oh the drama

Thursday in Portland

2009-07-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Walking to work from the bus mall after an off site meeting, I pass a man who is walking WHILE throwing up. Like it's part of his routine. Three steps, vomit, two steps, spit. Repeat. From what I can see it looks like he might have had a few too many orange circus peanuts. And wadded up waxed paper?

Three blocks later, a police officer is just beginning to get a statement from a hysterical woman who screams "No, YOU don't UNDERSTAND! I was just MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS and (unintelligible) OVER the HEAD and (unintelligible) RAPED ME! NO! You don't ...(Doppler effect of continued shrieking).

Now I'm being trailed by three teenage boys without shirts. All three are talking continuously, maybe to themselves, based on the fact that they're not saying anything other than what sounds like: "Seriously BIT-CHEZ! Get out the house, be-atch! Got-tamn mutha-fugga! Who said chill? Shee-it!

When I get back to work, open the doors and breathe in that excellent air conditioning and the smell of millions of pieces of paper, the fine semblance of normality is repaired, until I find out that two gentleman have been taken into custody after "defecating in the landscaping" outside the building.

Good thing I'm not a tourist, or I might sequester myself in my hotel's bar for the duration of my trip.

2009-07-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

I have now scanned approximately 500 of what appears to be roughly 19,000 family photos that have all gravitated to my spare room over the past 20 years.

There have been some sorry looking outfits and hair styles coming out of this project:

Let's just say I was 14 and call it good, yeah?

The scanning itself is mindless. It keeps me from thinking about the decreasing value of my PERS account and my sad little IRA. Also about the fact that somehow I became the very adult I swore I never would: tsk-tsking over the price of milk with a complete stranger at the grocery store. And meaning it.

Engine Trouble

2008-09-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Overlapping to-do lists are great if you and your sister get along, can commit to multiple hours in the car and don't mind spending part of the time waiting for her to do overtly embarrassing things, like say, filling the cart with multiple bottles of 100% cranberry juice, Vagistat (Buy 2 get 1 free!), and bodily blocking the birth control aisle while holding two different brands of the same huge bottle of 'intimate warming liquid' and discussing the pros and cons of each in an affected valley girl accent while women with children in their carts give you both the evil eye and rattle quickly past after snatching maxi pad value packs off the shelf.

"So like, this one kind is like, sooo slippery! It really does, like, heat up and stuff. You could totally use it for anal."

Luckily, my sister and I meet the first two qualifications and only speak hypothetically about the third.

The last time we decided to take a joint foray into the world of errands, we found ourselves at Jiffy Lube in July waiting in a tiny, Easy Bake Oven called the Customer Lounge where we stared listlessly at the certificates on the walls and listened to the static on the grainy TV where occasionally Oprah would burst into definition and show us a morsel of whatever emotional feast she was instigating. A heavily tattooed mechanic already talked me into replacing a bunch of parts I didn't understand and we were instructed to "take it easy" until the time he could significantly lower my available credit balance and turn us loose.

We passed a 20-ounce Dr. Pepper back and forth between us and shifted our attention to a newly arrived vehicle pulling into the garage. A woman in her mid-30s stepped out, fanning herself with a piece of paper.

"There's something wrong with the air conditioning. It just blasts hot air and then the car overheats." There were rivulets of sweat running down her like mountain springs headed toward the sea.

"Wow ma'am, you could have opened the windows on the way over here," said Tattoo, stepping involuntarily back from the interior of the car. My sister and I smirked at each other.

The woman was instructed to join us in the Customer Lounge while they "got to the bottom of it", and we dutifully moved over one chair to keep the social balance from getting out of whack.

Not five minutes had passed before she was asked to come and take a look at something.

"I think we've discovered the problem," Tattoo held up her dipstick, a dingy athletic sock dangling from the end. He swung towards her. "Do you recognize this? It was wrapped around the air filter." She stepped back in surprise and exclaimed "How did that get there?" We busted up.

The bell went ding and Tattoo handed off the stick with the offending article of clothing to a colleague (who asked if she wanted the sock back before whipping it across the garage into the trash) and called me up to the desk to go over my charges. I just handed him my credit card. At least the woman knew what she was paying for- how would that be itemized? "Undergarment removal?" "Sock excision?" Maybe someday I'll find out for myself.

Do you hate the planet?

2008-03-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

Conversation between a friend and a Safeway checker latenight in SE Portland:
"Hi, how are you? Oh, this six-pack looks like the bottom might be sort of weak."
"Yeah, could I get a bag for it?"
"Do you hate the planet?"
"What? No, I love the planet. And animals and small children. I'd just like a bag for my purchases."
"I hate animals and small children. I find them disgusting."
"Well, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that, but thanks for selling me alcohol."
"Whatever."

Kristi Quote of the Evening

2008-01-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

"In all our years together his demeanor never suggested that he would ever lip sync into a spatula."

Burning Down the House

2007-11-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

I'm grousing around with my panties in a bunch because I think I've got the whole fireplace thing under control. If anyone would let me near it. I'm swinging a huge log pilfered from our neighbor's yard when they cut down the primary shade tree to our front yard back and forth in front of the hearth, not quite sure if I should just chuck it in or listen to Chris and Kristi and cut it into more manageable pieces.

I have no problem with the idea in principle because I like to do things by the book, but we have no hatchet, no ax, no splitting power. And in order to keep the fire going, I am whining about how, as long as it's hot, we should just keep fueling the fucker. This would be sentiment along the lines of something my grandfather would let loose at Christmas whenever a discussion about how to tend the fire would crop up.

I wait until all backs are turned and then heave it in. It lands perfectly in the crux of the small stack of pine branches and scrap lumber, the latter complete with nails still embedded in some places. It lurches sideways, then settles picture perfectly and the bark goes up in flames.

I'm a huge snot, so I probably said something like "HA!" as I clapped the pine needles off my palms and strutted around the living room.

Twenty minutes later, my sister looks over from her perch on the couch and sees the enormous log now rolling towards her, freed from purgatory by time and simple physics. There is yelling. The log builds momentum for a burst of space, but bumps against the couch and starts melting the varnish on the hardwood floor even before it stops rocking.

I dance around in a circle, not knowing what to do. Chris grabs two towels and, taking it by each end, hurls it back into the fireplace. The floor smokes. This has transpired in the course of maybe 15 seconds. We discuss the pros and cons of putting the grate up. Eventually we all drift back to our little nests around the room. The cats' tails are all normal sized once more.

This time it is I who walk by just as the log crushes through it's cage and comes lumbering towards me. This time it doesn't get as far as the couch, but settles right back into the grooves melted into the floor from the first time it escaped. Luckily, Chris dropped the towels right there and with Kristi's assistance (kicking) it back up onto the bricks, everything is handled with a minimum of issue. We are becoming experts.

Over 12 hours after the fire goes out, uneventfully, I scoop up all the ashes and put them in a paper grocery bag. Kristi walks by as I'm in the other room, up to my elbows in cat litter, scrubbing the floor under the pans, wondering if cats miss the target more or less often than drunken frat boys. It would be a close race.

"Looks like you snagged some live ones from the fireplace. They're burning a hole through the bag."

I rush out to the living room, and there is my bag, going up in smoke, releasing a torrent of ashes onto the floor. Luckily I set the bag on the bricks.

I grab a metal garbage can (yes, I realize this is what I should have been putting them into in the first place) and dump the whole mess in. A pitcher of water follows. I put the entire package out on the patio in the rain.

Kristi is laughing as I step outside into the back yard, and I now know that I should leave all things involving flame to my more evolved monkey family. Thank god I don't smoke.

Quandary and reminiscing

2007-08-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

I'm all the way across the building, cause this is the only open restroom at this time of day, and am looking forward to this little activity the same way those guys in "Cocktail" must have looked forward to tossing full tequila bottles in the air all night. This is something I'm good at, but it's also just a means to an end. Efficient and showy.

I pull out the tampon from my pocket and squeeze the end. It doesn't really give, so I flip it around, knowing I'll need to unwrap the squishier end first. In a move practiced yet somehow instinctual, I pop open and peel back the wrapping like a monkey getting into a banana.

As I grab for the end with the hand that just deftly dropped the outer paper in that maddeningly hard to clean mini-can attached to the wall, something goes awry. I'm not sure what. But the next thing I know, my only tampon is flying across the room and bouncing around in the fruit fly inhabited shower stall.

Even as I watch, lip pulled back in a disgusted sneer, the thought flashes through my mind for an instant: "Should I still use that?"

The correct answer is no. But the thought of having to wad up a bunch of scratchy government issue toilet paper and jam it in my crotch, hobble back to my office to try and extract a tampon from one of my colleagues is exhausting.

I wish there was some way to make a tourniquet in situations like this, but other than duct taping my legs together at the hip hinge, I can't think of anything that might work.

I hem and haw for a minute and then do exactly what I have done many times since 8th grade: thank god that I am wearing black underwear.

I dash in and out of my cube. Make it back to find the room unoccupied. Crisis averted.

But this has made me think of adventures from the past:

1993.

Working in rural MN in a greasy spoon after school until 8:30 serving endless pots of Farmer's Bros coffee to groups of upstanding citizens attending court-mandated AA meetings.

It's January, which means the temperature is about 12 below the donut. My bag is in my car because it is the only way I'll be able to carry it around at school the next day without it smelling like a bowling alley.

As I'm running yet another order of fries to the back room where the smoke and heat make it seem like a low class vision quest, I get "the feeling." Right after "the feeling" I get another feeling, which is my stomach sinking into my pelvic floor. My bag, which is in the car, has essentially been in a deep freeze all day.

I'm one of two kids working, and my boss is glued to the TV in the kitchen because COPS is on FOX. I have to make arrangements for my surly waitstaff partner to watch my tables and not steal my tips and then duck out into the parking lot and pry open my door, grab my bag and haul ass to the ladies room, where I roll a Tampax Popsicle in my hands like how kids make Playdoh snakes. I think it has warmed up to room temperature, and I can hear the alcoholics getting restless for me to dump their ashtrays into the gallon ice cream bucket I carry in there for that purpose, and banging their cups on the table nervously for more coffee, always more coffee.

I breathe deep and impale myself with a skinny fist of cotton that feels cool at first, which is okay, but then a basic law of thermodynamics proves to me in a demonstration more gripping than any 5th period science class lab ever will that two objects at varying temperatures will seek common ground, making me double over in what can't really be called pain, but can be categorized more as blinding discomfort.

I recovered, of course. The AA people got their new ashtrays and coffee, my coworker was scowly because my tips weren't worth his trouble to pilfer, and my boss got to watch an entire episode of COPS without us hitting the bell on the heat-lamp warmed pick-up counter and screaming "Order in!"

Wisdom and meatballs

2007-08-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

Leaning over a steaming cauldron of soup so spicy my sinuses drain with the first tentative sniff, my friend D tells me this analogy for dating:

"If single women are empty parking spaces (and we all know how hard it can be to find a space at all), why would I want to park somewhere really far away from where I want to end up? I'd like to find a space near my destination."

He warned me that his thoughts on this upset most other people, but as I absorb what he has said so far, I happen to think it's the most accurate description of trying to figure out what you want in another person I've ever heard.

"Like, a space might be close in, but it might be too tight and if I took it I wouldn't be able to open my door. And there are always things like fire hydrants. Those are like, I don't know, gay men. Those spaces are open, but not for me."

I fill my soup base with about a pound of chicken thighs and radishes and stir while trying to keep from laughing. The steam is locker room thick. This is the best abstract conversation I've had in a long time about the nature of relationships. It certainly helps that I'm not trying to butt in and let everyone know what I'm thinking. But I have questions.

"So, do you like to cruise lots of neighborhoods or do you just try to stick to the reality of your ultimate destination? And what about if you see someone walking to their car? Do you just idle behind them and wait to grab it or what?" These are some of my burning questions.

"I've been trying to stay close to home. I have a couple of neighborhoods I drive around in, but I never get on the freeway to check anything out across town anymore. And I have, once or twice, gotten the sense that someone was about to get in their car, so I waited, but ultimately, you can just never know how long it's going to take for someone to really clear out completely. Now I just keep my eye on the spot, especially if it's a good spot, but just keep driving with the option to check on it later."

I put 20 cloves of garlic in my broth, along with a whole glass of soy sauce and hot peppers. D has already eaten his last meatball, urging me to stay away from the thinner slices of red meat as he 'had some trouble with the gristle and everything.' I ask him if the meatballs were okay, and he says since they're already ground up with no chunks of problem connective tissue, so they're safe.

Conversations with him are always really sort of paradigm shifting for me. His abstract observations of animals always leave me doubled over in hysterics. Things like:
"If you can't use a cat as a weapon, why are they so filled with hate?"
and
"I think chickens have more hate than brain."

One final thing on why I like D: I recently heard him play a Justin Timberlake cover on the concertina. Top that.

Black lights without fuzzy posters

2007-07-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

Chris got a small black light at Target in the dollar bin section. It was so cheaply made that he had to tape the batteries down in order to keep them from springing out and giving him a black eye.

As soon as it got dark enough, he was scanning everything. It turns out that I am covered with invisible freckles, my pink hair turns neon orange, and my eyes appear to be nothing but cataract under black light.

Disgustingly, it picks up everything you don't want to see. Pores that seem to be doing okay in daylight appear to be bursting with bright orange oil sprinkled with white bits of dead skin, like hellish nuclear sundaes set side by side on the topography of a nightmare. Flakes of what used to be you outline a human shape on the sheets, emphasizing the puddle of drool that dried before you woke up. Wherever the cats have spit up is suddenly apparent.

Gross.

So I take a bath, scrub, and I mean scrub my face until it hurts, then turn off the lights and see if things have improved. Now, instead of being dotted with orange, I'm smeared with white fluff from the towel I used to dry may face. While I'm at it, I check out the towel. No good! What is that mysterious streak there on the corner? Do I dare sniff it? Isn't this the way they analyze body fluid deposits in cop dramas?

I hear Chris from outside the closed bathroom door: "Um, whatever you do, don't look around in there too much."

Great. Now I have to know what he could possibly mean by that.

I move over to the toilet. The whole area looks like a crime scene. The underside of the bowl gives the impression that the toilet has thrown up on itself. I open the lid, unable to stop myself, and become almost unhinged. I've read about the spray that's supposed to be kicked up when a toilet flushes, but never thought about it much except when in department stores or airports where the suction is like an undertow. Now I see scientific evidence that it happens even in residential areas with low water pressure. I can see the edge of where the liquid can no longer achieve escape velocity. It is like a water balloon has burst by someone sitting on it.

I reel backwards and out of the room, catching the hand towel that until this moment, had seemed like it was far enough away from the bowl. It's not anywhere close. I will be rehanging it in the hallway later. But now I am struggling to get into natural light, where everything does not appear to be drenched in old bits of people and cats.

Chris winces as I stumble into his room.

"I told you not to."

"I had to."

"I know you did."

"Let's move."

He laughs, but I don't think it's very funny at all.

2007-07-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

Our friend Jayson's rendition of Chris giving himself a haircut.

Internal Conflict

2007-07-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

I chose Maya's for lunch because I didn't see a single person there. (Not that I don't like people, but 45 minutes to myself a day is starting to become my greatest fantasy.)

I took my heaping plate of carnitas upstairs and nestled in with my trade paperback. Just before I gave myself over to the drama unfolding on the cheap paper propped open in front of me, I noticed a guy wearing winter clothes lurch into the bathroom and sort of fling the door shut. Not slam. Not enough coordination to pull that off. But whatever.

Ten minutes later, I hear a slurping snuffly sound. I peek slowly over my glasses and then my book, feeling like a Saturday Night Live cast member in a bad skit. Winter Outfit guy is standing over the bus tub by the wall, unstacking dishes and hoovering up whatever remnants are available.

Now. The part of me uncomfortable with the thought of people thinking I've been brought up in a barn (not far off the mark) is freaking out. She is, in fact, clutching another part of me that is completely germ phobic and screaming hysterically in her face. Maybe guilt by association?

Winter Outfit turns slightly in my direction. Our eyes lock over a squeezed and dripping fistful of refried beans, soggy tortilla chips, and a battered Stephen King novel.

Then the part of me that cringes at the thought of the tons of perfectly good stuff that gets tossed into Dumpsters every day shoves the two screeching ninnies in my head over on their skinny asses and nods at Winter Outfit. I offer him my chip basket. He looks suspicious for a second, then shakes his head, holds up his dripping hand full of leftovers and turns back to the bus tub.

I tried. But here's the thing:

Chris reported the other day that while waiting to get a table at the Hotcake House at 4AM that one of his drunk friends pulled the same thing. He reached over and snagged a piece of French Toast off an abandoned plate and was unceremoniously booted out. Chris and company ordered their food to go and ate with their exiled friend on the curb of Powell and 15th.

Since good things happen in threes, let me end with this encounter: I was sitting on the bench on the south side of the library and a man (also in winter garb, but far more vocal) was making his slow way from one end of the block to the other. I say slow because he would stop every 10 steps and turn around, screaming at an invisible opponent.

When he was three feet in front of me, he stopped, turned back, flipped the bird and yelled in a hoarse voice: "Smell this you dog-eared lesbian bitch!"

I love this town.

What's in that suitcase?

2007-05-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

My grandmother was finally admitted to an Alzheimer's care facility after wads of unopened mail were discovered squirreled away in the dishwasher and a fruitless search for a missing cutting board revealed that she had packed a suitcase for a trip to God knows where containing three pairs of my grandfather's poop-filled boxer shorts stabbed by numerous ball point pens, topped with a sprinkling of fake flowers all surrounded by rolls of paper towels.

The paper towels were for shredding. She used to knit, write long letters, bird watch with the Audubon Society guide dog-eared in her lap, and bake these delicious caramel rolls. But now she dismantles roll after roll of paper goods and dispatches the super-absorbent confetti across their apartment. It takes her days to arrange the five magazines on the coffee table to her liking. She exclaims in first time delight when my mother brings her a Dilly Bar from Dairy Queen as though they haven't been her favorite thing for most of her life.

My mom had bought her a couple pairs of those elastic waistband pants to encourage her to remove her clothes on her own more than once a week. Instead, they disappeared. Having already given up on finding the cutting board (still missing months later), and sorting through the bills that had been through several wash and rinse cycles, my mom decided to just ask her what had become of the pants.

Grandma perks right up when asked a question she knows the answer to: "Oh, them. They ran off down the street together."

Getting her into the home was, as my mother put it, "not unlike trying to get a rabid animal into a carrier." She may not recognize the man she's been married to for 55 years, she may be afraid of zippers and hairbrushes, she may think that every piece of mail with her name on it is part of a conspiracy and that her pants routinely run off down the street in pairs, but once she sets her mind to something, she sticks to it.

I hope they let her continue wearing the boxer shorts she's become so fond of over the last few years. Finally! Bodily liberation after decades of industrial strength bras and 'shape refining' briefs!

Weeding; not the library kind

2007-05-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

Number of weeds, mainly thistles, eradicated by my weeding fork this evening: 65
Number of scraggly-ass irises finally laboriously dug up and tossed so they no longer get their banana-fiber leaves tangled up in my weed wacker and make me have to dig them out with my fingers, as nervous as if I was sticking a fork in a toaster that was not only plugged in, but actually toasting something: 2
Areas of weird mushy bogginess dug up and examined, to reveal only rotting tree roots and weird little pockets of trash wrapped in tin foil that I genuinely hope wasn't the drug-addled former occupant of our house's idea of "saving it for later,": 1
Feral cats scaring the shit out me by buzzing my kneeling form and letting out a low rumble as they pass by not inches from my uncovered arms and their daily frequency of terror: 1 (named Socks) and at least 2 if I'm outside.
Charcoal briquettes tossed into the hedges: 16
Full bins of yard debris: 1
Earwigs obliterated by said weeding fork: 8
Slugs tossed over the fence: 4
Times this year I've thought about getting a compost container: approximately 30
Rank of the smell of rot on the list of why I don't: 1
Bowls of homemade macaroni and cheese consumed after said yard activities gave me a blister on the inside of my thumb and made me retreat to the house like I'd received a mortal wound: 1.5

Tuna Intervention

2007-05-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

When I looked over at him, Chris was using his remaining tuna nigiri as a flesh drum pad, whacking it senseless with a pair of those disposable saliva-covered chopsticks, wasabi and soy sauce splattering around.

"What are you doing?" I asked, horrified.

"What do you mean?"

"Why can't you, you know, respect your tuna? Isn't it enough that it gave its life for you? Now you humiliate it by beating on it with a stick to 'Superstition?'"

Of course Chris and Eddy laugh uproariously at this, as would I, if I were them and not suddenly filled with sadness for the indignity of the whole ordeal.

"What if that fish used to be Jesus?" I ask.

"If Jesus were cut up into little sections like this, then I probably wouldn't recognize him."

"That's my point."

"Oh (hahahahaha)....um...(hahahahaha)...ZING!"

I get really emotional at inappropriate moments about inanimate objects. Cartoon drawings of dancing hot dogs have been known to make me break down in tears in the refrigerated section at the grocery store because I don't like that the hot dogs don't know that they look like idiots . One time, a fake fur pillow made me weep because it was just too soft for its own good. It goes without saying that scruffy stuffed animals abandoned on the side of the road send me into a def-con 2 meltdown.

So for some reason that last lonely piece of tuna, looking tired and ready to just be eaten, for god's sake, struck the mis-strung cat-gut stitches of my heart.

This all reminds me of that personality defining moment way back when I was married, and my husband wanted to make me something fancy for my 24th birthday dinner, so he brought home a big package of surf clams, a vehicle for butter that I had recently discovered. He cooked them and brought me a dish of drawn butter and a bowl of steaming yawning clams. As I shovelled them into my mouth, using their shells as spoons, he casually mentioned that it had taken them a long time to die.

