frustrating, electric and scary.

A long past conversation with his cousin, Red, flashed across my mind... I had been in her arms crying, not saying much. She knew I'd seen him. He'd disappeared, only to reappear in traffic next to me. He stared through the glass. I stared back. He rolled down the window on his Mercedes, raised his hand, waved a little like he was in trance. He'd gotten off work at the firm.

Traffic moved. We were parted.

"Where has he been?" I asked, angrily mopping my face with my sleeve. I felt so stupid to be crying. Red had taken me to her house so I could lie down and get calm. "Why do I even care? What's the matter with me?"

"We'll see, kid." She went back to work, leaving me on her couch. I eventually got my head on straight and went home. She called me later.

"Wow. Just wow."

"What happened?"

"Rio..."

[pause] "It was... bad."

"You don't know the half of it. I called him and told him I was off work and invited him over since he was in the area. He sounded happy to, but then his mood changed. He was possessed with the idea that you would be there. I kept telling him over and over that it was just me. I had to reassure him that you wouldn't be there before he agreed to come by."

"What?"

"I know. And when he got here, he looked nervous. I got all sorts of those thin unprompted statements people make when they want you to know they're happy, happy, happy. He used 'making it work', and I didn't argue that. I only asked how he was doing. He even calmed down a bit, and we started having a decent conversation, but he saw something of yours here at the house, and he stood up, flashed a look at the door like you were going to come through it at any moment, said breathlessly, 'I can't do this...'..."

"What...?"

"He cut loose with a ton of quiet but frantic statements. 'I can't see her, I can't do this, I can't do this...' like a doomed man. It was the most amazing reaction to something that wasn't going to happen. But then it really got strange..."

"What happened?"

"He looked so agitated, staring at the door like he couldn't take it either if you didn't come through. This low tense way, 'How is she?' He looked at me like he was dying, then it was million little questions about you - 'does she speak of me a lot?', 'is she all right?', - mixed with - 'she can't love me', 'I told you I'm happy, Red, and it has to work'. It's like he's angry and elated at the same time. He wants to know everything about you while recoiling from it."

"Red, I'm sorry... I didn't mean to drag you into anything."

"No. It's all right. I told him he's a mess. I told him that this thing between the two of you had to stop, that he needed to make up his mind to come on or stay away. I got black silence for an answer."

She ended with, "You're in his head. He fears you. No one believes those pathetic denials, not even him. The strangest change comes over him whenever your name is mentioned. But he's DOA. You understand?"

Yes. I understood.

Shortly after, there was a half-cocked someone-shoot-me calm tirade about my perfume, that his new status girlfriend had started wearing it because he unmindfully said it was his favorite.

"I think of you. YOU. I smell it on her and I think of YOU..." like I and the cosmos were conspiring to make him insane. He sounded bitter and tired, held me off. Then, he wanted me to dream of him so he could be near me.

One of the last things he ever said to me - he'd turned from me like a slow-acting poison, then turned back, his dark eyes wide. Quietly, "You're the saddest girl I ever met. You smile and still look sad. It's your eyes, girl. Two worlds of hurt... One day, one day soon..." He was shaking a little. Barely above a whisper, his face close to mine, "You won't have to be so sad..."

I wanted that. That pretty hope. A future not eroded with blight.

I've failed. Do you understand? I've FAILED. I fought like a cat to survive and HERE is where I land?? This??

That's what makes me feel sick. I slammed the book shut and sat on the couch. I haven't stopped feeling weird since. I wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after me.

It's official - every one I know is married, has kids, a career, a choice. A claim on the moment. The disaster of their own making. The triumph tailored carefully to fit the time when it was meant to be worn like a badge of honor. Plans. Steps. Air in their lungs.

It's not about him. It's about me. I'm still under the bus. I'm still the sad girl, the sick girl. I felt pathetic.

I had to get up and pace to calm the sense of panic and frustration in me. I'm so grieved with you, God.

You Called Me What?

2009-01-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

*Sunday paper - advert for Barack Obama coins right above another for "Black Magic Elephant Ears". I think he would find that funny.

*Turn of the century, a scientist specializing in gas-filled meteorological balloons. Name: Dr. Assmann. First name, Richard. So it's Dr. Dick Assmann, Master of Gas?

Fancy Bread Stuffs

2009-01-23T15:58:00.000-08:00

My mother bought a loaf of bread on sale. The brand was Ecce Panis. Very late last night after she went to bed, I taped "E" over the "A", then left the bag on her recliner where she could find it first thing in the morning.

I did it out of love. The dirty laugh means nothing.

That's Entertainment

2009-01-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

I don't know of you're familiar with the Jam, a late 70s-early 80s Brit band that came on the scene during the punk era. They're "smart" writers, like the Clash or General Public or the Psy. Furs. I really love them. You should hear "That's Entertainment". It's a near perfect urban rot song while still remaining thoughtful in it's disappointment. I love his distinctive heavy accent. One of my favorite songs. Is it creepy that I could pick out a Jam song while watching a British soap opera?

We have the Clash documentary called "Westway to the World". Makes me wish I was born sooner and living in England. It just speaks to me. The music keeps me calm and focused. It reminds me of when I was a kid, when even the insanity could be fought if you just kept throwing your shoulder into it...

I'm sorry for running behind with everyone. I have messages that need answering. I'm trying to hold down a bunch of things all at once, plus my head is a mess, so please be patient with me.

Rio's New Do

2009-01-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

And All That Jazz!

2009-01-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

I got all my hair cut off today.

I gave Magic Bobby carte blanche, said "Do whatever you like...." so now I look like a cross between a vaguely deranged 1920s street urchin and murderous Velma from "Chicago" (the running mascara from my shower helped). I absolutely love it.

When I came home and walked into Jaye's room, she stared at me from her blankets and said, "You look like a cartoon that's about to pull out great big guns and start shooting! YAAAY!"

Magic Bobby said I was looking a lot healthier, which made me feel better about my appearance. All 10 inches of my ponytail will be going to Locks of Love. :)

Pictures forthcoming.

That's Right. I Did It, and I'm Not Ashamed!

2009-01-02T15:13:00.000-08:00

This morning, first thing, I saw Jaye waving her arm around at me brattily from her blankets. I grabbed her arm and bit it. She burst out laughing, so I started smacking her legs and pushing at her.

"I'm gonna lick your pillow!" I shouted.

"Nuh uh!"

"Will too!"

"You won't!"

So I licked her pillow. By this time she was howling with laughter. She told me I was too disgusting to even look at and that I'd earned a "5 Minute Time Out for breach of etiquette". lol

TwinTheater Presents: The Reef

2008-12-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

Jaye and I were eating our dinner very very late tonight. With grim amusement, we were watching the tripe that gets run on tv at such hours. We were especially invested in a nearly unwatchable Edith Wharton adaptation that had Timothy Dalton and Sela Ward as the main characters. The two of them were mailing in possibly the driest performances of their entire lives. And of course, since it's Wharton, everyone is miserable to varying degrees, though we couldn't entirely figure out why.

Through the whole of the movie, Sela Ward is striding around internally dialogging and wearing the exact same expression in every scene, an expression I dubbed "handsomely askance".

Me: (employing my very worst flat thespian voice) "Oh Charles. Can you not see. You burn with an ague, nay, an unholy fire in thy loins. You must go to Brighton at once for vigorous physic."

J: "Prunella! I wish to kiss your fingers most vehemently!.... Oh Charles, no! No! I have the liver cramp!"

Me: "Prunella! I wish to gaze lustfully at your ankles!"

J: "Prunella! The vision of your ankles shall be burned thusly into my brain forever!... along with some dirty pictures I once saw.... and some dancing French girls...."

M: "Oh Charles! You mustn't say such things, even though my ankles *are* quite white and dainty from a general abstinence from mannish walking and the near total lack of sunlight for 17 years!"

J: "Oh Charles! I get carried from room to room by servants so that my ankles don't become fat and muscular!"

You get the idea. We were mightily entertained after applying our own dialogue. Regrettably, we went to bed so we didn't catch the ending, but "Oh Charles..." and "Prunella!" were both still desiccating the pith of human passion with a great many wordy stock scenes that left Timothy Dalton looking uniformly confused and dyspeptic, and Sela Ward clutching her arms and sighing in an endless array of lace doily collars.

J: "It was called 'The Reef'..?"

M: "Yes, but I must admit, I don't recall seeing any reef."

J: "I saw a bunch of ... trees..."

M: "No reef."

J: "No. Reef."

[Pause]

M: "So what happened?"

J: [shrugging] "The last I saw of them, he was on top of her. It was pretty gross."

M: "Ah."

I Mean, Really...

2008-12-19T15:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, it was drizzling so when she stepped out on the porch, my sister was mobbed by wet unhappy cats. (Not that cats need a reason to mob you. They're anarchists.)

I pulled apart the saddest gristliest Charlie Brown tree of a rotisserie chicken (Ma said she got it on sale and I said "You still got had...") and put it on a paper plate for the starving feline army that apparently crossed the river with Washington if you believe their story.

I don't know what to say about Mom's cats... I had to put the chicken up to their noses to get them interested. Maybe they recognized how bad off that chicken really was. *head shake*

I called Mom at work on her break to announce what I'd done, and I got three hilarious, totally different ways that I'd failed her and the cats.

Debate One:

Me: "Mother, I fed your gross chicken to the cats."
Mom: "My chicken!"
Me: "Mother , please. It cost..."
J: [chiming in helpfully] "A dollar!"
Me: "...a dollar!" [thumbs up to twin]
Mom: "Nuh uh! It was two dollars and fifty cents!"

Me Shooting It Down: "Never mind it tasted nasty and you were going to take it back to the store!"

Debate Two:

Mom: "Well, now they've probably eaten so much meat they'll be sick!"

Me Shooting It Down: "There was hardly a scrap to eat on that bird!"

Debate Three:

Mom: "You've spoiled them! They've gotten the taste of the high life and now they won't eat kibbles anymore!"

Me Shooting It Down: "Yes, of course, Ma, and next they'll start hanging out at juke joints and join a gang."

Mom: "It could happen!"

It Had To Be At LEAST 50 Feet Long...

