okay:
i've been a very bad girl and have not been keeping you informed about the drama that swirls in my life like a mist in the night. whaa ha ha! but i'll try to make it up to you by telling you shocking tales and weird stories that i have not made up!! they are all true!

i found out that the farm i grew up on was bought for a song by my grandfather because the people who lived there previously died horrible grisly deaths and no one else wanted the land. the wife developed a mysterious illness and died slowly and painfully. after she died, her husband hung himself(possibly in the house, i'm not clear on that detail). but my grandfather neglected to tell any of his family these gruesome details until after they bought the property and had moved it. yeek!

my divorce is final. my name has changed back to it's maiden self, although i don't feel like a maiden, that's for sure. my 'divorce ring' is in the process of being made. does anyone have a suggestion for the inscription? i've got a few ideas, but all of them seem corny and self-righteous and that's not really how i feel about it at all. it's not like "i've reclaimed myself." it's more like i've looked at myself under a microscope and am now better able to categorize all that is me. also, the tupperware my mom gave me in college that had our last name emblazoned on it to ensure it wouldn't ever end up in the wrong hands has now come back to being properly labeled. so that's a plus.

last night at the cheap theater four of us ended up in the front row watching johnny depp channel keith richards and peppy le pew in that pirate movie. after paying only $3 to get in and $3 for a large popcorn, we settled in and munched down. the popcorn was salty and saturated with that fake butter stuff that's nuclear yellow colored yet oh-so-delicious, but it was also sort of stale tasting, even though we had just watched the girl make it not 10 minutes before.

"i wonder if, along with the second run movies, they also buy the leftover popcorn from the other theaters." kristi said.

"i was just wondering that same thing." i replied

about halfway through the movie, my keen snout picked up a foreign scent. it was sweet, fruity, like adolescent perfume. it smelled good. i was about to let everyone know that i was going to go to the lobby in search of the source of the smell at the candy counter, but i decided to see if the edible part of my sensory experience was all in my head. i turned to kristi.

"i smell candy," i said, sniffing the air slightly. the odor had intensified when i leaned over her. "do you?"

she gave me a look and squinted. then she thrust her hand into her bag and pulled out a ziplock bag full of runts. how had i smelled the sugary goodness through the bag? who knows? i'm a big pig, i think that's apparent.

last night while waiting for my sister to show up, i fell asleep face down on this cordouroy pillow i have named tim. when kristi buzzed me, i stumbled to the door and flung it open and she said "what the hell happened to your face? looks like you and tim got into a fight." i had scarface sweeping across my cheeks and forehead in a stripy pattern. it took 20 minutes with the aid of hot water and vigorous rubbing to erase the marks. that happens to me alot. i sleep like i am heavily drugged. i am scarface.

reading this poorly written vampire novel, on page thirty with no believable plot is sight. i know i know, believable schlemievable. all vampire books are a stretch, right? even though this one sucks, it is way better than that romance series of vampire books that i guiltily read, called something like, "his immortal embrace." bleck!

chris is out of town for a few days to see his dying grandfather. drove him to the airport at 4:30am and the only thing i could think of as i was driving back was "i need a chocolate croissant." cold-hearted to be sure. i caught the early bus to work to be sure to get one and the coffee shop was out. brutal.

obsessively sniffing. can feel sort of a scabbed up bit of booger inside my left nostril and it sort of pulls at the inside of my nose when i sniff. i don't want to pick at it because then it might bleed and take even longer to heal. but my nature is, of course, to dig in and root out the truffle like a pig. agh!

riding the bus to work one morning, i was delighted to find i was the only passenger. i sat in my favorite seat, halfway back, and put my foot up on the tire hump. i dug out my book and sunk deeply into a mass transit induced hypnotic state. the bus pulled up to a stop with a large woman and her many bags, and she boarded, huffing and puffing. she moved very slowly, appraising all of her many choices of seats. i figured, what with all her crap, she'd sit up front and sort of spread out. but instead, she walked directly up to my row, gave me the once over, and nestled herself in right beside me, pushing me over with her girth, and trying to squeeze all of her bags into the seats with us. i am normally a pretty claustrophobic person and i also happen to generally not like people, especially if they are in my immediate space. basically, if i can feel, or in any way smell, their breath, i freak out. this lady didn't know this, but why had she chosen to sit right next to the only other person on the bus besides her? why? i didn't feel like i could move without deeply offending her, although looking back, i don't know why i cared. i was so uncomfortable that not only was my skin crawling, but i was almost losing control of my bladder. her bags were plastic and damp, smelling of the mystery food probably stashed deep and rotting within them. she was still panting heavily, and an oily smell was emmenating from her...well...from HER. i flipped out. i let out a small "aaaaa..." which involuntarily rose in pitch and volume until it was way louder than polite conversation would allow an offended noise to be. i sort of jumped straight up and clambored over the seat in front of me. her massive thigh sort of oozed into the space that i had just occupied. she grunted. i kicked my backpack up the aisle and clutched my books as i breathlessly told the driver to stop asap. i had to get off this bus and start my decontamination process. i felt like an ass, but obsessive-compulsive disorder waits for no social niceties. i just do what i have to do.