I froze. Shell-scoop part way to my mouth, dripping into my lap.

"What do you mean, 'a long time to die?'" Like Tim Curry as Wadsworth in the movie Clue, asking the officer what he means by 'murder' after opening the door grinning like an idiot.

"You know, they open when they die in the boiling water. That's how you tell when they're done. They're alive when you put them in the pot." A look, a furrowed brow. "Angela? What's wrong?"

Tears are running down my face, mixing with the broth already in my lap, ruining my pants. I'm sobbing, yet still scooping up butter and slurping brainless clams into my mouth. My nose is starting to run. It's truly amazing how fast my face can melt into an unrecognizable Butoh mask.

"I didn't, I didn't know they were...ALIVE. Oh, God, that's horrible!" Still scooping, still chewing.

"If you're getting so upset, why are you still eating them?" He's reaching for the bowl, trying to remove the source of my pain. I won't let him.

"Because they're delicious!" I sob again, and sort of hiccup, and I wonder why he didn't just leave me then.

But at sushi now, Chris is so affected my my goofy statements that two veins in his forehead are throbbing in tandem with his heart.

"Are you upset, because you look like your head is going to pop."

"Hahaha...hahahaha..."

And the tuna shares none of this hilarity. It goes on sitting there, slowly oozing into the rice, trying to become invisible.

Stephen King Library Internet Policy Quote from Everything's Eventual

2007-05-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

"They had a computer room in the library, and you could get on the Internet at a very reasonable cost. I had to get a library card too, but that was okay. A library card is good to have, you can never have too much ID."

I sort of love Mr. King.

Public Humiliation: Drawer Soiling VS Vomiting

2007-05-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

"I have some...concerns," I inform Eddy as I put my coat on.

"Oh...kay...What might these concerns be?"

My activities for the past hour have included crapping my guts out, walking back to my desk, and then running back to the restroom under the influence of what feels like a red-hot poker pressing down on my colon. I don't say this exactly, but lay out what I feel our options might be for geting back to my car, which is parked across the river, driving Eddy to his house and then getting to my own.

"Well, you could go get my car yourself and come back here and pick me up. We could call a cab. Or we could just try walking to the bus stop and see what happens." I fuss around with my sleeve, disturbed to find the lining pushing out past the cuff.

"I suppose I could go get your car. Or we could call a cab."

I have been thinking about the possibility of just riding the bus, and have put a stash of tissue in a plastic bag and tucked it in my satchel. You never know when a ziplock full of toilet paper could save your ass, literally.

The other options seem less likely to produce a scenario where I would have to bolt into the bushes, drop trou, and humiliate myself in front of God and everyone than taking an admittedly short but tortured bus ride over the bridge. I've had a rumbly in my tumbly before on public transportation, and while I've never actually had to pull any emergency manuever, I have run through enough scenarios in my mind (hundreds for sure, more likely thousands-chronic stomach issues can push large critical buttons in the imagination, to be sure) to know that I'd have virtually no problem jumping off a bus and wrestling out of my pants to drop a load on the sidewalk. Considering the alternatives, it's the most pleasant.

Now, on the other hand, the thought of throwing up in front of people in the same forced social situation mortifies me beyond rationality. I mean, I am so anti-vomit that I will lie still for hours on end when I'm sick, feeling like a dog, toughing it out when I know I'd feel better if I just let myself puke. I haven't officially thrown up in over 20 years. I've gagged, dry heaved, and belched stomach acid into the back of my mouth, but never produced a stinking pile of totally identifiable foodstuffs through my mouth.

I try to relate this to Eddy on our way to the bus stop (I've decided to just roll with it), this I-don't-know-if-preference-is-the-right-word preference, and he strongly disagrees with me.

"But vomiting is so much more intimate," I protest. "Your whole body gets wracked, vile stuff is coming out of your mouth, people can tell what you've eaten and if you've chewed it properly. I don't want anyone hanging over my shoulder exclaiming 'Wow, is that a whole mushroom?' You can't tell that sort of thing from excrement." I think for a minute. "Unless you've had corn."

He does concede that if you vomit hard enough, it can and does come out your nose, which is really bad, and there's a taste that doesn't easily go away, but he still sticks to his opinion.

I chalk this up to a difference in life experience at the mercy of an easily irritated bowel and by the time we make it to the other side of the river, I am no longer feeling the familiar yet in no way welcome clenching and twisting of my gut.

Eddy will have to wait until next time to hold my bag and pretend not to know me while I defile the side of a building.

PORTLY!

2007-05-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

portly before miso arrived...

Little Portly VS Miso

2007-05-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

Portly decidedly does not like the interloper. Miso is quite rightly feeling put out by the fact that he's a laid back, easy-going sort of cat, and yet he has been quarantined in Chris' studio until Portly can get over the fact that someone else wants to claw up the sofa.

We knew Portly was a freak of the evil step-sibling kind, but this new family member is proving that he is as snuggly awesome as she is cranky.

Attempts to move her food dish to the hallway, where the door to the studio is, have shown us that Portly will break her daily ritual of throwing herself in her empty food dish and begging and just not eat if it means she'll have to eat in the vicinity of the smell of HIM.

She will now enter the hallway and scootch around for a few nervous seconds before bolting, tail ramrod straight and as big around as a soup can. This is progress.

Miso, on the other hand, when we go in to pay attention to him, will hop right into our Portly scented arms, wrap his velvety paws around us, and rest his face on our necks. Oh the Joy! The horror of comparison! I can understand how parents can love two children the same, and yet favor one against their will.

It just occurred to me that if we get fleas ever again, that two cats will be far more challenging than one; they can work together to thwart the Time of the Medicated Bath. Maybe once Portly sees that she can utilize this newcomer to her advantage, she'll warm up.

Or maybe she'll just keep hissing at everything until her saliva gland shrivels up.

New Favorite Sentence

2007-04-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

"The guy is smarter than anyone I know. If you were to open up his head, his brain would burst out like an airbag."
From "Spook" by Mary Roach.

This is what it means to be admired. What an awesome metaphor!

Presidents Who Resemble Catfish

2007-04-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

Someone came up to the desk a few weeks ago and launched into this little statement with no preamble:

"I have scrutinized THOSE BOOKS and George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln look like CATFISH!"

"..."

Once again, the public rendered me speechless.

Before I could even begin to think up an appropriate response to that, the guy left. I nodded to myself and filed the interaction away for later processing.

The next person who came up didn't actually need any help either, he just wanted to let me know his thoughts on the catfish guy: "Oh yeah, I bet he scrutinized those books. They don't look anything at all like catfish." This from a well-known built-in bookcase who might be missing a few shelves himself. "They look like rodents; ask anyone and they'll agree."

Luckily, my hour was up and I escaped to my closet-like office and hid behind the door until I was sure it was safe to come out.

Most days I have the words "FREAKS TALK TO ME" written in invisible-to-regular-people ink on my forehead. Most of the time I'm totally all right with that. I pretty much meet other people's definition of Nutcake myself. When anyone starts in with politics though, even just cosmetic opinions from a whole different century, it's usually time to take a break.

For the record, Lincoln totally looks like a falcon or some other big bird of prey, don't you think?

2007-04-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

Have you missed me?

I am entering this on my new laptop, courtesy of the wireless router Chris just bought. Chris actually fixed this up for me so that everything runs. I have trouble even turning it on and off. I picked it up last night and realized it had been in standby mode for 2 days. I'm not technologically inclined.

I'm learning all the things that millions of people in the US have known for years: cats dig sacking out on the keyboard when you're typing, internal touch pads are in alternating cycles irritatingly sensitive and then completely unresponsive, the message "No problem detected" really gets on my nerves when there IS a problem or I wouldn't be running a program to help me figure out what it is.

Enough about that though, let's talk about the amazing array of life at the library's lobby level. I have heard 3 "My Evil Twin Stole My Identity and I Can't Do Anything About It Because S/he Looks Just Like Me" stories this month. Not always twins; some people just have the bad luck to look like their siblings. And not always evil; but definitely delinquent. So it appears that numerous people in the metro area have managed to get government issued IDs that have their brother's/sister's info as their own, which I find a little hard to believe, but not totally impossible. What to do with those accounts?

Chris just asked, "Are you blogging?"

"Mm-hmm," I said.

"Are you writing about the, uh, loaf of bread?"

"No. Do you want me to?"

"Not really."

Chris made up an awesomely raunchy sex joke while we were coming back from Pambiche earilier today, one that involved a loaf of bread and other baked goods and had me laughing so hard I was snorting into the steering wheel, but I have taken an oath to not post it here.

Sorry.

Okay, I'd say this entry has been long and pointless enough. I am back online and officially committed to bringing you more stories about whatever whenever.

La la la!

2007-02-07T21:08:00.000-08:00

i love my dog jake and here's why:

when we first brought him home from the humane society, we were so excited. here was a Constant Companion, a creature to love us unconditionally, caring not about whether we put the milk container back in the fridge when it was empty, or forgot to pay the water bill for three months. to be loyal, and come when we called his name. it was all so very american dreamy that in retrospect it sort of makes me gag. but that is neither here nor there. we loved him, robert and i, and we found it difficult to leave the house at all, for fear we would miss something cute that jake might do. in one extreme instance of this overprotective maternal manifestation, i actually left my little sister at the emergency room all by herself, in pain, holding a soggy washcloth on the edge of her eye, where she had developed an unfortunately placed sty, causing her so much distress that she ended up having me take her to the er, as i've said, and then after almost an hour, i lept up and realized that the puppy had been by himself for all that time, and was probably dying of loneliness right then and there, and i had to leave kristi and rush home and bundle jake into my arms, all squirmy and not the least bit upset at all, really.

2007-02-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

A Whole Big List Of Stuff:

1) Today a man wanted to renew a video he had checked out on Islam because, and I quote, “You have to understand your enemies.”

2) On Sunday, a man with a bullhorn burst into the main lobby and yelled as he flew up the stairs, “THIS IS THE LIBRARY!” Security was all over him in a matter of seconds. They excluded him for overstating the obvious. I’m kidding.

3) I dealt with my first deceased patron the other day. A woman called to say her husband had died, and she received a bill that that read “Assumed Dead- $49.95.” She asked if she was being billed for an item with that title, or if “assumed dead” was the category for which she was being billed. As in, we assumed the man had died and wasn’t going to return his items. I was horrified that she would think that, and reassured her that we presume nothing of anyone at any time. We had a sad laugh, and I deleted the man’s account. My boss says that the saddest one she ever had to deal with was a person for whom English was a second language, and the wife had printed on the bill “He is exit.” She said she could visualize her paging through a dictionary looking for the correct term to explain, and it made her really sad.

4) My friend David is sick of calling me only to get my voice mail, even though I’ve told him repeatedly that I can hardly ever hear my phone through my bag, and I’m not setting it any louder or I’d be one of those people who answer their phone on the bus and tempt everyone to slit their wrists with long, boring accounts of what their dinner plans would be if they didn’t have to work late. Anyway, he suggested that I just set it to vibrate and keep it in my underwear. Which might work, although it probably wouldn’t make me want to answer the phone any faster, even though I would know it was ringing. So I vetoed.

5) I caught an elbow to the face the other night while we were out dancing, and my labret caught under my gum, the little space right in front of my lower incisor, and ripped. Bleeding from the mouth but having too much fun to realize, it was the next day before I understood how many nerve endings blossom in that weird little pocket behind my lower lip. I had to take out my metal piece and replace it with my glass retainer so the rubber band could keep it snug up against my lip. Stupid jewelry. Don’t tell my mom, who would say, “Well, what did you think was going to happen when you put a piece of metal in your face?”

6) Chris returned from his wild weekend playing noise music in Texas with famous click-music celebrities and riding around with nutcake drivers polishing their nails while in rush hour traffic and proclaimed to have missed me and my ‘ding-dong dangly ways.’ That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time.

2007-01-18T17:48:00.000-08:00

Fruity!

2007-01-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

My sister sends me an email with an attachment from the local “I Saw You” ads on she cruises online. It reads something like this: “You: sexy, well-dressed blond working at (store where she works) with killer smile and laugh. Brown boots. Coffee or drink?”

Totally her. She’s the only blond in the store.

Now if you’ve ever trolled around looking at the “I Saw You” section on any site or in any paper, you know that what you’re really looking for, although you might feign purely anthropological/sociological interest, is yourself. My sister happens to be one of those women who get noticed by the sort of person who writes these ads. Descriptions of her appear in papers and online like clockwork. It doesn’t matter if the guy is some bottom-feeding troglodyte because she’ll never know. She can just fantasize that it’s some independently wealthy Johnny Depp look-alike with a mysterious past who will ravish her daily until her brain explodes. Or maybe that’s what I would fantasize about.

Whatever.

I don’t ever see myself in those ads. It might be because I never leave the house.

But so not five minutes after I read her email, a woman comes up to my desk. She’s 45 or so, huge Einstein hair with bad red-brown dye job, chapped lips, crooked glasses, and an odor of fish food. Her wiry eyebrows jump all over her forehead like a couple of puffy squirrels.

“Hi,” I say and lean back out of her reach. I’ve been grabbed at by nutjobs before, and I’m not taking any chances.

“I just wanted to tell you that I love your eyebrows.” She leans heavily on the counter and flakes of dead skin from her lips fall to the marble surface. I recoil.

“Um…thanks.” I’m not sure what else to say about that.

“Yeah, they’re just like mine. Big and stuff. Don’t ever wax them or anything. Big eyebrows are great.”

Okay, now I’m getting a little freaked out. The woman leaves, but there I am with the truth unspooling around me like a dropped roll of Christmas ribbon. My sister and I both attract attention, but that attention is wildly different. Even if it was the same person complimenting us, at least she gets to filter it through her imagination. I get grizzly reality, no filter, no chaser.

I think I need to develop a drinking problem.

2006-08-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

My friends threaten only half-jokingly to back me into a corner and have a stress intervention on behalf of the part of me that is not tied to the library. It is now a very small part. I live with a library person, all my close friends are library people, I spend 11 hours a day getting to, working at, and getting home from the library, I book my readings at the library, I work on job applications that will bring me up to other levels at the library when I get home, and I go out for drinks to 'unwind' and end up talking about the library.

I dream of updated training materials and holds lists in which every item is found. My nightmares include co-workers scheduling me for 4am baking shifts at their fantasy restaurants with out telling me about it. I dream that my supervisor is observing me through psychic channels and is "watching" me while I shave my armpits in the shower.

I can't have a conversation that doesn't revolve, in some way, around some aspect of intellectual freedom or the obtuseness of the our main data base. I am considering organizing my cds by the dewey decimal system. 'Party Girl' watches like a coked up version of my actual life (minus the male strippers and all that falafel).

I own one of those librarian action figure dolls. I buy clothes based on how they will jibe with any future library situation I might be in. I buy only closed-toed shoes.

During yoga practice, I concentrate on thinking about anything other than books and how they get from one place to another. People send me pictures of libraries when they go on vacation. I started a blog to give short reviews of all the books I read, but couldn't keep up.

Do you have your library card with you?

2006-07-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

I'm at the doctor's office with my mother, waiting for him to interpret my chest x-ray and tell me I have acute hypochondria, when it occurs to me that as long as I have my doctor's full attention, now would be the time to tell him about my gross deformity.

Wait, I would just like to share, for the record, that the reason my mother is accompanying me to the clinic is that I have just picked her up at the airport for her annual week-long visit, and the only same-day appointment I could get was adjacent to her arrival. I could have offered to drop her off at my house for a nap or an uninterrupted session of digging in my drawers, but she would have insisted on coming with me. Whenever there's an opportunity to go to a place where healing happens, you can bet she'll be calling shotgun.

Back to my deformity.

I'm in my jeans and one of those washed-a-million-times-and-looking-like-it gowns, sort of draped over my front like a paint smock on a preschooler. I couldn't figure out how to tie it in the back, so I'm just resting firmly against the upright exam table in a manner that I hope appears to be casual.

My doctor enters the room after giving me the courtesy knock, and proceeds to prescribe ibuprofen and rest for the stabbing pain in my chest. We have been here before, and I have the suspicion that he thinks I'm a little Nuts, but he keeps his personal opinion of my flourishing symptoms behind a mask of professional kindness that makes me want to cry onto his starchy white coat.

I know I'm one of those overbooked appointments, but I dive in anyway.

"Say, there's one more thing I wanted to ask you about."

He looks apprehensive, glances at the door, then composes himself and resettles in his rolling chair.

"I have this skin tag, well, a hideous deformity, really, and it's in A...delicate location. I'm always catching it with my razor and I was wondering if I should make an appointment to get it removed, or if that would be something you could just take care of right now?"

"I could take a look at it if you'd like. Where did you say it was?" He rolls toward me.

"Well, let me have just a second here..." I stand up and scramble to get my pants down to my knees to give him visual access to the sight. "Um, pardon me...it's right here on my inner thigh." I point to the location, right where my leg meets my body, and he immediately says: "Let me go get the liquid nitrogen and I can freeze it right now."

"Great."

He leaves the room and my pants are around my ankles and the gown is flapping open and my mother is in the waiting room reading the new issue of 'Health' and this is not cool.

I kick my jeans and underwear across the room, unsure of when my doctor will return, and try to tie my gown one more time, then realize that a far more awkward thing is I'm still wearing my shoes. My sense of aesthetics is wrestling with my practicality. (In case you don't know already, I have no sense of modesty.) I take the shoes off.

When the doctor reenters with what looks like a whipped cream canister, I look like the perfect patient. My bare legs knock against the table, and he asks me if I want to lean back. I accept.

I flip the gown up and basically flash him my nether parts. He looks unfazed, but gently brings the fabric back down and arranges it carefully.

"I'm just going to try to make this as respectful as possible, here."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to, uh..."

"That's alright, just lie back. I'm going to freeze it a few times and wait for it to thaw inbetween to make sure that the most tissue damage occurs. It'll fall off more quickly that way, and more completely as well."

"Okay."

I sink down, hear the compressed material hissing out of it's container, and feel something tiny with needly teeth biting at my nodule.

"Just let me know if it's too much for you."

"It's fine so far."

He stops, leans back and looks at it in a detached way, kind of how I look at a pile of bills or bird crap on my car. Well, that's interesting, how did that end up there?

He leans in again and the teeth dig in a little deeper. Stops. Waits for the thaw. Starts. Stops.

His gaze is intent, slightly frowning. I wonder what it is that has captured his attention, and I imagine that the slight layer of frost melting might be visually captivating so I ask: "Is is steaming?"

Finally, after years of him taking me seriously, although I like to be taken seriously where my bodily functions are concerned, he cracks. Laughter comes out of his bearded face for an instant, and he catches my eye, and I realize what I have said. I laugh too, and we have, together, in this ridiculous, intimate moment, made real contact.

He zaps it a few more times, gives me instructions to keep an eye on it, as well as take my ibuprofen, (like giving me homework, he knows I thrive with specific instructions, can't stand to be told to just wait things out), and bids me farewell as he leaves the exam room, his exterior rebuilt, professional demeanor restored.

But I know. I have seen him laugh.

My mother is sacked out on a loveseat in the waiting room when I join her.

She asks "What happened in there?" and I tell her that my doctor and I had a lot to talk about.

2006-07-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

"I'm not going to spend any money. I'm just going to get a quick snack with Chris after work, maybe go for a walk, and then going home."

Yeah, right.

I spend most of a gift certificate at Reading Frenzy where I listen to an author (who is there to sign autographs but has no takers) talk to the counter person about how he screams "I am loyal only to Allah!" whenever he gets on a plane.

Yeah, right.

I have to walk right by Buffalo exchange to get to my car and I still have 15 minutes until Chris is done with work so I swing in, sure I won't be able to fall in love with anything in that short amount of time.

Yeah, right.

I walk out with a black cardigan with skull buttons and a green jacket that Chris would say looks "smart." I can't believe it though, since it is about 92 degrees outside and I am already in what some cultures would consider to be my underwear and here I am picking out long-sleeved clothes that I totally cannot bear the thought of actually wrapping my limbs in.

I pick Chris up at the library and the first thing that comes out of both of us in lieu of greeting is: "Sushi?"

And so I spend $50 all while telling myself that it's all necessary. Especially the sushi.

2006-07-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

Kristi and I are in trouble. Not the kind where possessed pumas are chasing us on our bikes through a remote wooded area with no chance of us out-running them, or a serial killer pursuing us through a maze-like hallway in a 4 star hotel where all of the employees seem to be taking a mass break or anything, but still.

We can't find a screwdriver small enough to unscrew the last two screws on this picture frame to reorient the wire hanger. This is important because we want to put up this new print that her boyfriend bought before he gets back from getting coffee. He likes this print, but hasn't had time to frame it. We conspire to make his day. This is consuming all our energy, wrought from Subway's delicious Vegie Delights. (I prefer double mayo, Kristi likes double cheese.)

"I've only got this one screwdriver," she said, brandishing the oversized thing at me like a weapon in a street fighting movie.

I'm eye level with the frame, trying to figure out how someone twisted the screws in so tight that they almost touch the mat.

"Don't you have one of those little ones for fixing glasses?" I ask, picking up the picture and shaking it slightly, contemplating hitting it on the edges with a hammer, like you do when you need to get a new jar of pickles open.

"No."

"Oh."

I try a dime, a butter knife, a piece of plastic of unspecified origin, a few more attempts with the too-large screwdriver, and I'm ready to give up.

I blow away the metal shavings that are piling up from my stripping out the screw.

I hear Kristi pulling apart yet another drawer in the hopes of finding something adequate for our hardware needs.

Upon close examination, it appears that the screw no longer has any sort of ledge at all, well, perhaps just a small lip of ragged metal. I think about what it would feel like to have it shoved in my eye.

