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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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...

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

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.

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...

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.

My mom calls those mini-bananas that are all the rage in organic grocery stores right now "banditos." I'm not sure why. She says that's just the first word that pops into her head when she sees them.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch clutching a half-eaten bag of Doritos and the remote for the DVD player. I had been watching the Simpson's third season and when I got to the end of the fourth one I just sort of slumped over and started drooling on Tube Pillow(a pillow shaped like a tube, FYI.).

I had my dog Jake on Saturday for a few hours. We played in the mud, lunged for a guy holding a cup of coffee, and got caught in the rain. We went back to my house and drank a huge bowl of water, curled up on the couch and napped like littermates, and then did some laundry.

Jake loves carrying around dirty socks and underwear in his mouth, and I figured, what the hell, they're all going in the wash anyway, so I let him carry a few pungent items to the basement. It's important to make your pets feel involved.

December 28th: The Final Judgement

Didn't really get up to much. We took a scenic drive on I-84 to scope out activities for mom's summer visit. Drove up to some building on a cliff that I can't recall the name of, and it was so windy, we couldn't even get out of the car. I attempted it, but had to abort the mission as my hat flew off my head, my glasses rattled on my face, and my nostrils flapped shut like a camel.

Kristi, Jackson, mom, and I went to Green Papaya for happy hour, where the service is pretty slow, but the blond bartender is cute and you can order all the cream cheese wantons you can eat for two hours. I'm not sure if the crunchy fried wrap is a vehicle for the cream cheese or the other way around, but it really doesn't matter. We each had an order and I pigged up almost half of them. Luckily, the mom and Kristi were distracted by the steak rolls and Jackson wasn't very hungry so no one slapped my hand away or anything.

The bartender only charged us for our food for some reason, I'd like to think it's because he thought we were all cute, but it was probably just an honest mistake. So we left him a $20 tip.

It was almost 6pm, time for Chris to get off work, and the library's only two blocks from the restaurant, so I walked up there by myself to wait for him. I sat on the windowsill near the back door and watched my coworkers flee the building like it was on fire.

A group of three guys in their 20's, either drunk or stupid or both, rounded the corner and headed my way. I turned slightly in the other direction so I wouldn't have to watch them as they punched each other and had a conversation that consisted only of the words "Fuck you. No, fuck you!"

They walked past me and I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the littlest one, shaved head and huge cholo style cross swinging from his fat neck, whirled around and clumped over to me. He got six inches from my face and said, "You're so not out of my league. I could totally date you." I was so stunned that I didn't do or say anything, just stared at him for about 8 seconds(a really long time to have a stranger close enough to lick) until he smirked and said, "It's so true," and then ran to catch up with his buddies, who hadn't even noticed that he had peeled off from the group. The 'fuck you's' started up again and dopplered out of my hearing range.

Still, no Chris. I went into the back area, not feeling as safe outside anymore, and checked the schedule. He had gone home early after a training. Curses!

What else?

Not much. Mom and I read for a while and Chris, Jackson, and Kristi played a cutthroat game of
Monopoly in the kitchen.

Kristi generously agreed to pick mom up for the 6am airport run the next morning. We said our sleepy good-byes, no tears thank god, and it was over.

The most stress-free, easiest, agreeable visit my mother has ever had. I know it's not what you were looking for, coming from me and my familial nutjobs, and so I make this promise now: Next year, we'll get her drunk.

December 27th:
was a day dedicated to shopping. Not stuff for the weak of heart or stomach. Jackson went with us for about an hour until mom got stuck in a sweater store at the mall and then he sort of wandered off to drink coffee and read. Good move on his part because the three of us went nuts.

We went from the mall downtown to northwest, where the parking is scarce and the girls all wear those super low-rise jeans. Intimidating. I wished I had worn the fancy new underwear that Kristi had given me. I feel like I'm in a superhero costume in those things, that's how cool they are. But I had decided to save them for a 'special occasion,' whatever that means. It turned out to mean today, I'm wearing them right now. I could rip off my clothes and clothespin a fleece throw blanket thingy around my neck and become my alter ego "Vitamin A."

I was the only person who bought nothing. I just couldn't get into it. Oh, well. Less crap for me, cluttering up my space.

We had chicken salad sandwiches at the Daily Cafe in the Pearl, and made plans for that evening.

After I drove the ladies and their loot home, we got bundled up and jumped back in the car to go to the Festival of Lights at the Grotto. A huge Catholic outdoor sanctuary, it is actually one of my favorite places. It's always peaceful and no one hassles you. I light a few candles and sit and just breathe. Very meditative.