i grew up on a farm in rural minnesota. there was more than one "chicken incident" when i was a kid. i want to like chickens, but because i was chased around my own yard by a murderous hen who wanted nothing more than to peck out my eyes, i have a slight phobia about them up close and personal. one of my secret pleasures was to hang out when my grandfather was butchering them and sort of...play with the heads. sometimes the beaks would open and close on the disembodied heads and i thought that was the greatest. there were also a few times, although i don't remember each specific incident, where the chicken would fall off the block and run around for a while with no head, which was also pretty gruesome but cool to a farm kid. those chickens that my grandfather cooked every sunday were the best chickens i have ever tasted. the only time i ever really like them was when we got the chicks in the spring. there were boxes and boxes of tiny yellow cheeping puffballs all begging to be held. my mom would always bring a bunch of them to my classroom at school and i was the most popular girl for the day. some little pansy city girl would always want to hold one of the baby chickens and then completely flip out when she realized it had sharp claws or crapped on her hand or something. that made me feel tough.

last night i dreamt that my tattoo artist gave me an infectious vampire hickey on the back of my neck. in order to hide it, i put a flesh colored bandage over it. i went home and began to get ready for bed. chris yelled, "what is that on your back?" and i thought "oh crap, he knows i'm a vampire now." but he was really talking about the enormous pen drawing that had been done in tattoo style on my back. it said "FIFTIES STRIPPERS BREAK MY HEART" and underneath the letters was a picture of a stripper from the 50's. we worked hard to wash it off, but it had been drawn with so much force that it sort of scarred onto my back...unfortunately, when i woke up this morning, i hadn't been made into a vampire by my tattoo guy. but luckily, no pen version of a stocky cupcake was carved into my back either.

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 unfortunate wind blister, 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 when i realized that the puppy had been by himself for all that time, and was probably dying of loneliness right then and there, and i left kristi and rushed home and bundled jake into my arms, all squirmy and not the least bit upset at all, really.

am i the only person who thinks that 'alien' should be retitled 'that darn cat?'

okay, story time:
when i was seven, i found a squirrel frozen solid in a snowbank in the woods. my little sister and i took it into my dad's workshop, which was heated by a wood burning stove, with the brilliant plan to heat up the rodent (reanimating it), and then have it be our best friend. i was dr. frankenstein and my sister was igor. "find me a piece of cardboard!" i roared, and she hustled around, snowpants soggily weighing her down, slowly becoming covered with gobs of the sawdust she was rooting around in. i wrapped the squirrel in a shop rag with just its head sticking out, and placed it reverently on the edge of the stove, thinking that it was hot enough there to fry an egg, but if i just stayed vigilant and kept turning it over often enough, it would soon awaken from it's frozen slumber. my sister dripped silently next to me as we watched the squirrel melt into a rancid puddle of fur and putrefication. this was not going at all the way i had planned. we were pretty grossed out. my dad finally stomped in, covered with the snow he had been plowing, took one look at the freaky little experiment going on in his workspace, picked up the rag-wrapped rodent, or what was left of it, pitched it back out into the snowbank, and then stood at the door, holding it open, pointing outside. alas, we were to make no squirrel zombie friends that day.

god i almost forgot to mention that this random person sent me a fan-flipping-tastic two-page email about my meatloaf comment.

man, i love it when people show their work.

