i obsess.

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.

i'd say it's about time to hang it up, if i could be certain it wouldn't make me begin posting furiously in response.

Which simply means I have an uncontrollable urge, on a constant basis, to behave like an adolescent. 

At best.

FUCK, I miss blogging.  I mean, I miss writing.  I don't miss what blogging has kind of become, for me, which is this nightmare of social obligation that I cannot uphold.

I care about the people I have met through interaction created as a result of my writing here, but I do not crave regular social interaction.  I'm not super-good or whatever at that shit.  I kind of hate having to be social.  Mostly, I want to be left alone.  Sometimes, of course, that's absolutely untrue, and I wish ardently to be flitting, mothlike, diaphanous, under a moonlit night, threading through a maddening crowd, smiling, looking fantastic, making the other moonlit creatures laugh at my insightful jokes based on the quantum theory of poo, and wisely gleeful at my sojourn through life as a young, beautiful, diaphanous creature drawn to that one low-hanging light over there in the corner, oh, life, how long and beautiful you will be, how I will remain lovely and fresh and dew-bedecked, how there will always be other young, diaphanous creatures to love and fuck and kiss and spurn and worship and laugh with and oh, how that light beckons, I must just sneak only the merest inch nearer, I must just peer into its wizened depths for but the smallest speck of an instant, so that it may whisper its glowing secrets to me and I will grow only more beautiful and young and life will open and become more wonderful and the sounds will deepen and all the world will spin in a constant WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED WHY DOES IT BURN??? OH GAHHHDD WHAT! WHY! WHO THE FUCK SHOT ME UP WITH THREE AMPULES OF ELECTRICAL METHODONE HOLY FUCKKKK!

Owwie!

That's how it feels, somehow, lately.

Now that I am no longer beautiful, I can say all of these things, because my life is no longer that of the one where what people think matters.

It does not.

And I am glad.  I am glad to know this part, this clarity, this growing clarity that brightens and brightens and stings and burns the retinas, although that could also very well be the pain my eyes give me now in this era of my time from looking too long and too well into the depths of a stupid-ass computer screen, and from other equally eye-beauty-thieving shit.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I could read/ogle glowing screens from here until my personal eternity has quit me, because I am a suckling wretch at the teat of technology, but I will not score any points in the eyeball-beauty arena.  It ain't easy on the eyes, is all I'm saying.

(Okay, that was weird.  I had to spend, just now, easily a good minute trying to relocate my finger-stance on the right side of the keypad because I'm still getting used to this ever-so-slightly-smaller keyboard on the new netbook I work on, and it felt sort of like senility, like I had never seen the keys of a typewriter before, I scrabbled my right fingers over them attempting to place myself, place my extended-digit-self on the pad, and it was like forgotten-yet-known and so - scary.  Should it have been scary?  I. don't. know.  Yes?  Sure.  What's right, what's wrong, when your hand cannot find purchase on the keys of your mind's table?

I'm gonna give myself fucking Alzheimer's at this rate.)

Oh, the scourge of needing to write, and knowing how trivial, in the end, the pursuit.

There is no rhyme, no reason, and I should be loathe to share this nonsense, this drivel, and in point of fact I am, but I am compelled.  I am fire, I am heat, I am this stream of syllable and pronoun, and all while I whisper, faint, at night, late at night, when no one cares to listen, when I am shush and tuneless and all keyed up, and I turn disquieted on the spit in my steadily-deepening bed-coffin, there, in the night, I am burning it into my own little soul that I will never, no, never, write the things that matter, the epics, the torrid novels, the novellas, the pamphlets, there will be no great production, I will not matter, in this historic river I will not be trumpeting from the heights, I will be small and quiet and my voice will crack slowly and break into crumby bits that will not even float downward into the rocky crevasse and remain, stubborn, black, but instead dissolve, a foam of gentling acquiescence slipping out to sea.

I love these late-night rhythms of blur and tangy oblong heady chopped-up soups I whip up out of a child's purple cracked-plastic bucket filled with dark stars and cold, wet sand and dreams eddied into these arms, these fingers-of-brain that tell me stories when I cannot dream, cannot conjure my own dreams, am dreamless as I am currently barren, as I stroke my fingers down the length of the cave's walls and find etchings that remind me of a time so long ago that nothing hurts there, it is all wine-dark and wet and cool and there are gentle whispers of breeze along my forearms and about my neck, eliciting shivers that remind me I would prefer to go inside to the rickety rented house and away from the cold, but not quite yet.  Not yet.  Not when the chill and the stars and wine-darkness can cajole me with their guilty asides.

I long to know what they would tell me, but I am too impatient.  I must run inside!, now, and huddle close in a dog-hair-bedecked blanket, one that does not quite cover me, and I must choose between wrapping it around my neck while my feet dangle, bare, chilled, outside its snug embrace, or giving my feet its shelter and leaving my neck and shoulders naked and forlorn.

The hot cocoa is delicious but it burns my lip and is short-lived in its intoxicating splendor.  Why is nothing what it promises?

Oh, what I wouldn't give for the perfect cup of cocoa.  The one that is bottomless and hot but not stinging.

Fingers-for-brains, what say ye?  To bed, to curl up in crone-shapes and remind me of my pending death (which may be ages from now, but what's in an age, you fucking wretched bits of flesh and bone and sinew and shaped so very like the fingers of my forebears, that you would remind me of my own brief fling with this flesh fresh-that-is-not-fresh-and-grows-less-so-by-each-tick-tick-tick?  Hmmm?  Callous.  You're all callous as fuck)?

