i obsess.

where i smash (meme) rules!, and wax nostalgic about having been a stripper a little overmuch.

I am actually responding to a meme request.  Holy cow cheese.

But it's from Lotta.  How could I not?  She is the dreamiest.  She makes the word dreamy seem too benign a description.  She's like clotted cream (a very, very good thing; I think.  I don't *actually* know, but then, everyone I used to read as a child talked it up enough to make me think it equated to ambrosia, something *else* I've also never had, well, except for that ghastly canned fruit and whipped-topping melange of cloying ickiness referred to as ambrosia - only, really, it couldn't possibly be, because it's GROSS, but, uh, this was supposed to be about how awesome Lotta is, so let's pretend clotted cream is just perfectly whipped fresh cream with the exact-right balance of vanilla and sugar blended into its delicate awesomeness) on fresh, sweet berries and superbly baked cake.

I loves me some Lotta. 

(Lotta.  Srsly.  Be warned re: my approach at blogger prom.  I will try to quell the adhd alpha response you trigger, but I cannot promise absolute control over the bitch.  Only, don't!  Because my love for you is great and unquenched, so it needs a good quenching, but just, you know, reasonable amounts, like a hug, a nice, innocent hug, and I will master the adhdalphamonster if I can.  I mean that. 

Sorta.

I do!

Oh, christ on a run-on-sentence.)

15! Years! Meme! is now underway.  Gird up thy loins, my two readers, for here we goeth:

"Think back on the last 15 years of your life. How would you summarize your life in just 10 bullet points?"  -- Okay, so that would be from age 20, onward.  Yiiiikes.

1.  Ten?  Really?  REALLY?  Oh, dear lord baby jesus.  (yes.  this counts.  it's a microcosmic example of how I, uh, "manage" stress, and have done for the last fifteen + years.  see?  totally. counts.)  Did Lotta genuinely think this would short-circuit my adhd-addled excuse for a brain?  (also counts.  see above excuse.)

2.  I hate tests.  This is like a test.  (this one relates to having begun and subsequently quit and returned to university no less than four times since I started my career as a college student at age 18.  sure, it's a little over the fifteen-year guideline, but I dislike following rules.  this also relates to having quit school so often.  etc.)

3.  My parents.  (eh.  just keep sticking with me, here.  it's the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime.  *my* lifetime, that is.  right now, the roller coaster has slowed to enjoy some scenery.  iow, we're managing.  having a grandkid to proffer when conversation is awkward helps out awfully in that regard.)

4.  My husband.  Who stripped me of my turmoil-ridden "love" life and gave me steadiness and support and a sexy ass.  Shhh.  Don't tell him I said that.  He'll flush.  Which is so cute.  I love my annoying, adorable husband SO DAMN MUCH.  I cannot believe I have to be married to him forever, but I'm so glad I do, all at the same, wildly confusing time.

5.  My jouncing careen from career to career.  Since I was twenty, I have worked in the following fields (shit, this requires a bullet-point list w/in a bullet-point list.  unnervingly awesome!): 

* temporary employee (generally admin assistant or receptionist or file organizer - terribly exciting stuff) 

* staff in the mail room of a gigantic insurance company; part-time, while attending university (I got to use the microfilm/microfiche machine, and include that on resumes, later, which *ruled*) - this is when I began my side-career of snowboarder in earnest, sorta, so the jobs I took from this point on always were in consideration of the crucial need to work around my riding schedule

* day-camp counselor for the city of Bend, Oregon's outdoor program - I loved this job.  I worked with my old friend, Grand Mastah Gretch (I was DJ Deb), and we had so much fun it was scary, literally, for instance, there was this one kid who wasn't even supposed to be at the camp that day, she was just a friend of one of the campers, and we'd brilliantly handed around all of these super-sharp pencils to aid in their pirate-treasure hunt, which she used *not* to write with, rather, to jab directly into a major artery in her thigh, causing it to bleed in projectile fashion, and she WASN'T EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE THERE.  we didn't know her fucking name.  so, that ruled

* server at a little fifties diner, also in Bend, Oregon - as I was living there for the summer, I was trying to take advantage of the downtime, lacking a social life because I knew no one other than Gretch, and oh, dear, if I start along the road of explaining my reasons for every job I will NEVER FUCKING FINISH, so just you never mind, you -- nosy-pants mcgee, you

