i obsess.

good, not great, post about my almost-suicide yesterday.

I hesitate to share this.  I worry.  I worry that I holler “wolf” and you say, oh.  Sure.  Heard it.  And then you go away and watch something more entertaining, where people commit to things and follow through and do so with quiet determination.  You know.  Interesting behavior.  (That’s what the director of my acting school said, that the actors who are most absorbing to watch aren’t the ones who give in easily to crying; it’s the ones who *fight* the tears.  Struggle to keep from losing their composure, losing sometimes for a moment, but mostly managing to keep a stiff upper-lip.  Face the hardship with stalwart strength.) 

I didn’t choose to apply those lessons to life on the stage.  I decided to use them for real life.  I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME TELL YOU WHY.  Me, the girl who delves to the part inside where there is poo-flecked flotsam, where there is detritus and sturm-und-drang and there is also a misplaced key from that one apartment where the memories are haphazard and patchy and drunken and stumbly.  Where the world revolved around sleeping until 3 p.m. because of working at a strip club until 2:30 a.m. followed by a tired-toed exodus to the nearest Denny’s where a few of us would gather to eat questionably-cooked eggs and laugh at the torrid events of the night, sometimes rejoicing over our good fortune, sometimes despairing over where next week’s rent-and-utilities bill money was to come from. 

The reasons for applying acting lessons to life would make sense if I were to unravel them.  I shall.  (I shall try.)  Jeff, my brother, was never normal.  Neither were my parents.  I looked to them for behavior cues in the early stages but recognized the discomfort those behaviors caused in the people around us when I got to be, I don’t know, grade-school age?, and thereafter did my level best to act like anyone else (with, need I mention?, little success).

Enter acting school.  Use it for acting?  WHY?  When I could use it for something far, far more imperative: fooling others into appearing normal on an everyday basis.  DUDE, sign me UP.  I took the lessons from the classes and incorporated them into my daily life.  I don’t know what kind of actor I was (though I did enjoy it, I think, but that wasn’t what I was there for and never pretended it was).  I only know that it taught me how to blend, and that’s what I sought.

I almost took my life (took it where?  Took it to the park?  To the zoo?  The department store?  A movie?  Grocery shopping?  For coffee?  On a personal journey?  Oh, ahhahahhHAHAHAHhaha, I slay me) yesterday.  I stayed home from work, and, against my husband’s beseeching request, as he readied himself for work, remained in bed until nearly lunchtime.  I slept, mostly.  But when I woke, nothing was more logical than the thought of getting up and walking straight into the kitchen where my adhd medication (generic Adderal) resides, stoic, in the cabinet alongside the other medicinal soldiers, the whole regiment a little imbalanced because some of the bottles will simply not click into place, being round, or some daredevils who resist squareness and maintain their rectangular-yet-slightly-oval’d shape, WEIRDOS (aspirin – *sigh*), I thought-counted them into my hand, gingerly, careful to amass the even amount, ten, or twenty.  Yes.  Twenty would do it.  But maybe ten would do just as well?  And if I could get by with ten, why waste the others?  I’m not a fan of overkill.  KILL, yes.  Overkill, no.  (Shut up with your pointing and hand-covered mouth to the gigantic, neon “irony” sign right there in the way of the rest of this post.  I see it too.  Who could miss it?  I don’t WANT to miss it.  I want to ignore it.  Fucker.)

(The sign.  Not you.  I dislike your pointing and guffawing but I don’t dislike you.)

Seventeen pills, though, is messy.  I like even.  I like aligned.  I dislike imperfect, I abhor unfinished.  I’m unfinished.  I can’t finish.  Anything.  I am an utter failure at all I lay my hands on.  This blog is a relevant example.  I’ve never been consistent in my blogging.  When I can really write.  Write well.  I can.  I know I can.  (Today I know.  Yesterday I didn’t, and I won’t tomorrow.  But today, I know.)

So ten or twenty it had to be.  But the decision, another roadblock of Everest proportions, the decision of which, I could not make it.  Instead, I lay there, pondering the pills, wondering at their color, a dusty teal-blue, sort of oceanic, but dusty, so maybe what the ocean would look like if it were covered in desert sand, where the sand was stained, tainted, ruined by the ocean’s heaving bosom of color.  The crosses stamped on their wee roundness.  Crosses.  So tidy.  So easy to parse.  So easy to hang from.

And I decided, but I needed Caleb to know what happened.  Only, I didn’t have the balls to tell him.  I had to tell someone else.  I don’t have Jenny’s number anymore since I accidentally erased my entire phone book in my phone a few weeks ago when I updated the software and didn’t back up the contents (oh.  Hi!, i-do-dumb-things), but I would have probably called her if I had it. (And if you click through the link you'll see why I feel so stupid about complaining that I'm miserable ONCE AGAIN, because I've blogged similarly so often and for so long. 

I cannot stand myself.) 

I do have Gwen’s number, so I called her.  Partly because I knew she would answer (even though she’s in Switzerland, it was after the girls were in bed and she’d be home and have time to talk).  Partly because I knew I could ask her to contact Caleb, even if she just used twitter to DM him.  I could tell her.  She could tell him.  She could explain.  Explain why.  She’s so logical.  So capable of translating things from illogic to logic.  I reasoned thusly, dry-eyed.  I felt no compulsion to cry.  What’s sad about something so smart?  So sane?  I would finally free everyone from having to bear the burden of me.

It wasn’t until I called her to tell her that I was going to do it that I cried, not sobbing but still, choked up, and with tears running, ugly, down my cheeks and into my hair.  Onto my pillow.  I heard myself, how lame I sounded.  How weak.  How defenseless.  I knew I would resent Gwen for having to hear it.  I wished I hadn’t called her.  But then, somehow, she got me to laugh and think of something else.  And then my crying was more coughing, and I wasn’t as fixed on the dusty-blue cross-stamps on the Adderal, I was agreeing that it would be good to put on pants, to brush my teeth, to go and stand in the middle of Trader Joe’s and drink a smoothie and watch, watch the people in all their imperfect glory as they wheeled by on their ordinary errands of sustenance and routine and wonderful prosaic chip-and-salsa banality.

She says I owe her the Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” at karaoke in New York at the BlogHer conference this summer.  (If I go.  I may go.  Money is sketchy.  Let’s not talk about it.)  I agree.  She knows it’s funny for me to sing something so obvious.  So do I.  (And I have to fight against the urge to spew the opposite of the truth, or, that is, to deliver the wretched rejection of someone who held me by the hand as I scrambled my feet in gravel on the ledge, rather than the heartfelt gratitude I know I owe.  But: to owe someone to that great height, it's horrible.  I know she understands and won't rub it in or try to take credit, will lightly dismiss the whole business as having been entirely up to me, and I tremble at the thought of thanking her when I recognize my own future possible desire to erase her from my life so as not to have to remember that phone call, I AM A FUCKED UP FUCKWAD, <---evidence.)  I think keeping such awful desires obvious, keeping the light focused on them, is really important.  It’s only when I begin to pretend that I’m not going to occasionally long to (say it, Debbie, JUST SAY IT) -- kill myself (ugh!, shudder!), to act as though I’m fine, I’m doing fine, to act this pretend-part of fineness,

to act,

that I lose the essential piece of connectedness to whatever keeps me from foraging for an even number of the instruments of potential self-killing.

So I’m not consistent.  So I’m uneven and probably as bipolar as I’ve denied that I am to myself for years after the labored diagnosis of bipolarism (combined with adhd, which makes it all so much more confusing, like the bipolar is multiplied by the adhd to the fourth power, or vice-versa) in November of 2000, so I don’t finish things and I quit and I have uneven commitment to all the things I have professed, once upon a glorious time, to love.  So I do all of this. 

