i obsess.

Jealousy

Oh, hey, hi. I'm Melanie, and I'm here to hold down the fort for one last day before your lovely, charming, talented and gracious hostess returns to dazzle you with her brilliance. Me? Not so brilliant, no dazzle whatsoever, but I will do my utmost to keep the fort held down nonetheless. (How does one hold down a fort? Does it require VERY LARGE weights? A crane? Golems? I dunno. But I will try.)

So I'm sitting here, listening to Debbie tell me about her experiences at the Democratic National Convention, and I am jealous. Jealous. JELLUS.

Do you realize, this woman was present when history was being made? While you and I sat in our living rooms, watching Hillary call for a unanimous vote, tears streaming down our faces (okay, maybe just mine, but still), Debbie was actually there, in that place, watching it happen. Also, that she was in the same town, the same room, as the future POTUS? Yeah. I'm green. Not the sick kind of green, but the envious kind.

But then again, this envy of mine is nothing new. From the first second I started reading i obsess, I have recognized how very talented a writer and artist our friend Debbie is, and I have envied the effortless ease with which she charms and thrills and delights us,  her readers.

Wait! This is starting to sound like either a eulogy or a suck-up, and I am no good at either of these things. Plus, she is neither dead nor despotic, so neither is necessary.

I think that's all I got, friends, Romans, countrymen; but no fear, Debbie will return with another of her exhilarating, awesome posts quite soon.

Thanks for bearing with me. Now, if someone could tell me what to do with this crane...?

Friends Like These

Deb invited me to guest post on her blog this week and then proved she hates me by making me follow all these other fabulous, gifted women.  Thanks a lot, Deb. 

She did write me a kick-ass bio, though:

Gwen's beach girl beauty and utter fabulousness belie the dark secrets of her past:  she was raised by wolves in the deep jungles of SE Asia. This explains her inability to quote from Heathers and her obsession with cheese.  Watch out for that bitch--she will steal your shoes and your friends."

Okay, so maybe it wasn't so kick-ass.  And anyway, she gave me the shoes, okay?  Because they didn't even fit her.  I totally did not steal them.

Speaking of good friends:

Once I had a friend break up with me. Dramatically. Publicly. Humiliatingly. It wasn't just one of those friendships that died slowly and organically, phone calls growing less frequent, social outings dwindling until nothing remained but a lovely, bittersweet reminder of a person and a time in life. No. This was much more theatrical. I was dumped for crossing some invisible line, rejected for dipping below the very strict standards of acceptable friend behavior. So what was my deed of great evil? It wasn’t that I stole someone’s boyfriend or money. I didn’t spread a nasty rumor behind anyone’s back; I didn’t loudly disagree with a cherished ideal. What I did was not show up one night for a coffee date.

I was twenty-one, had recently dropped out of college and was working in the Sears Tower. My friend was in his second year of medical school, an overachiever who had completed undergrad early as part of a special honors program. We had planned this meeting for weeks, and I’m sure his schedule was busy and stressful. Mine was mostly full of cocktails with co-workers. On the day we were supposed to meet up, I received a phone call from one of my friend’s fellow med students. My friend, we'll name him Barry, had laryngitis and couldn’t call me himself, so he had someone else leave me a message—it was a message on my answering machine—confirming our date (not a romantic date, just an appointment).

As the day wore on, and people around me started making Friday night plans, I started thinking about how crazy it was to go out with someone who couldn’t even speak and who probably needed his rest, especially when a group that included Hot Guy, my current crush, were going for drinks after work. Probably I was more concerned about Hot Guy than I was about the health of my friend, but whatever. Let’s go with my maternal instincts, since it makes a better story. For me, anyway. So I left my own message on Barry’s answering machine saying, “Let’s get together another time. When you can, you know, TALK.” And that seemed like enough for me. This was pre-cell phone, before the Internet and e-mail and text messaging (yes, that time did exist, and yes, we managed to thrive, too, without all the communication accoutrements), so in my twenty-one year old head, I’d done my part to cancel our plans. After all, Barry had left a message for me, by proxy, so why couldn’t I leave one for him?

Apparently, I couldn’t. Apparently, blowing him off like that was the friendship line that simply could not be crossed. When I returned home that night, there were many messages on my answering machine, not left by voiceless Barry, naturally, but by his speaking friend. “Where are you? Why aren’t you here? You’d better show up! Where are you? Now I’m really pissed! You’d better be in a hospital somewhere. Where the fuck are you?” and so on. I know I didn’t call him back that night, since it was late and I was drunk … erm … happy, I mean. I was happy.

I probably didn’t call him back immediately the next day either, because I was hung over, or perhaps recovering from a strange food poisoning, and also I was racked with guilt. Guilt, for me, equals avoidance, especially when conflict might be involved. I honestly don’t remember exactly when I returned his phone calls, not that he could talk yet anyway. But whenever I did, it was too late. We were finito. It was over. OVER. Friends in our larger group attempted to intercede and repair the damage. We were even awkwardly forced into a room at some party to patch things up, but I was informed again that I just wasn’t friend material, that I wasn’t good enough, that Barry couldn’t be friends with a person like me.

Are you rolling your eyes? Even back then, I was a little, too. I mean, come on.