* temporary employee, some more, which consisted of the same as prior to this time, but I did, among other things, a long stint at a company working with Intel to produce computer processing chips in clean rooms (they designed/built the clean rooms), and it was chock full o' semi-middle-aged male engineers and other leery looky-loo types.  they flirted with me and the other two (female) front office peeps shamelessly.  I really couldn't tell you why I was there, because I spent the majority of my time writing horrible poetry and song lyrics and chatting with this wretchedly cute young man who had attended my high school several years prior to my having done, and was, during my employ there, fronting a band that had gained REM's attention.  they were quite popular locally, and I believe he still plays around town.  stupid fucker.  really messed my head up with the notion that he liked me, based on his regular invitations to drinks and social functions but NEVER ONCE put the moves on me, and at some point began telling me about his new sweetie.  stupid ASS.  stupid, confusing mind-game-playing ASS (and also, clearly I have completely relinquished the notion that I am capable of not involving lots of extra, not-entirely-unrelated details about extraneous happenings in/around each job, so let's all give into it and roil about in the muck of my historically embarrassing stupidity, alrighty?  great)

* cocktail server at a strip club.  this was only for approximately a month, because I bailed soon after to work for a "regular" place as a server, but it - certainly left an inescapable taste that lingered

* server at an El Torito, the one on the waterfront in SW Portland, a part of the chain, the Tequila Willie's version, where the servers all acted silly and sang really annoying, perverse, rated-R songs, and pulled patrons' chairs and scooted them to other tables and gave them "cowboy hats" (paper toilet-seat covers) as birthday necklaces and assorted other outrageous dumbocity maneuvers; and, btw, we were all drunk (and often stoned) most of the time.  my first shift, I was grabbed by one of the other servers on the way into the bus booth and asked if I liked tequila.  I said, uh, sure, and shrugged, uncertain as to *why* with the questions, only to be handed a shot of tequila, a BIG one, and ordered to drink. it. Now.  so?  I did.  I know.  but, what.  I was all of 21 years of age.  not the sharpest knife just yet.  it made behaving boorishly toward the patrons much easier, fwiw.  I fell completely and totally in loooooo -- no.  not love.  just - crazy-for-mad-about can't-have-want-goddammit-gimme-NOW! lust for a fella there, right off the bat, a fella with eyes the color of a dark chardonnay, he was a rock climber, a free climber (they shun ropes and carabiners and the like, and just shimmy up the side of a cliff, and occasionally break limbs and necks and die, and admire each other so much that they have no need of such encumberances as female companions, such is their admiration/love for other, insane-r free climbers - half-dome, dude!) - oy.  took me YEARS to move on from that one.  god but I was a hanger-on-er.  (fitting, given *his* love for climbing, I just realized.)  also dated someone else from there, a (needless to say, divinely cute) boy who I blithely assumed was gay and so was totally knocked on my ass when he requested that I go on a date with him.  and even further knocked out when he asked for the first kiss.  I just *never* saw it coming with this one, even though we dated off and on for some time (turned out later that he was completely addicted to meth the whole while, and EW, because, wow.  I mean, I had NO FUCKING CLUE.  truly.  that was sad, actually.  he was so - nice, somehow, and just, sweet, and -- nice.  poor fella.  he had to call me years later to tell me, as part of his rehab routine, and WOW did I, once again, get completely knocked flat with the surprise of it.  he was forever doing that)

* stripper (where I eventually expanded my conception of flirtable types to include those of the female persuasion, and, indeed, this career was the place to do it, if one were prone to something of that nature.  iow?  i made out with many, many girls during that time.  even dated a few.  again, this is totally irrelevant to my work experience, but not, because it's kind of related to the meme -- oh, right, the meme! -- in that I discovered I'm bisexual.  wooters!)