It doesn’t mean I am going to quit trying to live.

I’M NOT GOING TO QUIT TRYING TO LIVE.

Okay?  Okay.

*

And then I did a brilliant thing and submitted this piece to Brene Brown's amazing blog, A Week of Worthiness, in answer to her request for pieces on working to be okay.  Which I'm doing.  Just, well, some days are harder than others.  This is the best I could do yesterday.  Which means I! WIN! (for now).

(Good enough.)

*

Updated to point you here: ADHD mommy.

(Because it's a thank-you card of sorts.)  (I am crap at saying thanks and feeling it's remotely sufficient.)

you people in there inside the internets over there: get ready for some crazy-pie. (crazy DELICIOUS, and you know this.)

*I wrote this last night.  I was un-sober.  Go forth and read, if you dare.

Jersey-Shore-speak has embraced my tongue, it would seem.  Like a snake dry-humping a mongoose clothed in a colloquialism.  And you thought I was gonna say codpiece.

I'm sort of enchanted by that notion.  There's an exoticablayciousness imbued in the image of a snake wearing clothing.  Snakes don't strike me (YES! score) as the most sartorial of creatures on their good days, let alone the first couple bites at an all-you-can-eat lunch.

You know something weird and completely unrelated to the above?  (Because I'm sure you are ready to shiv me for leaving behind the thing about a snake at a buffet joint wearing golfing pants and a short-sleeve button up.  Polyester takes the lead!)  It's this:  Writing funny, writing in a deliberate, pointed fashion gets -- heyyyyy.

I just figured out something that's about twenty-five (okay, I LIKE even segments of time, GWEN, I appRECiate them because I'm a dullard, THERE) layers of everyone-including-my-four-year-old-knew-but me - namely, habits:  THEY'RE HABIT-FORMING.  My god.  Semantics knowledge, even in a limited amount, would've been tasty in my broham sandwich, back there.  HEY SEMANTICS, YOU WEREN'T HAM.  YOU WERE KRAFT SLICES.  NO.  NOT PLURAL.  SLICE.  SINGULAR.   

*laughs at Semantics' weak baby-tears*

(Semantics, as it happens?  NOT SO TOUGH AFTER ALL.)

I came here by way of the idea to post about Ella through this.  I know, technically, how it's going to feel to lose my pet, my dog, my family, but I don't know how to

/

/

/

I don't know how to lose another pet.  Not with a kid to watch me break down.  Break down.  I'm gonna break it down.  Imma make a workout video.  NO.  I'M GONNA MAKE A WORKOUT VIDEO.  Only I'm serious.  And it's gonna be me, working out to my gorgeously lame mom music that was hip anywhere from 5 to 20 years ago, and the only current thing I know about is Lady Gaga, which, seriously, I challenge you to find five people who haven't heard of Lady Gaga who aren't simultaneously in comas from watching other people in comas who were married to the people who invented comas.  But where was I about my fucking rad idea to make a workout video where I dance to my momtunes and make breakfast and call that a workout?  Like, I truly believe I've worked out?

YEAH.  THAT SHIT IS GONNA BE INSANE.

I should go.  I should note before I do that tonight, Ella went to sleep on Jack's bed.  Validly so.  Where he was asleep before her.  I SAID, HE was asleep. BEFORE HER.  *historic annotation here*

She lifted herself up after he went to sleep and lurched down from the bed, then trotted downstairs to hang out with her human dad.  It's weird to say that.  But he is.  Well, if not dad, pack-leader, then.  Important figure in her life.  Person who gives her food.  Dude who used to let her sleep on all the furniture before pack-mom put her foot down.  FELLOW DOG WHO WILL ALSO SLEEP ON EIGHTEEN-WEEK-UNWASHED SHEETS.  There.  It done got said.  As is proper.

I like her, okay I love her, I'm terrified to lose another dog.  Buffy (shut up my mom's fault not mine) was our dog from when I was eight until I was twenty four.  *soft whistle*  In some ways I'm *still* recovering from that loss.  I was scared to get another dog.  The thought of loving another creature even nearly so much as I did Buffy feels like curdled milk in my throat.  Jesus.  And in some ways I've kind of totally held myself away from her, always with the oh, the dog hair and the oh, god, the stank, and the get-out-my-way!  Not wanting to have to say goodbye in twelve or fourteen years.  And this - it's not been eight yet.  She's too young.

When my grandpa Ray died, he was eighty-four, he was (limp)armed and ready.  He had lung cancer and that's what killed him, but he was tired before its advent.  He died in our living room after lunch on a Sunday, and we put our dog down the next morning, skies gray as wet cement.  Buffy had been so ill, infirm, incontinent, my dad carrying him outside to piss and shit for over a month.  They didn't want to prolong the thing.  They'd actually kept him alive for Grandpa, who was staying with us during the last stages of his cancer, Grandpa, who loved the shit out of that dog.   And the shit, it was coming out.  Poor Dad!  Carrying Buffy!  Several times a day, even. 

And they'd already decided.  When Grandpa went, so would Buffy. 

It fucking sucked to mourn them both and not be sure who I was crying about.

I know, now, that even though I was incredibly angry with my parents for that decision cast in red-hot-poker-pointed iron, pressed to my skin, to my brother's dog-devoted flesh, I can't be so angry with them.  I find, again, my hypocrisy rearing its head and growling at my aware-brain when I see that I face a similar choice, a situation beyond my control where I must make a snap judgement and a split decision and it's for my family, this group of fellow travelers, I no longer have the liberty to point and say, you, you did this.  Because the finger hits me dead-center in my gut.  Golly.  That shit hurts.

I love my mom and dad even though they've hurt me.  I wish they accepted my non-acceptance of their religion.  If they could see it, see my choices, recognize their validity, 

that would be awesome but it ISN'T GONNA HAPPEN LET IT GO GEEEEEEEEZ.

I need to close.  Nothing's coming to complete this outline-for-the-lay-of-a-madman's-mind and wrapping-up hour hath arrived on wings of nascent taco chips (I had these KICK-ASS taco chips today from last night's burrito dinner and taco chips sound right now like kind of the next best thing to eating a roll of sour candy from the flat of Andy Samberg's palm. 

Oh, that's it, I've hit on the thing to close on.  Shy Ronnie. 

Have you ever even HEARD of such a piece of middle-age-lady-bait as Andy Samberg?  You know what that last sentence needs, there?  It needs a term that defines "middle-age-lady" in fewer syllables.  Gosh.  I surely wish there were one.

Poo.)

(But seriously, have I ever regaled you all with my vexing almost-toxic lust for Seth Rogen and all of his weirdbeard, Geeky with a TM friends?  I have a problem. 

I may be Stiffler's mom.)

Phew.  And you were worried this was gonna get sappy all over again.  I wouldn't do you like that, Boo.  I would not.  *kisses fingers, lets kisses ooze from hands like ladders of blood from an open wound*

i love my husband. no. sereusly.

My stupid toe still hurts.