Maybe, however, I didn’t understand his actions because I’ve realized recently that I really have no standards for my friends. You can invite me to a cookie party full of horrid, vapid, self-righteous women you consider your friends and even though I have a less than wonderful time, you can believe I’ll be back next year. Because you are my friend. And you want me there. You can ignore my e-mails, never return my phone calls and still, I’ll rearrange my schedule when you’re in town to see you. You can even ask me to make a double batch of holiday sugar cookies, when I have a seven month old and you are childless and not working because you and your husband have decided it would be better for you to stay home and try to lose weight, so that we can decorate them together. Then, 30 minutes before you are supposed to show up, after I’ve rolled out all the dough and cut out and baked all 653 of the cookies, you can call and tell me that you’ve just had such a busy day—driving your cousin to the airport; that was what you did that day—you must go home and have some “Me” time, and we’ll have to try to decorate cookies together another year. And next time you make plans with me, I’ll show up, promptly, with a smile, happy to see you.

I can’t decide if I’m pathetic or if I should be applauded for my extreme tolerance and generosity.

I’m leaning towards pathetic.

SURPRISE!!!!!!

What the...??!!!

omg...omg...YOUS GUYS!

Here I was coming over from my blog, Halushki, to Deb's blog for what I THOUGHT was a guest post, and here you all are throwing me a surprise party on my birthday!

DEB!!!

I thought that the scheduling of the Democratic National Convention was a bit suspicious, but I just chalked it up to this year's Olympics being held from mid April until end of August and the only good television air time left was during the few weeks before American Idol auditions started again.

Wait...was Obama in on this, too?

That guy!

Well he's finally won my vote, that's all I'll say.

Now, I was going to write a long, rambling and self-reflective post about how turning 42 years old feels so empowering and life affirming and how since I've reached middlish-age, I've become supremely centered and meditatively at peace with the regrets and foibles of my youth, and why being 42 years old is the best of all ages in the best of all days in the best of all worlds....

But then I lost my gin bottle.

And now my hip hurts.

So instead, as a celebration of the blogger I've become, I thought I'd share some of my very first attempts at word-smithing the contents of my heart and soul.

Now, Deb successfully does this sort of soul-bearing by writing both brilliantly and beautifully and with an eloquence of style usually reserved for and heard only in the the voices of poets and saints. She is an artist and a ballerina and reading her words makes my hands feel like huge hunks of ham on the keyboard.

Unlike Deb, I do my soul mining with a pitchfork and a shovel and with the help of a guy named "Mookie" hanging around in the background just in case anything I dig up needs to be weighted with cement blocks and thrown into the Hudson River.

So, I'll not attempt to duplicate what Deb does here in her inimitable Joni Mitchell-of-the-blogosphere way, and instead show you an old corpse...uh...I mean...journal entry from days of yore, which will illustrate just why and why again I have taken the road that diverged toward wry humor, goofiness, and general insincerity.

You'll thank me when this is over.

From April 1976, 9 1/2 years old
 
"I'm going to clean my room. Tomorrow, I might sleep over my friend Amy's house. I told Amy I wasn't aloud to but now Jenny's not aloud to, so I will. I think Amy likes Jenny more, but I think Amy and I have more fun together. We'll ride our bikes over to Mr. Laddick's house to see his horses."

Good girl! What does that Jenny got that I haven't got? Would Jenny ever spend the day with Amy sitting in a stable and staring wistfully at gelded stallions? No, Jenny wouldn't! Even in fourth grade, Jenny was all about watching the boys playing basketball at the public school courts. You be true to yourself, little 9-year-old Halushki. You be true to your straw bale-smelling self.

"My favorite rock star is Elton John. Nobody in my class likes him. I also like John Travolta. Whenever I buy John Travolta things, I say they are for my cousin so no one will make fun of me."

Hmmm. Well gee. That's kind of stinky that at nine years old, I felt like I had to lie about what I liked or didn't like so that kids wouldn't tease me. I guess all kids go through this to some extent. Still. What a bunch of wieners my classmates were.

On the other hand, maybe you want to rethink the John Travolta thing, Little Halushki. At least until he's cool again in Pulp Fiction.
 

"My favorite color is blue. I like everything blue. My sneakers, my jeans, my shirt, my socks, and even my glasses. (I wear them sometime. I'm not too atractive in them.)

Sometimes I wish I had a horse. I wish I could ride bareback on him and just run away from my troubles. Run away from everyone."

Now, at 9 1/2 years old, I had - as far as I can tell from here - no troubles. I had a mom and a dad who were the perfect Donna Reed Show parents; a precocious but adorable little sister who even then was my best friend, even if I didn't tell her that until thirty years later; and looking back from 42 years old, there isn't a 9 year old girl on the planet who isn't clearly and simply beautiful in all her 9-year-old girlishness.

I wish I could tell myself that now.

I mean, then.

I mean...

now....

"But here I just sit at my window. Just talking to you.

You can't laugh and you don't ever share my secrets. You just keep them here.

I'm glad I can trust you.

If my wishes ever come true, I'd take you along with me."

uhm.

Well, now I feel like a jerk.

Here I am, thirty-two years later, sharing my nine-year-old self's secrets on a public blog in a lame attempt at entertainment by poking fun at me.

I mean, her.

I mean, me.

I mean...

Damn.

I think I owe myself an apology.

I was a great kid. I don't deserve this.

I was empowered. And life affirming. And more or less meditatively centered.

And here I am, a smart ass old lady condescending to this girl, this girl I want to become.

DAMN!

How do you DO that Deb?!

I walk into i obsess all blustery and full of myself on my birthday, a big deal, dragging out my former self's private writing as entertainment, thinking that I can brazenly  resist the awesome power of your blog's sanctum sanctorum of gestalt awakening...and instead I am being handed myself...myself in a heart-shaped box...without a lid.

You really did know it was my birthday, didn't you?

You knew the perfect gift, my friend.

I'll blow out the candles now.

All nine and a half of them.

Thank you, Deb.

