The Center of the Universe: Me

Sigh.... Confessions of a Crafty Wench

2010-06-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

Nothing is really wrong. I mean, except for the usual stuff these days.

George's periodic surprises, demands and constant nagging.

Unemployment and reduced monetary circumstances, the wolf not yet at the door but lurking in the bushes, and fear that makes me stare at canned tuna for five minutes contemplating which brand is actually cheaper.

The bum knee and the fact that the GOOD knee is achey from picking up the slack in a freakin' two story house where whatever I need is always on the wrong floor. The various and sundry aches and pains that flesh is heir to, at least for out of shape, overweight, middle-aged women like me. Lack of health insurance. You know. Normal.

I spent the last few days getting ready for the first street fair I've done in over a year. In my last stretch of unemployment during the summer, I was doing an event of some kind almost every weekend. Then we stopped organizing CRAFT, and I got out of the habit.

I ran around like the proverbial chicken, flapping and squawking, trying to get everything together. Not just trying to finish one more painting, one more box, one more monkey -- I tore the house apart looking for my table skirts -- I packed them up and then forgot where I put them. Had to remember how to load the car with tent, wire walls, tables, paintings, boxes and monkeys -- getting my booth into a compact sedan is like putting together a complex puzzle, there's only one way it all goes in.

Meanwhile all those muscles I haven't used in a while are screaming at the unfairness of it all.

Doing street fairs and festivals is a damned hard way to earn a dollar. Making the stuff is easy. That's the fun part. Hauling your crap out to a field or street corner, putting it all together -- that's a bitch. Fitting it in the car. Guessing at the weather, watching the five-day forecast with bated breath. Dealing with heat that ranges from merely uncomfortable to life-sucking, keeping one eye on that large dark cloud looming in the distance. Fearing gusty winds that threaten to take your tent airborne in an eye blink.

You are trapped in that booth, smiling hopefully at strangers all day. You're afraid to go to the bathroom either because of the porta-potty horror or because you know -- you just KNOW -- that the minute you step away, that's the exact moment someone will want to buy the big-ass painting that you've been dragging around for two years. (Of course, the hotter it is, the less likely it is that you'll even need the bathroom; three bottles of water in two hours and you're already dehydrated.)

I'm whining here, but it's not all bad. At least when I used to do our CRAFT events, I was hanging out with my crafty peeps, and when you've got friends around, it's fun. You get to talk to people and catch up. But in Saturday's event, there was only one peep around, and luckily she was next to me, even though it only happened because the event organizers screwed me.

I arrived at 8:30 and was informed that my booth space -- #86, a prime location! -- had already been "accidentally" given to someone else. They moved me to space #110 -- a crappy space. Not as crappy as some, but still crappy, on a back row that the organizers kept insisting faced a "walk way" -- only nobody walked that way, and I was so close to the stage that my ears rang all day.

Even when you are on the "main street" of an event, getting people to stop and actually walk into your booth is the name of the game. It does no good if everybody in the world walks by your booth unless you can get them to come in and look. Touch, even better. Buy, bingo!

It's not really even about the money, though the money is important. Especially if you've paid a high booth fee; if you don't make at least enough to cover the booth fee, you are basically paying to suffer through a long, hot, boring day. I've actually worked a fair where I spent more money on food and drink that day than I earned. If you're not careful, you might actually buy something from someone else, going further in the hole.

But no, it's not all about the money. For an artist or crafter, money is love. Money is tangible proof that someone really likes what you do enough to pay for it. It's acceptance, it's feeling like you haven't wasted days, weeks, months, years -- hell, a lifetime -- doing something just because you love it.

When someone comes into my booth, looks around briefly and then walks away.... it's a terrible feeling. You try not to take it personally, but sometimes it's hard not to feel rejected. When someone comes into my booth, they are looking at my heart, the very core of my existence, my soul. It is not just what I do, but who I am.

I don't expect everyone to buy something. I empathize too keenly with people on a budget. And with my monkeys, it nearly broke my heart to see a kid Saturday who kept looking at them, obviously wanting one, but his mom said no, wouldn't even really look at them; I wanted to give him a monkey for nothing.

I know what he felt like. I walk into other booths, galleries, stores, and see work I greatly admire. Things that take my breath away, make my heart ache to take them home with me... but my wallet simply won't allow it. All I can tell those fellow artists and crafters is that I love their work. But I also know that my admiration won't pay their rent. Still, it is nice to hear.

Don't think I don't love being told someone likes my stuff. I do, I really do. But it isn't the same as a sweaty wad of folding money. A compliment is like a peck on the cheek, a slap on the back; a purchase is an orgasm.

Saturday was not a total loss, but it wasn't good. I made $163, but nearly half of that was from one friend's purchases and I greatly fear it was a pity buy. Oh, I'm sure she liked what she bought, but she also knows I'm in a bind. Making a sale that way is like a kiss from your mother, or a prom date with your cousin. If you take her purchases out of it, I was working for less than minimum wage, even without overhead costs.

When sales are good, I love doing fairs. When sales are bad, I hate them. Sales validate my existence, make me feel good about myself, my talents. A good event is like bathing in social acceptance, sipping on the nectar of admiration. Saturday, there were few sales, and not even many compliments. Not many bodies even looking. Sigh. All that work and sweat and aching muscles and sore feet for next to nothing. Very little love.

So maybe that's why my mood has swung downward. It began even in the middle of the day, seeing other people stop by on their way to do other fun things, leaving me stuck in my miserable, lonely booth.

I got home, too exhausted to do much other than push the A/C down to sixty degrees and sit in front of the tele. I paid $4.99 to see "Edge of Darkness" and was utterly pissed off that the movie was so freakin' bad. I want to call Mel Gibson personally and tell him he owes me not just that five bucks, but the two hours of my life he wasted.

This morning I felt like hell, and managed to smack my head hard on an open cabinet door, and started sniveling as if the cabinet door had done it on purpose. Suddenly I was in a full blown pity party, all leaky. Crying for everything and for nothing. Made a stupid phone call, annoyed someone and just made myself feel worse.

I went to Jerry's Art-a-Rama (alone) and since i was in the neighborhood, I drove by my old house. It's vacant with a realtor sign in the yard, completely gone to hell. My flower beds are all dug-up and empty, even my rhododendrons gone. The only thing left is the peach tree, but no one has been pruning it, it's just running wild and shapeless. There are trees and vines sprouting from the gutters. I loved that house. It was the first home I ever owned, and seeing it like that just made me feel terribly empty. In my current mood, it was as if the house was a symbol for my life. Gone to hell.

At Jerry's I blew $150 on paint and canvas... and then wondered why in the hell I bothered. In this mood, I am sure no one will ever buy anything I paint ever again. I'll just end up with another stack of paintings and no where to put them, until I practically give them away.

Nothing is really wrong. I'm just down. I will feel better, I know I will.

But for now... I feel really sorry for myself.

For the Record: Hate Mail to Kodak

2010-05-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

Tonight, finally so pissed off at my printer/scanner that I'm afraid my head will explode, I sent this email to Kodak:

I purchased the Kodak ESP 3 All-in-One Printer in December of 2008. I just want you to know that this is, without a doubt, the single most disappointing purchase I've ever made.

Because it was a Kodak product, I didn't bother to go to the store and actually see one in operation. I jumped at the tv offer and bought it because it sounded like a great product.

When it arrived, i was immediately disappointed in the print quality, even using photo quality paper. I thought, well, you get what you pay for, and it was really inexpensive, so I figured I could live with that, as most of what I print are drafts. I could also live with the way it shudders and sounds like a jet taking off when it does print. The fact that it will not accept more than one piece of paper at a time into the feeder -- try to put even two or three sheets in, and it jams -- well, that was annoying too but I figured I could work around it.

Recently, I've had problems with it suddenly "disappearing" and having to unplug it (being told to do this by the printer, you understand) in order for the computer to find it again.

But the single worst thing, and what I'm most mad about is the way I keep being told I am out of ink. I have printed maybe 20 copies on this thing, and have replaced the ink three times. I realize that I don't use it often, so maybe it's just that the ink dries out, but it still makes me very very angry.

I should have just packed the thing back up when i got it, and sent it back. Every time i use it -- or should i say TRY to use it -- it just pisses me off all over again.

As soon as I can afford to replace a printer and scanner, I'll buy a new one -- an HP or Epson this time!!! -- and take this one to the backyard and beat it to death with a sledge hammer. That might give me some satisfaction.

I know there is nothing to be done, and I'm not expecting you to do anything, but I really wanted you to know how much I hate this printer, and how disappointed I am with Kodak.

Where Babies Come From

2010-05-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

Today (or I should say yesterday, because, yet again, it is 2 am and I'm still wide awake) marked a major milestone in my life. Ten years ago, I saw a baby born. Up close and personal.

I'd never seen a real birth before, not even in video; after having seen one, I am fairly certain that I will be content to never see one again.

For the record, I should explain that I have no memory of ever wanting a child of my own. Perhaps in the early days of my precious Baby Boo, having tea parties of Coca-Cola and M&Ms with my mom, I may have imagined myself a mother, but I don't remember it.

I played with dolls, of course, but mainly I was interested in dressing them, arranging their domiciles, planning their adventures. I don't remember ever changing a diaper even in play, though I know I had a doll that wet herself. In retrospect, I can't think of anything more disgusting than a doll that can pee on you.

I first confessed my lack of interest in breeding to my gynecologist. This information got a raised eyebrow and dismissal. Throughout years of painful, heavy periods, I got the same reaction every time I brought up a hysterectomy.

"You're young," the doctors -- first male, then female -- would say. "You don't want to make a decision like that now."

"Yes, I do," I assured them. But they never took me seriously. It would be years before one agreed to remove my baby-making plumbing.

In the beginning, I suppose I simply didn't find children younger than myself very interesting. Then again, I wasn't much exposed to babies. The ones I did come in contact with seemed very dull. They just slept, and cried, and waved little fists in the air. They couldn't hold a crayon, nor could they read Nancy Drew. They didn't get my knock-knock jokes, either. People cooed and prattled about their cuteness, but I just didn't see it. As someone else once quipped, they all looked like Winston Churchill to me.

A neighbor who lived behind us asked me to babysit for the first time when I was fifteen or so. If the baby didn't appeal to me, the money certainly did. It was only when time came to change a diaper that I realized I had no idea how to do it.

I called my mother in a panic. She offered to walk me through it, until I blurted out that the phone wouldn't reach. When she found out I'd left the baby on the changing table in the bedroom, she came running.

The diaper was filled with greenish-brown goo and the most disgusting odor ever to assault my nostrils. I would not babysit again until I was in my mid-twenties, and then only out of desperation.

I spent six months as a pseudo-nanny to a three year old boy. And while I was charmed by some of his antics, I was more exasperated by just how childish a child could be. I could not go to the bathroom alone. He would play contentedly by himself until I picked up a book; then he turned into a little dictator, demanding this, that and the other.

By the time his father came home at 5:30, I was exhausted. I could not imagine how anyone could deal with a child 24/7 -- or why in the hell they would want to.

I realized that I was far too selfish to ever raise a child without the application of serious drugs or duct tape. I suspected neither method was approved by Dr. Spock. Child-rearing for me would probably involve social workers and possible jail time.

And to all of my friends who have reproduced, I confess: I suffered through every one of your endless baby showers. Only peer pressure and the promise of cake compelled my reluctant attendance. Baby pictures made me wince, trying to come up with something nice to say that wouldn't betray my complete indifference. When coworkers brought their babies to work, and everyone would crowd around, clamoring for their turn to hold the bundle of joy -- I would hide.

One of the worst fights I ever had with my ex exploded out of his refusal to attend a co-ed baby shower. "You go," he said. "You women eat that stuff up."

I wasn't angry that he refused to go with me. I was furious at his assumption that my possession of ovaries would draw me inexorably to events involving the gifting of gruesome things like Diaper Genies and breast pumps.

Life experience was also teaching me that what little maternal instinct I possessed would be used up in raising the men in my life.

Don't think that I don't respect parenting. My time as a nanny gave me a deep respect for the self-sacrifice and challenges of child-rearing. I just didn't want to be personally involved.

I witnessed the lives of friends completely devoured by the arrival of tiny, squalling and usually damp little creatures with a voracious appetite for time and attention. Their once-stimulating conversation was suddenly reduced to an endless string of baby-talk, the complaints of sleep deprivation interspersed with tales of their child's latest display of brilliance. Children were friendship-killers.

Neither do I dislike all children. But I look at them as I would any adult. I like some and loathe others. I believe restaurants should provide no-children sections. Call me heartless and inhuman, but I simply do not enjoy spending money on meals eaten with a small stranger hanging over the back of the booth opposite me.

When a close friend -- who'll remain nameless lest what I'm about to say embarrass her -- became pregnant for the first time, I experienced the first twinges of interest in the process. This was inspired by the depth of my love for her, and the idea that I could indulge whatever maternal impulses I might harbor in someone else's offspring. I could enjoy the bright spots, then hand the kid back over to their parents before I started looking for the duct tape.

I missed the first delivery because of distance. On the second, I was in attendance.

I approached it with no small amount of trepidation. My perception of child-birth was formed by "Gone With the Wind." All I could picture was Melanie's desperate, sweat-drenched and moaning ordeal that looked like hell on a bad day. I would have rather faced the entire Union army than go through that myself.

It was unnerving to stand around a friend with her legs spread and private parts on display. It was a tad more intimate than I wanted to be, especially in the presence of her mother, brother and husband. It was just weird.

I was surprised at how little pain she seemed to experience. Apparently something called an "epidermal" worked miracles. There was none of the screaming and profanity I expected. Just some sweating and grunting. The aptness of the term "labor" was clear.

Then, abruptly, a smooth, fleshy spot appeared between her splayed legs. I watched in a mixture of amazement and horror as a small human HEAD came into view.

Oh, my God, I thought. There's a person coming out of her. A very small person, but a person none-the-less, smeared with what looked like a combination of blood and vaseline.

A tiny arm popped out, and I could only think of "Aliens."

It was both the most amazing and disgusting thing I've ever witnessed. Both awe-inspiring and slightly grotesque.

All I could do was stare, mouth gaping like a village idiot, as another human being joined the world. It was like a magic trick, and I could not figure out how it was possible. David Copperfield had nothing on my friend. How could a woman push another living being into creation? How could there be nothing but a swollen belly and hairy cleft one moment, and a whole person the next?

That person is named Emily. Yesterday she turned 10. She's grown into an interesting little human, charmingly imperious at times, utterly confident as she strides through the world. I see both her parents -- people I love as I love few people -- in her features and her character. I am enormously interested in watching her grow.

Emily has two brothers, and they too hold an appeal that no other children can claim on my heart.

But Emily, to me, is the most special child in all the known world. I saw her come into this world. I was there the day she was born. I wouldn't trade that for anything....

But I am still glad I chose not to have my own. There's not enough duct tape in the world.

Attack of the Ninja Kitty

2010-05-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

Last night, i made a terrible mistake. I half-woke and in the drowsy roll-over, my hand landed on Doolittle, sleeping as he often does right up against my left hip. I gave him an affectionate pat or two.....

Not realizing that, in my stupor, I had broken the cardinal rule of our cease-fire: i touched his belly.

He nipped my hand, and i moved to pat his head, murmuring an apology in a sugar voice. But no... that was not good enough. He went into full attack mode.

I'm not exaggerating. If i hadn't been wearing my wrist braces, he would have severed an artery. instead, i felt his teeth trying to gnaw thru it, then moving up to my elbow for tender meat.

I pushed him away, yelping "ow" which I thought by now he realized was the human equivalent of saying "Uncle." Or begging for mercy.

Faster than light, he was back on my arm, this time more violently, claws digging in. This time I pushed him hard, nearly knocking him of the bed, yelling "QUIT IT!"

Doo leapt at my HEAD. Only a lucky block by my right arm kept him from biting my nose. I kid you not, every so often he acts like he's freakin' rabid and wants to rip my heart out.

I ducked under the covers, careful to tuck arms and hands under as well, and played dead.

For a moment, he just stood on my chest, sniffing at the sheet, as if thinking, "Where did she go? What's this whimpering lump? Should I bite it?"

Finally he meowed loudly -- triumphantly perhaps -- and jumped off the bed, retreating to the guest bed, which he considers his anyway. Hell, he considers everything his....

He's a bad, bad kitty. Sometimes he downright scares me. I don't know if I should call it Ninja Kitty or just plain Psycho Kitty.

Wisteria, Nostalgia and Pain

2010-05-17T00:44:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Several years ago, Rex and I took a trip to New Orleans. It was the best vacation I've ever had- well, the besides the time my parents took me to Disney World as an eight year old. (And really, when you are eight, can anything compete with Disney World? I don't think so.)

It was the year before Katrina, and the city was simply... enchanting. Not enchanting like Disney, mind you, where you know that everything is a carefully calculated fake. New Orleans doesn't try so hard to sell itself. She's a classy vintage brothel, not a modern-day street walker. She doesn't stagger over to your car and push herself against the window, with vulgar offers; No, New Orleans whispers, "Come in if you want, sugar. Stay a spell." It was as if the city itself put an arm around me, drew me close and handed me a drink.

New Orleans isn't picture perfect in that plastic-shiny way of most tourist destinations in the US, by any means. The streets are a little grimy -- but in a picturesque way. New Orleans is a little like an aging old lady, a grand dame whose got a little mud on the hem of her skirt, and her lipstick may be a little smeared, but she's still one hell of a great gal.

NOLA really is a special place where people still live amid its history, where around every corner you find yourself just staring at some bit of architecture that still has a distinct personality. That's something hard to come by in these days of cookie-cutter strip malls. What's special about New Orleans is that .... well, it's New Orleans.

Maybe our visit was helped by the fact that we arrived the week after Mardi Gras, when most of the tourists had gone home and everybody seemed to be breathing a huge sigh of relief in a post-blowout afterglow. The people we met made us feel like tourists were not merely tolerated for the sake of the money in our pocket books, but welcome just for hospitality's sake.

We set aside one night for a special meal, the kind of "throw-away-the- budget-and-don't -even-look-at-the-price-tag" extravagance that life requires from time to time. I had researched all the options carefully before the trip, and settled on The Court of Two Sisters.

I watch enough Anthony Bourdain to know that the most famous of a city's restaurants, the one who whistles loudest at the tourists, are most often not the best food in town. Hell, I know this from living in my home town of Savannah, where tourists are always directed toward the Pirate's House -- an interesting place, to be sure, but not often frequented by the locals who know better. For years, the best food in Savannah was at Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House, which for most of its history didn't even have a sign out front. You just knew where it was, and looked for the people lining up outside at lunch time. (I have no opinion at all on the newest tourist mecca in Savannah, Paula Deen's "Mother and Sons" -- i haven't been there. When I go home, I'm too busy eating my mom's cooking, and shoving Spanky's chicken fingers into my face.)

I'm not knocking the Court's food -- in truth, i don't even remember what I ate. I vaguely remember it being reasonably good, but the food was hardly the point.

Flash back to many years before. I was sixteen, dragged across country from Los Angeles to Savannah with my family in what has become known as the Great Yandell Vacation from Hell. Yes, we drove. At some point in the navigation, my mother -- from whom I have inherited the travel bug and food fetish -- insisted that we should detour from Memphis (had to go to Memphis, to visit Graceland) down to New Orleans. After the first 2,000 miles, does another five hundred really matter?

We trotted through New Orleans -- we had limited time -- and when it was time for dinner, my mother headed to the gated courtyard of some restaurant in the French Quarter. We could see nothing at all beyond the iron bars of the gate, only the elegant menus posted on the courtyard wall.

My father took one look at the french words on the menu and balked. If there was no hamburger steak on the menu, he wasn't having any of it.

We ate at Howard Johnson's instead.

I have always suspected this was the real reason my parents divorced.

I have no idea if the Court of the Two Sisters was the same courtyard restaurant that my mother had been denied years before, but I was damned sure it was an acceptable substitute.

It was magical. We arrived just as the sun was setting, and we were seated in the enormous courtyard, under the riotous blossoms of wisteria, obviously still celebrating Mardi Gras, sprinkling lavender petals like confetti across the cobblestones.