I get an idea. I pick up the original tool and try to fit the end of it in the sad opening. It fits, sort of. I press down and twist, oh so gently, and feel the victorious sensation of the metal giving way, physics on my side, the torque coaxing the stupid 1/4 inch piece of crap screw from it's cold steel embrace with the frame.

"Hey. I got it."

"What? How?"

"I damaged it to the point where the original screwdriver fit. Are we geniuses or what?"

Or what.

2006-07-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

I tripped over the edge of the curb and went flying forward, legs pedalling, arms clutched tight to my bag. Don't want to let go of that bag. Happily , I caught the first wave of my fall with my elbow and my right palm, abrading the surface in several inch segments, but missing my skull almost completely. My hip took the second bounce, and before I stopped skidding across the sidewalk on the busy downtown corner, my body happened to roll face up, and I saw Chris looking frozen and horrified, hands out, mouth open.

For the record, he couldn't have stopped me if he tried. I would have taken him down with me. Unstoppable force.

Having ascertained that I hadn't knocked myself out completely, I asked Chris the most logical question that popped into my mind:

"Did anyone see my underwear?"

"All I saw was legs."

"Oh."

Next question: "Is there a hole in my sweater where I utilized it as landing gear?"

Answer: No, however, further inspection at the coffee shop led me to discover that I was, in fact, bleeding all over inside the sleeve of my new cashmere sweater.

After having Laura put aside her schedule changes to help me bind up my arm like King Tut, I felt the actual pain start to seep into my left side.

It's amazing how often I casually rest my elbow on the edge of tables, desks, and other flat surfaces. Wow.

The next morning in the shower, while trying to clean the rest of the cement particles out of the scab, I noticed that there were sweater fibers ground into the wound. Under the crusty layer of dried blood.

What do I do with that?

I dumped hydrogen peroxide on it, slapped a bunch of band-aids over the worst of it, and decided to not worry about it for now.

I'm sure the material will come off when I'm healed up. I think. Yuck.

2006-07-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

Nothing funny has occurred in the past two weeks. Not that I can write about, anyway.

However, I have been to 2 birthday parties, ditched out on the 3rd, attended a swank housewarming party, found a bag in our hedge that was likely stolen in 2003(evidenced by the expired driver's license and the slug-dissolved cigarettes found within), consumed a drink with 'pureed kiwi' as the main ingredient (second to the vodka, of course), and bounced around during daylight hours at a lesbian dance party while my sister took my drink orders and did the server's tango through lots of touchy-feely grrrl reunions.

I basically drank alcohol for 10 nights in a row.

Now, after no days of reflection on my somewhat drunken behavior, I am about to take the bus home to greet my boyfriend's dad and step mom, who are here for a week of no air conditioning or cable, a cat that ejects all her hair the second you touch her, and us as their exciting Portland instigators.

I'll have to let you know how this goes.

2006-06-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

Neighbor girl invites me to her 'End of School' slumber party.

When I stop by to say hi, she and 5 other girls are in their pajamas, foam curlers in various states of coming unraveled, rolling around on the floor while playing a board game version of 'Truth or Dare.'

I wave to her grandma, who is draped on the couch at the edge of the room in a way that can only be described as 'melty.' Her arm is thrown over her face, the crook of her elbow sort of pulling her nose upward into a porcine-like grimace. The girls are shrieking every 3 seconds or so, taking great pains to humiliate each other in that special way that girls do. Every shout for 'truth' sends out invisible little girl feelers, bristling with palpable tension, waiting for someone to spill their actual beans, giving the group the upper hand. Soon all of these girls will learn what we all had to learn the hard way: to lie.

I remember riding the bus on the way to some class field trip in second grade, when a pretty, popular girl sat down next to me and grilled me for information on the boy of my pre-adolescent dreams. Keep in mind that I'm only like 8 at the time, and the thought of boys frankly turned my stomach, but so anyway I look around on the bus and pick the blond haired blue-eyed son of a semi-famous baseball player because I thought it would be safe, after all, everyone loved him, so it wouldn't brand me as a freak to pick the person that anyone would pick. All this only after I swear this girl to secrecy. She swears. Crosses her heart and hopes to die.

"Darren," I say, thinking I might have passed this social pop quiz.

But no.

She stands up on the seat, grabs the one in front of her and screams, "Angie loves Darren! Angie loves Darren!"

To my astonishment and horror, the whole bus starts in with her. I shrink down as close to the floor as I possibly can, and listen with a totally new level of understanding of the word 'coward' as a girl with Downs Syndrome named Angie starts yelling, "I do not! I do not!" and basically taking the heat off me for the entirety of the incident.

Christ.

But back at the slumber party: her grandma crapped out on the couch, her mom making about 50 hot dogs in the kitchen, as well as opening multiple bags of sugary snack food and gushing about John Travolta in 'Grease,' which they will be watching soon, if they can sit still long enough, and her brothers shipped out for the evening, I decide to beat a hasty retreat, but not before I congratulate myself on having lived through the stuff she's going through right now, and promising to look out for her as much as I can while we're neighbors.

As I read in a book not so long ago, "There is no worse training for adulthood than having been a child."

2006-05-08T07:49:00.000-07:00

The neighbor kids come over, insisting that we watch a movie with them. We dig around, knowing that they have all but exhausted the stack of old James Bond movies from my personal collection, or at least they have fast-forwarded to the good parts: the empty space suits that explode for no reason in deep space laser fights, underwater car chases and harpoon battles, boat stunts, alligators fed by a man with a fake hook over his real arm, you know, the awesome basics of action movies since the beginning of time.

But lo! What have we here? The Indiana Jones Trilogy! A great gift, and certainly something to keep a couple of action deprived kids content for an hour and a half.

Ten minutes into "Raiders of the Lost Ark," one of them looks at me and asks, "Just how old is this movie?"

"Why? Does it seem dated?"

I look at the box and nearly choke on my popcorn. 1981. Holy crap. This movie, such a basic tenant of my childhood, is now 25 years old.

Amid clamorings that we are trying to bore them out of our house, Chris lets the room hear his thought; that all must sit still and be quiet or leave the area.

Things are quiet again for a while, and the dreaded storyline develops.

"Are there going to be any more snakes?"

"This isn't like the video game at all."

When, finally, the infamous face-melting scene is imminent, Chris gets everyone to settle down and watch by telling us that it scared the crap out of him when he was their age. I second that, and wait to be disgusted.

It lasts all of 9 seconds, and when it is over, one of the kids says: "That was so fakey."

I have officially become an unhip old person, clinging to the scraps of my quickly rotting youth, unable to impress even the children from next door who like my cookies, the fact that I have purple hair nonwithstanding.

Too much humanity, not enough punching. I need to get on board, is the consensus.

After the kids left for more exciting activities, Chris and I talked about other movies that scared us silly when we were 10. Embarrassingly, Superman 3 would make my list, although I can't remember why, only that when the bad guy gets it in the end, he gets it in such a dramatic way that it gave me nightmares. Also, that movie with Tom Sellack called "Runaway" where robotic spiders would follow you around and inject you with a paralyzing agent and guns shot bullets that could follow you around corners and would explode on impact. I must have entered every dark room like a veteran undercover cop for 3 months after that, not absorbing the absurdity of the notion that futuristic killer spider robots would want to kill a 10 year old girl in a trailer in rural Minnesota.

It was an irrational fear.

2006-05-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

We are waiting for bacon to be delivered to our table. I am sipping a too-spicy Virgin Mary that I hope will clear out my pollen-irritated sinus cavity.

Chris is talking about something important, his music perhaps, it escapes me now, but I couldn't concentrate on anything he was saying because he had something stuck to his lower eyelash. I stared at it, thinking it must fall off the next time he blinks. But it didn't. It hung there, suspended above the rim of his glasses, bobbing with the weight of itself as he spoke.

Finally I say something.

"Hey, um, you've got a thing-" I make a swiping gesture at my own face to mirror the problem.

"What? Oh." He takes off his glasses, sets them on the table, where I can't help but think bacon will nest briefly in a few minutes, before being devoured by the two of us.

He rubs at his eye, and puts his glasses back on.

"Better?" he asks, then goes right back into whatever he was saying.

I still can't focus on it though, because now the offending particle has moved up to his top eyelash, where it looks to me like it will drop fiendishly into his eye at any moment, blinding him for life.

"So I just really think that my printing is going to take priority over music for a while, at least until-"

"I'm sorry, I have to tell you: the thing is still really close to your eye."

"Agh! Will you stop? Why can't we just have a conversation without you picking stuff off of me?"

I admit; I am highly distracted by foreign things attached to the faces of those I'm conversing with. I can't think of anything else until the thing/s are removed. It's a major flaw, as there's always something stuck to someone.

A friend just informed me the other night that the night her boyfriend came back to town after being away for a year, that the first thing she did was reach over, as he was speaking, and pick something out of his teeth. He didn't even miss a beat, just kept talking. How do we get to that point?

2006-05-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

2006-04-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

I was walking across the street with Eddy, severely underdressed, on our way to meet Luci et al for dancing hilarity. My heels were cute, sturdy, but flat, with no traction. These were not all terrain fashion statements.

So when a guy heading the other way, wearing eyeliner, looking cute as hell, says, "Hey, I love your coat!" and I turn and say "Thanks!" and try to look all runway model about it, the first thing to go is my footing.

I land sprawled on the asphalt, Eddy already ahead of me and standing on the curb, looking amused, with just the right amount of concern. I am mortified beyond any and all sense. This, for some reason, perhaps because I am no longer a teenager, goes well beyond the period stain on the back of the dress, the lipstick on not only the teeth, but the face.

Cute boy rushes back to me and says "Oh my God! Are you okay? You must need a hug."

I, still sitting on the ground trying to assess the glass absorption into my palms apologize for making him have to witness my flailing around like a clumsy ass.

He insists on helping me up and embracing me, his date furious on the opposite corner, while Eddy offers me an elbow when I catch up to him.

Now I understand why women hold onto the proffered arm.

2006-04-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

A patron walked up to my desk and stood there, staring at the side of my head.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said back.

Then I noticed that he had drool running down his face and soaking into the first five inches of his shirt. He thrust a sweaty clutch of snapdragons at my face.

"These are for you."

"Um...Thanks." I accepted with hesitation, taking the bouquet with only two fingers and placing it gingerly on a piece of absorbent paper.

"What- do you think they're poisonous?" He seemed pretty upset that I hadn't clutched them to my bosom and swooned.

"Huh? No, I'm just putting them here for...later."

Mistake.

"Oh! Not poisonous!" he caterwauled, and snatched them back, bringing them to his mouth and taking a huge, crisp bite and chewing, somewhat messily, while smiling at me as though I had just given him permission to crap on the carpet.

"Sir, you might not wish to do that. In fact, you don't want to eat those. They might not be good for you." I had never encountered anything like this before. Usually the crazy people want to hurt you, not themselves. What was the protocol? I had no idea.

Luckily, the LA sitting next to me jumped up and reiterated my concerns, adding that she thought they might be poisonous.

She called the security officers while I Googled the possibility.

The man happily munched away on the snapdragons, pieces of petal falling from his wet face to land on his soppy shirt and behind him on the floor as he wandered in circles.

Security tried to talk to him and advise him to not down any more exotic plants, but he resisted their common sense advice, assuring them that he knew what he was doing by yelling "Not poisonous! Aphrodisiac!" before he stumbled away and out the door.

A later inspection of the snapdragon arrangement in the lobby confirmed that there was only one lonely stalk left, and that he could have been eating snapdragons all morning. But since he left without the chance to let us know if it was true, we can only speculate on the demise of the decoration.

2006-04-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

I was in charge of the Chicken Kiev. The pre-formed, frozen kind; breaded and filled with yellow liquid that by all accounts looks buttery, but tastes strangely synthetic. Chris calls them chicken Twinkies. I was too tired to contemplate the amount of energy it would take to make mashed potatoes, so Chris was in charge of those.

I plunked the solid chunks of processed goodness down in the glass baking dish and walked away.

Chris busied himself with the chopping of the last of the potatoes, having to toss one in the trash when he discovered that part of it had liquified in the bag.

I decided at the last minute to put some frozen corn on a burner, because, well, when else would we eat frozen corn? Why do we even have it in the freezer? What purpose does it serve? But it was a good thing I did, because Chris happily finished the potatoes, announced that he may have put too much milk in them, and left the area.

I went over to investigate, and by checking out their texture, was able to discern that they wouldn't be great, but they wouldn't be too wierd. I stuck my finger in, hoping to be able to make a quick judgement about the possible addition of garlic or butter, but before I even put it in my mouth, I knew something was wrong.

They smelled. Bad.

I sort of hunkered down over the bowl and sniffed. The milk was sour. Not just slightly.

"Chris!" I yelled. "You used spoiled milk in the potatoes!"

He came running and looked at them in disbelief.

"Really?" He took a small bite. "Ooh. You're right."

"Chris, didn't you have cereal earlier today?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't notice the milk was bad then?"

"I guess not. I mean, I thought something was strange, but, I just didn't realize."

We flushed the potatoes and had frozen corn with our chicken Twinkies.

After dinner, Chris gathered all his clean clothes from the laundry area and dumped them on our bed for an enormous version of "The Matching Game."

I love this game, where you spread out all your clothes and separated them into piles, match socks, fold pants and t-shirts. It gives the a warm fuzzy feeling.

After we were left with a large number of orphaned socks, Chris went nuts, inspecting every article of clothing he owned and discarding an entire two garbage bags of socks without mates, t-shirts the color of rust or frayed to a translucent texture, pants covered in ink and paint, and shirts with less than 3 buttons.

It felt great.

2006-04-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

A patron just informed me that if I ever wanted to talk about or express my interest in UFOs, I'd be put on a blacklist fo fast it wouldn't even be funny. Then she put her finger to her lips and made a shushing noise. She didn't want anyone to hear her warning me about it, or she'd be put on the list herself. She said she couldn't take off her sunglasses or she'd be recognized for sure. She has to wear them all the time, even in the house.

2006-03-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

Some random guy tried to grab hold of me as I was shelving CDs today, a basic patron no-no.

I had been clenching my teeth about a kid listening to his headphones almost too loud. No one seemed to be bothered by him, and I couldn't tell if it was just because I happened to be totally in his personal space, as he wanted the pile of CDs in my hands, which you would have to pry from my cold, dead body before I would just give them up like that.

Then The Grabber laughed really loud, a staccato burst of insane sounding revelry and then nothing. I clenched my teeth together hard enough to hear enamel cracking and swung around to say something, but I didn't see anyone.

I started flipping through the classical section, orchestral, and suddenly an alien paw reached out from the other side of the shelf and made a swipe and my wrist.

I bent over a bit and peered through the opening. There was The Grabber, giggling to himself and wiggling his eyebrows at me. I gave him my best no-nonsense glare over the top of my glasses and pointed right at him, prepared to make a scene if he swatted at me again with anything resembling intention to yank my arm through the shelving.

But he reacted like a 2nd grader and hunched over, then scuttled away like a crab.

Then Headphone Guy started singing along, loud and proud.

I grabbed my truck and took off for the relative safety of the reference desk.

Jesus.

2006-02-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

We were on the road at 7:15am on our day off together, driving through jungly traffic on the 205 to get to an 8o’clock appointment at our highly recommended accountant’s office.

I was sick. Something lodged in my sinus cavity the week before and was making my life miserable, breathing wise. Chris was cranky because he had to get up early to go do our taxes, which is reason enough to be in a bad mood.

I was swearing and clutching my forehead in the stop and go lurch of rush hour. There were no signs of an accident or anything that indicated that the road would be freeing up any time soon.

We pulled up to the building at 7:58 and I grinned at Chris.

“Isn’t it amazing? We made it here on time after all.” He looked at me the way a cat looks at a spider before batting it across the floor.

“Yeah, that’s great.”

I turned to pick up the enormous stack of papers needed to itemize our deductions. They weren’t on the back seat. I looked at my bag. They weren’t sticking out the top of that either. I looked at the floor, at Chris’ lap, in my own lap. The papers were not in the vicinity.

I freaked out.

“Oh SHIT! We just drove almost an HOUR to get here early on our DAY OFF and I LEFT THE PAPERS on the KITCHEN TABLE!” My initial outburst was followed by some choice bits of self-criticism, as well as some stuff thrown in the direction of my car mate, who decided to tell me that flipping out and yelling wasn’t going to make the papers magically appear.

We both stormed away from the car. Chris took off down the street with no hat or gloves, even though the morning was brisk enough to have caused a quarter inch frost on everything, and me into the CPA office, trying to pull it together so as to not start blubbering in the presence of people who were going to decide how big my return was.

It was easy to reschedule the appointment, and the woman only stared briefly at my purple hair. I was still pissed about pulling such a bonehead move though, that when I got back out to the car and Chris hadn’t materialized, I figured that if he wanted to walk, that was fine with me, and started to pull out of the parking lot.

Then I envisioned him 45 minutes from home in a completely unfamiliar part of town with no warm clothes and possibly no wallet, and decided to turn my hazard lights on and give him five minutes to show up. I saw him coming towards the car with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up around his ears. For some reason, this didn’t elevate my mood, and I glared at him as he opened his door and fell sighing into his seat.

We had planned on going out for pancakes to celebrate the end of the dreaded tax errand, but now that was in the toilet, as the errand was still looming on the calendar, and now we were just two pissed off people up at an uncivilized hour for basically no reason. I figured we’d just go straight home so we could get on with avoiding each other all day.

Half way through the longest car ride ever, I pulled impulsively into a gas station when I saw that they had a price of under $2/gallon. A guy breezed by and said, fill on a card? To which I said $20 cash, and he said, fill with cash, and then took off. I didn’t have any more than twenty and I tried to catch him, but I had no idea where he went, so I stomped into the store to try to reason it out with the woman inside.

‘Hi hon, I’ll be right there.” Her disembodied voice came floating out of a back room.

I gave a Halls cough drop display a full dose of my animosity with a glower.

“Just a fill up, hon?”

“Well, see, the thing is…”

She looked over her glasses at me, not unkindly.

“It’s cold enough out there to have put a frost on the pumpkin, am I right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Whatever.”

“You look like you’ve got some frost on your personal pumpkin, if you don’t mind me saying. You know what that needs? A vigorous rubbing. That’ll take care of it.” She glanced at her register. “That’ll be $21.”

I had no idea what she meant, but it was the funniest thing I had heard all day, and I launched into one of those coughing laughs where you grip the surface in front of you and spray spit all over. She let the extra dollar slide.

I stumbled, giggling, out to the car, and announced to Chris that I may have frost on my personal pumpkin. He agreed.

Then we went out for pancakes.

2006-01-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

List to catch you up:

-We have termites. And carpenter ants. And no money.
-Portly can no longer shimmy under Chris' dresser as she is too chunky.
-My 30th birthday yeilded me a pink cake with Funfetti frosting, a Get Fuzzy Calendar, a killer unicorn, and lots of drinks.
-The ceiling in the garage is leaking above the dryer.
-I'm obsessed with Ranma 1/2. Mostly the show, but the books are good too. Teenage boys turning into girls and grown men turning into giant pandas seem to be 'my thing.'
-When I requested a clear acrylic ball for my labret piercing at the jewelry counter, the woman asked if it was for work. I said no, it was for my mom, and she gave me a look that could only be described as 'whithering.'
-My work area looks like a demilitarized zone.
-I washed the curtains in the living room after I opened them and was covered with a cascade of cat hair.
-The neighbor kid's biggest wish right now is that dinosaurs were still alive, didn't eat people(or stomp on them), and could be ridden to school.
-I'm paying someone to do my taxes this year. Fuck it.

2005-12-18T07:42:00.000-08:00

One of Chris' fancy pens exploded in the dryer. He opened the door and found that half of his clothes were splotched by ink, black stains rubbed around the cylinder by the churning of the fabric. It's true that his shirts managed to spread the offending substance around the entire compartment. I felt along the smudges with the pad of my finger. To my relief and Chris' despair, it was all smeary.

"You know what this means?" I asked, excited that it wasn't as grim as it appeared, in terms of far reaching consequences for our future loads of laundry.

"Sitting in the freezing cold garage while scrubbing permanent ink out of the dryer?" he guessed, not nearly as thrilled as I was.

And so, what was initially thought of by me as the ruin of an expensive appliance turned out to be no more complicated to clean up than with a sponge and some sudsy water.

It was cold in the garage though. Portly kept him company while he scrubbed.

Stupid pen.

2005-12-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

Everytime Chris moved last night, I woke up. Not just the sort of jostled out of deep sleep that is easily returned to by changing positions and getting my face out of the drool spot either. No. Everytime he sighed, or turned a page, or tried to fend off the cat, I came out of sleep like it was a cannon I was being shot out of. Several times I snorted, so quick was my desperate inhalation.

Then I'd start thinking about things that I only ever think about, at least in such a stark manner, at 3am. What is keeping me breathing? If I subconsciously told my lungs to stop doing it, maybe as a joke, would my brain comply anyway? What if I made myself stop breathing in my sleep, and then forgot how to get started again? Heavy stuff.

Clicking into more practical gears, my head went into asthma panic overdrive. All this thinking about breathing or not led me right into this: If I'm thinking so much about breathing and my abilities to continue to do so, is my body trying to send up the red flags that something is about to happen to hinder my abilities to continue with this activity? Like my own personal bronchial constriction breathing-lung dog? Oh, crap.

So I started to breathe very deliberately, checking for changes in raspiness and how deep each one was. And then every subtle variation meant a whole list of calamities; heart attack, pneumonia, emphysema, supernatural possession. Smothered by the spirit of the Lord. Going straight to hell for bringing up my sister's secret teenage oregano stash and the embarrasment my mom lived through when she busted Kristi on it, only to be confronted with the fact that it wasn't drugs at all, but just a container of spice. Shouldn't have tried to talk to her about that on the phone the other night. It's all coming back to suck the oxygen right out of my lungs now.