Thank you.

xxxxoooo

I need to read TV guide

MamaT passed me, katie, the keys and I'm taking over blogsitting today for the wonderful Deb.   Deb, thank you for giving me the time to go through your medicine cabinets and bedside tables, I've really liked getting to know you this way.  Blackmail is always great leverage in a friendship.  Hey, at least I'm honest.  Oh I kid.  But just to be clear: I took some pictures - you know, just in case.

Anyhow, I just need to establish something before you fine and unsuspecting readers of deb read this post, especially those who don't know me and think I'm some kind of amazing parent blogger full of lots of useful advice. The truth is : I've never claimed to have much parenting knowledge. 

Anyone who reads my blog is fully aware of this fact -  even after reading just one post - but for others thinking of clicking over for the first time, I need to shatter any parental perfection illusions the blog named motherbumper might conjure up.  Just keep reading this post for proof.

But I'm getting off topic.  During my pregnancy, when I had time to leisurely read and learn all that "being pregnant stuff," I devoured books on having babies - even bad ones.  I sucked up knowledge like no ones business.  I was a trimester list junkie, what was going on this week, it was like being able to get a newsletter about how your kid was doing without, well for lack of a better word, without really knowing your kid except as one who dances on your bladder or kicks you in the ribs.

But ever since giving birth, I've haven't been able to make time for reading those parenting books in order to garner some of that useful parenting knowledge.  Sure, I read the other crazies parent bloggers online and the advice comes as part of the dealio, but when I'm researching something, I like to read methodologies with all sorts of scientific-sounding stuff to back it up.  BTW, I only do this so I can diss them with some cred when they completely fail for me.  I like a little weight behind my method stabbing.

Anyhow, since giving birth I've also figured out that my completely lazy method of "winging it" and doing what struck me as natural isn't really working for me.  Despite this, I know that this much is accurate: my child is very strong willed, I'm easily duped, and in recent months, I've needed tactical advice; serious military strength manoeuvres are required to handle some parts of our day.

Sure, she has been a huge heaping bowl of rainbows and lollipops and piles of fun but when that other side - the dark side - emerges and starts spewing exorcist-worthy tantrums or whining akin to nails on a chalkboard, I have been in need of some motherfreakin' help.

Being lazy, I bought some recommended books that currently serve as a bedside table for my other books - mah stories.  In addition to the dust collecting books, I've also started watching shows like Supernanny and Nanny911 on a semi-irregular basis.  Unfortunately, one of those shows (can't tell them apart so I can't pinpoint which one) was until a week ago, up against "Make Me a Supermodel" and let's just say I missed a lot of parenting advice. 

But Make Me a Supermodel was over a couple of weeks ago and this past week I watched Supernanny.  Okay, kinda watched it because I also was catching up on some email at the same time.

In other words, I really wasn't paying strict attention but I can tell you this: it was about this couple with a seven year-old boy who has tantrums akin to my daughter's - except remember: he's seven and a seven year old freaking out, kicking, screaming, biting, destroying, is way crazier than any not-quite-three year old.

Hey, did I mention I like watching these shows because my kid has never been as bad as most of the kids on that show, so I kinda feel like a good parent.

Anyhow, I quickly realized that this show was something I needed so I started paying more attention - yet - because I'm an addict - still doing stuff on the computer during commercial breaks.  Oh and I also started writing a post because I'm the queen of multitasking.  Wait - no - I'm the queen of procrastination.

But I still knew it was important to watch so I could find out the "easy way" or perhaps that secret-button for shutting off this kind of behaviour (oh please oh please don't let it have any modifications on my part, I'm so set in my ways).  So yup, I knew I'd better start paying more attention to this show - right after I finish another email.

Yup, so I started watching the show again long after the commercial break had ended and I cannot even try to explain how confused I became when after a minute or so, the mother started talking about how she wasn't wearing any underwear. 

WTF? 

She was all snappy with Nanny Jo before the last commercial break and her husband was threatening to stop filming (got to love those parents - suddenly occurs to them that OMG I've let people into my home to see how crazy my life really is and they aren't telling me it's not my fault) ANYHOW now the mother was talking about something about good luck and not wearing any panties.  I repeated WTF?

How does not wearing panties come into play in the subject of parenting, except - you know, when you are trying to add to the brood.  But seriously, just what did Nanny Jo ask her?  Is this about birth control?

Then the camera cuts to another person and I'm all, WTF? What happened to the dad?  Was his hair really that long and blonde? And why, what, wha... wtf is going on?

Then I realize that my husband has switched over to Bret Michaels Rock of Love 2.  I can't believe it took me that long to realize it.

I think it's important to my marriage to mention that SB does not usually watch BM_RoL2 but happened to be bored and quasi-surfing the gazillion channels we have.  You know, those channels that seemingly always have absolutely nothing on at the exact same time.  I'm stunned that there can be an hour of primetime with absolutely f**king nothing on, but trust me: it exists. 

Case in point: CSI is on 24 hours a day (unsubstantiated fact but I really do believe it) and during that time when all the other channels are playing absolutely nothing but crap, CSI Miami is on.  Enough said.  OMG how that show succeeded is beyond me.  I can't take Horatio's penchant for removing his sunglasses every time he wants to make it known that, yes, I'm an f'ing badass. It makes me twich.

Anyhow, I have no idea what I was talking about before since I got so waylaid on my "digital cable sucks, even in HD" rant and I have totally lost my train of thought.  Anyhow, all I know is  when looking for parenting advice, don't listen to what they tell you on Rock of Love 2.  Keep your underwear on at all times or you may end up poisoned.