2008-12-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

Because my medication knocked me out and I woke up so very late (plus feeling the effects of pain that's not letting go), Jaye and I were awake at very unnatural very early hours. We stayed up to call Dad and make sure he was in good spirits before he left for his dr appt this morning. He got a stent put in that big artery that pumps blood to both sides of the heart which is a real doozie if it gets blocked. His was 50%. The rest of the arteries were free and clear. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and well wishes. Never have I wanted a year to get over-with so much as this one (1997 was pretty bad too, but I digress).

At almost 5 AM (I feel like that talking garbage heap from the Fraggles at that hour...), Jaye told me to call Pop so I did and then after making sure he was okay, we went up to bed. I was only partially dressed (or undressed, if you're a glass-half-full kinda person) when I saw this big nasty black thing go shooting across my pillow. Oh. The screams.

I awoke my mother who came came upstairs (stopped a moment to stare at me quizzically because I had no clothes on), and trapped the biggest palmetto bug we'd ever clapped eyes on (that was still in the bed... ), and after Jaye and I regained our sense of sanity (loosely grasped at any rate), we stripped the bed. No way was I sleeping on that! We've been washing blankets and sheets (including MY PILLOW) all day today. Something odd too about your mother on her knees in her night shirt chasing a huge frikkin' primordial swamp escapee across the bed.

So long story short, it was 6 AM before I laid down and attempted to do that thing called sleep. I wasn't doing much of it this week voluntarily (yay, Phenergan...), and when I wasn't medicated, I was lying awake thinking about how I'm going to be financially solvent, how I'm going to take care of my parents, how I'm ever going to get on top of this illness, what we're going to do now that our grocery money has run out. I don't care about canceling Christmas. I want my family to be safe and cared for and healthy.

Oh Look... ANOTHER Cat...

2008-12-14T16:46:00.000-08:00

Last night, Jaye and I were speaking to the grey tabbies on the back porch (they enjoy a good conversation) when suddenly a black and white kitty face popped up.

New Kitty meowed piteously, patted her paws at my fingers and asked to come inside the house. My mother went out to put the other cats in the shed for the night and brought New Kitty some food (J and I had plotted to rip off pieces of Mom's rotisserie chicken just in case Mom stonewalled us on feeding New Kitty).

Mom came back to the porch, hoping New Kitty had followed her, but New Kitty got confused and went under the shed. I took the plate of food and walked out to the shed, called to her, shook the plate so the kibbles would rattle around. New Kitty must have had a family somewhere because she trusted us almost immediately and the sound of rattling cat food made her come to me without hesitation.

She was starved. I think she ate every last bit. I suspect she may come back tonight.

New Kitty has a very long body, short hair that's really thick, and long crooked tail. She sat at the back door chattering away to me in the most anxious hungry way. We couldn't NOT feed her.

Me: I wonder who she belongs to?
Mom: [dry sarcasm] Who do you THINK...?
Me: Us. [tittering a laugh]
Mom: They always wind up here. Or your father's house.

I'm Going to Frame That Man

2008-12-05T12:29:00.000-08:00

I have a story to share. Be patient, it has a cohesive direction.

Back when I was a little pupa, perhaps 16 or 17, my bff Shorty went out on my birthday and bought me this great big ol' picture of Iceman. (Ladies, you KNOW you all watched "Top Gun" for the wrong reasons... you totally did! Don't be lyin' like that...) Being the uncreative soul that I was with malfunctioning spatial aesthetics, I gleefully stuck him to the wall in my half of the room next to a bunch of Harley-Davidson commercials and a late 50's Plymouth ad.

[Side bar: I grew up in a TINY old house and space was a commodity. J and I had to sleep in bunk beds (go, vertical space!) and had our bureaus (lovely art deco styled bureaus made by convicts! Ahee...) backed up against each other in the [relative] middle of the room. J's space was against a wall (that held her itty bitty bookshelf full of stuff and her giant beanbag polar bear that she won at the fair one year called BooBear - BooBear took up way too much space, but he was so charming... One day I'll tell you about his demise at the hands of my sister and Shorty...) and my space was facing the closet. This orientation is important to remember....]

Shorty and Jaye shook their heads at me. "You'll have to do better than that," I was told. (This is exactly what they told me about lip liner and underwear not made of cotton...)

Ok, fine! I said I'd go out and buy a cheap picture frame and do it right. (Everyone's a critic!) So I did. I bought Ye Olde Standard Brass Picture Frame, showed it to the girls (See!), and then framed Iceman.

"There!" I said. "It's no longer taped/tacked to my wall! Everyone happy now! From now on, a cocky gorgeous blond jackass will greet us whenever we enter the room!"

[Much applause]

HOWEVER...

As I said, space was at a premium in our room, so I had to change my clothes practically inside the closet. That was already awkward, and I discovered changing my clothes in front of a cocky gorgeous blond jackass was truly beyond me. So I turned him around. This lead to protestations from Jaye.

"Hey! I don't want him staring at me either, ok?!"

I countered that her giant poster of Martin Luther King was watching ME! Not to mention BooBear and a nearly wall-sized poster of U2 (from the Achtung Baby tour... while we were students in Antrim, a school mate of ours who saw them in Dublin brought us back that giant frikkin' poster...).

Iceman spent a lot of time face down on my bureau. Poor man.

He's Not DEAD... Stop it!

2008-12-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

There's a certain Pillsbury commercial where the DoughBoy sniffs cinnamon buns and is so enraptured that he floats. Every time my sister sees it, she shouts, "Nooooo!! Noooo!! Fight it! Don't go towards the light!! He's going to Jesus!!"

Who would have thought a cinnamon bun ad would cause such upset?

We'll Just Have to Involve the Dairy Council, Won't We?!

2008-11-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

Ok. Last night, perfect example of the out of hand, existential sudden jerking turn my life takes - Me and Jaye arguing about acidophilus.

It went something like this, around dinner time:

Me: Wow! Goin' heavy on xyz!
J: Yeah.
M: How is this possible?
J: Acidophilus.
M: That working for you already?
J: I don't want to talk about it.
M: But you just brought it up.
J: No I didn't. You did.
M: I didn't. You said acidophilus.
J: No, I didn't. You asked about my food and gave me that look like 'how is this possible?' and I said acidophilus b...
M: Why did you say it if you didn't want to talk about it?
J: I didn't!

This conversation degraded into a laughing outraged chaotic shoutfest that sounded like "ACIDOPHILUSNOYOUNOYOUACIDOPILYOUNUHUHYOUDIDSOCRAZYPERSON!!" flying back and forth that managed to wake up my mother who thought the world was coming to an end (this from a woman who could have slept through Hurricane Fran if we and the pets had not kept waking her up....).

Who shouts "acidophilus" at their sibling at 4 AM?

Everyone's a Critic

2008-11-26T14:06:00.000-08:00

My mother's cell phone rang the other night. I told her that her ring tone was "Ewok Village: Electric Boogaloo". She didn't find that utterly hilarious, even though it so was. Shame on you, Mother.

Mr. Mucus: Foul Substance of the Year

2008-11-25T19:39:00.000-08:00

You know that series of Mucinex commercials that uses the barely tolerable disgusting animated mucus people? Well, it seems to me that Mr. Mucus is good guy and father - he takes his family on fancy vacations, he reads to his kids at bedtime, he enjoys motorcycling with his friends. Come on! That's a model citizen!

Woolly Mammoths

2008-11-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

Thursday night, Jaye was feeling very badly, so I sat up with her and helped her rub the spasms out of her legs. As the pain lessened a bit, she said, "Woolly mammoths".

"What?"

"Should scientists make one?"

"No. Freaks me out."

"But you should have a woolly mammoth."

"I totally should."

"So why does it freak you out?"

"Before global warming, energy crises, overpopulation, and international economic recession, Jurassic Park seemed cool. Now, there's all sorts of things that shouldn't "be" - ever, or anymore."

"Oh. You mean 'New Kids on the Block'..."

lol

We tried to settle down, and I only made matters worse by pulling out my Ben Stiller "evil orderly" imitation: "You will go to sleep. Or I will put you to sleep."

The other night, to help her get into her bed faster, I laid out her pjs for her, but I had this weird little devil come over me, and I mooshed all her stuff - panties, shirt, pants, socks, etc.- completely flat. I almost left a mint on her pillow but I didn't! (boo! I never take the joke far enough!) Anyway, I went to bed and heard her say "You're such a goof" and then she started laughing a little, blurted sarcastically, "What 4 star hotel service!"

The Ultimate Winter Accessory

2008-11-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

Last night, Jaye demanded that we call Dad and have our National Geographic subscription canceled. Why? Because she's tired of being a "mummy magnet". For years, it has been well-known that if there's a mummy to be seen, on one's television or in one's periodicals, Jaye will find it. She could find a mummy in a Radio Shack catalog.

The final straw for her was when she glanced over my shoulder last night (yes, as I was reading the aforementioned magazine), and blurted, "Is that a raccoon?! With arrows up it's butt?!" To be fair, it was indeed a raccoon with arrows up it's butt. It was an arrow quiver owned by a native Central American. I likened it to one of those fur stoles with the head and paws still attached, only a fur stole that stores up imminent death for other animals. See? Simple!

Jaye is still grossed out and will not be swayed.

***************************

I really wish I could remember what it was that Jaye said or did, but Mom started dryly and sarcastically heckling her with rote generic "sports" talk. "Come on! Persevere! Overcome adversity! Put the puck in the net! Be a winner!"

Mom's been in a mood lately. Yesterday, when I awoke (at 5 PM... my medication can knock me out for long periods of time), I marched downstairs, pushed her bedroom door open with my slipper, found Mom still sleeping (a nap, I suppose), and declared that she had to get up. I stood over her heckling her. She made "hand guns" at me and started firing. I leapt behind the exercise bike and fired back. Fake bullets flying, Mom rolled out of bed and began shooting at me from around her door frame. I scurried to the kitchen, laid down some impressive hail from a protected corner until Jaye broke it up.

My mother's a gangster! I'm not safe in my own home!

***********************

Dear [friend]:

You're probably in Costa Rica as I write this, and in celebration of your daring temporary escape from the United States of America, I've decided to honor your "vacation" by making anagrams of the words "costa" and "rica". However, the best I could manage was "O! Stir caca!". I doubt somehow that this encompasses the grandeur and beauty that is Costa Rica. Forgive my clumsiness.