Chris moves again, tossing his book on the floor. It takes my alertness to the next level. Now I am convinced that while I am having a CO2 induced seizure that the house will be broken into and pillaged. Chris will be knocked out with his own bat while trying to call the police from his studio, and the cat will escape into the cold night, only to be eaten by the friendly neighborhood pit bull. And I, I will be trapped by my own inability to breathe, like a fish on a shag rug, and will not be able to stop the theives from making off with my clip art collection and my cheap ass DVD player that really doesn't work anymore.

And as long as they're at it, they might as well take the two ancient and malfunctioning reel to reel players that spark and make the lights flicker when they are plugged in. And that box of clothes I've been meaning to take to the Goodwill. And my jar of pennies, although I had to cash them in a few weeks ago to buy something that seemed important at the time, so there aren't that many to weigh them down. No, they'll be able to make a quick getaway.

But now Chris is fussing around with the blankets and all the noises I hear as crystal clear subside as I realize just how fucking cold it is in our house as the main quilt gets yanked off my shoulder. I wonder if I can see my breath. Our furnace is an electricity hog and the windows are not yet plasticized and the wonderful fans that keep our bathroom and kitchen smoke and steam free are like open portholes into frigid wind tunnels. They siphon the wind directly into those two rooms, making the fridge obsolete. We set the thermostat at 62 and wear our hats, scarves, and gloves. We build little fires in the fireplace and struggle to keep them going. I wonder why we haven't gone yet to the hardware store for puffy tape to put around the door leading into the garage. Payday sparkles in the distance, promising new ways to help us shore up our battlestation against the surprisingly crisp Portland winter. I make a mental wishlist for heatmaking/saving devices.

Portly is now off the bed, probably because her human companions aren't doing anything to help keep her still and asleep. She claws the chair in the next room, ripping sounds coming from the hallway.

"Does Portly have any Crunchies?" Chris mumbles, thinking an empty food dish might cause her to act out.

"She did when we went to bed."

"Maybe it's time to put her in the garage."

"But it's cold out there."

"..."

By the time 5am or so rolls around, Chris gives up and puts pants on, then goes to some other location to do god knows what. I try to drift off again, but feel the same steady pull of neurosis that kept waking me up to begin with. I dream about a nap. Maybe later, maybe later.

2005-12-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

I spent years looking for the perfect coffee cup for work. Somthing that sealed completely so I could toss it in my bag, easily washable, small enough so that if my order wasn't heard I wouldn't walk out with a beverage big enough for a small horse.

I found it. It holds only 8 ounces, is the blue of the summer sky, and keeps my tea hot until it's time to go home.

One problem. I just discovered it. There is a small space between the rubber part of the lid that keeps the liquid in and the cool blue metal top, rounded like an unfired bullet.

Unbeknownst to me, chai has been collecting in this space for several weeks. I just thought to unscrew it to look in there 4 minutes ago, as I noticed what I was afraid was a leak. I am still fighting a serious gag reflex. Just looking at the thing makes me feel green.

And so the search for the perfect coffee cup continues...

2005-12-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

My father is being forced into early retirement. He is vague about the details, and doesn't answer any questions he doesn't want to. "Forced" is his word. I imagine the state is tired of trying to find something for him to do, as he hasn't really had a permanent place since they shut down the print shop he ran years ago. We have no idea what he has been up to. We know that he likes Pier One and Barnes and Noble in the strip mall near his house in the suburbs.

My mom said she saw him driving the other day in town while she was waiting at a stop sign. She pulled out behind him, and as the distance she followed him turned into many blocks, she felt the rage and anger she thought she had cut loose threatening her judgment.

"It took every fiber of my being to keep from running him over."

"But wasn't he driving his truck? How could you run him over in his truck?"

"Oh, you weren't married to him or you'd know."

My poor parents, fueled by their mutual distain for each other, living lives in such close proximity. Do they choose this because of some deep rooted dependence on each other, no matter how twisted? Or is it something like they each think that the area was theirs first? They just both can't imagine living anywhere else?

Robert and I share a city, but it's a million people here vs 12000 there. It's easier to divide up a town if it has more than one fancy bar and one grocery store.

Oh, the horror of bumping into your exhusband when you look like crap and drove to the store in your pajamas because you were too sick to put real clothes on but you needed more canned chicken soup and maybe a few more movies. He's holding his flushed and cute little baby and gesturing to his new wife who has naturally red hair and the Norman Rockwell image is forever seared in your mind as The Thing You Could Not Do. The horror!

We were only married for two years, I can't imagine what it's like for my parents, married for longer than I've been alive.

I told my mom that she should excise the anger and rage in therapy, and she told me she doesn't want to talk about it in therapy because it's too painful. Either she doesn't grasp the idea of counselling or it really is worse than I can conjure up.

Graple. Grumble. Velour. These are words I like, on a completely unrelated note.

2005-12-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

The man behind the counter asks me how thick I'd like my salami sliced, and I have no idea what the right answer is, so I grin like a dork and shrug, telling him to 'surprise me.'

He turns to the slicer and makes some minute adjustment, then turns back to me, holding out a seriously thick slice of lunchmeat.

"How's that?" he asks, and waves it at me over the counter, demonstrating its ability to withstand even the most powerful forces of gravity and remain upright.

"That's...uh, fine."

"No, no, you have to take it."

"Oh, okay." I accept the offering of sausage and take a step back. I'm wearing gloves, and little tufts of fur are sticking to the piece of meat. Do I eat it? Is that what he meant for me to do? I take a bite, although I am stuffed from the sushi I gorged on not 30 minutes before.

"Here," he says, handing me another slice. "This should be better."

I can't tell the difference. The second slice he hands me is essentially identical to the first, and I stand uncomfortable and silent as he small talks me through several more pieces.

What is the etiquette? This is why I never buy things from a counter where you have to try to explain and justify your selections to another person. So many opportunities for things to go wrong. Once, I asked for half a bag of lavender and received half a pound, which actually filled up almost 3 bags. I wondered what took the guy so long and why he gave me a weird look. Who would need that much lavender at once? Maybe to fill up an entire comforter?

So I'm still standing there, one glove dangling from my teeth, one hand full of thickly sliced salami, the smell of which is actually a bit too cloying for me at the moment.

The guy asks me if I 'know my salamis' and I squint at him. He asks me what the difference is between the two he's got in the case, and I guess that one is more tangy. I look to him to see if I guessed right. The slices in my hand are getting that warm meat slime. I will have to wash my gloves.

He hands me the bag of lunch meat and I turn away quickly and stuff the pieces I am holding inside, along with the chunks of fluff from my gloves. My hands are oily and smell like a cat treat.

I move on to the frozen juice section where I stoop down and wipe my fingers on the tops of my socks.

Was the meat counter guy messing with me? Or just trying to be nice? I guess I'll be buying my next round of sandwich items pre-packaged.

2005-10-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

The large dragon on my back is partially inked in; vermilion and brick red. To color in his wings, head/neck, and arms took 2.5 hours. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life.

Yes!

Worse than the day that piece of metal flew into my eye. Worse than cutting the tip of my thumb off on the band saw in Industrial Arts class in 8th grade while trying not to look stupid in front of my caveman classmates. Worse than planting my toddler-sized index finger directly on the heat plate of my dad's shop space heater. Worse than cramps before the advent of The Pill. Perhaps even more painful than flipping over the handlebars of a friend's bike while going over a homemade jump consisting of a sauce pan and a 2X4, although I think the humiliation factor added much to the throbbing of my spilt lip in that case. It was definitely more attention getting than the weak punch delivered to me by a fellow middle-schooler who claimed I "stole her man" when in fact I had never seen the gangly boy before she shoved his picture at me, grabbed my face and then pushed me over into the mud.

But I digress.

I hunched over a vinyl pillow while Matthew drilled ink into my spine, watching with disgust as sweat literally poured down my arms and pooled on the pillow. I bunched up paper towels to pad the absorbency factor. I must have sweated out a half-gallon.

The sound of the needle vibrating, which is something that normally sets the fringy hairs at the back of my neck on edge, although not in a bad way, made my stomach roll over. For the first time in many years, I felt myself wanting to turn around and punch Matthew in the face.

When he told me he was nearly finished, I got really excited."Really? You're done? That wasn't really so bad."

"Well, I'm just going to finish up his other arm here and then you'll have to come back for maybe one or two more sittings."

AAAHHH!

The whole next day, Chris kept patting me on the back. It made my inner rottweiler quite snarly. Now, a week later, it feels like a bad sunburn. I've been anticipating this as it means the super no-touch feeling will soon be gone.

However, I kept finding what looked like red fish food flakes in my underwear today, and it started to freak me out.

"Where the hell is this flaky stuff coming from?" I wondered aloud in a stall this morning, clearing the room in three seconds flat.

After a cool moment of panic, it hit me: The extra ink and dead skin are peeling and sliding down my back. Thank God! No, wait, that's gross. But thank God!

Underpants With Fish Flakes. Look for their new album to hit stores this fall!

2005-09-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

I buy all my underwear in groups of maybe 10 to 15.

This works out alright during the first part of the life cycle of a pair of panties because, well, they're new. The elastic is stretchy, the microfiber feels smooth and unpilled, the tag still has all the information on it. Your pets don't take perverse pleasure in carting them around in their mouths. And no matter who you are or what size you wear, everyone feels hot in new underwear.

Even the second stage of life is okay, because here you develop your favorite pairs to go with certain clothes. Sort of a Superman costume under your boring work outfit. This is also where the wheat gets separated from the chaff. The cute polka dot pair that you thought might bring out the playful side of your significant other have been rejected with a smirk. You realize the pair with the alligator shouting "HAPPY TIME!" while reclining under a rainbow that you bought only for the novelty is actually the most flattering on your behind. Thank God those thongs you bought were all black! And what about the ones your sister held up to your head and said "Well, these say they're your size, but I'll be damned if you're going to be able to fit your whole ass in them." Ha! Not only do they fit, but they're actually too big.

The longest stretch in the life cycle of the panty herd is after the breaking in phase, when life returns to its non-new-panty plain-old day to day grind. You have some good days where all your clothes come together to make you look and feel like a rock star. Other days you choose poorly and end up feeling like your skirt and your panties have transformed into velcro. Your significant other has his/her favorite pairs, but no longer feels it necessary to take them off with his/her teeth.

And then, inevitably, comes the day when you pull on your old reliables, and the elastic no longer snaps reassuringly across your hip tattoos. They sag, they itch, the tag still haunts the small of your back even though you ripped it out months ago.

The weeding of the herd is always a sad day for me. I gather them together, freshly laundered for their final journey, and cut them into tiny pieces. This strategy came about after a friend discovered that her discarded underpants were being dug for by assailants unknown(possibly the dog, but who wants to take chances?) and spirited away or left in tatters on the lawn.

And lo! It was decided to wash and then destroy our loyal servants before disposing of them, so as not to be greeted with any ghastly, creepy, or slobbery sight upon leaving for work in the morning.

And thus ends the lesson for today.

2005-08-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

I felt the old familiar pangs of chronic stomach problems on the bus this morning. Luckily, our bus was rerouted due to a shooting downtown and the ride lasted twice as long. And thank god I was one of the many standing unfortunates gripping enormous bags of stuff, hanging onto the bar until my arm started to feel the warning tingles of inadequate circulation.

Otherwise, I might have been able to sit down and curl around my churning stomach, cinch tight my buttocks, and pray that I didn’t finally get to experience anal leakage.

So as we were driving AWAY from our destination on a round-about detour, I recognized that the sort of discomfort coming from my protesting digestive system was its version of a fair warning before it flushed my system of the offending toxin.

I will admit, I have something of a *ahem* delicate constitution. Just glancing sidelong at a bowl of warm potato salad in the sun will give me a rumbly in my tumbly. I am the only person I know who can contract food-borne illnesses through osmosis. So my entire life has been built around keeping myself as stress, gore, and rotten-food free as possible. But sometimes things slip past my goalie. My team will never make the championship.

I tried to hunch over, but the gravity of my enormous bags and the physics of needing to hang on to the bar to keep from assaulting my fellow passengers kept me from succeeding.

My tummy gave another warning twist, and my brain reacted by covering my body with a clammy sweat. Take that!

The bus driver, god love him, was doing his best to keep his place by lurching forward five feet at a time, inching along with all the other irate commuters in the world’s longest conga line.

My traveling companions were deep in conversation about something that I couldn’t have given a flying fuck about, due to the fact that I was weighing out the worst-case scenarios.

I might have to get out at the next stop, or maybe just scream that I need to get off here and now, crawl to the sidewalk, take off my shoes, and just shit right there in front of that antique store. They don’t open until 10am, nobody on the bus would have to know, and I wouldn’t stain my shoes. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Luckily, once we turned to get on the bridge, our speed increased to 15 miles an hour, and my stress level dropped a notch. I squeezed my eyes shut and repeated my mantra: If you have to crap your pants in public, it won’t kill you. I was referring to myself in the second person, so it was working already.

The second someone gave up their seat, I flung myself in it and felt a bit more in control. We did loops around downtown, attempting to get back on our route. All the damn one-way streets mocking me!

My companions were adjusting their belongings, still conversing cheerfully, talking about the large coffee beverages they were going to purchase. Ugh! The acidity! My stomach protested the mere idea of that black swill, normally so welcome in my daily routine, by traveling up into the back of my throat.

That did it. I reached for the bell, stamped to the door, and snapped something at my friends. My brain was in survival mode and became hostile to anything or anyone keeping me from my economy sized bottle of Pepto Bismal stashed in my locker.

I took it in my arms like a lost child and sat in the break room, snuggled around it, drinking freely. As the red-hot forks loose in my belly morphed into cool spoons, rubber balls, and finally, sugar lumps dissolving, I apologized to my friends and told them to be thankful that they hadn’t had to witness me crapping on the sidewalk while holding my shoes in my teeth.

2005-08-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

I don't have any idea what color my car is under the filth that covers it.

The man directing traffic at the do-it-yourself car wash gave me a lesson on how to wash my car properly. But let me say that I was aware that I was 'doing it wrong.

"Lemme put a dollar in there for you and show you. See, what you've got to do here is start with the tire wash. You hold the sprayer until it turns green. A really bright green. In fact, you may want to consider it as a hair color."

Ha!

"So then you soak your tires real good. You let them sit just like that there. Then you wet down the rest of your car. The way you were doing it was no good."

I only had two dollars and was scrubbing away at a few sticky spots with the foam brush.

"Now you can use the brush, and look here, you've got a minute more than when you started."

I thanked him and he drifted over to the vacuum hoses where he started demonstrating the massive suction power of the unit to a tightly-pantsed couple in their early twenties. The girl chewed her gum and did her best to look bored. The boy(scary wisp mustache!) seemed completely emasculated by this stranger telling him how to best suck up any unwanted particles from the floor of his monster truck.

I sprayed on.

My wheels were still grubby and I didn't spend enough time scraping the multiple layers of grime off the roof of my car to make a bit of difference. And it turns out that all the nasty stuff I thought was on the outside of the windows was actually old dog slobber.

Next time, I'll wash my car in my driveway with a putty knife and a strong acetone solution. Maybe some sandpaper.

2005-08-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

I walk into the house, arms around sacks of groceries, keys gripped in my teeth, bag sliding down my shoulder. I shuffle to the kitchen table and release the keys. They clatter off and hit the floor, trailing drool. Portly sniffs them nonchalantly from her sprawled out position in the middle of the floor, her cat disinterest fully engaged. She is not going to help me. She's just hoping I forget to close the door all the way so she can make her break for freedom. We keep telling her this is a bad idea, but like a teenager who knows it all, she thinks that the world outside is made of nothing but open cans of tuna and still-wet bathtubs for her to roll in and lick dry.

I look around for a human who might give me a hand with the numerous paper sacks full of discount edibles. He is standing in the bathroom, leaning over the sink.

"Hello?" I yell as I head back out the door for another load of bulk flour, sugar, and vanilla flavored granola. I hear him make a noise, but not one that sounds like enthusiasm.

I fumble with the bags as Portly tries to sneak past me.

"Ha! Not on my watch. Back varmint!" I lean into the door frame and weasel around her, a pouting mound of fur.

"Didn't you hear me? I'm home. With many bags. Can I get a hand?" I walk into the bathroom and recoil.

The place, to quote my sister, looks like a crime scene. There are bloody wads of toilet paper and cotton balls all over the sink. Chris is holding his hand and swabbing up blood as it swells out of a deep puncture wound in the meat of his palm. The sink has little splashes of gore in the bowl.

"Jeezus, what happened to you?" I say, and instinctively reach for his hand to assess the damage.

"Do we have any big band-aids? All I could find were these little ones."

"You mean like gauze and some medical tape? Sorry. Now, what happened?"

Trying to talk around me while I keep expressing my sincere belief that he should get stitches, I mean, GOD!- he told me that he had been carving away at a block print while holding it down, when he had suddenly relearned an important lesson about cutting away from himself.

I carried in the rest of the groceries by myself. Chris finally got the bleeding under control without the aid of stitches. Portly made another attempt to escape the torturous confines of our house but did not succeed.

But the main thing is that we all take a moment to really think about the object lesson: Always cut away from yourself, or your girlfriend will pressure you to go to the emergency room, where the wait will be unbearable and you will lose precious hours of your life, never to return again. Here ends the lesson for today.

Oh yeah, and get grocery bags with handles. Handles are the way to go.

2005-08-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

The neighbor kid comes over every day to play with Chris, or actually, Chris’ PlayStation and Lego’s. He happens to be the kind of adult that children adore, simply because he’s got all the coolest toys. As I write this in my studio, he is propped up against my closet playing Tactics Ogre on his Game Boy, change spilling out of his pockets as he periodically adjusts his weight.

And so the children flock to the door, pressing their faces up against our front window, tapping the glass when Portly stares at them, all eight pounds of her stretched out on the chaise lounge.

I answer the door, and he looks right past me. At eight years old, he comes up to my ribcage, but he still doesn’t look at me, but rather past me, to see if Chris is lurking.

“Is Chris here?”

“It’s nice to see you too,” I say. “He’s in the gar…” I trail off because he has already shot past me, dirt ground into his knees, sidewalk chalk in puffs on his face, dusting the sticky spots where chocolate Laffy Taffy has been drooled and stuck.

Children have never been drawn to me, even though I often have the coolest stickers, the newest markers. I always have Rice Krispie bars. These things are all for me, though, not for sharing. Perhaps kids can sense that I’m not willing to part with, or even share, the smallest portion of my loot. I have my younger sister to thank for that, who staged raids on my Halloween candy and my lip gloss drawer for years before I got hip to her scene and bought a keyed lock for my bedroom door. My mom never learned, and continued to stock the kitchen drawer with Trident and Chapstick every week, asking aloud “Where does all this stuff go?”

My quest for equal division of property went so far as to involve a ritual for dividing a candy bar. One of us got to cut it in half, the other got to choose. It could take almost an hour.

I am, it is safe to say, not good at sharing my toys.

2005-07-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

High point from the trip to Bend, OR with my sister and boyfriend:

"I'll go if you go."

"So, are you going to get in or what?"

"I said I'll do it if you do it."

"Yeah, I hear you talking but I don't see you getting any closer to the water."

The four of us were standing in our underwear on the hot black rocks that jutted up from the river like crooked teeth from a deformed jawline.

The guys were in plaid boxer shorts, my sister in some flattering bikini panties and a sleek dark bra. I, on the other hand, was clad in a floppy gray tank top and a blue paisley thong that I wear only under light colored skirts. I hadn't realized that I would have to show anyone my underclothes. Obviously.

Chris had already jumped in and done a few strokes around the clear deep center, and then flopped onto a flat rock five feet from

My sister picked her way over the rocks and through the weeds to stand by me, stretching her arms over her head in an attempt to act casual. As she brought her hands down to her sides, a stray piece of wheat grass that had lodged in her armpit poked out like a struggling locust. I leaned into her and said, "Stand still, I'm just going to pick off this little-"

Too late. She looked down and saw what she thought was an enormous bug wriggling into her armpit and screamed like a banshee. A full-body wriggle followed. Please remember that we are both in our underwear.

The guys were laughing, enjoying a moment of simpatico.

"I'm afraid to get in, because I have to pee, and I'm thinking that my bladder might just let go."

"So? Just as long as you're down stream from us, we don't care, right?"

The group murmured its consent.

I jumped in.

The water was so cold that it knocked the wind out of my lungs with one swat. I never had one of those life-threatening fevers when I was a child, but imagined that getting plunged into a tub of ice cubes would feel about the same.

I started laughing, my teeth chattering, and dog paddled towards Chris, who was still drying of on the flat rock.

I flung myself up and partially onto his perch, and he backed away from me, seeing how slippery the volcanic surface was when it was wet and not wanting to lose his place by sliding into the frosty river.

"Help me up! Argh! Help me up!" I flailed and attempted to find purchase, but, alas, there was none to be had. The rock was much steeper than it had looked from the shore.

My body was in survival mode, and my pasty white buns flexed and jiggled as I humped my way up out of the water, looking like an albino seal in a wet t-shirt and tiny thong panties.

My sister was doubled over with laughter, until she finally jumped in, letting out a scream before her sandaled feet even hit the water.

As we all dried out and put our remaining dry clothes on for the rigorous hike back up the ravine to Carl's house, Kristi wrung out her panties and gave me a wry look.

"That's right. I just thought I'd soak my panties and take them for a walk. You know me."

I decided to strip down to nothing as well, and announced, "Nobody look!" just as I was peeling down to my skin, which of course made everyone swing around to see what I didn't want them to look at.