Old Faithful

Dave and I got back yesterday afternoon from a weekend at my aunt and uncle's farm, a weekend that included good food and even better wine, swimmers ear, a somewhat sleepless night and a cup of hot coffee dumped in my lap. On the way home I put my head back against the seat and stared out the window, watched the barns and cows and bales of hay whiz past. And somehow, I got thinking about Old Faithful, a woman I used to see every day when my mother was living out her last days in the hospital. Later that evening, once the house was quiet, I sat down in front of my laptop and the words flowed freely.

Thanks for leaving me the keys to your pad, Debbie. I’ll pay you back for all the wine I drank, promise.

She was there every day to be with her husband. She’d sit at his bedside and hold his hand, fetch for him. She was older, tall with broad shoulders; she was what my mum would have called ‘good hearty stock.’ Her short blonde hair, a bit frizzy and graying at the roots, was tucked behind her ears and she carried her purse in one hand, by the straps, as she walked down the hall to his room.

Her shoulders sagged somewhat; it was written all over her face, the fatigue, the weariness: she was tired. I mean, we all were, the nurses and the patients and their family, but it was her eyes that gave it away, the ghosts they held and the bags beneath them. Yet there was such a gentle, motherly aura that resonated from her; she was there every day, without fail, to care for her husband and be with him. She was going through something, something that had hold of her heart and her self and her husband; her life. She was tired, yes, but she was determined. She was strong. She would fight.

I don’t remember her name, but every time I saw her making her way down the hall to her husband’s room I’d think, “There she is, Old Faithful.”

He was in one of the two private rooms in the Palliative Care wing; usually Old Faithful and I would see each other in the hall, coming or going or perhaps collecting ourselves, our thoughts, standing in front the windows at the far corner of the hall searching the streets below, ignoring the thoughts, the truths that skulked around in the backs of our minds, the ones that threatened to eat us alive. Sometimes we’d meet in the tiny patient kitchen, refilling large Styrofoam cups with ice chips or heating up a homemade, pureed meal. Those meetings quickly became a bright spot in my day; I looked forward to seeing her, talking to her; this common bond, as tragic as it was, rippled between us: every day we stared death in the face and that pushed our paths together. I felt a strong connection with her even though we were worlds apart.

I don’t remember what was consuming her husband, (cancer, I’d assume now; I did know then, but so much of that time in my life is gone, blackened) but he improved. He got a bit better, and he went home. When he did, my mum was moved to his room, one of the privates. She was moved there to die and she did, just a few days later.

I ran in to Old Faithful in a plaza parking lot shortly after my mum died and I remember not wanting to say it, my mouth not wanting to form the words she died, knowing we’d both feel it acutely. I can still picture the way she looked in to my eyes and reassured me, there on the curb, and I could feel her strength, I really could, but I felt disconnected, like our kinship had died alongside my mother.

I knew, though, that she and I were meant to cross paths. She was so much to me during that time – those long, sad days in the hospital – we shared so little, yet so much between us. I knew she came in to my life for a reason, and I in to hers. She buoyed me, helped me stay afloat.

I still think of her, six years later; Old Faithful. I suspect I always will.

You're Welcome

Debbie is traveling to the Democratic National Convention this week.  Thank you for allowing me to guest-post.   Mary

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

I believe I have isolated the cause of Debbie's ADHD.

It's TypePad. 

This blog platform is an arbitrary and capricious bitch whose bizarro formatting guarantees you will lose interest in writing within 15 seconds and decide to go count your shoes or sit down in front of the TV with a box of Little Debbie Snacks.  So, I've also isolated the origins of her nickname.

You're welcome, Deb.

Anyway, I had originally intended to write something about how we think we know people when we only have a tiny glimpse into their lives, and how surprising and illuminating it is when we see the bigger picture.  I thought it was relevant, since we bloggers all have "friends" out there we haven't even met in person, with whom we reaily share deep dark secrets but whom we would never let see the inside of our fridge for fear of what they might think of us.

 

I had written something about Sharon, the crazy choir lady I sang with in a cathedral choir back in the 1990's...she was a nutcase, but we found out after she died that she used to take in homeless people and let them live with her.  She irritated me when she was alive, with her choking cloud of oppressive Avon perfume surrounding her like a bodyguard, her crayoned eyebrows, her violently orange or purple lipstick.

I had a lot of stuff written, but then TypePad arbitrarily would put a paragraph break after the word "Sharon" and I couldn't fix it, so I spent a lot of time cussing this morning, at which point my daughter walked in and said "Mama, are those bad words?" and I said "Yeah, and there are more coming, so you might want to go hide in your bedroom."

 

Then I started thinking evil thoughts about HTML, which I understand about as well as the tax code, and then even had a momentarily evil thought about Debbie, who is involved in the political process while I sit here in a ratty tshirt and yesterday's underwear, trying to figure out how to format this stupid post.

Again, you're welcome, Debbie.

Actually, the original post was pretty depressing.  The crazy choir lady was a little sad, a lot mental, and she died alone surrounded by a lot of rolled up newspapers.  I don't think Debbie was anticipating a depressing post when she asked if I'd help cover while she was off enjoying herself.

 

I mean, really.  It's called "i obsess" and not "i depress."

So.  Here we sit.  I've already told you I'm still wearing underwear from yesterday.  Want to see inside my fridge?

No, really.  You're WELCOME, Deb. 

Secrets and Lies

Once I read a post on a blog hypothesizing that everyone has at least one heroin boyfriend in her past.  I don't.  I had a drunken boyfriend who would pass out in the middle of sentences, usually when we were talking about really important things like why I loved him so so much and why he didn't give a crap about me except when my clothes were off.  At least he never pissed in my bed, like he did with the girlfriend before me.  He went on to marry one of the sorority models, the one who had a lisp and wore thong underwear long before it was acceptable for nice girls to do so.  Last time I saw him, he was a fat actor shilling shitty pizza on my TV.

