i obsess.

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

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

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

I loves me some Lotta. 

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

Sorta.

I do!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I got pregnant.  and very, very sick.

* pregnancy break

* bought the embroidery machine and started learning to digitize

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only, wait, I have to add one more.

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

7.  Blogging.  (okay, two more.)

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

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

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

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

the. end. already.

miercoles GIGANTE! or, this post is nothing to get excited about.

I added a nice, brief, offensive rant at the very bottom of this post about how stupid and lame that one shall-go-unnamed magazine is, the one that made the awesome and candy-studded Kirtsy change their name, but since we will never again acknowledge the old name's existence, because it would draw undue attention to the other, craptastic joint, well, just, yeah.  'Course, that doesn't mean I didn't totally use it blatantly and repeatedly in my rant down below.  Heh.  I said "down below" when referring to skir-- the magazine whose name shall go unspoken.  Heh.

Anyhoodily.  Read on, brave reader.

*****

Things I would like to post on today, but haven't got the hyperfocus needed to zoom in and analyze closely (hyperfocus is a particular element of ADHD; oftentimes, prior to diagnosis, people who have ADHD assume they're OCD because of this ability to become consumed by some subject to the exclusion of all else in their lives; for example, I once spent three days cleaning a shower with a toothbrush, and I wasn't even on crystal meth.  See?  Sounds a lot like an obsessive/compulsive behavior, right?  I thought so, too.   Turns out, this is the hyperfocus thing.  I would say I'm relieved, only it's just hopping from one lily-pad of crazy to another, which just isn't all that much of a relief):

*write several posts for green mom finds on the skin care products I just bought that are all completely amazing and cool and *also* lacking in massive, disgusting chemicals, and also smell fresh and good and wonderful.  I want to do this especially intensely because, Cristina!, I *know* this time these are good products.  One of them in particular excites me, because it's a line created by a local (to Portland) mom who grows the herbs herself, and creates the products, and packages them, and does all of her own promotion and marketing and sales.  HOW AWESOME IS SHE.  Yes.  I want to meet her and court her and give her a gigantic ring made of yarrow root and sage.  (Would that be an insult?  Possibly.  I would not intend for it to be, but such is my hyperactive, impulsive way.   Bleah.)  (Her product line is called Wild Carrot Herbals, and her farm is located in a town named Rickreall, Oregon.  I just bought the vanilla bean skin cream, and the ingredients are

water, organic coconut oil, fair trade certified raw shea butter (fair trade!), virgin cocoa butter, vegetable emulsifying wax, vegetable glycerin, palm stearic acid, organic jojoba oil infused with Madagascar vanilla beans, sea buckthorn seed oil, vanilla fragrance, grapefruit seed extract and organic vanilla essential oils.  (nothing I couldn't pronounce without sounding out like a second-grader!  big ups.)

She actually printed the following alongside the ingredients list:  Resist the urge to eat it.  I'm grateful for the reminder; it smells that darn appetizing.

*write a post about this new design I made for a friend of a friend recently, and feature a photo, because DAMN but it came out supa-cute.  (hi!  I brag.  I'm a braggart.  Braggy-pants McGee!  Whee!  Uh.)

*write about my burgeoning recognition of how my stripper past is a good thing, that I need no longer be ashamed, and introduce the element into that particular piece about how my shame regarding having been a stripper was always related directly to how trashy it seemed, how low-brow, and not because I felt that it was a moral failing; in fact, I was always stoked on the fact that I had the -- okay, I was totally going to say balls, here, but that just seems a little inappropriate given that I am a female and my dancing was often (but not always, and yes, it was hot when not) for males, so prolly, unless I were she-maleing it, that would've been a big, unexpected, unpleasant surprise to those who gathered in order to watch.  ANYWAY, goddamn distractability *shakes fist at ADHD* -- I am seeing, upon considering it, that my having been an atypical "type" within the stripper realm was, in fact, a path I helped spur, along with the others who were doing similar things, performance-art things, being the sometimes-goth who refused to bleach her hair and wear fake talons and typical cheesy stripper apparel, rather, who made it burlesque when there wasn't yet a revival of such, who wore whatever struck her fancy and even if (only, really, it was WHEN) that turned off the clientele and she was mocked and almost fired on several occasions because she refused to look like the other cookie-cutter girls imitating the Playboy centerfolds of the day, and she wore actual costumes, and played specific music related to those costumes, finding ways to be sexy without being the prevalent Barbie-esque type, reveling in small breasts and slightly-larger-than-average thighs and ass, making no attempt to disguise her contempt for the obvious ploys in which to entrap the customers at the clubs where she worked.

