Totally Bemused

being

2010-01-16T16:39:00.002-06:00

There's a way of being that I accomplish sometimes, I want to accomplish it more. A way of sitting with exactly what is happening, of gently pushing away the impetus to be doing something, or about to be doing something. It's all in the trying. I notice it most when I'm with my cats, though sometimes I have to narrate it to myself.

"I am sitting here. I am sitting here with Odista. I am petting the kitty." It sounds silly, but it works. Odista has this way of walking me around the yard, pausing for a moment and requiring some communication from me. Most often it takes the form of a small pet, just a stroke. We are experiencing this together. We are both here. Her head arches up to meet my hand in a way that is quietly affecting. We pause and look around for a second or two more, then she steps off in a new direction. I follow. Sometimes we sit, she first and me following. Sometimes we sit or lie for minutes, hours, sometimes only for a few seconds. There is some kind of communication going on, but I am innocent of its import. I must attend fiercely yet gently to receive even a moment of its grace.

This is different from the moments to hours when I simply sit with the cats, going about my own business, patting or ignoring them by turns. Reading, drinking coffee, talking, staring into space, watching television; I am involved but not participatory in our connection. When I am aware and mindful of our shared experience, I am simply existing in the moment, waiting to have it show me what it will. I haven't decided what the moment is about or what it will lead to, I am waiting, participating but not directing. It happens in seconds, some running into each other to create larger chunks of time, some insulated on each side by seconds or minutes of self-absorption or simple non-awareness. Sometimes paying attention to the mindfulness of it extends itself, sometimes it disrupts.

The other example of when it happens is when I'm working hard at something, manual labor or mental. I paradoxically may be unaware that my awareness has shifted and I am living in the moment, for the moment. Sometimes I awaken to it with joy, sometimes I notice it only by its ending. I'm experiencing a kind of practice and discipline to it that I am unaccustomed to. It is disturbing and pleasant, alternately and then simultaneously. I am intrigued. I want more, but am unsure how to proceed. Calling it doesn't always work, nor does holding on to it. I will practice. I will listen.

I don't know how not to be alone.

2009-08-14T16:44:00.002-05:00

I have faith that I'm learning. I have faith that someday I'll be both worthy of and capable of trust. I believe in my ability to forge truly emotionally intimate relationships with disappointing, hurtful and careless human beings just like myself. I believe in my ability to make peace with human nature and to allow myself to love people who are not perfect. Even me. Me first. I also believe it's going to get worse before it gets better, and it's going to hurt. Maybe no more or no less than being alone, but differently. I'm scared. I'm terrified. I'm usually only seconds away from breaking and running, but I'm getting the hang of standing my ground. I'm no good at confrontation, and I don't think I want to get much better at it, but I'm getting better at not complying if I don't agree. At not just turning my back to avoid seeing what I don't want to happen. At being able to resist with neither rage nor revulsion.

What I want next is to be able to ask for clarification, for communication. I'm so well practiced at walking away from what I can't understand on my own. If needing help to understand things, even very complicated things, is something you've been taught to be ashamed of because the people who should have taught you were ashamed to admit they couldn't teach you, you shrink from asking questions. Anything that needs clarification makes you feel dirty, like the worst little girl in the world, like a traitor, like an idiot who doesn't understand because she won't even try to think for herself. You just walk away, you smile and pretend you get it and you leave. You close one more of the tiny doors to your heart and you try not to feel it. One more miniscule window that intimacy could have climbed into gets boarded up, because you can't bear to be vulnerable to something so dangerous as asking for clarification, as admitting you don't know something you should have already taught yourself.

Five Months!

2009-06-12T14:50:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I started going to meetings again after six weeks of spotty-to-non-existent attendance. I managed to remain sober the whole time, continuously and contiguously, one day at a time. But it was hard. Harder than going to meetings and trying to make genuine connections with people even though I feel like a fake and an asshole the whole time. Harder than trying to scrape along on my own. Harder than dealing with the foibles and incongruities of real, flawed people who are also trying to figure out this life thing and do it without mind-altering chemicals. Harder than it had to be, which we all know is my favorite flavor. Oh, how very much I love and live making things harder than they have to be. How I love how much it complicates my life and makes me tired and keeps me from facing the things I need to know and do. I wish I knew how to quit you, making things harder than they have to be. I have a sick, excited feeling in my stomach that means it probably involves working on steps and letting it be simple. I'm going to give it a try.

So, I'm five months. AA doesn't give out 5 months chips, you get nothing between 3 months and 6 months. I made my own 4 month chip out of shrinky-dinks, because apparently the theme of my fourth month was, "an' I can DO IT ALL BY MYSELF!" Yesterday night, in the middle of tornado warnings and massive thunderstorm, I watched a lady in my group get her 11-year chip. Part of what she said when she went up to get it was, "and don't do it by yourself, you don't have to do it by yourself. Make some friends. Make some memories. Make some connections." After the meeting she gave me a 'five-month chip'--a two month and a three month glued together back to back. I love my group and all the wonderful, batshit, amazing, bug-fucking-crazy, inspiring, annoying, loving, messed-up assholes in it. Welcome me home, because I'm back, possibly for the first time, if that makes any sense. And everybody get a helmet on, because I'm going to attempt to be myself. I haven't done it in a long time, because I thought it was really unsafe. It turns out it isn't any more unsafe than anything else, and it may hurt me just a little bit less than being whoever it is I think I'm supposed to be. Relax and breathe into it, this may hurt you more than it hurts me.

fun thing about AA

2009-06-06T14:05:00.002-05:00

Found a version of this on the AA Loners' site:

A man dies and goes to Heaven. St. Peter says, "What denomination are you so we can guide you to the right area?" and the man says, "I guess I don't belong here, I never went to church." St. Peter says, "We don't make mistakes, if you're here you belong. Why don't you take a few days and explore, come back and let me know where you want to be, okay?" And the man goes off to explore.

He hangs out with different denominations of Christians for a while, and likes them okay, but he just doesn't feel at home. Then he tries out Islam for a while, and it's nice, but not for him. Judaism draws him in for a bit, and again he likes the people and doesn't have any specific objections, but it's just not his cup of tea, so he moves on. Eastern religions are great, and make him feel good like the others, but he's about to give up when he stumbles on this little backroom, kind of out of the way. There's bunches of smokers crowded around the door, and everybody is laughing. When he goes inside he smells fresh coffee and sees a room full of people talking, laughing, crying, hugging, praying and commiserating. It feels just right after he mingles for a while, so he hurries back to St. Peter.

"I found them," he says, "I want to be with the people in that little backroom over by the gates. What are they called?" he asks. "We don't know," says St. Peter, "they won't tell us."

Four Months Have Come and Gone!

2009-05-15T19:34:00.002-05:00

Yay! I almost forgot, but it happened anyway--as of May 11, I am four months sober and counting. And still going to therapy. And I found out yesterday I've made A's in both my classes this semester. And I'm gainfully employed! Yay for me!

in-betweens

2009-04-18T01:00:00.002-05:00

I like liminality; thresholds, ambiguity, transition, even a little disorientation. Of course, I prefer my familiar states of liminality and reject ones that aren't as well-worn and beloved, because I'm human.

So here's what happened...Vol. 1

2009-04-16T22:36:00.002-05:00

I'm sure it's going to take me more than one waaay-too long blog post for me to tell the whole damn story, so I'm just going to give in to breaking it up into chewable chunks. I just think in long, windy paragraphs, dammit, and that's how it is. I have the hardest time in the world sharing, and I can rarely say more than a few words strung together, but I can't shut up at the keyboard. Actually, that's part of why I'm sharing this here, both to try to organize my thoughts, and so that anybody who's worried about me can get a peek inside my head, help me check what's going on there.

So back in January of this year I went to visit my family in Roswell, New Mexico. It was great. I took the train, and that was really fun, I met a lot of nice people. I got to stay with my brother and Clint in their big-ass gorgeous house in Roswell and use their Mercedes to get around and take lots of pictures and only see the rest of my family as I could stand it. I had been keeping my drinking more under control than normal at that time, and was thinking about quitting smoking cigarettes (again) while I was there.

My brother wanted to have a party on Saturday and invite a few of his friends so they and I could get to know each other. I was totally against it, so I told him it sounded like a great idea and helped him shop and cook. I was so nervous, I ended up almost cutting my right middle finger off with a cheese knife (whole other story). I should have told him I couldn't do it. I should have been honest and protective of myself and admitted that I hated the whole idea and asked to be excused, and maybe spent the night at my parents' apartment. So I drank 23 Coronas and probably 4 or 5 shots of liquor, that people saw. I horrified my brothers friends with a lot of wild talk (Sample line: "Ohhhh, girl, they got this new dildo without straps--it gotz this handle that you grip with your pussy muscles so it's good for you and you get off, and you know that would be hella fun with a girl but I can think of half a dozen boys I'd rather use it on!") Then I got weepy and paranoid and angry and started a fight with my brother.

A physical fight that eventually got so intense he got scared for both of us and called my dad to help calm me down. I broke my phone trying to hit him with it, and I fell and (he thought) broke off my front teeth on the sidewalk, and gashed my bottom eyelid on a lawn-sprinkler-head. I bit him so hard he saw stars. I ran away from him barefooted and got my feet full of really gnarly desert thorns that it took me more than a month to get all out. Somehow he and my dad got me in a car and dad drove me to his apartment.

Where I started it all again. I ran into a barbed-wire fence in the dark and cut up my legs, and got more stickers in my feet, hands and knees. I physically fought my dad and verbally abused him as much as I had my brother. Eventually a neighbor called the cops, and the cops came. My mom was scared and sad, and tried to talk the cops out of taking me, but they had to take somebody, so I convinced her they had to take me.

I was fully in a blackout. I remember little flashes, but I had to be told most of it. But as soon as the cops turned up, I was the best little girl in the world. I patiently explained the particulars of domestic violence laws to my parents, and even argued with them that the law was fair and they had to let it go down the way it had to go down. I thanked the officers for not arresting my father, and told them that I started it and that it was my fault because I was drunk. I thanked the officers for being kind to us all, and I asked them if I could collect my things and say goodbye before they took me. I asked them to explain what was going to happen next to my parents.

My mom called my brother, and he and my cousin, who is in law enforcement, came over to help my folks understand what was going on. I went to jail. I remember that one officer kept saying, "You're 32 years old. You're 32 years old. What are you doing? You're 32 years old." I kept asking him his name, desperate to remember it, but I have no recollection of it. Every single person that dealt with me in the jail was incredibly kind and respectful. They booked me and took me to the nurse, and put me in a single cell in the medical wing until they could be sure I didn't have a serious head/brain injury or DT's or something else really bad wrong with me. I stayed there for 20 hours, totally alone except for a few moments when someone brought me a meal or took away my tray, or when the nurse came to check me.

It was freezing cold, and I was drunk for a long, long time. I felt really sorry for myself, and angry at everyone for letting/making this happen to me. I blamed everybody. I blamed people I didn't even know. At the same time, I was trying to be the best prisoner EVER so they would keep being nice to me and let me out soon. I was being respectful and trying to demonstrate that I would obey the rules and follow orders. I was eager to please, but also very, very confused and not sure what was going on. It was hard to sleep, and I felt scared and deprived and disoriented. I wanted very badly to be away from there, sleeping in a real bed with real covers on it, wearing real clothes. At some point I realized somewhere deep inside my brain that I had performed actions, of my own volition, that had deprived me of the RIGHT to do those things.

That no one had just done this to me. Or let it happen to me. That I had knowingly and willfully violated the common social contract so badly that I was going to have to face the consequences that I knew, in advance of the violating actions, would be possible afterwards. I was stunned. It hurt so much I could barely breathe. I did it to myself, and I had known that it could happen. I just thought I would get away with it. I thought somebody would let it slip by, like so many somebodies had done before. I wished, and I wished, and I finally even prayed. I wondered why they hated me so much that they couldn't let it slip by one more time, just this one last time.

What clinched it was that everyone in that jail was as kind and as gentle and respectful as a really good parent disciplining a beloved child. They weren't doing it to be mean. They felt sorry that they had to lock me up, and they wished me well. They went out of their way to help me and make me feel more comfortable. Some time after breakfast, they came to get me. I didn't know what was happening, and they took me to a visiting room. I thought maybe a lawyer was coming to see me. I had pretty much resigned myself to losing my family at that point. I had tried to accept, for a little while, that I had finally violated their trust so much that I couldn't get it back. I put my head down on the table to wait for the lawyer to be brought to the other side of the glass.

When I picked up my head, my mother, father, brother, Clint and my grandma Dot were standing there, holding the horrible little phone receiver and taking turns to talk to me. I cried and cried. They cried and told me that the shame in my eyes was terrible to see and they wanted to fill me up with love to make it go away. They told me to start over, to not dwell on it, to know that they loved me and would never give up on me, no matter how hard I tried to make them. They told me that they would always be there for me, even if they had to do it through bulletproof glass. They told me I might be in jail for 18 months, and that I wouldn't find out for sure until my hearing, about a week away. I went back to my cell weeping, joyous, terrified and aghast.

And I'm going to stop there. I got out in time to not even miss any school or my return ticket on the train, and I'm three months sober now, so don't get your panties in a bunch. I'll tell the rest tomorrow or the next day.

recent triumphs

2009-04-15T15:23:00.005-05:00

On the bus, on my way home from vermont, a man sat down not far from me and asked if he could sit with me. The bus was fairly empty--every person had a two-seat row to themselves and several rows were vacant. The bus had been packed all night and several very uninhibited strangers had wedged their rumps and shoulders right into me and slept like lambs. Snoring, teeth-grinding, squirming, murmuring lambs. And I had been good. I strangled no one. I poked no one furtively with my knitting needles, only to pretend to be asleep when they woke, outraged and dimpled. One woman, in a bad wig, lovely scarf, and chemo-bloat, inspired my sympathy and I let her make me as uncomfortable as she needed to to get some sleep. Another was so obnoxiously free with taking up half of my seat that it became silly and fun to try to fall asleep between her grunting re-positionings. I had been looking forward to hours of small-town Virginia and empty seats through it all, and now this man (this slavering lady-killer, this depraved groper, my tired brain informed me) was very politely asking to sit next to me. I didn't know if he wanted a hand job or to talk about Jesus, or anything in between. All I knew was that he could. Not. Sit next to. Me. So I told him so. I told him I was exhausted and had been looking forward to sitting alone and sleeping. I told him that I'd be glad to sit next to him and talk later, when I didn't have a seat to myself anyway. I told him I was sorry and I hoped he found someone to talk to. Then I laid down in the seat and slept for several hours.

I hit a slump between my two- and three-month milestones in A.A. I was chugging right along, doing okay and even going up to strangers and acquaintances in meetings and just talking to them and telling them the truth about things they asked me about. I even went out for dinner or coffee with a few people. Then my birthday, then various things, and I started living too much in my head, living for daydreams and fantasies, ignoring the reality I needed to be paying attention to, letting the crazy lady in my brain talk to me, and things got so so so hard. Grace of G-d, I didn't drink, or even really want to. Someday I'll tell you how Tweeker Jeezus took care of me in jail and taught me to pray and took that away from me. But I was tempted to go back to that wretched old way of thinking, and hole up in my head and be that sad, lonely girl again forever and ever and not let anybody help. Just for a few days, or maybe a week and a half, but it was discouraging. It's crazy to think I could have forgotten in such a short time how boring and miserable being that person is, but it really did surprise me to find myself back in it. It was so dreary and ridiculous, and real and scary, and I couldn't think how to stop it. So I told somebody how it felt, and when they acted concerned and tried to help, I responded as best I could and tried not to push them away. Then I told somebody else, and tried to respond to them. I tried to think what I was doing before that I had forgotten to do, and found some things, so I started doing them again. Like reading my A.A. literature and going to meetings even if I don't want to, even if I'm scared and awkward. Like telling the truth and asking for help, even if I have to literally choke the words out, or tell on myself, or make myself vulnerable to people I don't know very well. Like not trying to protect the people that love me so much from the negative aspects of my life. And it worked. I feel better. Not fixed, and not healed, but safer and more loved, and much less dreary and discouraged.

what's so special about three months?

2009-04-12T19:22:00.004-05:00

I am! I got my three-month chip this morning. I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, and have a post sitting waiting to publish about it all once it stews a bit more. It's really the first big thinks I've done seriously since jail, and I think I'm getting ready to start really being serious about sobriety. I'm starting to accept that it might just take me longer to do everything, and that it won't be a problem unless I get impatient. Anyway, a big cosmic thank you to everyone at LL&LL and to Hope for going with me and Steve for driving us and Jasper and Leslie for pep talks and everyone who cares and my whole family for just being there. As someone in my group says, "This chip belongs to you; all of you, because I couldn't have done it without you. But I'm taking it home with me."

saving my life

2009-04-12T18:53:00.010-05:00

It's become increasingly obvious to me that the past ten years, and my escalating drinking/self-destruction had exactly one point: to cause me enough pain to make it alright for me to die. There were lots of peripheral reasons, and I had no idea at the time that that was the point. I thought I was having fun. Or maybe I thought that it looked like I was having fun.

That's a complicated thing to say, though. I hear people share about "when drinking stopped working" but for me it was always about pretending: that I was like the other people in the room, that I didn't hate what was going on and where we were, that I could be whatever it was I thought I had to be

Right here I could point my finger at a couple of people and say it was all their fault for making me think I was having fun, or for pressuring me to be something I'm not, but that's a lot of bullshit.