* hostess at an Olive Garden (it was the first of many cover jobs for what I was really doing; an excuse to provide for my parents and other types, to halfway account for where the money came from to pay rent, etc)

*part-time work for my dad, who was managing a specialty food company's route on the west side of Portland's greater metro area, so we'd service all these different, high-end grocery stores, like Stroheckers, oh, the late, great Stroheckers, the Beverly Hills grocery store of P-town.  I dug that gig, and still kinda miss it.  we'd go into a store and stock the health- and gourmet-food sections with all kindsa stuff.  there were many, many cute clerks and other stocking persons to flirt with when my dad was blathering to the store manager, and it suited my adhd to a T.  capital

* hostess at a TGIF in San Diego, also as a cover for stripping - I got fired b/c I decided to take a road-trip with my cool-as-shit friend, Brandy, to Portland on a strip-tour, b/c we'd both been tanking in the San Diego scene (which was SO weird at the time, I'll go into detail at some other point, b/c oh my god this post), and I didn't adequately cover my shifts.  woopsie-doodle!, this is always the reason I've been fired - well, except for, oh, we'll get there

* one whole day training to be a cook/cashier at a taco bar in SE Portland, and though I only spent the one measly day there, I totally learned how to chop parsley and onions and garlic like a fucking PRO; my mom has yet to become underwhelmed by my ability to crush mounds of those items to bits beneath my rapier chopping blade - which RULES, b/c of my cooking issues re: minha mamae

* a few days at the first Noah's Bagels, on Hawthorne, when the initial series of people, including me, were trained, prior to its opening; the reason I quit? - because Gretchen was in town from Bend and we stayed out late the night before opening day of the store, and I made out with some random fella at Saucebox, after which G and I got in this screaming match about the dumb make-out sesh, she accused me of ignoring her, which I kind of totally was doing, since it's difficult to manage conversing with your friend when some lame-ass has his tongue in your mouth; this occurred in my car after I'd parked in my drive, and we fought until my old housie began a rain of pebbles onto the roof (we were parked immediately beneath his room, nice, huh? - yes, I was quite the thoughtful housemate).  the woman who managed the store was super-cool, though; I totally flaked on the shift altogether, because when I woke up around three hours after going to bed, hung like a mad dog, blearily, to the sound of bleety alarm noises paining my ears, Gretch was all, DUDE.  you aren't seriously going to work?  at six in the a.m.?  don't. you. dare.  and I was all, yeah, you're so right.  and promptly rolled over and eased back into soft, comfy, padded dreams.  I felt kind of bad later, but then, when I snuck back into Noah's a few months hence, just because I craved one of their delish sammys, the manager totally hooked me up - gave me the whole bag of bagels and trifles that I'd ordered, free.  winked at me, too.  whatta cool betch *she* was

* student at a two-year acting school (yet another stripper smokescreen, but also, because I really wanted to do it).  I actually finished it, too.  the whole damn thing.  highly unusual behavior from this adhd-slave

* a karaoke dj, for about a month, at this terrible, awful place my friends and I used to frequent regularly back in the day (aka the early-mid nineties), and the owner, a really sketchy dude who was supposed to be some kinda ex-con or something, was forever asking me and my friends to work there as servers or bartenders or the dj; I finally took him up on it one night because it sounded cool, + I was on a constant hunt to find a job to replace the eeevil stripping.  I had to quit, though, finally, because he was an absolute FAH-REAK.  I only really remember the last straw, that he pulled me away from a teeming throng of people trying to give me their song choice, on a Saturday night, and over to the area by the door, just beyond where a speaker was attached, and yelling at me about how, if he could hear it there, it was TOO GODDAMN LOUD, and I was all, okay!, and finished my shift, never to return (I wanted that night's tips, and I'd fucking earned them)

* band member in a paid-gigging band (even if it was only for a few gigs, it counts)

* paid gig in a short, beyond multiple-gag-reflex-inducing (legit, though! - somehow the gag-thing makes me think of pr0n, which it was NOT - too bad, because that might have made it slightly less godawful, I KID, kidding, so. kidding., remember when I said I was the prude of the adult entertainment industry?  yeah, I was not lying) film

* paid gigs in theatre (like, under $100 for the whole thing, but it counts!, 'cause it wasn't the tainted stripper money)

* (still) stripping (at this point, having worked in Portland, Seattle -- for 1/2 hr, on the strip-trip with Brandy, before we realized there was a WHOLE lot more than stripping going on up in that joint, and we split -- San Diego, LA, Vegas, and I regret to say, NOT SF.  oh, Lusty Lady, how sad I am to have never spent any time shimmying inside your cool-ass co-op walls of hallowedness and dim, dankly odd beauty)