And so we arrive at the high point: Me, standing almost naked in front of my friends, tiny blue thong dripping into my shoes, nipples stiff enough to cut glass, my goose-bumped rump shaking in the 90 degree high desert sun.

"This is just like some God-awful porno," Kristi said.

2005-07-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

Laura, Luci, and I got the the park blocks for lunch and were just getting settled in, unwrapping our sandwiches, when out from behind a tree swung a large, swarthy man in sweaty clothing, brandishing a gun.

"Where's my cheesecake?" he asked gruffly.

We stared at him, not saying anything. I held my breath, thinking that my salami sandwich would make a pretty lame shield.

Then I realized that his gun was, in fact, a water gun.

"Where's my CHEESECAKE?" he asked again, and one of us said, "I don't know."

"No cheesecake?" he said, a bit softer this time, the hint of a deranged smile touching his lips.

"Maybe it's down there," I said, pointing down the block.

He laughed and pointed his gun at the ground and walked away.

"Not funny," I muttered, and turned my attention to my lunch.

We ate quickly and went down the street to a hip clothing store that we had been told was having a 50% off everything-in-the-store sale. We grazed the first racks by the door, skimmed the shoes, and made our way into the main area.

"Is there anything specific you guys needed help finding?" a dredlocked woman called over a counter filled with skull-emblazoned panties.

"No, we're just...killing time before going back to work," I shrugged and started looking at a display of black t-shirts.

She nodded and wandered away.

I pointed out some baby clothes with bright orange flames to Laura, and stared hard at the many different colors of tights on the wall, trying to will a plain black pair of fishnets to jump out at me. I picked up a shirt with a weird looking bunny on it and shook it out to see if their idea of small matched mine, and suddenly the dredlocked woman was back.

"Look, if you guys really are just 'killing time' and not actually shopping, I have a lot of work to do, so..." She let her statement hang in the air.

I thought she might be trying to make some sort of weird joke so I refolded the shirt, smiled and said, "Excuse me?"

"It's just that I'm getting kicked out of here in two days, I'm losing my business, so if you aren't actually shopping, then I'd appreciate it if you didn't mess anything up. I just see that you're unfolding those clothes and I really have a lot of stuff to do."

Okay, now I was really confused.

"We're actually shopping."

"Well, that's not what you told me before."

"No, but I meant that we had been told about this sale, and so we came down here to look, but not with anything in mind..." I frowned and limply held out the shirt to her. "But I've been refolding everything I've looked at."

"It's just that I'm getting kicked out in two days and I have a lot of work to do, and I'm not trying to be super bitchy or anything but I guess I kind of am..."

"That's completely understandable," I said and just sort of nodded.

I had been prepared to buy a shirt or two. I think we all had been. It probably wouldn't have solved any of this lady's problems, but hey, every little bit counts, right? But now I was being talked to like I was an obnoxious teenager ripping apart a store and leaving torn clothes and spilled food in my wake, and that feeling wasn't conducive to putting me in a purchasing mood.

"We really are shopping," I lamely said, and sort of wandered away.

After a few awkward moments trying to gather everyone together without making too big of a scene, we went outside to regroup and talk about getting shakes.

As she exited, Laura lobbed "I hope you have a better afternoon," to the woman.

"I'm sorry, it's just that, I'm losing my business and I just really appreciate it and, you know..."

"I'm no good at being rude," Laura said as we angled for the coffee shop. "She just totally misinterpreted my comment. She was all nice." She rolled her eyes.

The guy at the coffee shop, well known for his niceness and cheery attitude, snapped at Laura to make a decision about the type of ice cream she wanted in her peanut butter shake.

"Is chocolate or vanilla better?" she asked.

"Well, you HAVE to decide," he snapped with his back turned.

We just barely made it back to the library in time to take over the call desks.

The assaults on our little group were starting to make our stomachs turn.

I sat down, thinking I was glad to be on the other side of the counter, and that I would make it my personal goal to be extra nice for the rest of the day to make up for all the wackos out there today. Within two minutes, and ancient man approached the counter and asked for help with copying a poem. I did so, happily, and returned his materials to him. He asked for a pair of scissors.

Thinking that he wanted to cut the page in half and reassemble the contents (a popular activity) I handed them over.

He said thank you, and then proceeded to CUT HIS EAR HAIR ON MY DESK!

Before I could put my astonished thoughts together to say anything, he laughed a toothless laugh and handed them sheepishly back.

"Gotta keep your eye on that stuff; it'll take over if you let it."

"Nicely said," was all I could think of to say, and he kept laughing and waved heartily as he limped away.

2005-07-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

List of Activities From Saturday:

1) Tried to eat my first BLT since getting my lip pierced. Not recommended again for at least a week. Or two.

2) Saw angry pug dogs in partially demolished house. Wanted to bundle them up and take them with me, but figured that ultimately, the gruff looking man in the yard of said house would probably not go for that at all.

3) Thought my sister's real hair was a wig.

4) Had an Orange Julius at the mall. Boy, are they good. Got freeze brain. Didn't care.

5) Got sprayed by car washing hose while Kristi scraped something off her car with her fingernail and lost control of the gun. Also there was a leak in the gun that kept soaking her shirt with freezing cold water, just like in all those pornos.

6) Got charged twice for bag of organic apples. Didn't say anything because, I figure, that little fruit stand needs all the cash inflow it can get.

7) Was bit by a duck in a misguided attempt to pat it on it's puffy head. Surprised expression followed, and Kristi said, "Well, what did you THINK was going to happen?"

8) Called mom jointly while drinking wine and eating egg salad at my house. Kristi heats up my cell phone like it's been in the microwave just by clutching it in her hot little hand. Mom reports that grandpa said something incredibly inappropriate(don't ask; not worth it) about her new kitchen wall color and she had to hang up on him. I suggested a swift kick next time. Suggestion noted, but declined.

9) Kristi wrote down her name next to the words she was able to guess on my crossword puzzle. "GEM" and "SLEEVE" in case you were dying to know.

10) Made quiche. Took two hours to bake it because I insist on packing twice as much stuff in my quiche as the recipe calls for.

11) Used dictionary to help cheat on last couple crossword clues I just couldn't get. Didn't help.

12) Fell asleep listening to an episode of the X-Files which featured some pants-crappingly scary zombies mixed with the sound of Chris disassembling our Lego creations and tossing the individual pieces into the Lego Bucket.

2005-07-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

The Day of the Bodily Functions of Others (and one of my own, actually):

I was shelving some mysteries, over in the alcove, perpendicular to the non-fiction videos. I was content, even sort of whistling, because that area is generally pretty quiet and the old ladies who cruise the serial mysteries always ooh and ahh over my purple hair. I bent over just as a rather pasty gentleman came around the corner. I recognized him from 10 minutes before, when he leaned rather ominously over me and said:

"Action. I want ACTION."

"Excuse me?" I replied, attempting to keep my panic in check.

"Videos. Action videos."

"Oh, certainly, let me show you where they are." Thank god. But still, even in a public place with security officers trolling the waters, women never like to be hovered over by random men, especially while they are in a submissive position.

So here he was, index finger out, pointing at each scarred video case and muttering before moving on to the next one.

I've found it best to just work around people who talk to themselves. I never intervene unsolicited. So I kept shelving the 'Mc' stack of books on the bottom shelf and acted like he wasn't freaking me out.

He bent over to read the navel level shelf, and as he did so, his butt waggled into position not 15 inches from my face. Before I could straighten up and move, liking my personal space unmarred by even my closest friends, the guy let out a long chain-saw fart, that, through my germ-phobic tinted glasses, blasted me on the left side of my face, tainting the air in my mouth, nostrils, ear, and hair.

Gathering up my pile of unshelved books and holding my breath, I rushed to the relative safety of my book truck. I decided to hit the staff area for a quick decontamination. I stopped briefly to flip a chair up that had been leaning at an angle against the reading table. Then I realized WHY the chair had been placed that way.

As I pulled back, I noticed that the seat was covered in a clearish liquid that had puddled in the center of the seat. Now my hand was not only farted upon, but possibly soaked in urine as well.

Not wanting to do a definitive sniff test to be sure, I locked myself in the nearest bathroom and scrubbed my skin with liquid soap until I was chapped.

An hour later, while I was flitting around the basement pulling books from the closed stacks, the tack that holds my lip ring together came loose and floated around in my mouth.

I panicked and hit the bathroom again, trying desperately to get the tiny grooves to fit together. Anyone who has tried to do this themselves will tell you that it's like trying to thread a needle in a haystack. I had to call upon another coworker to come over and basically perform oral surgery. She had her hands in my mouth for several minutes. Which was fine with me, but I'm sure the other people in the room were wondering what the hell we were doing.

When I started working at the library, I thought there would be a 'certain quiet dignity' to it. Yeah right.

2005-07-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

Memorable patron interactions:

1) I was walking by the genealogy microfilm table, where I frequently see people in various states of coming unglued, unable to find their great-great-great grandfather's mother's maiden name on some passenger ship manifest or perhaps they are looking to prove that they did indeed divorce that bastard in 1988 but for some reason there seems to be no record of it and now that they think about it, their lawyer did seem a little confused and sketchy and now that they are looking at the divorce index and their name isn't on it they're getting ready to raise some holy hell, by God, all stuff of that nature, when I noticed that the tiny white-haired woman patiently scrolling through some list or another shot both her crinkly fists in the air and shouted, "Yes! There's his name!" This never happens, and if it did, I certainly never get to see the research equivalent of a 'money shot.' It was great.

2) A woman in the art section came up to me and admired my leg tattoos(full Joan of Arc style pyre around each ankle about half way up to my knee, FYI) and said she was thinking about getting her legs covered in some sort of pattern as well because her legs were so white and hairy. Then she showed me her leg, which wasn't quite as pasty as mine, but I saw her point. Then I said if she got tattoos on her legs she'd never have to wear nylons again. To which she replied, "Honey, even the promise of George Clooney sex couldn't get me into nylons anymore."

Yay!

2005-06-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Annabelle is really short. So short she's almost a Little Person. But not quite. She's one inch taller than the cut off of four feet ten inches. Which is lame, because I'd love to go to a Little Person convention with her if she was a member. Not the point here. What is the point: she told me that she just got herself a "midget bike." Her words, NOT mine. Evidently they aren't making the specific bike that she was looking for, so she got one used online and while she is waiting for the last part to arrive in the mail she is fondling it in her living room dreaming of flying over the hills through Gresham on her "midget bike." Oh, do I love her!

She also told me that she hasn't been driving so much after 'the Christmas tree incident.' She was driving down 205 behind a truck with an unsecured dried-up holiday remnant in the back. She watched it warily as it sort of flopped around and then suddenly FWISH! It flew out of the truck and spiraled towards her car like a gigantic football. She swerved in time to keep from totaling her car, although it did shear off her side-view mirror, and the car behind her hit it head on. She followed the guy long enough to write down his plate information and contacted the DMV, who did some awesome investigating and tracked him down through his insurance company. He fessed up about it right away, saying he was indeed surprised when he arrived at work that morning and the tree was missing from his truck.

My tough little nut to crack, ratting out inadvertent tree-dumpers to the proper authorities.
Ah!

2005-06-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Kristi and I check out different dog behinds at the annual Doggie Dash on the waterfront as Shadow peers intently into the camera. Spooky.

2005-06-26T14:14:00.000-07:00

Confessions from a younger age(a partial list):

I spent entire bathtimes trying to pee into empty tic-tac containers. Keep in mind that this was when I was four. And I never really succeeded. I tried to get whatever other little kid was in there with me to help, but they never would.

I hid boogers in the couch. And on the dog.

After the babysitter put us to bed and my sister passed out into the hot, flushed way she would sleep, I would sneak back into the living room doorway and watch the scary movies that my teenage guardians were into. Not that there was anything too explicit. We only had 4 channels.

I cried furiously for ten minutes when I found out that one of our neighborhood babysitters had been killed in a car accident, but less than half an hour later I was splashing around in the swimming pool with my sister, tragedy forgotten.

I tried to thaw out a frozen squirrel by putting it on the furnace in my dad's workshop and just ended up liquefying it.

I kept a dead salamander in a mason jar in an old chicken coop that we played in. When I went to check on it the next week, it was a writhing mass of maggots. I tossed the whole thing behind the building and prayed I would never see it again.

My sister and I had two rabbits and forgot to feed them for several weeks. They died, of course. My mother was furious, but looking back, I think we might have been too young for that sort of responsibility.

I heard that my obnoxious little cousin had jumped into a grave that my dad was digging and I was disappointed when I learned that they had managed to get him out.

Once I picked over 100 ticks off myself after playing in the woods and tossed them all in the toilet.

I thought it was gross that my sister would pick the engorged ticks off the dog and then crush them with stones or put them in a jar and light them on fire, but I had no problem smashing spiders into the carpet.

I swallowed a glittery yellow worm meant for tackle. In my defense, it looked just like a gummi worm.

I drank half a glass of Era because I thought it was flat 7-Up. There's really no defense for that.

I hoarded my Christmas, Easter, and Birthday candy. I could have given it to my little sister, who was always desperate for sugar, but I preferred to have it around so I could sort it into piles. I never wanted to eat it. Just arrange it. Hello, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder! So Kristi would eventually sniff it out like a truffle pig and eat it over time. I never noticed because I was getting more candy all the time.

It was I, Angela, who drank that entire box of red wine my mother had in the refrigerator. It took me three weeks, and it really wasn't worth it.

I hated my kindergarten teacher because when I tried to open my milk from the wrong side and then couldn't remedy the situation and asked for her help, she stood me up in front of the class and called me stupid and asked the rest of the kids if they wanted to be stupid like me. When everyone shook their heads no, she screamed, "Then look for the arrow before you open your milk!"

The son of a family friend tried to entice me into a game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," and I hid under a beanbag until he left.

I encouraged my younger and not-so-bright relatives to pitch themselves through the railing of a story of stairs and land in the aforementioned beanbag until their mother found out and freaked, saying it might give them brain damage.

2005-06-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm pushing Cheerios around on a cookie sheet, trying to get them all equally coated in melted butter and pressed garlic, working around the fact that I've made twice as many as will fit, and that my fantastically expensive wool oven mitt has a dime-sized hole in it, so I am blistering my index finger.

This is when the phone rings. I run over to the table to see who it is, scattering cereal in my wake. It's my sister, Kristi, and she's usually got something juicy for me, so I drop the hot tray and hit the flash button.

"Hello, Lady!" I watch as Little Portly executes some cat choreography across the tile floor, batting buttery Cheerios into the depths under the fridge. Her fuzzy front legs disappear as she tries to dig them out.

"Angela. I've lost my keys and I'm freaking out. Can you work with that?"

"Oh, I can work with anything. Where are you? Locked out of your apartment?"

"No. I let myself in earlier this evening and when I tried to leave to go to work I couldn't find them anywhere. Jackson already left for work so I can't leave the house. I can't lock the door! I've been looking for two hours!"

Kristi and her boyfriend live right downtown in a semi-underground condo the size of my front hall closet. There weren't too many places for keys to get lost in under 700 square feet.

"Did you check your pockets? That's where mine always turn up. Remember watching mom run around the house looking for her glasses when they were on top of her head the whole time? Those were good times." I chuckle and sigh, thinking about mom, hind end in the air, digging in the couch cushions and coming up with stale popcorn, dog hairballs, and crusty bits of things pulled from our noses.

"Angela. I'm being totally serious here. I'm really losing my marbles. Because if they aren't here in the house, that means I left them dangling in the door and someone took them. And if someone took them, that means they could steal my car or come back here later tonight and loot the place while I huddle in the shower with only a rolled up yoga matt to use as a weapon."

"Wow, okay. Do you want me to come over and help you look?" I ask jokingly.

"Could you?"

"..."

"I really just need some help here."

"Okay, I'll tell you what. I'm about five minutes from finishing up a batch of hot, buttered Cheerios. I'll bring you a bag and be over in like, twenty minutes."

"Okay."

So now I'm back to juggling the cereal into a Ziplock while the cat claws at my legs, trying to orchestrate a Cheerio catastrophe that would end in her being showered with hot crunchy oats, hundreds of little edible pieces for her to chase under the furniture.

I pick her up and toss her in the bedroom with Chris, who is watching "Children of Paradise," a long and depressing French movie.

"I'm, uh, going to help Kristi look for her keys. She can't leave the house until she finds them."

"Wait, so she's not locked out? She's locked in?"

"Pretty much. I'll call you when we see some resolution."

"Have a good time."

I leave the house armed with garlicy snacks and race downtown, making the trip in a record 18 minutes.

Kristi opens the door before I have a chance to knock and gives me a look that could melt glass.

"Two hours of my life! I'll never get them back!"

"It's okay, they have to be here somewhere. Your house isn't that big. I'll start from the beginning, but how about you take a break and just tell me where you've looked and what your strategy is." I drop my stuff and throw her the bag of Cheerios, which she breaks open and starts pouring in her mouth.

I pick up her bike bag by the door and start taking stuff out of it.

"I've emptied that bag twice. And all the other bags by the door. I've looked in all the shoes, behind the furniture, and in that bag of empty beer bottles. I looked in the refrigerator crisper drawers, because, you know, I was in there making myself a sandwich. I checked in the dishwasher. We don't even use the dishwasher. I looked in the toilet. The bathroom drawers. The kitchen cupboards. Under the couch. In the plants. The catbox. Under the stairs. I dug through the garbage. The GARBAGE!"

"Did you call Jackson and tell him to check his bag, just in case they got swept in there as he was leaving?" I ask while dismantling a pyramid of shoes.

"Yes. He told me he looked and that he didn't have them."

"Hmm. I guess that means that, unless your cat ate them or they warped to another dimension, that perhaps they were left dangling in the door."

"But I never do that. I always toss them on the fireplace."

We spent the next hour going over the same ground she had covered twice herself. We even rechecked the toilet.

"I have to pee."

"Yeah, but what if my keys are just out of sight in the pipe and you flush it and then they disappear forever?"

I held it.

We had just finished taking all the recycling out of the paper bags and sorting it into piles; 'not keys' 'and keys,' with 'not keys' winning 53 pieces to 0, when I decided to run out to my car and get my flashlight.

When I came back in, Kristi was on the phone with Jackson, pleading with him to check his bag again. I rechecked under the stairs and the major appliances, finding lots of cat hair I hadn't previously seen, but no keys.

Then Jackson called back.

"Hello...yeah...you WHAT?...YOU DID?...They were in YOUR BAG THE WHOLE TIME? Do you have ANY IDEA what I've been doing for the last THREE HOURS?...Angie had to come over and help me look! I though I was losing my mind and you'd have to commit me! Or at the very least you'd have to have everything re-keyed. I can't talk to you right now."

I looked at her. She threw her hands up in the air.

"What happened? Didn't he look before?"

"All indications are that he didn't. But he said they were really busy at the ICU tonight. Two people died in the same room at the same time. But still. What about my keys? He could have just looked."

We finished the garlic Cheerios and called it a night. And Kristi slept well, knowing that her Toyota would not be stolen in the night with her own key.

2005-06-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

Let's just talk for a minute about why those fire alarms scared me to the point of catatonia:

The first conditioning came from when I was but a wee little scamp, toddling around my father's workshop in the frigid cold of a Minnesota winter. I could really tear around, and within moments had lapped the sawdust filled room so many times my dad said that his head was spinning.

He picked me up and put me in the nest of blankets he had in a corner for our Shepard mutt, Ginger. She was excited to snuggle up to another warm living thing and wrapped her front paws around me and licked my face with great enthusiasm.

Thinking he could now get some work done, a common misconception among all new parents, his eyes left me and the dog and focused on some project or another.

I bolted up from the cozy slurp-fest and ran towards the space heater, which was center stage behind the band saw. It was one of those heaters they would never sell today. Wildly unsafe and a fire/explosion waiting to happen, it was cylindrical, metal, glowing red on the end, with a powerful fan blasting dry super-heated air into the shop.

It was beautiful, the only warm thing in the room. The furnace was having trouble keeping up with the wind chill from outside, and my dad kept the ancient space heater around for taking the edge off. Of course I went straight for it. The hot side was the color of molten lava, and its fan was my siren cry. I reached out and placed my tiny finger on the orange cone of heat. I watched as my fingertip melted onto the surface. Then the pain registered.

All hell broke loose.

I opened my mouth and screamed in slow motion. The dog jumped straight up out of her grungy little blanket snarl and bayed. My father's eyes got enormous and the blood drained from his face as he knocked over the saw table to get to me.

I don't really remember anything after that. It's safe to say that my mother was consulted, the dog was shut in the bathroom, and sedatives were administered. The hospital was no doubt called, and ice cubes wrapped in frayed brown towels were probably my best friends. Blame was assigned and anger was deflected for the first in a long series of dramas my parents starred in, called "Oh yeah, well whose fault do you think THAT is?"

And my little fingerprint is still grilled onto the end cone of that space heater, a shadow burned into the wall of my childhood, and a reminder for my father that little kids should really just be chained down.

2005-06-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about all the times I have lost control. I started out with your average temper tantrums: best friend making out with my boyfriend, little sister borrowing my favorite shirt without asking me, patrons at work being obnoxious, the normal gambit of stuff that upsets people.

Then I started branching out with my interpretation of 'losing control.'

I now include it all:
-When I was three, my mom liked to dress me in these bell-shaped dresses and wiggle me into fuzzy textured tights. One day, while gurgling in the back seat of her Galaxy 500 while she was getting ready to unstrap me from my car seat harness thing, I lost control of my easily irritated bowels and shit in my fuzzy tights. I don't remember a whole lot of the scene, because, you know, I was three, but my mom has said that it was like watching a pureed banana being squeezed through a sock. Which is probably close to what it was. I really loved bananas. But so then she had to deal with me, screaming and hating being in what amounted to a shit wet suit, feeling the stinky liquid turd spreading along my tights and dripping into my shoes. She yanked me out of the car and held me dangling over a trash can, peeled off my tights and tossed them, then squeegeed most of the mess off of my legs with some dusty Dairy Queen napkins from the glove compartment. Good times.