I did it for the love of the dance, of the feeling it gave me when the music and lighting and scents and my hormonal timbre were all just so, when my favorite costume sat in just the right place on my hips and my torso, when the temperature and the barometer and the atmosphere communicated perfectly with my skin and when I felt like I was made out of an astral cloud, silvery mercurial slickly satin, I could fly and I did.  And I could feel the people watching, their eyes as much a part of my movements as the force in my gut that propelled me around the space.

What I did, those actions, the resistance to falling prey to peer pressure, to succumbing to the requirement that I look like one of the long line of prancing, long-legged Barbie horses, in order to succeed, it was crucial, because it helped women get one step closer to misbehaving, to saying, FUCK, yes, I'M SEXUAL, and on MY OWN TERMS, and whether it brings me profit (it didn't, fwiw) is beside the point.  I am establishing myself as being unique, being sexy, being beautiful, not because I look like what is SUPPOSED to be sexy, but what is, in fact, ACTUALLY sexy.  Because I'm a woman, and I can do this, and I don't care if the girl standing next to me who looks like Hugh Hefner's girlfriend is popping another Benji in her already-bulging purse, and I'm smiling nicely because someone just handed me a pity-five, because that isn't what I'm doing here.  I'm proving something.  I'm proving that I can exist in this space, too, even while I don't fit.  I'm making room for myself to fit.  See?  Here.  Therefore = fit.

And now, the suicide girls and the newly popular burlesque theatre and all of the other inroads made by young feminists who are saying, fuck, yes, I'm sexy, and I don't have big tits and I don't have a perky, size 0 ass, and legs long as a colt, and it doesn't matter.  I'm part of that.  I helped that cause.  I'm proud as hell.  Because this movement, this inroad, the one that is still being made, whether women of all stripes and walks and runs and dances recognize it, the movement is doing its work.  It's erasing, nay, *obliterating* all of that singed territory between the madonna and the whore.  It's giving us all a chance to be, to embrace, all of it, the light, the dark, the dignified, the disgusting, because THAT is being a woman and THAT is real AND THAT IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL AND SEXY and it's the wave of the future if we're gonna get the beauty industry to quit wrecking us from the inside out with their shitty, chemical-rich, cancer-inducing bullshit.

Fuck yes.

But I only just realized it.

So.  ADHD?  Looks like I owe you one, today.

*another post idea, if those aren't enough:  to discuss how much I want to return to theatre, but hesitate, not because I can't do it, or don't have time, but because - I can't do it.  I don't have time.  I have already overextended myself regarding time and it wouldn't be fair to my family, and this is due to the ADHD's everpresent lure, the crooked ADHD beckoning finger, the one that whispers, c'mon, Debbie, you have time, and this! will! be! awesome!, and so much more exciting and interesting and captivating than the boring, insipid minutiae of your current regimen, and I say, oh, yes, ADHD, you're so right.  I'm coming!, and then, bam.  Even more overextended.

*more thoughts about the idea for an ADHD book; how I should format it; whether I should consult a medical personage in order to make myself sound more legit.  how I'm going to ever go about actually focusing for long enough to write one pathetic chapter, let alone all the chapters a book would require.  Ruth, your advice is perfect for me, too, but the terror that arises within me when I struggle to visualize myself seated and writing entire chapters, it makes my itching soles almost burn with the urge to run from that visual.

*there's more, but I have to leave to make a doctor's appt. and -- hey!  lookit that!  I'm late.

shit.