But the F.O.L. is a huge deal. They decorated the whole place with buttloads of lights depicting the story of the baby Jesus, hauled in dinner theater actors to portray people of that time, there was a spanish folk singer in the actual church, Feliz Navidad and all that crap, and best of all, a petting zoo stocked with baby goats, sheep, ponies, and chickens. I could have spent all night in there. I loved the goats. Yay! Yay for mini animals that butt up against your leg for food!

Mom spent almost an hour in the two gift stores, looking for 'the perfect angel' for her collection and ended up buying one that was made in Eden Prarie, MN, about an hour from her house. I started obsessively separating the saint medallions that had been mixed together in their bins, until Kristi stopped me. Just being in there with all that stuff made my stomach hurt.

When we got home, Jackson and Chris made pizza and we all played gin, my mom picking up the game as we went and sort of adapting it to her liking.

"Well, it just doesn't make sense to discard another card if I just played something."

"Mom, that's a good thing. You WANT to get rid of your cards. You should want to play as much as you can when it's your turn."

"I'm just saying, it doesn't make any sense."

Mom. Sigh.

December 26:
Kristi and I dropped mom off at Dosha the next morning at 9:30 to get her massage. We walked around Hawthorne, did some browsing at Fred Meyer for products that decrease eye puffiness. Lots of bottles of creams and gels that made startling promises with great before and after photos, but we were dubious and so just decided to get more sleep and drink more water.

I tried to return some underwear, but that store wasn't open yet.

Kristi had a massive stomach spasm and we ducked into Powell's bookstore to "deal with it."

After an hour of window shopping we went back to the spa and picked up mom, who came down the stairs to meet us like she had been beaten with a sock filled with oranges.

"Mom, are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, it was great." She hobbled over to us, her hair wet, her swim suit balled up in a ziplock bag sticking out of her purse. "Now I know why I needed to bring my swimsuit. The whole room was soaking after the hydrotherapy."

"What exactly is hydrotherapy?" Kristi asked.

"They had this huge hose attached to the ceiling and a girl wearing a rubber apron came in and pummeled me with the spray for 15 minutes. Anyway, I think I can achieve a similar effect withe the garden hose hooked up to the kitchen sink. I'm going to have my boyfriend try it this summer. I'll just lay on one of those plastic lawn chairs."

Frightening.

I finally got to exchange my underwear and we all had a quick bite to eat at my house.

Oh, man, I totally forgot to tell you about the chicken Kiev.

We made it from scratch for Christmas Day Dinner. Kristi's boyfriend, Jackson, is a vegetarian, so he brought himself over some asparagus thing, but the four of us pounded out chicken breasts with my all purpose utility hammer until it was wafer thin. If you haven't pounded out raw meat between layers of plastic wrap, by God, you should. The sensation of hammering something's muscle is really primal, and I feel like it was better than therapy. I didn't even get all weepy. Progress made in leaps and bounds.

But then we made little raw chicken burritos with filling of sticks of butter and lots of parsely. A little milk, a little flour, a little frypan and then the oven. Ta-da! Delicious chicken twinkies, made from scratch right here in my own kitchen.

We watched Young Frankenstein while we ate. Merry Christmas!

I digress.

We went to the play 'Narnia' at the children's theater. I brought along a koala finger puppet and danced it around until my mother wrestled it from me and put it in her purse.

The snow queen actress was the best part of the play. She was fantastic. Mom gave me back my finger puppet and we went to pick up Chris for dinner.

Kristi wanted to go to the Farm, a tiny restaurant on Burnside, and so we went. We drank and ate and ate and drank. We even ordered desert.

After a whole day of rushing from one activity to the next, we were all ready to go to bed by like, 9:30.

Aside:

Kristi called our dad last night and we all talked for a while. He asked if I liked my job and I told him that working at the library wasn't going to make me rich, but I enjoyed the work.

"That's important, see, that you like what you do. You like books and so you work at a library. I like to dig holes in the ground and put dead people in them, so I dig graves. You have to do something that you like."

For some reason, I thought you needed to know that about my father.

December 25th:
Mom was still snoring away on the futon in the living room until 9:30 or so, thank god.

I tiptoed into the kitchen and had a couple of the several hundred full-sized peanut butter cups we made the day before. I forgot to mention it in my last entry. The three of us ladies formed a sort of chocolate bark-peanut butter dough ball assembly line and cranked out a fridge full of candy in less than two hours. One of my greatest accomplishments to date, for sure.

