i obsess.

making people remember why they avoid this blog like a suspicious stain.

Would you please stop sending me telepathic requests for posts that I don't have it in me to write?  I feel terrible about it, really.  Honest.  But my stomach hurts when I try to consider it.  And that's not my fault. 
It's yours.

It's also kind of the result of 2+ helpings of the chicken-with-rice dish I made tonight that's kind of a bastardized version of a Brasilian dish I used to love when I lived there, a regional (i.e., state of Minas Gerais, a state below Brasilia, the country's capital, and inland about ten hours' drive from Rio) recipe that I sort of make kind of correctly.  As far as memory serves.  (... !! ... ??? .)  There's this amazing sauce that accompanies it, called vinagrete, it's kind of a salsa but with vinegar as a base, and parsley instead of cilantro, plus red bell pepper that you mix with the onion, garlic, tomato, salt and pepper.  The only side dish is refried beans, which I would normally make from scratch because they're prepared differently in Brasil than in Mexico, but I forgot until the last minute and had to pick some up from the store -- *shrug*.  Similar-ish enough.

Did you want something from me?  Because that's all I've got.  I tried to collate all the addresses from everyone who said they want a private password for when I private-up for a few, but my computer crashed and I took that as a sign from god to suggest that I should not be near my computer.  Which is why I'm here, only not trying to do the email-collating thinger, since that would've probably gotten me nowhere close to anything resembling progress.  This all looks a lot more progress-y.  That said, I still want to private up but by the flaming hand of gilgamesh, how do I make myself try and go through all that rigamarole again?  It vexeth me.

Whatever.

Anybody wanna be my secretary?  GOD that sounds sexy.  Just the idea of having a secretary makes me so hot.

Which is funny, because I'm kind of freezing.

rememberies.

I'd quite forgotten how inspiring it is to suggest I'm gonna disappear from the blog; inevitably, there's a gush of things to say to you eight people who straggle by on the random odd weekend to peep and see whether I'm still just as seriously incapacitated by insanity as I've always been.

(The answer is yes.)

Feel free to keep reading!, though. 

About bloggers I'd like to hump.  Or, rather, who you'll want to hump.  But you'll have to wait in line behind me.  I brought snacks, though, so that's okay.  I'm a sharer.  As my son has recently informed me that I must be if I'd like to survive socially.  (Unless you don't eat nuts.  Because it's trail mix.  Jack already picked out most of the fake m&ms, and most of the dried berries, so the balance is kind of -- nuts.  Apropos, non?)

Anne Nahm.  Read her.  Well, I mean, it's not a fucking *mandate*.  Just - a hearty recommendation.  If you like to laugh.  Which I do.  But what do I know?  I'm insane.

Mithras.  He's kind of a pompous ass with a sex-blog fetish, and I suppose that's why I like him so much.  Also, he's rather overtly taken with politics.  (Probably a direct result of having a sex-blog fetish.  Once you've gone down that road, it's all cattywampusness from there.  As you've probably observed with other equally sinister types.  Plus, he needs some assisting, I understand, in winnowing down the stale links in his sex-blog links section.  Maybe you could do him a solid on that.  You know.  As a favor.  To me.  Remember?, about the trail mix sharing?  Yeah.  You're that much closer to already-handled nuts.)

better now.  Kristin's writing is more attractive than television.  I do not say that lightly.  Nor should you take it lightly.  Televisions are very, very heavy, and can ruin feet and other limbs for generations.  Or at least days.

Halushki.  (But we've been promised to one another for after our husbands die, you know, so we can hold hands in the nursing home and shit, iow: don't bother barking up that particular tree.  Just love her from afar.  There's to be no snack-sharing on this one, either, yo.  Unless you're her sister.  In which case, heh!, I was only kidding.  I have but the most platonic brand of love in my heart for Jozet.  Girl scouts' honor.  *three-finger salute*)

Lotta and Gwen.  Although my envy for their neighbor-status has lately outweighed my ability to appreciate them as much for their individually incredible qualities.  You can have all the snacks in this queue.  I'm off pouting in the corner, and will be doing so for some time.  (Plus I get to talk to them both on the phone *almost* enough to sate me.  Enough, anyway, that I don't need to stand in a fucking queue for them.  You can jostle to the front here.  Unless Lotta's doing a ring-giveaway, in which case, back off, bitches, 'cause I want me one a' them rings, and I'll do whatever it takes.  InCLUDing pay actual money for one.  Yes.  I know.  I'm a wild thing.)