*******

Updated to add one more, but no less important, item to things I would post about if only I had time:

*write a post about how much the magazine SKIRT! sucks big, ugly, wrinkled-up-old-man penis.  I would include details about how the big money, colossal media corporation lifted up the combined sk*rts of the women running the awesome, fantastic site that has been renamed with something WAY FUCKING BETTER than skirt!, so nyahhh, old fucking pervs who insist on keeping their skirt to themselves, which, frankly, reeks of slightly more than a little bit of closeted behavior.  And, well done to the woman who began Skirt! back in the day, er, in the nineties, subsequently selling out to the man, and not only did she sell out her preshus, adorable company, but now they're capitalizing on her story to sashay out and playing at how they're small and start-up and cute, too, only they're not, because they're a bunch of old, white thugs who can stop with the pretense at being otherwise and may instead be excused to go herewith and suck each other's old, wrinkly penis -- penisi?  penises?  What the hell is penis plural?  I can't believe I've never run into this particular grammatical conundrum before.

*ahem*

Go Kirtsy!  Begone, Skirt.

NOW I'm done. 

phew.

a shnore-y for you. or: hi! i have adhd! what would you like for dinner? let's go to the zoo!

Once upon a time, I considered in great seriousness the idea of becoming a pop-tart music star, and in order to flesh out the exact-right image of what I had in mind in *your* mind, allow me to say the following:  neon. yellow. pvc. hot. pants. with. matching. crop. top.

Oh.  And also matching knee-high stiletto boots.

But I'm not done.  You see, the idea was to build on my experiences as an exchange student in Brazil, with requisite fluency in Portuguese and a whole lotta nothin' to do with it afterward except flash it around at cocktail soirées and the like, or, rather, just flash it around at cocktail parties, 'cause there really is no like, other than maybe when, say, shopping at the mall and randomly blurting something out in portuguese.  You know.  That.  And the other thing I was planning on using as a cornerstone of my musically pop-tart-letted persona of grandiosity and plastic-bottomed squeakiness was, natch, the stripper-ease.  I figured, hell.  I learned how to shake it so well that Justin Timberlake, yeah, that one, hit on me one night when he was probably around seventeen years old, and I was an ancient (for strippers) lady of twenty-five-ish, I think, *scratches head because who really effing knows,* and I thought he seemed incredibly dorky with his bright-ass jew-fro and his nerdy way of trying to convince me he was fabulous because he had been accompanied into said club by his bodyguard and had driven to said club in a "really hot car" (did he mean he'd stolen it?), and I smiled patronizingly and, motivated mainly by how very tired I was, given that it was almost quittin' time (a little after 2 a.m.) and my feet had been strapped into very high, very narrow shoes for several hours and had been carrying my body around in pirouette-y movements and other various stripper-ish antics that you can probably imagine on your own without my worded aid, and, well, I was just too exhausted to amuse this dumb seventeen-year-old kid with his jew-fro and his catholic-school-boy cross-on-a-chain necklace worn so prominently above the black v-neck t-shirt and his pretentious attitude.  I mean, who the hell did he think he was?  I'm serious.  I don't care what he's done since then.  I know he must've had a sense that he was gonna blow up.  Fine.  But at that point, he was just some dumb kid with an overblown sense of importance, and I had no friggin' clue that he was anyone other than a local rich brat out on the town after curfew.  With some obvious connections to be able to get into a strip club when so obviously underage, or just a really big wad of bills to waft under the bouncer's nose.  Either way?  I only thought he was annoying.  And I was tired.  I felt the tired waving up through the bottoms of my soles and into my chest, and in my neck, even in my teeth, and I remember it was hard to smile at him, even though it was my practice to usually be nice to people unless they compelled me to break out the asshole and make them go the hell away.  Which took a lot.  I was a tough cookie back then.  It surprises me to remember how tough I was.

Anyway.  So that kid hit on me and I laughed him off and went home and smoked a doob and went to bed.  And the next day my friend/roommate and I went to the mall and I saw his band's poster on the wall of that hilariously cheesy costume-jewelry store for teens, you know, Claire's, and I stopped short.  And looked close.  Examined the hair.  The necklace, the one grazing the t-shirt's neck.  His nose was definitely that guy's nose.  Wow.  I felt really - weird.  Surprised.  A little insulted.  A little flattered. 