I was the only one in control of my actions, and I chose to do what I thought other people wanted from me. I knew. It might have been subconscious a lot of the time, but it was there. I knew it really wasn't fun, and that it led to bad places that I had a sick desire to be in. I knew I was hurting myself and other people. It was my place to refuse to do that, to stick to my guns and protect myself and to BE the person I knew I was.

I just didn't want to. I wanted to wander a little way down the primrose path and see. I wanted to see if I could let it all go. To literally let it all go--to inch far enough toward the end of my rope that it was permissible to let go. To die. To hurt bad enough, and to throw away enough of myself that I could make it okay to throw away the rest, to make a job of it. To stop hurting forever. I thought that was the way to be safe.

And it didn't work. I was totally shocked about three weeks ago by the fact that part of me is really pissed off about that. I had left class (a nearly 3-hour ASL class) for a little break, and went into the bathroom. As I was sitting down on the toilet (I know, TMI, but that's where it happened) I just had this flood of emotion; regret, wistfulness, longing, and I heard my voice say (out loud) "I can't believe I don't get to drink myself to death and I have to do all this." I felt a little betrayed, even. It beggars the imagination, even mine, but I think if I had the balls to bring it up in a meeting I'd see a lot of nodding heads, a lot of people who know exactly what I'm talking about and lived through it.

Here's the thing, though. A big part of the power of A.A. is in the fellowship, the letting people get close to you. "G-D works through people," and all that. There is so much help and care I can pick up just by being there, and just by listening, and living on the fringe of it all. It helps so much. But there's no way of getting around the fact that to really get weller I have to jump in, make friends, socialize and get into service. Or at least get brave enough to get a damn sponsor. And I can't. I just can't.

It's bullshit, and a stupid reason, and I just can't. I'm too scared. People just aren't safe enough to trust my heart to. I'm just too damn scared. And that scares me. Part of the reason I started drinking is because drunks are shallow, and you don't have to let them in. They're happy with acquaintance-ship and, "Oh...I'm fine..." and not having any responsibility to each other. I know that these people at my meeting are wonderful, loving people who are helping each other and supporting each other, I know that. I WANT that, deep in the core of me, to be with them and be like them. I also know that they're flawed human beings just like me, and they'll screw up, they'll hurt me and they'll let me down, just like I sometimes do. Like everyone does. I even know that for me to be happy, joyous, free, fearless, thorough and honest I have to learn to be okay with all that.

And it's not so bad...I've made it three months now. I got my chip this morning, and despite being so scared I almost passed out on my way to the front of the room to take it, I made it. And the attention was awful, and wonderful, and I felt the love through the tears. I want this, and I want it badly enough to keep doing something that every fiber of my being says is wrong, bad, scary and dangerous. It's the best, safest and most productive place I've ever been this scared. So that's my dilemma--I'm too alive to die, and too scared to live. That's all. I'm working on it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks so much to C. of A Passion for Jaywalking for graciously letting me use the three-month chip picture above. I was frantically searching the entire internets for a picture of one that I could use and found this one, which is so beautiful. I consider it a triumph that I wrote and asked a total stranger for permission at all, and the fact that C. was willing to let me use it for just a credit and a link was gravy. Incidentally, it's also a great blog about sobriety, poetry, life, etc. Definitely worth reading.

my age

2009-04-07T13:03:00.006-05:00

I've been thinking about this for years, since working at Celebration! when I asked a lady her baby's age and got, "Oh, she's 27 months." At first it hacked me off, because really, why can't she just say, "About a year," what's so special about three months? I think a co-worker had to point out that, at that age, everything is special about every month.

So why not continue this into our later lives? I know, I know, we're not learning to sit up or speak or walk (unless we've been subject to Unfortunate Incidents, in which case we do often revert to the months accounting), but why shouldn't every month be just that special? We're learning something new every day, from mending a broken heart to how to really love someone, to how to get our shit together. How to live more fully, how to cut our losses, and practical things, too. How to train a dog, or become an accountant, or make a real friend.

Or maybe we're not. Maybe we stop learning, and start congratulating ourselves for having gotten to the end of all that. Maybe we decide we're finished, and ignore all the learning opportunities that present themselves to us, and we become Grown Up. Maybe that's why time seems to go so much faster as we age, we stop counting the days and weeks and months, and move to years or even decades. We count by the last thing we learned, and so instead of treasuring this week, this month, this year, we gloss over big chunks of years, chunks of our lives that we weren't really paying attention to because we, we've got this shit down cold.

Let's nip that in the bud, let's treasure the smaller increments of time we grow through. Look, listen to me now, I'm going to talk about something I know. Give up your hang-ups about age, and aging, and death. When you are 98 years old, if you are lucky to live to be so old and decrepit, you will wish for your strong, youthful, lusty body, full of life. You will not care how your skin was or whether you felt attractive. You will think that you were stupid and vain and foolish and selfish, back then, to be so picky about yourself, so nailed to others' opinions. You will say, "Oh, God, to be 65 again!" and you will be deadly serious. You will yearn for the days when you had your teeth, your hair (you too, ladies, and you lose it all over your body), your spouse still alive, the days when you could remember, at bedtime, what you had eaten for breakfast. Or dinner. You will mournfully cry, "So young! So young!" when a friend dies at 77, because he didn't know how good he had it, he without a walker, a hearing aid, a 30-year-old Guatemalan helper with better things to do brusquely helping him toilet; he who had so much life before him.

I was 250 months the first time I got my heart broken, but I've learned since then to do it more often. I was 300 months when I moved back in with my parents. I was 370 months when I went back to school. I periodically calculate my age in months because it throws off my brain. Does that make any sense? I can't really get any perspective on being 32, but 384.4 months kicks in a new gear in my head that understands something I can't when I'm in the "years" gear. Being in AA has got me thinking about days, too. Just so you know, I'm now 11,700 days on this Earth. That's 1671.4 weeks, if you were wondering.

It's like a four-year-old in here.

2009-04-02T00:23:00.004-05:00

"Why won't things be good?" She wails in despair.

What things, and how are they not good?

"I don't know, you know...things. They're bad, not good.

And I thought they would be GOOOOOOOOOOOD!"

She is very sad. Saaaad. SAD. Just look at that lip jut out.

Are you disappointed? Frustrated? Hungry? Angry?

"No. I don't know. And my teacher is mean. And my classmates are stupid.

I want things to be excellent and they are only good. And I don't have my cupcake anymore."

Things won't always be like you want them to be and sometimes people are mean, or stupid.

Er-herm. And you ATE your cupcake. Excellence is an ideal, a journey, not something

you can just have when you want it. I know this is sad news, and you're disappointed.

I wish I could tell you something else, but this is life. The sooner you accept it the

sooner you can get on with it.

"NooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Make things BE GOOOD!"

Things are go...

"GOOOODER!"

Nobody said it would be easy.

2009-03-25T15:20:00.003-05:00

It's cripplingly simple, but not always easy. Easier than I ever thought it would be, or even thought it had a right to be. I thought it had to be hard. But it doesn't. Mostly it's just getting out of the way of it. Who'da thunk it? Not me, that's fur shure. It feels like my brain is learning a whole new way to think, and at the same time that I'm recovering something I thought I threw away and shit on and put down the drain years ago. Something I forgot that I forgot I had. I know, I know, it sounds crazy. It sounds crazy to me sometimes. It's like I have deja vu and jamais vu and presque vu at the same time. The best part, for me anyway, is not having to react anymore. I mean, I'm not miraculously healed, I still react sometimes, but I don't have to, and I know it. I really do feel miraculously healed, sometimes. Other times I feel like nothing, or not much has changed, but really so much has. I'm not making any sense. And that's okay.

Ok, maybe it IS a little bit a poetry blog...

2009-03-15T07:36:00.003-05:00

I'm going to see the world's best baby! My nearly-brother and his wonderful wife (my almost-sister-in-law) have this wonderful kid. In Vermont, pray for my tiny cold tootsies. I can't wait to see Les and meet his lady and cuddle my practically-nephew!

Lookit that baby, she thinks.

His open face is both solemn and happy.

The light in his eyes says his spirit

lives down in there full time and

finds it safe and good. He's heavy

and solid with it, and she envies

him and longs to protect him in

equal measure. Her brain sings

of all the sorrow he'll see if he's

lucky to have long life, but she

brushes it away and thinks of the

joys. It's the same story, really;

told with the heart in the throat

or on the sleeve.

More poemage:

2009-03-08T18:56:00.002-05:00

Faced with an afternoon all to myself, when several things I might have done fell through and I was left to my own devices, I actually decided to treat myself to my favorite things. So amazing to me, that I even knew what they were anymore. Clear head is wonderful. So I went to the State Cemetery where I had a nice conversation with a stranger, and to Natural Treasures rock shop, where I bought myself a rock or three, and rode my bike around until I was tired enough to get on a bus for home. I shared my orange with a bum waiting for the bus, and once boarded sat calmly through the meth-head next to me getting bitch-slapped (twice!) by his nutso cohort, though I wanted to feel as though I should have intervened. While I was sitting in the cemetery I sat down to write and this came out:

Cemeteries soothe her, the comfort of the

promise of death less morbid than centering.

Long impatient, ever perfectionist, she loves

a goal toward which she need not strive.

Reclining on a stranger's grave, unsure of any

afterlife, she communes more with the life lived

than the liver. At these times it is easy to

imagine the day that this shading tree, the

soft grass beneath her back, will have covered her

for longer than she will live. She arises content,

prepared to make of it what it will have been.

Isolated graveyards have their purpose, she

supposes, but prefers those that are overrun with life.

Traffic noise should counterpoint the creek beside

the willow, bustling homes be visible from every

lonely plot. Her favorite boneyard sits beside a

school--an orange never more delicious than one

eaten crouched among the solemn influenza

victims to the lively strains of recess.

Uh, oh! She's been writing poetry!

2009-03-03T07:11:00.000-06:00

Yep. I must be feeling better. I've been sleeping really well for a while now but last night I had a hard time drifting off and gave a big think to all those long, sleepless nights. Then I dashed off a non-rhyming version of this and slept immediately. When I woke up, my brain had neatly arranged it to rhyme while I slept. Enjoy.

Night has always been her enemy,

When constant, soothing motion is forbid.

Her head mines the breadth of her pillow

As if that's where her precious sleep were hid.

She tosses so regular, and

Turns with such state!

So pendulously tolls, "It's

Late, it's late, it's late!"

She calls it restfullness and prays

To God in imperious tones, "Thou wilt

Give me peace and respite." Meanwhile

Her thoughts sift deep around her, fretful silt.

In the end, she sleeps, or doesn't. Either way

The sun and she both rise and greet the day.

Sounds like something I would do...

2009-02-17T15:43:00.001-06:00

Watch this man's truck "steal" itself! The way it parks right out of sight makes me think of TankGirl...

I am writing this in the future.

2009-01-11T12:55:00.002-06:00

I don't even know, yet, that my life has changed profoundly. Much later, more than three months from now, I will post-date this entry to mark the day, to have an easily recognizable break between before and after. I will only cry a little, and it will be grateful and easy.

Why I feel misunderstood.

2008-12-24T10:23:00.003-06:00

I take things personally a lot. I feel misunderstood a lot. I'd like to post on this topic about once a week with little reasons why I think that happens, and why it's okay. Something just came to me on the subject.

I was thinking about getting my new tattoo. It's a laborious process that involves me actually drawing the image for it and getting used to it hanging next to my bathroom mirror for a few weeks, then revising it and looking at it for another month, forgetting about it, drawing it on myself in various areas, lots of stuff. It takes years. All so that when the image is committed to my flesh for the duration of my natural life, if I find fault with it, I can only blame myself. I can't explain why this is an important component. If I should look down in the shower one day when I am sixty and suddenly hate my tatoo, if I should be able to trace my discontent to the oversight of some anonymous tattoo artist I should never have trusted with my future in the first place; this is the moment that I will despair. However, if I can follow the train of events that led me to imprint myself with this regrettable stamp, step by torturous step through every fail-safe of concept and design and execution, I will accept my decision and live with it in happiness.

Yes, I actually live that far in the future sometimes. No, I don't understand how I cope with it either. Yes, I think it is why I'm so anxious and nervy. I'm working on it. It's hard. I'm doing the best I can, each moment. Some moments I can be a total cunt about it. Write me a postcard from tomorrow and we'll figure out the answer.

Anyway, I was thinking about all that (yes, that was just the setup, now I'm going to tell the actual story. This is how I've always been, and yet you're so surprised every time. And I'm so surprised that you're surprised. What a world). There's a conversation you have with "the non-tattooed" if you have one, even a tiny one. The, "but what does it FEEL like?" conversation. Because they ask if it hurts, and you can't answer properly, because it does, but it does so much more than hurt that hurting is kind of irrelevant. Your skin is suddenly and repeatedly invaded by irritant-clogged needles, much too quickly for your brain to mount any kind of response. It's a shock response, and the pain isn't so much dulled or killed as put in a waiting area. It's fully visible, and you can experience everything that it's doing, but it doesn't matter as much as what is actually going on right in you. Which is weirdly unexplainable. Like in "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson, when he talks about the sensation of, "It's almost just like...but it's not."

The two analogies that pop most readily to mind for me are, "it's like when you're on fire, or being electrocuted." The first problem is, it doesn't exactly feel like either of those things, it feels more like what those two things have in common. Also, it feels kind of like when you're really cold, like you've been out in freezing weather for longer than you should have been, and you come inside and lean up against a hot surface and don't realize that it's burning your skin through your clothes until it is too late. But not exactly like that. More like what that has in common with what the first two have in common.

Which leads us to the second problem. "Have you BEEN on fire?" the person I'm talking to asks with alarm? "Have you BEEN electrocuted and frozen and then burned upon defrost?" I am nonplussed. "Yes," I mildly answer. "Which time?"

Too much iTunes?

2008-11-01T23:08:00.003-05:00

I'm going to start a band. We're going to be pretty good, and really popular, and we will put out a single about every other week with some amazing guest star you won't even believe, and the songs will be so good and new and cheap you and everyone else will be buying every one. You'll feel like a champ when you turn people on to us because it will change their lives and you'll feel a little responsible for the fact that they're a slightly better person than they were before. However, I've been looking at a little too much iTunes today, so I'll be naming the band "feat." just to fuck with everybody, just a little.

buythisbuythisbuythis

2008-10-16T13:35:00.002-05:00

Please, for the love of god, buy and wear one of these, everyone! I'm begging you, down on my knees. You have to do it! I am! You might have to click on "view larger" to understand my agitation, but once you do, I swear you'll be stealing someone's identity and buying a gross of them to give to your friends and family.

oh, p.s.

2008-10-12T22:25:00.005-05:00

my Red Bike came back! about a week and a half, maybe two weeks after it was taken, I rode past it (on Blue Bike, my new love) on the way back from the beer store, about a block and a half (if that) from my house. I rode into the driveway (after taking two turns past it to make sure the huge red-white-and-black beach cruiser with red panniers and lots of red-and-white reflective tape that could only be my bike was ACTUALLY my bike) and tearfully asked for it back.

The man in the driveway was a little non-plussed so I asked him if he was the one who took it, and explained that I had another bike, and that I would give Red Bike to him if he had taken it because he needed it, because I had tried so hard to give it up after it was taken. I'm still crying, you understand, while I'm explaining this.

He quickly explained that this was his mother's house, and he and his wife were spiffing up the yard before she came back from a long trip, and had found the bike in the yard. The neighbors had shortly come over to explain that they found the bike, the morning after it was stolen or roundabout, and were afraid someone had knocked the old lady off of it and done something terrible to her. Somebody is watching too much Law and Order. But they called the cops (too bad I didn't, I might have gotten it back sooner, since I can identify it; que sera.)

The cops somehow determined that no foul play had occurred and pushed the bike up against the house. The nice couple (the wife of whom used to own Cycles 360) thought it looked like a cherished bike, since it had lights and panniers on it, and stuff in the panniers, put it back against the house and hoped for the best. They've both had cycles stolen, so they knew what it felt like. The husband even rode it back to the house with me and met Hope, and saw the house. They were sooooooo amazing, and I just love that even after I gave it up completely to whoever had needed it badly enough to take it from my porch, it found me again.

I guess I should admit it wasn't locked up. It was just sitting on my porch. With the porch light on, and the bike sitting about a foot from the front door. A bike I ride every day. A bike that obviously, someone cares about enough to cover with personal touches. It is NOT yellow. I assumed a drunk had taken it, because Hope and I had been up watching cable about a foot from it until about midnight the night before it was taken. I seriously wondered if I should call the police and report it missing, just in case someone got killed on it or committed a crime on it. It can be easily traced back to me, you know. Not if someone wanted to keep it, but if it was involved in a criminal investigation (Pung! Pung! Where's Jerry Orbach? Who's watching too much Law and Order, now?)

I was initially concerned that the drunk who had taken it would discover several blocks away that it was too much bike for them. It's almost too much bike for me, and I've been riding it for ten years. TEN. YEARS. No wonder I was crying when I found it. I was afraid they would get really hurt trying to ride it. Not that I would be held liable (which I'm sure I would have been--"If you'd only locked it up, I could still walk!") but that I would feel terrible for the person who got hurt, not that it was my fault. Stealing is nasty, especially stealing bikes. If you don't want anyone to take anything of yours (even if it's not under lock and key) you just shouldn't take anything that doesn't belong to you. I try to live by that, kind of like I try not to rape anyone or murder anyone or commit vehicular manslaughter. Because I wouldn't want anyone to do it to me. Not that I'm perfect, my commitment to trying not to do these things is contingent on my humanity.