-When the fire alarm went off in kindergarten, and I, in my special, home-made mouse Halloween costume, panicked and climbed up on one of those little chairs and shook my fists at my sides and screamed and punched anyone who tried to pick me up and carry me outside.

-Again, when the fire alarm was pulled by some mischievous kid at the YMCA while I was immersed in learning the American crawl, I shot up out of the water and bawled all the way to the locker room, where I waited for my mother to come upstairs and take me away from the screeching noise. Luckily, she had been reading Good Housekeeping in the pool observation room, and saw the whole thing: me biting the wrist of my instructor when he tried to lift me off the deck and put me back in the water, me running at full speed across the slippery tile and slamming my tiny saggy-swimsuited body into the locker room door, me disappearing into the stairwell with my mouth open in a terrified scream that no one could hear over the alarm.

I'm sure she was pissed about losing the only 45 minutes that she had to herself all week, and while she was dressing me, she yanked my clothes on a bit harder than usual, and left my soggy braid INSIDE my shirt, which left a huge wet snail trail that leaked into my buttcrack, which I totally HATED her for, and she kept sighing, and said, "For Christ's sake, by the time we get you dressed, they'll have shut off the alarm and the $2.75 I spent on this lesson is as good as flushed down the toilet."

So many more stories, so little time left to type them. More later, I promise.

2005-06-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

Things that are in dispute:

1. Does Little Portly have enough chemical coating to eliminate the POW fleas that I keep pulling off of her every day?

2. Did I, in fact, pose for the picture in which I am seen at the Newport Aquarium gift shop wearing a hat shaped like an enormous bat and a dippy, open-mouthed expression on my face, or was it taken in a candid camera sort of way?

3. Did I "flee the room in tears" at work after telling Hapgood that I don't "need his crap" in response to his acidic comments including, but not limited to, a criticism of my proclivity for following procedure when faced with a software problem?

4. Did Eddy appear to be having his genitals twisted by our yoga instructor this morning during a demonstration of 'partner supported down dog,' or was it just me?

5. Do men avoid going to the doctor on purpose, or do they really 'just keep forgetting' to make the appointment?

2005-06-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

Whenever I go in to see a doctor about my asthmatic lungs, they have a standard list of questions they ask:

Q: Do you smoke?

A: Are you kidding? Just walking into a bar where other people are smoking is like my own personal Fear Factor. I have to carry an inhaler with me everywhere I go. If there isn't one within reach, I panic. This is not for show. If my lungs are irritated by the slightest thing, my bronchial tubes swell up like pufferfish.

Q: I see. Do you have any allergies?

A: Shouldn't you have that information? I mean, you're looking at my record right there in front of you.

Q: It just says 'amoxicillin' here. I was thinking more along the lines of seasonal allergies.

A: See, that's the thing. I feel crappy when the pollen count is high and you can SEE the stuff floating around in the air, but the guy I saw in the emergency room last night said that it wasn't necessary to do any specific allergy tests because, well, I'm not sure why.

Q: So, just the average pollen and dust stuff that affects everyone?

A: If I had to commit to an answer here, I guess I'd say yes, but obviously it's more than 'average' since most people with 'average' allergies don't have to make 3am urgent care visits.

And we do this thing where they ask me questions that they should already know the answers to, as this happens once or twice a year, and I become this bitchy patient that I don't even recognize because no one will just GIVE ME THE STUPID CORTIZONE SHOT ALREADY SO I CAN BREATHE!

More on this later.

2005-06-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

Chris didn't sleep last night.

This morning waiting for the bus, he and I looked like zombies. Not cool half-rotten zombies, but recently dead, waiting to kill our first victim and eat their brains type of zombie. Instead we got coffee at Stumptown and waited for the 4 on Division.

"This one time when I dropped acid...I was living with my dad and stepmom in the mountains at the time, anyway: we went camping. When I came back the next day, Ingrid handed me a package of socks and I broke down sobbing."

I laughed and nearly snorted up half of my latte.

"Why did you cry over the socks?"

"I don't know. It was one of those post-LSD moments where everything is ripe with complex double meanings. Like, 'Here, you asshole, you can't take care of yourself so I bought you some socks,' type of thing. You know?"

We boarded the bus and sat down near the back. There was no unpleasant smell that usually accompanies the 14 or the 15. We had chosen wisely.

When Chris blinked, took a sip from his coffee, turned his head, it was all slow motion. He would make a great zombie. All he needed was the drooling and maybe a little moaning.

2005-06-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

We are relatively flea free. Portly told me just this morning. I asked, she responded. The only talking cat in the world today. Sure, she sounds suspiciously like me on helium, but based on her body language, I'm fairly certain I'm interpreting correctly.

Flea free.

The greatest phrase in the English language.

2005-05-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

After Portly's second flea dip and subsequent re-medicating to the gills to kill the little plauge-and-tapeworm-carrying fuckers that are eating her alive, she disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the closet to lick herself dry.

"I hope she's not able to lick the spot with the goopy insecticide."

"She's probably fine."

I went back to reading a horrible novel about a woman's sado-masochistic love affair with a bald-headed asshole who wants to "help" her by recreating the scene in which her sister was brutally murdered. It was all so predictable; his knowledge of the event that he couldn't possibly know, the huge red arrows all pointing to him as the killer, blah blah, ad nauseum. And yet I couldn't stop myself from reading. Would she continue to let him blacken her eyes and ruin her career as an up-and-coming artist? Or would she come to terms with her sister's death and quit drinking herself into a stupor at 7am and ditch the cocksucker and make up with her family? I had to know.

But I was hearing a noise that was out of place. It sounded like someone digging a hole in the sand. I put my book down and listened. It was indeed someone digging in the sand. Portly in her sandbox in the closet. Nothing to be concerned about there. Except that the reason the noise piqued my curiosity was because it had been occurring off and on for a good five minutes. I listened for another minute and then the scratching ended and I thought "Sounded like she was spraying sand all over the hallway. I guess I'll be sweeping that up later."

Then Portly bounded up onto the couch and stuck her face in my book.

"Ugh! Get off! You were just in your bathroom!"

She leapt onto the coffee table and shook her back paws.

Then I noticed it: A large turdlet dangling, like a dingle ball from a bad sombrero. It was the size of a Whopper, with similar coloring.

"Oh Jesus! Chris, the cat has a dingleberry! Get in here and help me get it! Grab her, before she sits down, quick!"

And thus, Operation Extricate Turdlet was executed.

2005-05-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

Fleas!

Little Portly has fleas.

My sister and I peeled up all the blankets, towels, couch covers, pillows, sleeping bags, dirty clothes, and other assorted fabrics and piled them on the floor. When we removed the chenille throw from portal's favorite chair by the window, my sister recoiled and made a sound like a startled Holstein.

"What? What is it? Oh wow, there certainly is a lot of blanket fluff on this chair," I said, moving in for a closer look.

"Um, that's not fluff. Notice how it's all wriggling."

That's right. On my beloved chaise lounge there was a solid covering of flea poop and larvae, all waiting for the cat to hop back up on the chair so the buffet could begin.

"Gack! Rackin' frack! Ugh!" Really, mere words cannot convey my disgust. But know that it was(and is) absolute.

I tape rolled the chair. I sprayed the chair with harsh chemicals. I vacuumed the chair. Kristi started the bathwater and loaded up with the flea dip and a pile of rags. I started what would end up being over ten loads of laundry. We dipped Portly. She was not pleased.

"Hold her down, she's making a break for it!" Kristi commanded, a seasoned veteran of flea proceedings.

"She's too slippery, and she just scratched me. Look out, she's going to bite down on your arm!"

"I have to get under her armpits, scrub hard. Use more of that soap. Here, gimme. Pick off those fleas that ran for cover on her face." Like a drill sergeant Kristi let me know what was expected of me. Portly let out pathetic mewling noises and stared up at me with such an intense sense of betrayal that I felt like tearing up.

We rinsed her off and dried her as much as she would let us, and then locked her in the garage, which was okay with her, as she didn't want to be within grabbing distance. I rotated laundry. I vacuumed. I sprayed the furniture. I tape rolled every surface. I flea fogged the house. I did more laundry. Chris vacuumed the house a second time.

"This sucks."

"Totally."

After Portly was dry, we flea combed her every hour, pulling off several bugs in each sitting. We kept a jar of soapy water for the comb, with a roll of paper towels and the lint tape roller on the table. We applied a tube of Advantage to the back of her neck. I was maniacal about the combing, taping every surface that she sat on, checking for flea poop, keeping her locked out of the bedroom.

"Have you combed the cat lately?" I asked Chris, as he made himself some ramen.

"No."

"Why not?" I said, defensive about my procedures.

"I just don't think it will do any good."

"Well I think it's better than doing nothing," my hackles were raised, I was going to fight this infestation into extinction if it killed me.

"Maybe so. Here, give her to me."

So Chris combed her while I took a flashlight to the couch and scanned for more forensic evidence, like some sort of rookie cop, wanting to prove myself.

But the fleas don't care.

Die, fleas, die!

2005-05-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

"Hey Chris."

"Yeah?"

"The sink is still leaking."

"..."

I was flipped upside down under the kitchen sink in our newly purchased house, shining a tiny Mag-lite on the plastic piping. A small but persistent flow of water dripped from the elbow joint onto the warped cupboard floor.

The sellers had signed off on a legal document that stated the plumbing in the kitchen no longer leaked, but clearly, just because the law said that it was so, didn't make it so.

It's the week before we move in, and we are both a bit anxious about the change. We also want to make sure that everything works. Which it doesn't. Does it ever?

My sister and I went to Home Depot the next day and passed an aisle with a sign: Sink Repair. I ducked down it, thinking, well, maybe someone would be able to give me an idea about what to do.

A man who was almost completely spherical, wearing Home Depot's signature orange apron sidled up to us. He looked like a piece of tropical fruit. I was holding a kitchen sink basket kit in my hands.

"Hey! I was wondering if you could tell me if these things are easy to replace?"

"Oh, yeah. Just pop out the old one and put the new one in with like, a pinky's worth of plumber's putty around the underside." He demonstrated by holding up a pinky the size of a sausage link.

"Do we need any special tools?" Kristi asked, ever thinking logistically, god-bless her heart.

The man who could have been an orange shrugged a little and pointed to a wall of wrenches.

"You might need something to loosen the old one."

"Well," I began. "The old one isn't really 'old,' it's just not put in there right. Or maybe there's a piece missing. That's why we thought it would be easier to replace it."

"Oh, then yeah, you'll probably be fine."

He handed us a mini-tub of putty and sent us on our way.

When we got back to the house, the sink sneered at us in an anthropomorphic appliance way that to me, signified war.

I dropped a pile of fresh rags under the sink and stuffed myself back in the little opening.

"How do you pop this thing out?" I asked, digging at it with a screwdriver.

"Give me that, moron." Kristi took my place and unscrewed the biggest ring with our hefty new pipe wrench. I grabbed it from her and swung it around, slapped it into my palm.

"Colonel Mustard, in the dining room, with the pipe wrench." I muttered, and thought about how I had never held such a substantial piece of metal before with the capacity to do such damage. Holy crap that thing was heavy.

"Hey! He didn't even use any putty in here! And he left a cardboard ring on top of the rubber seal!" I found that all out the hard way as little soaking globs of caulked cardboard came dripping down my sleeves. I felt pretty tough. I knew what I was talking about here.

We replaced the main drain basket and reconnected the pipes. We turned on the water. No leaks. I checked with the flashlight, waiting for the tell tale beading to occur on the rim of the attachment. After a few minutes, I declared it officially cured.

"The other sink drain is probably the same deal, you know. We should take that one apart too." Kristi wiped her hands on a towel and grimaced at the smaller sink.

We took it apart and restructured it, then squished it into place. I hadn't used as much putty as I thought I might have over done it the first time, so when we turned on the faucet, water slipped in the gap and ran down the pipe.

"Houston, we have a problem."

"Good night!" I said. "I can't do this! I don't know what I'm doing. We don't know what we're doing. This sucks."

"It's okay, you know. We'll just take it apart again and start over. We're following the instructions on the box, and the orange guy told us the same thing. Here." She thrust the putty container into my hands. "Just use more of this."

Once more, we disassembled the drain and built it from scratch. This time I used a sausage link sized snake of putty, just like the orange's finger.

We turned on the faucet and watched the water for several minutes. I flopped down on the floor and shined the light into the darkness.

"Well?" Kristi asked.

"I think we have achieved our projected orbital trajectory!" I exclaimed, and we did a little victory dance in the pile of wet rags.

"Okay, let's not get too excited, we still have to shelf paper the cupboards."

"Ungh!"

Thanks, Kristi, for helping my first plumbing repair experience not totally suck.

2005-05-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

The periodicals room is like a goddamned meat locker. This happens every year. Weather outside starts to become not so drab and depressing, and the air conditioning stomps the inside temp to like, 60. I can see outside into the offices across the street, and beams of sunlight are striking this lady wearing only unnatural fibers, and it's got to feel pretty good to be her right now, being baked in her Banlon shell by the May sun.

The only good thing about the temperature in here right now is this: the cooler it is, the less people smell. When it gets nice and toasty in here on a rainy winter day, this room is packed to capacity with an array of people and their many, many different ideas about what personal hygiene means to them. It's the same thing when you enter a slaughterhouse in the summer. You can actually see the smell. That's why you should only buy your sausage from a reputable dealer who does all the nasty stuff in a cool room.

The other day while Chris and I were slowly navigating through a crowded neighborhood in northwest, we drove past a pigeon fluttering all over itself in the gutter, wing at a painful angle, eyes bugged out.

"Oh!" I said and brought a horrified hand to my mouth. "What do we do?" I looked to Chris for an answer. I turned the corner and swung into a parking space.

"We can't really do anything."

"We have to do something."

"Like what? We could take it home and nurse it back to health. Keep Little Portly from killing it."

"No, I mean, we have to do something."

"What, like snap it's neck?"

I looked around in the car for anything I could use as a weapon. I had an empty Dr. Pepper can, a pile of napkins, a few cracked CD cases, and a fingernail clipper shaped like a ladybug.

"Christ, I didn't mean it. Are you going to get out of the car and kill it?"

Here's the thing: if I would have had my snow shovel in my car, we wouldn't even have had that conversation.

"You don't think I could kill an animal that was suffering?"

"No, I don't think you have it in you." He paused, then smacked his forehead. "Oh right. I forgot, you're a farm girl. Saw lots of animals mutilated and weird stuff."

Not really, but whatever. I just know that I would want some help reaching death if I had been that mangled bird in the gutter. I wouldn't have smacked it with a shovel to be cruel, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it. But I would have done it if it would have stopped the pain.

We drove away without doing anything at all. I thought about the pigeon as I tried to sleep that night. I imagined it poked at by kids with sticks, kicked by jerks, frightened at it's inability to leave the ground. Am I as bad as the kid with the stick? The asshole who dumps a beer over it's head?

I need to get a new snow shovel.

2005-05-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

Little Portly, cat extraoridnaire, got kicked out of our bedroom early last night. She had been inserting her little furry body in the spaces between the blinds and then dangling there, causing all manner of disruption, leaping on our faces.

Chris tossed her out, shut the door, and gave her not a second thought.

This morning while on my way to the bathroom, I noticed that the crappy kitchen linoleum looked even more crappy than usual. I looked closer. There were black spots all over the place, smears on the bottom of our bedroom door, and a bottle of India ink rolling around on the floor.

Portly had somehow managed to unscrew the cap enough so that when she batted it around, it left ink trails behind her. Of course she must have tracked through it. How could she not?

Our apartment is being shown tomorrow to prospective new tenants, and last night before the inking, I told Chris it wouldn't take more than an hour or so to clean things and straighten up a little.

Ha!

Little Portly.

2005-05-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

More about the blind hanging fiasco:
On Sunday after work Chris and I schlepped the unopened blinds back to Cost Plus and then raced out to Jantzen Beach to check out some curtains that weren't expensive or dumb. But of course, you can't have both.

While I was freaking out with my pencil and list of windows to cover and adding up sums in my head that might as well have been millions of dollars, Chris did some social research and listened to a woman abuse a sales clerk in the same aisle.

"I drove all day to get here and now you don't have the curtains I need. Can I just take this display model? I drove hours and hours to get here."

I personally wondered why she didn't call first, if she knew what she needed, and clearly, she did.

"Well," the clerk shifted uncomfortably and tried to remain diplomatic. "No, but we can special order whatever you need and have it shipped right to your house."

"That's not the right answer," said the woman who had allegedly driven all day to come to a Portland suburb to buy curtains.

I didn't hear any of this escalating because I was too busy whirling in my own vortex of drama, reeling from the fact that I apparently didn't pay any attention in 5th grade math. I couldn't get the feet to come out in the correct number of inches. Why hadn't I written down the inches as well? They were right on the measuring tape next to each other. Why did I have to make everything so hard?

At ten minutes to close, we grabbed an armful of what we hoped weren't stupid tab panels and some of the cheaper rods and checked out.

"I can cut these in half and sort of pin the extra fabric together to make it work until we get new ones," I chattered happily to myself.

Chris just sighed.

2005-05-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Patriot Act investigation into Chris has been resolved.

A few weeks ago while dealing with the gathering of the dozens of documents to purchase our house, I asked Chris why his address on his ID didn't match our address, or the address of any of his apartments for the last eight years.

"Why should I update it? It's never been important to me before. I hate paperwork."

"Because when you keep your paperwork in order, then you don't ever have to go back and do it over with extra paperwork that happens when you don't keep it together," was my confusing reply.

But we signed all the papers on our house loan and chilled the champagne.

Then our mortgage broker called.

"Angela. We have a slight problem."

Chris' address matched an apartment he had lived in back in 1998. From then on, there was no paper trail leading them to where he is now. Which is with me, while I freak out.

He had to write a letter explaining why he had let his info lapse and provide a list of addresses and dates to satisfy an investigation that falls under the law of the Patriot Act. See, the lender didn't want to fund terrorism. Luckily, the letter sufficed.

"Shit, if I were a criminal of that caliber, I'd have all my paperwork in order all the time. Otherwise, they'd catch me, just like they caught you," I pontificated as we walked towards the bookstore.

"It's totally stupid. I'm just sloppy. I didn't know it would be a big deal. And you told me last week that it would be. Huh." Chris said.

I don't like to be right. At least not when I want to be wrong. Who am I kidding? I love to be right. But not when being right means trouble.

In other news, when we went to hang the blinds that we bought for the whole house, we discovered that they are pretty much see-through. Which defeats the purpose of having blinds in the first place.

Ahhh!

2005-04-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

Covert operation:
Chris took the futon apart and dragged it piece by lame piece into the living room. The pee-stained hay-filled mattress he roped together with packing tape, turning it into a lumpy worm.

I called my sister and told her to wear black and come over after dark. She said she had plans, but that she'd stop over when she was done.

Not knowing what to do with ourselves, we cleaned. I sprayed Oxy-Clean around the base of the toilet while the cat played 'jungle cat attacks the village' with my wrists. Why is the toilet such a magnet for pubic hair? Don't answer that. Maybe the question I really mean to ask is where is all this pubic hair coming from? No, I don't really want to know that either. But Jesus, it's almost like we have an invisible chemo patient living with us whose crotch hair is coming out in clumps.

(I just spoke to my friend Matt and he brought up the fact that when men dry off their legs, often times leg hair, which resembles our sexy friends, will cascade down on the floor. Mystery solved.)

(In case you're wondering why I'm not assigning any blame to myself here, it's because I keep my lower level in check.)

Anyway, Chris was busy airing out his room after staging a Raid party on it that morning. There was a colony of ants, complete with LARVAE, swarming under his briefcase computer, and action had to be taken. Not being able to handle infestations of any kind, I was glad that he didn't share any of this with me until after the battle had been won.

Kristi called me at 10:30 to let me know that it wasn't going to happen.

We did a quick re-con in the kitchen.

It was decided that we would go ahead with our plan, minus a wingman.

We loaded the futon parts into my station wagon and cruised around, scouting out the available open dumpsters. The one we had planned on was overlooked by someone's kitchen, and the parking lot lights were pretty bright. The second one was tiny and was flanked by people standing on their back porch. We drove around in circles.

Chris suggested we just drop the thing in a dark parking lot. But we couldn't bring ourselves to do it. It's one thing to break the law by putting our garbage where it doesn't belong, as long as it's where somebody's garbage should go, but to just dump a crappy piece of furniture in a random location? I'll admit it. I'm a pussy. We're both pussies.

Angry that our moldy problem wouldn't go away, I re-parked the car while Chris ripped the stupid thing out of the trunk. We stashed the mattress in the basement and stacked the frame up on the curb for someone to take. We hope. If no one takes it, we'll have to load it up again and figure something else out.

Anybody want a crappy, dismantled, pee-stained futon and frame? It's not our pee. I swear.

2005-04-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

My father had a hernia operation in the early 80's, when I was still running around in a pink Garfield night shirt and my little sister had goose down for hair.

He got to spend a week or so at home afterwards, waiting for the bleeding around his stitches to stop and the general pain in his abdominal region to abate. On the weekend, he and my sister and I would sit in the living room in our pajamas (well, he didn't have any pajamas, and wore this blue, fuzzy robe of my mother's that was comically small for him, and dropped from his sizeable girth like a short curtain, giving him a particularly Muppety appearance, which made me want to hug him a lot, which he tried to suppress because of the pain) and watch James Bond movies on the video disc player and eat bacon and toast. During a nasty little scene in "The Man With The Golden Gun" where James' main lady friend gets shot at a Sumo wrestling tournament, dad abruptly sat up, said, "Holy motherfucking shit!" and then yelled for my mother. He had been resting his glass on his belly, as always, and he had punched through the incision like it was a page from a perforated notebook.