* host/guide for Princess Cruise Lines on their series of cruise-cars attached to the Alaska interior cruise train from Anchorage to Fairbanks (can't dredge any of that up right now - too many broken, heart-smashed-to-smithereens moments to tally while I waste all this time on this effing meme, and Lotta, maybe NOW I know why you threw this at me, b/c you perceived my love for you would tarnish a little as I tried to complete it, and, hey!, but you're savvy, aintcha); fired for having overslept - it was one of their tidy ways of getting rid of employees before the end of the season and not having to lay so many off, which kept their quotas low.  smart bastards

* server at a lousy cocktail dive in Anchorage, but only once a week, which blew, because it was SUCH good money, and the owner paid me under the table, and if I'd been able to even talk him into giving me two nights regularly, I wouldn't have taken up stripping at the annoyingly cheesy well-known strip club, the name of which now escapes me, and I'm not gonna look it up, but it's something like The Great Alaskan Bush Co., ew, I think that's it.  yechhh.  that was a weird effing place to work, the end

* stripping again in LA when I came back to the lower 48 (the term used affectionately by Alaskans to refer to the bulk of the US) - I was really getting the hang of that particular club, too, but then I got SO fed up with my friend who was hosting me in order to be there in the first place, and just, oh, no, nevermind

* coffee barista at a stand inside a grocery store (NOT a Starbucks; also, where I acquired a solid education, firmly and certainly, thanks to a righteous bitch who completely freaked out on me one morning when I had a queue about eight people deep, in the knowledge that rice milk IS NOT soy milk) -- was known to drink sometimes as many as seven or eight shots of espresso in a shift, "just to see what would happen" (I would crash afterward and slump through til the end, napping when I got home for an hour or so) - my friend, Gretchen, our fellow team mate, K, and I referred to ourselves as "Team Peppermint," such was our love of the divine peppermint latte - and:  Gretch just texted me at Xmas of '07 to announce "Go Team Peppermint!," something I appreciated muchly

* stripper, after K fired me 'cause Gretch didn't have the stomach to do it, but it needed to be done, so I don't blame her (or K, for that matter), because I was flaking often and regularly (and by that, I simply mean that I was rolling in *awfully* late, like, easily an hour past opening time, sometimes - I never missed an entire shift) at le coffee bar, and this time was the very last rotation into the stripping scene; it's also when Justin Timberlake hit on me with his gigantic, puffy yellow afro and stupid faux-religious crucifix and dumb-ass coolier-than-thou attitude - oh, that stupid boy, I always thought, until he started cleanin' up awful nice and now?  yeah.  kicking. myself. more than enough to make up for everyone else who would've rolled with that action in a heartbeat -- I just HATED boy bands when they were happening, and was so beyond unimpressed, also, I didn't know who the fuck he was until I saw his picture the next day, but dude, trust me.  he was NOT the fella he is today.  also?     oy.

* temporary employee at another insurance company - I got so bored I finally just didn't show up one week, and was, naturally, let go, but only because I let *them* go *first* - my employment agency was, uhm, not super-happy with me and I sort of never got another job with them.  ever

* customer service rep for the sales office for one of the ski resorts on Mt. Hood

* student at a beauty school, which resulted in my being licensed to work as a nail technician and an esthetician, and I did nails at several racket-y salons where I paid more to work there than I made before I got out of it altogether and went back to the ski resort for another season

* ticketing agent for the sales office of the ski resort at Hoodie - preferred this position to the other one, and kicked ass at it, if I do say so my damn self, but felt like I needed something more regular and less seasonal

* worked at a very posh spa as a nail tech where they paid me hourly if I didn't have a client, SHOCK (srsly, this is not the norm in Oregon, or elsewhere, for that matter; you have to rent a station and acquire clients and it's hard and it takes years to build a business and I don't have that kinda patience or time, people), and the spa was part of a hotel so we always had clients which was good 'cause I made decent money there and worked almost full-time (but was attending school at a rate of 16 or 20 hours a term, depending, so had to have a little extra time to study and write papers and shit, also I was planning our wedding and doing most everything myself so, yeah, busy-ish)

* post-wedding crash-and-burn (got fired from the spa but, for the first time, it really wasn't my fault; the new spa director was gutting the old employees so she could replace them with people she hired and weren't influenced by the old manager's style), had, as I *finally* began my senior year, taken a job working for the english dept. of university, supposedly in order to DESIGN A WEB PAGE for the dept., which is the most laughable fucking thing ever, no rly, it's hilarious, because I?  don't know a fucking thing about web design or html or anything.  I just wanted that job because it paid better than the other ones in the dept., and it seemed more interesting and I figured I could use dreamweaver and it would be fine, and then?