Nora's taking two this time.  She's rather greedy.  And I'm ecstatic for her.  Also, my mind is kinda blown regarding how amazing science is, but then, my mind fails over simplistic shit, so, you know, no surprise there.

Cristina's rabid fan base needs to rediscover her.  Her writing, albeit far less frequent of late, is still sharp as a goddamn sushi knife.  Go.  Go forth and read.  Here's a fresh bag of trail mix for you (Jack finally decided to eat the nuts, since the fake m&ms and dried berries were depleted).

Oh Joy! doesn't need any bumps from me, but I do find that my heart feels lighter when I read her blog.

Jenny needs help from me even less than the last blogger.  She needs help from me like a dog needs a flea's assistance on matters of -- any kind.  It's possible I may even *damage* her shiny rep by including her, but I'm a loyal, little bag of pathetic, so she's on the list.   (Also, I may be wrong, which means I *am*, but isn't it a little *overtly* coincidental that "bloggess" so clearly imitates "i obsess" -- yes.  You're right.  They rhyme.  Obviously, Jenny came up with "the bloggess" after having fallen fathoms-deep in love with my blog name's sound.  Rhythm.  Feel.  Touch.  Scent.  The way its hair looks just after a dip in the ocean.  The way its ass swishes when it's walking through the mall in adorably sassy* high-heeled sandals.  The way it can carry a tune and bowl every.damn.body. in the room at the karaoke bar OVER with its moderately acceptable quality.  Them bitches is SCREAMIN' when the song is through.  And this blog?  Oh, it just bows.  And smiles.  Quiet.  Assured in the knowledge that Jenny's blog wants it so damn bad.  So. bad.  But we won't tell, it says.  It says this with its eyes.  Its woebegone, knowing eyes-that-are-actually-just-streaming-code, like in The Matrix.)

*Yep.  Bringing sassy back.  It's needing a good airing, I'm thinking.  I'm Irish, so leave that last sentence alone.  Mostly German, really.  A wee bit o' Irish.  Mostly just the whiskey I drank earlier.  It wasn't actually Irish whiskey, though.  It was American-made.  We can't afford the Irish kind.  Those SNOBBY, STUCK-UP FUCKING IRISH BITCHES THAT THINK THEY'RE SO RAD because they make whiskey in IRELAND. 

Fuckers.

Uhm.

Ruth, of the exploding-tampon-Ruths.  You may remember her; she's kind of TOTALLY FABULOUS.  Her blog still, in fact, exists.  She's awfully busy with something she refers to as "a job," not sure what she means by that, I think it's some vaguely-worded insult she made up on the fly to pretend she wasn't just blowing me off all those times I called, but it's cool.  The point, people, is that you need to read her.  She won't write you back, and she most CERtainly won't call you back, or even answer your calls, and at some point you may not even be able to call her at all, because her number will have been disconnected super-randomly, and you may be inspired to drive to her house, all the way across the country, and snuggle down in the grass nearby with some binoculars and an industrial-sized box of Easter peeps, already ripened, just to discover what the deal is with her phone (or you can use whatever excuse you like; that was mine, but it's been used, so I highly recommend inventing a fresher one, or she'll see right through you, and if you're in the field eating those peeps when you do it, she'll DEFinitely see through you because those bitches can make you radioactive, which shines out of your fucking pores, so maybe just stick with Cadbury cream eggs if you insist on eating Easter candy while stalking Ruth).  You may never find out about the phone, though, but you will seriously enjoy the tour of the local police station; it's lovely.  You can't go wrong with that restroom, and those people know how to FRISK. Let me tell you.  It's a hell of a trip.

n+1 = a very good online publication.  I enjoy it, but not nearly often enough.

Mary writes like Faulkner, if Faulkner fucking RULED as much as Mary.  Read, and thank me later.

There's funny, and then there's Melanie.  I'll let you decide what's what.

Did you know the fucking stellar/brilliant Cho blogs?  I did.  And now, so do you.

Got any tips for me?   Post 'em in the repository.  And have some sticky nuts, along with my undying gratitude.  *bows*

i need some privacy.

Feeling very lacking-in-chatty right now -- un-verbose?  Deprived of speech?

Whatev.  Something along those lines. 