I have always loved wisteria, but never had I seen anything so freakin HUGE. The base was a mash of dozens of thick trunks, the whole mass as big as the trunk of a giant oak. The creeping foliage covered the entire courtyard in a lush jungle of green and lavender. The vines were like the British Empire under Victoria, spreading everywhere as insidiously as small pox.

It got even better as the sky dimmed to a pale indigo. The wisteria was entwined with thousands of white lights that suddenly twinkled to life.

I came home -- reluctantly -- with a dream. I would build an arbor in my backyard. I would plant a wisteria vine. I would nurture it, pamper it, coax it into glory like the Court of Two Sisters.

With only a little arm-twisting, Rex helped me build the arbor. (Okay, I assisted. I mostly handed him tools, and i did do all the staining.) I went to Home Depot and got the biggest wisteria they had. I planted it in the light of the full moon, dancing naked and chanting around it for good luck. (Luckily for me, the arbor is inside a privacy fence.)

It seemed to grow well, and then winter came. I watched anxiously as it lost all its leaves and became just a few gnarled brown twigs. When spring strolled around, I held my breath, waiting to see if my beloved had indeed survived a Tennessee winter.

Lo and behold.... it sprung green once more. It grew and grew.... but it did not blossom. Imagine my dismay to research wisteria online and find that they may take anywhere from five to ten years to bloom. If ever.

I've been praying and crossing my fingers for six (?) years now, and while the wisteria continues to grow like gangbusters, it has not yet bloomed. I'm still hopeful.

It has grown so well it's begun to invade a nearby tree. For a year or two, I pulled the invading vines out of the tree, coaxing the tendrils back into the arbor. Then for another few years, I decided, to hell with it. If it wants to take the tree, I don't care. The tree is ugly anyway. Let the wisteria run free! Let it run rampant over the whole neighborhood! Run, wisteria, run!

But alas, the storms of the last week knocked a large bastard of a branch out of the tree and onto the arbor. A branch of nearly four inches diameter managed to wedge itself into the slats of the roof, and no amount of pulling and pushing would free it.

So, i spent this afternoon perched precariously on a ladder, with telescoping branch cutters, hacking at both the tree and my beloved wisteria until I was able to free the wretched branch.

I know my beloved will recover, and probably needed the pruning, but it still hurt my heart to cut any of it. Not to mention the pain of my upper arms, which I will probably not be able to lift tomorrow.

Now, if i can just find a lumberjack who'll trade taking down that damned tree for monkees, paintings or sexual favors.

Detroit, Canada and the Crash

2010-05-17T00:42:00.001-07:00

Written April 14, 2010

Note: It's been five days without a cigarette, and this is the first time I've tried to write anything. When I write, I chain smoke, so this is killing me. All I can think of is "I would drown kittens for a cigarette."

THURSDAY NIGHT:
When we stopped in Louisville, KY on the first night, we fell in love... with a hotel. Our room, specifically, at the Hyatt Place hotel. It's not that I haven't stayed in nice hotels before, but never one so brand-spanking new, with a radically different layout from the common hotel room, which is basically one/two beds across from a desk and a... oh, hell, you know exactly what I mean because they all look pretty much alike.

This was so clean, sleek and modern in design, yet comfortable. I mean, I took my first photos of the hotel room, for heaven's sake. Because of the way it was designed, with a wide open floor plan, it seemed gigantic. The beds were fabulously comfy.

I could live happily in that hotel suite. It's all the space I really need. I could use another bookshelf, and maybe a larger desk, but that's about it. As I closed the door one last time and went to checkout, I whispered: "I will always love you...."

FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY MORNING:
Detroit went okay, though in reality we never actually got to Detroit. Having spent 12 miserable days in the Motor City back in December 2000, I counted it a small loss. Rex's conference was actually in Romulus.

The hotel had apparently gone through a recent sale and was now called the Metropolis or Metropolitan, some unfamiliar name on a vinyl sign that struck fear in hearts when we first saw it in what looked like the middle of nothing but airport car parks. The hotel "restaurant" was really a bar that served nothing but bar-food in front of wide-screen tvs playing sports. Food nearby was in such short supply we actually ate two meals in the same restaurant... and the other two meals in another restaurant.

One was a decent local Italian place, the other a diner called "Coney Island," where we experienced the Detroit version of the chili dog, which, strangely, has a layer of ground beef on the bottom. This is referred to as "loose" as in: "Give me one loose," while a standard chili dog is referred to as "one-up." I have no idea why. But Yankees have many strange and unfamiliar customs. (And why do people find it weird that I put ketchup on hot dogs?)

The waitress, bless her, slipped me a cigarette when my jailers weren't looking. When we returned for the great breakfast special on Sunday morning, her daughter waited on us. I did not, however, try to hit her up for a smoke. I hit up a smoking fellow customer. Can you believe it? There's STILL a smoking section in a restaurant?)

And yes, food is the focal point of my life, so why should a trip being any different? Of course, I'm now sick to death of fast food. But I digress.

The hotel, of course, did not measure up to our previous love affair. While the beds were nice, it took three calls and one annoyed visit to the front desk to get more towels. This place also had the most freakishly small elevators I've ever seen.

I mention the beds because sleep is the second most important aspect of my life. And while I adore Rex, and he's the best bed companion ever (now that he has a CPAP) -- an excellent cuddler, but not smothering, prone to an affectionate pat or rub or kiss if you should stir in the middle of the night -- the double bed was annoying. i am accustomed to having a queen all to myself most of the time. It wouldn't be so bad if you could detach an arm.

Sunday afternoon, it was onward to Canada. We excitedly oohed and ahhed over the enormous stretch of Lake Erie (a really great lake!) as stupidly as any other yokel tourist. Having been raised on the coast, I'm used to see great expanses of water, but never at the edge of a city full of high rises, never without a beach.

When we saw a lighthouse on the shore of Lake Erie, we desperately wanted to take a photo. Rex is, after all, a professional photographer. But to our dismay, the lighthouse was on the Coast Guard base, behind a locked fence. Patti brazenly pressed the button of the call box and asked if we could come in. To our surprise, they said they would send someone to escort us.

The female officer was polite but seemed completely ignorant of everything except the pair of geese on the path to the lighthouse. She urged us to veer away from the increasingly agitated male honking at us, and the sleeping female on her nest a few feet away.

But she didn't know what the little round building about a half mile out on the lake was, nor did she know when they stopped using the lighthouse. No, she wasn't sure if the gigantic ship with missile launchers around the bend was an actual Navy vessel still in use. She didn't even know that name or location of any kind of restaurant in the area. We took our pictures and trudged back to the car.

I suppose I should mention this was my first experience with a GPS. It is an astonishing device -- and while i understand how it operates, it is still both amazing and eerie how it always knew exactly where we were, directing turns at just the right moment.

The GPS is, however, downright annoying at times. In the middle of a conversation, "she" butts in with instructions to continue down the road you've been on for fifty miles and will remain on for the next sixty. I have named the GPS after my mother; she knows exactly where you should go, she is always right, and when you get it wrong, she just keeps telling you to make a u-turn until you finally get it right.

The road we took was plagued by construction, and even with the GPS, we kept making turns that led us down into nerve-wracking cattle-shoots of concrete and orange barrels, only to end up going the wrong way, with the GPS constantly telling us to make a U-turn. We could see the gates of the border up ahead, so tantalizingly close and yet so apparently inaccessible. Our laughter teetered on the edges of hysteria.

Finally we see a sign that says: "Follow signs not GPS." Oh, now you tell us.

And there it was: CANADA.

What is about being faced by people in uniform that makes even the most innocent person feel like a criminal? "Where have you come from? Where are you going? For what purpose? How long are you staying? Are you carrying any drugs, firearms, farm animals or firewood?"

They asked us to open the trunk. I can only imagine that the officer took one look at the jam-packed mass of suitcases, tote bags, camera bags and cosmetic cases crammed into ever possible inch of space and thought to himself: "Oh, fuck it. I'm not to move all this stuff. Let them smuggle a few logs into Canada, I don't care."

I was crushed to learn that they do not stamp your passport unless you come into the country by plane. I still have a virgin passport, untouched by any official proof that I have, indeed, left American soil.

Almost sunset, we arrived at Niagra Falls. And my mouth fell open.

It was the most God-awful rabbit-warren of neon crassness since Gatlinburg. It was, in many ways, indistinguishable from Gatlinburg, or any other over-crowded, plastic toy town aimed at sucking the wallets of bleary-eyed tourists. It even boasts a Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not.

What on earth is the point of traveling to another town, let alone another country, to find yourself parking behind a Dave and Buster's, across the street from a Hard Rock Cafe? Everywhere I looked, I saw the same chain names I left in Nashville. The only non-chain establishment we saw as a closed restaurant.

We made our way down the walkway to the Falls. There it was.... the Mighty Niagra.

And it was totally underwhelming.

I don't mean to dis the falls. They are perfectly nice falls, bigger than any I've ever seen in person. Maybe it was the towering mass of casinos and hotels we'd just passed through that made it seem smaller than I'd imagined, the glare of neon that made it seem dim and ordinary. Leave it to humans to surround a natural wonder with crap and ruin the whole damned thing.

We were going to go to our hotel and come back in the morning, but decided it really wasn't worth it. That was our first mistake.

Canada was, well...not that different really. Mainly it was flat. Flat, flat and more flat. Nothing but far-flung farms, and yet not a single cow or horse in sight. Yet minor differences made it seem like we'd traveled through some vortex to a parallel universe. Flag poles sported the big red maple leaf, not the Stars and Stripes. Road signs were amusingly unfamiliar: "Fatigue kills. Take a break." Kilometers, not miles, on speed markers ("Maximum Speed: 100 km.") Gasoline prices of 94.9 shocking, until you remember they are talking liters. Signs in both English and French.

(No Spanish anywhere. Not a Hispanic person, either. We wondered who did the yard work. A dearth of Mexican and Chinese restaurants. We saw no black people. Only one possible Indian woman at the A&W. Not even in Detroit. I mean, Romulus.)

Funniest t-shirt spotted: "What is a Canadian? An unarmed American with health care."

Oddest food difference: something called "poutine" on the menu of an A&W stand. French fries, cheese and gravy. Um... okay.

Another hotel, on yet another shore of a Great Lake -- still Lake Erie. Always Lake Erie. Miles and miles of Lake Erie. We're not sure, but we think that our hotel was the only one on the Grand Island. We arrived in the dark, weaving down a twisting road of residential lake houses, wondering if the GPS was screwing with us. At one point we got sidetracked down a dead end under a bridge. It looked just like one of those places where the Law and Order detectives pull bloated bodies from the river.

The hotel was nice, a convention center, but the beds were hard... Thanks to the Netbook, Rex and Patti managed to keep swashbuckling on the high seas. I collected a few rents in My Town.

MONDAY MORNING:
The hotel offers no breakfast, so we are on the road again, looking for someplace to eat. We detour through a little town in New York called Hamburg. This is our second mistake.

Working our way down a two lane of lovely homes, we realize we are still finding nothing to eat, and attempt to turn around.

We are sitting there, fully stopped, and the SUV behind us (that has already honked rudely at us for driving too slow) also comes to a full stop behind us. The blinker tick..tick...ticks as we wait for traffic to pass.

Then the loud screeching of rubber, the involuntary cringe of wondering what terrible thing has happened behind us, but a split second of thinking we are well ahead of it. And then... WHAM. The horrible crunch of metal, the violent jerk forward and back, the car moving forward without our permission. I hear Rex first, then Patti, say, "F*ck!"

I am first aware that my head has hit the back of the seat. It hurts. I reach back instinctively, and am relieved to find no blood or hunks of hair. My back feels wrenched somehow.

We get out of the car. Patti looks at the rear of the first new car she has ever owned, not even a year old, and I know she wants to cry.

The two women inside the SUV are sitting still stunned. One of them begins to cry.

Then we see the cause of it all, a POS brownish-red pickup, the hood completely smashed with something running out if it. For a moment I worry that it might be gas, but it is only water from the radiator.

The police and two fire trucks are there quickly. Even the mayor of Hamburg responds to the call. A three-car crash is apparently a major event in this sleepy little hamlet.

I immediately fish in my purse for the single forbidden cigarette I've smuggled out of Detroit. I no longer care if Rex sees me smoking. I've waited two days, and I've had no coffee, no breakfast, and by God, I want that cigarette.

There are words with the women in the SUV, who still have not moved. The driver insists that she did not hit us. Patti informs her angrily that she did, having been pushed forward by the truck behind her. The crying woman is becoming hysterical, rubbing at her neck.

The paramedics end up taking both the women out on boards. Rex disagrees politely but firmly with one of the paramedics that no, we do not want to go to the hospital, but no, we will not sign anything.

The paramedic comes to me, questions me, takes my pulse. We find out we have the same birthday.

The police are questioning two witnesses. I need to pee, and trudge behind the nursery we're blocking to ask the owner if I can use his bathroom. He kindly obliges.

Traffic is being directly around us, lights are flashing, police and firemen and paramedics milling around, talking. It is a circus. I ask one of the officers directing traffic if he has a cigarette. He does not, but tells me to go ask the Chief, who does smoke. Rex hears me and tells me not to do it; I have a mini-temper tantrum-meltdown.

Finally everyone is gone but us, one cop -- Officer T. Brooks -- and the thirty-something construction worker who ruined our day. The crash-causing bastard is nice and easy until the police officer tells him he is being cited the accident, and held 100 percent at fault.

"How do you know it was my fault?" he asks, a little angrily. "You haven't even talked to me yet."

"We've got two witnesses who both said you caused the wreck," T. Brooks explains.

"But you didn't ask me what happened!"

"You're not exactly objective," T. Brooks says. He then tells Mr. Bastard that he will, in all likely hood be sued by the women in the SUV.

Finally beginning to calm down and regain ourselves, Patti, Rex and I realize that it could have been so much worse. We could have been seriously hurt, or pushed into the path of an oncoming vehicle; the car could have been damaged more, rendered undriveable and leaving us stranded in New York State.

Finally... we find breakfast. Three Grand Slams at Denny's. I defiantly eat pancakes.

More driving... another hotel. That night we go to a place called Mimi's Cafe -- a chain, but still rather good -- for dinner. We are ignored by the wait staff until someone tracks down our waitress, who apologizes profusely for the mixup.

Our meal is very nice, and we have completely forgiven our waitress who turns out to be excellent, but as a final apology she brings us four complimentary HUGE muffins. We leave her a nice tip.

And more driving... driving... driving.....

Not much more to say. I'm sore, headachey, sick of the car, sick of eating, glad to see my cat and eager to get to my own bed.

Conversations with a Ninja Kitty

2010-05-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

I often think that if i could have one wish, it would be to be able to have a real conversation with my cat, Doolittle. I think it might go something like this:

Me: Hey, Doo.
Doo: (blink)
Me: Doo.... Doo-kitty....
Doo: (licking paw)
Me: DOO!
Doo: me heared you, momma-woman.
Me: Then why do you make me call you three times?
Doo: Me a cat.
Me: You do understand that I own you, right?
Doo: Oh, be serious.
Me: Come on, I put a roof over your head, I brush you, feed you --
Doo: Yick. day affer day, same dry crunchy stuff.
Me: But you gobble enough for three cats! You're telling me you don't like it?
Doo: It look like gerbil doo-doo.
Me: Do you like the canned stuff?
Doo: (blink)
Me: Come on, you practically knock me down the minute I open that cabinet....
Doo: it not bad. Not swkewrl, but not yick.
Me: Then why don't you eat it?
Doo: Me prefer to lick it.
Me: It's expensive, that stuff in the can.
Doo: Don't look at me, human. Me got no money. No pockets.
Me: I ought to make you get a job, but no one would hire a cat.
Doo: Me could be kitty porn star.
Me: Yeah, right. You don't even have any balls.
Doo: That's sumthing me would like to talk to YOU about — (hard stare)
Me: Hey, I didn't do that. You were fixed when I took you in.
Doo: And you wunder why i got attitude.
Me: I see your point.
Doo: And why you so stingy with YOUR food, huh?
Me: I try to give you something, you sniff at it like I'm trying to poison you!
Doo: You try to give me weird stuff. You nebber let me lick steak.
Me: That's not true. I give you a slice of your own to lick.
Doo: Your piece more juicy.
Me: And while we're on the subject of food, keep your face out of my cereal bowl.
Doo: Me like the milk.
Me: I thought cats were lactose intolerant.
Doo: What stoopid human told you dat?
Me: The vet.
Doo: Oh, like he know. He same basturd that took me balls.
Me: It was for your own good. You can't be wondering the streets knocking up every strange pussy in the neighborhood.
Doo: You nebber let me go out! Me cat. Me like to go outside.
Me: Why? Don't I give you everything you need?
Doo: Me don go outside, me can no eat grass. If me can eat no grass, me cant barf on carpet.
Me: That's not exactly a motivation for me.
Doo: This serious. Part of me duty as cat. Let me go outside. Pleaz. Union fine me for not barfing enuff.
Me: Cats have a union?
Doo: Crap. Dat secret. Not suppose to tell you.
Me: I don't believe you have a union. That's ridiculous.
Doo: How you think we catz got such a kooshy job?
Me: Okay, that actually makes sense—
Doo: Let me go outside. Pleaz. Me want a skwerl.
Me: It's dangerous for you outside, stupid cat!
Doo: Naw. Me got ninja skillz. Besidez, me big cat. Nobody mess wid me.
Me: The vet says you're too fat.
Doo: That guy again. (eye roll) Me just big-boned.
Me: Come on, when you lay in my lap, my legs go to sleep.
Doo: You could lose a few pounz yourself.
Me: Hey, I'm trying—
Doo: Dat why you sit in big chair all day, staring at dat big box?
Me: I'm not just watching tv. I'm always working on something.
Doo: You jus playing with silly socks.
Me: Those silly socks help buy your food right now. I'm unemployed, in case you haven't noticed that I'm staying home all day.
Doo: Ohhh. Me thought you just wanted nap. Me was proud of you. You sleepin almost much as me now.
Me: How can you sleep so much?
Doo: Me savin strength for ninja attack.
Me: What is it with you and the bare ankles?
Doo: Dey taste good. Besides, it fun fer me. No fun fer you?
Me: I wouldn't scream when you do it, if i thought it was fun.
Doo: Ohhh. Me get it now.
Me: So you'll stop it?
Doo: No. It still fun fer me.
Me: Stop it, I'm serious.
Doo: Den give me mouse to chase.
Me: I give you catnip toys.
Doo: Pfft. They no run. Me cant chase.
Me: What about the one on the stick? I waggle it in front of you, you just look at it.
Doo: Me know it just you wigglin stick. Me not stoopid.
Me: Right. That's why your english is so terrible. It's embarrassing. Bubba Cat speaks much better English.
Doo: Hey, English hard. Too many words. Cat talk easier. Only one word. Meow. Mean everything depending on how you say it.
Me: Okay, then, could you at least stop rubbing yourself all over my face? You get hair in my mouth.
Doo: Me got no choice! You wont lick me! Me cant lick own face!
Me: Humans don't lick each other.
Doo: Dat not true. Me see you licking dat Rex-man.
Me: That's another thing. Stop watching us.
Doo: No. It too entertaining. Make me laugh.

Why I'm a Cyber-Farmer

2010-05-17T00:38:00.002-07:00

It has come to my attention that some people find the games on FB annoying. "I don't care if you just bought a dairy barn... or lost a cow.... or adopted a bandicoot," they say. "Stop sending me fig trees and quiche. I'm not playing!"

I can certainly understand that. I've never been a computer gamer. I mean, if you don't count Free Cell, 'cause honestly, is there anyone with a computer who hasn't played Free Cell or some other form of Solitaire? I've had friends virtually lost in World of Warcraft and the like, and I always felt a little sorry for them. Poor slobs, bless their hearts. Get a life.

Then at a party one night, I heard two friends talking animatedly about crops and barns, and I knew they weren't farmers. WTF?

"Farm Town," they told me. "On Facebook. It's a game."

"A game?" I asked, incredulous. "About... farming? You're kidding. Seriously?" Snicker.

Out of curiosity, I took a look the next time i logged into FB. It looked... interesting.

What could it hurt? I would just try it. Just to see what it was like. All my friends, it seemed, were doing it.

It seemed harmless enough. Someone sent me a sheep. It was so cute, so adorable. It went "baaaaaahhhh" and walked around. And you can't just have one sheep, it would get lonely, wouldn't it? If you got a few sheep, you might as well have a cow. Ooh, and a chicken!