How funny, then, to find it semi-crashed (there was no obvious damage, but if you know me you know how I ride it--it wouldn't be obvious amongst all the daily wear) not two blocks from my house. Hope will even tell you, when she woke up and looked out the window and yelled, "Where the hell is your bike!" I ran out in my nightgown, barefoot, and walked a lot of the streets in our neighborhood. I was totally convinced I would find it nearby. I could feel it calling me to come get it. I just didn't walk down the right street. Then we had a car to use for two weeks, and I was trying SO HARD to let that bike go. I thought it was some bad karma I was burning off for being a bitch, or for stealing things when I was younger. I was trying so hard to pray that the person who took it would have a rich, happy, blessed life with it or without it, from here on out.

I'm still trying, you know? No matter who took it, I still wish that for them. Even more since they fell off the damn bike, or decided it was too much trouble to ride home. Whenever I want to damn someone to hell or send them bad karma or wish that they would get what they deserve or die of some horrible, wasting disease, I try to turn it around and wish for god to bless them so much that their lives become a vehicle for joyful change for everyone around them. That they receive the blessings of life so strongly that they can't help but change and become a catalyst to spread it to everyone around them. That their problems melt before them with divine grace and allow them to be the person they deserve to be, spreading love and happiness everywhere they go. How can I do anything else? It's what I want for myself and the people I love.

Not a pushy, evil kind of change, but a joyous, blessed, beautiful change that works by showing what life can be if you have love, and know that the universe needs and loves you because you are you. Not effortless, but full of the best kind of effort. The kind that helps form you into who you were truly meant to be, the kind that rewards itself. The kind that changes the world, and lets you meet Oprah.

Not that I didn't initially wish for the seat (My brand new, $20 seat!) to fall off while they were riding and the asshole get what they so richly deserved. I'm not by a long shot anywhere near perfect. It probably took me a week or two of practicing (and a lot of love from my friends and family) to really commit to the "I hope you use it in good health, and that it transforms your life into a cornucopia of delight" camp. Probably more like two.

I was so astonished to find it, that I kept trying to give it back to the couple who found it. I told you I offered it to the man, thinking maybe he had taken it and needed it. Shit, I can't tell, just by looking at people, who is well-off and who might need my help and forbearance. No more than anyone else can tell, just by looking at you or me. And it might have been time for me to give it up, I told them that. I said, "I worked so hard to forgive the person who had taken it, and to wish it a good next life! I had really given it up!" That was when the husband offered to ride it home with me, so I wouldn't have to come back (a little over a block) to get it back!

I don't know what the conclusion of this post is. Life is beautiful and wonderful things happen. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Don't take bikes that don't belong to you. But if someone takes yours, try to think about the terrible life circumstances that would have to occur before you would take one. I know people who don't have a hard time in life take bikes, too. I know that people make a living, sometimes, stealing bikes. I'm not stupid. But for god's sake, let's be kind to one another. For my sake, let's.

I can't handle a world where we don't, because, you know, I'm sensitive. I can't live in a "devil take the hindmost" world, because that would leave out the people who are not only the most annoying and time-consuming, but who need the most help to get along in our world. Let's give people the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that no one thinks that he or she is being evil, or would take the actions they are taking if they had the wide view. People who do antisocial things like stealing usually can justify it, some way, just like everyone else tries to justify what they do. They have a reason, most of the time. It doesn't excuse them, but it is a reason, and if you think you wouldn't do the same thing in that person's circumstances, I want to be on the drugs they have you on.

often I am

2008-09-28T22:16:00.001-05:00

sure this whole dirty, messy process is worth it, if only for the color green

ye gods i am a shit

2008-09-26T07:25:00.004-05:00

some movie is on tv

meg ryan has taken her daughter for ice cream

the little girl is glumly stirring her ice cream

as mommy tells her about mommy's cancer

"does it hurt you?" the little girl asks

there is a sense of betrayal in her eyes

she won't understand the pain for years

but nothing will ever be the same again

and how can she trust god, now?

i think, damn, now i want some ice cream

god bless the internet

2008-09-25T19:52:00.002-05:00

and god bless youtoob.

I just watched an octopus eat a shark.

often I am

2008-09-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

abrasive when frightened or confused

End the ultimatums!

2008-09-20T08:18:00.000-05:00

No more ultimatums! Ever! Or else!

very sad, but calm day today

2008-09-16T15:35:00.005-05:00

I'm taking this class called The Execptional Person. It's so awful. "The Exceptional Person" is the new euphemism for weirdos and j.d.'s and gimps and simps and 'tards. Of course, we can't use any of those words, anymore, because we're so fucking thoughtful and sensitive. We wouldn't want to use any words that would make the troublesome little fuckers feel bad about themselves.

Please understand, this animosity is directed towards the smug, sanctimonious people who decide who is the exception and what we're all going to do about it, not the victims. I'm having a really hard time with the last few chapters, because we're discussing the kinds of processing problems that I had as a kid, that made my life torture. Things that it was adamantly denied I had. There was nothing wrong with me, nosirree-Bob, that a little trying harder wouldn't help. Even now my parents deny that I'm anything but exceptionally bright. And a little, "awkward."

They think they're helping me. Don't want me to get a label that would make people treat me differently. No, it's just my personality/most intimate self that makes people run screaming for the hills.

And then my teacher says, "Let me describe to you how a kid like this would look to a teacher or schoolmate..." and describes me at age 5 or age ten or age 15. She sounds like she's quoting from letters my teachers sent home. I cry and cry when I'm reading the chapter, and then I sit through the lecture and pretend I'm fine. Wouldn't want to do anything exceptional.

Today was a really hard lecture. I felt totally vulnerable and exposed, and the whole discussion was like, "Why are these people so weird? Why don't they just do what everybody else does? That sounds crazy and dangerous. I wouldn't want to be around that person." I really wanted to tell them, but I was so emotional I knew I was going to seem crazy and dangerous if I tried to explain.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I didn't feel understood and supported, and I didn't want to be there. Maybe I just have a persecution complex, but I didn't feel that today's topic was being discussed with the same kind of sympathy that the discussions on other exeptionalities included. It's probable that I'm just much too sensitive, and overtired, but I felt that a class which had heretofore been painfully aware of everyone's viewpoint turned into a mildly malicious gossip session about someone absent.

The best I can do is to say this. I seem to make a lot of people uncomfortable. If you are one of these people, I am sorry, and I think I can explain why it is. I perceive life a lot differently than you do. Nobody knows why. There are hundreds of reasons, from genetics to environment to brain lesions, and almost everyone has an opninion. But perceive it differently I do, and part of that makes me into a really intense mirror. Another part of it lets me see a lot more of the silly arbitrariness of life than most people usually do, or maybe it just makes it bother me more.

People are basically just perceiving machines, pattern recognizing machines. My machine just works a little different. Like, I bought mine in Europe. It pretty much does what yours does, but it's geared a little differently, and you have to work on it with a different kind of screwdriver. It's missing a couple of functions yours has, but it can do these other things. Maybe the other things are more important to me than whatever yours can do that is really important to you but that I just don't care about.

I really want to explain this lucidly and the part of my brain that knows how to do that feels like it's packed with broken glass and barbed wire. I just can't do it.

I'll stop trying for a moment and leave you with this final thought:

Jesus, why can't you just be like everybody else? Would it kill you to go along to get along?

What, if everybody jumped off a cliff you would too? Be your own person!

-took a nap, other side of brain had this for me when I woke up:

(There's a reason I'm fucked up, and it's called Human Culture. It causes people to do crazy things and then rationalize them much more virulently than I ever thought about. In its highly concentrated form it is poisonous, and if I make you very uncomfortable, I can be reasonably sure you are so contaminated with it as to be a danger to me, and cause you to avoid me by being rude and unkind to you.)

Thank you, other side of brain. Sometimes you scare me, but I like your confidence!

wonderful words by someone else but me

2008-09-15T16:45:00.002-05:00

I've been having a wonderful/terrible time lately with motivation and creativity. I mean, up until about 6 months ago it was just a terrible time, so that's better. It's just now I kind of still feel that icky feeling a lot of the time, but I find it hopelessly funny. What? I'll never amount to anything? I'm a terrible artist/writer/person/friend/daughter/pet owner? Everyone has these feelings and they never go away, no matter how hard you try to do better or ignore them? Then I roll out of my chair in genuine, life-affirming laughter. Which usually pisses me off.

Why? Because I'm special. Special as a stomach pump. Just like everybody else. The wonderful blogger Finslippy is special as a mysterious foreign postcard in the mail, and she has these feelings, too. Except her can talken more betterer then mine. Seems like everyone I know is having a hard time with the creative product coming out of their head, not just me, lately. Read it up, and if you don't believe me or her, listen to Ira Glass. That guy really fucken knows what he's talking about.

hey, kids! it's the usage nazi!

2008-09-15T11:58:00.005-05:00

Dear The Internet,

Discreet and discrete are two different words. They mean two different things. Please stop using them interchangeably, especially in personal ads. "Seeking clean, discrete kinky person, no fatties." Doesn't make any sense. Discrete means, "constituting a separate entity : individually distinct."

Maybe it's your really deep way of saying you want to be with somebody who can be their own person, who doesn't need to be with someone to feel like themselves. But I don't think so. I think the word you want is discreet, which means, "having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : prudent ; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence." "You told my wife we're fucking?! Are you insane? You agreed to be discreet." "No, I agreed to be discrete. And I wanted to tell her. That's just how I roll."

Considering how many other rules of grammar and usage (and spelling, and punctuation) I just ignore, this post might seem a little silly. Especially seeing that I (surprisingly) came down on the side of the them/they solution to the he-or-she/his-or-hers controversy. (That's right, there's trouble over it in the grammar world, and I'm playing fast and loose on the wrong side of town.) But if you're thinking that, you're probably the kind of person who misuses their and they're or hear and here. And jerks off to pictures of Ryan Seacrest holding a puppy. With your mom in the room.

why I love cell phones

2008-09-15T10:28:00.007-05:00

I decide to go to the grocery store, right? And it's, like, 9:30 at night on a Thursday. I so have this, right? It's gonna be dead, walk in and right out with the milk and butter and shit. Then I get there and all my dreams are dead, because every single person that goes to UT is in the goddam H.E.B. Swerving all over the aisles and being bitches. And then there's the girls.

I keep running into this Larry the Cable Guy clone, except skinny. You know, like "How did you know I do meth?" skinny. He's not got a basket, he seems to just be talking on his cellphone while "I don't just live in a trailer, I manage the park!" Lady next to him is steadily packing WIC-approved items in a buggy. I'm getting annoyed with seeing them everywhere in the store. Larry is really clueless, and keeps standing between me and whatever I need to grab, endlessly explaining some random story on the phone.

Then it happens, the magic. I'm leaning around the dude (again) to get the milk, when he says (clear as day), "Well, I don't know, Mama. I guess they thought I was all cuffed up and couldn't reach it."

God Bless America, people. Fuck you if you don't like cell phones. When I ran into him again in the meat market, he was saying, "Well, hell, I used it to beat the shit out of the back of his car, whadda you think I did?!"

back from a long stay in the igloo

2008-09-11T18:56:00.005-05:00

When I was taking my year of training classes for initiation into the Ol' Funky Order of the Sibylline Wicca they gave us all a guided meditation meant for the purpose of giving us access to the Akashic Records and some kind of wisdom shaman vision stuff. Yeah, I was pretty painfully sincere about it back then, but that was around the time I started to realize I'm allergic to religion. I'm also allergic to polyester and nickel. My brain wants it to make a pattern, but I'm afraid of what it might mean if it did.

Anyway. We go into the wonderful, transcendent world of the Akashic Records and can access any information we want about anything we need to know, and the more we practice the more wise and transformed we can become, then we come out of our meditation and have to tell everybody what our vision was. And everybody goes around and tells and they saw beautiful guides and strong animal totems and flowing rivers and all that happy leprechaun shit, and it was so meaningful and wise and wonderful. And here's my vision:

I'm walking in this place that isn't a place, it's all black everywhere like it's dark, but it's not dark, there's just no color anywhere. And these two people come up to me, but (you guessed it) they're not people. I mean...you know...they look like people but they're kind of squirmy around the edges and you know that they are something else when they're not here, that it's just convenient for them to look like people right now. They tell me something, whatever, I couldn't remember it as soon as I left the meditation. One of those, "It was clear as day, it told me to..." and you never remember. And we all go in this big room, and it looks like some kid's science fair project of what the inside of the International Space Station looks like, all made out of old plumbing parts from his dad's business. Except, you know, it looks really, really real, and instead of looking out on space, it looks out into this huge library in a gigantic underground cavern, and there's thousands of people in there looking at books, and this mean little girl in the control room/space station won't let me go in there.

you know how people look at you when they all suddenly realize you're a lot weirder than they thought you were? Like, I think a lot of people get the wrong end of the stick when they first meet me, and think I'm a harmlessly eccentric lovable nutjob, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. I've come to the conclusion that I'm a sort of half-feral throwback to the days before anyone ever thought about manners or protocol. Sometimes I think I just fell through the cracks of culture. Somehow I got this weird swerve in me where I just don't understand some of ya'lls weird customs, like eating in groups, and your strange tribal dancing. Eye contact, and letting people touch you just because they want to. You know.

The thing is, I am pretty much harmless (I think) but I generally prefer my way to whatever crazy shit you people come up with and put on MTV or whatever is cool now, educatin' the sheep. YouTube. I'm terribly curious about it, but in most cases, I do not want to play. I'm not even sure I want a ticket. I'll just watch through the fence for a minute. Oh, gosh, I forgot an appointment, but the Slushee was very good, and I think I learned a lot. Thank you.

It's not that I'm necessarily hostile to anything I don't understand, but I get so goddamned tired of being attacked for not wanting the same exact thing as the rest of the pods. Like, if I don't want it, how can I understand how weird you feel it is that I don't want it? If I thought and reacted and felt as you feel, and could comprehend how fuckin' weird it all is, we wouldn't be having this conversation, dude. We'd just wander around the mall together, not saying a word and just, you know, groovin'. I actually feel pretty normal. I feel like me. I want what I want, and think how I think, and a lot of the stuff that you do everyday seems pretty crazy and scary and weird and creepy to me, sometimes too. That part, I understand how you feel.

Stop telling me to be myself. I'm being myself. If you don't like it, there's nothing I can do about it. These people, and the, "You'd be so pretty if you'd just" people. Wear makeup. Smile more often. Shave. I like to make sure I see all these people again right after I shave my head. Oh, you meant my legs and pits? Sorry, these things happen. Once I shave the noggin, I tend to stop feeling I have to shave my legs and feel more free to wear my pretty dresses.

Jesus, I'm such a child. Why not just be goth? Because goths are just a bunch of monkey-see, monkey-do posers. I just randomly do the exact opposite of what anyone (including me sometimes) expects me to do, so nobody but me gets to possess me by being able to know or appreciate me very well. This is MY precious. Mine! And you can't have it, and if you want it I'm going to make you not want it, because it's mine. All, all mine.

And all of it leads to my special unique specialness being as totally generic as everyone elses'. Like, I guess the bald-headed chick in odd footgear and bag-sale clothes and weird jewelry and attitude on a vintage bike isn't as widespread a type as the frat dude or the rainbow person, but I'm not the only one in my zip code. Shit, I'm not even the only one named Kelly(e) in my zip code. And even if anyone ever was going to find a way to rebel and be unique in some way that wasn't old and busted when Plato wrote The Cave, a bunch of loser airheads would just copy it, and then you'd have to see it at Target and in the Dollar store and shit. Nine-year-olds sportin' it. All cheap and knock-off. In outlet malls and chain eateries. Wearin' it with those Ugg boots. And then you'd have to kill yourself.

Hey kids, don't try to be special! You're just fooling yourself. What a wonderful sentiment. I should put that on a greeting card. With a little pop-up. Of a noose. (I'm totally going to do this. Maybe it could be a graduation card. It would go perfectly with the valentine's card with the popup of the handgun.)

Anyway, despite all appearances this is actually a happy post. Hence the morbid humour, only one of the handy and simple things you can note to give you absolutely not any idea at all what is going on in my head, ever.

I'm a very calm lady today. I dug a hole this week, for our new flower garden by the fence. I'm very happy when I have holes to dig. I think I shall dig some more! I have a feeling our house will be surrounded by plants by the spring. People who know where I live should come by and look at my dug-up flower bed. It is very impressive (especially when you remember that my center of gravity is 8 inches above the ground and I have the upper body strength of a T-Rex), and my entire body hurts, so admire and compliment it, please.

My bike got stolen, but I think I was burning off some bad karma, and I can't wish evil on somebody having such a bad night they have to sink to stealing bicycles. I mean, my personal moral compass of terrible things to do, from worst to least worst, is kind of like, Murder/Torture, Rape, Stealing Bicycles, Arson, General Greediness, Theivery, Gossip, Looking at Me Funny. So how much does your life have to suck before you do like the third worst thing ever? Pretty fucking bad. Way worse than whatever bad day I had. Go with God, ride it in good health. I hope it's the thing that changes your life and you never have to steal again, or want for anything you need. My new bike is neat, neat, neat. It's fast as a rocket, and wonderful to look at, and I'm totally in love.