Today was kind of particularly awful, because I broke almost everything I looked at, including my workstation pc because I'm an insatiably-curious idiot who insists on spelunking in the some of the creepier corners of the internet without safety goggles and a hazmat suit, and I interacted with some bleeding, oozing thingeroo that gave my pc cooties AND NO, IT WASN'T P0RN, OR EVEN P0RN-ESQUE, I was, actually, believe me or don't, reading up on SEO-creation, as that's something I do for my job, and I linked to something a little weird and then a little weirder AND IT STILL WAS NOT P0RN, JESUS RON JEREMY CHRIST, I WAS AT WORK, ANYWAY, YOU PEOPLE WEAR ME OUT WITH YOUR SUSPICIOUS MINDS, GEESH, where was I?, ah, yes: aaaaaand and so, the pc: I broke it, sorta.  Lame.  Other things were also broken, not the least of which was my heart because I only just, JUST, today, realized how desperately sad I am not to have my beauteous friend Gwen here in the US of Hey any longer to kick around.  Oh, good golly, the pain, and SHE thinks she's got the worst of it because she's all, oh, wahhh, I have to adjust to living in some other country, etc.

Obviously, Gwen, you need to realize where the true impact of all this agitating lies: IN ME.

*graciously provides silent moment so as to allow it to sink in*

Anyway, I'm also pissed because I'm not pregnant, even though I LIED, BLATANTLY, to myself, to myself and everyone, about how glad I am not to be, for lo, I shall have the capacity to travel to Massachusetts in October and participate in my husband's cousin's wedding (don't get me wrong, I'm stoked and honored to be in the wedding, I just -- oh, oh.  Ugh, this urge, this prerequisite of explaining of things within me -- why do I try?  Seriously, why?  What is the deal with my programming that makes me think I can fix everything, make the world a better place, if I can only manage to EXPLAIN myself to -- myself.  Plus everyone else.  I despair of me).  I shall, further, have the ability to potentially go from Mass. to Switsish land if I'm not a giant, heaving whale of a breeder, and as to whether we will ACTUALLY do such a thing is not what matters, currently, it's the knowledge that we *might*.

Dig?

Oh, man.  Sad.  Tired.  Husband peevish because I wanted a new sink in our bathroom, resulting from reaching my legal limit on ability to deal with ugly flower-shaped pedestal sink placed there by old owners-from-H-E-double-toothpicks, what with the only location permissible for the handsoap being bang! in front of the handle where you turn the water on, which meant you had to pick UP the handsoap each time you wanted to wash your hands, and then, there you were, holding the soap while also trying to wash, and it was all very awkward.  Not to mention, hecka awkwardER when you're a chick who uses a diva cup and needs to clean it and the stupid thing is slippy and the soap for it has to be fetched from a cabinet behind you but there's no room to keep it on the stupid effing pedestal sink, the flower-shaped one, WHY DO THEY SELL SO MUCH UGLY CRAP WITH A FLORAL MOTIF IN HOME GOODS?, WHY IN THE NAMES OF HAYWOOD AND WAKEFIELD, WHY?, so there you are, again, holding the soap, but this time, also the slippy cup thingy and suddenly, one of them goes flying and you're desperately trying to keep hold of the other and then WOOPS!, there *it* goes, too, and in that same instant, your 4 y.o kid comes blasting around the corner and says, hey, Mommy!, whatcha doin'?, and spies the damn cup and begs, BEGS to know what it is and what it's for and WHY can't he know, Mommy, WHY?, and so on, and finally, you just throw up your hands and march off to Ikea, land of less-expensive bathroom sinks-and-whatnot, and you fight your way like a fish going upstream through the Sunday afternoon traffic and everyone kind of looks at you going the wrong way and thinks, "Oh, poor dear, she's never going to make it," and shakes their head kindly and through a true yet misplaced concern, because holy cripes, do you ever know where you're going.  You've been there more than you have been to church -- well, in the last sixteen years, that is.  Before that, not true.  Opposite-ish.  Etc.  But yes.  Found a sink.  And subsequently gave my husband a case of the classic Ikea-induced peeves.  It's Swedish and the elements don't work with US proportions, and it's kinda un-fun from what I gather.  From the sounds of banging, swearing and soft, soft sobs.  I go nowhere near the sounds, because I DON'T have a death-wish.

Doy.

The really great part is that it's my husband's birthday on Thursday.  Happy birthday to him, huh?

Yeah!

*pats self on back*

So, yep.  POOR ME.  Poor my-sadness.

(Do me a favor; ignore the gnashing-teeth sounds emanating from the bathroom so you can stay focussed on pitying ME, alrighty?

Thanks.)

badly-sprained toe-karma master strikes. for totally valid reasons.

May I recommend, as a seasoned experiencer of awful, semi(drunkenly)-predicted awfulness, that you avoid pronouncing your next injury on your blog?  BECAUSE THEN, IT WILL HAPPEN.  AND YOU WILL SAY, HOLYSHITTHATHURTS.

I am only trying to help.

As I have officially stubbed the bloody stuffing out of my toe.

I think it sort of went like this:

brain: "Time to pee."

ears: "Husband is showering in the pee room.  (How dare he.)  Wait a tic."

brain: "Ope!  The showering has ceased!  Get thee ready, loins and such, for peeing time to commence!"

ears: "Husband is insisting that we should get out of bed.  Let's excuse our seeming slothitude for our desperate need to pee, and having laid in wait to do so, post-showering in the pee-room.  Fingers, cross thyselves."

brain: "Ha!  He fell for it.  Also, wow!  Pee-time.  Also, ears, seriously?  Thyselves?  The middle-english pomposity has gotta go.  Plus I'm *pretty* sure it's "thineselves."  *whispers* losers."

ears: "Dude.  Brain.  Still heard that.  BECAUSE, WE'RE :: THE :: EARS.  Brain, you make us sad."

body: "Brain!  Ears!  Shut up!  We're at all systems go!  Can I get a second on that movement?"

ears, brain, grumbling unintelligibly together: "Yeah, sure.  Fine.  Whatever."

right pinky-toe: "Harumph.  Nobody ever asks ME whether I'm good with moving.  I get the shaft on an all-too-regular basis.  Screw those self-important assholes.  I'm staying put here in this dark, soft place where there's a cozy mini-bed-on-bed made entirely of dog hair commingled with coils of sproingles from head's topping.  So what if it's mostly gray and full of split ends?  Beats a cold, badly-in-need-of-washing faux-Italian-tile floor that's a little too slippery for bathrooms/other likely wetted-on-regular-basis spaces due to its fauxocity?  Yeah.  YEAH." right pinky-toe folds tiny, invisible arms obstinately across tiny, pink toe-chest

asshole: "Excuse me, right pinky-toe?  You talkin' to me?"

right pinky-toe: *weighs options, chooses to ignore asshole*

asshole: "I get so damn tired of everyone taking my name in vain.  Christ." shakes tiny, shrunken head, defeated

body: "Move it out!  Blankets up!  Legs overboard!  Torso lurch toward bathroom drunkenly!  Too nearly drunken for real!  Slow up!  Okay, good movement, everyone!  Keep it upppPPPPWHATHTHEFUCKJUST-OWWWWWWWWWWWCHHHHH" entire body slams down onto slimy faux-crackled tile, alive with pain reverberating from churlish pinky-toe

right pinky-toe: "Ha."

p.s. Right pinky-toe didn't exactly get the last laugh, given that it split its head wide open on the wall it smacked into, AND is either fractured or sprained.

See, RPT?  Nobody, NOBODY wins in these situations.  Least of all the bladder.  The bladder spent waaaay too long waiting for the mind-breaking pain to cease before it was allowed to unhinge itself.  I'd keep an eye peeled for bladder after this.  Because it is now UNHINGED.  AND TOWERS ABOVE YOU.  AT. ALL. TIMES.  Open wounds are easy to compromise.  Something bladder is rather TOO well aware of.   Why ARE you so aware, bladder?  Oh.  Uh.  What?  I was -- hahahhahahahh!  Just! Kidding!  Ahem.  *backs up as bladder slowly circles, menacing*

p.s. I think bleeding is a good, generic metaphor for -- other kinds of bleeding.  If you can dig it.  *wink, wink*  *sad, sad*

so that's what you think you want.