Anyway, we pulled ourselves together by noon and headed over to a friend's house for brunch, where they served a menu straight off of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"-little poached egg muffins floating on sauteed porchini mushrooms in a cupcake liner made out of prosciutto, that sort of thing. Scrumptious. We brought over a box of our peanut butter cups. I didn't eat much as I had already ruined my appetite with candy, but I'm an adult and if I want to spend Christmas the way most 6-10 year olds spend the day after Halloween, it's my perogative.

Then we went back to our house for a rousing hour of opening presents. Since everyone gave everyone else exact lists with product numbers and sizes, there weren't any surprises, and the whole thing seemed sort of hollow. The exception to that being that I gave Chris a DVD burner and managed to keep it secret for two whole months. I told him I was getting him a new office chair. He was quite pleased. And he said he'll give me his old CD burner, and so we were both happy, materialistically speaking. Mom gave me a stapler, Kristi gave me some fun underwear that I'd never be able to justify buying myself. Kristi and I gave mom a massage scheduled for the next day. Wine was consumed. Chet Baker was played. Grocery bags used as wrapping paper were folded and recycled. The whole thing was really very civilized.

The five of us went to see The Life Aquatic in the late afternoon. Theater packed. People cranky. Chris had a mild anxiety attack. He doesn't like crowds. Movie was great. Best line was "We're not good husbands, are we? But I have an excuse. I'm part gay."

After the movie, more chocolate bark products were eaten, and we all passed out by 10.

Oh, happy day!

December 24th, Part 2:
After fondue, we all took naps. My mom sat upright on the couch with her mystery novel propped up in her lap, but she wasn't fooling anyone. Her mouth kept falling open and little snorkling noises would come out of her throat.

I curled up in my standard armadillo position and tucked my head under an afghan, hoping we would all fall deeply asleep and miss going out to the 11 o'clock church service downtown.

But mom was determined to go.

So at quarter to, Kristi, mom and I piled into the car and headed over to the church, where we wandered around, looking for a door. The building itself was huge and imposing, gray stones all looking very gothic, and there were only two small wooden doors, as far as we could see, bearing black metal hinges like the door to a steakhouse. We spotted a handicap ramp and figured, well, we're all a little handicapped, and rattled on the door until someone from the choir came out of the dressing room to see what all the rucus was about.

We should have gone through the steakhouse door.

Once we got settled in towards the back, mom nestled between us, I staged a raid on the donation envelopes, which were labeled "PEW OFFERING." I mean, come on.

The lessons were given by a woman with a walleye, very cute, one eye rolling dramatically to the right while the other looked straight ahead.

The minister gave a sermon on how baby Jesus was really born in the heart of the innkeeper's house, as that's where people in those times kept their animals.

A large man in front kept shouting out answers to the mininster's rhetorical questions.

A smaller man in the row ahead of us got a nasty case of the hiccups. The walleyed woman eventually came and sat down next to him.

The choir sang a bunch of songs and rang large bells.

I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open.

My sister nudged me and asked if I was going to take communion. I told her that I hadn't been to confession and that I'd probably burst into flames, my standard excuse for not partaking in the freaky cannibalistic ceremony that is transubstantiation. She whispered back that we were at a LUTHERAN church and that I didn't need to go to confession first. Oh, right.

We took communion. We dipped our wafers into a mug of wine held by a ten year old girl. My sister went for the grape juice, which is a popular alternative in this age of recovering alcoholics. She started to dip her wafer and the guy holding the glass said, "This is grape juice, but it's still the blood of Christ, shed for you."

"What?" she said, tilting her head to hear above the organ and the warbling of the congregation singing.

"Grape juice, not wine. But still the blood of Christ, shed for you," he repeated, leaning in.

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you," she stepped over and got within six inches of his face.

"It's GRAPE JUICE!" the man finally raised his voice and shattered the illusion.

She dipped her wafer and stared at him, then turned and walked away.

I was having my own difficulties. The woman in front of me was wrestling with the ten year old, trying to grab the goblet from her to take a drink, a much more traditional way of doing things, although not nearly as sanitary. The kid was holding her own, attempting to stop it, but the minister intervened and let her take a drink, then wiped the edge of the glass and continued as if nothing had happened. I was paralyzed. I'm sort of an obsessive-compulsive freak, and along with that particular disorder comes a great fear of other people's mucus. If I dunked my wafer in there, it would be like kissing her, and who knew where she had been. We're all children of God, my ass! After a slight hesitation, I felt my mother push me with a hand to the small of the back. I dipped into the contaminated wine and put the wafer in my mouth and rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth with vigor, in an attempt to psychologically crush the germs that might have been in my few drops of the blood of Christ, shed for me.