Anyway.  Privating it up, just for a wee span, and if you want to join the inner-sanctum conversation, you can email me at lildbsnack at gmail dot com.  We can discuss it more there.

xoxo lildb

me and my extremely boring shadow.

So!, HA!, yeah, I was gonna do that weird post-every-day-in-November thingy, 'cause I'm highly unrealistic (read: high) about such business (you thought, nay, you prayed I'd say "bidness," didn't you.  Oh, no, mothafucka.  I do not roll the way you think I roll.  I sort of more limp.  Especially after the falling-off-the-press-riser-on-election-night injury that has gifted me with a bruise on my upper-left thigh resembling a tattoo of brains.  Yes, there will be photo evidence.  This I swear.  And I promise it, too, because swearing isn't enough to make you believe me.  You = me in this scenario, by the way, just so we clear, Muriel.  I'm sort of a big fan of my blog, so I like to talk to myself in the posts like I'm actually someone else.  It's good for me.  Unhealthy-good.  It makes me believe I have a fan.  Except I'm not really even a fan.  I only said that to make me feel better.  Try to not let on your awareness if you happen to be reading this.  I'd rather not know.  Anyway, you can just *forget* about bidness.  It's all business, all the time, from here on out.  BUSIness.  I am very, very busi).

I have a new job.

Did I not mention, I quit my old one?, that is, the one I held for about five weeks?  Uh-huh.  I sort of got harrassed on my first day by one of the supervisors, so I decided after a few weeks of having to tolerate his, er, mavericky (only, in this instance, mavericky = independent of, aka lacking, a code of reasonable, adult manner/speech applied toward those who are not on equal footing within the company hierarchy) behavior, that I would do so no longer.  And I quit.  It felt good.  I didn't really feel tolerant enough to survive something so disturbingly stupid (and by something, I mean someone, and, sure, I could've gone back and edited it to reflect that in the initial sentence but that would've required GOING BACK, something I do not do, hence the nauseating rehash, it's why you love me, the you-who-is-me who-is-now-reading-this-post and-laughing-adoringly).

There's some other stuff, too, that I could add; about how I've gone plumb crazy!, plus additional sappy anecdotes about multidinous trips to see therapists and psychiatrists and absorb a variety of medicines into my system in order to "fix" my desire to suicide it all away, and when Jack tilts his head, sparrow-eyed and sweet, and says, why do you need that medicine, mommy?, I get to tell him it's for my brain.  It's mommy's brain medicine.  Because he's easily six months too young to hear that it's to keep the crazy in a holding pen.

(Or maybe he's ready.

In fact, I'm gonna go way out and suggest he's ALREADY AWARE OF T-H-E C-R-A-Z-Y.)

p.s.!

I love you, me.  *winks back at saucy self*

(Saucy is sorta depressing, all of a sudden.  Like Charo trying to recapture her original disco-awesome glory in the late nineties.

Or toast that's burnt on the edges and still soggy in the middle.)

(Also, I just realized why I have to take brain medicine.  It's for the brains.  That are tattooed on my upper left thigh.  Said photos of which exist, *and* are forthcoming.  Except, they're gross.  Exactly/like/brains.)

all around me.

I live in a place where
my thoughts leap up from the page
tinted in hints, tendrils of physical ellipses

The items collect, the dust is neglected, the detritus rejected
by my hand
that recoils

To whom do I utter the thoughts I now keep
that I guard
untenderly
tended

Would that my courage could find its sticking point
somewhere other than in
my heart
in its finest, most curdlingly fearful, yet pained, locales

Word to the weary and-yet-unwise;
do not put off doing today what you will not yet avoid
in a tomorrow that will come

Like the dog's muzzled nudges,
the curtains pulled asunder
the muttered confusion
that grows into a clarion call of clarity
from the child-into-man

And in the betweens,
sleep
and do not dare peep at the drifts
of clothes
and assorted scattered matter
do not let its existence collect
inside of a viewed tense

Rather,
sleep
with both lids
clamped
until the rigid brows, bowed,
become softened by time,
and relax into their lines of closure
naturally.

onions make me cry.

And again, I find myself wishing The Onion was real news.

(Sometimes I close my eyes real, *real* tight and pretend it is, anyway.)

(Totally blew it on the post-every-day-in-November thing, huh.  woopsie.)

drowning Batman.