Then we went and got coffee and had a good laugh about the whole thing, my old friend and I.

So the GENIUS idea for me to use my singing/stripping/language skills and become a cross-over pop star in Brazil, with an album in portuguese and english, garbed in small bits of neon-yellow plastic, well, I might have just done it.

If it weren't one of the SERIOUSLY dumbest ideas I've ever had.  And I've had some doozies.  In other words, approximately twenty minutes after the idea had been conceived, it had been discarded.  But it lived large in my mind for those twenty minutes.  (How could it not have?  I was wearing bright-yellow plastic hot pants and matching bra in it.  It was a loud outfit.  I've been effectively scarred by my own, treacherous imagination.)

*********

Am I the only one who, prior to shaving, when it's already been a few weeks, kind of thinks, oh, but for all of this leg hair goeth my shapely, porcelain-skinned limbs of beauty?  Only to actually shave and discover that what lies beneath the hair is, gasp, not porcelain, but rather man-eating-pores-of-horror and more veins than last time I looked, and bigger ones, too, and also all those old damn scars from being a Tasmanian devil as a kid, and also the ever-wobblier knee-flesh?  Is that just me?

a brief briefing. (heh. i said *brief*.)

Yesterday we had the Cadillac of furnaces installed:  It's so purty, I almost forgive it for costing more than ten seasons' worth of Marc Jacobs handbags.  Or ten years of my typical wardrobe accoutrements.  Etc. 

Today:  The shower felt unusually cold.  My husband informed me that it just "takes a little longer to warm up in the mornings," in a sour tone meant to communicate that I wouldn't know since I never have to get up and shower that early, because it's utter torture to have a daily shower (although we won't go into my shower phobia, because that would totally ruin the image of my envying his daily shower opportunity, 'k?  Let's pretend I would KILL AND MAIM to get a shot at a daily shower.  Yes.  Ahem).  I had to go to an appointment for this weird holter-monitor-thingy that's supposed to determine the whoseits and whatsits about the irregular heartbeat I've been experiencing since I began taking the thyroid medication prescribed to me over a year ago.  So I was up at the crack'o, i.e., 6:45-ish.  And the shower was cold.  And I knew my husband thought I was being a wuss.  I tried gamely to convince myself that the shower was lukewarm.  It was not.  In fact, it was becoming progressively colder.  J was banging on the door all the while, shouting, MOMMY!  MOMMY!  MOMMY!  MOMMY!  MOMMY!  WAZZAT, MOMMY?  WAZZAT, MOMMY?  And pointing at my nethers through the glass.  I ended up begging my husband to check the heat gauge on the water heater, just in case the furnace guys might've bumped it or something (his response to which was something like how I'm obviously mental because FOR LAND'S SAKE, DEBBIE, why would they DO such a thing?  They wouldn't.  Never).  And was washing my hair with head tipped forward because I feared that my shoulders might freeze up if I stood beneath the faucet, terrified that I would get wet.  Somehow, my head can withstand the colder temperatures, but my body is kind of particular about sub-zero water striking it.  He returned to announce flatly that the water heater was off.

Ah-hah!  I thought.  Now he'll feel bad for having made me feel like a wuss about the water temperature's low measurement.

Only not so much.

Conversation and events ensued.

I scooted to get to the appointment. 

And when the appointment was over, and I was walking uncomfortably out of the room and back toward the elevator, gingerly trying to not jostle the device hooked to my chest with various suction-y things and the wires tucked into my pants (which I hoped didn't look like I'd just stuffed with a sock, but I was pretty sure it did look exactly like that), the little shoulder-strapped bag with the giant clock that makes me look like I'm a walking bomb hanging from my hip, I was embarrassed.  I felt - sick.  Like I might have a disease, or a rare illness, and that people might pity me, and not want to look directly at me for fear that I would notice their odd, questioning stares.