When we got back to the pew, mom slid in first, leaving the two of us to sit next to each other. Bad move. Inappropriate laughter ensued, starting with giggles at the chorus to "Most highly favored lady, AMEN!" The hiccup guy couldn't get it under control. Neither could we. The whole pew vibrated with our shaking laugher. The choir walked through the aisles and the guy in front of us high fived one of the tenors. We lost it. People around us glared.

Mom ignored us.

Everyone said an "Our Father" outloud. The last half has been rewritten and revised so many times that no one knows what it originally was. Everyone diverged and said it the way they learned it. It sounded awful, everyone talking at once but with no unification. Kristi hee-hawed. Mom smacked her in the arm.

Mercifully, it ended. We left by the front door on the way out and shook the minister's hand. I caught a glimpse of hiccup man and the walleye woman. I started laughing all over again.

"You are going straight to hell," Kristi giggled in my ear.

"So are you, most highly favored lady," I snorted back.

December 24th:
My sister came over for breakfast and we reviewed our plan of attack for the day. Inevitably, we discovered the need to make a run to Fred Meyer for chocolate bark and this French Vanilla creamer that my mother can't live without.

The actual shopping experience wasn't so bad. It was crazy in the store, to be sure, but tolerable. Kristi picked up a bottle of juice, as her tummy was giving her trouble and she felt that a dose of something packed with goodness might help the stress vibes subside.

Back in the car and fully enveloped in gridlocked parking lot action, she took a big swig of her juice and then handed it back to me for a taste.

"Mmm, yeah, that's good."

"Totally. I've never tried this kind before. It's loaded with raspberries."

Then my mom chimed in: "Can I have a sip?"

"Sure," I said brightly, and handed it back to the front seat. She grabbed onto the bottle at the very top, where the lip and lid twist together. She was wearing gloves. She dropped the bottle. It hit the arm rest and the contents of the almost full bottle exploded over the leather interior of the car.

Kristi somehow managed to pull into a parking space, to the annoyance of other circling cars, and jumped out of the driver's seat. My arm was covered in juice and so I got out too, thinking that she had some paper towels or rags in her trunk. I caught a glimpse of her standing at the trunk, clutching a gym towel, soaking from shoulder to waist, her jacket shiny with sugary liquid.

"There is raspberry juice..." She started calmly enough. "In my ARMPIT!"

Mom opened the window and started apologizing repetitively. We could hear her saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," over the idling of many cars, trapped at a nearby intersection.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. And I think it was okay for me to laugh, as I had juice up my sleeve.

"Do you want to swing by your house and get another jacket?" I asked through fits of giggles.

"Why? It'll just happen again." She tossed the sticky towel in through the car window and mom started wiping up juice from the leather seats, floor, and ceiling.

But soon we were back to the relative quiet of my house, and we got stuff ready for fondue.

Chris never fondued before, and we were eager to show him just how fancy it could be.

The cheese sauce we chose to make, however, had a bit too much wine in it.

The steak that Kristi and I picked out was great though. We bought it at New Seasons, from a gray-haired man in the meat department wearing a hat that said "MEAT LEAD" on it. We loved him immediately. We bought bacon, steak, the aforementioned chub of beef, and chicken breasts to pound into chicken Kiev on Christmas. We had been a bit confused about how the chicken rolls would stay together and hold their delicious buttery packets and so we asked him his opinion on every step of our vaguely formed 'recipe.'

He squinted at us over the glass case, leaned towards us and said, not unkindly, "What, are you guys just going to wing this then, or what?" Did I mention that we loved him? He brought out some special chicken from "the trailer" and we walked away from the meat counter with over $50 worth of animal products. I felt evil.

But his steak recommendation was fantastic. It was, by far, the hit of the fondue party.

"Why don't we do this more often?" I asked the three of them, chewing up my 20th piece of steak

After we were done eating, I took out the trash and came back inside to be greeted by the greasiest, beefiest smell ever. It took four candles burning almost continuously for three days to knock the smell into the background. So that's why we don't have fondue more often. I mean, even the towels in the bathroom smelled like oily meat.