Obama's on Leno.  Tivo just winked on, but it can seriously fuck itself.  It cheated me out of a new episode of The Office tonight, and for that I will curse it roundly before allowing it to worm its pathetic way back into my life tomorrow at some stupidly weak point, preferably in the afternoon and we've gone and had some decent form of exercise and I can give myself the admirable excuse of having exercised our bodies adequately in order to feed on tivo's meager offerings for a few slices of hour.  Fucking tivo.  Ugh.  Tivo doesn't even deserve a capital letter at its front, the wretched brain-miser.  I could write things, you know, you beast, if I weren't slaving for you, panting to make my way to you and fall captive to your nightly spells of pithy, neatly encapsulated 22- and 44-minute dreams.

God.  What would Hemingway have to say about tivo.  Would we even know?  Would Hemingway have managed to escape its hungry maw?

I'm fascinated to ponder that.  I have to believe he, as well as my other literary heroes, would have stayed just out of reach of the miserable brain-eating machines.

Better me than them.  I am the martyr.  Yes.  Look to me so that ye may be saved from the existence of watching anything and everything your television shows you so that you do not prescribe thoughtful thinking on your porr, beleaguered brain.

I will bear that crass, er, cross, for you.

(I don't really think it's necessary to say anything.  It's cool.  I got you.  It's all me.  I got this one, baby.  I got this.  That's just how I do.)

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

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

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

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

Whatever.

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

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

the "health" exception.

I had an abortion when I was about seven weeks along.

I was working as a temp at the time.  Twenty-six years old.  No health insurance.  I made about $1200 a month.  Couldn't afford to live on my own because I couldn't cover rent, car insurance *and* living expenses simultaneously.  I had just moved out of my best friend's one-bedroom apartment, where I had been paying slightly less rent than she, with her in the bedroom and me in the eating area of the kitchen (I'd rigged up a wall of cardboard-and-fabric between the breakfast bar and the kitchen for "privacy").  Was in-between, uh, well, just generally in-between (and, yes, I'm referencing The Cure here, along with my horrific life in my terrible twenties).  Staying at my parents while I hunted for a reasonable place to rent that would be close enough into town that I could give up my car and just bike to work.  Had discovered a teeny 1-bed next to Laurelhurst, somewhere near 32nd and Stark - but adjacent to the park, so sort of between Stark and Burnside.  Just where the crummier houses leave off and the mansion-y places begin.

I was still sort of suicidal from being wrecked by my experiences in Alaska the summer prior; being molested by one of my roommates there really fucked up my head and I spent that winter after I returned being an utter mess.  I won't describe it.  I've done so before and I don't feel like going down that path just at this moment.  It was horrid.  I wanted to die but I didn't exactly want to have to be directly implicated in the process, so I just did all kinds of self-destructive things instead.

The abortion was out-of-pocket.  My boyfriend paid for it, as well as for the additional general anesthesia expense (more than doubling the cost, making the total around $500, as I recall).  He had allowed me to make the decision (I'm sure it hurt him very much to leave that up to me, particularly because of the one I did make) as to whether I would terminate the pregnancy, but he insisted that I have general anesthesia as opposed to local.  He knew I couldn't face such a thing if I were only locally anesthetized.

(I still live with the guilt of having had the privilege, the luxury, of general anesthesia for the procedure; because of all the other women who experience it with only local anesthetics, their thoughts of what is happening to them intact afterward.  It is - it is unfair, it is cruel, and I will never forgive that small part of me that was too weak to face what I was doing to myself, to my would-be baby, too weak to watch.  To be present.  I am still ashamed at my own cowardice in the face of it.  When others *must* face it because they cannot afford to do otherwise.)

I never allowed, to myself, to him, to anyone, that I was hurt.  That it hurt me to do such a thing.  I only cried when I tried to get assistance from the state of Oregon in order to cover the cost of the procedure and they turned me down, because, as they explained, I made approximately twenty-seven dollars too much for them to give me even their most basic level of coverage.  The person I spoke with said that I would have to have a child in order to receive benefits.  I explained, but you see, I plan to remove any need for Oregon to have to cover me on their plan on a long-term basis through this procedure that I need and cannot afford, if you could only help cover it.  I'm SAVing you! - the state! - MONEY!, I said, plaintive.  The woman simply shook her head, her mouth a line.  No.  No, she told me, adamant, you can't receive coverage *until* you have the child.  I said, hah aahhaahha hahah.  That's so funny.  I am trying to terminate the thing that would require you to pay for my insurance.  I just need a little help to do so.  And she said, Yes.  I understand.  You still can't get coverage until you *have* the child.