i got up quickly and vaulted over adam and a pile of coats and bags as i watched aysha walk towards the restroom. thinking i would follow her into the stall and pretend she wasn't there or just try to startle her and make her laugh, i boogied as fast as my clunky heels would take me. i heard the clicking of the beaded curtain near one of the restrooms, so i followed suit and raced into the alcove. a hand was just shutting the door from the inside. i placed my own hand on the outside of the door and pushed. hard. the door went flying open backwards into the stall and a surprised looking girl who was not aysha staggered backwards, her mouth open. i still had a mischievous grin on my face, and was about to do something lewd, like grab my breasts and stick out my tongue, when i realized that this girl was not anyone i knew, and she had a look that equaled 'restraining order.' i gushed that i was sorry and mumbled something about how i hadn't seen her go in there, and she just looked at me and said, "That's okay, it happens... i guess."

i had my first krispy kreme donut right out of the vat of oil the other day. the lady working behind the counter was just handing them out, it was really great. the long line of people in front of us were literally fighting with each other over who got the most recently created gut bombs. arms outstretched, money clutched in plump sweaty fingers, the whole lot of them were impatient, short, and rolly polly. watching them clambering up the effectively designed glass display case, which kept anyone from actually vaulting over the counter and into the deep fry area, but in a tasteful way, i thought. chris and i ate our complimentary glazed donuts and then, satiated, decided to leave the wrestling to those who were clearly more motivated to do so...

what else...some lady, unhappy with her life, put her feet up on the chair in front of her at the movie theater on halloween and refused to let three of us by her. i don't know for sure that she is unhappy with her life, as she never said a word, just stared obstinately at the rolling credits, oblivious to our at first polite and increasingly louder and more harsh inquiries for her to move her legs, her husband sitting silently on her other side, the two of them complicit in a grandiose display of text-book passive-aggressive behavior. i eventually, being the first person in line, and not hip to her little game, just climbed over the seats in front of them and escaped to the aisle. eddy made it past her eventually with a resounding 'jesus christ!' which made me realize that their antisocial behavior was directed at us personally. kate just stared at her and said 'hey, i didn't get up during the movie. you don't have to do this to me.' or something along those lines. we laughed and laughed. they had obviously planned this and had been thinking about it ever since i got up(only once because my bladder was about to explode) to use the restroom. beware, you social heathens! do not enter the city or any public place, for that matter, if you do not wish to have any human contact which may inconvenience you. you will be mocked mercilessly if you do not heed this warning!!

ha ha ha!!(swoosh of black cape, fold into misty night, cue the baying hound)

"what's ostensibly mean again?" kristi asked me as i stuffed a huge fork full of ceasar salad into my mouth.

"what do you think it means?" i said, chewing.

"why don't you just tell me?"

"well, i-"

"excuse me, i couldn't help but overhear your conversation and i just wanted to let you know that the meaning of the word 'ostensibly' means 'to pretend.'" some hey guy('hey guy' here means anyone you'd probably only address as 'hey guy.' like say someone cut in front of you in line at the grocery store. you might be inclined, as i would be, to exclaim, 'hey guy! back of the line!' you see?) had materialized in front of us, clutching his copy of 'best true business crime writing 2000.' we stared, hamster-cheeked and wide-eyed. my sister squinted at him.

"excuse me?" she said through a bite of pepperoni pizza.

he looked at her, studying, quite rudely, really, when you think about it, i mean, who likes to be stared at by a complete stranger while they're eating? unless they're on a date, but that's different. i digress.

"are you stoned?" he asked her.

"are you?" she lobbed back.

"i'll leave you alone now." he scampered off to the front counter, leaving us in a state of 'what the hell just happened here?'

"thanks for the vocabulary lesson." i whispered, sending my sister into a fit of giggles.

"how did he hear us? he was all the way over there." she pointed and waved to the other side of the room.

"well, your voice does carry."

"oh god."

the thing of course was that he didn't even really know what the word meant, obviously. he was ostensibly pulling it out of his ass, is what was happening. even kristi, who had initiated the conversation, knew that whatever he was saying was of dubious credibility.

and then he was back, holding a pizza box with his book on top. "another good word is 'nefarious.'"

my sister cringed, thinking he meant it as an adjective about her disposition, but then he continued as he spun out the front door, pizza box wobbling: "as in, 'our nefarious president has only made the worst...'" and that was it. the door closed as he walked briskly away, still talking to himself. kristi stared after him, and thought to shout only after the door had closed, "thank you mr. dictionary!"