I got pregnant.  and very, very sick.

* pregnancy break

* bought the embroidery machine and started learning to digitize

* digitized for awhile, then decided to start a baby clothes company! -- that went well.  as you can assuredly see, based on how impressive the site is now (iow, uh, flop)

* still digitizing, but probably going to either take another job at a fancy spa across town as a nail tech, working for my old manager, or go back to the seasonal gig at the ski resort, because I really liked that job and was proficient, at minimum, if I recall correctly, and maybe even quite good, and also, I really liked it *and* the people involved (plus a family pass would kick patoot, since I haven't snowboarded for three years, and DAMN would I like to crawl my outta-shape ass back up that hill and do some snow slidin'

Oh, fuck this meme.  Lotta, I love you, but I can't do this.

You totally knew, huh.  You knew I'd end up feeling rabidly anti-meme afterward, and my ardor for you would cool a little, and GOD but you're clever.  Diabolically so.

(don't hate me for not finishing it?)

(everyone else?  you're welcome.  I know.  it was horrid and endless.)

Only, wait, I have to add one more.

6.  Jack.  My little almost-three-year-old man alive.  Wow. 

7.  Blogging.  (okay, two more.)

Fucking blogging.  You are such a wench/my master.  *shakes fist*

It reminds me of the time, *it* being *this post*, when I was in LA, hanging out with a girl whose initials were L.A., srsly, and she and some other friends were about to smoke some pot and be silly and I was all, I'm out.  Nope.  Not gonna.  And they were all, dude, why?, and being total pushers, and I was all, no, because I'm a FREAK when I'm high, and they were all, c'mon, you're with friends.

And then I smoked and scared the living PISS out of them, and they were all, oh, I see, and I was all, TOOOOO MOTHAFUCKIN LATE, YO, and throwing signs and running wild in the local Sevvie (7-11) and they were all, uh.  Woops?  And I was a raging behemoth of ridiculous.

Which = this post, and why I never take on memes, because it's ragingly behemoth-y.

the. end. already.

larnin disabilatee, yor on notis!

I have decided to subpoena adhd with a cease-and-desist warning.  In other words,

I'm through.

Done.

Finis(h).

O.v.e.r. it.

Got that, adhd?  Your days, or possibly hours, are numbered.  (Maybe this would be a good time to sit down and figure out the finer details of counting.)

*****

My therapist has given me an assignment; anytime someone compliments me, I am expected to write it down, long-hand, using a writing implement *other* than something with an electric cord attached to its keys, iow, yes, a pen or pencil-ish item, and paper.  Or, you know, whatever's handy.  Like a receipt.  Those are generally the most handy.  I *have* notebooks and scads of paper in this house, I just don't necessarily know how to locate them.  But the important thing is to trick my brain into thinking I'm worthy.  And stop being so focussed on the negativo.  Which means I'm allowed to go back through all the comments I've ever received on this blog and pull the nicer stuff that you've said to me (even if they were all a heap of lies, real purty ones, but lies, nonetheless), and write it down, with a pencily thingy, on the back of a bar tab a receipt for milk and cereal and local, organic produce.  Also, what Caleb says to me that's complimenty.  And what Jack says to me, like when he tells me I'm nice, and when he says I'm pretty pretty.  Etc.

Now if I can just remember how to fucking write.

what a relief.

And to think I was considering *actually* finishing my degree (in English Lit, w/a poss. minor in Communications).

Good that I didn't consider Dance as a major, though, of course, there's that little business about my having skipped the major and gone straight to the big leagues of stripperdom.  So, phew, no wasted class work *there*.

And, finally, art.  One of the first things I thought about trying to get an education in, when I was still in high school, and officially alotted the dream-time of "what shall I do?" without seeming like a total wanker. 