Her hair, strewn back and across her sharpened shoulder blades, so much seaweed but in a champagne tint, wet and soft.  It came around as she whipped her neck in a quick arc, slapping her cheek, moistening her nose, surprising her.  Slurping audibly on her skin as she turned back, now, slower, motivated less by his words and more by her desire to move away from it all, from the light and the speed and the anger, away, away, away.

If you think you can treat me like, like -- why.  Why, I could -- I could just, just snap, and things would be SO different, you can't imagine.  You think you're so important, such a key element in my life, but actually?  NO.

She snatched up her wine glass and hid her slightly tottering movements as she paced away from him, back toward the campfire where her mother and husband and child laughed and looked a picture of comfort and cozy near the yellow-orange spires of flame.  Her dad, with a sour grimace she could barely discern, simply peered, with pinched gaze, into the vague middle distance and away from her softly crumbling beauty, once statuesque, once impressive, now gentling, like couture removed, several seasons beyond sharp-chic recognition, at first blade-harsh, at present a thing that goes on and on and on until it suddenly is akin to your mother's curtains:  dated.  Garish. 

Unpleasant.

The window streamed, angular, with highway lines of irregular water, her eyes tracing through its tracks, waiting for a rhythm, an ancient quiet of steady logic, where none would exist, not today.  She turned blearily to her husband's ruddy cheek and remarked on its stoic length without fingers to aid her.  Fingers that ache, now, a little, fingers she flexed upon the thought, beneath the salmon-pink blanket, fingers too taut and congealed to be her own, too old.  Too soon.  

The little boy, his voice a dusty, delightful LP of scratches in the cobwebbed morning, brought his arrow-straight body into their bed as a catapult of energy, still surprising despite its being routine of late.  She saw the man wince as the harpooned child hit its mark, the father's body lanced with his offspring's weight straddling his gut.  She put her hand over her mouth to catch the laugh, so the child wouldn't think it was a move he ought to incorporate into his routine just to amuse her. 

The man and child rough-housed as she lay, static, her mind skipping lightly over the conversation she'd held with her own male parent the previous evening.  The feeling of its being the newest rendition, a cover of all their attempts at this very conspicuous, repeated piece of disastrous wreckage recorded on warp speed and played back in a screech in her mind.  Not just a feeling, a true truth, her knowledge of their inability to find a groove to fall into in their talk that remotely resembled the other's, and how lifelong-harsh that frustration, that frustration.

Then she remembered, with an ease, a sliding-down toward the thought, of the day when she had chased her brother down from the attic in their rented house that lay outside the tiny town in Missouri, chased him, with hoarse screams, down the ladder from the attic that led to the top of the carport, she crawled down as quick as she could but still trailing him as he leapt, sprung to the first of the rough 2x4s nailed into the stately tree's bark, a rung too high for her six-year-old state.  She railed at him, screamed more, even wept.  But he was on and on, higher into the tree, until he'd simply - disappeared.  His usual trick.  Going where she could not follow.

And then her father, behind her, catching her up, in his strong, steady arms, and suddenly there they were, bursting through the dark, guarded leaves and into the strong light that shone on their bright heads.  They lay on the warm, wooden platform, then, all three, side by side, and picked out the bunnies and giraffes and monsters and the profiles of beautiful ladies in the massive white ships of cotton drifting easily above them.  It was the longest afternoon of light and warm and safe, safe, safe.  And she felt its beauty in her small hands, gripped it.  It felt like golden light and green winds, soft and swaying, and the bluest blue ever written about by the greatest of wordsmiths.  And her father and her brother, their camaraderie together, they three.  

Her father interrupted her reverie to ask if she would like a cup of the coffee he was pouring into a thin white cup.  A curt head shake was her response, after which she felt guilty and gave a further explanation, messy and overwrought and altogether unnecessary.  Then she got up and walked outside so she could catch her breath. 

Small fires were already smoldering in the early morning drizzle, their pungent scent a meager offering to her bruised emotions, her own gaze into the gray mist a study of bitten lip and creased brow.  Her rancor and her acquiescence a braided chain to tuck into a sequestered spot somewhere deep and still accessible so that she could remind herself without too much digging about.

modesty and semi-nudity, reconstructed poorly.

I forgot about how interesting it is to witness the behavior of the unprofessionally half-naked. It is, first and foremost, decidedly amateurish. Also, I got nothin'. I'm suddenly too desperate to be gambling, an activity I have avoided deliberately since my arrival in Vegas. Probably because I was a.) initially too hungover from drinking on the plane and b.) trying to recuperate. Um, I'm gonna go gamble. Blogging from my phone is super, but it takes perseverance due to lacking the ability to re-read my nonsense at a glance. Adieu. p.s. I've missed you. And this. Shhhhhhhhhh.

not to be read if you possess a blueprint for enjoying your life.

The thing is, I'm going through a mid-life crisis, but it's kind of precious since it's my first one of what is certain to be a regular item on the menu of my life for the next, oh, fourteen-odd years.  It's kind of sweet and darling and golden in its twirly, twirly petticoats and its first-serious-wrinkles way.  It's adorable in its holy-shit-that-old-broad-in-the-mirror-is-me kinda fashion.  The genuine taken-aback by the quasi-unrecognizable element - it's nothing short of bizarre.

I was never traditionally gorgeous.  I wasn't a looker in high school.  Allow me to qualify that statement: I was not asked out on dates.  This was possibly more a lethal-to-sexual-development combination of an older, protective brother who was a well-known senior upon my arrival as a freshman, who most likely warned everyone of ugly mishaps if they so much as dared to turn their head while I bounced in blissful unawareness down a locker-filled hallway, and my being a gigantic fucking nerd.  I wasn't nerdy in dress, but I was nerdy in reputation, having been a member of the TAG (talented and gifted) program for all of grade school, etc., bla-dee-blowhard-blah.  I got academic awards and achieved - uh, stuff.  Good grades.  High marks in fitness, even.  Presidential fitness award.  Played classical piano for school assemblies.  Was in choir.  Church-attender.  "Good girl."  You know.  Typical hallmarks of your classic nerd.  (That and I have adhd and don't edit my thoughts super-well and was much, much verbally stumblier than I am now, and I am now very stupid in social settings so you can guess at how gawky and stumbly and unpleasant I was in all my excited, bubbly dorkiness.

Big-ass sigh.)

So.  Threatening older-brother who was a decorated athlete and over six feet tall in high school, x nerd signs all over my personal front yard = devestating lack of courting from all but the most annoying male members of the society of my high school for the bulk of my participation in its circumference, unwilling as I mostly was.  This informed my theory of How I Looked To People, Both Male and Female.  I.e., unattractive.

(A year in Brasil as an exchange student during my junior year, as a sixteen-, and then seventeen-year-old horny-ass girl in a foreign locale rife with seriously hot, very willing protagonists, UNaware of my nerdy persona nos Estados Unidos and aWARE that I was a horny-ass Americana, gave me a new perspective on my appearance.  I still chalked up the interest in my sexual wares as my being foreign, being American, sort of like how boys at my school would've probably behaved toward the female French exchange student, no matter how mildly attractive, if we'd ever had one, simply because of the stereotype about how sexy French girls are.  There sure as hell was a stereotype about American girls in Brasil, thanks to American cinema.  I was a disappointment to an awful lotta fellas who assumed we'd be fucking within seconds of an embrace based on the myth.  So I had enough sense to recognize I wasn't merely attractive as a result of my physical merits.  I just wasn't sure what the balance was.  I got that I was taken more at my current value than I would have been if I were still at home, attending my regular school, allotted all of the baggage of having grown up alongside the people there.  Still - a somewhat muddy reflection of me, in the end.)