I don't miss him.

Much.

So I don't have a heroin ex-boyfriend, but I do have a gay one.

I think.

I went to a very small, very conservative, very Christian private school with a hundred million rules, daily mandated prayer and Bible reading and metric tons of sexual repression.  Twice a year a special speaker would spend a week preaching to us about our many sins, and at the end of the week, we would all be so filled with guilt and fear about the brimstone that awaited us beyond the pale, we would stream forward to the front of the little chapel for a laying on of blessed hands to cleanse us of our unworthiness.  Every third or fourth year, this special speaker would make sexual purity the theme of his bombastic sermons.  I never quite understood this.  We could barely date, were only allowed to hold hands and had nowhere to go to engage in the dirty deeds to which he alluded.

My junior year, after one such week of emphasis on the sheer heinous awfulness of anything related to sex or passion or physical desire, my boyfriend took me aside on a hot afternoon for a serious talk.  Now I loved this boyfriend--let's call him Andy--desperately, which, yes, seems to be a theme with me and my boyfriends.  I had loved him since the 8th grade and had only just this year convinced him to love me back.  So when Andy told me that he was struggling with a sexual sin and wanted me to pray for him, I made sure to be duly concerned and loving and understanding.  Except I desperately wanted to know what the sin was, ostensibly so I could, you know, pray correctly.  Really, I was burning with curiosity.  What could this dark stain on his soul be? my friends and I wondered.  We finally decided, in what we believed was a remarkable show of worldly maturity, that he must masturbate, since that was exactly as far as our imaginations could go.  So he jerked off.  No big deal, right?  He was a high school guy.  If he hadn't been doing it, something would have been wrong with him, we reasoned.  Encyclopedia Brown solves the case and is now able to pray with full fervent fervor and specificity.  Yay for her.

Andy and I didn't even make it to the end of junior year.  He dumped me the night before the SAT's because he decided being single was far preferable to having me as his devoted girlfriend. 

Fast forward too many years.  Andy has started contacting me at random intervals, spending hours talking to me on the phone about his enduring love for the band Toto and about how much he regretted stomping on my heart, sending me poorly written e-mails, poking me on Facebook.  Although I am always kind and patient when I deal with him, I find his intrusions into my life unsettling.  We have headed in completely different directions since high school.  He has spent the last decades trying to become a pastor, while I have wandered into a life that does not include a passion for the church.  So when he hints that I am the love of his life and the one who got away, I quickly change the subject or mumble some platitude.  Our limited contacts make me wonder who that girl was who once found him to be so funny and awesome and cool.

At a high school reunion a year ago, one that Andy had skipped because he was hiding at home, dealing with an ugly divorce (are there any other kind?), I found myself explaining the whole saga to a guy I hadn't seen since tenth grade.  (We were the only people at the reunion who shared a love for drinks with vodka in them, so the bonding was instantaneous and clutching.  Please be my one heathen friend, we pleaded with each other.)   I recounted the sexual sin drama, and how we had unscrambled its mystery.

The guy looked at me strangely.

"What?  He wasn't playing with himself?"

"I always assumed Andy was gay."

Gay? Huh?  At my fine Christian school?  Good evangelical Christian boys can't be gay.

My re-found vodka swilling friend then proceeded to inform me that at least half the boys in the dorm were engaged in sexual activity with one another at one time or another, that he had been at school for two whole weeks before he was propositioned by an older kid, that the dorm parents and teachers turned half a blind eye to the behavior except when they mentioned, vaguely, that it might not be acceptable once we graduated and moved out into the real world, and that he was fairly certain that Andy was more than just an experimenter.

See that enormous, gaping hole?  Yeah, that was my mouth.  And it wasn't because I have any issue at all with homosexuality.  It was simply that, in the context of what my high school was about, what it claimed to be, what we claimed to be as students in it, this revelation was shocking.  But it explained so much of the weirdness that I'd always felt emanated from the boys' dorm: the strange, indefinable tension, the reason those annual naked camping trips had always made me tingle uncomfortably (No, really, every year the boys would go on beach camping trips with an older, unmarried male adult where they would spend the whole time naked.  And then come back and brag about it.) even though I couldn't decipher why.  It also made sense of those many uncomfortable sermons on sexual purity.  And it illuminated why Andy had broken up with me to spend more time, supposedly single, with his best boy friend.

It does not, however, explain why I continue to receive periodic messages from my gay ex boyfriend telling me "ur so hot" and "if u wern't married...."

Everyone's favorite Deb is at the Democratic convention being all smart and shit (and hopefully not making too much of a fool out of herself over the hotness that is Joe Biden).  So I'm muddying up the crystalline beauty of her blog with my drivel.  Don't blame her, okay?

*clique, clique*

Or:  The Road to Success is Paved with Assholes.

We would sit on the bench along the rear wall of the dressing room lockers and discuss books and music and film while waiting for our turn at "up-time" - a horrible cat-walk get-the-evening-going system devised by the pimpy manager of the club where we worked, Pure Platinum (yes, that was the real name *gags*).  There were two locations; one sort of along the freeway in the middle of a random strata of San Diego burroughs, and one near the airport.  We worked at the one along the freeway.  It was considered the better of the two, which was laughable to us.  Sometimes, during a table dance (and they meant it, at this joint; the dancing was done in a little circular cut-out on the top of the tables) one would cling to the ceiling for balance during the routine, often meaning that bits of decrepit ceiling would flake off and drift down into one's locks.  Picking them out later was a true delight.