(Found the link to the above site at candywrapper.)

to the unsuspecting eye.

While it may not be obvious, I dig through my repetoire of pain and anguished memory in order to save my child(ren?) from having to endure the things I have done.  To comprehend the madness, understand its angles and contours, see it for what it is, expose it in an uncomfortable series of essays and exposes and unhappily rendered portraits that render it weak and rattling in its feeble grasp on my soul.  I do this for my son, for Jack, and I do it for any other children I may (or may not, ...) have the pleasure of knowing, vis-a-vis, I do it for those whose children must eventually battle dissimilarly similar creatures of dark, haunting personal treason, and I do it, even, for some of the other parents (and non-parents) who find themselves in battles akin to my own.

And, so.  Though this weblog, more often than not, has the quasi-tangible feel, the sense, of a worn, pock-marked personal journal, rather than that of a mommyblog;

don't be fooled.  This is a MOMMYBLOG, coming and going.

You see, through it all, I hope.  I hope for the things to come. 

And, thus, I wage on in my ever-tiresome, yet never-ending battle.

(Beats hell out of describing all my intrepid, albeit minutiae-enriched, introspection as naval-gazing, huh.)

nothing new to speak of.

Is clever something you can just FORCE on people?  Is it something you can death-grip without the death?

Fucking clever.  It's deserted me.  And I only just finished telling Sarah that I would be writing without my parachute and would try to be okay with it.  That was my new plan, my most clever, most perfect plan ever, that I would just take wicked-sick chances with words and it would all be beautiful and awesome and everyone would toss flowers and donuts and we would all spin and the daisy petals and donut dust would drift down onto our hair and clothes until we looked like angels on heroin.

It would've been perfect.

I ran a mile today.

I walked a quarter-lap after that, red face, itchy back, stiffening old groin semi-injury from years hence when I would run real, actual miles, plural, not just the one sad, panting, achy one.

But it was a mile.  And it was more than zero.

Fuck.

fear of flight.

Have been barely capable of lifting my ass out of bed in recent days, weeks, months; my writing has not just suffered, not merely lapsed; I didn't only privatize my blog (only, god, privatize?, jesus - sounds like I have hired an attorney to pen this piece), I quit participating with my insides.

Here, there, and everywhere.

The piles around the house that accumulate on a regular basis grow and grow; the until-recent cold outside has prevented planting a garden, and so I plant a garden of papers and envelopes and moldy catalogs that advertise things I do not require and will never acquire, stacks of yellowing receipts and recipes and requiems, aging piles of disks and cards and broken pieces of toys possibly mended but probably destined for a garbage bin at some distant date; lightbulbs gone bad, written directives to self to create order amidst the stacks lost, lost terrifically, lost desperately, lost quietly and mute and moot.

There is nothing and no one that brings my mind up to the point that I can feel energized to stop being sad.  Not a constant drone of sad, but a regular, soft, hidden beat, a hidden, cloaked pulse of sad that lurks beyond the windows, just beyond, and not further.  Hands pressed gently against the glass, indenting the surface, leaving pale almost-prints.

The list of to-dos is long, long.

The people wait.  They grow tired of waiting and they move on, away, beyond my outstretched fingers that I mask in the pocket of my pilled, clumsy sweatshirt.

I have love here, and I cannot sense, cannot scent, am indirectly sent, misspent; pent-up regret belies the bent of exchanges unmade, beds laid in and arms mislaid or lain away or flown not high, rather, low, low.

And the readers say, ugh.  This, this is more of what I cannot bear, your sadness, your fingers, your pale prints, and they abstain and there is no blame to shoulder, no shoulder to blame, and the words spiral across the page like bad dna, broken and lost to flame and bitter and bracken and sour.

There are chills here in this newly summer'd moment, there are quiet spells and deep danks and thankless hours of bruised ideas, ideals, things set aside, things to lay to rest in the unmade beds of the mind.

This is no time to fight.  This is time to cradle the stacks, to sidle beneath their disheveled bellies and close over the gaps with hands and fingers full of threads disowned.