chris and i went car camping over the weekend. we got together a bunch of blankets, sleeping bags, and my body pillow named tim, and i vacuumed the dog hair out of the back of the station wagon, and bought a box full of snacks and we were ready for an outdoor adventure. we ended up staying in two hotels when we were unable to find a suitable campground or even a place to park. chris really wanted to cook fish in tin foil in a campfire, so that made just parking in a parking lot unacceptable. but all the campgrounds that were open were rv places populated by scary looking people. i did get to take a nap in the nest i had fashioned in the back of the car at a rest stop, while chris read and listened to the waves slosh on the shore. it was the best nap ever! i awoke as scarface, with tim's corduroy print smashed into my face. chris reiterated how much he'd like to cook some fish in some tin foil. "where are we going to get the fish?" i asked him. "safeway," he answered. i groaned. "you know, it's not going to be very fresh if we get it from safeway. don't you think we could find fresher fish? i mean, we're on the goddamnmotherfucking coast." chris laughed and said it was time to go, as i was cursing like a sailor.

at the same rest area, i was sort of coerced into driving the two hours to mount saint helens. i walked into the little info booth to get a map of the area, and the little old lady working in there was chatting away and foisting brochures at someone else. as the person turned to leave, chris' ears pricked up and he caught the info lady's chat vibe and hightailed it back out to the car. so i turned around with a map of some dopey tourist thing to show him, and instead, the chatty lady was standing in front of me, and although she only came up to my boob level, she was still rather intimidating. she asked where we were headed and i said i didn't know and she ran out to her truck to get her binoculars so i could catch a glimpse of the volcano. then she opened some maps and cursed her arthritis and strongly suggested that if we had the time we should drive up there since it was such a beautiful day and all. i wriggled away and found chris in the car, and informed him of the lady's plans for us. so we drove up there. it was chilly and almost the end of the season, and the interpretation center was pretty deserted. we walked up the path to a splendid view of the inside of the crater and listened to the wind do it's slow erosion work. it was pretty silent, and panoramic, and a little scary. i was thinking about the big picture, how little we were and how grand the earth is and mother nature and existentialism and all that crap. i turned to chris and saw a thoughtful expression on his face. then he turned to me and said, "this would be a great place to hide a dead body."

we went hot tubbing in the outdoor area of our second hotel. there was a cover, but it didn't keep out all the leaves and insects. when chris turned on the bubble jets, it was like sitting in a bug frappe.

our last hour or so in astoria, we hit an antique shop for the second time that day. earlier, i had bought a few old circa 1960s photos of a large lady in a nurses uniform standing with a german shepard outfitted with a head bandage. they were expensive, but they are the best pictures ever. chris had seen this patch made "in country" during the vietnam war. pretty vague description of who it belonged to or who made it or what for, but that is neither here nor there. the patch itself is what i want to talk about. it is bad ass. in fact, it is the baddest ass ever. it is bright yellow. it has a skull on it. with wings. black wings. the skull has fangs dripping with blood. the eyes are tilted way upward, to give it an evil glare. there is a dagger jabbed into the top of the bleeding, flying, fanged skull. it looks exactly like what someone in 7th or 8th grade would draw on their book cover or on their algebra notebook. so our second trip to the antique store was for chris to buy the skull patch. the next day we took turns sewing it onto his shoulder bag with thimbles made out of masking tape. his bag looks tough. and bad ass. man, i love that skull patch.

"i think i'm over the whole bedbug thing," i tell my friend eddy while we are shelving. "i don't get all itchy when i get in bed anymore. my obsession is over."

he doesn't look at me but says: "don't worry, something else will be along shortly to take their place." the implication of course being that i must be obsessed with something at all times.

"are you saying that i'm damaged?" i pull a bunch of world war two books that are crowded together to the point of combustion.

"no, i'm merely saying that...well..."

it's okay eddy. i'm a nut.

last night i finished a book that was really well written and intelligent and funny, and the last four pages were totally devastating and brutal, and i cried. for real. actual tears over a book. okay, i'll tell you what the book was, but not the devastating part. population:485. it's about a small town emt/firefighter guy in wisconsin. i know you are dying to know what happened, so i'll tell you now that if you want to read the book, skip the next couple of lines. his little brother had gotten married seven weeks before the day of the incident. the day in question, he got a call to come to a car accident. his little brother came with. the victim was his new wife, who died on the scene. i can't imagine anything more horrifying than answering an emergency call and having the dead person be one of your immediate family members. so i held mr. fuzzy, my stuffed koala, and stared at the ceiling and felt sadness for all these people that i would never know. and i cried.