Anyway.  Yeah.  Feeling funny and out of place.  I went home.  Caleb was holding J on his lap as they watched a tv show.  He saw the device at my hip and said, "hey, that's not so bad," but then I dejectedly pulled up my shirt to show him all the wires and how they were all suctioned to my chest and torso, he looked at my (probably totally droopy) face and shoulders and got up to wordlessly give me a big hug.   His face was sad and sympathetic.  I couldn't have asked for more.  Sometimes, that is JUST ALL I FUCKING WANT, some sympathy and hugs.  WHY can't he just UNDER-fucking-STAND THAT?  Sigh.  I know he does, and it's just that life has gotten so complicated and he forgets in those moments that it's what I need most, just like I do with him, although I have a *way* better excuse, like I'm learning-disabled, i.e., stupid, so DUH.  What's his story?  Huh?  And he better not say it's because he's as mind-numblingly dumb as me, because we BOTH know that it's just not so.

Wait.  That's not going the way I wanted it to.  Never mind.

Um - so I took J to Lowe's with me to check unfinished cabinets after Caleb left for work, because we figured out yesterday that the cabinets, the ones that I really wanted to salvage, are - well, they're sort of *totally* un-salvageable.  Bummer.  I hate new cabinets.  I wanted to keep the old ones.  They're real fucking wood, and the kind you can buy now, unless you plan on spreading more scrilla than you can make in a lifetime, is all pressed wood and it SUCKS.  Because we can't afford much.  Especially after the furnace.  And the carpet and the vinyl and the windows and WELCOME TO HOME OWNERSHIP.  The kind where there is no deferred maintenance, like in our last house, which was new.  I know.  I'm playing the violin myself, I'm so pathetic.  Yes.  Yes.  We're lucky to be able to  have tethered ourselves to the debt equal to that of a small country been able to buy a home.  Sweet.

And, the unfinished cabinets.  They're fine.  They'll work.  I will stain them into a place of pretended loveliness.  Gleah.   But I decided I wanted to leave so I could take off the hoodie I was wearing over my t-shirt to disguise the series of wires and lumps and that freaking bomb-y device on my hip, because I had sweat drops riding on my sweat drops.  J made it clear that he needed some park-playing action, what with the giant meltdown, a star performance, really, when he saw a play equipment center outside of the hardware store, that I refused to take him over to because I'm the most hateful parent in the stratosphere, and also because it was attached to the wall of the store about ten feet in the air; a little unrealistic for playing purposes.  Something he doesn't quite grasp, yet.

I chose to drive us to his dad's office for lunch.  I'm having one of those hair days where shit just didn't work out right after I did my normal post-shower routine, and it's all goofy and frizzy on the bottom and almost crunchy on the top (I use leave-in conditioner that evidently didn't get distributed very evenly).  It always makes me a cranky betch when that happens, because I, well, the shower phobia, so I have to live with it like this for at least a few days.  Etc.  And I just felt dumb and out of sorts and wanted Caleb to take over for a little while.  But he had to get back to work after lunch, so I told J we'd go to the park by ourselves, and he was so stoked.  He was gleeful and chattering, and I followed him around without involving myself too much, thanks to the giant bomb-clock-device series-of-wires thingy, and then he went to go the see this gazebo in the middle of the park, the "house, mommy," and he fell on the sidewalk.  He was wearing his rain boots, he'd put them on by himself this morning and I knew they were getting a little tight but he was so PROUD, so I let it go, but then his feet weren't really doing well in them, and he caught himself on the toe and just went over like a statue, but in that weird shutter-frame sequence where I could see each body part make contact with the paved walk, frozen because it was happening so fast that I couldn't go to grab his body without fearing I'd fall, too (I was a little behind him when he fell so I would've had to leap forward at light speed and might have managed to only injure myself and possibly fall onto him in the process).  I watched as the fall completed itself, and thought it wasn't too bad, and then his face hit, too, and I was already gathering him into my arms and soothing him and he was wailing and my heart was more sore than all of his parts together could ever be, he clung and I swayed and we walked toward a sun-and-shade-dappled bench, whispering that it was okay, and we sat so I could assess the damage (a skinned knee and a little cut on the nose, sad!).  I motioned to the pavement and said, "bad sidewalk!  Mean sidewalk!"  He nodded and gulped, with those giant tears falling down his round, soft cheeks, the kind that only little kids know how to produce, the kind that are built intentionally to cut a parent's heart to the very deepest core, I was struggling to control my impulse to sob with him, oh, to know this pain.  It is real, it's awful, it stings.  It's only the beginning.  I wanted to throw myself on that walk and roll and howl in my misery over his new knowledge, the education I would save him from if only it weren't so crucial to his becoming an adult.  FUCK.