When the pig fell over and went to sleep, snoring softly, I was utterly charmed. "Gotta have a pig," I thought. "Maybe three or four."

As my farm filled up with crops and animals and buildings, the lust for more land grew. I had to expand! More land! More crops! More cows!

My carpel tunnel began to flare up from nights spent clicking, clicking, clicking. I walked through the produce section at Kroger and felt the strangest urge to click on the piles of corn, as if I could harvest them. I would drive down the road, see a field and think, "I'd put a tree right there."

Still, I thought, "I can stop any time."

Then one night, it was three a.m. and I was actually contemplating buying more coins with a credit card because I really, really, really wanted that mansion and I was a mere thousand experience points from Level 32.

One night, I left my boyfriend in bed so I could go harvest my crops. That should have been a warning sign.

I did the math to figure out which crops had the best payoff to growing time ratio -- and I haven't voluntarily done math in more than 25 years.

When the game went down the night I had an entire crop of pineapples (the biggest money crop at the time) coming in, I hyperventilated, banged my fists on the computer and finally sobbed in frustration. When the game came back up in time to harvest, I experienced something akin to the ecstasy of Old Testament saints.

That's when I realized I had a problem. I needed an intervention. But not until I got to the next level.

And just when I thought I had mastered the game -- I had the biggest farm possible, and the mansion, and all the other neat stuff and animals -- the bastards added new stuff and new levels. Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.

I've tried other farming games, but I love Farm Town the best. It's the most interactive because you can work harvesting for other farmers, too; of course, that's also the most damnably addicting aspect as well, because you could work Farm Town literally around the clock if you had enough coffee. (In Farmville, the graphics are higher quality, but once you plant your crops, all you can do is wait for them to mature.)

In Farm Town, you go to the "marketplace" (which is really a chat room) and try to get a job. Or you just hang out and whine about how long you've been stuck at Level 24, or how you're scared of the big mutant turkeys that are twice the size of the horses.

If you see someone with a really big farm, and a crop of say, pineapples, almost ready to harvest, you chat them up, ask them to be your neighbor, negotiate trades. But it's not all about the game, you actually talk to other living beings. I've made friends (of a sort) in Australia, Canada, California, England.... seriously. We visit each other's farms, admiring new acquisitions. "Ooh... how'd you make that waterfall?" (There's actually a tutorial on You Tube.)

I even reconnected with friends from high school and college. It was kinda funny that I would be trading harvests with the former football player I was afraid to talk to in high school.

But what I love most about Farm Town is the chance to play God. To create a world in which I have complete and total control. "I will put a pond here... and the meadow here. This looks like a good spot for a windmill." I build orchards and fields, plant elaborate gardens and hedges and entire rivers. True, it takes a bit more than seven days, but what the hell. I have the time.

It appeals to the artist in me, and the apparent completion compulsion I didn't know I had. In real life, I am out of work and broke, but in the cyber world, I am billionaire farming tycoon, living in a mansion amid gently rolling hills and valleys. Life is good.

Unlike life, the rules of the game are clear. You do the work, you get the rewards. You know where you are and how you're doing because you have coins, and points, and levels.

I've dallied with other games: Sorority Life (a horrible, horrible game built on shameless material acquisition with an inordinate amount of face-slapping) and Mafia Wars, but I much prefer the building games. In Cafe World, you build a little diner -- though I am more about decorating the restaurant than cooking the food. I've started and abandoned some games --- such as Social City -- because they are so ridiculously slow.

My current obsession? My Town. Again, I'm building my own little world. And I like it there. I like it a lot.

So don't judge me too harshly when I post about my new amphitheater or parking garage. It makes me ridiculously happy to have something I can control. Something I can win at, when I can't seem to bend real life to my wants and needs.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go collect my rents and see if I am any closer to buying that big honking shopping mall.

I Love my Doctor

2010-05-17T00:38:00.001-07:00

March 25, 2010

Today I went for my six-week (?) or is it eight? I can't remember... anyway, it was a followup on George, that pesky SOB. Which meant I had to drag my butt out of bed at 7:30, no coffee or breakfast, and fight the rain-impaired drivers of Nashville. I was in such a foul mood I had a pop a Xanax before I crashed into someone, yanked them out of their car and beat them to death with my shoe.

I complain here a lot, about many things, and I thought that today I should mention something I do like, my primary care doctor, John E. Anderson at the Frist Clinic.

When I first went to him -- good grief, was it 15 years ago? Or twenty? He looked more like Doogie Howser than Marcus Welby, and I was a little skeptical. I don't know how young he was, maybe he just has one of those faces who looks much younger than he actually is, but I was tempted to ask to see his license, just to be sure he had actually graduated.

(Hey, I once changed OB/GYNs because the guy was just too good looking; I know it's crazy, but I just didn't want him seeing me naked with my feet in the stirrups. That's not a situation where you want to be thinking how sexy your doctor is. Makes the breast exam really awkward. For me, that is. I'm sure that for him, it's just another pair of hooters in a day of female genitalia. But I digress.)

Over the years, Dr. Anderson has grown into a more "doctorly" appearance. (Rather attractive, actually, which is why even though he's offered to do my yearly pap smear to save me time and money, I just say, uh, no thanks. That's okay. Really.)

But in all these years, what hasn't changed is the care he shows. He's personable, but not in the superficial way of many doctors I've seen over the years. He never makes you feel like he's in a hurry -- and THAT is truly remarkable, in my experience. The last other doctor I saw, a dermatologist, diagnosed me before he'd taken two steps into the room, and was gone faster than you could say "tylenol."

Anderson asks a lot of questions and listens when you ramble through a litany of symptoms and dumb questions. He doesn't sneer derisively when you mention you read something on WebMD and just want to make sure you don't have mesothelioma or malaria.

He doesn't seem to overbook as ridiculously as most other doctors do, because I never spend an inordinate amount of time waiting. (I am, however, mourning the departure of his head blood-sucker. I can't remember her name, only that she was a superstar, the Tiger Woods of blood-drawing. I never ever even felt the needle. The new girl's not bad, but she ain't Tiger.)

True, he's still lecturing me on my smoking and aversion to exercise, but nobody's perfect. I think he took an oath or something that makes him legally bound to oppose the one and promote the other. Go figure.

When I told him about my recent calamities, he told me I could get my Metaformin at WalMart for $4 a month. He cleaned out his Cymbalta samples for me. And he assured me that his office would work with me to make sure I continued to deal effectively with George. Having just been dumped by my shrink, and obsessively worrying about my lack of insurance, it was good to feel like someone was in my corner.

He's proud of me for doing so well, and I am giddy as a schoolgirl getting a gold star. (Maybe bringing him my BS levels for the past two months on an Excel spreadsheet tickled him. ) I've lost a total of 16 pounds -- not miraculous, but a good steady downward.

Anyway.... all this rambling to say thanks, Dr. Anderson. You're a good guy, and I'm glad you're my doctor.

Up in the Air: Bad Movie Choices

2010-05-17T00:30:00.001-07:00

Written: Thursday, March 11, 2010

Warning: the following post is probably not going to be very funny. It will, however, be soggy with tears, stinking of desperation and mired in a deeply morbid self-pity only nominally covered by sarcasm and failed attempts at humor.

I am a big movie fan, so I was looking forward to seeing "Up in the Air." But somehow, in all the stuff I'd read about it, I either didn't hear or blocked out one teensy, weensy pertinent detail: Clooney's character fires people for a living.

We're not just told what he does. No. Neither do we get just one scene to get the point across. No. There's scene after scene of ordinary people being terminated. Let go. Downsized. Devastated.

Someone in movie marketing actually promoted this movie as a "high-flying comedy." Sure, it has a few chuckles here and there. So did Sophie's Choice, but i wouldn't characterize it as a light-hearted romance.

It was a stroke of genius on the part of the director not to have these terminated people played by stars or even recognizable character actors. He chose instead people who look like someone you might have passed on the way to the copy machine. We don't even get the safety buffer of long shots or medium shots (to use camera angle jargon) but head-on in the terrible intimacy of the close-up. Face full frame, talking directly to us, the audience, as if we are the bastard laying their world to waste.

Face after face, crumpling in tears, anger, terror, disbelief, shock. Whimpering, screaming, shouting, threatening suicide. People agonizing about their kids, their mortgages, their heating bills.

I squirmed in my seat, felt my stomach twisting into an origami crane, and even contemplated turning the damned movie off, because who the f*ck needs to see even fictional lives shattered when you know so intimately how it feels, when you've been that person not once or even twice but four times now...

Clooney's character has a line he likes to use on these pitiful wrecks of human beings: "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."

The first time he said it, I smirked and said aloud, "Screw you." The second time, I would have thrown something heavy at the screen except that I knew I couldn't afford to replace either a television or an ashtray.

But when the guy in Detroit responded to that line with: "I'm 57 years old! Who's gonna hire me?" -- well, that's when I finally lost it.

I wrote a blog after my third termination about the stages of being fired, most of which included hysterical sobbing. I was actually rather pleased, in a strange sick way, that I skipped some of those stages on this, my fourth trip around the dead end of my brilliant career.

I only watered up at the moment of first realization, and quickly choked those tears down a painfully constricted throat because my supervisor was still saying things he expected me to reply to. True, I was leaking a bit as I packed up my desk, but held it together until I was alone in my car.

But as soon as I had the privacy to cry, I didn't. I thought maybe it was because I was just too numb, or because I really loathed that job anyway, or because I was just making progress in the fine art of not giving a shit. Maybe, I thought, I'm just toughening up and realizing that tears are a waste of time, body fluids, Kleenex and decongestants. Tears never change anything. (Except that ticket for not wearing my seat belt; hysterical sobbing did get me out of that one, but that was a total fluke.)

But tonight the flood gates opened. The dam broke. Hysterical sobbing, wailing, a whole box of Kleenex sacrificed on the altar of self-pity, despair and abject terror.

Before anyone rushes to tell me to buck up, that it will be okay, that I'm too smart and too talented to stay down for long, that this is all for the best, that i'll find another job that better suits me... yada yada yada -- understand that I appreciate your kindness, but I don't write this to elicit sympathy. I just need to belch these toxic fumes into the safety of an internet that cannot see the snot hanging from my nose. And frankly, I'm too despondent and terrified right now for anything anyone says to matter.

What frightens me the most is my inability to come up with any serious plan of action. I look at job postings in my chosen field of graphic arts, and more and more I see that I'm just falling more and more behind in the required technology. I look at all the classes offered online and on campuses, financial aid information, yada yada yada, and feel more and more like a possum in the headlights. All I can do is curl into a ball and play dead. Seriously, I was reading on how to apply for a Pell Grant and I had a minor panic attack, the words on the screen didn't seem to be a recognizable language anymore....

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

Many of you have so kindly offered suggestions and I know, i really do, that you're trying to show your support, and I do appreciate it. I do.

But the truth is:

Yes, I am a very talented writer. But I have spent the last ten years writing and writing and trying to get my work out into the world and so far, no one wants it enough to pay me money for it. I am trying to find the energy to go looking for a new agent, on the chance that it's not my own lack of talent but my agent's.... But publishing is dying. I fear that the only way I'll ever get people to read the four unpublished novels in my computer will be to turn them into three-minute blurbs on YouTube.

I do all the freelance graphics I can get my hands on, but those jobs are hard to come by, and even harder to get paid for. I know more unemployed graphic artists (i.e. "freelancers") than you can shake a stick at.

Even if I wanted to teach, I would have to continue my education. I am terrified that I will make the sacrifices necessary to get that education -- going back into the debt that I finally got myself out of -- only to find out that what I suspect is true: I will hate teaching. I will get sued for striking a student. That I lack the patience and dedication to deal with the average ignorant, willfully stupid student without resorting to violence or foul language or alcohol addiction.

I'm terrified that I'm too old to do it. How old will I be by the time I could get my Masters? Could I manage a doctorate before senile dementia renders me incapable of remembering even my last name, let alone the fundamentals of pedagogy? Can I even learn anything anymore?

I already make as much art and crafts as I can physically make, but have yet to find a way to live on what little money I earn that way. Yes, there are still people who will spend money on the most mediocre of stuff, but I've not had much luck finding them. (And I won't go into my other parallel crisis of faith brought on by watching "Amadeus" again. I realized that I am Salieri, and that i will never be Mozart. Not even Chopin or Barry Manilow. I am so discouraged about my art right now, my inability to translate what I see in my head onto the canvas, it all just comes out as trite mediocrity.... i want to burn it all. I know it's not terrible, it's just not very good. And that's almost worse. Hello, my name is Mediocrity.)

I am terrified of trying to open a business of any kind in this economy. I'm lousy with money anyway, and I don't want to run a business. Payrolls, taxes, zoning, bookkeeping, oh dear god just shoot me.

If I were to chose a completely different "in-demand" career path, I don't know what in the hell to choose. Court reporting? Medical coding? Paralegal? I'm an artist in my heart and soul. There is nothing else I want to do, nothing else I can even begin to imagine that wouldn't suck me dry of my will to live.

Today, I talked to a woman at a company called Lee Hecht Harrison, one of my termination benefits provided by Hewlett Packard. This is the crap they actually sent me about their program:

Lee Hecht Harrison, we believe that when it comes to career transition, individuals benefit from a proven process. That’s where AIM comes in - AIM (Assess opportunity, Implement search, Manage transition) is our business process that combines personal support and productivity tools to help you identify and achieve your goals.

Oh, dear God. Let me guess. I'll get a Briggs-Meyer personality test which will tell me I am best suited for a career in art and design. Someone with an associate's degree from a community college will help me proof my resume for grammar and punctuation. I'll get tips on how to interview successfully, which will probably be about as helpful as the ones I've already read on Yahoo, Linked-In, CareerBuilder, Monster and Oprah's magazine.

I know, I know. I'm so fucking cheerful and positive about this. But this totally pointless exercise will require me to put on a dress, hose and heels to sit in a conference room for two hours next Tuesday. Then they want to send me to a two-day seminar. Do they really think I haven't been trying? I'm not a moron.

Did I mention that their offices are located in the same building as the second job that fired me?

Clooney's character may actually be right. "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."

But I'm afraid. I am so deep-down to my bones afraid. All i can see are all the obstacles. I'm walled in on all sides by fear of failure and a paralyzing lack of faith. I know I need to move beyond this, I just don't have any idea how in the hell to do it.

A Few Thoughts on Mortality and Three Year Olds....

2010-05-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 5, 2010.

Wednesday, I voluntarily got up at the ungodly hour of 7 am. There are few people for whom I would do this without having a gun put to my head. But on this day, I did it for Kelly and Elaina.

You should understand that for many, many years, Kelly and I roamed the streets like Thelma and Louise -- only without the guns, attempted rape and a half-naked Brad Pitt. You couldn't really call it shopping, because in the beginning, neither of us had much of anything to spend. Later, a lot of it was just running errands -- quite mundane stuff -- but it was always fun.

It became even more important when we were no longer roommates. These excursions gave us a chance to catch-up, and often a much-needed break from our significant others.

Over the last couple of years, such roaming has been seriously curtailed by life's crappy details. So I was happy to be on the streets with Kelly once more, even though our errand on this day was a heavy one.

We were going to pick up her mother's ashes.

First, however, I had to face off with a worthy adversary: Kelly's three year-old, Ben.

Don't get me wrong. Ben is a sweetheart - and I don't say that about every kid. I am not one of those people who go all mushy over babies and small children. But Ben is sweet and happy, particularly when you consider that in the last year he's spent a good bit of time at Vanderbilt's Children's Hospital being treated for leukemia. But he's only seen me a few times since babyhood. Once, when I visited him in the hospital and brought him a Funkee Monkee -- which has permanently made me, in Ben's mind, "The Monkey Lady." Then at the Tomato Festival when the poor little guy threw up in the middle of my craft booth, something that is bound to be a less than stellar memory for him.

I'm sure his reaction to me had a lot to do with the fact that his mother hasn't been around as much in the last couple of days, and the potentially confusing news that his beloved Me-me has gone to heaven. Kelly's not sure just how well Ben understands death. He has commented that "Me-me is running around heaven holding Pe-Paw's hand."

(This comment made Kelly nearly fall in the floor laughing. You'd have to have known both Elaina and Kelly's father, the notoriously insane Herschel, to understand just how absurd the image of them cavorting hand-in-hand through Paradise really is.)

At first, Ben seemed happy to see me. Much happier than the family dachshund, Doxy, at any rate, who barked nearly incessantly at me as soon as I stepped through the door. But Ben and I discussed his monster trucks, the cartoons he was watching, and his older brother's unfortunate decision to follow in his father's misguided footsteps as a Volunteer fan. (Ben is the only one of Kelly's children to Roll Tide, and the poor guy is forced to share a room painted Tennessee Orange. Shudder.)

But as Kelly was buckling him into the back seat of her Saturn, and I got into the passenger seat, Ben made his feelings clear.

"No! She goes in her car! Make her go in her car!"

You should also understand that this was not said maliciously, but with a happy rolling giggle. He seemed quite delighted.

"Ben, don't be rude," Kelly admonished. "She's going with us."

"I don't want her to," Ben insisted. (Giggle.)

"Can't I ride with you and your mom, Ben?" I asked, smiling to show I wasn't taking any of this personally, even though I was. Just a little.

"No!" There were more rolling peals of laughter from Ben.

A little ways down the road, at a stop light, Ben told his mother to "Go!"

"We can't go yet," Kelly said in that utterly imperturbable, endlessly patience tone of the World's Best Mother.

"Why?" Ben demanded happily.

"Because it's not our turn yet," she explained. "The other cars will hit us."

"Make her get out!" Ben exclaimed gleefully, pointing at me. "Make her get out so a car will hit her!"

I was torn between astonished laughter and a desire to throw something at the little emperor in the back seat.

I was reminded of his older brother, Christopher, who is now an unbelievable twelve. (How the hell did he get to be twelve? Who gave him permission to be twelve??)

Between the ages of two and four, Christopher loathed me. Probably because nearly every time he saw me, Mommy would leave with me to do our Thelma and Louise thing. He cried at the very sight of me. When we took him with us, he was cranky and (I am not exaggerating) downright antagonistic towards me. I bought him a soda, of which he refused to let me have a sip. He crawled under the table at a restaurant and tried to reach into my purse -- prompting me to act like I was three and slap at his sneaky little hand -- which in turn set him into sobs of outrage. It wasn't pretty.

So I was at least pleased that Ben was still giggling, in spite of his desire to see me smeared across the highway.

We got to his daycare and Kelly got him out of the car.

"I'm staying in the car, Ben," I told him cheerfully. "Don't worry."

Ben just giggled, then raced his mother to the door.

Kelly and I went to her mother's house to check in with her roommate, Claudia. Claudia was feeling the strain of the last few days, and said she was too tired to make the trip to the mortuary. While this was probably true, I think Claudia also wanted me and Kelly to have some time together. She knew that our having a little Thelma and Louise time would have made Elaina happy.

Elaina had been worried for the past couple of years that Kelly and I were drifting apart. She prodded Kelly repeatedly, and she called me about it a couple of times. "I know ya'll are both busy, but you need to make time."

Kelly asked my advice on how to word the obituary. She didn't want to say "Elaina Taylor Burch died" -- that sounded so cold -- nor did she like the euphemistic "passed away."

"I don't want to put in some ordinary, depressing obituary," Kelly said. "That's not who Mom was."

I told her I'd read a few obits that said, "So-and-So has gone on to his heavenly reward." And we both burst into laughter.

"Shuffled off this mortal coil" had the same effect.

"I wish I could just say she kicked the bucket," Kelly said. "Mom would like that, but other people might get offended."

"You think?" More laughter.

"You could always say, 'she has made forceful podiatric contact with a metal pail,'" I offered. "But I vote for shuffling off the mortal coil. Very poetic."

"Mom would be so pissed," Kelly laughed. "She'd come back to haunt me."

"Consider it a last joke on your mom," I said.

"Should we be having a good time doing this?" Kelly asked, sobering.

"Sure. Because it would make your mom happy."

"I know."

A box of ashes is amazingly heavy. Just a white cardboard container, with a wooden box inside. A wooden box full of all that remains in the physical realm of a good and wonderful human being.

"I guess I should put her in the floorboard," Kelly said when we got back in the car. "I wouldn't want her to slide around...."