(The irony, of course, is that those who would insist on a woman having her baby regardless of the circumstances, is that she must then scrap and scrape and save and work three jobs in order to support the child, because there is simply NO WAY those same insistent folks will fork over the social services, i.e., their taxes, to assist such a woman in caring for the baby after it is born.  No! to the welfare! queens!, they scream.  Get a job, loser!, they scream.  Have your baby, even if you were raped!, they shriek, and in the same breath, they blaspheme you for leaning on the system to raise that child.  The one they said you had to have because otherwise God would smite you.  You shouldn't have had sex, they simper, if you protest.  You slut, they imply, the corners of their mouths tucked in just-so.  That the man who fucked you and didn't have any requirements post-fuck?  Ah, well.  Such is a man's luck.  Oh, shame on those men, they cluck, their feathers bunched tight around their big asses.  But where is the man?  And where is the evidence?  And does that man get to go on and have a profitable, head-held-high kinda life?  While his child's mother toils and strains and struggles, the system with its allure of come-hither-and-have-your-child, the system giving you another good fucking-over, once you've had it, where you must place your child in daycare and work during the day and maybe another part-time or full-time job at night to pay for the daycare and the health care and the fucking mandatory car seat that costs a minimum of $150 for a decent one, never mind the pricey kind that consumerreports.org insists on if you're a good, mindful parent and want your child to actually be *safe*, the $300-and-up variety, and there are the co-pays and the medicines, the over-the-counter cough syrups and inhalants that you try to give your sick, miserable child in vain in order to help them sleep so you can sleep so you can work so you can pay for the care and the medicines and the formula because you couldn't breastfeed because you had to go back to work when the baby was six weeks old and you couldn't afford a breast pump and then you find out that the formula and the bottles and cough syrup are possibly, no, DEFinitely toxic for your baby, your sweet, sweet baby they insisted you have because God would curse you and where in the world are those people now?, you wonder in the spare moments when you have the energy and presence of mind to wonder and not fall into the pit of despondency over your life, your whirlwind maddening life of work and toil and never seeing the child you gave birth to because they told you you must, backed you into a corner and threatened you with everlasting hell if you didn't listen, and now the aspersions and looks and glances you get on a daily basis when you're with your child, the whispers and the looks and the withering eyes that burn you, because, while it's no longer socially acceptable to comment to a single mother that she's a slutty sinner, the eyes still have it.  Oh, they have it.  And the man is off somewhere in Ibiza with his new girlfriend, the one he met in college while you were with your baby working sixty hours a week and barely surviving.

And the irony of the system giving you the fucking-over after you've already been fucked over is not lost on you.

But I know you're already aware of that.  I just had to say it.  It feels good to say it.)

I left.  Head high.  Stumbling a little on the way out to my boyfriend's car, and letting that be the reason I cried.  But then, crying, because I knew, if I couldn't acquire state assistance, on my oh-so-robust wage, that there were women already with babies and kids who HAD to live on less than I was doing in order to receive state-provided benefits.  SHITTY ones.

and I cried for myself because I had to go through the procedure because I was too unstable to have a baby.  Drunk.  Drugs.  Series of relationships too miserable to recount.  Latest boyfriend totally, bizarrely different, but -- based on my experience leading up to him, I knew better than to rely on the notion that it would survive my - me.  however, I wrapped up that crying portion of the crying menu quick.  didn't need to linger.  this was too important.

I could not do that to another human, not knowingly.  Not with the little handful of sanity I clutched, desperate, like a miser with a small collection of dirty pearls gathered from dustbins around a large city with dark pockets.

I had a dream about it, just before the procedure.  A morning or two prior.

I don't want to relate the dream.  But I remember it.  I still don't know what it meant, if anything.  But that it has remained with me, that dream, makes me feel its significance, all of these years hence. 

I woke up after the surgery and I was sick.  So sick.  I threw up.  A lot.  My old friend happened to be a nurse's aid, worked with the doctor who performed my surgery, only at a different clinic.  I'd requested that she be present during the thing to - watch over me.  She held me while I barfed in the clinic's toilet.

Weeks later, I still bled freely.  New, orange-red blood (because my uterus had been swept clean, so the lining had to replenish itself, which takes time).

I will never forget.

I will never forget what it meant to decide with lightning speed that I would not produce a child that I could not give up if I were to carry it to term because I don't trust people.  That I could not be a mother to. 

I occasionally -- maybe once every few years -- do the math.  Think about him, especially now, in relation to my son.  How old he'd be (of course I have no idea whether it was a boy or a girl but I have somehow, in more recent times, chosen his gender as boy.  Not sure why). 

My health exception was life-and-death.  My own life.  The child's life.  My prescience regarding this subject was crystal clear, the cleanest pane of glass you ever laid eyes on.  I could not mother that child, I could not give it up to some stranger to mother.  I would have done terrible things that the child -- oh, I don't dare think of what I would have done.  I cannot.  They are unspeakable.  Unthinkable.

I was not in the third trimester.  But my health was at stake.  Sanity.  My life.

Now - I have a child.  One who will be (relatively) unscathed by my current bordering-on-insanity, because of, thanks to, my supportive, wonderful parenting partner, and our family.  (I hope.)  This, after I've aged and settled down and done some soul-searching and taken some anti-depressants and other shit, besides.  Grown up a little (as much as someone stricken with the permanent childishness of adhd can).

Is that not to be made exception for?

I would not have this now, my son would not exist, this life we have now, it would not exist, if I had not been able to decide to release that first child from me.

Is that not a health exception worth excepting?  Accepting?  Is that something someone, anyone, could have possibly decided for me, given all the details I have deliberately not shared here - the ones that would convince the most ardently anti-me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was choosing correctly - that is, if thou hast spent any longer than a sliver of time inside this skin, this spirit?  That thou canst do if not in possession of this uterus, this heart, this head?  And to think, for but a moment, that thou wouldst attempt to do so for any NUMBER of women.  I am mortified by it.

Am I a blip on the lefty-liberal agenda?

up against it.

The interview went really well, and thank you to those who offered to lend their heads (there will be a reward in heaven for you, I just learned, because Jesus and I are pretty tight, since I'm a famous blogger TM, and if you don't get the hilarity of that then I really can't be of any help to you on any level and we ought to probably part ways as of this moment), and thanks to those of you who just assumed I could handle it on my own.  Somehow, despite all of my stubborn belief to the opposite extent, I did it. 

But going into this readying-the-house business is tough; we have a lot to do in the next week (we're shooting to list in the middle of the week, a week from now, or, technically, nine days). 