Once my sentence at public school had been served, with time off in the foreign spot for good behavior, etc., I began to have a better idea of my appeal.  I wasn't sure, despite that, because the adhd is so off-putting and socially crippling.  I'd assess the mirror for hours, turning this way and that, smiling, pouting, mincing, but it never gave me that final assent: yes, you are pretty.  No, you are not pretty.

I just wanted to finalize it, just nail it down, so I could carry on and walk through my day either confident that I was, and behaving accordingly (whatever that fucking would've entailed), or not.  I settled on -- feeling unsettled.

I had a few boyfriends after high school, between the years of nineteen and twenty-one, one of whom was very outdoors-adoring, and once I'd been on enough adventure-dates with him I realized I hated a) makeup and b) him.  (He was an utter ass; lovable, but really, just as ass as a human can be.)  The important thing I took from the relationship was how stupid and pointless makeup is (I'd already come to this conclusion about bras that give the appearance of larger, rounder breasts) - the deception is just embarrassing once the moment of truth arrives, and then you feel like you owe the lucky person an explanation, which sort of totally sucks the sexy out of a moment like nothing else. 

So I was determined to discover the level of my attractiveness to those-who-would-be-attracted based on my natural appearance.  (Also, I figured out just how much I genuinely liked sex, having it, and not allowing stupid shiz like embarrassing, oh!, my breasts are NOT double-Ds! moments to complicate or, truly, dilute the pleasure potential.  HEY, YOU, EMBARRASSMENT: GET OUTTA MY ORGASM.)

Enter stripping.  (I know, it ain't classy-sounding, like "burlesque."  I don't sugarcoat.  As already explained w regards to the makeup and bra business.  You will eventually adjust.)  The convoluted beginnings of the stripping I may have already explained in some prior post, but I don't remember, and I don't much care.  That was that story, this one is this.  And I cannot pinpoint just what it is making me so pissy about refusing to extrapolate that part.  Guess it's my dislike of the imagined audience giving me a scolding look.  Your scolding looks are angering me.  Especially the imaginary portion of the (imaginary) audience, which, btw, includes you.  Yes.  You.  Stop smirking.  Let's un-de-rail this thing, shall we?

It took a while, and some coaxing on the part of many acquaintances/friends made in those cloying strip-club dressing rooms that were sometimes closets with a mirror and a low shelf and a bulb dangling from a string, to recognize the validity in costume for the role of stripper.  I had to be almost held down at one point, by a woman who viewed herself sort of club-queen at the Pure Platinumb (the "b" in that is my clever addition) marched me over to her chair, who plopped me down and proceeded to clown my face out of existence under several trowels-full of heavy makeup.  The works.  Then she shoo'd me out of the dressing room where I'd been dithering and into the dark club, where I was suddenly reacted to by SEVERAL customers at once.  As in, more than two.  Possibly as many as three.  It was weird.

After that, I got more comfortable with the idea that I was attractive.  I got used to being whistled at or looked at as a pretty, a beautiful, woman, though -- not really.  I was always sort of surprised by it when it wasn't at a strip club.  If someone spoke to me on the street or wherever people say random things or make animal noises at pretty people, it always sent a shock of color to my face and a mumbled thanks or stupid thing that would burble helplessly from my lips.  The reason this is kind of amazing is because, if I were dressed in a two-inch skirt and fishnet half-shirt minus any undergarments, with a full face of makeup and hair pinched and prodded and six-inch stilettoes, I had no difficulty firing back immediately if someone said something to me regarding my appearance, or really, anything at all.  It was the costume - it empowered me to be bold in my response to an approach by a strange person, woman or man.  In my day-to-day, where I wore large, balloon-ish, clown-y clothes that never alluded to my job, I was incognito, and as such, unequipped to respond to comments about my looks.  Shocked, even, when people would hit on me when I was dressed - goofily, in thrifted, sloppy, ill-fitting things that hid my shape, my hair in a low bun, my fifties-librarian glasses with no lenses masking my face.  Why would they? - I wasn't pretty.  I didn't have any of the markers of a pretty girl on my person.  Surely it was fool-proof (it wasn't). 

So looks are mostly about markers, I figured out, especially because I leapt from dancing to acting school, and got even more into costumes and props and markers and what does and does not conspire to make someone react to one's appearance.

At a certain point, I realized that there was an element of basic, good genetic shape to my physique and my facial structure that made people think I was pretty or good-looking or whatever, but that I could disguise it, mask it, or I could appeal to a certain sub-set of people based on the costume I was wearing at that moment.  Some days, I deliberately appealed to the crowd, because I needed it.  I needed them to tell me I was pretty, good looking.  I needed them to approve of me without knowing me, without learning about my tics and my dorky, shivery-lapdog behavior that would out me if I were sans costume, because I needed the ease of approval from strangers.

Some days, I did not want that approval.  I would go as far as I was allowed (particularly at work, where, uh, looking ugly and unappealing was rather frowned-upon, but I pushed it as far as I could, just to test the people around me, test them to see if they would discover an attractive person beneath the ugly, crusty, off-putting exterior, because I wanted to believe that if *they* could find that attractive person in there, maybe she really did exist).

(This was all very organic, very indirect.  I wasn't aware of all of this on a conscious level.  I can see it now, plain as day, natch, but back then it was just some foggy feeling I intuited about how I should operate, some weird, ingrown vibe that I found irrestible and was obedient to.  No better explanation for the behavior than that, which seems sad, somehow.)

And then some good and bad things happened, and I quit acting and I quit life, sort of, at least, I seriously tried, and would have succeeded but this dude who eventually became my husband intrigued me and then insisted that he wanted me to stick around and have his babies and be his incredibly argumentative wife who refuses to do or be anything he would really view as "dream girl" quality but then be horribly contrary and work tirelessly to do and be all of the things that constitute that person when he isn't expecting it, and oh!, did I mention, my husband's a (medal pending) saint?  Because he is.  A grumpy, mostly perfect saint.

So here I am.  Thirty-six and grabbing the last dregs of these days of what I finally realize are pretty ones.  But get this: it's already nearly gone.  The sands have shifted downward, they have slipped trickily out of my grasp even as I scrabble over the surface of my body of my face of my head of my sanity and clutch, clutch, clutch.  The costume days are drawing to screechingly abrupt halt.  I am - aging.  I am not pretty any longer.

I wouldn't resent it so goddam much if I could have ever, just for one goddam day, really believed it in the first place.  I didn't know I had it 'til it was gone.   And - make no mistake.  It is GONE.  Irrevocably, irretrievably departed.  My costumes now will involve ridiculous old ladies.  How much costume they'll be is anyone's guess.

I reach out for old age and I beg for it.  I am no pious patient.

*attempts to leap over yawning chasm onto opposite shelf where old age rests, refusing to acknowledge how that maneuver has never yet worked, that cutting in the line is impossible and the growth necessary in the interim is vital, and in fact the attempt to cheat somehow seems to delay the growth so much that it will arrive later than it does for everyone else and she will be left, standing, alone, behind, ashamed of her attempted circumvention of the necessary route through painful reality and its resultant pain will lacerate her more as it is coupled with shame*

Eat me, oh, young, oh, youth, oh, offspring.  Pierce me with a skewer and devour me.  Save me from this slow, wretched amble into obscurity, into the dust, into ever-deepening madness.  I am not so dried and hollowed that I won't still make an excellent meal. 