Jack:  "I'm dwowning Batman, mommy!  Wookit!  Wookit him drowning, go down, down, down into the deep, deep, deep bottom of da tub, mommy, see he's dwowning, mommy?"

me:  "Why is he drowning, though?  Batman's a superhero, honey.  He doesn't have to drown.  He could survive - he usually does, in fact."

Jack: "But no, mommy!  He's gonna dwown.  He's gonna hafta dwown, I think.  Batman's dwowned."

me:  "Is this because the fish were drowned yesterday and they died?  Is that why Batman's drowning?"

Jack:  "Yeah.  He's dwowning just like the fish."

me:  "Maybe Batman could play with that shark instead of drowning?  Maybe he could play with the shark and the polar bear?"

Jack:  "No!  Batman and the shark can NOT play together, mommy.  They are NOT friends."

me:  "Why can't they be friends?"

Jack:  "Because they're people, mommy, and people aren't friends."

me: (choking down laugh) "People aren't friends, Jack?"

Jack:  "No, mommy, they aren't.  They're just people.  And they sometimes just aren't friends."

As he sing-songed to himself afterward, I contrived to think of something, a vignette, maybe, that I could include with this, to write it as a post that referred to something else, something bigger, that could make the point so I wouldn't have to even comment on it. Which I sort of decided would be too easy.  Kind of a cop-out.  After all - the worst part of having that conversation is trying to determine any of its meaning.  Realizing, as I do, that there could be so many interpretations.  And each of them would be utter crap.  Because he doesn't even know what he meant by any of it, and when I ask him in several years about its significance, he'll not remember. 

And, yes, I will ask him.  It's the kind of annoying thing I do.

My mother would agree with that statement.

spiderman shirts matter tremendously.

The one Jack owns is imperative.  He must be clad in it.  At. All. Times.  Even if it smells like urine, because when he sat down on the toilet on Friday to pee, he forgot to lift the lid, and the shirt soaked up some of the pee, the rest of which spilled all over the toilet lid and down the sides and cascaded onto the floor.  Caleb didn't wash it yesterday (he did ALL of the laundry while I was at a trade show for a bunch of girl scouts while representing the ski resort I'm working for and - oh, my dear baby jesus, that's its own blog post which I'm considering, very delicately, the writing of - possibly today.  We'll see; because, as you and I both know, LIES: I TELL THEM), but this shirt remained unwashed, because this shirt, with its flashing, battery-operated flashy-thingy that emits red flashes beneath a plastic image of le spidey, must be cleaned - very delicately.  Maybe I'll try to wash it AND write the girl-scout post all at the same time.  Then I may possibly bring the proper amount of care to both requirements. 

But probably not.

He's insisting it's fine, now, though, in the meantime, because it's *dry*.  Never mind that it smells of urine.  No matter.  That the urine is no longer wet is all he's concerned with.

 

*raises eyebrow*

p.s. We got a kitten last week.  I wanted to name it something literary or possibly after one of my jazz heroes (I was kind of hoping for Webster, after Ben Webster, whose tenor sax is a dream and I wish my record player worked because I have this double album of his that melts me and, oh, why am I starting down *this* path?  I'm not.  'Bye, path.  Leaving.  Jazz begone!  *poof*).  Somehow, Buster came up and then I quickly went with Dickens, because a.) he's a little Dickens, and b.) I love Dickens.

Buster has remained.  Even our attempts to sway Jack with the alluring sounds of the name Dexter (after Dexter Riley, one of my favorite all-time childhood Disney character favorites; please tell me you remember any of them?  The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes; Now You See Him, Now You Don't; The Strongest Man in the World?  No?  *Sigh*) did not work.  (Also, Dexter's Lab was good and I wouldn't have minded naming a kitty after such a mischievously adorable cartoon child whose accent I very much enjoy abusing whenever I think to do so.  Alas, 'tis not to be.)

But the two gold fish we bought when we got Buster (see?  Slowly growing accustomed) have, sadly, passed into that long night.  May their water be less murky and poopful than it was here on Earth.  Sleep well, little fishes.  Sorry 'bout that whole *really brief existence* business.

p.s. Caleb just called from the store where's he's busily buying those canned cinnamon rolls for me because I begged indolently for them because I am a disgusting, spoiled monster, *this* is a hell of a sentence so far, ain't it?, to tell me that he did, in fact, wash the Spiderman shirt of great importance.

Oh.

i should not do this.

So I will.

Post Every Day This Month.

(Watch for regularly more insane updates on a daily basis.)

(Oh, dear.)