There were several dancers who would sit in the same seats, night after night, in front of the mirror that stretched along the wall just beyond the door into the dressing room. It was as if those seats belonged to them.  They were senior dancers in the club and also usually the best money-makers, and they were entitled, somehow, and no one else dared sit there.  Well, there were nights where those girls weren't working and then a second-tier dancer would take her seat; but otherwise, it was understood.  They got those spots.

We called them the mirror-girls.  When we were together and away from the club, we'd mimic them and their almost-ghoulish behavior while putting on their faces; how they spoke to one another, how they flipped their hair, how much rouge they applied to their decolletage. 

They had a name for us, too.  One night, one of the girls flipped her hair and, turning to give us the once-over while we mused quietly on Hemingway and feminism, said something pointed about our being "the nerd group."

We all laughed, genuinely laughed, laughed so hard the three of us were laying about on the floor in choking spasms.  It was such a filthy floor, too, with anyone's guess as to when it had last been cleaned.  But we couldn't help it.  We really *were* the nerd group.

I was so proud of that.

(I was also proud of the fact that, on an almost-nightly basis, I flashed the bouncer, ready to walk me to my car, and the dancers still waiting in the queue to be escorted out, with my regular bikini underwear, that they all referred to as "granny panties."  The other girls wore g-strings, without exception.  This was in ancient times, or about twelve years ago, so it's funny to think of g-strings being so edgy.  But they were.  Going commando wouldn't become a thing until at least a few years later on.)

I'm pleased when I'm not associated with what everyone else is doing in a large group.  To be different, to be able to distinguish myself from the rest of the inhabitants of a scene, it makes me feel alive. 

As a blogger, I'm glad to not play at being a hipster.  I don't know anymore what's cool in the music world, in film, or the realm of fashion, really, though once upon a time, it was the most important thing I could fathom. 

It's an honor to be friends with other bloggers who, while possibly not the edgiest, are the most genuine, the most sincere.  I'm humbled by their continued search for their truth, whether it means their traffic fluctuates or just plain plummets.  It's what makes them the very most edgy of us all.

And FUCK you if you think you're so cool you can't speak to something because it's beneath you.  Even when it's presented by someone who is lovely and genuine and a hundred times the writer, a thousand times the person, that you could ever be.  Especially then.

May your beloved mirror give you the unending pleasure and validation you apparently seek.  But don't assume there aren't people mocking your every move while you absorb yourself into its depths.

Oh, there are.

minimal effort posting.

The dark-chocolate trim pops nicely against the new house color, I (would like to) think.  I'm a little bowled over by the fact that close to a G in paint and supplies for the overall job didn't really do much; it wasn't until the addition of the $12 can of trim paint and three dark brown plants placed in front of the window, at $8 per, came into play, making the entire effect pop beautifully.  I mean, damn.  $36 to blow it all up.  That's crazy.  But somehow always the way things work in design.  Accents!  Accents are key!  Or whatever.

I really dig the reddish mulch (we just tried one bag for effect, and will throw the rest on tomorrow night, in advance of the appraiser's visit on Thursday - curb appeal, or so they say, counts).  I don't generally thrill at reddish mulch; it reminds me too much of the pain of angry barkdust splinters from childhood days.  But this does so well because our chimney has remained true brick red, and requires a little color balance to pull it into the other elements.  I can't wait to see how the mulch will look around the new plants below the front window.

Caleb shaved Jack's head on Saturday, in hopes of staving off massive heat discomfort (our a/c quit on us on Thursday afternoon, just as the heat wave really got underway; our spoiled asses did NOT know what to do with the 89 degrees the upstairs portion of our house was registering).  Also, who knew?  Cookies and moisturizer don't hold together so well in that kinda heat, either.  Surprise!

Silly monster faces are the new smile.

The back route to the beach from my parents' RV spot at the campground near Tillamook, Oregon, where we stayed last weekend.

A few minutes' walk from our camp site; maybe fifty yards from the bay near our camp ground.

Caleb took this one.  I don't know WHAT he said to that bee, but DAMN.  Maybe he mocked his, uh, "wingspan."  Whatever the case, super glad I was hiding under a rock while this was snapped.  I believe in duck-and-cover.  I have ovaries of gelatinous goo.

Headless man is usurped by small parasite near coastal town!

Sand:  Toddler cryptonite.



Strawberry-headed.  Possibly an affliction resulting from overconsumption of massive quantities of late June Oregon berries?

 

Ocean attack!

Mom!didyouseeit?thatlittlethingyinthewateritwascomingandthenthewater cameduptomyfeetsanditwasso!cold!mommmy!mommy!mommmmmy!!!

This is certainly a look-back-and-sob-in-twenty-years'-time kinda shot, no doubt.

Finally.  FINALLY.  The boy/dog co-entertainment possibilities begin to unfold.  And not a moment too soon.  My (dying-to-be-sedentary) ass has been begging for this moment for three + years.

Idyllic.

A husband who can garden.  He did *all* of this.  I have, uh, real, REAL bad, uh, hay fever.  REAL bad.  *cough, cough, sorta-convincing sneeze*

And the husband pickled these *after he grew them and picked them*:  a mix of lemon cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, green tomatoes and sweet purple peppers.  At first I was all, what kind of girl are you?, and then I realized I may be damning the probability of his ever doing something so kick-ass again, simply because I couldn't let a shot-at-the-funny go, and then I realized I didn't care, because, DUDE.  WHAT A FUCKING GIRL.  THE BEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.  *MY* GIRL.  *swooon*

We gathered eighteen pounds of these bad boys.  Jack even helped.  By not eating what we'd picked.  Seriously.  My husband is a bad-ass.  He culled most of them.  I kind of mostly just grazed and thought about possible blog posts I'll never, ever write down.