I cleaned his knee gently with a sanitized wet-wipe (and made a mental note to get a first-aid kit in the car, pronto), although I have to pat myself on the back for having tossed some band-aids in my bag a few months ago.  Foresight, after all, does occasionally take roost in my uneven brain parts.   I removed all the dirt and blew softly on the damp knee, and he chuckled over my imitation of the pavement reaching up and biting his flesh, CHOMP!, but cried softly, saying, "no, mommy, no," at my attempt to clean the cut on his nose.  Ouch, he said.  Ouch, my heart replied.  I stopped back at Caleb's office and called him to come out with some sanitizing ointment, and J was shocked to see him again.  It was painful, all of it, the physical parts, the knowing that he would be sad again to see Daddy go, again, after having had to say goodbye such a little while before. 

I stopped and bought milkshakes on our way back home.  He moaned and drank milkshake in between, his little bandaged knee so small and fragile and smooth in my cupped hand, the one that should've been on my steering wheel.

this song is about a superhero named tony!

(I really had a thing for the Pixies back in the day.  I still dig them muchly, but I so rarely listen to music now, not only because I have record-envy, but because I just never seem to have time, and usually my habit of spinning jazz when I *do* recall that music is an option eclipses amour-de-los-Pixies.  Sad.)

(That is not to neglect to underscore just how hard Frank Black still rocks it, though.)

Look!  I'm talking about music!  And about how much I loveth the music!

*the people begin dancing in the streets (but not in the sheets, a dusty, silly song from the eighties that I confess to having enjoyed overmuch) and tossing handfuls of muti-colored confetti*

Today didn't suck.  And that's something.  It's not major, but it's a start.

Here's to a week that also doesn't suck.  For you.  For me.  For the scary-ass gigantor  amount of us human beings.  (Surprisingly, having viewed An Inconvenient Truth last evening didn't send me into a further tail-spinnish state; rather, it sorta made me feel - dare I say it?  Hopeful.  I mean, how can one not be inspired - no, make that COMPLETELY BLOWN OFF ONE'S ASS by the stature of Al Gore?  He is a giant among humankind.  Seriously.  That man has taken more beat-downs than a boxer and yet - somehow, he finds it within himself to get back up and try harder.  Hopeful = Al Gore.)

So, yeah.  Love.  and Kisses.

(p.s. Ferber's on tour again in our house.  My life is a comedic whirlwind of sleeplessness and hilarity.)

(That seems like an awful lot of s's for one word - sleeplessssnessss.)

(Yes.)

Also:  remember to work your fingers.  Because sometimes air is too heavy.

once upon a mattress.

There's a tale bubbling in my head, but I simply don't have the time to devote to placing it lovingly in the bosom of this space, for tonight I must bust some arse and finish an order, even if there is snow threatening in the forecast and I'm itching to sneak downstairs and watch a Christmas movie while I sip hot chocolate and listen to the wind howl plaintively around the edges of the windows.

The tale is about my son, about how he learned to tell a story today.  About how it was so simple, the story, but the excitement at his realization that we understood his communications, however stumbly and odd and physically enhanced they were, was the size of a symphony hall, his smile breaking away from his face, threatening to tear his face in two, it was stretched to capacity, the beauty of the moment when I really understood the significance of the thing being enough to lay me flat.  Caleb and I resisted the laughter that we, desperate to avoid, kept pinching and poking one another over, instead.   Rather, we maintained our attention to the story, and I kept being drawn into the re-enactment of the thing, which I willingly obliged, so happy to be part of this moment, this new awakening into the social realm.  I recognize, then and now, how furtive, fleeting, this moment is.  That he will, too soon, be refraining from involving me in the telling of his stories.  I will catch this brief space up, hold it to my breast, my lips, my cheek, and I will wear it thin with my embrace.

And I will tuck it away for moments, in years to come, to take out and press again to my cheek, bury my nose in its mothball fragrance; remember.