Sod to lay, plants to dig holes for and, uh, plant, windows to clean, floors to scrub, painting to finish - oh, dear heavens, the painting; several rooms' worth - hardware and outlets to change out, baseboards to tape off and paint (hundreds of feet of them, in fact), chairs to paint and recover for the dining room (yes, those two black chairs that I finished are still lonely in their efforts to flesh out the room they inhabit in somewhat-moribund fashion, however fashionable they may now be), floors to scrub, again, faucets to change out (doing it myself, and terribly nervous, but staunchly determined), light fixtures to replace, a storage unit to arrange for and begin filling with the piles of things yet-to-be-tossed, that-really-ought-to-be-gone-by-now (*wrings hands, silent and desperate*), floors to scrub, AGAIN, minor repairs to be made in every room, caulking (*snicker*), oh, so much caulking (*doubles down on snicker attack*), a bathroom that requires a shower-head installation, cement-board and taping completed, tile installed (that part we're having done by a professional), and the tub refinished (again, pro-intervention; we're not *utter* idiots - just mildly so, and by we, I do mostly just mean my husband.  I'm kidding.  OF COURSE he's an idiot.  JOKING!  It's me.  I'm the idiot.  A lovable one, but a nidjit nonetheless.  My husband is brilliant regarding everything that does not involve having chosen me for his partner.  Sorry about that permanent-yoking business, babe).  (Doy.)

And there's just really an endless list of items that require cleaning.  The carpet on the stairs, our fabulous, very new, very lovely wheat-toned Berber carpet, is a sodden mess, after the last few seasons of unkempt dog paws and toddler feet having barreled up and down their length too many times to count, and, well, dude, we have a dog and a toddler.  You get the picture.

All of that notwithstanding, this blog, and my pretty, beloved fanciness, Did You Buy That New?, yes, that one, oh, sigh, it fades, it fades and is unbecoming in its faded unglory (not because of the other GIVING-ME-A-HARD-ON-WITH-THEIR-AWESOMENESS contributors, but because of me, because I was really. gonna. stick with it. on that, and, well, yes, the usual fail, etc).

I'm quite sure you all understand.  And if you don't?  Screw you!  (Look!  I'm even using exclamation points!, and you know what those do to my skin.)

Seriously.

Screw.  You.

(I'm mainly referring to my asshole following, here; what, you weren't aware of them?  Me neither.  But I've heard you haven't really made it as a Big Blogger TM if you haven't got an asshole contingent hanging on your every libelous, snarky, loathsome utterance, so I have to get there somehow, right?, and if it isn't through actually having been trolled in comments, then, by the eyes of my sweet friend with whom I walk alongside idyllic rivers, Jesus, I shall simply lie through my teeth.  Fuck.  I'll lie with my teeth SPREAD WIDE APART.  I'm so nervy.)

(I'm nervy x 1000.)

(*weeps openly*)

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

to market.

We're selling our house.  I cannot breathe under the weight of this debt.  Neither can Caleb. 

Jack will adjust. 

We'll be spending all of our time and energy on finishing the painting and other little tidbits, plus refinishing the bathtub and retiling around it + installing a showerhead (the fucking ASSHOLES who owned prior to us dismantled the perfectly good, working shower because, from what we can guess, the tile they'd purchased was on clearance and there was only enough left to go halfway up the wall, so rather than buy more expensive tile, they removed the shower element.  I. HATE. THEM. SO MUCH.  I WILL NOT MISS HATING THEM. SO. MUCH).

Oh, the amount of hate I've felt for those people in the last year; the day we took possession of this house, I began feeling a horrific loathing for them, because they left piles of their shit in the garage and in the kitchen and in the basement, and they didn't clean ANYTHING -- ATRHGKLAL;DSKJFASDKFJ!!!!!@#$%@$#%@ so ANGRY! --- STILL!!! 

*breathes deeply*

*breathes deeply some more*

*throws things*

Anyway, where was I?, so I called Caleb and said, I don't want to live here.  I have a terrible feeling about this house.  He was driving over with his brother, in the rental van, a van already packed with our things.  I told him he could turn around and drive it to my parents' house (they live in a large place that, since they've been empty-nesters, has ample space for our junk, and while I dread the thought of living with my parents, I figured we could find something to rent inside of a week, so it was more just a rest stop, a horrible one, but better than making a tragic financial error).  He said, NO, DEBBIE, WE'RE NOT DOING THAT.  I cried, he yelled, I yelled, I backed down.

The agent told me, after I called him, that he'd let the former owners know through their agent about needing to pick up the rest of their things, and that they'd schedule a time to do so.

A few hours later, while I was unpacking and trying to cope with the bile in my throat over how filthy, HOW FUCKING DISGUSTING everything in the house was, how I didn't want to set any of our stuff down on any of the vile surfaces, there was suddenly someone yelling at me from the garage.  It was, natch, the former owners, or, more precisely, the former owner-dude and three of their four children.  I went into the garage and said, um, yes?  What do you need?  (I was shaking with anger.)  The (late-forties-ish) owner-dude wouldn't look at me, and since he was wearing those cheesy, dark Oakleys with the sharp corners, the ones from the nineties that guys wear while riding fucking ski-doos, along with his killer muscle shirt, wearing those fucking sunglasses while inside the dark garage, I was kind of alright with that.  I spoke with his teenage son who asked just what I wanted them to take.  I pointed at the piles (having already moved all of their nasty kitchen shit, all of the gross dishes and containers of MOLDING FOOD and the CRAP table and broken chairs into the garage, next to the disgusting garage refrigerator full of years of mold and filth, plus other boxes packed with nasty, extraneous detritus that I used gloves to carry) and said, please take ALL OF YOUR THINGS.  ALL OF THEM.  And then I went back into the master bedroom to sort out where I was going to PUT my clean, nice things in that filthy fucking disaster of a house.

A few minutes later, I heard the kid yelling at me.  Lady?  Lady, do you want this?