I didn't tell Kelly then but I had a sudden flash back to a Monty Python reunion show, where they brought out an urn full of Graham Chapman's ashes, and placed it on one of the chairs with them. Of course, before the end of the show, Idle managed to knock over the urn, and Cleese brought out a dust buster to vacuum them up. It was hysterical and irreverent and would have made Chapman laugh. I realize now I should have told Kelly about it.

The plan is that Kelly and the rest of the family will take Elaina's ashes down to Gulf Shores, a place that Elaina loved passionately. And since Kelly still hasn't figured out what to do with her father's ashes, Herschel is going, too. Elaina had already told Kelly she didn't mind.

Though Kelly does think that her daughter Emily's idea to mix the two together is a bit much. There is a high probability for some kind of combustible chemical reaction.

We went to lunch and then to Hobby Lobby. No matter how much time has passed since we've seen each other, we pick up right where we left off. That's the wonderful part of friendship.

Then it was time to pick up Ben. Kelly transferred Elaina to the other side of the floorboard, commenting that it probably wasn't nice to let your child rest his feet on his grandmother's ashes.

I was again grateful that I have chosen not to have children. How do you explain a white cardboard box to your kids? What do you tell them about death and the afterlife if you're not sure there is one, or what form it might take? You can't tell a kid that that you believe the spark of our soul goes on somehow, somewhere, even if it's just back into the ebb and flow of all creation. Running hand-in-hand with Pe-Paw through the clouds sounds so much more comprehensible and more comforting. I don't envy Kelly having to deal with this along with her own grief.

"Not her again!" Ben exclaimed when he saw me. "Make her get out."

He turned and ran about twenty feet down the sidewalk.

"Ben! Ben, come back here right now."

More giggles as Ben raced back and forth.

"You are about to be in trouble, Ben!"

Finally, he came back to the car, but refused to get in. He made a sort of squealing sound when Kelly picked him up. He struggled not to be put into his car seat. He was still laughing, but his feet were kicking the door as he hollered: "I don't want to go with her! No! Make her get out!"

I burst into mock sobs and sniffles.

"See what you've done, Ben?" Kelly asked. "You hurt her feelings."

Ben was still kicking.

"Don't you want to take me back to my car?" I asked him, hoping it would pacify him to know I was going to leave soon.

"She can walk! Make her walk!"

Apparently, he wasn't even going to speak to me directly, only issue orders to his mother about "her."

"She might get hit by a car," Kelly said, matter-of-factly, but beginning to show a tiny throbbing vein in her forehead.

"I want her to get hit by a car!" Giggle. Giggle.

Thelma and Louise didn't have kids. Of course, neither did they have their mother's ashes in the floorboard. But I do have Ben's permission to come to dinner sometime soon.

Elaina would like that, I'm sure.

A Bad Week... and a Goodbye

2010-05-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

Written: March 1, 2010

The week started out not so good for me. I was the victim of another "workforce reduction" on Monday... and it just seemed to slide downhill from there.

That same day, Rex crashed and totaled his beloved truck -- I am so grateful that he was okay, and please don't think I'm not aware that that single fact may have actually been an amazing stroke of luck that puts the rest of my whining to shame.... I couldn't bear to think of losing him. But the loss of that truck is a bad thing, not the least of which being that he and I both have a sentimental attachment to it.

Then last night, in the process of installing my birthday present -- a Roku gadget which allows me to download NetFlix directly to my television -- my Mac bit the dust. The" on" switch has been intermittently wigging out for months, but this time it's been 24 hours and I still can't get it to come back up. For me, the loss of the computer is a devastating loss.

It's not so much loss of files -- i had all the important stuff backed up but have lost some stuff that will be really annoying to replace -- as the fact that I am unemployed and broke and really, really don't want to go into the debt hole that I'd finally climbed out of when I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage, let alone a credit card bill -- to replace something so integral to my quality of life and a source of what little livlihood i have left.They will charge me $150 just to open the computer up.... it just makes me want to cry. (I am writing this now on Rex's NetBook. Blame any typos on my not being able to see the tiny screen very well.)

But then I got a phone call this morning that put everything in perspective, even as it proved a dismal ending to week that wasn't very good to begin with.

I have had a lot of "best friends" throughout my life, but the single most enduring friendship has been with Kelly Burch Cole. We met in college, lived as roommates for several years after my graduation, and -- as cliched as it sounds -- she is my sister more than just my friend. We've seen a lot less of each other in recent years -- she's a working mother with three children and I'm a single, often anticsocial person whose life has moved in far, far different directions.

But I always know she is there, and she - i hope -- has always known i was here.

And its not just Kelly who has become my family over the last 27 years -- her family has become mine as well. I dated her brother, Ray, on and off for a couple years; I lived with both her brother and her father in Huntsville for three years right after I graduated, working in their furniture store. (And I might add, I suffered all the same insantiy with Kelly's dad that his actual children did, and that alone bonded us in ways that can never be fully understood by anyone but us.)

Kelly introduced me to her mother, Elaina, while we were still in college. "Want to come with me to met my mom?" she asked one weekend. I was always ready for a road trip, so I packed a few things -- a dress, some heels, my hot curlers -- and off we went to Alabama.

Now, here is a point of continuing contention between myself and Kelly. I heard, "We're going to see Mom at the beach in Gulf Shores." Kelly swears she said: "We're going to see Mom CAMPING at the beach at Gulf Shores."

I still insist that I never heard the word "camping" because I would never have agreed to go camping, anywhere, anytime, with anybody. Imagine my chagrin to I find myself squatting around a campfire, ridiculously overpacked with nothing of any practical use but the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing. If I had not been able to borrow a sweat shirt from Elaina, I would have frozen to death. I'm not a camping kind of girl.

And yet, I had fun.(And I became addicted to Elaina's magnificent baked beans and ribs.... but I still do not camp.)

But Kelly's mom, Elaina, opened her arms and heart and home to me from that moment onward. During a long period when I was far from home, and my own family relationships were complicated, Elaina became my second mom, and I became a "yard kid."

When Elaina sent Kelly an easter basket at school, she sent one for me as well. When I spent my first Christmas away from home, Elaina included me in their family celebration -- an orgy of chili, homemade cookies and far too many generous gifts. I was blown away by the lengths at which she went to make me feel not just included, but as if I was a long-lost child.

When Kelly and I got our first apartment together, Elaina was there to help us move, to help us make it a home... and most importantly, she fed us when we were too broke to go to the grocery store.

Elaina was, even then, a "wise old lady" who listened to me through numerous crisis and heartbreaks. She truly taught me that sometimes you CAN choose your family, that blood is not always the most important thing that binds people together. She taught me what is is to have an open, generous heart.

A couple of years ago, Elaina was put on oxygen. A lifetime of smoking finally caught up with her. The last time I saw her, she couldn't walk four feet without gasping for air, and the sight scared the hell out of me.

The doctors didn't expect her to last as long as she did. Kelly called me Friday night, and the fear and sorrow in her voice was terrible. Elaina had fallen and broken her arm, and Kelly was certain that the end was near. Elaina seemed, finally, too tired to keep on fighting.

On Saturday night, the end came peacefully for Elaina, and Kelly was there with her. I thank God for both of those things.

I do have one regret... that I did not return Elaina's last phone call. She called me at Christmas and left a message to tell me that she loved me, and that she was grateful to have had me in her life. She knew her time was almost over, and it is typical of her generous spirit to want to share just a little more love with people she cared about.

I don't really know why I didn't call her back. I was probably caught up in my own petty, personal crap and just never got around to it. I know that she knew -- knows -- that she was special to me, that I was the one who gained so much by being a part of her life - but I wish I had told her that one last time.

Life is short. Tell the people you love what they mean to you.

Day Four

2010-05-17T00:22:00.001-07:00

I just finished rewatching "Witness for the Prosecution" -- the old black and white classic, with Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich. What a great old movie but provoked a couple of random thoughts:

First, Laughton is an amazing actor but lordy, lordy... he is a seriously unattractive man. Even without the makeup, he still looks like Quasimodo's only slightly more attractive brother, bless his heart. That he managed a career in Hollywood at all is an achievement. But the sheer presence of the man has to be part of the reason. I shall have to look for more Laughon in other films.

What amazed me this time around about WFTP-- I saw it years and years ago -- was seeing just how much of Marlene's performance inspired Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles." I mean, I knew that Lilli Von Stupp was based on Marlene but really "seeing" it -- now that I've seen BS about a dozen times -- was fun.

Dietrich DOES sound like a German Elmer Fudd when it comes to pronouncing the letter "R." (It's twue, it's twue!) Even the scene in the club where Dietrich was singing was so much like Lill's stage show -- right down to the drunks storming the stage -- it was a hoot! And at the end, when Marlene is clutching at Tyrone Power crying, "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" all I could see was Kahn hanging onto Sheriff Bart, saying the same thing before bursting into hysterical German. (Something really hysterical, though, was hearing Dietrich attempt a cockney accent. She just about nails it until an "R" comes along....)

Anyway.... i watched that while sewing a monkey (yes, I have monkeys all over the place), Then called Centennial and my doctor and my bank trying to figure out which medical bills got paid twice, once by me, once by my insurance... and now checking my online life.

Next on the agenda: ordering more socks, then adding embellishments to a couple of treasure boxes in the finishing stages of production, and finishing (hopefully) another monkey while watching "Frost/Nixon" later this evening.

Though I may opt for my NetFlix of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

Or maybe seeing if Season 2 of "Breaking Bad" is available on InDemand. I've finished Season 1 and am loving it. Mr White is like a combination of Mr. Wizard and McGyver. Mercury fluminate, indeed. What a hoot. Though this series has shown me how very unlikely it is I would ever succeed as a meth dealer. I'm a lousy chemist.

The Last of the Oreos

2010-05-17T00:20:00.000-07:00

Written: February 25, 2010.

Three days into unemployment... again.... and I'm having difficulty relaxing. Hmm.

Let me be clear about this. I am upset about losing another job -- demoralized, worried and a tad humiliated. I shouldn't say I lost it, because that just reminds me of an old Bobcat Goldthwait joke: "I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that when I go there, there's some other guy doing it."

But let's be honest. You all knew I hated that job, and on some level, I feel like one of the children of Israel, skipping into the desert after Moses and not even bothering to whine, "Are we there yet? Yes, the Pharaoh finally let my people go.

(Of course, you know what happened to them. They went a little nuts, started worshiping golden cows and really pissed God off. Jehovah gave them the longest time-out in history: forty years, just wandering around the desert. No pudding for them, either.)

So I have really mixed feelings at this point. If it weren't for the money thing -- and the health insurance thing -- I would be deliriously happy to never work outside my home again. I say "outside my home" because I do stay busy.

But right now i'm having trouble shifting gears. I'm so used to watching that clock in my head, the one that says in ticks of utter dread, "You have to go to bed now because you have to get up at 6 am.... you have to get off the computer now and make dinner...." The one that says, "Hurry, hurry, HURRY!"

If you sacrifice eight hours a day (more if you count prep and travel time) to the Almighty Dollar -- and if, like me, you count your "real" life only as the stuff you can cram into those other hours, and resent things like sleep and even showering because they take away precious moments you could be painting or making boxes or writing or stuffing monkeys while watching reruns of Law & Order -- you know what I mean. "Gotta" seems to rule your life, as in "I gotta get this done." "Should" comes in a close second: "I should clean the oven/vacuum the carpet/scour the tub/organize my tupperware/wash the walls/clean out the litter box/take out the garbage/chop the everlasting carrots and celery...."

You feel like you're running a race against the clock. Gotta, gotta, gotta. Should, should, should.

Luckily for me, the "gotta's" are the things I want to be doing. And I am never happier than when I'm at home, getting all that fun stuff done. It's just that ever-present, free-floating pressure that bothers me. Even on the weekends, I'm so damned aware of the sands running through the hour glass that I feel like I rush, rush, rush.

Now the pressure is off. Or is it? Because I know that the clock is still running, even if on a different level entirely. I've got sixty days (actually fifty-seven now) to enjoy the freedom of getting a paycheck -- meager though it is -- without having to do a damn thing I don't want to do for 24 hours a day. At some point, I will have to do something about my future in the workforce of America.

But I haven't been able to relax yet. And that's what I loved about being unemployed for such a long stretch before. The sheer joy of not feeling pressured to be doing something productive as efficiently as possible every waking moment. The freedom to nap at three in the afternoon without worrying that I won't be able to sleep that night.

During my last unemployment, I spent a solid hour at my kitchen window watching the guys across the street cut down a tree that must have been at least three stories high. I was riveted to that window. I thought they just cut the base and yelled Timber, getting the hell out of the way. But they don't.

They cut most of the branches off first. Then one guy in a safety harness climbed to the very top, and sawed off the first four or five feet. He then tied a rope around it, and he and the other guys standing around below carefully lowered the section to the ground. Then the process repeated itself, until the whole tree was horizontal. The most interesting part was when the top guy got to the bigger thickness of the trunk, and had to use a chain saw.

How often do you get to watch a man tied to a tree, twenty feet in the air, wielding a chain saw?

(Truthfully, I don't know how much of my fascination was in waiting to see if the tree-hugger would fall, or if a section would come crashing down onto the roof of the house a mere five feet away. It's the same lurid fascination that makes us watch NASCAR races, police chases and America's Funniest Home Videos. We wanna see that guy belly flop off the trampoline into the swing set.)

My point, however, is that having the luxury of time, I could enjoy the death and removal of a big honkin' tree. And now I know how they do it without crushing a car. Learning is fun, you know.

I'm trying to get back that relaxed pace of simply being, and not constantly doing. I sleep as late as I want. I get up and eat my Cheerios while I scour the tv offerings for the day. Yesterday I found "Reality Bites" on HBO and watched it again while stuffing a monkey. I had forgotten how clever that movie was, though at the old age of 47, that twenty-something angst is funny to me now in ways they never intended, and bittersweetly nostalgic as well.

I have been indulging in old episodes of "No Reservations" on In Demand. (I think In Demand programming is the bee's knees, perhaps second only to the iPod and Netflix as the top societal advances of the last 50 years.)

I would kill Anthony Bourdain, the host, if I knew I would get his job. I wouldn't even quibble about eating the disgusting things, too, if it meant I got to see as much of the world as he does, always working in a dinner or two at some fabulous four-star restaurant where he gets to sample everything on the menu. I'd have to go into serious training, though, to drink as much as Tony does. I assume they turn the camera off when he starts to slur his words.

But I do enjoy watching Tony eat a whole pig with drunken Greeks -- or Italians, or Czechs or Phillipinos, cause where ever in the world Tony goes, it seems someone is always slaughtering a hog for him, as if he's a traveling minor deity. How cool is that?

He's funny, too, in slyly confidential way. I have to admire a man who can eat bratwurst while managing to work in a Rocco Siffredi Love Bus reference, or slip in an off-hand joke about three-ways and reach-arounds while eating tiny lamb chops from a sheep that was walking around just minutes before.

Anyway.... it's now three a.m. and I'm not yet in bed. Maybe I am finally beginning to lose that inner time bomb.

But tomorrow, I really gotta take a shower

Suicide by Oreo

2010-05-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

Written: February 22, 2010.

Tonight, George and I sat down with an entire package of Oreo cookies and a big freakin' glass of whole milk. That's right. Whole milk and a shitload of America's favorite cookie. I'm dunking George and holding that little muther under till he stops thrashing around.

I'm not really trying to commit suicide by sugar overdose. It takes too long and besides, I really wanna know how LOST turns out. And I didn't eat the whole package. Just ten or fifteen of those creme-filled sandwiches of death.

So what am I doing? Well, I'm either drowning my sorrows in an orgy of lard and sugar, or celebrating the fact that I don't have to go to work tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that.

Yes, friends, neighbors and people who barely know me -- I am unemployed. Again. "Workforce reduction" is the term they used. Does it really mean that Hewlett Packard is tightening its belt, or is "workforce reduction" just a code word for "we don't want you anymore but we're afraid of wrongful termination lawsuits" ??

The Invisible Man (aka my boss) assured me it was no reflection on my workplace contributions, and so far I know at least one other person who got the ax today. But still..... I've been terminated more than Sarah Conner in all four movies, and I'm pretty freakin' sick of having authorized personnel escort me from the building with a box of my belongings.

It's humiliating to be let go even from a job you loathe. I mean, hell, they could teach a monkey to do what I did, but they'd have to pay the monkey more.

No more WTF Names of the Day. No more Quickie Cubicle Lunch Reviews. On the other hand, I can spend all day posting every whining pathetic thought that passes through my brain, and annoy the shit out of all of you by posting lyrics to whatever song happens to be playing on my iPod at any given moment. ("You Don't Know Me" by Ray Charles.) I can take every stupid quiz and challenge you to do the same, find out what my hip-hop name should be (and invite you to do the same), and send you a million invites to play "My Town" until you unfriend me.

The good news is that I will be paid my regular salary until April 23. That's sixty days of a paycheck until I'm living on peanut butter and jelly. Again. Sixty days until George and I are on our own, alone in a world without health insurance. If diabetes doesn't get me, my bipolar monkey probably will.

Sigh.... I do apologize for the sarcasm and misanthropy of this note. Blame it on George, who's swinging from the ceiling fan at the moment.

I'll be better tomorrow. Probably. Maybe. Oh, who the hell knows. I may just decide to devote the rest of the week to self-pity, misplaced anger and random around-the-clock napping. Next week will be soon enough to launch into abject terror about the future: just in time for my birthday.

Mole-Kitty

2010-05-17T00:09:00.001-07:00

You've probably heard me talk about my cat, Doolittle. He's the second cat I've ever owned... er, i mean, cohabitated with, because no one really owns a cat, do they? Dogs have owners; cats have support staff.

My first cat, Luci, was a beautiful tortie I adopted through PetSmart. She was only about six months old, playful and energetic and a total shock to me, a lifelong dog person.

She had to go everywhere -- climb everywhere -- and stick her nose in everything. I finally understood why they say, "Curiosity killed the cat." She made me laugh as much as she exasperated me. If I painted, Luci would chase the brush. If I got on the computer, Luci would try to catch the cursor. If I wore earrings that dangled, she seemed sure that they were play toys for her amusement. (Having a cat's claw stuck in your earrings is NOT fun. I don't recommend it.)

I named her Luci because I liked the idea of coming home each day and calling, "Lu-ci! I'm home!" in my best Ricky Ricardo voice. (And more often than not: "Luci, you got some 'splaing to do!"... and yes, the disparity in the spelling was deliberate.)

Luci simply could not be kept in the house -- every time I opened the door, I felt like a bush league hockey goalie competing with Wayne Grestsky.

Once a cat gets out, well, you can pretty much give up on ever catching them. I mean, dogs will lead you on a chase, but you can outsmart them eventually. Cats can climb trees and leap tall fences with a single bound. They are... Super Kitty!

I chased Luci around the neighborhood time and time again. Finally one day, winded and out of patience, I just said "Fine, stay out if you want!"

For several months, Luci would go out -- never intentionally, as I really did not want her outdoors -- and come back after an hour or so.

Then one day, she didn't. I was devastated, searched for her everywhere, by car and on foot. Posted signs. Went to the pounds and shelters. Knocked on my neighbors doors.

I hope that because she was such a friendly cat, someone took her in and simply kept her. But that's the story of my first cat.

I wasn't sure I was ready for another, but a friend of mine, whose home has become a sort of feline Mecca for strays, asked me to take Doolittle in. He'd been hanging out in her back yard for months, and she was afraid that the coming winter would be the end of him.

So, I took Doolittle home with me. He was already a big, fat cat, and living with me has not changed that. I have no idea how old he is, but he's definitely a ways from kittenhood. He earned his name honestly, by doing very little. He's not quite as entertaining as Luci was, but he will let me paint in peace.

When I first got him, Doolittle had a serious problem with bare ankles. He couldn't resist pouncing on them. Legs with socks and pants and shoes didn't interest him. Only bare flesh sang to him with a siren's song. Doolittle wrapped both front legs around the aforementioned ankle and sank little cat fangs into the lower calf. Even at five in the morning, making a groggy trip to the bathroom, I would find myself dragging a fifteen pound cat across the floor. He was like a Ninja kitty, streaking out of the shadows and latching onto my ankle.