Don't Be Hatin'!

2008-11-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

Ferocious nerve pain in my arms has kept me off the computer.

We had a doctor's appt yesterday. The radio alarm went off. As soon as she's out of her blankets, Jaye started doing this little weird Bill Cosby dance.

Me: "Is that... a hornpipe?? To Beyonce??"

J: "Don't be hatin'."

M: "Maybe I hate it out of ignorance. I mean, perhaps my savage uncivilized mind can't comprehend the levels of subtle meaning interlaced throughout your unusual dance? Perhaps it's bad like most everything else that's good for you is bad, like alfalfa sprouts or flu shots. My unschooled m..."

J: "No, it's just bad."

M: "Ah."

On the car ride home from the doctor:

J: "So. Have the hounds been up to any shenanigans?"

Dad: "Yes, in fact. Just last night."

Dad's massive Catahoula hounds love to play Houdini - climbing, undermining, teleporting- simply to get out and roam the countryside, though they always come back and obediently go back into the pen, the very pen my father has made tiger-proof, and yet the hounds still escape... On some of their escapades, they've brought back squirrels, antlers, even a broom.

Dad: "I buried gravel in the holes they've dug, then I put really big rocks on top which I bury. But when I came back home, they'd dug the holes again, and managed to FLING the rocks - and I mean boulders bigger than a human head - 10 ft away from where I'd buried them!! How are they doing that?!"

[A lot of speculation occurs, including a suggestion to mount a hidden camera just to see how they manage these feats of strength]

Dad: "Maybe I should pour Sakrete into the holes."

Me: "Then you'll just have large chunks of Sakrete incomprehensibly flung 10 ft across the pen..."

Dad: *heavy sigh*

Heart Monitors, Various and Sundry Items

2008-11-08T15:00:00.000-08:00

J had the heart monitor on for two days. It was mostly a nuisance and we figured out how to work around it. The trouble was Jaye got sick, and I mean really sick, the day it was put on, so the awkwardness compounded on itself several times. Mother and I were both up until nearly dawn with her because she was in terrible unrelenting pain. I'm still tired from that, and from the nausea meds we're both taking. She was able to remove the monitor on Friday.

Here was our conversation and yet another example of my selective obliviousness:

Jaye: [taking off her heart monitor] "Ah man, the sticky pads have left goo all over me..."

Me: "We can take it off with some rubbing alcohol."

Jaye: "Okay. That's a good idea...." [undoes the pads]

Me: "Hey, there's a little metal snap there..."

Jaye: "Yeah? And?"

Me: "I would have thought they wouldn't use something metallic on a disposable pad. You'd think plastic maybe..."

Jaye: [looks at me mystified] "You're really that bad. Sometimes, I can't believe it, and yet..."

Me: "What?"

Jaye: "The metal has to be there to conduct."

Me: [realization dawning, then sheepish little grin] "Ah."

Jaye: [laughing] "Silly."

As I'd mentioned before, the medication can knock us out for long periods of time. I'm waking up late because of it, not that I mind, because hey, no nausea! *high-fives myself* But it sets the stage for yet another scene.

This afternoon:

Me: [finally awake and downstairs eating a little something. I hear loud jeering from upstairs - it's Jaye being a pest...] "She's gonna get it."

Mom: [casually] "Why don't you go upstairs and tuck her in?"

[Note: Every time I tuck the blankets around J really tight, for some crazy reason, even if she's not tired, she goes right back to sleep.]

[silent evil amusement exchange between me and Mom]

Me: [charging back upstairs, punting the door open with my shoe]

Jaye: [mocking] "Just couldn't stay away, could ya, eh what!?

Me: [tucking her in tightly] "Take that!"

J: "Nooooooooo!! Nooooo!! I'll go back to sleep!!"

Me: "Mwauahah! You won't wake up until EIGHT!"

J: "Noooo!!"

Me: [evil cackling; I leave the room and return to my fig newtons downstairs]

[Hark! I hear struggles to get loose from above - lots of giggly shouting and her antique metal box spring squeaking]

Me: [going back upstairs with malicious dread purpose]

J: "I'm freeeeeee!!"

Me: [jumping on and smooshing her] "Not so fast, missy!"

[Melee scene involving a lot of flailing, growling and shouting]

J: "Get back!" [putting me in a head lock] "You're elbowing my boob!!"

Me: [attempting to roll her in a blanket] "You won't escape this time, Shattner!"

J: [breaking loose] "Freeeeee!!!" [beating me with a neck pillow] "Get away!"

[both of us flopped on the bed like we've been massacred]

J: [grumbling] "You have too much energy."

Me: "Evil gives me wings."

We have these kitty-fits of silliness, and then fall over. She's on the couch now with an ugly sick headache, but at least we felt okay long enough to clobber each other.

Control Sassy Old People... With Nets!

2008-11-05T19:38:00.000-08:00

Spoke to my grandmother today. Jaye had just hung up with dad (she had some logistical questions about working around her heart monitor for the next 2 days), so I thought maybe it was dad calling back with some forgotten bit of advice. The caller ID stated his name so I picked up, said, "Hi Daddy!" and then Grandma said, "This isn't Daddy!" haha!

Caller ID was showing me Grandpa's name (dad is Daddy the 3rd).

Anyhoo, Jaye and I have been writing her letters, and since we're attempting to write her personal history, we mailed her a bunch of questions to start with, and she was calling to clarify a few points. For instance, I knew she sang with a big band back in the day, that she worked at Carolina Theater, and that she stopped her pharmacy/nursing degree at Duke to come home when her step-dad was injured. But I didn't know that she'd joined the WACS (double pneumonia kept her out ultimately), that she wanted to be a flight stewardess (you had to be a nurse to be stewardess in those days), and that the only time she ever boarded a plane was when Grandpa was going to propose to her.

She also told me that she'd gone out and voted yesterday, and that she raked her yard this afternoon. "Girl. I'm telling you. If your 85 year old granny was gonna have a heart attack, today was the day, because I musta raked 1500 pounds of wet leaves! I get out there and start talking to God - he promised that that annoying bird that chatters at me wasn't gonna be there and it was back! - and people are gonna think I'm crazy and throw a net over me!"

She says she knew it was me on the phone because my laugh is different from Jaye's. I wonder...

Out! Out Foul Demons of Whatever The Heck This is!

2008-11-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

Very late last night, Jaye and I were cracking ourselves up. I told her that as I was working out earlier that day, a Backstreet Boys song came on (and I couldn't get to the radio to change it...) and it was that silly daft shout-out, "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" with such mind-blowing lyrics as "Am I original? (yeah)... Am I the only one? (yeah)... Am I sexual? (yeah)... Am I everything you need? You better rock you body now." Though my favorite bit is "As long as there'll be music we'll be coming back again." That sounds like a threat to me.

People. Please. Don't play any music. If you do, the terrible portal into the Land of Awful Pop will open and draw the Backstreet Boys "back". Won't somebody please think of the children?!

I made mention of another completely vapid song, "Get Ready For This" by 2 Unlimited. I'm sorry, but there's simply no way to prepare for this song, with such awesome lyrical stylings as "Feelin' hypnotised, I can see it in your eyes. Feelin' kinda better, Put on your sweater. Into my house, into my room, That's the part where it goes "boom! boom!".

Dazzled? Me too.

So I turn to Jaye. "Remember that nasty guy with the blond mullet perm and a name like the Flintstone's pet dog?"

Jaye: "Oh dear heavens. That guy. Dino?"

Me: "Ewww. His dancing was like skipping in place."

Jaye: "He looked like a creepy pool salesman."

Me: "A jacuzzi salesman who lives in a shed behind his parents' house."

Let me share with you the song that we reference. Be advised. The lyrics are powerful.

I Like It - Dino

Get up on it

Let's do it
That's nice
I like it

[I'm already howling with laughter]

(CHORUS)
That's the way it has to be

Cause that's the way I like it

That's the way it has to be

Cause that's the way I like it

Here we establish the "theme".

You told me that you loved me

Now, girl, show me

Cause I can't believe it's true

By the things you do

Never have I ever

Had such pleasure

Of giving up my love this way

I want you every day

Take me by the hand

I will be your man

Cause that's the way

You make me feel

Take me by surprise

Look into my eyes

And show me that

Your love is real

(CHORUS)

Yeah, yeah, yeah

(I like it) uh huh, uh huh

(I like it) uh huh (uh)

Let's wine and dine

And just take our time

The night is young and so are we

Just come with me

We'll walk in the park

And kiss in the dark, girl

Cause that's the things I like to do

When I'm with you

Uh, I like it

Let's do it

I like it, girl

That's nice, uh huh

I say yeah, yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

(Ooh, I like it) uh huh, uh huh

Uh huh (I like it) uh huh

(Ooh, I like it) uh huh, uh huh

Uh huh (I like it) uh huh

People, clap your hands

If you like it

Stop, this is what I like

Your hair so wild

Sunglasses and that smile

That's the way, uh huh

That's the way, now dance

I like it, nasty (uh)

(I like it)

Exhibit B: Jaye called me one day as she was driving home, said that she was listening to the world's most god-awful song, and that she had a suspicion that it was Jordan Knight. It was so gross and stanky that she almost drove off the road with horrified laughter. She said it was like having some guy rub his junk on your car window.

Give It To You - Jordan Knight

(Verse 1)

You say its been too long

since you had some

You say I turn you on

like a fire that's burning inside

You think that I'm the one

You see in your dreams

I know what you mean yeah

It's creepin around in your head

me holding you down in my bed

You don't have to say a word

I'm convinced you want this

Chorus:

Baby you know I can give it to you

I can't deny you do it right

Just let me know and I'll give it to you

Just show me where, I'll take you there

Baby you know that I'll give it to you

Your body needs a man like me

Anything goes when I give it to you

You know without a doubt, I'll turn you out

I'll give it to you

The feeling is fine, giving you everything of mine

(Verse 2)

I'm the place to be

and soon, you'll see

I don't care who leads

As long as we move horizontally

Anyone can make you sweat

But I can keep you wet

It's creepin around in my head

Me holding you down in my bed

I can't wait to give you some

I'm convinced you need it

Chorus

I want to satisfy your every wish and mine baby

I know just what you need,(you need)to get you off

No one could ever do you like I do you right baby

There's nothing we can't do.....