Is that weird? Being in love with a bike? Oh, well, like I give a fuck. Have a great day!

Words I love

2008-09-05T10:42:00.001-05:00

I've been working on this list for a long time now, maybe 6 months. I know I'm the only one who cares about it, but these are some fucking awesome words. All the entries are glossed from the dictionary, maybe paraphrased but any errors are mine. I know I already use too many big words, but you can kind of understand why when you see how many great words there are.

It makes kind of a weird list, because my brain likes words for weird reasons. I should write a little story that has all of them in it. There are a couple for each letter of the alphabet (even x and z!) and sometimes the list of synonyms is better than the actual word. I also really like word origins, so pretend you're interested.

ab.ne.ga.tion, n,: the act of renouncing or rejecting something : self-denial, abjuration, surrender, relinquishment, abstemiousness, continence, asceticism, temperance, austerity

a.lac.ri.ty, n.: brisk and cheerful readiness, from Latin "brisk" "My major attraction to the local peep-show is the good-natured alacrity exhibited by the performers."

back.hand.ed, adj.: gesture made with the back of the hand facing the direction of movement; figurative use as of something indirect, ambiguous or insincere; a backhanded compliment delivered as teasing.

be.at.i.tude, n.: supreme blessedness; benediction, grace, bliss, rapture, saintliness; also a proper noun indicating the blessings listed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, or a title given to patriarchs in the Orthodox Church

ca.tarrh, n.: excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat, associated with inflammation of the mucous membranes; from Greek "down-flow"

cre.pus.cu.lar, adj.: of, resembling, or relating to twilight, an animal appearing or active in twilight; from Latin crepusculum, "twilight"

de.fen.es.tra.tion, n.: the action of throwing someone or something out of a window; early 17th cent., from modern Latin de="down from" fenestra="window"

du.ra ma.ter, n.: the tough outermost membrane enveloping the brain and spinal cord, from medieval Latin "hard mother" or Arabic "coarse mother"

e.bul.li.ent, adj.: cheerful and full of energy, buoyant, merry, jaunty, elated, animated, sparkly, vivacious, perky, chirpy, bouncy, peppy; from Latin "boiling up" or out, to boil, as a boiling pot or a boiling sea

e.pis.te.mol.o.gy, n.: the theory of knowlege, esp. with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. from Greek, "know, know how to do"

fra.cas, n.: a noisy disturbance or quarrel, from Italian fracassare, "make an uproar"; brawl, melee, rumpus, skirmish, struggle, scuffle, scrum, clash, fisticuffs, scrap, dust-up, set-to, donnybrook

fa.ce.tious, adj.: treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant, glib, sardonic, jocular, sportive

gib.bous, adj.: having the observable illuminated part greater than a semicircle and less than a circle, as of the moon; convex or protuberant, as of an eye. from latin gibbus, "hump"

gad.a.bout, n.: a habitual wandering pleasure-seeker

hie, v.: go quickly, with haste, from Middle English for "strive or pant"

hack.neyed, adj.: of a phrase or idea, lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite, vapid, stale, tired, banal, hoary, boilerplate, old hat, cheesy, played out

in.fin.i.tesi.mal, adv.: an indefinitely small quantity; a value approaching zero. minute, imperceptible, teeny

i.sin.glass, n.: a kind of gelatin obtained from fish, esp. sturgeon, and used in making jellies, glue, etc., and for clarifying ale; from obsolete Dutch "sturgeon's bladder"; or mica or a similar mineral in thin transparent sheets, often used as fireproof windows in lanterns and stoves

je.june, adj.: naive, simplistic and superficial; (of ideas or writings) dry and uninteresting; from Latin "fasting, barren" denoting "not (intellectually) nourishing"

join.er.y, n.: the wooden components of a building, such as stairs, door and door and window frames, viewed collectively

ken, n.: one's range of knowledge or sight; v.: to know, recognize, identify or be acquainted with

ki.bosh, n.: put an end to, dispose of decisively, halt, quash, block, cancel, scotch, thwart, prevent, supress, stymie, scuttle

lach.ry.mal, adj.: poetic/literary, connected with weeping or tears; Physiology/Anatomy (lacrimal) concerned with the secretion of tears; n.: Anatomy, a small bone forming part of the eye socket, or n. archaic, a vial to hold the tears of mourners at a funeral

las.civ.i.ous, adj.: (of a person, manner or gesture) feeling or revealing an overt, confident sexual desire; lustful, wonton, salacious, lewd, smutty, naughty, licentious, concupiscent, ribald, blue, indecent, lubricious, purient, dirty

Ma.cas.sar, n.: a kind of oil formerly used, esp. by men, to make one's hair shine and lie flat. Also spelled Makassar, the oil was originally marketed as consisting of ingredients from Makassar; consider the "anti-macassar" doilies popular at same time to protect the backs of chairs and sofas from staining with this ubiquitous hair dressing

mus.te.lid, n.: Zoology, a mammal of the weasel family (Mustelidae), distinguished by having a long body, short legs, and musky scent glands under the tail, from Latin "weasel"

nai.ad, n.: a water nymph said to inhabit a river, spring or waterfall; the aquatic larva or nymph of a dragonfly, mayfly or stonefly; a submerged aquatic plant with narrow leaves and minute flowers, from Greek naein, "to flow"

nar.whal, n.: a small Arctic whale, all males and some females of which have one or two long forward-pointing spirally twisted tusks developed from one or two teeth; from the Old Norse word for "corpse" referencing the mottled grey skin color.

oar.lock, n.: a fitting on the gunwale of a boat that serves as a fulcrum for an oar and keeps it in place

ou.bli.ette, n.: a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling, from the French word for "forget," 'oublier.' With the diminuitive 'ette', literally a "little forgetter"

pa.ho.e.ho.e, n.: Geology, basaltic lava forming smooth undulating or ropy masses; contrasted with 'aa,' basaltic lava forming very rough jagged masses with a light frothy texture; both from contemporary Hawaiian

per.e.gri.nate, v.: travel or wander around from place to place; globe-trot, voyage, journey, treck, adventure

quin.cunx, n.: an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its center, as on the five of a die or playing cards, or in planting trees; in Astrology, an aspect of 150 degrees, equivalent to five zodiacal signs; from the Latin words for "five twelfths"

quo.tid.i.an, adj.: occurring daily, ordinary, diurnal, average, standard, common,mainstream, unremarkable, workaday, daily, run-of-the-mill, mundane, nothing to write home about, conventional, a dime a dozen, middle of the road, unexeceptional; medical usage denoting the malignant form of malaria.

ran.cour, n.: bitterness or resentfulness, esp. when long-standing. origin middle english : via Old French from the Latin words for "rank or bitter, stinking grudge."

ru.fous, adj.:reddish brown in color, used esp. in Ornithology i.e. 'rufous tit'

sa.lu.bri.ous, adj.:producing good effects, beneficial, health-giving, advantageous, productive, worthwile, timely, profitable, cushy, wholesome

syz.y.gy, n.: in Astronomy, a conjunction or opposition, esp. of the moon and sun; a pair of connected or corresponding things; via Latin from the Greek words for "paired or yoked together"

ta.lus, n: in Anatomy, the large bone in the ankle that articulates with the tibia of the leg and the calcaneum and navicular bone of the foot, also called astragalus, from the Latin words for "ankle-heel"; or a sloping mass of rock fragments at the foot of a cliff or the slopingside of an earthwork or wall that tapers to the top

ty.ro, n.: a beginner or novice, from the Latin word for, "recruit"; neophyte, initiate, fledgling, apprentice, greenhorn, tenderfoot, rookie

u.ki.yo-e, n.: a school of Japanese art depicting subjects from everyday life, dominiant in the 17-19th centuries, from Japanese words for "fleeting world-picture"

u.vu.la, n.: a fleshy extension at the back of the soft palate that hangs above the throat, or a similar hanging structure in any organ of the body, particularly at the opening of the bladder; from the Latin word for "grape"

vac.il.late, v.: alternate or waver between different opinions or actions; be indecisive. from the latin word for "swayed." dither, hesitate, blow hot and cold, fluctuate, hem and haw, shilly-shally, flip-flop

vul.pine, adj.: of or relating to a fox or foxes; crafty and cunning, from the Latin word for "fox" or "fox-like"

wale, n.: a ridge on a textured woven fabric such as corduroy; a plank running along the side of a wooden ship, thicker than the usual planking, and strengthening and protecting the hull; or a horizontal band around a woven basket

whore.son, n.: archaic, an unpleasant or greatly disliked person, construction suggested by Anglo-norman French "fiz a putain," literally "son of a whore"

xan.tho.phyll, n.: a yellow or brown carotenoid plant pigment that is revealed in autumn colors of leaves when the green of chlorophyll ceases to mask it; from the Greek words for "yellow" and "leaf"

xiph.oid process, n.: the cartilaginous section at the lower end of the sternum, which is not attached to any ribs and gradually ossifies during adult life, from the Greek word for "sword"

yawp, n.: a harsh or hoarse cry or yelp; foolish or noisy talk; v.: to make such a cry or talk

yoke, n.: a wooden crosspiece fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or cart they are to pull in tandem, a pair of animals coupled in such a way, or achaically, the amount of land a pair so yoked could plow in a day; a similar frame fitting over the neck and shoulders of a person to carry pails; part of a garment that fits over the shoulders, to which the main fabric of the garment is attached (the yoke of a western shirt); a crossbar at the head of a rudder, a control lever in an aircraft, a bar of soft iron between the poles of an electromagnet; in ancient Rome an arch of three spears under which a defeated army was made to march.

zeug.ma, n.: a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses ("She checked the date on the milk, unaware that she would tragically expire before it did.") or to two others of which it semantically suits only one ("With weeping wounds and hearts they retreated.")

zo.e.trope, n.: a 19th century optical toy consisting of a cylinder with a series of pictures on the inner surface that, when viewed from outside through slits with the cylinder rotating, give an impression of continuous motion, from the Greek words for "turning life"

oooookayyyy

2008-05-06T17:47:00.000-05:00

school is doing well-ends thursday-and I should make a's in both classes

still don't like it much, but maybe I could learn

going to see my brother next tuesday for a couple weeks

back in time for summer session, might even go

Run! It's a poem!

2008-03-15T10:35:00.001-05:00

Here's a poem. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not even saying I like it, it's just a poem I wrote. I backdated it to when I wrote it, rather than today's date. Enjoy.

Her Safeword is "Awesome!"

Compassion was trained into her like a Pavlovian response.

She can taste it, salivary and immediate on exposure to suffering.

It's just that she doesn't care anymore.

Her heart feels like a dry socket in a crumbling jaw,

a holy relic of her belief in the golden rule.

She's the precise opposite of a bigot;

She only hates people exactly like herself.

The weak, the selfish, the manipulative,

the broken and the timid incur her wrath:

their only offense, reflection.

you must watch Bearforce 1

2007-09-14T14:09:00.001-05:00

Dutch man-bears dance and sing boy-band-style. "Ooooooooooo, it's so goood, it's so good, It's sooooo gooooooooooood." They're so cute. I'm not even attracted to hairy men and I can't decide if the pink one or the yellow one is hotter. (No, I'm not talking about a caucasian and a regular asian. Just watch the video.) They're so simultaneously serious and winking you have to get up and dance, too. I love these boys, boys, boys.

My letter to the New Mexico Tourism Board:

2007-08-24T12:30:00.000-05:00

Dear Sir or Madam:
I'm from New Mexico and still have family there, though I now live in Texas. I'm always encouraging my friends to travel in New Mexico and telling them about all the wonderful things to see, do and eat there, but every once in a while I have a problem.
I'll be talking up everything in my home state when suddenly my friend or acquaintance will get a funny look on their face and say, "Yeah, but I don't have a passport!" or "What do you do about the water, or are you immune from being from there?" So I say, "It's a state. In the United States of America. It's called _New_ Mexico. They have modern sanitation. It's between Texas and Arizona. Colorado and Utah are just above it. The US-Mexico border is just below it. And below that is Mexico. Old Mexico. The country. Which is no longer any relation to New Mexico, because it's a US state. I was born there. As an American Citizen."
And they say, "Wow, no wonder your English is amazing!" I'm tired of explaining this to otherwise intelligent people. Someone today just asked me about how I feel about having to get a passport to go visit my folks after so long of having an open border. I know the tourism board wouldn't endorse my screaming and hitting these people, but what _should_ I do?

we are very small

2007-07-04T11:43:00.001-05:00

Neato! Watch this! It pays to spend all morning looking at Defective Yeti after all!

new favorite song

2007-06-11T14:39:00.001-05:00

This is so amazingly wrong and right at the same time. I love it so much I can't hardly bear it. Can't wait till I end up singing it somewhere innapropriate..."It puts the lotion in the fucking basket...bitch...in the basket...oooooohhhoooooo...sorry officer."

Thanks to the internet...

2007-05-16T23:18:00.000-05:00

suddenly I don't feel so alone.

(Earlier tonite I felt like it might be one of those nights, but it turned out I just needed to be alone, and once I let that be okay with me, I feel fine. Ish. Or whatever. Anyway, it was a melodramatic thought I had about the kind of night I thought I was going to have, and it turned out to be a funny google, so whatever. Love you.)

people smarter than me

2007-04-19T13:05:00.000-05:00

I was noodling around the ol' internet this morning, thinking about writing a nice, long blog post about some of the intense thinking I've been doing about the news lately. You know:

Anna Nicole Breaking News: She's Still Dead!

Don Imus Controversy: Everybody Who Ever Heard His Show Totally Unsurprised, Celebrities With Apparently Nothing Else to Do Shocked, Outraged. (The uproar somehow kept the focus from the way the actual Rutger's women were a total class act throughout, behaving with respect, poise and self-possession at every turn and making all the "outraged" people look shrill and selfish.)

Virginia Tech Tragedy: Continuing Insensitive Saturation-Coverage of Horrifying Tragedy Causes International Non-Partisan Sympathetic Vomiting

It's possible that somewhere in me I have an entry about the media behavior on that last one, but not right now. My point is, before sitting down to write, I looked around at some of my favorite sites and found that my much more intelligent and talented male doppleganger from another universe had already written a much cleverer post expressing most of my salient views, probably more germanely and coherently than I would have. (Oh, look how she uses the vocabulary words to protect her from feeling intellectually inferior! Why did I let her buy that Mensa book?)

further postiness

2007-04-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

Ah, the reason I hate putting things off: I never get around to them. And here I am again blogging while doing laundry and willing the sun to come out. My brain does not toggle cold/hot easily enough for me to be living in a non-tropical area. Seasons just exhaust me.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't think that all the people I wanted to mention don't now deserve mention now that I've put it off so long. I've just made myself so neurotic about the risk of leaving out someone who has meant the world to me (yet again) in the last few weeks, and have panicked so about what to say about these people (these people who make my sanity and marginal pleasantness, if not my life, possible) in a format where they, and everyone will see my remarks and praises, that I'm sort of sparing you all the tortured excercise I forsee it being.

Besides. You know who you are. Your ears are still ringing with the constant refrain of my journey-bleating when I begin the serenity-croaking. You listen to me when I need to be listened to, and you tell me to shut the fuck up when I need that. You laugh delightedly and tell me how happy you are for me when I am amazed to be doing well. You defend me and succor me when I'm dissapointed to be doing poorly. You wrap your arms around me at the slightest opportunity and help me find the heart to love me, too. And you trust me to do the same for you, in the way of friends. No list of names and why-I-love-thems, this far after the impulse to share it, will be adequate, so just keep in mind I'll be looking for ways to appreciate you practically, since you know you're on the list.

birthday

2007-03-28T13:20:00.000-05:00

My birthday: fun, quiet, personal, intimate, gentle. I loved it. I loved the wonderful conversations, in person and on the phone. I loved the simple meetings and the soft words. As always, I appreciated the triage, again on the phone or in person. I got so many lovely gifts and so much lovely love. Thank you, each and every person I love, for helping me celebrate my continued exhistence. You made my day!

other people even besides me

2007-03-18T11:28:00.000-05:00

You can't belive what kind of wonderful people I know. Well, if you're reading this, you're probably one of them, or someone who knows one of them, so I guess that's a patently false statement. All I know for sure is that this whole weird ride would be a hell of a lot less interesting and more painful if the people who love me didn't love me, or even tolerate me. Suffice it to say, if you've passed more than three words with me in the last week, you are on my all-time list of People I Could Do Without But I Wouldn't Like it One Bit and I'd be a Lot Worse Off.

Soon, when I'm not blogging while doing laundry and willing the sun to come out, there will be further postiness here about who I love and why

a story

2007-02-27T10:00:00.000-06:00

It is summer. She is eleven years old. Her birthday fell on Easter, this year. The cake was a bunny; her mother outdid herself. She, her mother, and her baby brother have arrived at the town pool. They do this every day that the pool is open for the entire summer. No one thought to teach her to swim until she almost drowned when she was five. Then there was a flurry of lessons and caution that gently dropped into near-total amphibianism. Her mother will leave her here when the baby gets tired and pick her up before dinner. On lucky days, she might get to spend four or six hours in the water.