This is no time to fight.

what it's like when you have a disability but can't get assistance because you forget to call because of the disability:

I'm on hold but it's already afterhours for the mental health triage for Kaiser and I have a feeling I should've tried to call maybe slightly earlier than I did, which was, hilariously, right at five o' clock.  You know.  Quittin' time.  So, basically, I nailed la hora solid.

What I want to know is this:  after I get the help I need, and b'lieve you me, I need it, N.E.E.D., should I write a book about my ADHD experiences?  Now don't you all (hee!  I said "you all," like there are more than three of you reading) kiss my ass and say, sure, honey, you should do it!, sure's shootin', don't just blow a bunch of hot air at me; tell me if you think there might be someone who would benefit from my semi-horrific collection of disarranged, colossally messy life puzzle pieces, none of which fit together in any coherent fashion.

Or, conversely, tell me if you think that, oh, poor dear, she really *is* a big, sodden, ridiculous mess (and please take note of my having deliberately NOT described myself as a fierce, hot tranny mess, b/c I am simply not that interesting anymore, people), and she just needs to find somewhere quiet where she can whisper to herself and rock out in her kewl granny chair.

Book?  Or whispery chair scenario?

It all starts here, people.  IT. ALL. STARTS. HERE.  (It also all falls out of my ear, or ass, depending on your pov, or maybe quite possibly where you're standing, in which case, I apologize and -- you're right.  Absolutely no more beans/beer at the same time.  Scout's honor.)

Dweedle deedle dee!

asking the challenging questions, and getting dumb looks in response. from the mirror.

It is too hard, I tell myself, to say the very deepest, painy-est things.  It is like chewing on a bike chain.  It is like throwing up after too much to drink. 

It hurts so much now to confront the bullshit.  I thought it would get easier, progressively so, after years of hard labor spent acknowledging my inner tantrum-thrower, my inner angry little fucker, my inner liar, that I would find it less difficult to throw open the curtains on the wee satan in my chest. 

But it ain't so.

All I want to do is go pick up my baby from school and hold him tight, and snuggle him in my arms.  But he's too big to snuggle like that, now.  Even in his sleep, too big.  He shunts his body away from mine and throws his lengthening feet across my chest or my throat and I find myself hanging off the edge of the bed with the aid of a few toenails.

I will be so sad when he's old and grown and my arms are snuggle-empty and I didn't hold him enough (only, I have) and I didn't kiss and squeeze him enough (only, I have) and I didn't force him to freeze in his childish perfection so I could maintain my snuggle-posture with him for the rest of eternity.

And now my body says, okay!, let's do it again, we're ready, here comes your ovulating proposition, it's here!, look, here's the evidence spread raw and bright like a parade across your cheeks and forehead and chin and neck and chest and back.  Here is the evidence spread through your thoughts and your shoulders and your heart, raw and beating.  Here is the evidence in your temperament, so uneven so bloody cursed so fucking self-defeating, welcome!, aren't you thrilled to bear another child, given these circumstances!, when your ovulating body marches toward you in a threatening manner and all you can do is duck and hope for it to end soon enough, which it will do, and you will tell your selves that you tried and you meant well and there was so much to be done and hardly enough money or emotional presence or prescience and you will tear yourself to shreds in a vain effort to discover whose fault it was, and you will produce an endless stream of words that will not be salve enough, not ever.

He will grow up and you will make a choice to bear another or you will not, and your life will cascade down toward its inevitable conclusion and the ones who matter the most may or may not recognize your consuming desire to make an impression of some kind, but you will be already growing up again amongst the weeds and flowers and tar.

and she was.

Tap-tap-tap.  She knocked the brush gently on the edge of the sink after cleaning around its smooth, white circumference.  Glanced alongside the toilet's recess to check the surfaces there, clucking softly to herself at the already-gathering hordes of dog hair, swiping at them haphazardly, preventing herself from looking harder or further for such things.  Just keep moving, she muttered to herself, just don't look too close, just do the job.  Clean-clean-clean, wash the dishes, finish the toilets, sort the clothes, remember to grab his hamper bag, run downstairs at a gallop, jump over the last two steps, land funny on the left foot and remember that time the ankle was ballooned ridiculously out for so long.  Too long.  Old wounds that should've been given proper healing time and attention and weren't, and now though they appear resolved, linger beneath the skin.

No matter.