The feeling is fine giving you everything of mine

Jaye couldn't get clean for days after that. And I've seen other peoples' comments about that song ranging from the clearly brain-damaged "Jordan can get me any time" to "That song is kinda gross!" Kinda?? How about a LOT gross?? How about "making a lesbian out of me" gross?? This is unforgivably BAD, Jordan Knight! Even for you!

Listen to Your Elders - or Don't...

2008-10-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

As you may already be aware of, my mother likes game shows. The other night, as she was busily shouting out (wrong) answers during her nightly ritual of "Wheel of Fortune", some lady won a trip, and as we are shown the grandeur and awesomeness that is scenic Spain, Mother says, vaguely outraged, "Well, now! That doesn't look right at all!"

Then she turns to me, blurts, "Everyone knows there's no grass in Spain!" like it's a fact. I stared her like "nutty woman, be quiet" and she started laughing. (Later, Jaye said facetiously, "Of course there's no grass in Spain. The sheep eat rocks.")

I have no idea what made Mom assert such a thing, but I may have to chalk it up to generalized geriatric "wackiness".

It's Entirely Possible I May Be Vogue-ing

2008-10-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

A moment of levity with Das Twinks. Taken yesterdee.

RIP Mr. Carducci

2008-10-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

A Carolina anole came to live in our kitchen window about a week ago. I started looking forward to seeing him go out hunting during the day, and then return to the window at night to wedge himself into the storm window track and fall asleep. He even preyed on moths that strayed past the ripped mesh. We refrained from naming him because when you name an animal, it usually means they'll die or get eaten and die. A friend of ours named him Mr. Carducci, and then the next day, I saw my mother's cat, Moxie, out in the yard KILLING MY LIZARD. I was so upset! I held a big grudge against Moxie for 2 days (I don't like him much anyway so it wasn't difficult), and then, Jaye calls me to the kitchen, "Hey! Your anole is back!"

I went in there and we both stared into the dark window. Sure enough, an anole had gone into the storm window track and was sleeping. It wasn't Mr. Carducci though. He was too small and too fast. I checked on him this morning and he'd gone out hunting already. But he's come back already, so perhaps I can be less ticked off with Moxie, now that I have a new resident.

The best part about wild animals is that you can enjoy them while letting them take care of themselves.

Eureka!

2008-10-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

I had a total "Rio" moment today.

I called Blogauthor and Wheeler (who was this very week hospitalized with pain that couldn't be tracked down. He was released after tests didn't reveal an ulcer/outstanding issue....) So I heard from Blogauthor that he was at home and still in pain. I called to check up on them .

I told him he worried us. He said, "You know how it'll be in the end. Just me and the roaches. You can't kill me - I'm Wheeler." True dat! He's a very tough-minded person. I don't know how he does it.

Anyway, Blogauthor asked him if he wanted to go to a hockey game tonight, to which he said YES because he'd rather "be miserable at a game having some fun than being miserable at home."

Later, I began to think over Blogauthor driving him to the game, and then pulling the van up to the curb to get Wheeler out. I thought, "but she can't leave him alone!... and what would she do with the van!?...."

All of this lead ultimately to me blurting, "Parking spaces at the front of the building!! They should be able to park where they unload the disabled person!"

My ESTJ mother, who's used to these spatially challenged outbursts from me, nodded, said dryly, "Those are called handicapped spaces. Been around for years."

I sat there staring blankly, and Mom started laughing, said, "I knew you'd reach the right conclusion in due time."

I'm that bad. Environmental things, practical matters = do not compute until something occurs to MAKE them compute.

Plasma Jet Willford Brimley Turtle Husbandry!

2008-09-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

There's a giant tortoise from the Galapagos Islands named Lonesome George because pirates and sailors ate his tortoise homies long ago. George is impossibly old and looks old, even for a tortoise. Everyone thought that when George finally died, that would be it for his species. But! Two females were discovered on a separate island. And some eggs were produced. And in a few long months, they'll know if they have new baby tortoises.

Apparently, George has very little libido or prowess. Hey, leave the guy alone! He's 90 gajillion years old! According to my friend Tina who breeds exotic turtles, the creatures should all be extinct strictly on the grounds that the structural angles of turtle sex is utterly ridiculous. Maybe the folks from the racy pre-code era movie '42nd Street' should have flown to see George and sing him a song about a turtle bride getting laid, you know, for inspiration. That might've helped.

I can see him watching such a spectacle whilst chewing a piece of shrubbery (the same piece from least week), and thinking, "Hmm. Per... haps... zzz... zzzz.....zzzzzzzzzzz...." (That's what happens when you get nothing else on TV except "Matlock" and "The Price is Right"...) Then he'd wake up long enough to demand his senior citizens' discount and his free diabetic cookbook from Willford Brimley (who is himself younger than George but certainly older than black holes...)

Speaking of black holes, someone finally explained to my satisfaction about those plasma jets that shoot out of black holes. The man on NOVA said that it was something like trying to fill a dog dish with a fire hose, i.e. only so much can go in and the rest slops back out. I'll bet if we fed Willford Brimley a lot of food (sweetened with Splenda) plasma jets might shoot out of him too.

Dr. H and John Wayne

2008-09-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

Dad took me to the dr. yesterday because the infection in my toes isn't going away. I saw Dr. H, the same man who admitted Jaye to the hospital for dangerously low body weight, and I rather liked him. Kinda dry and funny. He has only one lung! And he runs marathons and has a resting heart rate so low that I can only describe it as "wacky".

He took a look at my toes, said immediately what it was and what to do. I told him I'd attack it with all guns blazing. Made little gun hands for emphasis. He looked up at me, made gun hands too (with his vinyl gloves on), said dryly, "Like this?"

Me: "Like John Wayne."

Dr. H: (raised eyebrows) "You like John Wayne?"

Me: "I love John Wayne."

Dr. H: "I love John Wayne too!"

Me: "The Quiet Man! Stagecoach!"

Dad: "The Searchers!"

Dr. H: "I love John Wayne! My daughter hates John Wayne!"

He said that he liked John Wayne because back in the 60s and 70s he was the only guy standing there telling hippies to cut their hair and get a job. ha ha! I would recommend "The Searchers" to anyone. I'm not a big Western genre fan, but that movie is powerful and the shots of the great wide open are beautiful. John Wayne always played good guys, or degenerate good guys like his Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" (another great movie), but in "The Searchers" he's a hard-bitten bigoted cowboy who's had to live in a brutal murderous atmosphere. He's seen the worst of white people and Indians. His harshness in this movie and his internalized torment are quite stunning. The whole pursuit of the kidnapped little girl is to kill her because she was "tainted" by her contact with the Indians. The end of the movie is worth the wait.

Deer Madam - What Fine Antlers You Have

2008-09-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

My ENTJ best friend Athena has been going through an extremely difficult time. She loves to get paper letters so I write to her about random things. She said she feels special when she goes to the mailbox and finds a letter for her. Paper letters ARE special. Someone went through the bother to write pages of content that can't be deleted with a button or spell-checked.

I'd starting writing to her because I was so sick and in pain that I couldn't move. Sitting for long hours alone feeling horrible and afraid, I wrote to her to stay sane. Now I write because I want to. I endeavor to entertain her and to make her feel closer to us when she needs us so much.

Yesterday, the letter began this way:

Dear Athena -

I just want you to know that I'm looking at the current VS catalog and there's a girl in there who looks like she has two giant flesh-colored sea slugs glued to her face...

She said the last time she got my letter (I really had to cram it into an envelope because I had gone on several long tears and couldn't stop myself!), she said she was driving and almost went off the road laughing. Then when she got to her appt, she was sitting in the waiting room and laughing out-loud. A woman looked over and said, "Is that... a letter?" like yeah, no one sends those anymore, and Athena said, "My best friend wrote this to me. She's a nut." The lady said, "I used to love getting letters! Just like in school!"

Here are some other excerpts from past correspondence:

My mother can drink Diet Coke like a camel. Not that camels drink Coke, but maybe they would if they knew about it. Sort of like manatees getting bellyaches off of fresh water (which they love like crack cocaine), but then again, it's probably way more amusing for a manatee to have tummy trouble than a camel because camels can't blow bubbles in the water...

I've completely forgotten what I was going to say because Jaye was shouting something about Japanese communal bathing. My world is a maze of mirrors. Or naked Japanese. Dunno...

Jaye tells me I have to stop writing this letter now or else my envelope will be too heavy for a simple first-class stamp. In response to her rational assertion, I boo'ed her loudly and then sold her to the Inuits for valuable walrus hides. Good trade! Good trade!...

There's a lot of really really bad literature out there and most of it is science fiction, and I do believe the worst of it is sitting here on the floor at my feet. If that's all it takes to get published, I should stop trying so hard. Here's my idea for a story:

A giant hairball attacks an underwater city that somehow manages to catch on fire, and all the little telepathic fish-aliens (no, more like oyster-aliens...) write a really long pretentious boring song about it using a pidgin language that sounds like a cat having a seizure...

S. called yesterday. You know he works at a bread factory, right? And apparently one of the worst managed bread factories in Australia. For as long as I've known him, that place has been run by a bunch of chimpanzees. He gets fed up every other night because usually he's the one who has to go straighten people out. Anyway, something amusing -- there are these really large (and I do mean large) plush promotional display items shaped like enormous crumpets wearing hats. Yes, I know. Giant crumpets. Only in former British territories, right? And its name is -- wait for it -- Crumpy.

So S. and a few of his other malcontented co-workers decided to filch a few giant Crumpies for themselves because the creatures were simply too bizarre to leave alone. The giant Crumpy that S. took home has to live in a bedroom because his mother's dog rightfully distrusts Crumpy and barks at him like he's trying to steal the family silver service.

I would bark at him too -- he has his tongue hanging out and these huge staring eyes. Very disreputable. The darn thing fills a doorway, it's that big. S. had made a joke about leaving Crumpy in the middle of a roundabout, but I thought people might veer off the road as if they'd seen an errant cow. Crumpy looming out of the darkness = accidents. Giant crumpets. Wearing hats...

It's 7 pm. Jaye is upstairs listening to her Czech language CDs very diligently. I nod in appreciation as she recites her new phrases and then I tell her what she really needs to learn is "You are a fudgey man-beast" not "Where's is Wenceslaus Square?" She came downstairs to tell me that she doesn't want to go to Wenceslaus Square, but the CD insists...