She had to stop taking swimming lessons two years ago because everyone watching her swim was making her very nervous. Really, anyone looking at her for any reason makes her nervous. Now that she's older it isn't cute to hide behind doors, in closets, under tables or in cabinets. Sometimes when she tries, now, she gets stuck. Then everyone has to look at you even harder while they try to help you get out. She doesn't understand why they won't just close the door and let her stay there until everyone leaves. She could get out if she was alone.

Lately she has discovered that if she corralls some of the younger children, or runs errands, or gets the grownups refreshments everyone will ignore her, as if she wasn't even there. As if she wasn't something to stare at. Being helpful and useful makes you invisible, and safe. She doesn't hear the words in her head, but there is a sensation like a tiny click as she realizes it in much broader terms. Now she thinks she'll get out and run around to the deep end and do about 98 dives and cannonballs, then go play with her brother.

She's thinking about this as she climbs the ladder, so it's a shock when she looks down for the next rung and sees her body for what feels like the first time ever. Her legs, which she's been looking at for her entire life as various people dressed and washed them, and then as she learned to do the same, look like part of an alien species that she's encountering for the first time. Here in her head, there has never been a judgement on a particular body part. This is how they sounded in her head before: leg, arm, hand, head, torso, foot. Now, somehow, since she heard that click, they sound like this: fat, weak, ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. The way her hand-me-down black Speedo one-peice is cutting into the dimpled fat over her hip is making her seriously feel like vomiting.

She is paralysed on the ladder, and when she can finally climb out she wraps her towel around herself. It won't go all the way around, and her eyes dart around to see if anyone is laughing or pointing. Retching. All she sees is regular, happy people. They don't seem to be paying any attention to her, so she sits down on the side and covers as much of her body as she can with the tiny towel.

Sometimes things get very weird when you're a kid. Some mornings she wakes up and the whole world except for her is in super-slo-mo mode. It feels like it takes her mother an hour and a half to say, "It's time to go to school." Even swinging in the hammock is so incredibly slow that she can't stand it. Sometimes if she reads and pays attention to nothing else, it will speed up enough so she won't scream. Sometimes it just starts in the middle of the day, too, and those days she sometimes will scream.

Words have been bothering her lately, too. The word "crotch" has become unbearably dirty to her ears and eyes. Not only can't she stand the written or spoken word, but she has an aversion to most things which could be described by the word. Strangely, the crotch of her panties doesn't bother her (except at the laundromat, when so many panties in the basket make the crotchiness of them shoutingly obvious), nor does her own crotch. However, the crotch of a pair of tights has made her hysterical and her mother has bought all new knee-socks to spare them all the drama. And the crotches of tree limbs make her so uncomfortable she has had to stop climbing trees altogether, though if you'd asked her before this she'd have described tree-climbing as, "my favorite outdoor activity which doesn't include immersion in water."

All of a sudden, she wants to leave. If she tells her mother she doesn't feel well, they will go home and she can lie in bed under the covers. She stands up, shading her eyes with one hand and trying to obscure at least her bottom with the towel, looks for her mother and brother. Mom, tanned and lithe in her bikini, holds the baby over her head, then swoops him around in the air over the shallow end, just skimming his baby belly and legs through the water, then claps him to her body for a big hug. He's laughing hysterically as drops of water shimmer in the hot air all around them. "Mom!" She can hear her voice in her head, but it isn't coming out of her mouth. "Mom, I feel sick, I need to go home!" She's afraid they're having so much fun they'll be mad about having to leave. She can't ask them to, but she can't be here anymore.

Her voice still won't come out of her mouth, but it starts talking in her head again. "You can't make them leave. Just go hide in the shower, or the locker room. Come out in a little while when you're more calm, and buy some candy, then sit and eat it in the truck and a few minutes later you can all go home." This is reassuring. Her voice won't come out and tell people what she wants, but it will tell her, secretly in her head, now to make them give it to her anyway. This might be okay. Her voice says, "You're too ugly and fat, so no one will ever love you or want you for anything. Go hide in the shower so no one has to look at you and you don't cry or make a scene or everyone will know how pathetic you are." So she did.

the end

a letter

2007-01-15T14:09:00.000-06:00

Dear Kellye,

We are trying so hard to be there for each other and support each other and love each other that it is hard for me to criticize you or ask you to change your behavior. I don't want to inhibit or discourage you. I know how fragile you are under the mask, and that the tiniest nay, once said, can make you want to hide for days, to retreat to that safe, dry place where you don't have to try, or care, or engage ever again. I know that when you're scared and hurting all you can think about is how to make it stop, and how to keep it secret, and how to protect anyone else you care about from being exposed to it. I'm asking you to listen to me with the thought in mind that I love you very much and I wouldn't ask if I didn't need it.

I know you're stronger than you think you are, and more useful, too. I know you have a lot of room to improve in almost every area of your life, but where that makes you queasily suicidal or autistically depressed, I think it could be exciting if you'd embrace it. Also, embrace your fears. It's time. You know they're most of them not real, and you know you can beat them. You're scared of dancing and love and sharks in the same way you were scared of the 183 flyover, which you tricked yourself into not caring about one way or the other as you drive over it three times a week. So what if you're scared of looking stupid? So what if you're scared of being vulnerable or dissapointing or laughable or getting hurt or being rejected. Being so careful that none of those things ever happen to you hurts just as much if not more. And it's so much lonlier. Watching you be this lonely and scared and sad is breaking me.

Here's the thing, darling: I want to help. Everyone that loves you wants to help. And we can. None of us could do it alone, not even me, but if you can stretch yourself out to be just a little more vulnerable, to be a little more patient, a little kinder, a little safer in your own skin. Then everyone who wants to help you would find it so much easier, and you'd be better able to be there for them. Things wouldn't be so scary if you'd at least try to believe that you're really a cherished part of a huge, loving, wonderful family of people who only stand as far off as you make them.
love, -kel

Liking myself

2006-11-03T11:34:00.000-06:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my life and my actions and decisions and responsibilities lately, as you know if you've listened to me at all lately. I say, "listened to me" because no one has had much of a chance to do anything else with me lately. I never thought it would happen (and I bet you didn't either) but I'm actually sick of the sound of my own voice. I'm actually consiously trying to not talk and to listen more, which used to not be a chore or anything I even had to think about until I decided not to have my Saturn Return after all and just turned into a tantrum throwing, taco hurling, whining, "that's-not-fair"-ing little baby for two years.

I think last night I had a breakthrough. Not sure. It doesn't seem to have miraculously changed my life and made me a better happier person, overnight. Which was part of the breakthrough, actually. Accepting that it's just hard and that knowing more about why doesn't really help make it easier. Just easier to take. Accepting that the work is the reason. It's hard, and you have to start over every day, and you have to do all the work yourself. And the reason why you have to do it is because it's there to do. Not work, as in "career" but work as in "travail." But another part of the revelation to myself was that it can't really be explained or talked about substantively because the realization happens to you and you can't even really explain it to yourself. Another significant part was the idea that being a happy and successful adult is largely impulse control, which I'm pretty sure I learned from Clarice Starling, years ago, but which really hit me during this whole "sense of significance" experience I'm talking about. That maturity and responsibility aren't magical keys that you find at a pre-arranged point in the video game. That taking control of your life isn't anything anyone else can help you do, by definition. That you get out of life what you put in, and that every moment is simultaneously important, precious, insignificant, and fleeting. That our behavior is a contract we write with the world, determining every effect of our experience. The killer part is that I already knew all these things. I've said them to numerous people. Ad nauseam. I even believed some of them to be true, but last night it was as if I had been describing giraffes to everyone from a third-hand description of one and then woke up to one in my room. Again I can't really explain how or why.

Not that any of it will mean anything to anyone but me, since we are talking about chemical fires inside my own uniquely coiled head-meat, but what the hell. I need to spitball about it a little so I won't monologue and short-circuit my growth by being forced to cut out my own tongue. Besides, noboby reads this blog anymore because I never post, so it's almost like those things we used to have way back when. You know...it's like a book...but with no words in it...and you put words...a diary! I tried to keep a diary for years but I just wasn't getting enough attention. God bless pornography for inventing the internet.

Anyway, so I'll be working on that. I fucked up my timesheets at work and won't get a check for a month, because the one for the next two weeks will come out with the one I get after that. Assuming I don't fuck up those timesheets. I finally got my drivers' license renewed/replaced and changed my address on it. I finally went down to the courthouse to show them my insurance papers (which they wouldn't accept without my DL) and get the deferment so I only have to pay half of that ticket, so I only owe the city another $250 or so. I'm thinking about looking for another job. I feel pretty. I need to gut this blog and make it nice again, and decide what to do about the "two blogs" issue. Not enough time or energy to write unique posts for both, not really enough time or energy to duplicate posts. Hmmmm. Don't know. (Actually I have four blogs, but I never post on the other two. I just needed them, back when I got the blogging bug.

The thing that made me think what I felt last night was a real breakthrough in my thinking, that it honestly meant something, is that I've had momentary glimpses of the feeling it gave me, throughout my life. It felt kind of...I can't explain it. But it never felt like it had as much content as it felt it had this time. Like I was knowing something deep for the first time. Or the latest time, however you want to view it. Sci-fi author Connie Willis, in her excellent book Passage, writes something along the lines of, "just because you really, really want something to be true, that doesn't make it true. But just because you really, really want something to be true, doesn't make it not possible." I really, really want to believe that I'll give myself this feeling more often. That I'll learn to carry carefully this precious thing inside my chest and live a life that honors it. That I'll teach myself to live fully and with zest, full of awe and love.

I love when things just come together.

2006-10-01T02:22:00.000-05:00

I can't remember what exactly I wanted to write about tonight, but it had to do with W.H. Auden, whom I've been reading lately. For about the last 4 years. On and off. And I've barely made it through about twenty of his poems in one book of his collected stuff. But I think I'm getting it.

I, of course, got interested in him in high school. When I first saw Four Weddings and a Funeral and heard John Hannah give the devastating recital of "Funeral Blues" at Gareth's funeral. Years later I finally bought a book of his poetry and started trying to really understand every line. So far I get "Funeral Blues" and parts of "Song For St. Cecelia's Day" and "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (strangely enough) and "The Quest." I think.

Anyway, I wanted to write something about something I read tonight and I got online to IMDb to look up the movie to find a link to the poem and found all kinds of wonderful information that is super-exessively linked above. And when I happened to casually click on the "reccomendations" link (which I almost never do) I discovered a revelation about how I feel about romance and love, divulged in the fickle heart of "user ratings" I'm not sure exactly what it means, but I'm working on it.

Then, looking for a few stray links I wanted to include but couldn't find, I stumbled upon this article about this poem of his. And I feel like I understand several things now that I didn't before. Which I hope you do now also.

Best boquet EVER

2006-09-01T13:42:00.000-05:00

My mom and grandma and brother all give me plant cuttings whenever I visit. Sometimes it's a plant I know and love, sometimes it's a mystery plant. Last time I was home all three of them gave me and Jasper cuttings of this kind of plant, which I've always loved because the stems or spines or fingers or whatever of the plant are soft as a kitten. I had just forgotten until my brother reminded me that the flowers smell like rotting meat because they're from South Africa and they're pollinated by flies. Soooooo awesome. Jasper sent me the above link because he couldn't stand not knowing their name after finally finding a flower he could love. Here is a Google search about stinking flowers. I really love the Stapelia gigantea simply because I have several, but among the others I can't decide if my favorite is Dead Horse Arum or Stinking Corpse Lily. E-mail me if you live in Austin and want a cutting of S. gigantea when I separate them in the spring.

Margaritaville

2006-09-01T13:19:00.000-05:00

This is such a cruel song. If there really was a place I could go live and spend all day wasting away...no job, no responsibilities...just look for my lost shaker of salt all afternoon and then maybe take a swim. I wouldn't even care if I stepped on a pop-top and blew out my flip-flop. I might even get a new tatoo...

That's right, it's been stuck in my head for over 32 hours now. And people wonder why I'm so irritable sometimes. Jimmy Buffett wrote that song the year I was born and my parents used that as an excuse to expose me to it literally thousands of times. And now I'm an alcoholic. Call CPS. A point of interest: I wrote this whole post, then I looked up a link to the lyrics to check them, since I wasn't 100% sure "pop-top" was right. I had no idea, nor do I even now, what in the hell he's talking about about the sponge cake. Traditional island fare?

grudgingly recommended

2006-08-27T10:28:00.000-05:00

is this awesome video. I love the video itself, but it was my first experience with YouTube, which I found amusing and diverting. Until I tried to set up a profile and prepare it so I could click on the "blog this" whenever I found something on there I wanted to show you all. I don't know about you, but I don't like getting my dick shaken by websites that are suppposed to be simple and fun. I wouldn't even have logged in and tried to blog by clicking through, but I've been on several websites where you can't link directly to a page and have to use their link. Then I entered my blogging info and clicked the button to get it all started, and the page goes, "please wait a moment while we get your blog junk all set up" (or however they said it), the page said "done" and the whole thing refreshed. Back to "please wait." Then it did it about 700 more times while I was making coffee. I guess that's great for YouTube, since I'm so freaking interested in their site I've looked at it 765 times just today, but for me it's just annoying. And I still had to blog it manually! Ugh!

That's right: summarily shot!

2006-08-14T09:45:00.000-05:00

I have this weird tendancy to work a lot in one or two weeks, then to sit around on my ass until I'm completely out of money before I maniacally start working again. Luckily I've landed in an industry where work is so in supply and workers so in demand that I can do this. For a while longer, anyway. Until the stress kills me. I'm having a pretty raunchy week, not in the good way. I kind of feel like my emotional life has taken on an aspect of "chemical bus toilet, DFW to Chicago nonstop," but when you take into account that I'm living on about $8 a week for the essentials (beer, smokes, gas) with nothing left over for non-essentials (food, medicine, fun) and it's all basically because I chose to live this way and I repeatedly refuse to learn to take care of myself or even attempt to do better, you sort of can understand how I got to the point that I'm hiding in my bed and throwing food objects at people who can't tolerate my pouting. Just so everyone knows, this, too, is somewhat likely to pass. Assuming everyone stops patting me and telling me how worried they are that I'm having such a hard time. For those of you who didn't grow up in my childhood home, the way to treat Kellye is this: pretend nothing is happening and that everything is all right, especially if things go a bit wonky. If behavior becomes troublingly erratic, leave or otherwise disengage yourself. Return when regular "only semi-erratic" behavior is restarted, pretend nothing happened. Thank you.

On a related note, persons who use the disturbing word "blogoverse" in any context othere than condemnation will be summarily shot. This is not a drill.

a conversation

2006-08-11T13:40:00.000-05:00

me: me, me, me.
you: me, me, me.
me: me, me, me. dammit.
you: me, me, me. really.
me: boo, hoo, hoo.
you: you, you, you.
me: me, me, me, me, me!
you: you, you, you, you. me.
me: ME, ME, ME, ME. you?
you: me.
me: ok

Inky dark inkwell of pondering...

2006-03-12T15:19:00.000-06:00

I changed the headline or tagline or whatever it is, so I had to put the old one somewhere for posterity. Since I'll probably go back to it in a week or two, and whatever. I'm gardening and playing croquet today. Because I plan to have a croquet game set up for my birthday, and I need to practice. Because if I lose at croqet on my birthday, with ready acess to a keg, a pinata full of liquor (decided drugs was too dangerous) wooden mallets and sharpened wooden stakes, something probably pretty bad is going to happen. You know I'm too pretty to go to prison. Rambling, rambling, babbling, nothing much to say. I keep thinking of great blog posts when I'm doing something where I really can't drop everything and post them, then I forget them before I get to a computer. You know, driving my car, riding my bike, having the spins in my yard, whatever. I need to start toting around a physical journal to jot some of this shit in. Either that, or figure out how to blog from my phone or whatever crazy, mixed-up, computers-taking-over-the-world, I Robot "convenience" blogging they have set up now. Blog from your fillings! If people who aren't poor even have fillings anymore. Have you ever thought about joining the military (obviously, in peacetime, not now) just to get your teeth fixed? This is a good question to ask people at parties to find out if they're the same "class" as you. Also, I just want to say, who the fuck is too fancy to drink cheap beer? I can't tell you the number of times I've been totally ridiculed in the last year for drinking PBR. I'm talking schoolyard-style hazing. What the fuck is up with that?!? Did everybody else in the world just get a raise and start drinking some $13 a six-pack shit from Europe? Or do people just enjoy making fun of me? Fuck people who like making fun of me, I can get drunk for $6.04, including tax. And then I can stab them.

Just in case you didn't know or have forgotten...

2006-03-03T21:26:00.000-06:00

I'm a vicious bitch. Also, my birthday is coming up. I'll message all you bitches and let you know when the party is. I'm having a pinata. I told my mom I was having a pinata and she said, "Be careful, you know how all those people on America's Home Videos are always getting the shit beat out of them by a four-year-old with a streamer-covered stick." And I was all, "Shit, mom, don't worry. My party's going to be all adults. Plus we'll all do compulsory jello shots for about half an hour, then everybody gets a stick and I announce that the pinata is full of little bags of kind bud. Yayy! Happy Birthday!"

Sometimes...

2006-02-22T21:27:00.000-06:00

when I'm just walking around, I suddenly can hear the "Darth Vader Theme" from Star Wars in my head. Then, sometimes, I realize that I'm singing it out loud. Sometimes people look at me funny.