Just be sure to put some gravy on the table.  In case.

far overdue drunken-blogging sesh. (you're pleased. i can tell from here.)

It's that time, ladies and genitals, to produce a blog poo, er, post, where I'm all hopped down on booze.  So what's to stop me?  Nothin'.  Nobody.  My fella's in bed with a sick.  And the son is -- god, please -- asleep. 

I am not pregnant.  I repeat:  Not.  Pregnant.

I am sad.  I repeat:  I. am. sad.

*wishes there were more beer in the growler, but there isn't because she poured it into her glass and syphoned the last drops out with her mouth, she's SO CLASSY LIKE THAT*

So.

Fuck YOU, people younger than me who had your second kid already.  And FUCK YOU, people who are older than me who have had your second kid already, and FUCK. YOU. if you're having your second kid now and you're younger or older or the same goddam age, to the minute, but mostly, FUCK you if you already had your second kid and you aren't broke as shit and you aren't living every minute like it's all about to blow up, like you're grasping an unpinned grenade in one hand while you wash dishes and fold laundry and work like mad with the other.

FUCK YOU.

It ain't happening up in here, up in this potentially-tapped uterus.  I don't know why.  I only know I have resented any of you who are not in my particular boat, this one shaped like thirty-six years, this one, with its increasing creases and its warping bow and its more misshapen shape, daily, its less attractive form, its unripening entrails, its heartbreaking, spirit-defying, maddening  - ness, you aren't here, so I hate you.  Not rationally. Rationally, I'm all smiles and pretense.

But inside, I hate you from stem to stern.

I'm sorry.

I don't want to.

I just -- can't help it.  I can't help how much it makes me spit and fume inwardly to know that you have your heart's desire.  And I don't.

I DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING KNOW this was my heart's desire until a few years ago, when I got an F on a pregnancy test, and it hurt.  And since then, every single one has hurt more, where now, it's a willed mastery of all my strength to not break everything in sight when I discover my uterus is empty, emptying, dumping its stupid bloody contents into my porcelain nightmare of disposable heartbreak, FUCK YOU, UTERINE BULLSHIT.

Uteri get it so easy.  They just lounge for twenty-thirty years, in most cases, then work for ten-twelve months and then another break for a year or two or three, then maybe one more go of a year, and then done.

Granted.  The uterus takes on an Herculean task when it labors.

But the bitch gets to recreate forEVER after.

I envy my uterus?

I'm just so tired.  I'm envying everyone.  I'm envying those who are better-dressed, better-looking, better-aged (ahem, younger) or more comely in their aging (ahem, older and better-kept).

FUCK ME.  For not rolling with the punches.

Punch and Debbie.  That's who I want to reincarnate into.

it's my birthday. it's my birthday.

Too many two-bite vanilla cupcakes from Whole Foods eaten while on the downhill slope away from the climax of Thanksgivingery consumption will sort of dismiss your will to celebrate your laceratingly! thrilling! 36th year of deliverance from the womb of disastrous proportions (not blaming my mother, here, but a little, but mostly just commenting on my existence as a whole, honestly -- but still with at least a tad of totally over-personalized hatred for having to exist at all, because my parents just couldn't resist forcing my becoming on all of us).

Cupcakes.  Attempts to fathom the whys and wherefores.  Vodka and ice cubes and some kahlua and cream drizzled on top to make the vat o' vodka pooled amongst the cubes slightly more palatable in order to down it with more grace and less precision.

It's one of those days, folks.

Tomorrow, Britney Spears and I are celebrating our raisins in the sun.  Minus the sun, on my part, but who knows?  Maybe Britney will toast to her (mid?  late?  *shrug*) twenties in a tropical locale. 

MY birthday wish involves, among other things, snow.  It won't happen, because this is Oregon.  Specifically Portland, and we're at sea-level, or thereabouts, so no, vodka-laced dreams, thou shalt not receive thy snow-capped beneficence.  What the fuck does that even mean, beneficence?  I'm misusing it, or abusing it, one or both, and I demonstrate to you mightily and with sweeping bows my ever-embarrassing, ever-shameful inability to know words.  Or at least their definitions.  So I don't know them in the biblical sense, is my point.  Too bad, since I'll never fuck anyone besides my partner again for the rest of warped-ass time, and hey, I'm coming to realize that's alright since jesus-peanut-monsters but I look not very awesome anymore, and I would be shy in front of anyone more strange than my partner of the last almost-ten years (at least he saw me back in my stripper-strength days of physical tip-toppedness - so he knows what lies beneath the layers of yikes.  Thank heaven.  *smirks dryly*).  But I would like to at least know, biblically speaking, words.  Words because I use them.  I bone 'em dry I use 'em so hard.  And yet I don't always know their meaning.

I'm sorry, words.

(This is why I never made a good gigolo.  Yes.  Women can be gigolos.  At least as far as I know.  I don't know all that much, true, as established in the last over-explaining-yet-incomprehensive paragraph, but I know from unbridled but still somewhat limited searches for truth-through-whoring-around in my earlier years that YES! WOMEN! CAN! be loosey-goosey sexual beings.  Goody.)

(But I sucked at the whole churn-n-burn bit.  I only pined at the wrong times, and I only managed to spurn those who -- oh, whatever.  F. Scott never wrote anything that applied to me, is basically all I'm saying.  I was not wily, nor was I craven.   Probably just dumb and horny.  Sound familiar?  Congratulations, you belong to the "I was also a whore who never wised up, either" club.)

I'm turning thirty-six, and it's not really paining me so much as it is surprising me that I have anything at all to say about it.

Probably the fault of too many cupcakes.  (Fie.  It isn't the vodka.  Vodka is my friend. 

It told me to say that.)

flavors!

There's two kindsa crazy, yo*; there's the "I can kinda dig this shiz" brand, and the "Wooooaaah.  Slow it down, there, Nelly," variety.

I think we both know which kind I am right now.

And I think we both know why you aren't sitting in my lap, petting my hair, and feeding me chocolate-flavored-whiskey as a result.

p.s. With all of the appointments I suddenly have scheduled to see both my therapist and my psychiatrist, you'd think I was a) popular and b) rich.  Turns out, I'm *not* Cindy McCain; rather, my husband called and reported that I was, uh, unwell.  Somehow, this alarmed them enough to see me now, rather than in the middle of November.  Cancellations all over the place!  Blowing up like my teenaged-neighbor's celly, yo!

It's so funny.  It's so funny that, once my husband informed them that I might seriously wish to kill myself, they're ALL. ABOUT. ME.

Why not before, though?  When I made all those calls to get appointments?  And even went to some of them (the ones I remembered)?  Why not then?  Why didn't they see it then?

I guess I do an adequate job of covering up the crazy?

(Well, not if you read me on twitter this evening.  But -- never mind that.  Sigh.  I blame the box o' wine.

Okay, and maybe also the crazy.)

*I will allow that, in fact, there may be more than two varieties of crazy.  But, for the above argument, it worked nicely.  Let's just leave it there for now, shall we?  Thank you.  YOU are divine.  And lovely.  And deserving of chocolate-flavored-whiskey.  I'll be sure to feed you some just as soon as I get back in the saddle.

toil.

there is no depth,
no sorrow,

there is only this struggle,
only tomorrow

yay?