Blood soaked through my mother's Grover-like robe. My sister started crying. I, being a screamer, screamed. My mother arrived and helped my father to the bathroom, where many layers of gauze were applied and the doctor was called, who basically told them to stop the bleeding and to come in on Monday to see what could be done.

I was still screaming.

"Jesus Christ! Keep it down in there! It's just a little goddamned blood!" and then quieter, to my mother, "You'd think she was being ax murdered in there or something. For the love of God..." And then my mother's quiet mumbling, and then nothing.

I stopped screaming and focused all my attention on the dwarf butler on Scaramanga's private island. His voice was funny, and it made me and my sister laugh. She came over and put her head on my shoulder, and the two of us sat there until the credits rolled, and then we sang along with Lulu and collapsed into a smelly little goat pile.

My father emerged from the trailer's bathroom wrapped in a sheet, toga style, and put on "The Spy Who Loved Me."

2005-04-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

I was with a guy for a long time who never went near his ass crack with a bar of soap. I know, I know, this sort of thing would be a deal breaker if it was readily apparent. But he also went to great lengths to keep me away from his backside in general. When I realized what was going on, it was too late. I confronted him in the bathroom.

"You seem to be neglecting your poop chute. I just watched you suds up everything except, you know, your butt. What's up with that?" I had been brushing my teeth and noting his procedure with mounting disgust.

"It gets clean! The soapy water runs down there. That's all it takes."

"I hate to break it to you, but that's not 'all it takes.' You need to make contact. Here, I'll hand you a washcloth."

"Get out of here."

And it was never spoken of again, although I was very aware, from then on, that I probably just wanted to avoid his butt and his dirty laundry forever.

2005-04-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

Chris and I do our best impromptu communicating through issues in the middle of the night. His insomnia will often send his mind reeling in an ever-growing spiral outward from his original prickly thought. When he can no longer pretend that he will get to sleep if he just tries a little harder to relax, he'll turn to me and say:

"Angela."

Sometimes he will shake me a little. Mostly there is just the solid sound of my name in a normal conversational tone.

"What? What is it?" I usually am jarred from a deep sleep, pulled snorting and worried into consciousness. I generally panic, fear the worst. And who doesn't, at 3:30am?

"I was just thinking..."

From here we will have deep, meaningful, if somewhat groggy conversations about everything, from trouble with friends and exes, to the meaning of pets and how we feel about each other. Recently, the conversations in the dark of night have centered around our purchasing of a house in deep southeast Portland, and how and what we will be sacrificing to make this investment. This is a real griller, because it is a big deal, this joint purchase well above the dollar/committment level of the French press we bought together. And so it is discussed.

The other day, while I was napping in the afternoon and Chris was watching cartoons, I heard the tell-tale siren call.

"Angela."

I snorked and lifted my face from the drool puddle it had been resting in.

"Wha-huh? What's wrong?"

"I was just thinking that I am glad you're alive."

These rocky starts at conversation are not always emergency grade explosives. Sometimes they are just good, warm, and fuzzy.

2005-04-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Our father to my sister via phone:
"It's amazing! You can get anything down here. Do you like...giraffes? Because there's this store called Pier One where you can get any damn giraffe thing you want. Yeah, they import this shit from all over the world. You can walk around in there for hours and never see the same damn thing twice. Do you like books? Cause they have this place called 'Borders Books' and I tell ya, I've never seen so many goddamn books in my life. They've got a book for everything. They have these sale books, they're only like, two dollars. Yeah, I bought some art books from that sale table and I just ripped out some pictures and hung 'em up on my walls. You put 'em in a frame and you can't even tell."

I just thought you should know how Dad is adjusting in his third year of "big city livin'."

2005-04-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

A little thought for Chris on this morning after a night of little sleep:
"He who angers you, conquers you."

And with that, I must say(in a hypocritical manner) that waiting for our loan broker to call is a particularly exotic torture. I'm trying hard to chill and just let the water roll downhill, but like an idiot, here I am struggling against the current, attempting to climb the Mount Everest of Patience while wearing only a tablecloth knotted under my chin.

!

2005-04-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Argh!

Financing for the house is becoming painful to wait for! I'm not flipping out though. Okay, I'm flipping out. I can hardly type. Oh, the waiting!

I have virtually no patience for this as I need to use it on ridiculous conversations such as this:

"Hi, I'm 369."
"Pardon?"
"Oh! I mean, computer 369. I have some prints to pick up."
"Oh, certainly, it will be just a moment."

(Patron wiggles and mini-paces back and forth in front of my desk. Giggles like a little girl, although he is about 250 pounds and looks something like Barry White.)

"It will probably be a few minutes as it appears that you have a number of pages."
"Oh that's okay. I'm just addicted to flesh, you know, there's just something about it. I don't know what it is."
I smile and nod, as if I know what the hell in the hootenany he's talking about. And although I try hard not to notice what patrons are printing, it's impossible to not see the all caps http://BIGGEST_BLACK_DICK_IN_THE_WORLD_!" come up on the printer release screen. This among other, more imaginative titles.

He continues to jiggle and twitch, and I pretend to straighten the returned reference books.

"I've just got to look, you know?"
"Sure, uh huh."

I love the library.

koala

2005-04-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

koala
Originally uploaded by schmangela.

2005-04-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

Things from this week:
-Little Portly the cat ripped a one inch hole in my sister's left ear with her claws as she was climbing on her shoulders and batting at her pony tail.
-House buying anxiety roller coaster as we go through the motions; race to put in the offer before anyone else, hold our breath while the seller's flaky agent takes her time to present said offer, freak out about the acceptance, worry about the inspection, which goes off with only minor repairs needed (no dead bodies in the crawlspace like we imagined), and finally, in the home stretch, we get to play the exciting game "Will Our Loan Fall Through (At the Last Minute, Baby)".
-Having spent every last cent we have, and a few extra, actually, Chris purchases his first crappy 99 cent beer and toasts the upcoming financial drought upon our house.
-My allergies take a turn for the better, until I acknowledge that fact out loud to a friend, and then they come back in one big happy fiesta group: itchy eyes, chronic fatigue, death rattle cough(!), sinus pressure, and mucus, oh the mucus!
-A guy flips out at the pharmacy counter where I am patiently waiting to get my steroid inhaler, flabbergasting the attendant and making everybody stop, yet no one does anything. Basically, all I caught of the interaction was the flipper yelling at the flippee: "Just give me the goddamn bag! It's like you don't trust me!"
-Our realtor confides that she could never be on "Fear Factor."
-Library patrons continue to print out an enormous amount of color pornography!

2005-04-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

OCD Central:

Every night I put my lunch out on the table in the same arrangement: banana curved outward to the right, orange and apple nestled next to it, tea bag on top of the orange, granola bar underlining everything.

Often I sat bolt upright in the middle of the night, breathing hard and wide awake from a recurring nightmare in which the bathroom linen closet did not have at least four, preferably six rolls of toilet paper neatly arranged beside the carefully rolled towels.

Getting myself out of the house in the morning was a path fraught with obstacles, from getting exactly 13 plaits in my long braid to "just checking" to make sure that the lights were off in every room. I went like this: I'd turn off a light, get a few steps away, and then a scary, insistent version of my voice would pipe up, asking me if I was really sure that the light was off. How did I know? So I'd go back and run my finger over the switch, in the down position, room dark, and then leave the room again. I'd get down the hall, or maybe even make it to the kitchen, and look back, sure that I could see the light on, and have to trudge back to check again.

I'd put my wallet in my backpack, push it securely into the bottom, zip it up, and the whispering question would waft through my brain. "Hey, there Angela. Are you sure you put your wallet in your bag? Maybe you should just have a look see." I'd look, and there it was, just like I thought. I'd rezip, head out to the car, then have to just make sure one more time, foot on the bumper, keys dangling from my mouth.

In spite of all this checking and rechecking, I still managed to do the things I feared the most. I locked my keys in the car with the car running. I left my wallet on the table at the restaurant. I didn't write down to whom I lent my favorite sweater. I lost things all the time. Fate intervened to bring disaster. Our toaster oven spontaneously combusted and had to be thrown out the back door, still flaming, into the rainy parking lot. Our dog pulled my used tampons out of the garbage and spread them in an artful display all over the front lawn. And still I worried, had to have things done my way.

If my husband left any dishes from his hastily consumed breakfast, they had to be rinsed and stacked in neat piles; plates to the right, silverware to the front, glasses on the left, faucet turned slightly toward them before I could try to leave the kitchen, running my finger over the light switch as I did so.

I'd scrub the tub that I just watched my husband clean, wipe down the counter right behind him, even though he'd done an admirable job.

"I just cleaned that."
"I know, I'm just...finishing up." A cheery shrug and a helpless smile.

He'd walk in on me scrubbing the grout between the tiles in the bathroom with an old toothbrush, sweat pouring into my eyes, hair stringy across my face in the sweltering summer heat.

"I can help you with that." He'd poke his head in and dangle an open beer above a section I just finished.

"No, I'm good," I'd say, hoping like hell he'd back the fuck up before he dropped the bottle, because if that happened, we'd have problems.

"You're good alright. Good and crazy."

And in this way, without formal discussion, I nudged him out of the household chores altogether, although to his credit, he never stopped trying to help me.

I might have been a nutjob in just my personal life, but no, it had to spill over into my professional life as well. As the manager of a trendy coffee shop, I would often be unable to delegate cleaning jobs to the rest of the staff, and if it was a slow night, I could often be found on my hands and knees scrubbing the coffee stains off the floor or scraping boogers off the underside of tables. Everything had to be sparkling and put away properly before I could leave for the night. My boss loved me.

It was physically impossible for me to walk down the sidewalk without counting the number of steps to a square. If my gas tank was less than half full, it would consume my thoughts until I dropped everything and got it filled up. Drinking a martini was a complex affair; five sips, one olive, five sips, one olive. If I ran out of olives before the end of the drink, the whole night would be shot.

I took Prozac for my obsessive-compulsive behavior for almost three weeks before I woke up one day and walked to the bathroom without running my finger over the hall light switch to make sure it was off. After I put toothpaste on my toothbrush without hearing even a whisper of my internal voice's painstaking aesthetic qualifications, I caught my own eye in the mirror and smiled. Tonight, I'd let my husband wash the dishes.

2005-04-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Chris spoke first:
"I just had to get out of that Bermuda Triangle of idiocy."

The single mom with two toddlers told everyone in our train car the story of her unfair life. Her children fussed and force-cried for the first half of the night. By the time she had them both properly spanked and sniffling, "Get away from me, you're a bad mommy!" the overweight gentleman across the aisle was able to fall asleep and promptly start snoring like a javelina. After a few hours of negotiating a limited version of rest, one of the kids woke up after snoring guy emitted a particularly loud snorkeling sound. She whined a mysterious phrase over and over, "I want my bat seat," or an equivalent. Her exasperated mother matched her volume in explaining(everytime the little girl finished her sentence) that she couldn't give her the "bat seat" because she had lost it and that she was "going to be" responsible for waking up "everybody on the damn train" and did she really want to be that rude?

What kind of adult tries to reason with a four-year-old in the manipulative way usually reserved for adult-on-adult guilt trips? I mean, it is not going to work to tell a toddler that other people are going to hate her if she doesn't stop making noise, or that she will not receive any of the Easter presents promised to her if she doesn't stop poking her sister.

After the "bat seat" fire had been tamped down to a few stray whimpers, snoring guy fell right off the end of the sleeping pier and started in with his bubbly-sounding snorts. I ground my teeth together and fought, I am not kidding, to keep control of my left leg, which wanted to shoot out and kick the guy in the lumbar region.

Chris got up and stormed to the observation car with his Game Boy, where, presumably, it was quiet.

I stayed clenched in my little ball of fury until I realized that, zoo noises or not, I wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon.

I wrapped my scarf around my face and spread out over both seats.

I love the train.

Further into the night during a snoring volume spike, I went to the bathroom and walked in on an older lady in a state of undress. Wearing only a deep purple bra and some sort of control-top garment, she didn't even notice that I had flung open the door and went on digging around in her suitcase.

Even later, Chris came back to our seats and tried to snuggle up to me, but every position on the seat's incline meant one of us got smooshed and some limb went numb.

Just before sunrise, he crawled under our seats and stretched out on the floor.

"Is that good down there?" I swung my face over the edge of the foot rest and eyeballed him. My scarf was twisted around my head like a lepers bandages.

"It's luxurious!" He pulled his hat over his face and went to sleep.

Soon after, as the sunlight burst into the car like the Kool-Aid mascot in commercials of old, snoring guy shut down his log-sawing operation and almost immediately started making calls on his cell phone to a number of people to tell them that some airline had lost his luggage. It couldn't have been more that 6am.

Single mom woke up and started complaining to snoring man(after he was through telling his missing luggage story about five times) about how behind schedule we were(about two hours), why we didn't stop for a goddamned cigarette break, and how they were "never taking the train again in life,"(?) and how much of a refund they were going to demand. This was punctuated by proclamations of how poorly they slept, how unfair and unacceptable it was that they were going to be late meeting her new boyfriend, and returns to her previous story about why she left the father of her two children.

Even with my scarf pulled over my face, the light got through, the conversation permeated.

"My kids hate the train. I couldn't fly out of Portland on Thursday or we would have done that. My boyfriend insisted that I come home for Easter or we wouldn't be here. On the way up to Portland, the bathroom broke in our train car and we were running two hours behind then too! I have to go live with my parents because I'm having a house built. My husband and I got so stressed about how long it was taking that I left him around last Halloween." She was up and pacing, talking snoring guy's ear off. Then she called her boyfriend and her grandmother and told them the whole story we had just heard.

Oh: by now it was 6:30am.

I started to think about how the only reason I was having a bad time was because of her and her mucus-y offspring. The screaming, the spanking, the loud complaining. Oh my god!

Chris called in the delay to his parents, who were awaiting our arrival in San Francisco. I went to brush my teeth. We gathered our things and sneaked away to the lounge car, noting, on our passage through five other passenger cars, how serene they were. People were still slumbering all around us. My head throbbed.

Chris bought some horrible coffee that only resembled it's label in that it was hot and in a styrofoam cup.

We talked about the Bermuda Triangle of Idiocy in our car.

I replayed the punishment scene from the night before: the older child of single mom wouldn't stop forcing herself to bawl. Huge hitching sobs came from this fairy-sized being. At this point I still had patience. Snoring guy offered to be "surrogate daddy" for a while. Whatever that meant. She told him(and the rest of us) her woes. He told her(and the rest of us) that his own fiance was pregnant, and that he wasn't sure if she really wanted to be with him.

Oh, the drama!

The kid was wailing through all of this. Eventually, I figured, she'd wear herself out. They always do. But her mom cracked first. Warnings were issued and ignored. Tiny four-year-old punches were thrown.

"Alright that's it!" and mom got up and stuffed her two-year old under her arm like a sack of flour, dragged her other screaming child by the wrist down to the lower level, where for a moment we heard nothing.

"Somebody's in big trouble." Chris whispered.

"No kidding."

Then, a solid-sounding WHACK! followed by a thin, reedy wailing as the whackee reacted in exactly the way that got her in trouble in the first place.

"I hate you, Mommy!" she caterwauled and tore back up the stairs, dove past us to hide under her seat.

Late breaking news flash:
People around us confirm we will be even longer delayed due to a medical emergency that is happening in the full view of the observation car. I thought we had been sitting here for a while. Some lady(we hoped it was Single Mom) had an anxiety attack about how late we were and opened one of the exit doors and tried to get off the moving train. An ambulance has been deployed, and a fire engine; train employees are all over the place. Evidently, she wants Amtrak to rent her a car so she can get to where she is going on time. This is not going to happen. They are sedating her and driving her away in the ambulance, which is good, because if she got back on this train, an angry mob would surely kill her.

Some little kids down the car from us are playing "No means yes and yes means no."

Chris seems to feel vindicated having predicted that Single Mom's head would explode at some point during the trip, and if the medical emergency lady is one and the same, he would be right.

Things I have seen from the train:
-a sign on a shed door reading: "Keep locked or stay the fuck out"
-a crusty, hardened glove
-a stallion taking a pee (his stream was as thick as a towing chain!)
-a really really bad wig
-hundreds of abandoned appliances
-frat boys
-ditches of sludge
-Chris asleep on the floor under my seat

Things I have heard today on the train:
-shrill screaming
-more shrill screaming
-a child singing a song phonetically resembling "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" but sounding more like "Twittle Twittle Butter Bar."
-repeated threats of spanking
-I say again: shrill screaming of a pitch and sustainability only utterable by a human under 3 years old. Jesus, but that girl puts her lungs into it. And with a Nuk in there, too!

2005-03-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

Taking a stand:
I take stands all over the place. What is it with me? I mean, there isn't just one incident that bubbles to the surface of my memory when I think that phrase. In my life, I pretty much get what I think that I want. This is totally different than getting what I actually want.

When I was in college, I wanted the dishes to be washed every night and the kitchen put away. Nothing strewn about, underwear wise, in the bathroom or hallway. No wet towels balled up on the bathroom floor. My lunch for the next day uneaten. My CDs all in their appropriate cases. I let my live-in boyfriend know as much, and soon after, he moved out. I got my way, but not what I wanted.

I wanted to leave my floundering marriage, which, to be fair, wasn't pleasing my husband either. But by instigating that change, I lost my house and my dog, my own private studio, my garden, and an easy life subsidized by marrying into wealth. I got the station wagon and an apartment besieged by roaches. And oh! The paperwork! Holy crap, if people knew how much paperwork there was involved in divorce, maybe they'd give couples therapy a last ditch effort. Plus, there's nothing like sitting across the table at the courthouse from someone whom you've told you don't want to be married to anymore, that your life together cannot go on, and having them stare you down over your strategically placed cup of Starbucks coffee. Be careful what you wish for; blah, blah, blah.

Of course, I also got Chris out of the deal, who is silly and wonderful and who baby talks to the cat just like I do, so it's not bad. But when you're in the shit it all seems that way.

I haven't ever been able to take a stand with my mother. Doesn't everybody feel that way about one of their parents? I was wondering aloud the other day about a time in the future when I would be able to take grown-up vacations that don't involve using up all my vacation time going to see my family. My sister's boyfriend said, "As soon as you tell your mom that you aren't going to come and visit her this summer, but are going somewhere for yourself instead." This horrified me, as if he had advised me to hit her on the head and roll her car into the nearest body of water. But he's right. It's time for me to start loosening her arthritic yet tight little grip on all of my time off.

2005-03-21T17:02:00.000-08:00

I board the bus with Eddy and Chris. I sit at the far end of the section of three seats by the back door. Eddy sits next to me. Chris wanders into the bowels, swallowed by a section of street punks with ripped jeans and bad-itudes.

There is a guy on the other side of Eddy, pasty, dredlocked, who taps me on the shoulder as I press my fists into my chronically itchy eyes. I look up and behind Eddy.

"What's your name?" he asks.
"What?"
"What's your name?"
I panic and blurt out the real thing: "Angela."
"Oh... I'm going to write a poem about you."
"Okay," I say, because, what else can you say?
"That's why I needed to know your name," and with that, hey guy gets up and bolts out the back door.

Eddy appraises me and says, " I was wondering why he gave me the evil eye when I sat down next to you."

Fantastic!

2005-03-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

My corduroy pants are never so loud as they are at work.

I walk around in the closed stacks and a zipping sound whispers from between my legs. My thighs don't ordinarily rub together, I am generally thought of as 'just a little bit of a thing,' but wearing corduroy, everyone can know the joys of thigh friction.

I think about how wearing corduroy would translate into the food service industry, where 'Waiter's Ass' runs rampant for both sexes, and how everyone I've ever known waiting tables, including me, carries either talcum powder or a tube of cortisone in their bags. Don't leave home without it! (FYI- this is when you are cruising around at high speed in a hot, often moist environment, and your butt cheeks rub together in the most unpleasant way. Eventually, after hours of this, a red, raw rash will crop up and cause the worst kind of pain and itch you would wish on your most foul enemy.) I think that polyester is the best fabric for that job, based on my personal experience, because it stretches when you do and if you spill some hollandaise on yourself, you can just wipe it off. So no cords while waiting tables.

I also think about this obnoxious fat kid in sixth grade named Brooks. He was loud. He farted and then shook with laughter, every time. He was a friend to no one. He made fun of everyone for any reason. I can't think of a single person who even pretended to like him.

But he did wear these blue cords, and he was big enough so that his thighs scraped together audibly when he walked. There were rumors flying around that he had run to catch the bus and his pants went up in flames because of the furious rubbing of fabric between his legs. I wanted to believe this was true so much that eventually, I did. Brooks was fond of calling me names. "Chicken Wing, Chicken Little, Turkey Neck." Anything that called to mind a small, scrawny, helpless animal. I loathed him.

Even though the fabric of those cords gave in to the tremendous pressure and blew out two bagel sized holes that could be seen if you bent over and looked just under his butt cheeks, he still wore them. I don't know why.

Sometimes, I wonder what those pants of his smelled like.

2005-03-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

Opening my eyes this morning was like peeling gauze off of still-damp red crackle paint. For the first time in years, I looked stoned. I closed them immediately and pressed my fingers deep in the sockets, feeling the relief that only pressure can bring to itchy pain. I rolled my eyes experimentally, feeling my scarred marbles move in painful synchronicity.