I was fuming when I walked back toward the garage.

What?  I asked.  What is it?

Lady, the kid said, rather quietly, do you want to keep the microwave?

NO.  No, I don't.  I HAVE a microwave.  Please take ALL.   OF.   YOUR.   THINGS.

ALL OF THEM.

I pivoted and left.

The last time he yelled at me, I was on the phone with my mother-in-law, pacing and crying and swearing about how much I did not want to live in that fucking squalid mess of a building, especially given how horrible the people were that we were buying from, I was coming to discover.  I told her I'd call her back, and stomped back to the garage. 

Lady, do you want this box full of spa stuff?  It's for the hot tub and the pool.

Fine.  Yes.  Leave the box in the garage. 

A trail of smoke followed me back to the bedroom.

I hunkered down and waited for their car to leave, talking to my mother-in-law in a muted string of castrated screams, and when I heard silence emanating from the other end of the house, I went and peeked out.  They were gone. 

There was still a stack of their shit.

::inner rage became a physical tyrant, leaving my body momentarily and filling the garage like a violent storm::

I reigned it in and went back to determining where things would, where they COULD, go.

We found out later, after the papers had been signed and all was done, that the spa they'd sworn was working?  Wasn't.  And that the furnace was beyond repair, and that the water heater was on the verge of needing to be replaced.  (Some of this we knew, sorta, through the home inspection, but our inspector explained that the furnace could probably be serviced.  He was in error.  The water heater hasn't started leaking yet, which is why it's the only thing we haven't had to replace.  However, if we have to, we'll work out a deal with the future buyers, because WE'RE HONEST LIKE THAT.  Did I mention that the a/c broke about eleven months into our residence here?  Yes.  We are currently faced with either fixing or replacing it.)  (Yay.)

They freaked out when Caleb began emptying the pool (the CHEESY AS FUCKING HELL LINER POOL THAT THEY'D TRIED TO MAKE LOOK LIKE AN INGROUND POOL BY DIGGING A HOLE IN THE GROUND AND LOWERING IT INTO THE HOLE) into the street, a few days after we'd gotten our things all moved in; they called their agent, who called ours, who called us, because, you see, they were standing on the property across the street, watching the water empty into the gutter.  Get this: they are adopted grandkids of the people who live directly across from us. 

AND THEY COME OVER AT LEAST TWICE A WEEK.

*shoots self in brain*

Also.  She always uses our driveway to back into when she's leaving the neighbor's house.  But I dare not speak of it, or I shall simply melt into a puddle of rage, and also, I'll be late for my second fucking interview with a company I've already worked for for two + years.  This is a job that pays approximately $9-$10 an hour.  You'd think it was a high-salaried upper-management position with a Fortune 500 corporation, given the litany of phone and in-person interviews I've had to conduct with them in the last two months.  Oh, and sending them my resume.  Twice.  (Did I mention, I WORKED FOR THEM FOR TWO YEARS?)  Sigh.  We are broke.  I have to take the flak.  It's probably good for me anyway.  Humble pie.   Yum!  (brain = not very tricked.)

Suffice it to say, I want to move like I have never wanted anything in my life.

Wish us luck.

No.

Wish *me* luck, because if we don't sell this house soon, I will go through with that suicide pact I made with me last week.

I'm almost serious.

*shakes fist at house*

sick *and* tired.

Caleb called me while I was at the Dem Convention last week -- maybe it was Tuesday?  Yes.  Tuesday.  Anyway, he called me Tuesday after getting back from his appointment with his physician to inform me that he had been diagnosed with pneumonia.  And I wasn't scheduled to come home until Friday in the a.m.

That would've been tough enough to take if I hadn't already been feeling beyond useless, given that my laptop crapped out completely the day I arrived in Denver and refused to stay on long enough to let me read email, let alone post anything.  So I was unable to participate at all in writing my experiences about the events unfolding around me, ostensibly the reason I'd attended.  So, hearing the news about Caleb's being very ill and with me stuck in Denver, unable to help, knowing he would have to continue to solo-parent and work while I sat on my ass in the blogger hang-out and did some blogging 1.0 (yes, I read JD Salinger books and wrote things using a pen and paper), it was kind of TOTAL BULLSHIT.

Then on Monday, when we had planned to attend a Labor Day function, we found ourselves at urgent care again, only this time it was for Jack and *his* diagnosis of pneumonia.

Also, some random thing that's sweeping the universe, called cough-variant asthma; both he and Caleb have it.  Enter the ventilator-thingies that little kids loathe and scream over.  Super-double-awesome.

I went to work with Caleb today to make some extra do-re-mi.  I worked on the production line.  The people I worked with are super, duper nice.  They didn't make me feel like a weirdo, and while I've known one of them for a long time (Caleb's been working there since before we met, which means that some of his co-workers attended our wedding, etc.), the rest were virtual strangers, so having them all be so nice was a pleasant experience.  Usually I feel totally stupid in that kind of situation.  But I didn't today.  Just, you know, content to be doing something, working hard, helping out, making a little money.  I worked as hard as I could, too, and they were complimentary, and even a little surprised, I think.  Which was - satisfying.

I'm doing it again tomorrow, and Jack won't be happy about daycare on Friday (it's his first Friday bout of daycare, and since he and his classmates just switched rooms to preschool this week, things are already kinda horrible in that realm, but it can't be helped.  We need the money, and we all just have to hang tight and try to manage.  It's hard, but I'm so certain that there are a trillion people in this world dealing with harder things that I simply refuse to let it get to me).

Hope you all have a nice weekend.  I may or may not be around.  I had a suicidal bout yesterday and am worn out by it on top of the physical exhaustion from today, and don't have a thing to say that isn't dull as dirt.