He's gotten a lot better about this. I think that a few months of my screams and curses finally got it through his pea-sized brain that I didn't enjoy the game as much as he did. He will still pounce once in a while, but more gently. He hardly ever draws blood anymore.

Doolittle will occasionally get past me out into the big, bad world. But he always goes to the same bushes by the front door, and sits there meowing miserably as if already regretting his dash for freedom. Of course, he will retreat further into the bushes when I try to retrieve him, eventually leading me through the neighbor's rose bushes. But I always manage to drag him out, usually with a final howl of outrage at being pried out of a rose bush. I don't know why he's whining; I'm the one bleeding.

But today we played one of Doo's favorite games. Mole-kitty. Whenever I change the bed sheets, Doo gets on the bed and stubbornly refuses to move. So I just throw the sheets over him and go about making up the bed.

He will sit there for several moments, just this large lump under the sheets. Then he moves from one side to the other; from the top to the bottom. Finally, after about five minutes, he will poke his head out and jump to freedom.

So, for your consideration... photos of Doolittle playing Mole-Kitty.

2010-05-17T00:07:00.000-07:00

Ah, Valentine's Day. It's all about love... real, genuine love. Love that lasts until the end of time. Love, deeper than the ocean and higher than the heavens. Love that binds two souls together and lifts them up on the wings of a snow white dove.....

Screw that. We all know it's about the chocolate. That's real love that stands the test of time. In my 47 years, the men have changed, but the chocolate remains the same.

I can't eat any chocolate this year and it's pissing me off. So if the following thoughts make you want to tell me what a miserable cynic I am, please keep my chocolate deprivation in mind. I had to go to the drugstore twice today, and walk past aisles of screaming red hearts that are off-limits to me.

I swear, I could smell all that sugar and cocoa and sweet, delicious carb-laden death right through the beribboned and laced boxes. For a the briefest of moments, I wanted to cry. Because I love those heart-shaped boxes full of little bite-sized surprises. A box of chocolates combines the pursuit of rich, creamy bliss with the fun of a slot machine. Selecting each piece is a serious business; you hold your breath as you bite into the chocolate shell. Will it be the wonderful coconut filling? Or that disgusting orange cream? Mmmm... caramel!

Even if you do get that orange cream, you know that you can spit it out and try again. And again.

Generally, I'm not such a sourpuss about VD. But like most of us, how I feel about Valentine's depends entirely upon whether I'm in a relationship or not, and the state of that relationship. If your relationship sucks, then a truckload of roses isn't going to change that. (Unless, of course, you find that he paid for them with your credit card; in that case, it will probably change his home address.)

I'm in a very good place this year. Except for the chocolate thing, of course. But standing in the card aisle, it occurs to me that Valentine’s day cards should be categorized differently.

They have sections for mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, platonic friends and even 4-year grandchildren who can’t even read yet. But they need to break down the whole spouse/lover categories down to more efficient divisions.

Like how long you’ve been together.

On your first valentine’s day together you spent an hour considering all the romantic cards. The ones that say things like: “I’ve been looking for you all my life, you are my world, my soulmate, I’d drink your bathwater and lick the ground you walk on.” And you want the biggest, most elaborate card you can find, in the shape of a giant heart, trimmed in real lace and satin ribbon. Or the mutant cards that are 2’ x 3’ and not only take extra postage, but the postage costs as much as the card itself.

The first Valentine's Day is also the one where the man not only buys an embarrassingly mushy card that says things that would never in a million years come out of his mouth, but a dozen red roses, a box of Godiva chocolates and/or a stuffed gorilla who dances to “Wild Thing.” He takes you to an expensive, special restaurant and orders wine. That night you put on the sexy lingerie you paid too much money for and you have acrobatic sex all night long.

By the second or third valentine’s day, you’re both looking cards that say things like: “You’re still the light of my life.” And neither of you bother to write a poem on it. You just sign it, “Love, Cindy.” In bed that night, you surprise each other with oral sex.

By the fourth Valentine’s – if you’re still together – you’re sending the funny cards with cats wearing clothes and a caption that says “You are the cat’s meow, baby!” You give him a blow job, but you’re doing it with all the enthusiasm of ironing. He makes a gesture at going down on you, but moves on to the missionary position before you reach an orgasm.

A dozen red roses have changed to a nice potted plant; the chocolates are now Russell Stover or Whitman’s; and if he grabs a stuffed animal, it’s small enough to get tossed into the back of the closet without attracting much attention. And yet you’re beginning to look at the cross-eyed teddy bear and thinking you’d rather have had the money he spent on it.

If you make it to the sixth or seventh valentine’s day, you’re sending a card that says something equivalent to “Thanks for still letting me live here.” You might have sex for the first time in months that evening.

By the ninth or tenth Valentine’s Day, you find a card in his sock drawer meant for his girlfriend, not for you. He sleeps on the couch, or at the Holiday Inn. The next day you go out and buy 1 lb box of chocolate that’s been marked down to half price, and eat every damn piece in the box except for the ones with the weird orange jelly centers and try to decide whether or not to just to have done with him and love and all the crap that goes with it.

(Kisses change too, of course, In the first year, you’re sucking face with wet sloppy kisses and tongues that writhe like eels in a barrel.

By the fifth year, you’re not opening your mouth anymore. And by the ninth year -- when you find the card for his girlfriend in his sock drawer -- the only thing you want him to kiss is your ass. )

Understand, those are just some generalizations I've learned from past relationships. My guy and I are in the eighth year, and while there have been some ups and downs, we've gotten to a place that is comfortable but not totally bereft of passion. The card I've picked out for him is actually a rather romantic one, but not too over the top. Maybe it's because we went through the kiss-my-ass phase and now have started over. And he's never given me a potted plant, bless his heart.

But I do have a bone to pick with Doo. He's never bought me a card, not even for Mother's Day. I know, you're saying: where would Doo get the four bucks? He hasn't got any pockets for change, nor does he have a check card. I don't think he can drive, but then again, how do i know what he gets up to while I'm asleep? There is a suspicious amount of cat hair in the drivers seat.

Sarah Palin Sips Tea

2010-02-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

She’s out there right now, at the Opryland Hotel, just across the street from me. I can almost see her from my front door. You know the one I mean: Caribou Barbie. Sarah Palin. They’ve been having a tea party over there all day long. And at $549 for a ticket, I’m fairly sure those mad hatters over there are several rungs above me on the financial ladder. The price tag says something fundamentally wrong about a supposed grass-roots movement. It’s hard to come up with that kinda cheddar when you’re unemployed. I guess the less affluent will have to let the rich folks make all the decisions. In other words, politics as usual. Let me tell you how I feel about Palin for those who never saw my bumper sticker that said: SARAH PALIN JUST MADE ME THROW UP A LITTLE. That’s not just a pithy little joke, it’s the actual truth. (And it got me some irate fist shaking from a woman at a craft fair.) Just when I thought politicians could come no dumber than George W. Bush, along comes Sarah Palin. If you wanna argue with me about Bush’s intellect, consider that when Hollywood set out to make a satire about “W”, they didn’t have to do much but quote him:

They misunderestimated me.”

We've got a lot of relations with countries in our neighborhood.”

And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq."

I won’t mention his frequent subject-verb disagreement, or his inability to pronounce the word “nuclear.” In one of the debates, I noticed that Palin mangled it the same way. Maybe they thought if all the Republicans mispronounced it, they could actually convince people the word was supposed to be “nucular.” Bad enough, from my perspective, that here was a Pro-Life woman who shot wolves from helicopters, a former beauty queen whose political resume pretty much began and ended with being the governor of Alaska. (Alaska? Seriously? Alaska comes in as the 48th least populated state of the country. True, she was mayor of Wasilla, a thriving metropolis of 10,256, but my own stagnant little home town boasts 128,000.) As soon as Palin began talking, stupid things starting falling from her lips: When asked if she knew what the duties of a vice president entailed:

They're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.”

Uh, not really. Thank goodness she didn’t get the job; I can only imagine her disillusionment upon showing up for work the first day and finding she was only leader of the senate in the most nominal way. She was relentlessly cheerful, choosing not to watch the news because it made her sad. For me, the confirmed and relentless cynic and general misanthrope, her cheerfulness only made me want to smack her; only game show hosts should be that relentlessly upbeat, and then only with chemical assistance. Her little attack on Obama wasn’t just stupid, it stooped to the lowest level of fear-mongering propaganda:

Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Maybe she didn’t know that the US has been playing musical dictators for years, supporting then opposing some of the same people they’d trained and given weapons to. She should have watched the news. Her interview with Katie Couric was one of the most painful things I’ve ever seen. It was a traffic accident; you didn’t wanna look, you just couldn’t stop.

: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this -- to stay informed and to understand the world?

: I've read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media --

: But what [sic] ones specifically? I'm curious.

: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

: Can you name any of them?

: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

I actually hurt for her. It was like watching a fish flopping around on the bottom of the boat. Sometimes her stupidity also showed a frightening ignorance:

"One of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay and I love her dearly, and she is not my "gay" friend, she is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made, but ... I'm not gonna judge people.”

Homosexuality is not a choice. Now, choosing to have a child with Down’s Syndrome, that’s a choice. (Not a choice I would have made, but hey, I support her right to do so.) Coming out against the rights of rape and incest victims to abortions or even the morning-after pill: that’s a choice Palin wants to make, to take away the choices of even the most victimized of women. But the straw that breaks my camel’s back was not really Palin’s lack of experience, or her lack of understanding of the job she was running for, or her stance on a woman’s right to control her own body…. Listening to her views, I briefly wondered if she was really a man in drag. No, it was the timing of the Republican Party’s decision to finally put a woman on the presidential ticket, and what their choice of Palin said about their motives. If Hillary Clinton hadn’t been a serious contender for president, a woman wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance of being tapped as a Republican VP candidate. They saw a potential for division in the Democratic Party, a hope that Clinton supporters would be such sore losers they would withhold their support from Obama. I can easily imagine the Republicans behind closed doors, discussing how in the hell they could compete with a black candidate. Smear tactics could so easily backfire with the appearance—if not actuality—of racism. Worse, women really liked how Obama looked with his shirt off, as opposed to McCain, not just pale and paunchy, but alarmingly close to senile dementia. And then, bingo, someone suggested they could offer women a female candidate. Not as president, of course; more like a little lady who could bring the baked beans to the tailgate party. No, the real final straw was the sheer arrogance and gall of the Republicans to even suggest that Palin was a worthy answer to Hillary. Whether you love Clinton or loathe her, you can’t say she wasn’t qualified. She has experience, a first-hand knowledge of how the government works, and a razor-sharp brain. She watches the news, you betcha. One of the most astute bumper stickers I’ve ever read said:

"Sarah Palin is the hood ornament on the truck American is about to be thrown under."

I was insulted, as a woman, a feminist and a participant in the political process. Sarah Palin? Seriously? She was the best they could do? Google “Partial List of Republican women more qualified than Sarah Palin.” It’s a long list, a veritable smorgasbord of smart, informed and experienced women. I can only come up with one reason that the Republican powers chose Palin as their ace in the hole. That women would be stupid enough to vote for her just because she happens to have two X chromosomes. Men would vote for her because she’s a MILF with a gun. That’s an insult to voters of either sex. Thank God their evil plan didn’t succeed. The good news is that maybe, just maybe, Tina Fey has a career in politics.

Fleeing the Country

2010-01-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

My phone rang at 9:45 this morning. I growled.

"Come on, we need to get our passports done this morning," Rex said. "Meet us at Walgreen's by 11."

More growling. I had been dreaming that I was taking a shower in some stranger's house, rushing to get done and sneak out before they discovered me. In this dream I was very thin, attractive and had dreadlocks. I wanted to go back to sleep to discover why I had dreadlocks. Maybe it was that half a cupcake I'd eaten last night.

I have always wanted a passport. Having one implies that you are going somewhere -- or at least that it's a possibility. Besides, you never know when you may be forced to flee the country.

(It could happen. Rush Limbaugh could become president in a right wing coup and all us liberals -- or smokers -- could be rounded up and shot, or sent to re-education camps for an all-expenses paid water-boarding weekend. One should be prepared.)

Walgreen's was the first stop for the necessary photos. Like all fat people, I hate having my photo taken, but especially now when my face is still recovering from that rash.

The guy at Walgreen's advised us not to smile, and I figured it's because they want you to look the way you will look when you've spent two hours in line at Customs, trying not to look or act like a drug mule or terrorist. I have this unreasonable fear that they will find out about that "Yield" sign I stole in 1982 and not let me back in. I'll have to live in Canada next door to Celine Dion for the rest of my life, eh.

I was amused when, after his frequent reminders to me about bringing my birth certificate, Rex realized he had not brought his own birth certificate, and neither had Patti. I did my best not to smirk while they ran home to retrieve proof of their being born on American asphalt. I spent some quality time admiring the ShamWows, Strap-Perfects, Bump-its and the other "AS SEEN ON TV" merchandise while I waited for our photos to be ready. I considered buying some of that Miracle Super Putty but decided to wait, since my birthday is coming up.

Finally, our mug shots in hand, we proceeded to the post office. Filling out forms, standing in line... oh, this is the way to spend a Saturday morning!

Suddenly I became an ugly American, a little concerned about just how many of the people standing in line with us DID look like drug mules and terrorists. Then I told myself it's only natural that people from other countries would be in the majority of those needing passports. Still... they got here somehow, didn't they? Shouldn't the swarthy man behind me wearing white pajamas and a little macrame beanie on his head already have a passport?

We were still trying to read all the tiny print on the signs plastered on the door, over the heads of burka-wearing women in front of us, when the woman inside made an impatient gesture indicating we were up.

Yes, my friends, I was about to meet.... the Passport Nazi. A thin woman in a lime green shirt who apparently hates her job even more than I do.

She took one look at Patti's form and said -- in a tone you would use to rebuke a dog that had piddled on the carpet --: "You filled this out in blue ink. It has to be in black ink."

NO PASSPORT FOR YOU!

"I'm sorry," Patti said. "I didn't realize...."

"It's stated clearly on the signs outside," the woman said. "If you had taken the time to read them, you would have known."

Patti and Rex scurried away to redo their forms. I swallowed hard, held my breath, and stepped up to the counter.

"I need your properly filled-out form, your birth certificate," she said in a rapid drone, not making eye contact -- obviously because I was little more than a bug on the windshield of her life. "Your driver's license, a copy of your driver's license -"

"A copy of my driver's license?" I parroted stupidly.

She paused just long enough to twitch her lips in some involuntary spasm of disapproval. If I had had a tail, it would've been between my legs.

"Do I need to go get a copy?" I stammered, my heart sinking.

"We can make a copy," she said. "There's a charge of 50 cents."

I would have been relieved not to be bounced from the line, but it was obvious that reaching for the desktop copier at her left was an enormous inconvenience, a favor reserved only for foreign dignitaries or George Clooney.

"You didn't fill out question #20," she said.

Ohmigod, she's going to eat me, I thought.

Question #20 asked for an additional contact phone number. I have no other phone number but my cell. I am afraid to tell her this. Instead, I wrote down Rex's cell phone number. If I hadn't been able to remember his number, I would have made one up.

Over my shoulder she was aiming her laser-death-eyes on a child cheerfully turning the lock on the door back and forth.

"Please stop that," she said. "I got locked in here once because some child broke the lock and we had to have it replaced."

I was seized by a sudden panic, certain she would know that I was not entirely sure of my mother's birth date. For some reason, I can never remember whether it's November 3rd or 4th. I think I get it confused with Election Day.

"Hand me your photos OUT of the folder, please." I had never heard the word "please" uttered with such a lack of sincerity. I wondered if I've been using the word incorrectly all my life.

But I scrambled to pry the two small ugly photos from the folder.

In the corner of my eye, I noticed with some annoyance that the line beside me was being administered by a cheerful man in a US Postal Service uniform. He was taking the photo of a potential drug mule -- a giggling twenty-something female -- with a smile and assured her that her photo -- produced in mere seconds -- was actually quite flattering. It wasn't fair. Why had Karma delivered me to the Nightmare-Life-in-Death of the Passport Office?

The drug mule's boyfriend was tempting fate, asking the Passport Nazi how long it would take to receive his passport, even though he was clearly not in her line.

"Five to six weeks, if there is no problem with your application," she said with a glimmer of malice, as if she doubted he would ever gain clearance to leave the country. "That information is posted on the door. All of this information is posted on the door."

I noticed with some alarm that she was stapling my fragile, faded and tattered birth certificate to the application.

"You're keeping my birth certificate?" I asked timidly.

"It will be returned to you by mail when your passport is processed."

I wanted to say something about the wisdom of entrusting the most important piece of paper in my life to the government, but didn't dare. I just bid an anxious adieu to proof my existence and hoped for the best.

"You need to make one payment of $75 by check or money order, made out to the US State Department," she said. "And a second payment of $25 made out to the US Postal Service."

"Does that need to be check as well?" I asked. I felt a little foolish writing a check to the State Department on South Park checks, but it couldn't be helped.

"The second payment can be made any way you want," she said, as if daring me to get creative. I wrote a second check.

Then she asked for my signature and I realized we were done. I had made it. I would not be sent home soupless.

Unless, of course, there is a problem with processing my application, such as the Passport Nazi deciding to accidently knock it into the shredder, just for giggles. I can only hope that she does not have a twin sister working Customs the day I attempt to cross a foreign border.

A letter from Santa to Doolittle T. Cat

2009-12-24T23:25:00.001-08:00

Dear Doolittle:

I want to apologize, my furry friend, for not being able to
bring you a squirrel for Christmas. You were indeed a very
good cat this year! But there were a number of problems
with your request.

Catching a squirrel was the first problem. I'm a pretty old fellow and
I don't run so well these days. Bad knees, you know. The reindeer --
Dancer especially -- just laughed their antlers off watching me try
to catch one of those crafty little buggers. And mean? Oh, Lord,
they have really bad attitudes. Let me just say that there is one
squirrel in particular who is NOT getting any nuts in his
stocking tonight.

So, not having much luck with catching one, I tried asking for
volunteers. For some reason, not a single squirrel I talked to was
particularly eager to be stuffed in your stocking. I was willing to
give you the benefit of the doubt, but I think they mistrusted
your motives. Seems they have had some bad experiences with
cats in the past, but I think it's species-profiling myself.

Then, somehow, PETA got wind of my efforts, and next thing
you know, I got a bunch of people picketing my workshop.
I reminded them that I know who's been naughty and nice,
and that picketing Santa is a sure-fire ticket to the naughty list.

Then they asked me if I was aware that forcing my reindeer to fly
all over the world in just one night violated OSHA regulations
about overtime hours.

I told those PETA people that those lazy reindeer only work one
freakin' night a year, and that they should get off my property
before I turned a yeti on them.

Now they are threatening a lawsuit, and my lawyer says I can't
really afford the bad publicity, what with the increase in my liability
insurance this year due to that unfortunate incident with a 747.
Besides, the reindeer were threatening a boycott and my elves
are already grumbling about the hiring freeze.

Honestly, I don't understand all the drama about squirrels, which
are basically just rats with bushy tails. And bad, bad attitudes.
No Christmas spirit at all.

I hope that you will like the presents I was able to bring you.
Fake mice laced with catnip are a lot safer, anyway. They don't
have all those sharp, pointy teeth. Or the bad attitudes.

All my best to you, Doolittle. Keep up the good work....
and leave that sofa alone!

Ho Ho Ho,
Kris Kringle, aka Santa Claus

Doolittle's Letter to Santa

2009-12-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

Deer SanTA Claws-

hoW is you? i haz ben verry good cat this YEAr if u donnot count lazt thanksgibben. i is up to sleepin 12 hourz a day and haz gott rid of laST MINiblinds in houze so i kin see reaL good out of windoze. i even hep MOMa when dat bad box go WONK WONK WONK evry moRNing by sittin on her hed but she do not seem greatful.

FOR kittmas me wood like a squirral. me know which one i want, two. dat mean one in backyARD who teeze me. he bad, bad squirral.

me wood also like pidgen. a fat slow one. do not mater which one. robin wood be ok if u cannot catch pidgen. me try and try but canot catch one EITHer. wood hep if mOma not make me sneaK out when she NOT lookin. can yu bring me housekey?

me wood also like ME own juizy steake sinze momma do not Like me lick herz. do not kno why she so stingy me do not wanT TO Eat it jus to lick IT.

for MOMA i wood like dead Mouses. she say NO but me knows she wood like tHEM. noTthing say i luv U like dead mouses. m e do luv momma even if she no like M E sleepin on her hed.

i wood leve dead mousez for yous but moma she say cookie beTter.

luv dookitty

pS kin U bring momma new sofa befor she see watt me did 2 back?