Let's face it -- most men would like us to trip and fall and drop a breast right in an eye socket...

So, did you ever get around to asking your brother if he bought his house with a pink toilet? [Barbie's got to do her business too, you know...]

I'll have to post a picture of evil Crumpy.

You'll Still Tell Me I'm Pretty, Right?

2008-09-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

My hair is falling out. Again. Third time since I was 19. I never know why.

I'm going to beat it to the punch once more. I'm making an appt to see my stylist, have him cut it as close as he can without him having a panic attack.

I don't care if I walk out with a shaved head. I've done it before. I can do it again. I can't fight. I'm hardening.

I'm so angry.

I'm so tired and so angry.

I promise if I get it shaved (I doubt Magic Bobby will allow such a thing) I'll take a picture and share my misery with you all, my lovely friends.

Well, At Least I Didn't Curse or Take My Clothes Off

2008-09-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

For some reason I was dreaming last night about my baptism.

Jaye and I were 4 years old. Mom was having us baptized at First Presbyterian in Raleigh, the church we attended with her and our grandfather (he was custodian).

The services were televised, hence our baptism was too. My mother had already made a mental list of "the things [she] could stand" and she told me later that she had decided she take pretty much anything from two rambunctious twins if we didn't "curse or take your clothes off".

Cursing stripping four year olds. We sound like pirates.

Nice.

We didn't do either of those things, but we did manage, at one point, to sit on the communion bench on the stage and fall over backward with our legs in the air and our ruffly underpants exposed to the congregation. A friend of my mother's said she could feel the pews shaking with sedate formal Presbyterians trying desperately not to crack up.

Hey. At least I wasn't televised cursing or naked. Or both.

Attack Hummingbirds

2008-09-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

Today, we got to UNC for our rheumatology appointment. It was nothing short of a miracle really - both of us had gotten really sick the night before, and while I was doing better today, Jennifer really wasn't. I tried to coach her through the worst of it. She just gets so violently nauseated, sometimes for no apparent reason, and a long car ride makes it worse. She wound up taking half a pill of the the stuff that's supposed to not only knock out nausea, but also YOU. It didn't get to her this time, thankfully.

We wound up on the scales - I was 115, Jenny was 118. (You have no idea how relieved I am). The nurse commented on how close our vital signs were - she even pointed to the computer screen where our stats paralleled.

The doctor was a nice man. I think most doctors may be impatient because they're smarter than most people and want to ferret out the trouble as soon as possible without being bombarded by what they consider extraneous information. I have no idea where this is going. He wanted the rest of our test results from our GP and the hospital stays, plus a few tests he wants particularly. Referral to the GI unit. Next on the list...

I feel panic now, dread, when I see doctors, even on tv. I recoil. This is something I had to battle off of me because I knew it had no place in the scheme of getting well. I don't want to be a hostage any longer than I have to, and yet I'm really worn out.

The 3 guys manning the front desk were very amusing. Started calling us the Double Mint twins. Funny. Years ago, we were almost in commercials for that very thing.

Guy One complimented my black cabbie hat (worn to keep the rain off) and I said thank you, it's been very utilitarian. "Great word!" he said. I laughed.

Guy Two said that he had twin sisters who frequently ganged up on him. I laughed again. Twins can behave like velociraptors against singletons.

Guy Three- Jenny noticed he had a manicure - he looked like Jamie Kennedy and kept teasing the nurses, especially after I saw a mouse - a MOUSE - go streaking across the floor and they screamed. One poor nurse, I thought she was going to have a coronary. The mouse practically ran up her leg. I don't blame her. Darn thing was fat as a hamster. This lead to a desk-wide discussion about mice and hamsters and the open Eurasia prairies where such wild critters run/undulate/dash/stuff their cheeks with various objects.

It rained all day. Cool, overcast, grey. I love it. "The Scottish would call this a mizzle," I said to Dad. "Mist and drizzle."

"Well, the Scottish would need more than one phrase for the all the types of drizzle they get," he said.

On the way home, we turned around on a road called "Lester's Way". "Who is that Lester?" you may ask. I don't know, but he sure does have a way about him. BAH, I couldn't restrain myself. Jenny saw "Big Perms Hair Salon" too. If I need a 'fro, I know what establishment to haunt.

The back tires on the Toyota were low, so we stopped at Dad's house. If it gives you any clue about how sick we've been, neither of us had been to my dad's house in 4 or 5 years. We looked at the empty pasture expecting to see the horses. When we pulled in and as soon as I walked into the patio, I saw a black and white cat. "Oh my goodness...." I reached out a hand, spoke softly, lured him over. "Come here, big boy... come here..." It was Goober. At the very least, he's 18 years old. He's been really solid and funny and friendly all his life, and when he gave himself a moment to focus his eyes, he knew me and came right over, offered me his head to scratch. I was so touched. I rubbed him, trying not to cry. He's like the very last of the very last links to our past. Jenny and I have lost everything else.

We met Dad's pink tabby, Tommy. While Dad re-inflated the tires, Tommy followed me and Jenny from room to room, rubbing against our legs and chirping. He popped a few impressive kitty wheelies when I finally relented and scratched his silly head. Apparently I opened a gate there because he followed us very enthusiastically, entreating pats and kind words. Of course I had to rub him. New room, rub Tommy. New room, rub Tommy, shampoo, rinse, repeat.

I also got to witness the combative hummingbirds. There are feeders all over the yard, but the one closest to the house is staked out by a small and very belligerent hummingbird that would rather burn up all of his BTUs chasing the other hummingbirds away than share. It was hysterical.

Here, Have a Taco

2008-09-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

I called my buddy Taco to see how he and his brood were.

Me: "Hey, Taco! The Feds built a fence around your house yet?!" (He's part Spanish)

T: "Ahahaha, that's AWESOME..."

It was one big fit of hysteria, as usual. He and I make each other laugh like lunatics, esp my "Hey, dude, I saw a guy on Jeopardy wearing my Cover Girl glasses" and his "I've lost 30 pounds. Probably because of sardines. Better than Olestra..." stories.

Here's Taco after a really long job, running on 3 hours of sleep and 3 rum and Cokes: "Ah, soon all your troubles will be over, Megan. The new Hadron Collider will be online, and you KNOW we're going to be sucked into a black hole." [patient voice] "Sometimes. We don't NEED to know how we're gonna die."

Try Riding COACH, Sean, Seriously

2008-09-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

I read something about a girl in the paper. She was a foster care kid who'd aged out of the system. She's just 19 and has had some hard hard knocks. I found myself reading about her, and I almost cried. She's trying so hard to be strong and do the right thing, working two jobs, trying to get into college, but life can be so hard, especially for a 19 year old. I was so sorry for her and so proud of her for being able to say "I'm scared and lonely" while still pushing forward, I wanted to rescue her. Local readers gave her $1000 to buy her a little 1992 Tercel so she could get to her jobs, but nobody ever taught her how to take care of a car, and she forgot to change the oil, and the car is having problems.

I had to put the paper away from me because I couldn't control how badly I wanted to help. I have no money. But if I did, I would find her and help her get a reliable car and then show her myself how to take care of it. Girl to girl. I wasn't a mechanic for nothing.

The kindness of strangers towards her touched me profoundly. It's been the very thing that's been the difference between drowning and remaining afloat for us too.

And to see Sean Combs bitching about having to ride first class because gas prices make private jets too expensive?? You don't want to know what I was thinking at that moment. Jerk.

I hate it that I can't rescue everyone who needs it, and that I can't slap people who have no sense of suffering or hardship. I hate not having the means to enact the changes I so badly want.

Fambly Theater: Problem Solverating

2008-08-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

Dad, Jaye and I attacked the broken exercise bike. It got so silly and complicated that ultimately Dad was lying on the floor, I was pulling up on the handle bars and Jaye was wedging phone books under the machine.

J: [sarcastically] How many NFs does it take to fix an exercise bike!?
Dad: What we need here... is another phone book.
J: [retrieving it from another room] Here you go, Dad.
Dad: I was kidding.
J: Heeey!
Me: Ahee hee hee!!
Dad: Ahee hee hee!!
J: I hate you.

J was proud of me - Dad asked if I had any spring ring pliers in my toolbox. I said no, but I checked anyway. Fortunately for me, Irish left a pair behind (among other tools that I'm calling Eterna-Dibs on - mwauahaha!) after he worked on my car.

J: "Look at you! You know what spring ring pliers are!"
M: [chest puffery] "Why yes I do!"

Fambly Theater: Dad and Me Drive to the Doctor

2008-08-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Me: The left rear window is rolled down...
Dad: ah...
Me: I'll get it. [not bothering to unbuckle, I lean between the front seats] I'm almost.... [leaning and reaching] ackkkkk! [growling ferally] RRRR!!! Stupid ... window...

After a moment, I prevailed but with no little effort.

Me: [wiggling to no avail] Uh... ahee hee...
Dad: Okay over there?
Me: [giggling so hard I'm snorting] I'm... ahee hee, I'm stuck! [Randy from the Christmas Story voice] Daddy, I can't get uuuup!
Dad: [laughing because I'm stuck and snorting] Ahee hee hee hee!!
Me: Ahee hee hee! Hee *snort* heeeh ehehehe!!
Dad: Ahee hee heeh heeehehe!! You can do it!
Me: heeheheheheh.... ugh!! [gradually struggling myself loose] aacccckkk!!!

Me and Dad for several minutes after I regained my seat: "Ahheee heheheh hehehehe hehee!!"

Fambly Theater: English Lesson

2008-08-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

Mom: [something highly facetious directed at me]
Me: [drawing up] "ExCUSE me, Madam! I sense a highly facetious tone!
Mom: [ahee!]
Me: And do you know what root word supports facetious?!
Mom: [aheehehehe!]
Me: [very haughtily] FECES, madam!
Mom: [bursting out laughing]
Me: [poker face] And I do NOT appreciate you talking shit to me!
Mom: [dissolving]
J: [from the kitchen] And to think, Ma, that you were worried she'd never read....

Medicaid

2008-08-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

*Our Medicaid claims went through. I was astonished and deeply relieved, especially to see that my claim was open to extension through the end of the year. This is such a massive load off of my family. I just can't believe it.