Now re-read it and pretend I'm saying it to you in a Ralph Wiggim voice. Yes, it really is that strange in here. Now imagine Ralph Wiggim dressed up as Vader. "Luke, I choo-choo-choose you!" Someone save me.

HOLY SHIT!

2006-01-27T14:25:00.000-06:00

I forgot to tell you my fantastic news! About two weeks ago, while I was at work doing one of my first 12 hour shifts, Jessica called me a couple hours before I got off. I just happened to be in a situation where I could answer the phone, so I did, because as many of you know, I kind of enjoy me some Jessica-chatting-up.

Jess: "Hey, don't get mad at me, I got you a present."

Kel: "Oh, I always get so mad at you when you bring me presents."

J: "Well, I kind of made you a present. And It's kind of big."

K: (having fantasy where the "present" is that she's somehow swabbed out my horror of an excuse for a bedroom and made it livable and pleasant, then dismissing it) "Well, that's okay. I like big presents AND made presents"

J: "It was supposed to be just a little present but when I got started making it, I couldn't stop and now it's kind of...huge."

K: (Fantasy of clean, tidy room with 0% effort from me comes screaming back into my head with a sense of certainty, and instead of dismissing it I tell myself, 'Don't get your hopes up. There's no way anyone could do the whole thing in one day.') "Okay. Sounds good, I can't wait to get home."

J: "And you won't get mad?"

K: "Absolutely not. See you soon" (Doing a little dance as I turn off the phone.)

As I was driving home I kept repeating, "Don't get your hopes up. She probably started the picking-up for you and it's going to make it 100% easier to get started and you'll be done in no time and she's so awesome! Yayy!" I walk into the house repeating it. There is a palpable sense of excitement and suspense in the air as I walk over to the door of my room. Jessica looks like a pressure cooker right before it blows a hole in the wall behind the stove. I'm about to loose my mind trying to be cool. I open the door. My room is totally spotless. EVERYTHING has been picked up off the previously knee-deep floor and either put in it's place or assigned a temporary space. Jessica begins taking me around the room and showing me where she's put things that have never had a place before in this house. I notice that she's taken the six-inch-deep pile of mat boards, art paper and collage materials from under the bed and sorted and filed them under my desk. My arts and crafts supplies are no longer strewn around the room, they are neatly put away in one of three areas. All the clothing that was everywhere in the room is neatly in piles for laundry or putting away. Shoes are sorted. The closet closes. Every book I own is on a shelf, rather than in a box or on the floor. She's found all my cds and put them neatly together. The bed is made. You can find the bed easily, and neither pair of stairs is blocked. I start to cry. I notice Jess is crying. I call everyone I know and tell them about it, and they all cry. Rejoicing resounded througout the kingdom, and they all lived happily ever after.

Eeek!

2006-01-19T21:47:00.000-06:00

Various horrible e-mail drama as Yahoo! fucks me around. Please click on the "write to me" link on the top of the sidebar and write to me at my gmail account (link now sends to me there) if you'd ever like to get an e-mail from me again, because the evil Y! people have deleted my account for the third and last time. Evil, terrible weirdness swirling. Here are more (mostly serious) things I'd like to become by pretending I already am:

-sober more often

-nicer in a more heartfelt way

-a person who says "yes" when she means "yes" and "no" when she means "no" and "I'll do that" only when she really wants to

-did I mention taller?

-stronger and more healthy, emotionally and physically

In other news, people just won't stop calling the house phone and hanging up on the machine. We have caller ID, people. In most cases I know exactly where you live. I know where you sleep. Just leave a fucking message, before I start pretending I'm already the kind of person who would stab you. Oh, wait, I already am.
Also, I just noticed that the dates were showing in Dutch, so I changed it back to English.

How to be happy

2006-01-19T14:27:00.000-06:00

Who knew? Trying helps a lot. Back when I first posted about this, I was really hanging on by my thumbs, and really scared. I couldn't see a way out or a way to ever change what I was feeling, even though I knew I had felt that way before and it had gotten better eventually. I couldn't see how I could change anything; my lifestyle, my personality, my emotions, my behavior for the better. I didn't think I would ever stop feeling that sad. I was very afraid of what might happen to me.

Then I got really fucking tired of it. Tired of feeling bad all the time. Tired of my eyes aching because I couldn't stop crying and tired of missing my friends and wishing they could help and knowing that they were getting tired of it too, and tired of being angry and tired of being scared. Tired of other people being scared about me. And really, really fucking tired of how much it hurt.

Until I realized that virtually the only thing I had any power or control over at right that second, or any time until I could feel better, was my attitude. So now I'm becoming a happy person by pretending I'm already happy. Not in a fakey, assy way, but really trying to feel what it would feel like if I was really happy right now. And it's working. I definitely feel better and am reacting more like I would like to.

Not that it's a perfect system. The bottom fell out on me the other night, and everything went sideways and I felt as bad as I did right before I decided to change my attitude. It was all back, the crying and the feeling like a terrible person and the persecuted feeling and the anger and the fear and dissapointment. I felt like a stupid fucking failure, too, because I was right back where I had started and thought I had lost all that ground.

Then I realized I hadn't lost anything because I could change my attitude again and again until I got it right. This is going to work for me, I think. Then, when I have being happy worked out, I can become tall and willowy and Belgian by just pretending that I already am tall and willowy and Belgian. Then I'll pretend I have 8 billion dollars and a castle in France. And an 18 year old Italian boyfriend. And a tiara. And a pony...

photo musing

2006-01-18T23:15:00.000-06:00

I need more pictures of myself. This is an odd state for me to be in, as I've, since about age 10, avoided having my picture taken or destroyed what pictures of me I could get my hands on. The cognitive dissonance between my picture-in-my-head of what I should look like and my retinal dismay at what I do look like is too much for my tiny little brain.

However. When I got my digital camera (which is a hunk of crap, but what the hell) I was suddenly able to sit, totally self absorbed, for entire hours, snapping self-portrait after self portrait until I captured something I actually wanted to see. This has caused unfortunate side-effects, because people are now getting used to seeing pictures of me. My mother, for instance, will not get off my back. "Why haven't you sent more pictures? Where are the pictures? Take more pictures!" I panicked and sent her every picture I have of myself that was taken in the last three years (I had been doling them out like a smart girl) and now she's even more crazy for more current pictures. Never mind that the pictures she now has of me taken in the last three years outnumber the pictures of me from the foregoing 10 years...

Which is only a problem because my camera is a hunk of crap that won't keep a charge. And because I'm tired of only self-portraits. I'd like to get some shots including more than one side of my face and part of my neck. I might even consent to let myself be photographed all the way down to the shoulders, if I could only get someone to agree to help...that won't be happening anytime soon, tho. I've asked everyone I could bear to ask and have been flatly refused...I'm trying to be cool about this development, but my brain wants me to be bitter and never take another photo. This time, however, my brain is not going to win.

Self-Portrait Tuesday

2006-01-17T22:32:00.000-06:00

There's this cool thing on Flickr called "Self-Portrait Tuesday" where every Tuesday or thereabouts you take a new self-portrait or post an older one. I really like the idea, so I'm piling on. We'll see how long it lasts...I hope a long time. Ironically, I'm posting this from Photobucket because I can't use my Flickr account because it's tied to my old, now deleted by Yahoo! account. These pictures were taken last year sometime while I was living with my folks. I like to take a couple pictures in sequence with just a little change in between. I don't know why, but I thought it would be a fun thing to start with and since they're so tiny (when did I make them so small? what was I planning?) it seemed like putting them both up would be good.

Continuing near-normalcy

2006-01-07T16:15:00.000-06:00

Still happy by main force. Getting easier every day. I mean, being happy is getting easier. I'm already as easy as I can get. And as Jasper says, I get what I can take. I had a moment this morning where I lost the center and hated everybody and everything and wanted to stab, stab, stab, stab, stab. Then I decided to not be like that anymore. For right then, anyway.

Went to lunch with Kathey and Rob today at Threadgill's. Yum. They brought Jessica a bed today, and they're MARRIED! I mean, I know, I know, I was at their wedding but I can't quite make it work in my head. I told my neighbor today, "My friend and her husband are coming over in a minute and they might use your parking space for two minutes." Then I got this dumbstruck look on my face and she said, "What?" And I was all, "They just got married and I've never said that word in reference to them before." And then of course I got to see the great look on her face when they came up and she noticed the 22-year age difference. I love that. In other K&R news, I'll be setting up their wedding Flickr site for them soon. Yayyyy!

Fasten your seatbelt and prepare to be astounded! And beaten with sticks!

2006-01-04T16:44:00.000-06:00

It's my miracle new cure for depression: just be happy by pretending you're already happy! I'm holding my first workshop next weekend...only $500 per person per day (two day minimum). I've hammered out the notes for the class on smiling maniacally in any circumstance, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to teach "whole body fake-happiness" where you pretend you're happy even when alone or asleep. I wonder if it's okay to beat people with a stick? Is there some kind of release they have to sign saying you can stand over them for six hours and whip them every time they stop smiling?

Please disregard the last post

2006-01-02T14:58:00.000-06:00

as it was written by an insane monster that lives in my head. The monster has had her internet priveledges rescinded and will be beaten bloody with bottles of beer and enormous spliffs the size of small dogs. But less hairy. So far my recovery strategies have included re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas daily, emotionally abusing everyone who loves me, the above-mentioned chemical treatments, and weeping uncontrollably at the slightest stimulus. I swear, if things don't get better soon, I may have to come up with something else to try.

I hate you

2006-01-01T19:11:00.000-06:00

and everybody else.

My foreign policy

2005-12-24T23:08:00.000-06:00

So, I've been re-reading Lies My Teacher Told Me, a book about all the things you never learned about in high-school American History. And I'm on the chapter about where our western society is going (now that we've begun to re-learn where it has come from) and what may lie ahead for humanity. Prior to re-reading this I've re-read An Underground Education and once I'm done I'll re-read Guns, Germs and Steel. I highly recommend each book, for diverse, and ultimately, consonant reasons.

Here's my question. Let's say I'm America. Just me. Little old me, tooling along. I'm the entire country of The United States. If I deal fairly and legally with my neighbors, treating them as I would like them to treat me; if I overlook little foibles of theirs and speak to them frankly about what I wish they would do or not do and let them know that I want them to speak frankly as well, if I talk to them about problems before I let them get to the point where I want authoritarian intervention, if I communicate with them about what is important to me and to the neighborhood; we will have a good relationship, neh?

And perhaps I see that a time of economic want may be creeping up on me? I would surely put something aside to see me through it, so I don't burden my roommates or my family with having to "spot" me so I don't wreck my home and end up homeless, living out of my car. Wouldn't I? I mean, I'm not absolutely and idiot, am I? Or at the very least I'll economize and reduce my spending so I can sort of coast through the bad time.

And perhaps I'm in conflict with someone in my given or chosen family, surely I'll bring it up, talk it out, work it through, and come out on the other side with a stronger and more open relationship. A relationship that will see us through whatever will come ahead.

Or maybe I'll act like the real America. Maybe I'll drink too much every night and scream at or call the cops on my neighbors if they so much as fart loud, and I'll stockpile my "real" necessities while I sponge everything else off of everyone else; maybe I'll wake up with a hangover every morning and hate everyone and be evil to the people who make my life possible and tolerable, and dominate every conversation and sell my future short with intransitive pleasures and maybe I'll burn every bridge I see. Maybe.

Happy Holidays!

2005-12-24T18:02:00.000-06:00

No wonder he's such a right jolly old elf! It has the same effect on me!

Kathey got married!

2005-12-20T00:33:00.000-06:00

And I got wasted. The wedding was incredibly sweet and wonderful. As far as I remember I was the only asshole there. Yayy! I'm so incredibly happy for Kathey and Robby that I'll be putting pictures up here as soon as they get back from their honeymoon and I find out where they are on the web. I forgot to ask the wonderful Christine who took the pictures as a wedding gift for them whether she was setting them up a Flickr site for it, but if she doesn't, I will. Yayy! Happy married people! Yayy!

A note to Travis at H.E.B.

2005-11-22T14:38:00.000-06:00

Dear Travis,

Quit it. Quit being so yummy. I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job. Wear looser pants or something. Do me a favor and gain 60 pounds. At least quit being so sweet to me. I'm not stalking you, but I am acutely aware of you. In only a semi-friendly way. Who the hell has the right to look that good in black dress slacks and a red shirt!?! I think it's some kind of a violation of my civil rights to have to look at you for six hours while I'm trying to work. I'm calling the ACLU. The ACLU is going to sue you and sue H.E.B. and sue your ass for making my job have a sexually charged and uncomfortable environment. You're going down. Either that, or I'll end up fired and in jail for pushing you down on the floor in the produce cooler and humping you unmercifully. I would try to get you fired, but you're so damn good at your job. Which, I don't know if I mentioned it, but that makes me hot.

Your friend,

-kel

I'm so very cool

2005-10-12T16:46:00.000-05:00

I really am. I'm having the best few days here. If only I could get motivated and do some of the things on my list instead of lying around, thinking about how cool I am, I might even get to feel this way for a while.
What I mean is, my pattern is to have a few really good days, slack off doing nothing but having fun and thinking about my coolness factor, and then reap the horrible consequenses durning the next few days while lying around thinking about what a failure I am and how I never, ever do anything fun or am cool. Yep, you figured it out. I'm nuts. And here's pretty much the whole list of what I wanted to do today:

1. Walk the dog. (partially done)
2. Clean my room. (been "in progress" for weeks)
3. Try to clean out the bathroom drains and get the rocks out of them. (accomplished!)
4. Blog. (we'll see how that turns out in a minute)

Yes, I know. How on Earth can you possibly "partially" walk a dog?!? I don't know. You kind of have to watch me do it. Also, why do I need to get rocks out of my drains? Or, more pertinently, why do I have rocks in my drains? Well, see, they're really spiritual rocks and...Oh, hell, it's really complicated and involves alcohol. They're out, okay?

Anyhoo, why don't you buggers start putting comments? I want you to. (They don't exist, Kel, they're all in your head.) Oh. I guess I'll just go clean my room, then.

Bad hair day

2005-09-15T20:21:00.000-05:00

Supercuts Lady: What do you want to do with it today?
Me: What?
SL: Your hair? What do you want?
Me: Well, in three months I want a perfect, glossy swing bob. Today, I just want to not go home and hack it off at the scalp with a pair of kitchen shears.
SL: Oh. Okay.
Me: The last time I felt this way I took care of it myself.
SL: Oh. I can see that.
Me: Stop me before I do it again!
SL: Okay, okay! (snip, snip, snip) This should be better. (snip, snip, snip)
(as to a small, developmentally challenged child) You can flip it out or tuck it behind your ears, okay?
(As to a desperate woman standing on a bridge) And I'm not touching the front--you're almost there! Don't give up!
Me: You have to get rid of the proto-mullet!!! Please, you have to help me!
SL: I'm doing it! Right now. (SNIP, SNIP, SNIP)
(hands mirror, turns chair) How's that?
Me: (big sigh) Oh, I feel so much better all ready! Thank you! Thank you!

The following things are right out.

2005-08-30T13:45:00.000-05:00

I spend most of several days a week, as I've previously mentioned, standing around a grocery store trying to influence the shoppers to experience and buy product. Precisely, I work in several grocery stores all around town, which gives me a good opportunity to see how people dress, at least just for the grocery store. Now, no one will ever accuse me of being a fashion plate, and I'm certainly only going to be deputized to the Fashion Police in the direst of emergencies...something along the lines of Fashion Martial Law. However. I've been noticing a few things that are really trendy right now, and with the students coming back into town the trends are getting bigger and more hamfisted than ever. Hence, I hereby declare the following things absolutely, without fail, mandatorily OUT, right out, and begone from my sight:

1. Gold and silver purses and shoes. Whoever decided that these items would be in this winter is obviously dangerously psychotic. Metallic purses and shoes are tacky, tacky, tacky. Also, they're kind of tacky. There are exactly two kinds of people who can get away with it, so if you're not a crack-whore or an aging, alcoholic drag queen all hopped up on goofballs, please take your trendy new purse and shoes over to Goodwill immediately. Especially you girls carrying the huge spangled shoulder bags that look like you could hide a baby in them. Wearers of metallic shoes with kitten heels (see below) and carrying one of these bags will be shot on sight.

2. There are earrings out there which are not appropriate to be worn with just any outfit. Before you ever leave the house, you must look into a good full-length mirror. Look closely. If the tiny, delicate crystals of your chandelier earrings brush the shoulders of your "Turkey Trot" t-shirt, you must take them off. If the color of said tiny, delicate crystals clashes with your wind shorts, you must remove all jewelry and go back to bed. If said color clashes in a different way with your Tau Delt insignia flip-flops you must beat yourself 'round the head and shoulders with the heaviest pan you can find. Just because you can wear discreet pearls, modest gold hoops, or un-presupposing diamond chips in your ears with any outfit and on any occasion does not mean that the same holds true for all earrings, and especially not for earrings which you bought because of how much they look like the ones so-and-so wore to the Oscars. Idiot.

3. Denim for anything but jeans was never really cool, and it never will be. Those really expensive skirts you're all wearing that are especially frayed and ragged around the horrible bell hemline already when you buy them? They're awful. The cut is awful, the denim color is awful, the pre-frayed him is awful. Stop wearing them. Especially stop wearing them with t-shirts and chandelier earrings and horrible giant spangled gold bags and kitten heels. I'm going to kill one of you eventually if you don't.