Gay Eskimos, ABBA and Grad Night

2009-10-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

First, let me say that I think the iPod is the greatest invention since peanut butter. I listen to mine everyday, especially late at night when i'm working on the computer. I listen at work 1) when the funky lady in the next cubicell starts jamming and 2) when I think that I simply can't stay awake one more minute.

I have 237 GB of songs loaded, and a lot more still available. But that 2377 GB is filled with an wild variety of songs that range from "Mack the Knife," to miscellaneous Andrew Lloyd Webber to Nina Simone to Kate Bush to 9 Inch Nails to Bill Monroe to a bizarre but hilarious song called "I'm the Only Gay Eskimo in My Tribe" by a group called Corky and the Juice Pigs.

Most amazing, to me, are the songs that form the soundtrack of the egocentric little farce called My Life. Songs that call up in stunning detail a place, a time, a person, an emotion, in a way that nothing else can do. Call it a musical flashback that comes zooming out of the past and -- if the memory is powerful enough -- can knock you on your ass.

Start with "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night. Most people refer to is as "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog." It came out in 1971, when I was eight years old and in the second grade. It is one of the very first Top Forty songs i can remember falling in love with. (Interesting factoid: the song was written by Hoyt Axton and TDN didn't really want to record it, but they needed a final cut for an album.)

But the memory it recalls is a rather fuzzy one, as memories from second grade tend to be, but even sweeter for it. My dad took me, my sister and some friends down to River Street for a parade (or something). I remember my first BBF Mindy Higgs and I joyfully, no doubt flatly, singing that song, probably until my dad begged us to stop.

My dad is alive in music for me. He and his cousins had a band in high school called The Hep Cats. Giggle. As time moved on, his tastes turned to folk rock -- Peter, Paul and Mary; the Kingston Trio and Bob Dylan. At family gatherings, he and those same cousins would sing "Lemon Tree," "Tom Dooley" and "Four Strong Winds." He played guitar and sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" at my birthday parties. I have an old recording of Dad and cousin Roger singing some of these songs, but it's quality is so terrible that it's painful to listen to. I listen anyway, because the music and the photos which chronicle my life are all I have left of him.

The song that started my relationship with radio was Paper Lace's "The Night Chicago Died." (If I had realized that Paper Lace had recorded "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" I might have boycotted it.) I heard it on some television show and loved it so much I started cruising up and down the radio dial looking for it, until Christmas when I got the 45 from Santa. That was 1974, when I was eleven.

I am not going to talk about Donny Osmond or Bobby Sherman here. Almost any woman of my generation would recount amazingly similar memories of swooning, shrieking, reading Tiger Beat and kissing lunch boxes.

I am also going to skip my rather embarrassing infatuation with Barry Manilow, and recall instead Elton John's Greatest Hits as the first truly grown-up album I ever bought; followed by Some Girls from the Rolling Stones -- which I bought mostly because I heard there was a song on it too dirty to played on the radio.

Then there's ABBA, which was cool, then dorky and now kitchy-cool again. And ABBA belongs to Sammy Adams. Around sixth or seventh grade, Sammy told me he'd had a dream in which he and I and Robert and Denise actually WERE ABBA. I thought it was cool that I'd been in someone's dream. Particularly Sammy's.

(Flash forward to freshman year in college, and losing my virginity while ABBA crooned in the background -- a song called "Andante, Andante," which i have NOT got in my ABBA collection. Not out of bad memories, but just because I now think it's a stupid sappy song. Not that "Waterloo" is a particular masterpiece, but it is bouncy and mindlessly happy.)

Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" also brings back high school, playing that song at the Halloween party our class had at Mrs. Moore's parents place, the Savannah Seamen's Home.

But a song that always knocks me out with memory is "Superstar" by the Carpenters.

I know that Bette Midler did a 'hipper' version, but i always preferred the Carpenters. I fell in love with their Singles double album (I can see the brown cover) -- at a slumber party at Ann Gooding's house. Or was it Cindy Banks? I remember getting that album for my very own for Christmas later that year, and being so happy to have it.

But neither of those memories are the one that come first when I hear that song. No, it's Sammy that comes back so clearly, and the bittersweet sadness of Karen Carpenter's voice captures my own emotions of this particular memory so perfectly.

Graduation night in 1981 was, for me, a miserable disappointment, clouded by my growing panic about leaving high school. Not that high school was particularly great for me. It was a hellish ordeal of insecurity, self-doubt, embarrassment, fear of embarrassment, loathing myself for not being popular enough or thin enough or pretty enough. It would take me years to realize no one in high school ever thinks they are popular enough or pretty enough or smart enough or just plain enough. I was such a ninny back then, and deeply, passionately concerned that I had never had a real boyfriend, or a first kiss, at 18. But high school was my world, a known quantity, a place in which I knew, at least, in which niche i belonged. (The good girl, the smart girl, the quiet girl, the best "drawer.") The great unknown of college -- which would take me away from home for the first time -- yawned like a friendless, black and bottomless cavern before me.

My depression that night was compounded by the fallout of the night before. The Beowulf Society had gone out to River Street with the intention of getting drunk, something I'd never done before outside of our Senior Trip in the Bahamas. Getting drunk was a goal for which we strove with a ridiculous innocence and naivete. Denise and I drank pina coladas, for God's sake.

What's the Beowulf Society, you might wonder? It was what we called ourselves, the private in-joke of the little troupe of nerds I hung out with, mostly because we always ended up in the same classes, being the "smart" kids, and worked on the student government together, the newspaper, and were all on various literary teams that went on trips to Macon every year.

Anyway, we had gone down to River Street, the center of Savannah's nightlife, and managed to get served at the Dodge City Saloon. They did card us, but when Robert told them with ludicrous gravity that we'd left our IDs in the car, they shrugged and served us anyway. Oh, for the good old days.

But somehow, even on pina coladas, i managed to get drunk. And i committed the single stupidest, most horrible mistake of my young life up to that point. And it's probably still in the top five of lifetime stupid, horrible mistakes. Possibly the one thing I'd like to erase from my memory completely.

I kissed Robert.

I'd had a love/hate relationship with Robert since seventh grade, when I briefly had a crush on him, and he "went with" me and my friend Cindy both. "Going with" for us at that time consisted mainly of exchanging valentine's and sitting together at lunch.

The "hate" part of the relationship came from the fact that Robert was deeply competitive in nearly every way. And in his own personal hell of trying to fit in, he was frequently enormously annoying, sometimes outright pompous.

I also loathed Robert because he asked me out. How dare he.

I only had four dates in high school. Robert; Chuck, the son of my english teacher, who put him up to it; Fred, whom I knew from church and asked to a dance myself, but viewed with a sort of sisterly detachment; and Bill, an upperclassman whom I adored in a kind of groupie way. I've never really understood why Bill asked me out, but our first date remains to this day the most fun I ever had on a date. He cooked dinner for me at his house and then we went to the Nutcracker. It was also the first time I ever saw that ballet -- or any ballet --and I was mesmerized.

But Robert.... Robert was the target of a great deal of snickering from the "popular" kids in our class. Every social blunder Robert ever made, they found hilarious and another reason to hold him in contempt. I resented him for blithely ignoring that contempt back then. Now I realize it took a bizarre sort of moral courage.

And because i was young and stupid and dying to be accepted, so keenly attuned to being outside the popular circle, I resented Robert for making me so conspicuously "uncool" by asking me out. And I hated myself for being so desperate to go out with ANYBODY that I accepted. Having gone out with Robert, none of the other boys would ever, ever ask me out. (As if that was the only reason. Chalk it up to the desperation of a teenager.)

I kissed Robert only because he happened to be there. He drove me home that night, and I refused to go into the house until i had a goodnight kiss. Little did I know how totally I panicked him with my drunken overture. I only knew that I was keenly distressed by my apparent lack of attraction to the opposite sex.

So I suffered through Graduation day and the consequent festivities of Grad Night feeling such acute embarrassment that I would have welcomed meningitis, an emergency appendectomy, a brain embolism-- anything to avoid having to face Robert and anybody who might have heard what I'd done.

All this was made more excrutiating by the fact that I had a hopeless crush on Sammy. I had had a crush on him ever since Jennifer Fredrich's birthday pool party, where we sat alone on the dock for some time, talking about music, mostly. I had no real expectation or hope of ever having that affection requited, but still, i harbored it. The one time I might have fessed up to this infatuation was on our senior trip. My first night of inhibited drunkeness, I got back to my room in time for curfew, and kept calling the room Sammy shared with Robert and Jonathan. I kept asking to talk to Sammy, but Robert -- always Robert! -- kept talking to me and wouldn't pass the phone to Sammy.

My friend Sonia had a crush on Sammy, too. And i played cupid for her with a generous loyalty born mostly of my own belief that i didn't matter whether I liked Sammy "that way" or not, so he might as well go out with someone I liked. That way I could sort of date him vicariously. He had already spent most of senior year dating a cute little blonde freshman, and had already expressed an interest in Sonia. Sonia was prettier than i was, bubbily and fun and hung out a lot with the popular crowd. I couldn't possibly compete.

And Robert... well, it seemed that he was always getting in the way of any progress I might have made with Sammy. That first dance in eighth or ninth grade? I had found out later that Sammy had mentioned asking me, but Robert had been the one to suggest he ask my friend Ann while he asked me, and that we could double date. When i could spend time with Sammy, Robert was always there too. That whole time on the senior trip, Robert stuck to me like glue. Just about every dance that came around in high school, Robert asked me first, even when i had started steadfastly turning him down. I even went to the homecoming my senior year stag, rather than give any more fuel to even the appearance that Robert and I were an item.

So Grad night was a miserable haze of trying to avoid looking Robert in the eye, and trying to be sympathetic while listening to Sonia obsess about her love life. I don't know, but suspected, that the cool kids were having parties to which I hadn't been invited, or were at least doing something a lot more fun. Worse still, Denise was there with her longtime boyfriend, and even Jonathan was dating someone whom he brought with him that night. More horrifyingly, Robert had apparently told Sammy and Jonathan something about taking me home the night before, because when we all decided to drive down to the beach the first time that night, Sammy turned to Robert and said, "I'm going to ride with Belinda, if that's all right with you."

Of course this prompted a furious seething on my part. When Robert said, "Sure, it's okay with me," i shot back, "Damned right it is." No wonder people thought we were a couple. We fought enough to look like one.

I forget what we did when we got there -- i remember it was foggy and once we got there, we couldn't decide what to do. There wasn't anything to do at the beach at night then. Driving to the beach was more a journey than destination, a reason just to drive somewhere.

We came back to the "senior breakfast." I have a picture of me looking quite sour, holding a napkin on which i'd scribbled "Dodge Sucks" over a fork sticking out of congealed grits, in some kind of makeshift flag.

So, just when i thought the night could get no lower for me, Sammy made me laugh. Sammy could always make me laugh. And when it came time for things to break up, somehow, miraculously, Sammy suggested he, Sonia and I drive back to the beach to watch the sun come up.

And that's when we sang "Superstar" together. In the dark car, lit only by the dashboard's glow, we sang with a total lack of self-concious attempts to be cool.

The sweet sadness of the song resonated in my hopeless puppy love and the sense of impending loss. And yet it was my happiest memory of Grad Night: driving to the beach with Sammy and Sonia in the deep darkness that comes just before dawn, on the eighteen mile stretch of empty two-lane highway through the marsh.

We never did see the sun come up. We realized, too late, that the particular stretch of beach we had chosen was actually facing the wrong way, for Tybee -- or Savannah Beach as everyone called it then -- is a long curving peninsula on the tip of Georgia's coast.

I spent a lot of time talking to Sammy on the phone that summer. Long, rambling, ridiculous conversations about everything and nothing. That Christmas break, he called me up one day to ask if I wanted to drive to Jacksonville with him; he was working for WSGA radio then, and they needed him to go get tickets for the big Michael Jackson concert.

I called in sick to work that day, just so i could go with him. God, we had fun on that drive.

I saw him again after college began. He was at UGA, just an hour from Atlanta where I was, with Denise. Denise and I went to the apartment he shared with another classmate, Craig -- who would be dead in another couple of years, the first death in our class that would shake us all profoundly. We cooked spaghetti, and talked and laughed. I had begun to find some confidence around boys, and flirted shamelessly. And while Sammy talked and joked with me a great deal, he never seemed to get the hint. Or maybe he did and just wasn't interested.

I had a party at my house the following summer. Sammy was there, making me laugh as always. But still, I never found the courage to profess my feelings for him.

I would see him next my senior year in college, when i asked him to be my date at Spring Fling, along with Denise and her current boyfriend. As luck would have it, I was desperately in love with someone else by the time the dance rolled around, and preoccupied. Even so, Sammy was the worst date I ever had. He spent more time talking to my friend Kitty and her boyfriend than me.

I would see Sammy again at Denise's wedding. I had gained a good deal of weight by then, and I was shattered when I overheard him making a comment to someone about me that, yeah, I had "more chins that a chinese phonebook." I slunk home early, and cried myself to sleep, deeply bewildered and hurt that he could be so malicious.

But I still had a thing for him. So much so that the last time we all got together one summer in Savannah -- and I had lost all my weight again, was looking better than I ever had before -- and i had dressed carefully in a lowcut blouse and short skirt with every intention of seducing him.

The evening began well. Sammy and I talked feverishly about writing, and Kerouac in particular. Then something happened. Sammy found that some of his friends were downstairs in the hotel. He said something about going down to talk to them for a few minutes, but that he would be right back....

He never came back. And I haven't seen or spoken to him since.

I wonder how things might have been different if I'd ever told him that I liked him. Possibly even loved him: my first real love that lasted, unconfessed but hopeful, for years. I don't harbor any delusions that we would have had a lasting, lifelong relationship, but still...other choices and relationships in my life would have probably been different, and that would make me slightly different somehow.

And when i hear the Carpenter's "Superstar" -- that sad, sweet song of loss -- I still miss him.

The Truth About Fat Chicks and Personal Ads

2009-10-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

At forty-six years old, I've not only been around the block and back a few times, I've been down the garden path, up on the roof, under the boardwalk and seen paradise by the dashboard lights.

Understand that I'm not looking for a conventional relationship these days. I have no driving obsession to pick out china patterns, procreate or even cohabitate. (I love comedian Rita Rudner's old joke: "I want a man in my life, just not in my house.")

I'm not looking under bushes and cabbage leaves for any vaguely presentable human with a pulse to keep me from being lonely. There are many people in my life, and when they aren't around, I'm too busy to be lonely: reading, writing, painting, making jewelry... or wasting time on FaceBook running an imaginary cafe and plowing cyber-fields.

Nor am I interested in casual sex. That's not because I'm a prude or conservative, or believe that sex is bad unless you're "making love." It's because sex is so important, and so intricately part of who I am, that -- like ice cream and books -- I only expend the time, energy and calories on the good stuff, those experiences which truly engage my spirit and mind as well as body. After all, I am a modern woman with a drawer full of triple A batteries, if you get my drift. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

If I'm just looking for physical release, I can manage that better than most men on my own just fine, with the added bonus of not ever having to fake it or sleep in a wet spot.

I am, however, keeping my eyes open for a particularly compatible person who might add something unique and enriching to my life. That's why I sometimes look at various personal ads on the Internet, just in case Mr. Pretty-Darned-Good-for-Right-Now happens along.

But I think I'm going to stop. It's too depressing. Oh, it's not just that so many of them are misspelled, grammatical nightmares. (I'm not expecting Faulkner, but geesh, is it so much to hope that high school graduates know the difference between "there" and "their"?) It's the prejudices these ads make so plain. Men who claim they are "open-minded, sensitive and caring" keep writing things like:

"I am seeking a woman with a slim or average figure with an open mind and outgoing spirit. Age or nationality has no bearing on a person's attractiveness. It's the mental age and heart within that makes the difference."

In other words, this guy wants anything female as long as she's not FAT.

I know, I know; you gotta be honest and ask for what you want, and I'm not putting anyone down for it, honest. Obviously those of us in this age bracket have figured out by now that if you don't ask for what you want, it's not going to just drop into your lap like a gift from heaven. If you are certain that no other possible combination of amazing qualities could ever overcome your lack of attraction to a body, then by all means, yes, be blunt and get it over with. Heck, you can write to Santa Claus asking for a life-sized Malibu Barbie, with a teeny-tiny doll-sized brain to match, for all I care. (Just keep in mind, between the ears isn't the only place Barbie is missing something.)

But suppose you found a woman who possessed Meg Ryan's adorable sweetness, Julia Roberts' smile, Jane Pauley's intelligence, Julia Childs' culinary skill, Princess Diana's grace, Joan of Arcadia's moral courage, Gilda Radner's sense of humor, and the heart of Mother Teresa. But this fantasy wears a size 16 or 18 or 22 instead of a size six. If you still wouldn't even consider having dinner with her, then just skip the rest of this article. But stop describing yourself as "open-minded, sensitive and caring," okay?

There are amazing women, myself among them, who are more...uh, shall we say, voluptuous than "slim"? Gravity, metabolism, Ben and Jerry's ice cream and my body have come to a truce at the age of forty-six.

And while I've made peace with the regrettable fact that Angelina Jolie inhabits the body I requested, it does become tiresome reading personal ads. Someone describes their criteria for Ms. Right (or even Ms. Right Now) and you are thinking, "Hmmm, that could be me; yes, yes, that's me..." until you get to their physical qualifications. (Insert obnoxious game show buzzer here.) Oh, too bad! Let's show this contestant our lovely parting gift!

I do envy people who can see a mere photo or set of measurements and say, "YES! I want to meet that person! That's what I'm looking for!"

For me it's much harder. Do I want to be at least mildly attracted to the physical package? Sure, I'm as human and shallow as the next person. If you could order a partner from some gigantic menu at Cupid's Intergalactic Dinner, I'd ask for a man with Brad Pitt's boyish good looks, Antonio Banderas' sex appeal, Dr. Phil's emotional sensitivity and sanity, Anthony Hopkins' voice, Dennis Miller's wit, Einstein's brain and Bill Gates' bank account.

But people aren't pizzas. Besides, looks are fleeting, attractiveness is subjective and beauty is often a subtle, mystifying blend of any number of qualities.

Let's be honest. Women -- and men, too -- know that their physical appearance plays a big part, sometimes the only part, in how other people see us. We're all insecure about something. Maybe it's a smaller than average penis or being short or balding. So many people, deep down inside, fear they are not really attractive enough. They worry their nose is too big, their teeth are too dingy. Even beautiful women worry that their breasts aren't big enough, or their butts are too big, or they won't raise their arms for fear of that tiny pocket of fat flopping around under their upper arm. American commercialism thrives on our insecurities.

Yet women don't post ads saying, "Small penises need not apply" or "No bald men" or "If you have a huge nose and bad teeth, don't bother responding." Very few men would dare to advertise "Looking for a woman with huge knockers; A and B-cups need not apply." But people (generally men, sigh) are still saying that if you're fat, you're not worth even exchanging photos and an introductory email with.

And who decides what is fat, anyway? For some people in our thin-obsessed culture, being a half a pound over a size eight is "fat." For others, a size 12 or 14 is thin. And I know, having been a size eight and a size 24 and everything in between. Even now, I'm sure there is somebody out there who thinks, "Damn, if only I could fit into a size 24, I'd be thrilled; stop whining, you skinny wiener."

There are just so many other things I'd like know before deciding whether to invest the time in responding to someone's personal ad.

What they are passionate about? What books do they read, what movies make them laugh or cry?

I want to know what they would change about the world if they were God.

I want to know if they have a soul that is open to the entire spectrum of human experience and the courage to embrace it.

I want to know if they have the compassion to accept other people's frailties as well as their own.

I want to know if they can deal with disappointment gracefully; if they can win without gloating; if they have a genuine capacity for joy. I want to know they see the glass as half empty or half full -- or if they're the type of person who says instead, "Tell me what's in the glass first, and then I'll tell you whether it's half empty or half full."