"Babe?  This smile is starting to slide south (note gritted teeth) unless you deliver on that promise-of-beer, the one you gave me around an hour ago, back when the dinosaurs still roamed the Earth?"

It has begun.  For the record, I'm totally fine with that.  After all, we'll always have beer.  And that one summer -- which summer *was* that, anyway?  Alright, so maybe it was a weekend.  Or just one night.  Maybe it didn't even happen.  Here's to that possibly-made-up memory, babe.

Note the handy.  Caleb put the whole damn thing together.  It took two days, and saved us a G in installation costs. 

Guess who adamantly refuses to play in it.

Babe, it's a cheesy shot because you're so darn cute in it (but let it not be assumed that I refuse abjectly to post shots of my partner wherein he looks hot, because that assumption would be incorrect.  General apparent behavior of avoidance of deliberate highlighting of attractiveness notwithstanding, just for this particular post).  You almost make me want to have sex with you, you're so ruddy and kinda totally hot.  (It is like. walking. on hot. coals. to say this about my partner on the blog, btw.  I loathe and abhor verbal pda.  Dunno.  Guess I just think it's -- below me, somehow.  I'm a snob about the weirdest shit.  I won't overanalyze it.  He deserves to be recognized for the hotness.  The.  Fucking.  End, Debbie.  Jeeeeeezus.  Letitgo.)

Happy (fourth) anniversary on Thursday, babe.  You so deserve a toast.  What you don't deserve?  Me ditching for a week to attend the Convention while you hold down this end, and we cross even all of our smallest hairs in hopes that the refinance isn't a bust, and put off celebrating our anniversary, again, one more result of the purchase of this home (last year's awesome celebration being, lamentably, the day we moved into the hell hole in the first place, and we postponed our real celebration that time, too).  I'm sorry it's been such a rough go this year.  I'm sorry I pushed us into moving last year, and buying this house, and all the time and energy spent fixing it, and then my being such a mess because of finding out about the adhd, and just generally having too many breakdowns and epic fails to count. But I guess you're still sticking it out, after almost ten years together, and I promise to keep trying, trying my hardest.  Always.  You're so fucking worth it.

i think the medicine may not be quite addressing the matter.

But I don't want to be right about that.  I want to be fucking wrong.  I want to be fucking wrong!  And I hate exclamation points!  Fuck!

I can't write this tonight.

I shouldn't even be up at this hour.

And with Caleb still getting over the flu, and all of the pictures from the beach I'd rather show you, and my very cold toes, situated directly over the cold-ass air-conditioned air from the vent, my head STILL buzzing, this medication still holding me in its intense grip, -- but I shouldn't make any decisions yet.  I ought to at least give it another day.

If, at the end of tomorrow, I have accomplished as little as I did today that didn't involve blogging or twittering, I will make my decision.

And it's not even the money wasted on the prescription, money we can ill afford this month, it's not that, it's not the time wasted in the last two days and possibly tomorrow as well, testing this new drug out on my brain and my body and my family and my life, it's not the lack of sleep I'll have to manage tomorrow, or the work I still have to complete because I didn't do it yesterday or today.

It's that stupid glimmer of hope for fixing my lack of focus.  The light's just that much more dim if this isn't the right thing.

Fuck.

beach: 0, flu: 1

We bailed early yesterday from the rainy, yet far from bland, incredible Oregon Coast.  Jack has had a hacky cough for weeks - I keep waiting for it to abate because I really don't see the need for him to endure yet another round of antibiotics that repair nothing, and once it began raining as we tried to walk out to the sand for one more round of diggy/skippy/giggly, we cashed it in and drove home.  Neither Caleb nor I were feeling all too well, either, having both acquired whatever weird throat/raspy cough/icky chest thingy my mom was laden with, and after we got home, Caleb somehow turned feverish and punch-drunk within an hour or so.  I went inside from the back to find him sitting in the chair in our room, shivering, his face dark red, with several layers of clothes on.  He told me he felt weird and asked for a thermometer, but I insisted on just feeling his forehead, which was alarmingly hot.  He crashed downstairs on the couch and I tried to get things unpacked and all of the wet bedding into the wash (Jack had no fewer than *two* accidents during the night on Friday evening/Saturday morning; all while sleeping a few inches from me on a too-small pull-out large chair masquerading as a love seat, so awesome).  Jack ran around in circles, yelling and throwing things.  I solo-parented and hacked and tried not to put our wolf-child out on the sidewalk with a "free" sign strapped to his chest while Caleb slept. 

After I got Jack to bed, a mighty struggle in itself, I crashed for awhile, then watched this old film, Country Girl.  It left me thinking about feminist issues when I ought to have been sleeping, so I popped Groundhog Day in, just to stop the maddening spin-cycle in my skull.  Caleb woke up at some point, at which I, evidently, in mid-sleep, asked if he minded that I was watching, a la, "Is this okay?  That I'm watching this?," even though I was ASLEEP.  So, not really watching anything but the backs of my eyelids.  He was, naturally, confused.

Today was more of the same, and the three-year-old in my son richtered (I refer, here, to the "why" and the "no" and the "I don't waaaant to" fields of HOLY GOD JUST SHUT IT, SHUT IT BEFORE I AM REQUIRED TO RETHINK THIS WHOLE BUSINESS AND QUITE POSSIBLY SEW YOUR MOUTH SHUT *AND* REND MY EARS TO BITS, SIMULTANEOUSLY).  We went out a few times to a) give my husband a chance at a few winks of undisturbed sleep, and b) to fetch more acetaminophen and, yes, a milkshake for me, because it's the closest I can get on certain days to the hard stuff, and I needed it.  Don't question me.  I did.  This = truth.