I thought: "It would be cool to have a wall-eye that I could control. I would freak people out with it all day."

I released my face and looked at the puffy blue-black that surrounded my crackle-glazed stare. Whoa! I looked like hell. Welcome to hay fever country.

Last night Chris and I made a compress soaked in lavender and I sprawled on the bed, pajamas with the baby chickens on them swaddled around me, washcloth tamped into my eyeholes, listening to an episode of Monk.

It felt good, the compress. As long as it was on my face. The relief ended as soon as I removed it and was hit full force by whatever was in the air; Little Portly's fur and dander, dust, mold, pollen, what-have-you. I am starting to hate air. Every time I breathe or otherwise encounter the stuff, it gives me trouble.

2005-02-27T15:07:00.000-08:00

Okay:
A week of steroids for my most recent asthma attack has taught me that in order to feel better, I have to sacrifice my generally well-adjusted attitude for one of a strung-out junkie. I am hot, way irritable, full of noxious-smelling farts, and have a ramped up appetite that allows me to eat almost a whole large pizza by myself and then get upset and territorial if there isn't enough left over for a snack later(like, maybe 6 or 8 pieces). My face and chest have broken out in tiny little whiteheads that would be cute if they were made out of glitter, but they're not.

I am wide awake, all the time, with energy that, if only it could be constructive, would be nice. Instead of repainting the bathroom or editing my novel, I am forced to go to late movies, hijacking my friends to watch Keneau Reeves say my name over and over in between his visits to hell. I am so exhausted with coughing, trying to get on top of the cough, that I pine for a sunny nap in the afternoon, kitty asleep and purring on my legs, but instead I get me, eyes wide and throbbing to the jack-rabbit pounding of my heart, launching the cat off of me when she starts to knead her tiny claws into my thigh.

And yet my head is congested, my cough persists. The thought of having to stand next to a smoker, even outside, where the wind could rip the smoke away from my lack-luster lungs, is enough to make me want to grab the next gutter punk who asks me for a cigarette by the tattered lapels and scream obscenities into his face: "Is THIS what you want? To struggle to take in air and spend your nights wondering if you'll be able to make it to the hospital in time before you starve your brain of too much oxygen?"

How did I ever think to put a cigarette to my mouth?

Also, I have to inform the people I work with about the drugs I take, what to watch for if I go down, what to tell the attending medics.

And why, oh why does my Urgent Care physician always have to be so cute? Meeting me while I look, sound, and smell like hell? Why does he have to put his cold stethoscope on my bare back and frown, saying, "Well, yes, actually, that DOES sound pretty bad in there? Are you a smoker?" I roll my eyes and say "Christ, no."

He looks like he still may not believe me. Is it the purple hair, the heavy metal style dragon tattooed on my back?

And my pharmaceutical sentence is only lightweight. I am only on these corticosteroids for a week. I wouldn't take them for longer. You can puff up like a blowfish if you let them linger in your system, bowing to the almost fanatical need to eat constantly, always feeling faint from hunger, yet never really 'hungry.'

I hate this breathing thing, it's getting me down.

Sorry about all the sniffling, guys, I'm not actually on coke, it just sounds that way.

2005-02-15T16:34:00.000-08:00

Chris and I have been playing 'Name That Kitty' for a day now, and, while the random words that pop out of our mouths are sometimes uproariously funny(i.e.-Assmaster and Poopmachine are two that take me right back to being six), it has been slow going when it comes to the real candidates.

We thought about 'Oolong' as sort of a tribute to that guy who had a web page devoted to his rabbit, Oolong. He used to put small toys and muffins and stuff on Oolong's head and then post the pictures. Sadly, Oolong died last year. But the website's still up: http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~yuebing/ (not sure of this link but if you do a google search for "oolong rabbit pancake" you should be able to find the site. It's in Japanese only, but the pictures have English captions if you roll your mouse over them)

(Okay, I just viewed it and it's his new rabbit's page, but he still has lots of Oolong pictures up.)

Then I suggested 'Pancake,' but Chris said someone else we knew had a hamster with that name.

More bathroom humor ensued.

This morning, as the kitty was launching numerous assaults against an innocent catnip mouse, Chris blurted out, "How about 'Little Portly?!"

To which I exclaimed: "Okay!"

Little Portly is a character from "The Wind In The Willows," specifically, a little otter with a paunch who tends to wander away from home while he plays and then takes naps and wakes up lost. Ratty and Mole spend about a chapter looking for him. (Don't worry, he gets found and is delivered home to Papa Otter safe and sound.)

We just reread the book and Little Portly was, by far, the best name of a charater in the story. Maybe in any book ever.

Yay for Little Portly!

2005-02-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

So there's this cat that Chris and I might take on as a freeloader. Her name right now is "Blisters" but I find that repulsive and have countered to rename it.

"How about "Keebler?" I ask and munch on my soggy ham sandwich. "Like the Keebler Elves?"

"What's wrong with "Blisters?"

"It's gross. It makes me wonder if she's got any open, oozing sores. Or maybe a short temper."

Chris takes tiny bites of his banana, thinking, moving mechanically, like a robot. I watch his teeth come down through the meat of the fruit, watching the marks his mouth makes on it. The banana dissolves into moosh. Like a mouthful of pus, sucked out of a 'blister.' I am reinvested in the renaming. I can't call an animal something that makes me think like this, especially when I'm eating.

"Actually," I say, pulling sprouts off of my sweater, "I really like just the sound of "Eebler." It could be something that rhymes."

Chris stares at me for a second and then says, "How 'bout "Enabler?" He looks triumphant, and it's clear from the look on my face that we have a winner.

2005-02-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

Whose Pants?

Chris recently discovered that if he washes and dries a pair of his pants that should be dry cleaned only (say, a pair of wool Banana Republic pants that he bought at a thrift store for about $3 and that I have always liked a lot, and have maybe even eyeballed with a good deal of thrift store score envy, on more than one occasion), and the pants shrink, they end up being the exact right size for me. Not that I would wish shrinking wool pants on anybody.

So now I am the proud, if a bit sheepish, owner of a pair of BR pants. They fit great!

I was worried that the butt of these pants would make my butt look more like a typical guy butt, and that is not something that I want, as lots of guys sort of have no butt at all, but more like a weird concavity that should maybe be checked out by a doctor or something. But as I asked around, everyone agreed that my butt does not automatically turn into guy butt just because I'm wearing guy pants. Thank god.

Change of subject:
Tomorrow morning BEFORE work, I've got my yoga class, and although I love it, the last one I went to we were told to use these straps to sort of rope ourselves into position. I couldn't figure it out.

I am not ashamed that it takes me a minute to remember which end of the cable goes to what part of the battery when jumping a car. I am, however, embarrassed that I couldn't figure out how to secure this belt-like thing around my back and have it not immediately unravel.

The instructor was very patient with us, but only got to help the three worst of us unravelers before we had to move on to a different pose, one that didn't involve any props. By that time, I resembled one of those tree-shaped air fresheners that you hang from your rear-view mirror. I didn't smell like one though, which was maybe too bad, because I was quite sweaty.

One last thing: I got asked out on a date by a patron wearing a train engineer's hat. I don't think he was an actual train engineer. I flashed him my divorce ring and told him I was married. He seemed to take it well.

2005-02-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

It was almost like my subconscious had grabbed ahold of the virus that was going around the library and kept it in check, waiting for the right moment to begin incubation. I started feeling crappy on Wednesday night, just a slight catch in my throat, a dull ache in my limbs. By the time Chris and Eddy and I had reached the bus stop though, I could tell I was going down for real.

I was supposed to have Jury Duty the next morning, and I couldn't figure out how to call in sick for that so I go up and went to the court house, even though I could barely keep my clothes on. I was hot, my skin was doing that prickly thing that sea urchins do when anything touches them. My spines felt poked at. I was a tide pool creature at the mercy of the people with sticks, with probing fingers.

I waited in line with everyone else, thinking I'd fall over. My fever spiked and I sweated through my clothes. I could have collected the moisture in my shirt in a glass if I had tried to wring it out.

"Fever!" I croaked out when a nice young man named Brian asked me how he could help me. He may have thought I was a junkie, I guess it doesn't matter. He sent me right home, which was all I wanted, with the stipulation that I come back and try again next month.

I climbed in bed and slept for two and a half days.

That's not true; I got up early the next day to reschedule a dentist appointment for the third time. I had been hoping to feel well enough to at least take that off my calendar, but alas, my body made the choice for me: an unmoving mouth-breathing lump in bed instead of numb-faced, drooling, and receiving a lecture on why I should floss more.

Fuckity fuck.

So now both the jury duty and the fillings are back in the hopper, waiting for me to stress out about all over again.

Chris stayed in with me on Friday, even though I think I only woke up a few times to pee. He camped in the bedroom with his new $65 laptop playing video games and trying to entice me into a state of awareness with Frogger and jeopardy. Needless to say, I didn't really play with him, which made me feel bad, but not bad enough to wake up.

I was so sure that I wasn't going to get sick this year. I've been taking all those fancy inhaled steroids for my asthma management and so I figured my lungs were like iron. I was wrong, although, I have to say, that with this cold, there has been a marked lack of congestion. Hmm...

Yesterday I finally started to feel better. I know this because I started to realize how goaty the sheets were getting. I wobbled down to the washer and threw them all in. Then I did the dishes. Ah, being better= domestic chores! Heaven!

2005-02-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

It turns out that Jason(see previous post for run down on police action at my house) actually suffered some fractures in his face the other night. There is talk of him or his family suing the Portland police over their brutality and not taking responsibility for hurting him. I understand that he asked to be taken to the hospital on the way to detox, but that he wasn't taken there until the next morning, where they discovered the fractures. He had been cleared by an EMT before he was put in the car, which makes me think that he might have done some of the damage himself.

Prevailing opinions at my house are that the police are solely responsible for his injuries, but as one of the only sober people at the scene, I have a different interpretation:

I didn't see everything go down, BUT;
Two grown men who should have known better got shitfaced.
One woman forgot to give those men a key to the place they were staying.
Chris and I didn't answer the door on the first doorbell ring and were untrusting of the strangers standing on our porch in the middle of the night.
One of the drunk men refused to comply with a police officer's requests.
The other drunk man called the officer a fascist.
The drunk man who was 'taken down' by the cop and handcuffed was put in the patrol car where he then slammed his head against the window repeatedly.

It kind of sounds like no one wants to take responsibility for their actions here.

My opinion is that we are all a little at fault. If they wouldn't have been so hammered...if Sonya would have woken up...if we would have answered the door right away and let them in...if Jason would have just done as he was asked...if he wouldn't have hit his head against the car...

I think that the police need to be liable for the mistakes that they make, but I'm not so sure that they could have done anything different. I mean, every situation they deal with is one where they have to go into it believing that the people involved might kill them or others. Shit, I'd be more likely to take extreme measures myself if that were the case...

2005-01-30T14:05:00.000-08:00

3:30am. The doorbell rings. I wake up, but decide to ignore it. It's probably just the same shitheads that stole my sick plant off the front porch.

It rings again. Then again. I wake Chris up, then ask him what we should do. I mean, answering the doorbell at 3:30 in the morning is never going to yield good news. He decides to answer it.

We open the front door out into the hallway we share with the girls that live upstairs. It's one of their friends, a college age boy who compulsively wears a red baseball hat. Chris walks down the hall and opens the door.

He finds out that the guy is drunk and he is staying with our upstairs neighbor and that he and his companion got locked out. We don't know if she locked them out on purpose or if it was just an accident. I am hanging back in the hallway in my pajamas, away from the strange people.

"I'm terribly sorry to disturb you at such a late hour, but I'm a friend of Sonya's and my friend and I just went to the bar down the street after Sonya passed out and she must have locked the door and we're staying with her and she won't wake up to let us in." Red Hat gushes the run-on sentences of a socially well *ahem* lubricated man, but is freakily polite about it. "Thank you so much for being so understanding, and we apologize again for waking you at this hour."

We don't know if we should let them in because there is no way of knowing if these guys even know our upstairs neighbors or if she wants them there. We need to ask Sonya what she wants us to do. Chris runs up the stairs and opens the front door to Sonya's apartment, which is unlocked. He calls her name. No answer. He ventures in as far as her closed bedroom door and calls her name again. Still no answer. He comes back down.

I have decided that my need to know exactly what is happening on my front porch overrides the fact that I am clad in flannel pajamas with baby chickens all over them. I grab my robe and jump into the fray.

The first thing I notice as I enter the hallway is the flashing disco lights of a police car in front of our house. Not a good sign.

A policeman has pulled over and handcuffed Red Hat's companion for mooning his patrol car. The kid sloppily insists he was merely trying to hail a cab. I will later wonder how he thinks he was going to flag down a taxi on a street with no traffic in a town with no cabs. But that is later. This is now:

Red Hat is upset that the policeman tackled his friend to the ground, bruising his face and making him bleed on our front steps. The cop is defending himself by explaining that since he wouldn't take his hands out of his pockets and he was "dancing drunkenly in the middle of the road" and "wouldn't comply with my orders" that he had to assume he was carrying a weapon of some kind. Red Hat is trying to calm down the mooner, whose name I find out is actually Jason, by holding him down on the front steps, blood dripping onto the sidewalk.

A fire truck/ambulance vehicle pulls up. A woman gets out and examines Jason. The cop is calling his sergeant for back-up. The EMT lady clears Jason of any possible concussion.

I wonder out loud to Chris if Sonya has choked on her own vomit upstairs, as Red Hat keeps telling us how much she was throwing up earlier. That plus the fact that she hasn't woken up even with all the noise makes me think she might be dead. We both return to her bedroom, where I knock on the door and call her name. She doesn't answer. It flashes through my mind that this might be a very long, gruesome night. I tiptoe over to her bed, why I'm not sure, I mean, I WANT her to wake up, right. Still, I'm in a strange person's bedroom in the middle of the night and I feel ginger about touching anything or stepping to heavily. I touch her head and she moans. She is incredibly fucked up, but still alive. I ask her if she knows her friends have been locked out. She wakes up a little and tells me to let them back in. She is distressed. I smooth down her unruly curls and tell her to just lay back down. She asks if they are okay. I hesitate and then shrug, saying "I think so."

I do not want her to wake up and "try to help." We shut her bedroom door and promise to let her friends back in her apartment. We do not mention the police, the handcuffs, or the swollen bloodied face.

We return to the front porch where Jason is repeatedly attempting to stand up and confront the cop about his handcuffs. He asks to have them removed. Or at least loosened. This request is denied and Red Hat pulls him down into a sitting position again. Jason and the cop are still discussing whether or not he deserves to be in handcuffs. Red Hat agrees with his friend that they should be removed and is growing visibly upset at his friend's appearance.

The cop refuses to discuss taking the handcuffs off and tells Jason to get used to it(paraphrasing like crazy here, as I could only hear bits and pieces, sorry).

Red Hat tears up the stairs on his way to Sonya's apartment, calling the cop a fascist on the way. I suck in air through my clenched teeth and think that this is not the way to endear yourself to a law enforcement official.

Back-up arrives. There is talk to taking Jason to detox, as he is clearly unable to handle himself, and is even possibly a danger to himself and others. The evidence they have to prove this is the fact that he tried to "hail a cab" by flashing his ass in the middle of the street in the middle of the night. Oh, and that he refused to comply with the officer's request that he remove his hands from his pockets and get down on the ground. Things aren't looking so good for Jason.

Red Hat vehemently opposes Jason's immanent departure for detox, and requests to be taken with to keep an eye on him. The sergeant laughs and says that he does NOT want to do that. Detox is not fun, and the only way he can go with is if he agrees to be locked up there as well.

I think the police are being more than generous with their plan, as they could have just saved themselves a lot of trouble and arrested both of them for being drunk and disorderly.

I mention to the policemen that Sonya has in fact given them the okay to just come back in her apartment and crash. One of them asks me if I am in fact taking responsibility for the two drunk people. I wave my arms and say no. He asks me if I am sober. This grates at me. I am standing on my porch with two strangers causing a scene in the middle of the night. I am in my pajamas, have bed head, and have clearly just been interrupted during a critical stage in my sleep cycle. I am the only one here besides the officers who is sober. But I let it go, as this is clearly an uncool situation and someone needs to take control. I say no, that I have to work in the morning and that I don't even know these people.

The officers confer and decide that Jason really needs to be taken away to sleep it off somewhere where he won't get up and wander off or freak out. They load him into the back of the patrol car. Red Hat flips out. He does not want Jason to go, and asks for the address, which is given to him with the promise that as soon as Jason has sobered up, he will be allowed to call Red Hat for a ride.

"How long are we talking about here?" Red Hat asks.

"You'll probably make it to church."

"We're not going to church, I don't believe in God-" Red Hat is getting upset at the assumption that he is a God-fearing type and the cop laughs a little and tells him that he was just trying to give him a time frame.

Jason making loud noises by himself in the patrol car like he is banging his head against the patrol car window, hard.

The policemen decide to wrap things up and leave Chris and I to reason with a drunk man, with his own brand of circular logic.

After two more whole recaps of how Red Hat thinks things went down, which makes increasingly less and less sense, Chris announces that it is late, and that we are going to bed.

Red Hat apologizes again and thanks us for being so understanding.

We lock the door and go back to bed.

Chris plays his gameboy and I lay awake, eyes on the ceiling, wondering if I'll sleep

2005-01-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

Last weekend when Portland had that huge ice storm, Chris got a call telling him that he still had to go to work. I was worried(like a mother hen) that he would slip on the front stairs or on the way to the bus stop, so I decided to venture out on the front porch and see just what we were dealing with. I grabbed my cell phone to cancel my appointments for the day, and opened the door. Everything was covered with a solid layer of wavy ice, sort of beautiful, like a big glazed donut. (The machines that cover donuts and candy bars with the final layer of glaze/chocolate are called 'enrobers,' if I'm not mistaken, and that's so cool.)

I put my slippered hoof down on the top stair and slipped, then bounced down all eight stairs to the sidewalk. Luckily, I was able to break my fall with my cell phone, and so I only sustained enormous bruises on two major portions of my back instead of three. My arm got dinged up too, but my phone only got a small scratch.

When I tried to stand up, I realized I was soaking wet. This was because it was, you know, raining, but I was convinced that it was blood. I kicked off my slippers and used my socks as impromptu wooly cleats, dragging what I thought to be my blood-covered carcass back up the mountain.

I threw myself on the couch in the living room and tried to get my breathing under control. I called out to Chris, who had been getting ready to take a bath. I could hear the water still running and I hoped he hadn't gotten in yet. No answer. I called again, louder this time. Nothing. So I shouted. Then I screamed. That got him. He came out of the bathroom holding his towel, brow furrowed.

"Angela, what is it? What's wrong?" he came over and inspected my crumpled form.

"I fell...down the front steps. Am I covered in my own blood?" I started shaking, the kidney punches the cement had laid into me were starting to really ache.

"What? Blood? No, you're just wet. Come on, let's put you back in bed."

He helped me into the bed room and tucked me in. Kissed my forehead and said, "It's weird, because ten minutes ago, your sister called and told me to tell you to be really careful to not fall down the stairs."

"Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I figured you wouldn't fall down the stairs."

Nice.

2005-01-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Last night after a weird bath(long story, too personal), I heaved myself out of the barely lukewarm water and racked myself on the faucet. I don't normally sit on that end of the tub, and wasn't at all ready for the feeling of being stabbed in the small of my back by what felt like a hollow needle the size of a, well, a bathtub faucet. I checked it out in the mirror, as best I could without my glasses, and it hadn't even broken the skin, which wasn't consistent with the way it felt. After five minutes, I looked at it again, and to my horror, it had swelled up and looked like a sugar cookie had been implanted under my skin.

I went to put on my pajama pants and realized that the scrape was dead center in the physiological lane my waist bands usually drive in. (What a horrible metaphor. I have a headache and girl trouble, can you tell? Fuck.)

Chris put a bandage on it, but that lasted all of 10 minutes, as it just pulled on the fine little hairs around it.

Then I got glassy-eyed as my femininity made itself rudely known by kicking me in the groin.

I went to bed mad that uterine cramps had once again surprised me, deer in headlights style. I mean, I should know what to expect, I've been doing this menstruation thing for quite a while now, but it never fails to blow my fucking mind.

As I drifted to sleep I mentally went through my closet to figure out what clothes I could wear that would accommodate my swollen reproductive organs and the sugar cookie-esque bruise on my back. I decided that I should go pantsless. Then I fell asleep to the sound of Chris playing his Game Boy...

2005-01-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

For my birthday yesterday, Chris gave me an armful of purple presents, including a stuffed unicorn. Then we went out for sushi at the place downtown with the train. I stuffed myself with multiple orders of tempura tai(a jazzed up fishstick teetering atop a nub of sticky rice smothered in hot sauce) and creamy scallops. I ordered real crab sushi too, which I normally don't do because it's so expensive. But, this is the last year of my 20's, and if I want real crab with my seaweed, I'll have real crab.

I always buy the 25 cent mints at the counter there when we leave. They're nothing special, but I like how the clear plexiglass mint cage has a pink sign taped to it that says: 25 cents! NOT Free!

I told Chris I was going to name my birthday unicorn 'Sushicorn' in honor of the delightful dinner we had. He thought that was a pretty good name for a stuffed animal.

We're having a reading on Thursday night at our house to give everyone who wrote books for National Novel Writing Month a chance to publicly showcase their efforts. We have about 5 or six people lined up to read, including ourselves. Nervous in that I'm not sure who is going to show up, and will we have enough chairs. Not nervous about reading. That last workshop I took sort of took the wind out of the fear of public speaking.

Now then, I have taken to wearing these fingerless gloves everywhere, because I'm always cold and black fingerless gloves are just rock star cool, no matter what anyone says.