Oldie but Goodie... Bathroom Renovations

2009-10-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

I have a couple of friends who are or have recently gone through bathroom renovations, so, in an effort to share one of the most excruitiatingly messy events of my entire life, I'm reposting something from my old Myspace blog.

The Bathroom That Wouldn’t Die
SUNDAY, Feb. 3, 2008

Current mood: drained
Category: Life

You will notice that I've added a new default pic, one that is sure to make Rex shudder, lol. But I want to take this opportunity to salute him wholeheartedly for busting his ass to help me through this project. [this refers to a pic of Rex ripping out the old vanity. This pic to the left is the old bathroom downstairs.]

Of course, it was distressing to see him rip out the old vanity -- bleh, it was so old, tired and dark for such a small bathroom -- and i did hold my breath as we pried the old mirror from the wall... and i won't even relive the trauma of ripping out the old soffit with the light fixture. Rex and I both are totally bewildered as to why the builders of this condo put that in in the first place.

The worst thing about renovations -- aside from the mess, and the expense, and the way it just never seems to end, but instead grows and grows like a redneck's gut in middle age -- is that when you rip some of this stuff out, you see just how badly constructed your home is to begin with. You discover there is not a single right angle anywhere. And somehow seeing the skeleton of the room makes you shiver as you realize just how insubstantial your biggest life-investment really is.

Gone are all your illusions of the stability and solidity of the very shell of your life. It's just a bunch of matchsticks, two-by-fours and sheets of drywall that crumble under a hard stare. And you get to see just how nasty the underside of things are, and how many spiders are living in your walls. What exactly are those spiders living on, anyway? I don't even want to think about it.

I've completely exceeded my expected budget for this, which is being funded my mother, otherwise my unemployed ass would not be doing this at all. I found an incredibly cheap vanity (sitting in the living room) and when i realized I could save money on the formica vanity top (also still sitting in the living room), I splurged just a little bit on a fabulous new sink (currently sitting in the backseat of my car).

It was only after I'd had the vanity cut to fit the new sink that i realized the awful truth. The new sink would require a new faucet -- and not one of the less expensive basic faucets, oh no. It only takes an 8" center set lavatory faucet, 90% of which cost over a $100. I found a discontinued model for $86 and counted myself fortunate.

Yikes. I'd fallen into the first renovation trap. Unforeseen consequences always cost more money.

In ripping out the soffit, we found that the utterly stupid way it was constructed would also require a new section of ceiling and side walls that would have to seamlessly flow into the rest of the ceiling and walls. Only after we'd cut the new wallboard did we realize that the old wallboard was 1/8" thicker than the standard wallboard we'd bought. If you don't think 1/8" is very much, you've never tried to make walls meet with any kind of mutual agreement.

I spent a week up to my elbows in wall mud, mostly on a step ladder trying not to get great blobs of joint compound in my eyes and hair. Luckily, I wear glasses and so my eyesight was not imperiled; dried wall mud does in fact come off of glasses with a chisel, and the hair will grow back. I went through a gallon of joint compound.

And the sanding between the layers, and the final sanding -- oh my god the utter mess. A fine mist of eye-scratching, nose itching dust that somehow manages to get in every corner of the house. I stayed up past 1 am the night i finally finished all the sanding, washing everything, dusting everything, because i simply could NOT STAND IT for a moment longer.

Next misery came from trying to make the new ceiling texture match the old. This, of course, is impossible. And so the entire ceiling -- now mysteriously expanded to the size of a football field -- had to be redone. More mud and paint to be picked out of my hair. You can see a pic of my ceiling work -- it may not be the Sistine Chapel, but I'm damned proud of the final outcome. Of course, i can still see the seam, but i'm okay as long as i remember to squint slightly whenever I look at it.

In an effort to recoup the faucet miscalculation, I had to give up my dreams of track lighting with two super cool pendant lights on either side of the new mirror. Instead, I went with a generic light fixture. It ain't very pretty, but it is nice and new and clean and lights the bathroom much better than the old bare bulb fixture that was ensconced in the old stupid soffit.

As an added bonus, since the wiring was now exposed, Rex put in the long-discussed and desperately needed light fixture in my adjoining closet. With the new light, i found things i forgot I even owned.

Then, there are the things that you don't know you need until you're in the middle of it all and realize: you don't have enough of the right color paint; you need new electric boxes and switches for the closet; sandpaper; not just tile, but mortar, grout, spacers, grout sealer and a new transitional bar for the doorway; wall seam tape; a new wax ring for the toilet, which may yet require new bolts because the old ones are so badly corroded; new shoe molding for the whole room, because the old stuff broke and warped and splintered and the original nails are completely rusted and unremovable; new burst-proof supply line for the sink and toilet; paper face masks because sanding the bathroom is like standing in the middle of the Sahara in a dust storm, making breathing a health hazard and causing you to blow really gross snot blobs for the rest of the day, assuming you can stop sneezing long enough; a ceiling texture brush because there is no way to make a ceiling look like anything except some mutant paper mache made by a developmentally impaired fourth grader without one (and believe me, I tried.)

None of that stuff is expensive, but a dollar here, five bucks there, twelve bucks back here again -- it adds up. And one more trip to Home Depot, I may kill myself, if i don't kill the ignorant employees I always seem to find first.

We won't even mention all the tools I would have needed without Rex's extensive collection of masculine toys. Not just ordinary things like pry bars, hand saws, mud- and grout applicators, and a heat gun for removing linoleum; but things I didn't even know existed, like a pin gauge for making a template of the cuts needed for tile around molding. Oh, and the frightening tile saw. Diamond blades for the Dremel to sand the rough edges of cut tile.

But tonight the tile was finally laid. Which reminds me of the other side effect of this project: a drop-off of the sex drive. After a day of doing this manual labor, neither Rex nor myself has the energy. Not to mention that a sweaty, dusty woman with joint compound in her hair and paint smeared on her elbows is hardly an enticement to amorous exploits.

Quickie Cubical Lunch Review

2009-10-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

I had to go the post office and spent an ungodly $29.95 to overnight a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread to my sister. If I'd planned ahead, I would have spent only $7, but noooo, I had to be a day behind.

I passed Taco Bell, and for a moment, a Fiesta Salad called my name. But noooo, I decided to be fiscally responsible and eat what I brought this morning, namely, California Kitchen's Marguerita Pizza. But now there are four people in front of me for the microwave. I am hungry, hear my stomach growl....

But I can tell you that I like this pizza. It actually crisps nicely in the microwave. If you eat it fast enough, of course. Everything in the microwave becomes inedible after 10 minutes.

Quickie Cubicle Lunch Review

2009-09-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

Today it's Healthy Choice Asian Inspired Five Spice Beef & Vegetables. One of the basic problems with this dinner -- and all others containing "beef" -- is that the beef never looks very appetizing. Instead it's a fake-looking thin sliced "roast beef" not unlike the stuff you used to eat as a kid from Banquet frozen dinners. It also has this weird textured-leather look. But in spite of the look, the beef is actually tender and tasty.

While not among the ingredient list (unless if falls under "spice blend"), almost all I can taste is ginger, and the peppers. I was suprised to see "sake" among the ingredients. Not a big fan of water chestnuts either. I mean, they have no taste, really, just this crunch.

Overall, not bad, but I don't know if I'll try it again.

Quickie Cubicle Lunch Review

2009-09-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

Today's Lunch is what I was supposed to have yesterday until the hostage situation arose: Marie Calendar's Breaded Chicken Parmesan. Besides being tasty, with actual recognizable vegetables, it's a fairly generous amount of food (as frozen entrees go)and it should be at 650 calories.

What I noticed today, however, is that Marie Calender's: 1)has supposedly been around since 1948 -- and this will require investigation because inquiring minds with low tolerance of advertising BS want to know; and 2)is actually part of ConAgra Foods.

I don't know anything bad about ConAgra, but it sounds so coldly and unappetizingly corporate. I mean, would you go to a restaurant named "ConAgra"? They also make Healthy Choice, Orville Reddenbacker, Hunts and Chef Boyardee, among a dozen or more other brands. Which is just kinda weird to me. Does this mean Marie, Betty Crocker and Chef Boyardee all get together to have drinks? Is there perhaps some fiddle-faddle going on between Orville and Peter Pan? And just where does that innocent little Swiss Miss fit into this sordid little family?

Quickie Cubical Lunch Review 9-28-09 Arnolds (Again)

2009-09-28T09:54:00.001-07:00

I had intended to have Marie Calender's today, but around 11 am, my mouth sent a ransom note: "We have the stomach hostage. Give us Arnold's Country Kitchen or you'll never eat ice cream again."

I don't generally believe in negotiating with terrorists, but what could I do?

So down Rosa Parks to 8th Ave I went, not really minding being sorta "out" in this gorgeous weather. Even the bums loitering at the bus station seemed to have a spring in their step.

I was kinda hoping for country fried steak, but that's only on Thursdays, and I was momentarily tempted by the fried chicken, but I went for my standard: roast beef, mashed, green beans, mac and cheese.

I am pleased to inform you that the roast beef today is sheer perfection --- nicely pink and tender, ohmigod. The mac-n-cheese is still a little too peppery for my taste, but it's still a cheesy, gooey kiss of heaven. I really don't need the three "veggies" -- esp since two are starches - but it's so hard to choose. I mean, I passed up fried green tomatoes this time.

Have I mentioned how much I like Arnold's staff? Most of them have been there forever, and they obviously take pride in being a part of a Nashville tradition.

I tried to take a photo of my lunch with my cell phone, but I think company email is blocking it. I am disappointed.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish my lunch.

2009-09-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ah, vanity! Women have endured a lot of stupid things over the centuries, all in the name of beauty. Corsets, high heels, pantyhose, girdles, Richard Simmons. As a forty-something woman and feminist, I’ve given up on a lot of that, more out of exhaustion than philosophy or politics. But whether it’s society’s programming (i.e. my mother’s voice in my head) or simply something deep in those XX chromosomes, I continue to participate in one of the most painful and stupid rituals ever inflicted on the female of the species: the removal of unwanted facial hair.

It’s gotten worse as I have aged. When I was a teenager, a few painful moments with the tweezers were enough to save me from the “unibrow” look. As I entered my forties, suddenly there were whole armies of tiny but stunningly black hairs sprouting from the damnedest places. More than a week of inattention now and I begin to resemble Sasquatch in drag.

Given my carpal tunnel, developing arthritis and failing eyesight, tweezing has become rather like playing the old Operation game of childhood. No cartoon of a fat naked guy, true, and no buzzer, but a great deal of clumsy grappling at exasperatingly evasive objects. I began searching for another method, hopefully one that did not involve poking around my eye with pointy metal objects.

What I came up with was waxing, an ancient technique first used by the Romans to torture those criminals for whom crucifixion was deemed too “kind.” Modern waxing technique was later perfected by the Marquis de Sade (all the best and most painful beauty secrets come from the French, for reasons I don’t care to examine too closely but I suspect has something to do with their profound contempt for anyone not French.)

I found a product called “SurgiWax.” I liked the description because it required none of those pesky “muslin strips.” (I don’t know exactly what muslin strips are or what part they play in other waxing techniques; I only know that several of the products touted not needing them as a good thing.) You could heat this particular product in your microwave, which we all know is fast and quite modern so it must be convenient. And Surgiwax is quite effective, I admit. Here’s how it works, step by step:

1) Loosen the lid and microwave the small plastic jar according to the directions.

2) Test the temperature of the wax cautiously with your fingertip.

3) Think: "Hmm, seems about right."

4) Lift the small wooden paddle loaded with wax toward your left eyebrow, drizzling droplets of gooey wax onto the bathroom carpet, tile and even the mirror. At this point, a single droplet will land inevitably in your eyelashes, in effect waxing your left eye completely shut.

I have learned from experience that this lump of wax cannot be dislodged without leaving a 1/4" gap in the fringe of your already meager lashes, causing you to look like a drunken drag queen that has lost a section of her falsies. Pry lashes apart and attempt to scrape wax off with fingernails. If you accomplish this with a loss of ten lashes or less, consider yourself blessed.

5) Take another paddle of wax and this time make it all the way to the unwanted forests of left eyebrow.

6) Emit a sound often mistaken for an enraged mongoose that's been stepped on by a hippo. Why? Because no matter how long or short a time you heat the wax, no matter how carefully you have tested the temperature, the wax is always – ALWAYS -- still too #@I& HOT!

7) Stomp a foot and mutter, "Why the hell do I do this to myself?" as you feel the flesh beneath the wax begin to blister.

8) Repeat steps 4 and 5 on right brow.

9) Attempt to repeat steps 4 and 5 on upper lip, only to find the wax is now too cold, and refuses to adhere to upper lip.

10) Trudge back downstairs to microwave.

11) Repeat steps 1-7.

12) Allow wax to cool completely. You can amuse yourself during this time by making faces in the mirror just to watch the planks of hardening wax wiggle up and down.

13) Carefully peel up the corner of the first section of wax, getting wax under your fingernails that will later have to be carved out with a nail file.

14) Once you have a solid grip, give one enormous yank, pulling in the opposite direction of the hair growth.

15) See stars as blinding pain immediately causes eyes to fill with tears.

16) Grip the edge of sink (to keep from falling to your knees) and stop screaming.

17) If necessary, stand there for several moments, blinking and squinting, stomping foot, using language that has been banned in 34 countries.

18) As the profanity dies down to a sustained hiss, remove fingers from countertop. (A little sandpaper will remove the crescent-shaped imprints.)

19) Realize that there is snot dripping down your face, because the tears have, of course, set your sinuses running like the Mighty Mississippi. Blow your nose.

20) DO NOT -- I repeat -- DO NOT LOOK in the mirror at this point because what you will see is not pretty: a sobbing, snot-nosed face with thick yellow crusts of wax on one eyebrow and upper lip, and a scarlet crescent of angry red flesh above one still-squinting eye.

21) Repeat step 13 on next eyebrow. Only this time, in vain hopes of making it hurt less, pull S-L-O-W-L-Y.

22) Halfway across, unable to see for tears, give up this strategy as stupid and simply yank the rest in one motion.

23) Repeat steps 15 - 20.

24) Consider just letting the wax on your upper lip wear off naturally over the next 24-48 hours.

25) Decide this course is not viable, as you cannot bear to go to dinner, even at Waffle House, with a wax mustache.

26) Repeat steps 13-20 on one side of your upper lip.

27) Allow yourself one expletive of choice before doing the other side.

28) When your vision clears, examine eyebrows to make sure they are balanced. Find that you have actually removed your ENTIRE right eyebrow.

29) Consider whether you will look funnier with only one eyebrow drawn with the eyebrow pencil or if you should just remove the other eyebrow and draw on both.

30) Decide to hell with it and go eat the rest of your carefully hoarded Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey while you sulk. You’ve earned it.

Friday Night Dinner Review: Tom's Elite

2009-09-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

Rex, my psuedo-significant other, has dragged me to Barbecutie a couple of times. He thinks the food there is good, including the dry, tasteless impersonation of brisket he ordered a couple of times. (I worry that he has such low standards; he is dating me, after all.)

When I found Tom's Elite, I brought the brisket plate home for dinner and told him, "THIS is what brisket is supposed to taste like." Moist, meaty, tender, flavorful, smoky heaven.

Tom's has become one of my favorite places to stop on my way home to get an excellent dinner that I don't have to shop for, cook or clean up. I just have to eat it. Which is exactly the way I like it. Plus, the portions are generous, so I always have enough brisket left over for a sandwich the next day.

Tom's Elite is located on Gallatin Rd in East Nashville, across from Nicholson's Cleaners and my SunTrust bank. I don't think I would have tried them if they hadn't gotten a glowing review in the paper. But thank goodness, they did. I love the ribs, but the brisket has captured my heart. The turnip greens are excellent too.

So that is what we had for dinner tonight. Beef brisket from Tom's. I had mac-n-cheese and green beans. Rex had the baked apples and greens.

We were going to watch Schindler's List, because Rex has never seen it (and that will not do -- i believe it's possibly the greatest film ever made), but I discovered that my VHS copy has developed that annoying buzz. So I'll have to get the movie on DVD.

Instead we watched my NetFlix "Dracula" with Frank Langella. I developed a definite crush on Langella in this one, back in 1979 when I first saw it. Not having seen it in years, I was a bit dismayed to find myself distracted by his hair, which looks disturbingly late seventies, maybe even a tad Liberace. But I'd still let him in my bedroom window, even if he was hanging upside down like a bat.

Doolittle, however, spent some quality time with Rex's shoes. One of these days, I'll grab the camera in time to get a shot of him rolling orgasmically on his back, which a shoe clutched tightly in his paws, or trying to force his entire head into one shoe. My cat just LOVES those shoes. Maybe it's a leather fetish, I don't know.

Quickie Cubicle Lunch Review

2009-09-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

Today, it's Marie Callendar's Pasta Al Dente: "Inspired by Modena, Italy, the home of balsamic vinegar, Fettuccini Chicken Balsamico features spinach and mushrooms drizzled with a balsamic reduction sauce."

I've always thought that Marie had some of the better frozen entrees, and now she's going after that "steamed fresh" trend/marketing ploy. This one, the first i've tried, was... well, okay. I should have chosen a different variety, because actually I don't care much for balsamic vinegar. (I know, what was I thinking?) They could put more spinach in here. Spinach is cheap, healthy and I like spinach.

The good news, there's a generous portion of noodles here, so maybe I won't be gnawing on the desk by 4 pm. Maybe.

Quickie Cubicle Lunch Review: Marche

2009-09-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

Somehow, my lunch reviews have become rather popular -- or so people tell me. Maybe it's just three people desperate for diversion, but still....

But I'm wondering if the fact that people are actually reading about what I had for lunch is making me seek out lunches that are... well, bad for me.

I've been a bad, bad girl today. I had to be in East Nashville, dropping off some art, and thought: "Hmmmm... Marche would be a yum-fest."

So I stopped at Marche's Artisian Foods. It's an almost unbearably trendy temple to food in the Five Points area, and only the fact that the food is in fact fabulous prevents it from being pretentious. The interior is shabby chic French provencial, where the waiters are all unemployed musicians and starving artists.

It's the kind of place where you'll pay $8 (plus tax) for a BLT -- but it will be the best BLT you have ever tasted. It will be the Sistine Chapel of BLTs.

It will start with fresh baked sourdough bread, toasted lightly, with generous, thick-cut smoked applewood bacon... and sun-dried tomatoes that are to die for, and fresh tender greens. There's some kind of dressing on it, I think, something light. I'm always too busy eating and sighing in bliss to take note.

But today, I was lured by the Cheese Steak -- soft, fresh foccacia bread, still slighty dusty from the oven, with Boarshead Roast Beef, roasted red and green peppers, carmelized onions, and cheese that I think may be brie.

Yum. I'm a sucker for food lovingly, artistically crafted... a welcome antidote to the recently-frozen, mass-produced and mundane crap that passes for food in most restaurants.

I suppose I wasn't as bad as I could have been. Did I mention... creme brulle? Madeleines? Chocolate Expresso Cake with Caramel and Cream Cheese frosting? Butternut Squash Cake with Apple Mousse frosting? Every kind of bread you can imagine. Chocolate croissants. Baguettes. Stuff you could just sit down with, along with a pound of butter, and eat until you die a happy piggie.

2009-09-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I painted up a storm. I think I'm painted out. These are going to Meg at Art & Invention Gallery this afternoon.

Confessions of a Craft Junkie

2009-09-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

I should have known, early in childhood, that I would develop an addiction to making stuff. I had a ton of Barbies, but I wasn’t at all interested in dressing her, or taking her around town in her spiffy orange jeep, or even posing her in compromising positions with Ken. No, not me. I spent all my time building and decorating her dream house.

Having only the limited resources of a child, I found my materials around the house. And nothing was safe. Not my mother’s jewelry box (brooches made excellent wall decorations), not her closet (scarves became curtains), and not the kitchen table mats (excellent for carpets). When Mom couldn’t locate her pincushion, she knew she’d find it being used as an ottoman for that little blonde bimbo.

Soon came all those elementary school projects: handprints in plaster and lopsided ashtrays. In Vacation Bible School, they showed me how to cover cigar boxes in macaroni, and spray-paint them a gaudy gold. I made bookmarks and Christmas ornaments out of felt, egg cartons, pipe cleaners and way too much Elmer’s glue. While the other kids were busy spreading layers of glue over their hands just for the sheer joy of peeling it off, I labored over macaroni designs and glitter placement with all the concentration of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.