then i told chris stories at his request as i was falling asleep and he was working on a friend's computer. this is what i came up with:

my mom used to help me put together model dinosaurs. i loved them so much,and would try really hard to put them together correctly, and would get really upset when the parts didn't match up. i probably threw fits. which is probably why she helped me. to avoid the compulsive freak out that was only a deep breath away. so anyway, i was building the biggest dinosaur ever. it was a brontosaurus: pointy, brown, plastic parts slowly resembling a big pile of sharp, sticky crap. mom had to hold the final leg in place with superglue to help keep the wobbly guy from collapsing. when it had dried, she relaxed her grip, but the stumpy bronto-leg held fast to her thumb. the superglue had oozed over the edge of my dinosaur's knobby knee and grafted itself onto my mom's hand. xenotransplantation has always fascinated me, i always kind of wanted a monkey tail. but my mom didn't like any of this at all. she panicked, ran to the bathroom to run hot water over her hand, which of course, didn't do anything except maybe give her first degree burns. man, superglue truly is great. it really is the glue of the future. with the model hanging off of her hand, mom decided to use brute force. she grabbed a hammer, and started tapping on the leg. it didn't do anything, so she started hitting it harder. eventually, the leg cracked and and the brontosaurus came flying off, but the lower leg was still stuck fast to my mom's hand. she kept pounding away at it, amazingly never hitting herself very hard with the hammer, but i don't really remember how she got the remainder of the toy unstuck from her thumb. i think a steel nail file was eventually employed and there was much cursing under her breath and laughter from my father. i wonder what happened to that model dinosaur...

feel dumb about calling in sick yesterday, but the pain was real! i wore the wrong shoes for eight hours of shelving, and then also twisted my foot or possibly missed a step somewhere and landed hard on it and could barely stand up by the end of the day. then, like a moron, i went to help my sister collate a 96 page birthing booklet with out changing my footwear. whoa! a whopping total of 12 hours on cement floors wearing shoes with no cushion or support! so when i woke up the next day, i sort of hobbled around my apartment and realized i probably couldn't even stand long enough to take a shower and thusly, called in with sore feet. it sounds so lame. it is so lame. i am the biggest wussie.

waiting at the dmv the other day, a guy rolls in on his motorized wheelchair and parks himself in the middle of the room. he is severely crinkled and looks like he can barely move. he also has a stack of empty coffee cups on his little tray. i'm thinking that maybe he needs help, but doesn't seem to be trying to get anyone's attention and so i just go back to reading my book like the jerk i am. five minutes go by and then a guy working behind the counter comes over to the wheelchair man and puts his hand on his shoulder and addresses the rest of the room: "Hey everybody. This is Melvin. He sells coffee for Seattle's Best on the fly. If you would like to buy some from him, you just put the money in the box and help yourself to the coffee on the back of his chair here. He's also got some muffins here he'd be happy to sell you." a lady gets up and says she'd like some and has an awkward little interaction with melvin, as she is trying to talk to him and he can't really speak so just sort of grunts and moans and she responds as if he is making all the sense in the world and i am staring at the saran-wrapped little muffins in the plexiglass tray in front of melvin and i'm thinking that not only does it display his pastries well, but it also keeps him from falling out of his chair, he is really that impaired. the lady is still very valiantly trying to hold a conversation with melvin, and all of this is starting to get to me and my heart is feeling a little crackly and so i am relieved when my name is called and i get to have my picture taken and when i get my license back you can't tell that i've just been tearing up.

how many times can you eat meatloaf in a month before you probably shouldn't eat any more?

if anyone wants to email me, my address is ohthedrama2003@yahoo.com

"yesterday i did a load of clothes and someones stuff was in the dryer so i left my basket there. when i came home my stuff was dry. weird. should i check for missing panties? i mean i just don't know who these guys are. "

emails like this are why i love my sister...

i had totally forgotten about this: a few weeks ago i was at my friend brendan's house and he was making us dinner and the rest of us were horsing around in the living room, acting like 6 year olds, well, okay, maybe it was only me. i was acting like a 6 year old. so i grabbed brendan and sort of mock-tangoed him across the dining room and when we got to the vast carpety expanse of the living room with an audience(!), i dramatically, but without warning him, dipped myself. i leaned way back and felt him shake with the unexpected weight of my limp body, and then i felt him lose his grip and drop me. on my head. and then he lost his balance and squashed me. full contact, right on the lungs. my breath left me and my head throbbed and brendan flushed red and went back into the kitchen to check the spaghetti. but no concussion, thank god. there is shag carpeting in the living room, which i am sure broke my fall, and allowed me to keep the integrity of my head shape intact, but that's about all...