I got the job.  So that's good.

On the other hand, we still have to sell the house.

Also, I'm supposed to interview Oregon's soon-to-be Senator, Jeff Merkley, on Friday.  It's a phone interview, so I'm not super-panicked, but still.

Maybe one of you who's kinda good with the words wanna, um, lend me your head for an hour?  We could trade.  It'd be funny.  You could be all, lookit me!  I'm a dummy!, and annoy the shit out of everyone you work with.  Or just scare your toddler to bits.  Me, I could be smart and engaging and on it and know all my questions inside-out and sound really, really articulate and coherent and brilliant.  Look at what you could be doing for me.  No!  Not for me!  For Oregon!  For the future of our country!   For humankind!

I'll be waiting to see whose head is ready to sit on my shoulders in a few days.  Just, you know, be prepared for the eventuality that I may not give it back.

xo Deb

traditions of hangoverness.

Me and mah freend, Cyn.  LOVE THIS GIRL.

Twiggies come in multiples.  (Nora, Gwen, Julie.  STOP BEING SO FUCKING FABULOUS, BITCHES.)

Suebob, you're so dreamy.  And that's our new friend, head-on-a-stick.  (I'm certain this person exists, and is nice, so no dissin'.  All love.  And feel free to come forward and alert us to your existence.)  (Also, who said I was allowed to go out in public with that chin?)

Sarcastically cute.  Especially with head-on-a-stick.

Her boobs make my booblets appear nonexistent.  (Well, and also, just, they are -- kind of nonexistent.) 

I'm hungover and shouldn't be typing.  The shakiness is difficult to overcome.  I'll live.  Somehow.

More updateys later, lovers.  (If the shaking doesn't cause me to inadvertently step into the void situated b/w the hotel's elevator and its doors.  Whee!)

 

a sophisticatedly fitting end to what felt like a pretty sophisticated day.

(But what was probably a day where I had some of this morning's cereal wedged into my gums throughout, and everyone was too polite to mention it.)

's okay.  Just after the second hand had brushed the topmost point of five o' clock, I had the nicest chilled vodka martini, dirty, with two garlic-stuffed olives, and the barest hint of ice slivers dancing across the liquid's surface. 

Evidence:

(Generally, I prefer my martinis with gin, Sapphire if I can get it, but the Crater Lake vodka is not a bad alternative.  Distilled in Bend, OR.  Thumbs up, me!, for being all local in my drunkenn -- er, sophistication.  Which reminds me of my favorite quote:  "Drunk is feeling sophisticated when you can't say it."  Ain't it the truth.)

p.s. After a few of these at prom in a few weeks, albeit with gin in lieu of vodka, I shall probably have to be bodily prevented from swinging from chandeliers, dancing like Michael Jackson (or, that is, my sadly lame interpretation, which probably resembles the chicken dance more than the great gloved one's), and crowing about how I can sing in portuguese.

If you see me, take the drink from my hand.  It's the kindest thing you could do.

(Kidding.  Unless you want a punch in the nose.  I don't enjoy being robbed of free alcohol.  Or any kind of alcohol.  I'm a selfish drunk.)

Lucky Gwen and Nora!

so not into it.

Blogocide = dumb?  Good?

Or just completely inconsequential?

All of 'em.  None.

Whatever.

p.s. If it isn't apparent, I have decided my official excuse on bailing will be because I don't want to talk about being a mom anymore, and I'm not good at talking about anything else.

If/when I bail.  You know.  I'm not so good at sticking to -- much.

beijos.

status.

Tonight:  Drunk.

Today:  Tough.  Didn't spank.   Wanted to spank.  NO, wanted to hit.  Didn't.  (And this should go without saying, but I would rather not risk it:  WOULD. NEVER. HIT.) 

Decided I'm not spanking him anymore.  Tried it for a bit, and felt that the time-outs were more effective.  Spanking always felt ugly to me, anyway, even before I had a child, because of how my parents handled it.  They did it the "go wait in your room" way.  Which was weird and scary.  And, rather than allow me to muse over my having violated a rule, or whatever, it made me sit and tremble in fear of the spanking.  So.  No.  I don't want that in my son's head.  I want him to understand that I'm in charge right now, because I'm his mom, because I have to take care of him until he's old enough to take care of himself, fully, but I don't want to hit him.  Not even spanking him.  I just - don't want to.  There.  I finally made the decision.  (Now to wait for the inevitable backlash.  Though I'll fight it, because I know this -- it.  So, fuck you, future me, and just know I'm ready, fists doubled.)

See?  Drunk.  Haven't wanted to talk about my son or how I'm handling parenting in so long.  I dread the whole thing, in fact.  So many people, parents, are so open about how they're going about it, and I'm just - ashamed.  Afraid.  So afraid.  So terrified.

I know you're thinking, oh, poor Debbie.  Poor, little Debbie. 

Yes.  No!  No.  I'm not poor.  I'm great.  I'm fabulous.  I have a super life.  Don't fucking pity me.  I am so lucky, don't you know how lucky, damn I am.

But the less I have to complain about, the harder that tiny isthmus of pain becomes to grapple with.  It's so hard to pin down.  Enter the anti-anxiety pills.  But I've been taking them only at night, to sleep, now, because I quit caffeine.  As I'm naturally caffeinated.

I will officially be hungover tomorrow.  I kind of wish I could back-track, because I don't like hangovers.   I mean, I know I should heart them, and hug them, and squeeze them, and try to make out with them, but I simply can't bring myself to do so.
 

I don't know why I'm so obsessed again with politics.  I just get so caught up in things.  The political stuff has gotten me down, though, the last few days, because there are sensitive subjects cropping up now and I'm a fucking bull in a china shop, despite my best intentions, on more days than not, and the very last thing I want is to hurt anyone I care about, or even someone I don't know.

I live afraid.  The Rove tactic has worked.  Brilliantly.  I am a living human sliver of fear, upright, poking up through the sidewalk, my length one quivering mass.

My eyes don't want to work so well, now, so I should go.  You're right.  It's tired time.

Until I have the ability to be open again (because, don't let the politics throw you - I'm afraid, afraaaaid these days to be open - you are all watching me now, watching, and I fear your lowered lids, the potential for judgement in their minute dimensions) - tchau.  (Brasilian spelling for ciao.)

*Updated because I re-read this post to check for spelling errors, because, dude, I'm drunk, and I noticed the date.

Well, no wonder I'm sad.

It's my old best friend's birthday.  We don't talk anymore.  We haven't for years, really, and

yeah.

We grew up together; her parents and mine were friends prior to our births.  She's three months younger than me.  My earliest memories are of playing with her.  We've had some really goofy times.  Some really shit ones, too.  Traversing adolescence with a childhood friend is -- rough.  But we managed, we made it across that crazy terrain, and she was one of the only people to stick by me when I went through my stripper stage, and the fucking thing that broke us up was fucking alcohol, and a boyfriend (at least one), and jealousy, and rage, and drugs, and music, and that huge body of knowledge we possess of one another that has become epic and also dangerous, and coolness levels, the levels  - damn.  I even entitled this post "status."  Without realizing.  See, I stopped being cool, I did, really, not that it isn't painfully obvious, but I stopped trying, I could give a fuck, and she's still THE SHIT.  I mean, truly.  She is.  I won't go into an explanation as to why, but trust me.  (Like you give a fuck.)  Oh, fucking shit.

I miss you, G.  I miss my sister/partner-in-crime.  You're much too cool for me these days, but I hope you had a nice day, today.  I hope it made you happy. 