Mostly, I'm grateful for the shower I got to take this morning, and for the fact that, just as soon as the quilt is dry (which, god almighty, who fucking KNOWS when that will be, it's been in the (granted, totally crappy) dryer for no less than three hours - it's kinda thick), I get to crawl into my beautiful, big, comfy bed of not-love-seat-pull-out-proportions and sleeeeeep.  Oh, and also, grateful for the incredibly delicious fresh crab we ate for dinner, a rare treat for me; we always had the imitation crab when my mom made something requiring crab in the recipe -- the real was way too $$.  Also, I got a lot of hugs and kisses from my terrifically bipolar-y child, and there was a healthy balance of laughter and giggles and general silly amidst the chaos, which must be noted, in fairness.

If you really narrow your eyes and squint, hard, at my day, it was pretty alright.

Pictures of beachy delights tomorrow.  Swears.  The nice, G-rated kind.

camptown races, sing something dope.

Am off to the beach for a few days, but the poor dog is being left behind to guard our pad (mainly due to the leash-at-all-times rule at the particular campground my parents chose for us -- yes, the RV'd ones are including us in their camping plans, and we're grateful for the chance to escape the city and the heat, wavy and simmering and yellow'd in its late-summer tints, and because they are paying for the site, and we's broke -- so, no Ella-dog with us).

Ella will be here, fierce and ferocious, guarding with all of her might and mane, and our good friends who happen to also be our neighbors are coming regularly to feed and water her.

There are sure to be photos of sun and sand and dust and tents and campfire-smoked hair and, one can hope, good times.

xoxo

a post about the paris hilton for prez thing; a classist conundrum.

The Paris-4-Prez ad is shocking.  And it highlights something I'd never thought of prior to watching it; that we really want Paris to be smart.  See, she's a socialite, a top-rung type.  She's got money coming out of her -- pores.  She probably has a daily breakfast smoothie that involves ground-up gold bullion.

And no one has ever been comfortable with her desire to play a low-brow, trashy type.  No one, from the highest echelons of society, to the very poorest of our teeming human realm, has been okay with Paris mixing with the sweaty and the great unwashed.  She's supposed to be a nice, horse-ridey girl, wearing her haute couture (when she's not in jodhpurs and riding boots that cost as much as the horse), remaining behind the closed doors of the country club galas and the penthouse suite parties and the very most expensive, most financially elite locales on earth.

We can't stand it, and I lump myself into this group of "we," we can't handle her mixing with us, wearing bikinis and washing cars in commercials that hawk hamburgers.  It screws up the entire order!  Our classism comes into question when a girl from her sector deliberately treks into ours.

money woes don't pack so well into an old kit bag.

Am so stressed out about money.  We're waiting on a refinance that, if it doesn't go through, will ruin us financially.  And we didn't do stupid things with equity and all that.  We just picked a *really* shit moment to buy a house that needed work - and not the kind that was willing to wait for a few years (look for my next book!, about what to avoid when purchasing an older home, and how many cabinets and inch-sized niches to peer into using a micro-lens in order to best determine whether said old house is worth the duckets!).

Will be returning to a full-time position with the mountain resort, in their sales office, at first of September.  Jack begins preschool the same week, and I'll just be coming home from the convention the Friday prior.  He'll be in daycare all day, three days a week, as a pre-schooler, with the bigger kids, in a classroom of twenty children and two teachers.  He'll also be attending grandmacare for the other two days (and thank jeeeesus they can do that for us, although I have my reservations about it all, which are drowned by our need for me to be working full time, so, reservations be damned).

Today he cried so hard when I left him off at school, harder than he has since he began there last fall.  It was horrid. 

I am witless as to how to manage this.

And hopeful that the medication I'm waiting for a prescription on from the psych will ameliorate the scattered, dull memory issues, and general lack-of-focus/disorganization.  Because if I'm ever gonna need to be able to organize myself and my family, this is that time. 

antique bling: somehow, SO much more fabulous.

Some of my favorite thrifted and estate-sale-purchased discoveries.

Even the shell came from an estate sale.

This piece is, quite possibly, my all-time-favorite thrift item. $.99 for a clasp that can go from trashy to classy (claspy?) in the blink of an eye.  Hooray for San Diego thrifting!  (Oh, and the shelf on which the clasp is situated was also an estate-sale purchase.  It's a rolling cart with a - working! - hot plate.  For $15.  Hot dog!  Or, uh, hot fondue!)

(The aforementioned cart, in the left corner, which supports a hodge-podge of literature and drink materials; coincidentally, so do I.  Or not so coincidentally.   Also, while we're in this space, you may as well know that the table was purchased second-hand and extends to fit about seventeen-hundred people, or maybe only fourteen, which kind of feels like seventeen-hundred.  The chairs on the long ends were salvaged from someone's curb, repainted and reupholstered by yours truly.  The centerpiece on the table consists of two heavy glass candle holders I inherited from my maternal grandmother, and the turquoise cinder receptacle in center, full of shells that were a gift to my son from his -- still very much alive at 90! -- great-grandmother, came from the estate sale of a woman with exquisite taste.  More photos to come in future of a small, well-edited selection of pieces from her once-incredible collection.  I only wish I'd had a thousand dollars to spend the day I wandered through her slightly-musty, yet darling, home.)

Cross-posted at my daring-to-be-sane-ish blog, did you buy that new?