4. Kitten heels are stupid. I really love shoes and when I first started to see this style back in stores I was elated and immediately started shopping for the perfect pair. Then I remembered (after trying on approximately 48,000,009 pairs) that kitten heels are dumb looking. The only place they belong is on those silly boudoir shoes with the pink boa around the toe, and the only place those shoes belong is in romantic-comedy movies made before 1972.

Just in case you're reading this and thinking, "She's wrong. I know what she means, but I can carry it off," You're wrong. The only times it's in good taste to do something in such bad taste: if it's really cute; if it's ironic; if it's funny. None of these trends are even deep enough for funny.

Defining moment

2005-08-17T18:02:00.000-05:00

I never really grokked "eurotrash" until today. Sure, I had a vague, use-it-in-a-sentence kind of idea. I'd heard it used in context enough times to know I could use it semi-properly, especially if I happened to be drunk, talking to drunks.
Then I saw her. The shoes, first. High-couture, gold brocade with thousands of beads. Pointy-toed like some Italian hallucination of the Arabian Nights. Some sort of trendy skirt and a thick, heavy silk-satin halter top, more beads all over it, the color of weird foreign change just before you over-tip. Her hair was unbelievable--brushed completely forward over her shoulders and curled into perfect ringlets the size of bratwurst. Bigger. Her makeup looked like she'd recently been "done" somewhere that the lipstick cost more than I make a week. I don't even make enough to start talking about her handbag.
And here she was, stalking through the grocery store, screaming at the top of her lungs. A chagrined and possibly frightened young man wearing jeans and a t-shirt followed her, pushing a grocery cart with his head down and his mouth shut. She was screaming at him. In Russian. About limes. It was the only English word that I heard come out of her mouth, and it issued forth in a climbing, growling shriek like the cry of a cornered panther. Then would start again the incomprehensible muttering, the aggrieved whining, the yelling, the screaming, then, "LlllliiiiiiIIIIMMMES!!!!" They were heading towards the produce department, but she would occasionally leave him at the end of an aisle as she stalked down it, still orating, to grab some item and hurl it in the cart. He flinched every time. Once, when she was out of sight (but not sound) I caught his eye and considered offering to call for help, but she scared me too much.
Why is my life so boring? I hardly ever scream at anyone, much less about limes. And never in Russian.

Oh, p.s.

2005-08-10T18:27:00.000-05:00

My computer crashed about two days after I wrote
the triumphant "my computer is set up and we're
getting wireless!" post, so it's not ALL my fault.

Liar, liar...

2005-08-10T18:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay, my pants are duly on fire. I've been promising to post and promising to post and breaking my promises every day. I'm sure no one is reading anymore, but in case you are, I absoloutely swear to stop promising to post. I'll just post whenever I get a bug up my ass and knock out the lying promises part.

So, my wonderful next raise at work is never going to happen (speaking of people who break promises) and the five days a week I was also (liar) promised fell through after about a month, so I'm working less now than I was before I got promised the fantastic raise and full time work. Yayy! (Which is what my boss always says when she's about to tell me that I'm "off for the weekend! Yayy!") So I'm looking for a new job. I haven't told her yet, but I'm going to. I'd like to keep working for her on the weekends only, but if I get a full-time, really really full-time job, she's going to be out of luck. So that's that.

Also, I've been spending lots and lots of time with my new friend Jasper (see previous posts). I've known him for years, on and off, since my roomate met him and his boyfriend...I have no idea how they met, actually. I suck at "Austin geaneology" and I could hardly tell you how I met Jessica, anymore. But I've known him a long time, and we never really hung out at all until I moved in here, right down the street from where he was living at the time. Where he promptly moved out of and ended up spending a lot of time at our house, until he found a new permament place to live. I don't really know how much of his life he wants to see splattered all over my blog, so maybe I should think about going back and changing his name in all the posts. Hmmmmmm.

Anyway, the roomate, who was really his real friend and I was just an acquaintance, ended up being busy most of the time and not being able to hang out with him, and we just started spending more and more time together until we basically started making everyone, including ourselves, sick with it. He's super-fun, and more than that, he helped me remember that I'm super-fun, too. Which is awesome, and he has a great new place, and we're both now able to utter up to ten minutes of conversation without mentioning each others' name even once; there's even whole days where we don't talk on the phone or see each other personally. His new downstairs neighbors (who I've never met, but who he talks to often) have even been persuaded that I'm really not his girlfriend. I may even eventually make a blog entry where I don't mention him.

Anyway, here's to new friends, and old friends, and new jobs, and being able to pay the bills. Yayy!

New Post

2005-05-29T02:35:00.000-05:00

I'm not very imaginitive tonight. I've been drinking beer and talking to my roomate (Jessica) and my neighbor (Jasper) and messing with the dog (Bella) and basically doing the same thing I've been doing since I moved in here at the end of this last January. The only thing is that I've gotten a cost-of-living raise for moving to Austin and a couple of merit raises for doing my job right (practically the first time since I started working outside my family at 18) and am maybe going to get a raise if I start being a "team leader" next week. Plus, I'm working about 30 hours a week now. Yayy! Money rocks!
The down side is that my job is still basically the same, although I went from working in one store in my hometown to working in whatever store I could get hours in here in Austin, to working one tiny store in my old (bad vibe) neighborhood where it's hard to sell anything because everyone who comes in is either 1)Extremely old AND senile AND deaf or 2)A total hippie and only eats granola and yoghurt or 3)Just doesn't want a sample for some reason. This is trying to me because, as some of you may remember, my job consists of standing around a grocery store and handing out samples of things I hope the customers will want to buy, then giving them a (very) short sales pitch about why they should. It's really a fun job, unless some really senile and deaf old lady (or a drunk vagrant) needs you to run over the salient parts of the sales pitch about seven times. Or some hippie mom with three kids needs to berate you for the use of Red Coloring #7 in the product you nearly gave her kids, for 1/2 an hour. Then there are the people who just don't want a sample. I think I'm wearing them down, tho. They're very polite ("No, thank you, ma'am.") but they just don't want to try it. My first demo at my new store was taquitos and popsicles, and I just did queso dip, so it doesn't look good. I mean, who turns down a popsicle or some queso, free? But maybe they just need to get used to me. Since I'll be working 5 days a week in their grocery store, they will. There's already a couple of creepy old people (one with a truly scary wig, which I will talk more about in a later post) who are so used to me they talk to me for hours while I pretend they're invisible.
So anyway, everything is pretty ok. I love my house, I love Jess and Bella, I love talking to Jasper every day or so and seeing or talking to Kathey and Mary every day and doing my job well, so I'm happy. Yayyy! I'll see you tomorrow.

I'm baaaaaaaa-accckkk!

2005-05-23T10:49:00.000-05:00

I finally got my computer set up and started making enough money that we could splurge and get high-speed...Yayy! So here I am, actually making a post. My friend Jasper predicted that now that I have a job and a semi-social life (mostly consisting of sitting on my porch with Jasper, smoking and being jaded) and am occasionally leaving the house for totally non-work-related reasons, that I would not regain interest in the blog or need to be interesting and funny for it, since I know actual humans now with which to converse. Which is ridiculous, because the blog always listens raptly and never interrups me. Or thinks I'm silly, or makes a face when I mention I have a blog. Jasper. No, he's really nice and funny and cool and interesting, none of that is true except the 'oh, I'm kindof embarrased for you' face he made upon hearing about the blog.

Anyway, I'm working more and still have no money for various reasons (most of them sold at Pronto), I'm guardedly optimistic about the future and totally done writing for right now, but I'll see you later.

I laughed so hard I crizzied...

2005-02-28T15:32:00.000-06:00

Please, please, please go here if you'd like to also.

I'm so bad about updating...

2005-02-27T15:12:00.000-06:00

partially due to the fact that this weekend is when I'm bringing my computer up, meaning I haven't had private access to one all this time. As kind and wonderful as my roomate is, it's hard to spend three hours writing a blog entry just before dawn whilst drunk when you're using the computer one foot from her bed. I know, I know, I can use it while she's at work, I've written lots of entries in the middle of the day, but I just haven't felt like it.
So maybe I'll be writing a lot more in the next little bit, but I've somehow gotten another job (beats me--the only time I ever get a job is if I go into the interview with a "who gives a rip? not mee-ee!" attitude) so maybe I won't. In any case, if there are any incredibly cute people out there who read my blog and are knowledgeable and (I may have mentioned, stone cold foxes) and want to teach me how to use a computer effectively and without using the word "thingy" just send me an e-mail and I'll tell you where to bring the beer. I mean, body. I mean, knowledge.

Actually, all ridiculously overreaching joking aside, I've been in a lull lately (the last three years) where I really don't care if I experience bodily closeness with another human being in my entire life. In fact, I recently had to admonish someone for standing in my personal space, and it came out like a date-rape accusation. I guess that's not totally normal. I have these really incredible dreams about cuddling and such, but the idea of actually laying hand on a fellow person either platonically or erotically, kind of makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Somebody make a comment and tell me that's okay, it's normal and everyone feels this way. Never mind. I'll write more tonight after I get drunk. Which I can't, because I'm on antibiotics (huge infection in the left tonsil), so I'll write more tonight after I get tired but can't sleep and am all cranky.

Okay, okay, so I'm not really writing posts....

2005-02-22T15:36:00.000-06:00

but you really couldn't see any new ones for a couple days. It was kind of annoying and then everything got insane for a few days, what with the drinking, and the excessive sleeping, and the watching movies...

I know, I'm a total loser. I'm doing the same thing here as I was doing in my parents' house, to wit: not working enough, spending too much money and drinking too much, and never leaving the house unless forced. I swear by all that's holy I'm going to start going outdoors recreationally if it ever gets warm again (at this point I doubt in a depressive manner that it ever will). Until then, I'm going to lie on the couch and watch movies from my favorite genre (Lovable professional killers. You laugh, you think I'm funny, go to the IMDB and search "Plots" for "professional killer." that's just the tip of the iceberg.) and weep about my total lack of charisma or ability to do anything right. Maybe I'll get back into the swing of writing regularly in the Spring.

Whatever, I'm a puling dope, sorry, I'll be better soon and write more, I'll even forbear making the gloomy comment that it probably won't matter then because I've already lost the interest of whatever sad, lonely people could have had an interest in my dithers and rants, so I'll be back to no one reading me again. No disrespect to my noble readers, I'm just illustrating how gloomy the comment could have been if I'd not forborne making it. Or something. I'll stop now, and start again when I've stopped chanelling Eeyore.

I swear I'm writing. You just can't see the posts.

2005-02-04T10:24:00.000-06:00

I wrote a semi-long post day before yesterday, and it won't show up. I can see it when I'm editing inside Blogger but when I look at the blog from outside it 's nowhere to be found. This makes me tired and bored. I wish I knew more about computers and code so I wouldn't be so helpless. I'm going to go outside and play with the dog. Maybe that will fix it. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Long time, no blog.

2005-02-01T16:58:00.000-06:00

I know I haven't written in a long time, and I feel bad about it. I've been moving back to Austin and mostly when I get near a computer I've just driven two hours and schlepped a good amount of my worldly goods either into or out of a house, so I usually just want to sleep. But now I've got the greater balance of my stuff out of my folks' house and arranged here, and I'm really happy and ready to write. I've even had some good posts in my head and haven't had the energy to put them on till now.

One thing I wanted to talk about before this is how incredibly moving I still find the fact that anyone reads me at all (you all know who you are). I'll lay off posting for a few weeks and get a few e-mails about it, and that's really incredible to me, but even more so is the occasional offhand remark. The first time I brought a load of stuff up, someone came by the house to visit for a minute, and we were talking about all the bizarre weather lately, and I said, "It snowed a foot at my parents' house!" and she said, "I know, that was insane. I liked the pictures you put up." or something similarly familiar and complimentary, and I kind of almost cried a little. So you guys rock. Every time you read this miasma of whatever, every time you think about it or e-mail or mention it or put on a comment (everyone's invited!) I really feel blessed to have such great friends.

The other thing is that I love my new house. I feel all conflicted about leaving my parents (mom was putting on the "My baby is leaving me, and I'll never have another!" show nearly hourly until I moved out the last of my clothes, and now they're talking about moving out of state next month.)...again, and I'm scared about getting back into the swing of Austin and having enough money and being good enough, but I overall love being here and the house is great, and my housemates are great, and I love being back. Yayy! That's all for right now. Scroll down a little farther and look at the snow pictures again. Hey, and thanks.

Pictures of the Christmas snow!

2005-01-05T21:30:00.000-06:00

Holy Christmas...

2004-12-24T23:05:00.000-06:00

So, I woke up today at my regular time and started getting stuff done so I could be at work by 11 instead of noon, since we were going in to work early today, it being the eve and all. And around 10 I started getting my e-mail knocked out preperatory to putting on my uniform. When one of my co-workers calls to find out why I'm an hour late to work. And I was all, "No, it's still an hour till I have to be there." Which turned out to be wrong. Apparently someone told me over two weeks ago that we were all coming in at 9am today, but it never got written down and the schedule that my boss left for me three days ago (a week or so after the alleged "we told you" incident) had my regular noon time on it. Which wouldn't be upsetting, but that's exactly how my last incompetent boss managed to fire me from my last job...by changing the schedule, not telling me or writing it down, and then writing me up on it.

Long story short, I was in a bad mood when I was driving to work this morning. Then it started sleeting. The evil, sadistic weathermen have been threatening us with snow for Christmas, but it never, ever snows here, so, whatever. But sleet, that's right up our alley. So I park in the sleet and start slogging over to the store to go to work, late, for the most annoying demo ever on the ickiest, coldest day of the year. And everyone is going to be harried and trying to find a turkey and pushing me down and kicking me when I offer them some delicious cheese dip. And, I may have mentioned, it was sleeting. The tiniest possible sleets, with razor-sharp needles sticking out of their little spherical evil hearts. Which contain "Kellye-eye-finder" type radar. Did I mention I was in a bad mood?

Then all the precious little teenagers that work at the store start wandering by and going, "OMG, it's snowing! Go look, it's snowing! Yayy!" and I spent about an hour replying, "Have you ever seen snow? I have. Is it still doing what it was doing at ten, with the little razor-radar balls hitting the ground at Mach 2 and bouncing higher than your head? That's not snow. You're an idiot. Have yourself sterilized and then put out your eyes. Merry Christmas!" Then I fell for it and went outside to look. Razor-lazer-radar sleet. Then I did as just above for another hour, then I went outside to look again. Total lack of any precipitation. Then an actual adult, respected and valued co-worker came over and said, "Go look outside, it's really snowing!" and she was really excited, so after making her say it really was really really snowing actual real snow, about six times, I went to look, and it really was.

Drifty, flurry-y real snow, really snowing down on the ground. And it started to stick. And it started to get colder. And now my whole town is gently slumbering under about three inches of snow and I'm starting to worry that Dennis Quaid fell through a glass roof and we're all going to freeze to death in the library, if the wolves don't get us first. Oh, wait, that's The Day After Tomorrow. Yeah, probably in the morning the sun will come out and the snow will melt and by afternoon I'll be wearing shorts and a tank top. Please?

Please, please, Santa...

2004-12-14T23:30:00.000-06:00

bring me this!

Hey, nice rack!

2004-12-09T01:16:00.001-06:00

Meatball sandwich

2004-12-02T13:04:00.000-06:00

So, both our computers bit the big burrito yesterday and have been taken to the Computer Urgent Care center. The only thing they have in common is having been taken to the same Computer Urgent Care center last week, and now neither of them will turn on, and it's very annoying and I'm writing this at the Library. Ick. Not that I don't think it's a wonderful thing for the library to offer internet access, and everyone should use it who doesn't have two perfectly good (till last week) computers at which they can type in their nightgown and no one looks at them funny. Anyway, everything else is okay, except my evil grandma (I have two, one is good and one is evil...okay, mentally ill and unable to control her good-evil axis) had a seisure and went in the hospital and had two more seizures and they're trying to get her put in a home, which is where she has needed to be for the last 20 years. Phil, I'll write you soon, I haven't forgotten about you, just let me get over some of this static. Feel free to write until I do, tho.

Still okay, despite intermittent storms.

2004-11-25T01:07:00.000-06:00

We haven't had more flooding, which is a-okay in my books. We had some high wind last night, which screwed a lot of people's roofs and trees, but not ours. My county ended up having 22 inches of rain this past Sunday, which would have been disruptive for me if my parents didn't always have enough food and bottled water on hand to sustain them for several days, if not a week or two.

Almost everyone at the little farm is okay, though they did have the only tree they've had to plant in the last five years twisted out by the winds last night,and they had one baby goat die and one goat break his leg during the "goat evacuation" Sunday afternoon. The broken-legged goat looks to do okay, though he might loose the bottom half of the broken (back) leg, and the baby goat died after being brought to shelter inside the house shortly after the rains began. If I haven't mentioned it before, the farm is open to donations, and if you e-mail me about it, I'll turn you over to the proprietors' computer-savvy son. He'll help them accept any donation (no matter how small or large--$5 buys enough produce or feed to satisfy any of their animals for a day or more) to subsidize their farm of mini and pygmy animals for petting-zoo and hospice uses. They lost their llamas to the heat (as I think I mentioned in the summer) and aren't planning to adopt more for that reason, but have pygmy goats, miniature donkeys, pygmy cattle (you haven't lived till you've stood next to a brama bull that stands shorter than your shoulder at his head) and several head of abandoned pot-bellied pigs they've adopted, all of which they use for petting zoos for schools and therapy for hospice (the farm mommy is a hospice nurse) and nursing homes. They've also got two (soon to be three!) head of Gigantos (I think is how you spell it?) Donkeys, which look just like regular or miniature donkeys (down to the cross-mark on their back) but whose adult withers stand above my head at 5'2". I love it. Everything at this farm is either smaller or larger than you expect (except their Fallow Deer, which are exactly the right size except one of them is snow white), and it is the perfect therapy for a hard day. You just need to pet a donkey, and you don't even know it. They stood in two-foot high water for three days, and their only reaction when it went down was to rejoice in dry ground!