*Mom picked up a sleepy Peaches off the porch and rubbed her. Peaches will demand rubbies until your hands fall off, so after about 10 minutes of patting her and scrubbing her fat little head, Mom gave up and put her back down. Peaches was so jazzed that she marched across the porch two times and then went into the yard and attacked a shrubbery.

Mom: [wryly] "I don't think she handles her feelings very well."

Megan the Klutz

2008-08-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

Fandragon and Captain Slack dropped by last night bringing many shiny objects with them.

First of all, dude. A box set of Duran Duran singles/remixes from 81 -85. I'm officially flipping out. Some cover/insert pictures stuffed in there too. John Taylor, you pretty. Pretty. Man.

Second, another little old 50's Agfa for Jaye. This time an Isolette II, complete with a funky old awesome light meter that looks like a prop from Flash Gordon (get it? Flash Gordon...? Ah me, delicious pun alert!)

Thirdly, a teenage romantic comedy paperback that has haunted me since 1986. "Megan the Klutz". I stood up out of my chair shouting, waving the book around in front of me. I remember when this thing came out. I was, man, 9 years old?? It made all these book lists, so I was quite aware of it, especially since the kids in my class immediately latched on to the title. *tired sigh*

You guys are great!

Jaye and I watched the men's swim team go to town in a freestyle relay last night. We were cheering like mad for Cullen. Not only is he making history as, what, the second African-American to make a dent in Olympic swimming, but he's also from NC. And a really sweet genuine guy. His mama raised him right.

And who doesn't like looking at a swimmer's body?

Magic Backdoor: Hummingbird and Star

2008-07-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

Two occurrences at our Magic Backdoor:

Jaye was staring out at the yard and a large silver and black hummingbird hovered right before her, face to face. He looked her over calmly and hovered a bit, then cruised in a leisurely manner across the yard into the trees. She said he looked just like a fairy.

Hours later, as I was admiring the bright spray of cosmic lights overhead, I saw a shooting star. I didn't know what to wish for. I went to bed still not having made a wish, but my unconscious sleeping mind told me what it wanted. It said it wished for "hope finally to split open wide into the realm of the real..."

I'll take it. Hope as a door to nowhere is exhausting.

Yukon Discovery Day

2008-07-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

One of my doctor's appointments falls on Yukon Discovery Day.

Coincidence?!

I think NOT!

According to Wikipedia: "In Yukon, Discovery Day is a public holiday on the third Monday in August commemorating the anniversary of the discovery of gold in 1896, which started the Klondike Gold Rush."

"Gold"?

Oh. I think we all know better.

It was the day set aside by the Canadian Overlords as the day they discovered all those carbon cubic-crystal meatbags (read: US!) running around below the border.

Gold, as everyone knows, is a transitional (read: assimilative) metal and is demarcated by the letters "Au" on the periodic table. This is a many fold code word.

*A is the first letter in the English alphabet. That indicates top priority. Grade A!
*U is the twenty first letter in the English alphabet and as everyone knows, "21" is the Canadians' favorite import show!
*Short for "hey, you!" - why would they bother to learn our names when they're just going to assimilate us anyway?

Slipper of Justice

2008-07-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday:

My mother likes to watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune when she comes home from work.

Me: (passing through) "Josh odd wafer!"

Jaye: (pityingly look) "Just add water."

Me: "So close."

Jaye: "You're ridiculous."

Many days ago:

Jaye steals my diary and writes really silly things in it, or draws what she calls "pressed roadkill" like bears and monkeys. I wrote an entry for her to find....

"Dearest Dearest Diary - After one to many "funnies", I quirted Jaye with a slipper and threw her in a canal. At least I thought it was a canal. A bunch of hamsters came out. The End (of JAYE...)"

She laughed and laughed. Oh the laughter of the fools who don't respect the mighty slipper of justice.

Many many more days ago:

Passed out cats all over the porch.

Jaye: "I hate it when people throw their dead cats on our deck. There's got to be four of them, maybe more."

Me: "It's especially disgusting when those same dead cats are grooming themselves. I mean, just give up already, right? Your butt's not getting any cleaner! Why? Because you're dead!"

J: "Too true, sister."

Next day:

J: "Who cleaned up all those cats?"

Me: (thoughtfully eating a fig newton) "It was golden eagles."

J: "Well, of course it was."

Art Tour with Rio

2008-07-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

These can be found at the NC Museum of Art. I make a beeline for them because I could stare at them all day.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1745

Mesmerizing. This one has been my absolute favorite since I was a little girl. Can't say why, except that I was drawn in by the primal combat, and the dog's eyes like taxidermy glass.

Adolphe William Bouguereau
French, about 1880

Looks familiar.

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Mercury About to Behead Argus

When I was a kid, I thought he was stunning and kinda bad in a funny way, and wanted to laugh even though you knew he was about to kill. I kept staring at him, wishing in a strange way that he was real, that he was mine. I was a weird kid.

Stupid Commercials

2008-07-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Notice how polarized things have gotten lately?

I was sitting with Jaye on the couch yesterday. Commercials annoy me anyway, but I was in a particularly bad mood, so I started grousing:

[after flag-waving Ford ad]

Me: Hi! I'm Tobey Keith! I'm so American I eat cold-rolled steel and poop hamburgers! Tomorrow, I'm gonna drive my Ford straight up Mount Rushmore, plant a flag on Washington's right nostril (the left is fulla commie Scientologists!) and sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic!

[irritating holier-than-thou hippie ad]

Me: Drive out the Republicans! They eat baby seals, wear leather shoes and don't find John Mayer compelling. AT ALL! Bastards! Shame on you!

Jaye encourages me by laughing. See! It's her fault!

Nature is Yucky!

2008-07-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Ok.

I need some 'good girl' points. Like right now.

This morning, when I came downstairs, I found 7 or 8 giant black tree ants in the kitchen. FYI, me + bugs = $@#!&^!! I'm truly terrified of them. My old house used to be infested with just about everything you can think of, so I'm pretty much aversion trained to hate them.

Anyway.

I employed the method I use when dealing with heights - don't look down and keep moving. Don't look at the bugs, Megan. You can do it! You can do it! Don't look, don't look, don't look... Thoughts of Charlton Heston in The Naked Jungle is completely unhelpful, brain! Stop that! I mean it!

I trapped the strays under paper cups and hauled the trash outside (tree ants don't even LIKE trash... I think they just wound up there by accident, like they did when they stumbled into the house... there must be some overhanging tree branch or something...). I accomplished all of this with a lot of praying and swearing under my breath. I went into the washroom with a flashlight and looked everywhere, including behind the machines to see if I could find the point of entry. I couldn't. Very puzzling.

I don't care if I sound like a big baby. Giant bugs scare me and I tried to be brave! Also, when I was tossing the trash out, I had to kick the back door open with my foot and what was DEAD and totally GROSS right next to the handle?! A SLUG. I'm not kidding! What IS this?! A bug safari!? (Oh excuuuuse me... nudibranch. NUDIBRANCH SAFARI....) I half expected Marlin Perkins to jump out from the bushes wrestling a humongous palmetto bug.

The Megan is so done with this. DONE WITH YOU, NATURE!! YOU HEAR ME?!

Awesomely Pompous Nature

2008-07-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

There is a dove, promenading up and down the ridge-line of our shed. It's a fine promenade, I must say. Lots of kooky head-cranking and little birdie feet swinging crisp and high.

A dove really knows how to promenade. Kudos to you, sir. Kudos. To you.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

2008-07-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

In response to national "spirituality" poll's results, my sister asked me a few days ago if I believed that the Bible was divine or words straight from God. I said yes and no. Yes, I believe the Bible is a divinely inspired book, and I believe it IS from Adonai (to differentiate from Allah or Ganesh etc...), but I think things such as the creation story are more allegorical than literal.

For instance, I believe God *could* create the universe in 7 days, but do I believe that within the rigid strictures of literalism? No. I don't. God doesn't need or use "time". He's omnipresent and omniscient. Time is a man-made construct. God made us, that's what I believe, and who cares about the time frame?

In Genesis, it says that God spoke the world into being. Scientists are discovering that the smallest particles of smallest particles are actually sound waves of sorts. There's no way an ancient could have known that unless they were a) being fanciful or b) God told them.

The Dead Sea Scrolls will be here in Raleigh until after Christmas. I want to go see them (when the weather cools off) because I've already read the transcribed text and found myself mystified and intrigued by it.

Update

2008-07-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

My feet are healing, though I still need to get back to the doctor to figure out what's going on.

Upshot: I weighed in at 110 lbs. I haven't weighed that much since I was a teenager. I thought it was an impossibility, after being underweight for so long. I actually look like a human being again. Can't allow myself to think on it too much or I start to panic.

My Grandfather

2008-07-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

I was just a kid then. Riding in a Lincoln Towncar for hours. I'd never ridden in anything so large. It had leather seats, tinted windows and an AC that could keep meat fresh. I sat in the backseat next to my sister in our Sunday clothes. I had a little blank book in my lap - the cloth cover was strawberries. I loved that thing. My first blank book. I was composing a magnificent story about a magnificent horse. Occasionally, I looked out the window to see how much the landscape had changed. The coastal plain looked nothing like the midland piedmont where I grew up. Flat. Sandy. Tons of evergreens.

Our driver stopped the car and we got a bite to eat. He was a very pleasant man. Not much further, he said. We're almost there.

When we arrived at the swamp cemetery, we stepped out into broiling damp heat. The sun was high overhead - it was July. He had to die in July. I stared around at the trees, swagged with Spanish moss and wisteria vines. It looked lonely, tired. I was small, but I sensed that time stood still here.

We buried my grandfather next to the grandmother I'd never met. This was her territory, the swamplands of Lake Waccamaw. I'd seen pictures of the big white plantation house where she grew up. Many years later, I'd run through the big white house, emptied out, stand in the room where she had had her bridal picture taken in front of the fireplace.

Last night, I was standing at the sink washing my hands, trying to shake off this terribly sad feeling. I suddenly realized that I was grieving for my grandfather. I missed him. I have none of his things. They were all given away, and I didn't even know it until it was too late. My sister, though, she found something of his that hadn't been taken.