(Although I suppose the insertion of "suicidal bout" could suggest un-dullness.  But I didn't put it there for the sake of being incendiary.  I'm just being honest.  It sucked.  I really had decided I was done.  Through.  Caleb talked me down, and then I rested for several hours, and felt better enough when I woke up to eat and shower and pretend I hadn't been entertaining such thoughts until -- well, just now, I suppose.  Don't please say anything.  I just needed to get it out of myself.  I'm okay today.

Really.)

minimal effort posting.

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

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

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

Silly monster faces are the new smile.

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

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

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

Headless man is usurped by small parasite near coastal town!

Sand:  Toddler cryptonite.



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

 

Ocean attack!

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

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

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

Idyllic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess who adamantly refuses to play in it.

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

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

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

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

I can't write this tonight.

I shouldn't even be up at this hour.

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

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

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

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

Fuck.

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

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

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

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

I am witless as to how to manage this.

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

junior-high memories; un-green in their resistance to disintegration.

I spent several years vacillating between being embarrassed about being pretty and being embarrassed about being smart.  (The puzzling element of this sort of vacillating is no longer a puzzle, given my recent comprehension of how ADHD works, and how it's affected me since I was small, but I want to nit-pick the one see-saw just highlighted for a minute and see where it goes.  I'm sure I'll work some of the opposing pieces to death and beyond at a later date, so if you were really, really hoping I'd be squeezing my brain to the choking point on a separate subject, be sure to come back for the exciting series! on opposing-personality-overanalyzation! that will follow this, or, you know, remember how I operate and face the fact that I'll n.e.v.e.r. do this particular study again, merely because I said I would.  *face crumples*)

So.  Embarrassed about being pretty.  Embarrassed about being smart.

And never really making much of either asset.  For, surely, they were that.  Assets.  I see, as an adult, an adult who eats her own heart out over having lost opportunities, having been too busy with the mortification of being in possession of natural gifts that others did not inherit, shame that I was selected for wit (such as it is - ah-ah!, *there* you are, self-deprecation, just in the nick of time, too - I was about to start feeling slightly positive about my minute slice of the smarty pie - don't dilly-dally, now, self-dep; just shove on in and guide me away from taking note of my potential.  Keep me from enjoying it or even acknowledging it without the regular sledge-hammer of shame and guilt!  Do your damn job, self-dep.  Holy stupidity.  Where would you be without me, you fiendish predator?, I mean, favorite lover/hater of all time?).

Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead and refer to the pretty/witty as asshat rather than asset.

They do both share a commonality, after all; ass.

*********

Trying again!  Sticking my fingers in my ears and ignoring self-dep!  Lalalalalalalalalacan'thearyouselfdep youareataselfdepconferenceforasshattedassetsbye!

*********

I vacillated all those years (though, quite obviously, not anymore, *ahem*) about having been smart and gregarious and attractive.  I seemed to have an easy time making friends.  I had some kind of gift.

And then some people didn't like it, my gift, and they stomped on me.  Eighth grade.  A rainy day under the eaves at middle school.  Amy, and yes, it's her real name, because if she ever stumbles on this, I'd like her to know how it still stings, this darkly-lit pinpoint of my memory, Amy wanted to pick someone's hair out with an eighties perm-pick.  Black.  With a long handle.

No one would let her, and I didn't either, but she decided to just start in on me anyway.  Some backstory: my hair was, while thick and coarse throughout my youth, fairly straight until pre-pubescence, when the DNA gods saw fit to bring it to a new plateau of horrid, and I developed tight ringlets.  This was just beginning to happen, but I had no awareness of it as yet, and had chopped my hair off in the seventh grade *after* a very-Brady-perm (I KNOW) left it soul-glo-quality-gerry-curled.  So was growing out a perm and it was still in a fairly awkward period of re-growth.  I didn't really have an arsenal of managing the largess of my locks, yet, because of this new precedent of curliness taking place, and, in fact, developed it only as a result of the following event.  Amy began picking at my hair, and I continued to quietly complain, saying no, don't, stop it, but quietly.  And others began to use their fingers to back-comb it, and suddenly it was The Lord of the Flies, with my supposed best friend, Marisha (also another real name, and another person who I hope feels shame if/when she ever reads this, because I want her to know the sting this still holds), laughing hysterically.  So many kids had descended on my head that I felt a little wild.  The arms, the hands and nails grazing my face, the pulling and tugging and the little stabs of pain, and then I noticed it was raining next to my leg, there were drops of water.  I thought it strange, given the giant eaves under which we had taken refuge from the weather, and then it occurred to me I was crying, *I* was making those drops land, sizzling, on the cold concrete.  I leapt to my feet and threw my arms out, yelling, banshee-like, FUCKKKKK! OFFFFF!, and dashed inside and into the nearest bathroom, hunkering down into a stall in the middle and sobbing.

Jade (you, too, you heartless wretch) and Amy chased me down.  They got into a stall on either side (a chess move I hadn't foreseen else I'd have taken a corner stall) and climbed onto the toilets, choking down laughter through their speech, "Debbie -- heehehehehehheee -- are you -- gasppp -- okaaaaay??"  BWAHHHAHAHAHAHAA!, and there were kids gathered outside the door, laughing like a group of monkeys.  Cackling and gasping and maniacal.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the councilor's office.  (One of the adults working there was Amy's mom.  Well, technically, she was the office secretary.  But she was present.  And knew why I'd been molested.  There wasn't a lot of eye contact made by her with me that day.  Go figure.)

I tried, in vain, to get all of the hair into the tiniest knot possible, with the aid of bobby pins scrounged by the kind councilor, and a rubber band.  I didn't return to classes until the next day.