The next saddest thing after having all your personal possessions ruined by rainwater is being dry but knowing which of your fellow townspeople are home from evacuation shelters by seeing who has a fresh pile of sodden carpet and furniture in front of their house, and guessing how high the water went in their homes by looking at the watermarks on the bookcases. Lots of businesses and homes had water inside, and some people didn't get back to their property until today, when the sun came out and it stopped raining upstream long enough for our creeks and rivers to drain downcountry and uncover the roads. About 3,000 people lost power for 1 to 8 hours, and there was plenty of intermittent power loss from Sunday to Tuesday. My dad's a Cable Technician who worked 13 hours on Sunday, first fixing cable, then after the local answering service lost power, answering emergency calls for electric or phone customers or people who needed evacuation.

Lots of cars got ruined in the engine or interior or both, and Highway 59 was closed for quite a while because people's vehicles (even big trucks) were stalling out whilst driving on it, and having to be towed to safety. In fact, a lot of buildings that got water inside them wouldn't have, except for vehicles driving past too fast on their streets and causing wakes that forced the water over their foundations and thresholds, most of which was caused by townspeople driving past as looky-loos or rescue personnel. That sucks, in case you didn't know. The only thing worse than having to have your stalled car towed to safety is having the tow truck swamp a small business driving too fast on the way to you.

The lucky part is that, being a small rural community near the coast, there were plenty of huge tractors and boats of all descriptions to rescue everyone who needed rescuing, so there were really no casualties. There were lots of Weather Channel videos of the rescues playing on www.weather.com yesterday, but my link from the previous post doesn't go to them now, and I don't know enough about internet stuff to link them independently, but rest assured that huge cultivators whose tires have hubs higher than a man's head were used to rescue flood victims and we had plenty of motor- and air-boats, too. And in case I didn't mention it, our entirely Volunteer Fire Department rocks, and saved everyone who needed it.

Because our town is quartered by 59 and 71, and because everyone who got kicked off 59 had to go up 71 to get back on track, and because I live right on 71 (71 Business or "Mechanic Street" in town), I got to watch most of the boats go back and forth down our street from the point where they pick up the refugees and drop them off for distribution to shelters to the point where they put the boats back in, so I got to see a damn-huge lot of boats. I saw at least 3 Texas Wildlife boats (or three of the same one) and a hell of a lot (or several hells of the same lot) of local Volunteer Fire Station boats from all over the county, and plenty of local volunteer boats. And I wasn't on the porch the whole time, as I was also busy filling our tubs with water for flushing toilets and washing, and locating our kerosene lanterns, so I surely missed many boats. Plus I happened to be on the porch when the National Guard arrived. It wasn't as exciting as you might suppose, given that a number of people I personally knew were homeless and waiting to be evacuated.

And the town already had planned a Community Thanksgiving to accommodate several thousand, since the one last year went off so well. We're going. Last year (no disaster) they had something like 3,000 people in our community of 11,000, and this year they were planning for quite a bit more, which is likely good. Several religious and benevolent organizations are also feeding for free anyone who feels thankful tomorrow, and accepting any donations toward their likely larger audience, which is also very likely going to be useful. We've donated to several just driving around town on errands that got put off till today.

Several even smaller towns near here were totally incapacitated by the flood, with almost total city populations being evacuated and no people being re-admitted to their houses until today. I hate that this had to happen the weekend before Thanksgiving. I really do feel for my local fellow-residents and hope they all come to the Community Thanksgiving Dinner. I hope you're all sending kind thoughts to this general area, as the whole thing pretty much got slammed.

In my own news, I didn't get to work for two days starting Sunday, but I was only scheduled for the one, and I got to make it up yesterday on a scheduled day off, which puts me at a personal even keel. I was really incredibly lucky both in my home staying dry and in losing no real days of work. And since I started drinking mass amounts of beer every time it started raining, I was happy to have a couple days off unexpectedly. I was planning for total evacuation, and hoping to pass off my inebriation as anxiety. It completly backfired Monday evening, in case you were wondering. It started raining at 7pm, stopped at around 10pm and left me totally hungover but committed to a demo at noon on Tuesday. It went great. I do my best customer-interface whilst hanging on to my "Basic Decent Composure" with both hands and one foot.

And, despite my aversion to organized religion, I have got to give props to our local churches who turned out to house the 250+ members of the community who found themselves temporarily(?) de-homed. They rocked (as I've mentioned before). I got a chance to thank some of them, and some of the Red Cross workers, at my job today. The Red Cross workers were at the grocery store to pick up general supplies (mostly donated by the grocery company and local organizations and charities) and required pharmaceuticals for our refugees. Amongst the religious, I only got to thank the local Mennonites, because the Methodists and etc. don't wear a uniform. I think next time I do a demo (this weekend) I'll just thank everyone for pitching in, since I'm as likely to hit an aid-worker as I am a victim, and I think everyone should to be thanked for their composure.

In other news, our area is trying to get declared a disaster area, since you can't get flood insurance very easily when you live below sea-level in a flood plain near the coast (or when everything in your house is demolished by huge, unexpected rainstorms totally unprecedented in your area), but FIMA is saying the total loss isn't a high enough dollar amount. So I'm urging all my neighbors to photo and inventory their huge piles of discarded flood-damaged property and submit them to the total. I know if this community pulls together, we can have ourselves declared a Total Disaster Area and get the government to help us recoup. For possibly the last time ever, if this administration gets its way. This is the worst flood this area has sustained in living memory, and it might be a lot longer than that under the Bushies...ya know?

Anyway, Happy Turkey day, think of something you're thankful for. I'm thankful for not getting flooded out of my house or car, for having a loving family and friends that care about me, for having a job, and for moving back to Austin soon...Even though I know at least one of my friends in Austin had 1-3 inches of water in her home day before yesterday. The only upside is that Arizona and New Mexico got a lot of rain, too, and they actually needed it...

Flood update...

2004-11-22T14:33:00.000-06:00

We're still okay here. Every time the news runs someone else of our family or friends calls to see if we're okay or evacuated or what. It's funny, when the phone rings there's a very good chance it will be someone saying, "I saw El Campo on the news! Are you drowned?" It ended up raining about 18 inches yesterday, or as they said charmingly on The Weather Channel, "About an inch an hour." For what it's worth, you can go here to watch some videos of the flooding. When I was a kid we lived in the part of town the videos mostly show, and there's an older lady in the "Residents forced to flee" report who was our next-door-but-one neighbor back then. It hasn't ever rained this bad in living memory around here. We've had floods before, but this is ridiculous. There were a couple of articles about the whole deal in the Houston Chronicle yesterday and today, but you have to have a subsription to look at their archives, so I guess the cheap bastards won't be getting any additional hits from me.

I wish I'd taken pictures. They closed highway 59 because it was so far underwater cars kept stalling out and having to be towed to safety. Three different churches (including the local Mennonite community, who have enough sense to live on what passes for high ground around here) are sheltering more than 250 people until the water goes down enough for them to get back to their homes, and god knows how many more people are staying with family or friends.

We went out to the mini farm today to try to help, but the water hadn't drained off enough to start cleanup and they'd already assessed what damage they could and made sure all the animals were accounted for, so we made coffee and commisserated. Flooding sucks. In case you didn't know. But, it could have been so much worse. Hell, it still could. Send dry thoughts.

Yayyy! Boats!!!

2004-11-21T10:30:00.000-06:00

So when I woke up this morning at 9, it had rained 16 inches since I went to bed. And I'm not going to work today, because most of town is underwater and my boss figures, probably correctly, that anyone who makes it into the grocery store might be less than concerned about being handed an attractive two-oz. food sample. And we're currently in no danger of being flooded because our house is on relitively high ground and is on two-foot pilings anyway. And it isn't really going to stop raining for at least 36 more hours. So the upside is, that if the water gets up to the front door, beefy firemen in boats will come save me. The other upside is that I get to stay at home all day, knitting and watching the Weather Channel. The downside is that the only book in the house I haven't read is one I snatched off the shelf at the library the other day while there with the kiddo, and it turns out it's a Reconstruction-era wholesome Christian romance novel that takes place in Montana. So it looks like I'm re-reading "Me Talk Pretty One Day" again. Please bear with me if I call you and perform an entire essay. David Sedaris is just so fucking funny.

The saddest thing that has happened to me in days.

2004-11-13T21:21:00.000-06:00

So, the light in the breakroom where I work is on a motion sensor that turns the light off when the room is empty and turns it back on when someone walks in. So I go in there today to eat lunch and I'm sitting on the couch trying to ignore the other six people in there, all eating and vapidly watching Fear Factor. You know, since H.R. 666 went through, requiring that there be an episode of Fear Factor playing on at least one channel in every market at any given time, so that I am always in danger of seeing some dude eat an elephant cock while jumping out of a helicopter with his head in a box of rats. On fire. Or whatever. God, I hate that show.

Anyway, so everyone's watching it and drooling onto their sippy cups and I'm hunched over my food like a guy doing 15-25 upstate for pedophilia, trying to will myself deaf and blind, when suddenly the lights go out. There's 7 people in the room, and the stultifying effects of that damn show convinced the motion detector that the room was empty. Then we all kind of looked back and forth at each other, and the lights came back on, and some chick changed the channel.

Total Bemusement Now Achieved

2004-11-11T16:14:00.000-06:00

I wonder what I should do next. Last night as I drifted off to sleep I had this great idea for (another)ancilliary blog; title, format, skin, content, everything. I remember having the idea and thinking what a phenomenal lot of cool funness it would be, and now I can't remember any of the specifics. Oh, well. Here are some pictures of my cat wearing a tutu:

If you knew her, you'd understand why I've been locking my bedroom door, nights, since I took these. I made the tutu for the munchkin I sit on, but she won't wear it, so I'm reduced to putting it on the cat to satisfy my crafty needs. Maybe I'll send it to Bella, that might be cool. Everybody likes to see a pink pittbull in a tutu.

Still having a hard time with this whole, "Apparently a majority of Americans think that having Duck-face remain our religio-dynastic monarch is a really good idea" thing. I'm thinking of turning to pharmaceuticals to dull my pain, except that would make me a terrorist or something, so I guess I'll just stick to beer. I've been working a lot and haven't really had the time to get it up to blog, but I'll be better soon, I promise. Maybe in the next few days I'll even be able to wind myself up to a huge juggernaut of a linked-up photo-intensive post about all the cool stuff I've been neglecting to mention to you, my adoring public. I could never have done all this without you!

Cuteness Therapy

2004-11-04T01:59:00.000-06:00

I'm so sick and disgusted over the whole election. I'm dissapointed, I'm disillusioned, I'm disgruntled, and I'm totally shocked that I let myself get as hopeful and excited as I did. I totally thought everything was going to be okay, which, as my friends will tell you, is totally unlike me. Anyway, I can't talk about this anymore today, but here's a picture that includes: my mom (awwww!), the munchkin I sit for (awwwwwwwwww!) and a baby miniature donkey (awwwwwwwwwwww!).

Try to enjoy the cuteness, and if you get too upset about the 100% probability that we're all about to be anally raped by the new old regime, put a cold towel on your head and look at the picture again.

P.S. Look how high that kid climbed up on the gate! She's got no fear at all. There were fallow deer on the other side of the fence that she wanted to pet, and she wasn't buying that they were shy. I guess she thought they maybe just couldn't hear her yelling "C'mere, Deeeeeeeeer! C'oh here Wight Now!" for half an hour at the top of her voice. Deer are crazy, I don't know why they wouldn't come to her.

I Did It!

2004-11-02T21:52:00.000-06:00

Did you? Now it's just anxiously awaiting intelligence of whether it even counted. Or rather, whether they counted it. There was a rumor going around in town that if you vote straight Democratic ticket in Texas, your ballot mysteriously counts as a vote for every Democrat except Kerry and that Bush gets your vote for pres, but I doubt that that's really true. Or at least I don't want to think about it if it is. Anyway, I had to vote each section individually because I wanted to make a pretty pattern on the scantron...not really, I really thought about it, and I even read about the candidates and voted my consience. Like I said, now we see if they use the input we citizens so kindly gave them, or just have a kegger at the Skull and Bones and decide by spinning the bottle.

Oh, p.s. my job is great, and everyone is nice, and the second day was better than the first, and I only freaked out a little tiny bit and my boss saved me and rubbed my back.

new posty goodness

2004-10-28T13:33:00.000-05:00

I've done my new job orientation yesterday and I like my boss tolerably well and I start on Monday (with a tiny second orientation on Saturday). I'm working for the company that does those demos for HEB, I'm going to be a demo lady. It pays way better than the truckstop/smokehouse job and I have 5 co-workers instead of 80, one manager instead of 6, and a much higher degree of autonomy. Plus I'll be getting a larger raise sooner if I do a good job and there's several chances for advancement in the next months that would get me more hours, more responsibilty and recognition, and most importantly, higher pay. Our town's new, enormous HEB is opening on Monday, so that's what the orientation of Saturday is about. We get a sneak peek at the new store so we know where everything is on Monday. I'm actually kind of excited about the grand opening, in a sick, corporate kind of way.

Oh, here's photos of Hallowigs:

First of all...

2004-10-24T01:15:00.000-05:00

I got the better job for sure and I start Wednesday, so I'm happy. And I start Wednesday, but I don't work again after that until at least Monday, so I'm thrilled to have All Hallows off. Yayy! Even if this job sucks as much as the one I'm working now (not likely--I love 98% of the people I work with, but the work is too hard for my old body and I hate the customers 79% of the time), I still make $1.50 more an hour! Yayyy!

Anyhoo, I put Hallowig pictures up on the Hallowig-along and I'll be putting finished pictures here, as soon as I take them. In the meantime, click on the Hallowig-along button in the sidebar under "knitting" and "knit-alongs" and it will take you to a page where you can see my current in-progress pictures.

In other news, my friend Kathey (who I've been horribly neglectful of whilst I've been doing work stuff) is having her birthday today (the 24th) and has just bought a house and found a lump in her armpit, so please, please send her your most positive energy for a healthful and happy conclusion to both events (I'm not including her birthday as an event, as she's gotten through those before with no help. You might send her psychic Birthday Love, tho.) She's such a love, if you knew her you'd feel as blessed as I do.

I rock.

2004-10-21T01:23:00.000-05:00

If only I really was a drunken, wastrel pirate with a speech impediment. Then I could truly be happy! I haven't heard about the better job yet but I know I will. I'm excited about it and going to work in the meantime is only as depressing and painful as I let it be. Which is unfortunately pretty damn depressing and painful, but at least I know that the problem is really me. Hee hee.

Tomorrow I'm posting pictures of my Hallowigs to here and the wig-along for everyone to see, but while I was taking pictures of them and getting all fired up and knitting on them some I realized that I somehow skipped three decreases all at the same marker on the black wig. I don't know how many times I have to say it, people. Don't knit drunk, I tell you. In related news, I trimmed my hair the other night. Anyway, picture picture picture, bitch bitch bitch. Thanks for listening.
Good night.

p.s. Kathey, I'm writing you a letter tomorrow also. I would do it tonite but I'm really sleepy and I have tomorrow off, and I'm so excited about getting some good sleep and maybe being in a good mood tomorrow that I have to go do it! Loves ya! Talk to you tomorrow!

I'm in a terrible mood

2004-10-19T01:30:00.000-05:00

and I just want to be left alone. I might hear about getting a better job this week, or I might not. Either way, I had a terrible day today and I'd rather just sleep. G'night.

Goodbye, cruel world

2004-10-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, etcetera, etcetera. I'm really only joking, but it's how I feel today. Plus it would just be so pathetically funny to write your doing-myself-in note on your blog. Just think about it. If somebody told you that they heard someone wrote the final letter on their blog and then really did it, you would laugh and say, "That's sad." Then you would laugh some more.

Thinking further about the title and first line here, I'd like to start a movement to change the official "stereotypical suicidal melodromatic saying" from "goodbye cruel world" to "screw you guys, I'm going home." I think it says more about our current culture and apathy. That's all for today. I thought I got a better job, but they just called to tell me they hired someone else. I hate my job and it sucks and I hate everyone who works there and I smell like barbecue on my day off and I hate everything, so, screw you guys, I'm going home.

Vote or not?

2004-10-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

The crazy guys that started up hotornot.com have got all het up about the election coming up and desperately want you to vote. They don't care who you vote for or why, they just want you to do it, and they want you to do it so bad they'll give you money for it! You can enter a sweepstakes to win two hundred thousand dollars by clicking right here and when you do, I'll be entered to win one hundred thousand dollars for telling you about it, then you can tell some people to enter and when they do you'll be entered to win one hundred thou. It's a win-win. Do it. Doitdoitdoitdoit. Do it. You know you want to vote. You know you want an ass-load of money.