A sterling silver charm with his florid initials. FGT. Fred Gray Turner. Jenny put the charm on her charm bracelet so it wouldn't ever get lost.

When he died, my stability died too. Five years of sanity that never returned. We moved in with him when I was just 3. Mom and Dad had split. I was no longer living in a trailer in a crime-infested armpit trailer park.

I tell him all the time how much we need him. Mom's sick, I said. Look at her. Look at us... what are we going to do...

I think he's proud of me and Jenny. In fact, I know it. Deep down. I think he sees us and is upset at how hard things have been. Jenny said sadly last night, "We still couldn't have him back, Megan. He would be dead by now anyway. He'd be... 103 years old..."

Yeah. That too.

He was pre-med at UNC and a very handsome man. He and his brothers. He was quiet usually. An ISTJ. Hard worker.

A cousin of mine recently re-connected with us, told us that when our granddad and her granddad (his brother Maurice) were young they had built a car.

"How did it go?" I asked.

"They returned on foot," she said. That made me laugh. My grandfather was a resourceful man. His father was a hard-bitten railway postal clerk who'd survived multiple train wrecks, including one that made history as the worst in North America - the New Market train wreck of 1904. My great grandmother would have been pregnant with Grandpa then. He was the eldest child.

I Don't Understand

2008-06-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to the doctor tomorrow (I would have gone today, but I've been so sick that I've barely moved from the couch). Something is going wrong with my feet. And on the left one, I have a wound that hasn't healed (tried repeatedly) in a month. I have never not had a wound heal. I don't know what this means.

I've been crying off and on since last night because I can't take it anymore. The constant litany of problems. Things going wrong with my body when my body and I try so hard to be proactive. I can't get on top of the other problems because we're being undercut by these ambush attacks.

I have no words. For this kind of frustration. None. Nothing that shows how angry and demoralized and AFRAID I am, as I have been for months.

The Rescue Twins

2008-06-16T18:13:00.000-07:00

There was a weevil-beetle creature on my kitchen counter. He managed to get himself flipped onto his back, little legs helplessly treading air.

I couldn't just leave him like that. It was so sad looking. A piece of paper towel - grab on, little dude. No. He tucked his legs up so tight (don't eat me!).

I managed to flip him over. He stayed tucked up. Gradually, one little leg. Two little legs. More legs. Antennae.

I left. Came back after a phone call.

WBC was gone.

Glancing around the counter, I found him nowhere. J took one look at me, said, "The weevil creature?"

"Yeah. Where'd he go? I rolled him over ea..."

J started laughing. "I had to save him too!"

Apparently after I left, he managed to get his silly round self to the edge of the sink and fell in. He was on his back AGAIN and this time, in a puddle of water. J rescued him on a bit of cardboard and took him outside.

"Put him in the grass," i said. 'So the cats don't step on him."

"Come on, little fella!" J said brightly. "We're goin' to the yard, even though you'll probably eat some farmer's crop or something." She flicked him over the rail. "You're free!"

Seconds later. J looking down. "Uh."

"What?"

"He's on the bricks. He's not moving."

"We've stunned him."

"I think he wants us to stop helping him now."

More Dork Awards

2008-06-15T19:02:00.000-07:00

*Yesterday, when my father was visiting, we got on the subject of the Founding Fathers, the Tunguska event and left-handed amino acids. Who DOES that?!

*Yesterday, someone asked, "Who was the Congressional Congress no-show?" I thoughtlessly blurted, "Rhode Island". Was I correct? Unfortunately.

*Today, my mother was watching some Brit mystery. J and I were sitting there on the couch eating dinner. I looked at her and whispered, "Hey. That guy over there. He was the Dauphin in 'Henry V', wasn't he?"

"Yes," she said. "I think you're right. And that other guy over there - he was, what was his name.... Fluellen's friend..."

"Gower."

"Yes! That's the one. Couldn't miss that nose."

Mind you, we haven't watched 'Henry V' in probably 10 years.

Reach Out and Torch Someone

2008-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

In a supreme act of cruelty (urged on by my twin), I called Stomper AND Irish and left a Shakespearean recitation on their phones of that hideous inane Black Eyed Peas song, "My Humps".

To my credit, I could only get through the refrain once without buckling from intense self-loathing.

Welcome to Indonesia

2008-06-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

*My friends are the very pith of generosity. Because of you (and you know who you are), I was able to buy an overnight bag. I didn't have one. I was toting my clothes around in a pillow case. If that sounds pitiful, it's because it is.

*Also, because of friends, when the plumber came by (our Magic Plumber, M...) and replaced some pipe under the house that was leaking, we were able to give Mom some money to help offset the cost. I'd noticed that our pump had gone from cycling every 40 minutes to every 20. Then 18. Then 13. Then finally 8. Yeah. That's a leak, people. Somewhere. M found it and fixed it with his usual awesomeness. (No, you can't have him. He's ours! Back off! *hissing*) We made sure to put a Coke and a bottle of water in the freezer for him because it was BROILING outside. I thought I was going to melt just from walking the Coke out to him in his van. Bleh. Welcome to Indonesia. (And our aging heat pump is next. We're spoon-feeding it recharges until we can afford the new coil it needs - $1500... like we have that kind of money lying around.)

Shorty was just telling J last night how the refrigerator in her apartment has played Lazarus, dying and coming to four times, before going the way of the dodo for real this week. She said all the nice food she had - quality fruit and vegetables she'd picked out for her girls to eat - spoiled. All of it. "I can't replace it," she said. "I don't have the money." I'd buy you big huge giant piles of fruit, Shorty. Just wait til I win the lottery!

*I'm on autopilot. J says it's kind of disconcerting. She says there's me being really angry/sad and then there's the robotic version which she says is the last rung on the ladder before falling off. "Deflated silent Rio is very forlorn and sad to look at."

Do you ever entirely lose the capacity to speak? I do. My feelings say "enough" and disappear. I can stay that way for days depending on how mangled I am. I stop speaking and all connection to my person is broken. I just float through the day, the night, observing without comment, without feeling anything, without me. Like a cool wholly objective stranger staring in at myself.

*Watching C-SPAN has given me a facial tic. Partisan politics rule the House and the Senate. Bush will never see impeachment. He's reeling out his final days in office and then the fall-out from the Congressional/Repres. filibustering contest will become someone else's problem. The poor clerk was forced to read the entirety of Kucinich's impeachment proposal which had taken HIM over five hours to read himself. It's great to see our political system being used this way - like an immune system attacking it's host. Ugh.

*Speaking to someone on the phone, finding an address. The woman says, "Falstaff Road..." and I blurt, "Oh! As in Shakespeare?" and she said, "Is it?" and I said, "Henry the Fifth?" and she started laughing, "I had no idea! I've learned something new!"

I think this officially qualifies me for some sort of Dork Award. *sigh*

*Left a note for Mom this AM. "Dearest madam - We need pasta sauce, por favore. De nada, Rio. ... PS. 'de nada' is Spanish for 'no nadas.' ..." She came home on break to inform me that if I thought I was going to control and confuse her with foreign language phrases, I was dead wrong and that she was going outside to set my note on fire with the power of the mighty sun. Do your worst, woman! I can take it!

Canada Broke Our Weather

2008-06-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

I'm lodging a complaint - Canada broke our weather and made it too hot so we'd be forced up North where the Supreme Clones can trap us and harvest our organs!!!

My Canadian friends don't even have the shame to deny it.

Stanley Cup 2008 - Go, Red Wings!

2008-06-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

I've been honored with a recent Canes cup win, and now, a Wings win. I have the best two teams ever. J and I felt like garbage all day, but we still cheered and clapped. Big fans of Nick Lidstrom. (picture - Yahoo Sports)

Bills at Rex

2008-06-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

Rex called today and said that they've pardoned all our debts with the hospital.

I have no words for how thankful and relieved I am. All I could say over and over was "Thank you... thank you..."

Our debts have become less crushing by $40K+.

I would weep but I'm too stunned and tired. Who do I send the thank you letter to?

George

2008-06-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

George was pretty.

My kind of pretty. The way I'd want a George to look.

Dark and feral and deplorably handsome in that reeling cock-eyed manner that translated into charm rather than puzzlement. He was everything and minus a few pieces, all at once, clashing harmony in his habits that had no ritual or reason. Quite beyond the mortal, flesh and blood, now treading the line, now floating defiantly above it.

Through the crowd of bodies in the hall, George was coming my way. Not for me. By me. Walking, tracking between eddies of arms and bags and hello-goodbye.

Some lack of definition, as I passed, struck my boundary-seeking mind, forced my head to turn, meet his dark eyes coruscating like distant fires throwing up smoke and heat.

He was used to this. These stares. This or that gaze following his movements. Not me. Was I blushing yet.

Definitions, George. That's what I'm after...

Winning but wanting to be won.
Immovable, but uncertain.
Besotted with frustration.
Amorphous, opinionated, receding man.

Reality had earned only scant visitation in the years since George divorced it. Their meetings were chill and brief during these moments of materialization. The Terran world left cursory signs... the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Vague awareness of not-shaving, his hand stroking his jaw with disapproval. Food. Sometimes, food.

Touches of the human. The rest - inhuman. Disturbingly. Eerie frightening ease of motion, as if gravity and awkwardness didn't exist (he'd divorced them too). His clothes fawned on him, slid against his body, draped over him as did all of his exes who hated him and yet clung deliriously. Everything was an inevitable seduction waiting patiently to occur, waiting to get soaked in the slippery charming humor falling like black rain from a stormy mind that meant no harm.

You have a guileless smile, George.... for a wolf.

On any given day he was picking and choosing which physical laws he wished to obey, picking and choosing, how..., like a Titan... I don't know...

There it was.

The silent look of challenge.

"Defuse me... no, don't... yes... come closer, sweetheart, we're not strangers... intentions, what are those... show me yours and I'll show you mine..."

I won't be a part of your madness, George. I swear to al...

"I'm not uncivilized..."

You only rise to the smell of blood in the water, George. You'll never master yourself. There are simply too many, too many possibilities...

I saw it.

He would helplessly confess to me. In that part of time that still held sway over him. I would await the sign only I could read, announcing where his weakness lay. The Achilles heel in his features, betraying him.

Small agonizing deaths would bring him on, straight into me, his doom. Nemesis. Freight train.