With my hair in a band and kept bound around my face with all the pins I could manage. 

For months.

Months without end.

I don't just have hair shame because of that event.  I have shame about my bigger-than-life personality, a thing highlighted by the gigantic frame of hair. 

Only, you know, I'm starting to realize that the pain and the power of that episode is ebbing.  At the conference this year, I still grappled with the guilt over my enormous energy x hair x voice x non-stop verbal stream, but it was less than last year.  I told Gwen the story about the eighth-grade hairmare (as I panicked while late, again, to one of the conf. parties, in a desperate hunt for a hair tie), the utter desertion by my supposed best friend (some best fucking friend), and my almost-compulsive need to have at least one hair band and one hair pin (but two or three are better) on my person at all times.

And the telling didn't hurt as much this time.  I didn't want to cry.  I didn't feel devastated.

That's something.

pity partying: the inexpensive way to get down.

This is exactly what's wrong with me, all outlined in the following entry; I take offense at people having left me out when mentioning their BlogHer experiences in posts, and then I go and leave people out.  In a post.  About my BlogHer experience.

No one should ever read my blog.  Ever.

Ever.

Carry on, though, reading my blog, but know I am full to bursting of the hippo-crazy.  Full. to. bursting.  Carry on like you didn't already know it.  Which you did.  But whatever.  Tear it up, bitch.

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

I'd prefer that my writing of this particular post come out compelling *and* articulate; however, I'm fairly certain, based on past experiences, that it will only seem random and messy and incoherent.

But fuck it.

*deep inhalation*

I don't know why I went to the conference this year.  I only know that I wanted to see and get to know Gwen, and also to see Lotta and Suebob and Jenn and Jaelithe and Kristie and Aimee and Kyla and Jenny and Steph and Kristin and Joanne and Stefania and Jess and Julie and Kerrianne and Tanis and Katie and Erin and Flutter and Maria and Nina and Jen and Kiki and Sarah and Bobita and Feral Mom and Kristen and Liz and Donna and Julie and Cyn and Glennia and the rest of the MOMocrats, and lots of others besides.  (I'm forgetting some people; I've already edited and added some in who I forgot initially, but if you're not in here and you're all, BITCH, WHY AM I NOT IN YOUR LIST OF PEEPS WHEN YOU'RE ALL FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF AND NOW YOU WENT AND MADE ME CRY, BITCH -- double bitching feels very right here -- I'm sorry, but please just know that I will either remember later and add you, or I'll never remember because my brain is mush on a good day, and today, the surviving-BlogHer-letdown day, it's rotten to its weak, fetid core.  But I love you nonetheless.  Just email and see if I don't.  But try to not aim too many overripe tomatoes directly at my noggin.  I really don't deserve it.  I honestly love you.  Genuinely.  Truly.  Completely.

Sigh.)

I didn't go with any intentions of being anything important.  I didn't go with any intention of passing cards around (because even though I made a few, they remained unfinished and made me embarrassed of yet again starting a project, only to not complete it), of savvily networking, of interacting with the correct, the powerful, the career-making.

I went to see my friends.  I went to dance and sing and party and be myself.

Being myself is being neurotic.  I'm an anxiety-ridden, adhd mess.  I talk too much, too fast, I say inappropriate things, I cannot focus on what others say, I lose my concentration when I'm trying most to apply it, I am a social freak.

But I DON'T NOT TRY.  I fucking show up, I showed up this year, even given all of that mess of bullshit.  I went to the conference knowing full well how batshit-insane I can come off to people who don't know me, or who only know me from the online scene.  I've offended, albeit accidentally, enough people in my life to be aware of the way I resonate with others, especially in group settings (which magnifies my crap social behavior to an incredible intensity). 

I probably did that this year, too.  I know it happened last year.  I'm certain I left many, many people shaking their heads and wondering how in hell I get by on a regular basis (and to those of you who are still wondering, I say this: it's fucking harder than it looks, and it looks really fucking hard). 

Now I'm confused.  I can't remember where I began.  I'll try to find my way back.

Oh.  Right.  I've been visiting the blogs of a lot of these people with whom I felt I connected to this weekend, people I didn't necessarily know prior to the weekend (or did know, from blogging), but people I had at least a short while to chat with.  People I tried to talk to, even though I may have apparently only taken a shit on the conversation, despite my very best intentions.  (Oops.  Almost typed "breast intentions."  That would be -- not where I was going with this.)

I'm sad.  Sad to see that these people mention so many others with whom they connected,
but not me. 

but NOT BECAUSE I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT BEING PERCEIVED AS A BIG BLOGGER.  whatever the fuck that means.  big blogger status appears difficult, and i've already got my plate, no, fuck it, my table, no, my house laden with difficult.  i need no more difficult.  i just feel like maybe people thought i was being a snob, people i thought were my friends, because i didn't hang around long enough to have a good talk, but the truth is that i dash away sometimes when it's all getting to be too much and i'm starting to freak out, no matter how badly i want to keep talking to someone.  and i cover for myself really well because i would be horrified for someone to recognize that insecurity the moment it occurs, so i bail before recognition happens.  and it must have happened.  a lot.

i'm not an asshole.

I really thought this year would be better, in terms of my anxiety and my ability to focus b/c the anxiety would be lessened (I was on a daily dose of klonopin for the anxiety and a regular regimen of booze for the, uh, anxiety), but I was wrong.  I was obviously not someone anyone really managed to remember, aside from my roommates, and a handful of other people, and it hurts.

I tried so hard to be present.  Focused.  With you.

I tried so hard.

smut blogging.