Dash to the machine, slam the lid with a bang! upward, begin the sorting while humming some old song that used to matter and now there are only lyrical fragments that see-saw in and out of the melody.  She knew she had to get to the store, today, because, calamity!, they were out of milk. 

Recall the forgotten tub-cleaning she'd planned, and rear up from the sorting task like a wild mustang, bearing across a field, low, rushed, at a tear, mane flashing dark and spittle-bedecked, its oats the premise of the tale.  Laughing a little at the incongruity of the analogy.  On her way back up the stairs, a little more cautious this time on account of the ankle, the old balloon still prominent in her head, the balloon a salmon pink, she caught up one of the toys left on the landing, pinching it in her grasp.  It would be joined by other items, she knew, because it was always so. 

At the store, the boy at the check stand reminded her, lightning quick, visceral-gut-punch, of an old beau, a rock-band-academic, a double-major twat, his manner and hair as similar as a photo in her archives she'd suddenly run across.  She avoided eye contact, kept her manner light, pulled her fifteen-year-old pilled fleece coat tight around her, tried to remember that this was not he, that he she held in her imagination for so many years, two years, two years too many.  Just some young checker, some new version of him, and then the irony of this store, the memory of its having been a laundromat in a previous incarnation, that she had gone with him, nay, driven him to this former-laundry-cum-grocery so he could wash his clothes and squeeze her ego into a slightly smaller compression of its former shape, all at once.  It flashed before her, she flashed an impromptu smile and looked straight into this young man's eyes and straightened, slackening her grip on the old coat, his eyes shining back at hers with a recognition that surprised her.  It was imagined, she knew, but somehow, he understood, she guessed, that she was currently in good stead with her self, her building of layers of self, that there was pride to be sussed from between those waxen images laid to rest alongside the old archived snapshots, and cobwebs and slivers of self-hatred.

Her head high and even a little haughty as she heaved her bags of groceries and stumped out from the ex-laundry and into the fresh, wet air of a different Portland than the one it had been when this was a laundry and love was encountered and flipped on its back and gone sour and ebbed into a nothing she no longer knew.

Lugging the groceries toward the crackly-painted bumper of the old van, her head lowered, she remembered who she was.  His mother, his wife, her friend, her daughter, her self.  This self.  This now.  This van and this old coat and these gray hairs and this wet, fresh, chilled air, and these aging limbs and this life.

She climbed into the van.  Started it after pumping the gas several times to get it going.

Motored away, away from the ex-laundry and toward the current house, checking over her shoulder for traffic on Division Street before lumbering into its midst.

now where'd i set that glass of champagne?

Hate, HATE when I lose my drink.  Especially when I'm the only one drinking, and the only one in the house.  And it's only slightly after noon.  I mean, dude, I should still be alert enough from the coffee to be able to find the glass, or at least, theoretically so.

(I'm toasting to this being the date of my beginning foray into blogging, two years hence.  C'mon.  Who wants to drink before 5 with me?  Where my fellow alcoholics partiers at?)

Also, it's post #501.  Here's to the new blogger-frame of politics as major tone.  Only, just when I feel like it, which may or may not coincide with drunkenness.  Like you care.  You're just jealous 'cause I look skinny when I'm drunk.  To me.  In my fun-house mirror.  In the hall bathroom.  With specifically adjusted lighting.  But this is all unimportant, because we are drunk!  Er, we are celebate.  Celebrate.  Celebrating.  There.

*wipes drunken brow*

Sadly, this is not my best drunk post, but it's all I got for now, little loversh.  (I am secretly only pretending to be drunk, but I'm so good at it you'd never know if I hadn't just told you.  Huh.)

Apropos of not much, did you know that John McCain is playing us?  He wants us to think he's an American, when in fact, he's a Republican.  Even *I'm* not too drunk to miss that gigantic detail.  Look and see for yourself.

I lovse you.  Each and every little, teeny punkin-pie one of you.

And, btw, I reserve the right to interfere if someone's child begins abusing mine (or, hell, someone else's, for that matter) in public, like at OMSI or the zoo or a park.  I will most definitely step in and get annoying if somebody's kid is punching or scratching or smacking or otherwise abusing somebody else's kid, and no other adults are preventing that kinda crap from going down.  That shit ain't right.

Yo.