In a boiling flash he caught my understanding. Momentary pale flame of alarm, swallowed by high color. Leggy tottering shyness knee-capped by a carnivore's certain and gory smile.

"Fight me for the right to your disbelief, angel. We'll go down swinging... "

You're not afraid... are you, George...

Our stare was defeated by passage; he glanced back over his shoulder: I was already looking.

His sudden laugh struck like a knife turning in on its owner's hand.

"Pick you up at 8," he said, quietly.

The fight of our lives was on.

We were in love.

Time in a Box

2008-06-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

I have a big box in the bottom of my closet. It's filled to overflowing with over 12 years worth of diaries, journals, related things.

I was talking with my friend Elfie who says, while being quite the romantic at heart, she doesn't hang emphasis on objects, material things. I know that the object doesn't make or unmake one's experiences or reality, but the very idea of throwing out some of this stuff in my Big Box is actually marring to my psyche. I have a hundred little things that keep the memory of the no-longer-present alive in my mind. Sometimes I have to force myself to throw something away or Jaye will physically intervene and do it herself when I can't let go. And I frequently can't let go. It's as if any shred of the event or person escaping me is too horrible to accept, as hostile as I am to Time.

It's not just documentation in words, as with the diaries. It's the butterfly wings a friend found and gave to me one Spring day when I was 17; it's the notes passed between me and my best friend in a boring class where he always had a seat next to me; it's the baby shower invite from Shorty; it's the fortune cookie slip spouting happy nonsense; it's my first passport stamp; it's the scribbled handwritten "call me and more" note/phone number of a certain guy I fell hard for, became entangled with, because he changed me forever, regardless of what he was.

It's things like this, painful or not, that I must have, safe from the robbery of Time or Forgetfulness. Because you can't go back...

Grocery List

2008-05-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

A list made out for the store by Jaye:

*corn pasta
*2 bags of basmati
*rice crackers
*veggie broth

I took it, drew a little piece of rice with hillbilly teeth waving his arms and wearing a buckwheat hat next to "rice crackers" (get it?! I slay me...), and added "a baby brother".

J retrieved the list, read it, snorted and said sternly to Mother, "And you better not come back without the baby brother!"

Mom: "Does it have to come from the store?"

Me: "No. Just wherever."

Mom: "You do realize that 'baby' brother could mean anyone from one year old to one year younger than you."

Jaye: "Yes. Preferably a 30 year old hot Russian baby brother who can't speak any English."

Eight Belles

2008-05-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

As most everyone knows by now, I've loved horses all my life. I still brutally miss Bigfoot and he's been dead many years. When I was a kid, I watched just about every horse race there was and only ONCE did I see a horse have to be euthanized on the track. I'm speaking about races within my awareness, not something like Ruffian which occurred in 1975 before I was born.

I watched the Preakness last year, after having missed the Derby, and I was awarded the dubious honor of watching Barbaro destroy his leg. The second I saw it, the way his leg was moving, I knew he'd broken it and brokenly it badly. It made me sick to my stomach because I knew what was going to happen next. As strong as they are, a horse needs four legs. When they put him down some time later from laminitis, I wasn't surprised.

I decided not to watch the Derby this year. I felt a really bad vibe, told myself it was a warning. Glad I heeded my instinct. Eight Belles shattered TWO legs. I was mortified. I would have avoided the tragedy entirely had I not been ambushed with re-runs on the news. Watching her flop around like that, wanting to get up but not being able to - I burst into tears immediately. Jaye sat next to me, patting my leg. "It's okay. She didn't suffer long... don't cry..." I was mangled for days.

I have a HUGE problem with Thoroughbred breeders. If you look back to horses, even just, I don't know, 20 years back, they don't look like the horses on the track now. The horses 20 years ago had more heft and substance. Eight Belles - I don't care what the racing industry said about her size or whatever - looked weedy and brittle. She had no business being run that hard. She was an accident waiting to happen. The horses are bred for "precocious speed", meaning showing signs of speed really early. The development period of the old days seems to have been chucked.

So, with some trepidation, I watched the Preakness yesterday. Big Brown had a very reassuringly deep chest and thick legs. He has an interesting motion too - like his head is just above his legs when he's running. He pulls in instead of running on his belly. It was great to watch him cruise under the wire without a speck of dirt on him.

But overall. I'm just disgusted. These animals want to run, they have the drive to run, and the way they've been bred has made them brittle as matchsticks. The "late bloomers", who can run longer but not as fast, aren't worth the same dinero. The bottom dollar is clearly the motivator. Horse racing is a gambler's field. High risk, lots of money flying around. But it shouldn't be at the risk of the animals. You want a risky thrill? Learn to play poker or something. Find a way to just hurt YOURSELF.

I turned to Jaye, blurted, "You never see a Quarter horse or an Arabian break a leg."

It's true. Our Bigfoot, a QH/Morgan cross, was 16 h, well over half a ton, built like a Sherman tank but could pass a car on the highway. Speed AND endurance. It can happen. Torque and hp can be balanced. And if you're going to run them so young, do it mindfully. My step-mother's Thoroughbred/Arabian, Lady, had been pushed into jumping too early at age 3 by a jerk who owned her before my step-mother did. When she bought Lady, it was because the guy said Lady was no good and lame and glue-factory material blah blah blah, and my step-mother knew he was the one who'd lamed the horse. Lady recovered, and had a very long life, but even into her teens, Lady would occasionally favor her front legs because they hurt. That creep had permanently damaged her.

I swear I just don't understand people sometimes.

3 AM

2008-05-14T14:58:00.000-07:00

Went to bed late. Awoke abruptly some time after 3 AM. Four-alarm nausea, out of no where. J grabbed the anti-spasmodic and a bottle of water and gave it to me because I was shaking so hard I couldn't move. After about 20 minutes, the pill kicked in and I slowly stopped. Put my two pillows on my lap and fell asleep bent forward. I was glad the medication knocked me out.

I have no idea what's going on.

Walking Off in a Huff: A Tutorial

2008-05-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

In honor of Fandragon who likes to do things properly.
*************************

Modules:

A. Modes of Walking
B. Descriptions Used to Alleviate the Gross Ignorance of Outsiders Who Practice Unfortunately Sloppy Walking Methods
C. The Art of Walking Off in a Huff

*******************

A. Modes: (from slowest to fastest; please note that there is no running. Ever.)

1. Ambling
2. Strolling
3. Gadding About
4. Promenading
5. Parading
6. Striding *

[* -- just above "striding" is "speed walking" which is silly and shall be limited to the sorts of shameless people who wear tube socks to their knees, i.e. the weekend athletes at Fort Heart Monitor. The Ministry of Fort Super Twins strictly prohibits any exercise regimen that requires rapid and undignified ambulation, except for controlled graceful striding (see chart) on one's treadmill.]

1. Ambling:

This gait does not include dazed wandering, loitering, moseying or falling down in shrubberies. [PROHIBITED: "Moseying" has been banned for its lack of posture and association with cow manure.]

Ambling is a slow loose stroll, one that the Ministry has concretely defined as "spontaneous".

May be solo, in groups, or with pets who have been trained to properly amble along with you. [PROHIBITED: Undignified displays of you attempting to amble while your dog flagrantly strides.]

Everyone is to associate "ambling" with our older artists and musicians, and the "sassy" elderly people here at the Fort. [PROHIBITED: Anyone under the age of 18 may not amble as they have not been alive long enough to earn the right to conduct themselves in a lazy fashion.]

2. Strolling:

Not to be confused with the permissibly dignified '50's dance "The Stroll".

Slightly faster in pace than ambling, only with certain direction (read: velocity).

This gait is recommended for young couples in love, old couples in love, optimal observation of our many beautiful public art works, retrieving the mail, and taking 'physic'.

3. Gadding About:

A mode approved by the Ministry for our young people to "act wackily and with vim".

All old people seen "gadding about" will be immediately sized up by the Fort MPs as "sassy" and sent to the magnificently repainted shuffleboard court (thank you, Bluebird Troop #32!) for a large print slideshow refresher course on the Proper Ambulatory Modes for All Ages.

4. Promenading:

A stunning semi-slow display of one's fantastic personage, clothing, shoes, handbag/imported Italian leather brief case, or "sassy" old person.

"Promenading" is derived from the ancient battle dance of Fort Super Twins, set forth by our mythic forebear, Eustace the Perpetually Correct, who was reported by contemporaries to be something of an intimidating and purposeful walker himself.

This gait may be executed alone, occasionally in pairs, though never more than 3 people at once.

5. Parading:

Group promenading, with more properly pompous energy and gold braid.

This method may also employed by our delivery persons (30 minute guarantee or it's free!).

[PROHIBITED: Any wild gyrations or swinging of hips. You are not a beatnik on a trampoline.]

6. Striding:

The speediest of the proscribed modes at Fort Super Twins.

One may use "striding" whilst in battle, when trying to make class on time, and for the concerted purpose of fleeing Canadians who wish to assimilate you. It may also be used for walking off in a huff.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chimera Carpet

2008-05-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

First thing this morning as I was eating my breakfast:

Mom: [thoughtfully, between bites of hummus and crackers] "Do you see faces in the carpet?"
Me: [leaning over] "Hmm. I have a winking smiley man with one eyebrow."
Mom: "I've got a monkey. No. A lion." [staring] "I've got a monkeylion."
Me: Monkeylion.
Mom: It's a monkey AND a lion.
Me: *sigh*

We wound up seeing an empty flower basket, a giant black-eyed pea, a ladybug, Big Boy, a manta ray, and Boba Fett. Mom also admitted to seeing a gorilla in profile in her bathroom. There used to be a face on the door in the trailer I was born into. Talk about antagonizing a three year old. I look for patterns all the time. I guess I inherited that from Mom. She likes to cloud-watch.

Another scene, moments later, whilst watching the newsbots:

Me: "Looks like the Olympic torch made it safely up Everest."
Mom: "Hmm, interesting!"
Me: "Well. It's a sister torch, not the real thing..."
Mom: "They don't want to lose the original, of course, just in case someone falls in a hole. Or if the Sherpas take a fancy to it and give them a push."
Me: "Yeah, Ma, because Sherpas SO push people off mountains."
Mom: "They might! You never know if they have a black market for Olympic paraphernalia!"
Me: *sigh*