I refrain from posting really often, because there are so many smutty items of business that dance like wee, naked gingerbread hookers across my mental screen that I just really don't think you, yes, you, care to read about.

You're welcome.

(unless -- ?)

(cough you love smut cough?)

(cough please debbie post more smut more often hack?)

You know.  Feel free to - discuss.  With me.  Here.

I'm (really obviously) pretty open.

quick, quick, out with it before it quicksilver-slithers away.

I'm living in a hovering state of panic about blog posts; reading them, writing them.  I'm filled with a daily-more-noxious sense, the threat of my ability to do either will be snuffed out, those wee licks of flame that still tease the bottom of the cylinder in which they reside in my core.

I cannot seem to write.  I cannot seem to tease out those flames, lure them into a cascading roar-and-echo, my leaping store of faith in my ability, diminished, diminishing, to forever put words together on a page, knowing they will succeed once they have joined up, like a militia, well-ordered and shining bright with their buttons and filigreed elements in the fiery light of the reader's eye, shins connected to smooth shoe-tops that come down clean and firmly-planted on the firmly-packed dirt of the trail, the trail that leads, winding, into the middle-distance of harps and furies and a smoky-amber'd ether.

It's thanks only to the efforts, hard-fought, I'm sure, of those who I rarely brave reading, it's thanks to their more quietly exerted, yet exceedingly exquisitely wrought, perfectly-tumbled gems, set to their most lovely angles in supple lines and worshipful sentences and passages of humbling brilliance, that I am even capable of 'fessing my fears of reading of writing, of hearing of their perfect, poignant, gripping telling of things such as:  pain, and the resulting discomfort, and of their experiences with shocking, raw beauty.  I owe them a debt I'll never repay, not because I lack the desire; merely the means.

But here is a game attempt to say it, to thank them for their work, their constant polishing and laboring over their love, for sharing it, bravely, regularly, in a way that I cannot.  For whatever reasons that I may or may not remember just now. 

the no-one-cares post, edition 308.

I hate blogging.  I love the community, but I hate the blogging part.

I'm psyched about SF, but I'm completely terrified that, even though everyone has basically already witnessed me handing myself my own ass via the dancing solo mio at the first social function of last year's conference, at a bar where there was no dance floor, and yes, I'm aware that "basically" is crap and constitutes English-abuse, I will manage to somehow further disappoint everyone and only be able to grunt monosyllabically this time around, and everyone will say, wow.  She can't write AND she's a fucking boor/bore/halitosis-riddled drunken hot tranny mess w/excruciatingly overblown sense of fashion that has no basis in reality whatsoever (take yr pick).

What I *really* want to know is, when do we get to all just begin communicating telephathically and BASTA with this writing-it-all-down shit?

*taps nails, twists hair around boring (aka left) hand's index finger*

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.

i wanna be medicated.

Can't get an appt. to see a psychiatrist until the middle of July.  The 16th, to be precise.  Iow, the day before I leave for the SF BlogHer conference.  Prolly isn't a good idea to start dosing on something unknown the day before I reconvene with a thousand crazy-a$$ bitches and behave in the expectedly ridonkulous fashion that I will do.  (It's the hyper aspect of adhd - kicks in whenever I'm even mildly mentally stimulated by something in my environment.  Give me a thousand shimmery, brilliant stimulants?  And I'm dancing like a marionette on trucker speed.  For untold hours.  It's - annoying.  And embarrassing.  And tiresome.  And unpredictable.  Etc.)

I'm tired.  So tired.  I don't care anymore.  I don't.  It's all just so nuts.

Lying cuddled together with my kiddo a minute ago, because he had come into the room, suddenly, demanding a hug, and upon returning him to his bed, I discovered his playmates, some toys he's not allowed to go to sleep with - because he *doesn't sleep* when they're present - and then we sang some songs and snuggled.  And I felt his length, even with legs curled all pretzel-like around my knees, feet stuck randomly between my knees and thighs, hand curled around mine, and my breath halted, quick, brief, because - it's all happening.  So fast.  Too fast.  Blazes of light and *poof* and he's growing, growing, grown.

And I will have done nothing throughout his growth but bemoan my own beleaguered state, my own incapacities for things that - well, that I just am not, and cannot have, and cannot be, and yet I reach, I reach, waggling my fingers 'til they're outstretched to the point of pain, and my son, this beautiful, amazing creature, this creation, he is turning tricks and cartwheels and pulling rabbits out of hats all 'round me, and still I reach, and bemoan, and waggle, and pine for things.  Unknowable, invisible things.

And soon he will, too, be invisible, this smallness, this wee synapse of time, this sharp echo against the rocks of the ages, his once-tiny hands and feet and legs and elbows all crescendoing and I see its harmonic rise in such finite, too-fleeting, too-few moments.

Is nothing in life what it ought to be?

no pretty subject line to lure you with.

I've been fighting, struggling, lashing out at the faceless, formless thing that is adhd ever since I can remember. 

And since I figured out what I'm fighting against, I've been kind of coasting.  Or, at least I feel like I have.  (I flip-flop about it, though; some days, I thrash and flail as hard as I know how, coughing and spitting and gasping as I struggle to be like all the successful people, the disciplined, ordered, organized career-holders that are my adult peers; so it isn't *completely* true that I've only been coasting.  It just feels like it, most days.)

Fucking adhd.  I hate you.  I hate you so much I wish I could strangle you.

(And this is not one of the days where I want to be reminded that I have "so many special gifts!" - because today is one of the days where I'm so totally enraged that I'm mentally disabled, today I hate the force that wars against all of my attempts to do -- anything.  Everything.)

Fuck you, you stupid fucking nothing bastard-thing.