I want you to be happy.

the current dem candidacy smackdown, as viewed through the lense of an ex-stripper.

Back in the dark ages when I was, indeed, a stripper - and I happened to be one for several years, so it wasn't as though I just dabbled; I know from whence I speak - I encountered loads of conflict.  From every arena, in every gender-on-gender way.  I saw men fight men; once, when Jay, my best gay boyfriend, drove me to work for an evening shift, he kind of didn't really want me to go in because right before I got out of the car, we watched a stream of dudes exiting the rear of the building, the first of whom was badly bloodied from face to groin.  The second was carrying aloft what appeared to be a javelin, but was, in fact, I kind of remember, a closet pole dowel thingy (you love me for my scientific specificity, huh).  The first guy had evidently stabbed some dude, boyfriend to one of the other dancers, and then got walloped by some yokels.  It was dumb.  Another friend of ours, along for the ride, happened to be an EMT and was all, "do you think I should *gulp* go in?"  I said, sure, yeah, alrighty.  The subtext of that statement was YES PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME GO IN THERE ON MY OWN.  It ended up fine, and I danced the night away to fun tunes like "Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day)" - it has been my humble opinion for the last few years that the title of that song ought to be altered to "Walk and Crawl All Night, and Potty Every Day," but then, I'm the mother to a toddler who has lately made me want to chew through my chains and bolt.  But that's just this week.

tryin' a get that feelin' back again.

Is it weird that I'm more intimidated by blogging than I was when I began?  I remember the shiny, wet-eared brazenness that motivated me.  I recall feeling vigorous; zesty.  Strapping.  Snappy.  Fresh.

I was gonna wow the world with my brilliant droppings of -- no, wait, that's supposed to pearls of wisdom, not droppings of wisdom.  Yes.  That would be the point, there, and I should probably quit while I'm ahead.  Not that it's ever prevented me from fully fleshing out the horribly boring full thing before, and it's not gonna keep me from it now, either.  I'm drink and I"m gonna bear my breast.  Not with pohotos.  That would be too unkind.  I'm not that cruel.  Also, the only interesting breasts on the inertnets these days are the banned kind, i.e., breastfeeding boobs.  No, not the boobs who feed on breasts, i.e., geeks who have, in all likelihood, been no nearer a physical rendering of a breast featured on a female than in a sweet-ass photo from Hustler.

I just remembered that I used ta speak my mind around here.

You know, I hthink I might post some old journal entries.  To prove that I haven't gotten wackier or more honest in my old writing age, because I need to prove it.  I'm the same as I ever was, in writing terms, only maybe 10% less interesting.  Or, you know, several percentage points higher than that, or just throw a zero on the end of the original number. 

The point, people, is that I hate having to make points.  With you.  I'm simply no good at it.  It's a damn farce.  I haven't got a thing left to say, anyway, but there's no sopping, er, stopping me now.  Oh, this'll be a post I feel sheepish about later.  It just feels so good *now* though, in that sturm-und-drang kinda way, did I use that right?  I've been itching to use that, lately.  I've also been itching to spell ilt right when I did use it and, look!  towel thrown, thrown and crumpled sad, in that filthy, dog-hair-choked corner, because I'm already misspelling a regular milieu, no!  a litany, yeah, a litany, no!  a torrent, yes.  I'm misspelling a regular torrent of words alreayd in this post so why should I let a little germany-prhase trip me up now?  This is good.  I'm prancing in my one-eye-squeezed-half-shut state, which is how my old friend used to drive when she'd had several bowling-pin-shaped longnecks too many, she swore it was easier for her to see, and I finally comprehend what the hell she was talking about, this chair is like my rocket, scooooot!  That rhymes with woot, huh.  so.  Woot.

This is truly how I used to write, and it was fun, and I think it was my raisin day etc. (because who really knows how to spell that, I'm not french, k?  geeeeeez.  *rolls eyes*)

I suddenly am overcome with exhaustion.  Sure, it could be that I have had one good night's sleep in the last ten, thanks to bouncing from the pink-eye fun house over to the croup-coaster and then along toward ear-infection avenue.   It could also be the $8.99 champagne I started drinking just before my husband was due home from work today, in fact, that's what it is, that's IT!  *slaps thigh with certainty*  I havne't accomplished a thing in the last two weeks and I keep feeling less and less sure that I ever will.  But that's the cheap swill talking, through the lips of the cheap swill.

I had an amazing dream last night that I sort of half-remember, because I finally got to sleep for longer than a few hours at a strectch, it was that same Henry Miller 1930s mis-en-scene that villifies my mind with its langorous beauty and dark seamy stockingness, I want to go back there and drink absinthe and steal glances at other dark, lovely characters and flaunt my knees in strange rooms at stranger strangers.  I'm so close to that dream right now.  I'm so very close.  Hold me, sweet darkness.

*head slips onto keyboard, sasflkjhsaldkfjjdksasld;kfja9ds888888888888

'noggin.

Naughtini (nice).

Ingredients:

1 part egg nog (the super-duper-thick kind; don't chintz)
1 part vodka (vanilla vodka is even nicer, but the regular stuff works fine)
shaker
ice
cinnamon & sugar mixture + a cinnamon stick

throw ice into shaker; follow with vodka, then nog.  shake it good.  pop off shaker lid, and drizzle lid's contents slowly around inner edge of a (chilled) martini glass.  sprinkle moistened (heh) edge generously with cinnamon/sugar, then pour drink into glass.  sprinkle a little extra cinnamon/sugar mix on top, then add cinnamon stick for the pleasing sight of it.

guzzle.  go ahead.  be uncivilized.  no one *hic* cares.  it's friggin' xmas time.

mmmm.

I'm drunk.  Who cares.

*snore*

(This was like two weeks ago, wasn't it.  I almost wrote *weaseln't it*.  that would've been funny.  drunk-blogging is funnly.)

This was a week ago, or no, it was a week ago *Wednesday* so it was, in reality, more than a week ago.  I know you're a stickler for these thigns.  that looks like thighs.  I know you're s a stickler for thighs.  that sounds painful.  please don't stick my thigh.  ow.

but wait, there's more .  yay?

Why, yes, you're right.  I *can't* cook.  But the mens can.  Thanksgiving, indeedy.  (And it was so damn good I almost got sick from the eating.  It was so.  damn.  good.)

Anway, who cares if I can't cook.  I can set a table with the best of 'em.

It's dreamy.  I mean, really.  Dreamy.

White counters are a bitch to keep clean, I'm discovering.  A bitch I can live wtih.

An Istant-hot, while questionable in terms of being enviromentally-friendly, okay, not quesitonable, because obviously, how friendly is it to hang onto about 10 gallons of heated water, being maintained at a fairly high temperature and -- oh, ugh.  Anyway, it's unquestionably a friend of mine.  You see, there's nothing so super as being able to have water boiling on the stove in mere moments.  (I used to think such things about good clothes and cute boys, but -- that is not this.  I am now the-woman-who-revels-in-potentially-driving-a-minivan.  Suck on that, terrible-twenties self.  Plus, I can almost justify it because I'm aware that we'll be replacing our dying water-heater with the tankless kind.  Suck harder, old me.)

'

Wait.  Don't suck *that* hard.  Your cheeks might end up all prune-y by the time you're in your mid-thirties.  Okay, fine, yes, thirty-five next week. 

Uh-oh.  Too late.  Prune-y is a foregone conclusion.

At least I still rock cool holiday socks.

Uh.  You say that's not exactly chic?

Huh.

...

That's all I got.

*tosses back rest of wine in glass, searches blindly for bottle*