I didn’t really blossom into full-fledged crafting until I moved into my first apartment. Having little disposable income, I had to get creative. I’ve talked to other crafters and found that for many of us, poverty is truly the mother of invention. I’d see something fabulous in a store (that I could not afford) and think, “I could make that.” Or some approximation of it. God knows, some of my first attempts were indistinguishable from, say, the work of blind, motor-deficient fourth graders.

But whether it was a dorm room or a cardboard box, I had to decorate it. Had to. Just as surely as I had to breathe. And I would use anything and everything. I became a compulsive pack rat of discarded ribbons, buttons, pretty paper and miscellaneous “stuff” from garage sales and thrift stores. There was no furniture so scarred and battered that it couldn’t be painted, decoupaged or covered in fabric.

Eventually I discovered the craft and hobby stores springing up all over the place: Michael’s, Joann’s and Hobby Lobby. I’d wander the aisles, my eyes glazing over in a blissful daze of creative mania. Not just for the things I already dreamed of making, but for whole new crafts that I never even knew existed. Clay sculpture, glass painting, wire wrapping. Even the rolls of multicolored yarn, in so many colors and textures, could mesmerize me, and I didn’t even know how to knit.

I learned to cross-stitch, and for several years, the biggest goal of my life was to own every color of DMC floss known to man.

I bought my first glue gun. It was wondrous in its possibilities, but I couldn’t understand how Martha Stewart managed to use one without yelping, “Oh, shit!” as the hot glue melted all her fingers together into mutant flippers, or the cat chose just the wrong moment to stick out an inquisitive paw. But even the searing pain of red-hot glue could not stop me. Let me just say, I no longer have fingerprints. And my cat is now afraid of the glue gun.

The money I once tried to save by making pretty things now went to feed my addiction at the various craft stores. Even walking through their doors, I felt my wallet opening like a thirsty flower to spring rain, even if it meant forgoing food, rent and cable television. At one point, a friend threatened to post my photo on signs at every register, saying: DO NOT SELL TO THIS WOMAN: SHE IS SICK AND CANNOT HELP HERSELF.

My current boyfriend has suggested that I should only be allowed into Hobby Lobby if he accompanies me with a cattle prod.

When I discovered beading, I was like a pot smoker graduating to heroin. Oh, the variety of bright, shiny objects in so many colors, textures, sizes and shapes! Semi-precious stones, glass, plastic — it didn’t matter. I had to have them all, and now discovered entirely new specialty stores to plunder.

Soon I was buying sterling silver by the gram, beads on long strings in bulk. Bead shows at the fairground beckoned to me with a siren’s song. Even on vacation, in every destination from Memphis to New Orleans to Pigeon Forge, I would check the phone book to seek out new suppliers to feed the ravenous beading monkey on my back. I showered friends and family with beaded jewelry until they were afraid to open even one more gift.

I wasn’t even safe in my own home, as I discovered mail order catalogs and the Internet. When I spent $200 on a state-of-the art wood burning kit on EBay, I began to suspect I had a problem. When I donated two bulging bags of perfectly good clothes to Goodwill just so I could devote an entire closet and dresser to my craft supplies, I knew I had hit rock bottom. I had a sudden vision of myself standing on a street corner, with a sign that said: “Will Work for Beads.”

Then, I found my salvation. I discovered others who did not judge me, for they suffered from the same addiction. They understood. They did not turn away or yawn when I rambled excitedly about my new paper cutter.

I have one friend who crafts in her car during her lunch hour, and frequently puts her three children into an assembly line of prep-work similar to third-world sweatshops. Another roams estate sales and thrift stores, obsessively searching for interesting junk to fashion into funky art and jewelry. We confessed our sins, the depth and width of our addiction, like alcoholics at an AA meeting. “Hello, my name is Belinda, and I’m a craft junkie.”

We shared our secrets: new ideas, new materials, the best places to find supplies, the newest adhesives, and how to hide Joann’s receipts from husbands. We found Cafe Press, Lovli and Etsy as an outlet to turn our addiction into hard, cold cash – or at least enough to fund our next expedition to Michael’s. And when those websites were not enough, whole groups of us began banding together in armies like the Craft Mafia, CRAFT, Artsy Mamas, and the Etsy Street Team, just to name a few. When we could not find enough existing venues for selling our wares in the established fairs and shows, we took to the streets of Nashville, creating our own events.

I have now come to terms with my addiction. I no longer hide in shame, but I embrace it, cherish it, and nurture it. I am not alone, and with my new friends, I have the strength to get out and testify to the masses who have not yet embraced their inner crafter. I openly scorn the mass-production of third world countries, the ugly and the just plain boring. I spread the gospel of the handcrafted and the one-of-a-kind like a born-again prophet.

I am a craft junkie, and damned proud of it.

How to Tell If You Are a Craft Junkie:
1. Family members will no longer go into Hobby Lobby with you.
2. You have sacrificed sleep to make "just one more ______."
3. You have considered trading your least favorite child (or spouse) for a gift card to Michael’s.
4. You have ever lied about how much you spent at a craft store.
5. You have bought a craft material or tool even when you had no idea how to use it.
6. There is at least one closet/bookshelf/cardboard box in your house crammed with craft supplies. And there are things in there you don’t even remember buying.
7. You have ever refused to throw “trash” away, because you are sure you can someday use it.
8. You are physically incapable of throwing away a scrap of fancy ribbon.
9. You have ever called in sick to work or made excuses to get out of a family obligation in order to stay home and make something.
10. The mention of a cold-temp, cordless glue gun makes your heart race faster than Antonio Bandera’s butt.

10 Steps to Happiness or Some Approximation Thereof

2009-09-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

In my forty-six years, I have collected some small bits of wisdom for a happy life. And now, I'm going to share them with you whether you want them or not.

As a misanthrope/cynic/sometimes negative-nelly, I'm not talking about the broccoli-brained happiness of game show hosts and certain religious cults, but rather the fleeting and transient happiness of a Survivor contestant who wins a finger-full of peanut butter on day 47. But sometimes a finger-full of peanut butter can keep you off the rooftop with an AK-47.

1) Never say no to whipped cream. If you are eating something, somewhere, where someone would possibly ask you if you wanted whipped cream with that -- then, damn it, say yes to that fluffy puff of indulgence. Don't stop to calculate calories, carbs or fat grams. You're already in the pool, so go ahead and grab that inflatable donut of wild abandon. Say yes to whipped cream. And the cherry, if for no other reason than that it's a cheerful, lovely red.

2) A bathroom of your own. Virginia Wolfe espoused the benefits of having a room of one's own, but I'll take it a step farther. Not just any room, but a bathroom.

It doesn't matter if you're five, dancing in agony in the hallway waiting for your brother to open the door; or twenty, beating on the door and yelling at your roommate that you have the right to blow-dry, too; or thirty-five, sighing at the vast amounts of hair, dried shaving cream and petrified toothpaste splotches on the marble vanity, all left by your partner.... the bathroom is the last bastion of personal space where you should be free to linger, soak and pluck your eyebrows in peace without having to clean up anybody else's used personal hygeniene products. Do what you have to do -- lie, steal, cheat or kill -- but with God as your witness, never share a bathroom again.

3) Never pass up the opportunity to nap. Ah, the joy of totally unnecessary, unrequired langor. True, it's often hard to find the time, but indulge yourself once in a while. There is something so decadent about lying in bed during the daylight hours, rolling over to press your cheek into that soft, cool pillow case. And it's even better if you can convince someone to indulge with you. Your lover, your child, your cat.

4)Throw your alarm clock across the room. Personally, I think we'd all be better off if no one had ever invented the clock; we could all just show up wherever whenever we felt like it. Imagine, no more rush hour, because no one would have to rush. As for the bastard who invented the alarm clock? Dig him up, disembowel him and feed him to hyenas. That foul electronic honking is enough to make your ears bleed, second only to crying babies on an airplane, and the only reason it comes in second is that babies don't have snooze buttons.

Once a month or so, set your alarm even when you don't have to get up, and give yourself the criminal pleasure of grabbing that wonking Big Brother of our hurry-up culture and send that puppy crashing into the wall. The spackling will be worth it, believe me.

5)Learn how to read. I don't mean just mastering the ABCs enough to read the back of cereal boxes and snarky YouTube comments. I mean learn how to read a good book. And I don't mean "good" as in just the Bible or Moby Dick. Pulp romance novels will do, if those are what take you out of your own world for just a few hours.

A good book -- a good story -- is like a vacation without going anywhere and it's still absolutely, positively free. Let's face it, reality is overated. Learn how to read, and you learn how to leave it behind.

6) Adopt a pet. Cats and dogs are best, but a goldfish will do in a pinch. It's a scientic fact that a pet can lower your blood pressure and make you live longer. Sure, there are the walking-the-dog, clean-the-litter-box chores, as well as the occasional loss of your favorite (and expensive) strappy designer sandals, but the joys of a pet outweigh all of that.

I get so much pleasure from my cat, Doolittle, even if he does almost nothing but sleep, and he has an unfortunate affection for launching himself at my ankles when I least expect it. Even when he does things that annoy me -- like walking on my head at 3 a.m. -- I still find myself smiling at the way he looks curled up on the sofa cushion that I've tried so hard to keep him off of. I laugh when he runs full-tilt through the house for no reason at all. I smile at the way just the tiniest pink tip of his tongue hangs out of his mouth.

And nothing compares to the contentment of a warm cat sleeping in your lap on a cold winter day.

Addendum: Don't go to some puppy mill for a purebred with the brain of a pea, or buy a gorgeous haughty cat out of the classifieds. You'll earn brownie points with both Karma and your own conscience if you adopt an animal that needs you to save its life. Double points if you spay or neuter them.

7) Just say no. No, I'm not talking about Nancy Reagan here. I mean, learn how to say no to the things you really don't want to do, if you can get away without doing them. So many of us say yes automatically, a sort of good-girl knee-jerk reaction even when people are blantantly taking advantage of us. It's nice to help people out, but there's a limit. Find it. Stick to it. Just say no. At least some of the time. You are allowed.

And what's so great about obligation and guilt, anyway? How many parties have you gone to that you really didn't want to go to, just because you felt you should. Especially those parties where your "friend" tries to coerce you into buying one of those super-duper non-stick cake pans in the shape of a bunny rabbit just in time for Easter. Really? Do you really have to? It was one of the greatest days in my life when I realised I was a grown-up, and nobody could make me do anything I didn't want to. Except for work, death and taxes... and going to Walmart.

8) Plant something. You don't have to become a poster child for Miracle Gro, but every spring, plant something, even if it's just a begonia in a clay pot. Maybe it's just the childlike joy of playing in the dirt. Maybe it's the higher-plane metaphysical joy of getting closer to growing, blooming things.

Nah, it's the playing in the dirt.

9) Smile at a stranger for no reason. Smile as if you really mean it. Most of the time, it will cause them to smile back; it will scare the shit out of the rest of them. Either way, it's a win/win situation.

10) Once in a while, give money to the guy on the corner. Maybe it's a scam when he tells you he came downtown to see about a job, and his car ran out of gas, and he just needs a few bucks to get back home.

Maybe he isn't homeless, this is just how he's chosen to make a living, because isn't standing in the rain with a soggy sign that says "Help a veteran" more glamorous than flipping burgers?

Maybe he's an alkie who's just gonna blow it on Thunderbird or Starbucks. Maybe he's a tobacco addict who simply can't afford the price of cigarettes anymore.

It's not our place to judge why he (or she) is out there. Sometimes, you just don't know what a dollar can mean to someone else. What's a dollar to you, anyway? Super-sized fries? A lottery ticket? If you're gonna throw it away, you might as well buy a lottery ticket in the Do-A-Good-Deed Powerball.

Sure, it would be better if we stopped and brought them a Happy Meal or some clean socks, but we all know we're not gonna interrupt our busy schedule to feed and clothe the homeless. It would be better if we all volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, or ladled soup at the Mission. We all intend to do those things, but do we?

So take the easy way out, just every once in a while. Meet their eyes. Really see them. Take a chance and give them something.

FaceBook Is Eating My Brain....

2009-09-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Oh, I remember when we first met. I was in my middle years, feeling like I'd done it all, seen it all... and then, there you were. The Internet.

You made me feel like a kid again - a kid struggling to understand long-division, true, but once I mastered AOL, it was love at first password. You had me at: "You've Got Mail."

Some said it was just an infatuation, a passing fad; but I knew our love was here to stay.

Still, the relationship has gone through some changes. AOL gave way to Yahoo; Yahoo melted into MySpace... and then FaceBook captured my heart.

At first I felt like I was cheating on MySpace. But Facebook just seemed to really understand my needs, what I really wanted from a social networking site. Namely, a vehicle for posting minute-by-minute updates on every move I make, every breath I take, every thought -- profound or inane -- that skitters through my addled brain.

I also desperately needed a way to keep in touch with 2,534 of my closest friends. Because I really need to know your Disney princess name.

I love FaceBook. It's brought me back in contact with friends I haven't seen or spoken to in a coon's age. But I am beginning to think I may need an intervention.

It's bad enough that I feel compelled to come up with something moderately witty before noon for my status message. A little sad that I've actually started to post a new status message late at night, only to think, "Wait... most of my friends are in bed. I'd better wait or they might miss it."

But it's the GAMES... those freaking games!

I'm not a gamer, never was in the "real" world. No D&D, no marathon Risk games, none of that. And for years the only thing I ever played on the computer was Solitaire, which, in the computer gaming world, is really lame. Kind of like playing Spin the Bottle when everybody else is playing Howard Stern's Orgy-Mania. (It's like Twister, only dirtier. Yes, I made that up.)

But then a FB friend kept sending me sheep. Chickens, cows, orange trees. I caved into peer pressure, and thought, I'll just try it. What harm can it do?

So I began my first farm in Farm Town. I thought it was just a little innocent fun, and I could stop any time I wanted to. But by the time I expanded my farm the third time and made a spreadsheet to calculate the optimal profit per field, I began to suspect I had a problem.

I hit rock bottom the night Farm Town went down for six hours and I couldn't get to my farm. My crops, I wailed, beating on the computer screen. My crops! I've got pumpkins coming in, you have to let me harvest!

I thought about finding a twelve-step program, but I was too busy plowing, planting and harvesting.

Then it happened. I reached Level 24. My farm could expand no more. I bought my mansion, my greenhouse, my river. There was nothing left to do in Farm Town.

I wandered the web searching for another fix, trying to recapture the thrill of that first level-up. YoVille. FarmVille. Mafia Wars. Sorority Life.

Sorority Life is my dirty little secret. The game is the pinnacle of crass materialism and anti-feminist smut based on the idea that women will climb all over each other in stilletto heels for a chance at a Guicci bag and a dozen cookies, slapping each other silly the whole time. Because they do. I'm so ashamed of myself.

But I have 402 sisters now, as well as 148 Hummer stretch limos, 74 lifetime tans and one yacht. And it pisses me off way more than is seemly when a rival smacks me upside of my head and steals $70,000 from me.

First thing in the morning, I log into FaceBook and head straight for Sorority Life, to bank my earnings, send Juicy Couture dresses to all my sisters, and make sure I haven't been put on the Burn List.....

Then it's off to Mafia Wars, where I check my properties for break-ins and send my family members wire taps, sawed-off shotguns and stolen Rembrandt paintings.

Then to YoVille, to feed my cybercat, punch the clock at the Widget Factory, and shop for a new dining room set. If I have time, I dance with a few friends before rushing off to Farm Town.

Once the flowers are watered at my Farm Town estate, I run over to FarmVille, where I have to milk the cows, collect eggs and harvest all the eggplants.

I've also got my own amusement park in Rollercoaster Kingdom, where it seems i do nothing but feed my employees.....

It's all becoming a big blur, more a job than my job.

What I fear is that one morning, I'm going to send Juicy Couture dresses to my goodfellas, throw grenades at my sheep and try to milk my sisters.

Someone stop me, before I farm again.

Why I Despise Kroger, and You Probably Do Too

2009-09-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

I hate Kroger. I loathe that store with every fiber of my being.

It's not just that it's always crowded with slack-jawed sheep staring blankly at the 2,054 varieties of breakfast cereals as if the secrets of the universe are about to be revealed. It's not just the shrill whiny spawn of shrill, whiny psuedo- humans from the shallow end of the gene pool, clinging to the cart and beating on their siblings like so many monkeys fighting for the last banana.

it's not just the infuriatingly oblivious women chatting on their cell phones about whether or not their husbands are really cheating or trying to arrange Jr's next playdate while blocking the four-foot ailse of death with their buggies full of organic veggies, LifeWater and cottage cheese.

It's not even the cashiers whose conversations I am obliged to interrupt as the bagboy puts the bananas and twelve cans of soup into one bag... which will split open as soon as I lift the bag to put it into my trunk.

All of the above, I resignedly accept as a tradeoff for not having to forage in the wild for roots and berries. It's more than that.

The bagboys are akwats forgetting to put one item in my bags. I get home, unpack, and wonder where in the hell the pimentos got to. You know, the pimentos I needed for that dip I was planning on taking to a party which I am already late for. I have to dig through coffee grounds and garbage to find the receipt to confirm that yes, I did pay outrageously for those stupid gourmet pimentos.

Out to the car to search trunk and floorboards. No pimentos. Back into the house, rechecking the cabinets and countertops, even the freezer. No pimentos. Drive back to Kroger, shove my receipt in the face of a different cashier -- because you know the one from before is on break now, naturally -- and demand my freakin' pimentos.

This requires the intervention of a manager -- who, judging by the length of time it takes him/her to reach the front of the store, must have been stocking frozen foods in Siberia. He and the cashier shuffle around the register area looking for a jar of pimentos -- at one point i catch the manager looking into the trash can and i have to wonder, if my pimentos are in fact there, will he merely fish them out and hand them to me, with a glob of the cashier's gum stuck to the top?

Finally the manager sighs and tells me to go get another jar of my pimentos off the shelf.

Did you get that? He TELLS me to GO GET ANOTHER JAR.

Because I am late, and afraid that at any moment my head is going to shoot right off my spine and richocet around the store, probably landing in the cereal aisle where two snotty children will procede to fight over it -- I don't give him a lecture about customer service, but trudge off to find the pimentos.

When I return to the front, the manager is gone and the cashier is looking blankly at me as if she has just experienced a complete CIA mind-wipe. I remind her of our journey together around the register just a few moments before, searching for the pimentos.

She asks me if I have my receipt.

I tell her I handed the receipt to her earlier.

"When?" she asks. "You didn't give me no receipt."

Must...not.... kill. Must... not...

Finally she produces the receipt from her pocket, with a cheeky little smile and an "oops!" that makes me wonder what her heart tastes like.

She says I have to take the receipt and my new jar of pimentos to the Service Desk, where the entire crew of a local landscaping company is in line to cash their paychecks.... and they are as fragrant as manly men who spend a day in the hot sun playing with manure are bound to be. None of them speak much English, and the transactions proceed with all the speed of a large glacier racing uphill.

But the time I leave the store, my jar of pimentos clutched between two white-knuckled hands and my left eye twitching, the very sight of those pimentos makes me ill.

Sometimes, upon the discovery of yet another missing item, I have simply said "F--- it" and waiting until my next regularly scheduled trip to Hell's Supermarket. Now knowing how the game is played, I go straight to the Service (!!?) Desk.

"You bought the eye drops last Thursday," she says, eyeing me as if I look familiar from the post office wall. "Why didn't you come back that day when you first realized they weren't in your bag?"

"Because...." Gritted teeth. The sound of my own blood pounding through my ears. "It was eight o'clock at night and I was too tired to drive all the way back here."

"If they were left here-" dramatic pause for effect tells me she believes this is merely an attempt to scam Kroger out of a five dollar and forty-five cent bottle of eye drops - "someone would have put them back on the shelf by now. You really should have come back right away."

"Let me get this straight," I say. "You are telling me that it's MY fault for not dropping whatever I was doing and coming all the way back to this store to correct a mistake YOU made? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Ma'am, I'm just saying you shoulda come back as soon as you --"

"Call your manager. I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER RIGHT NOW."

Thiis is the kind of relationship I have with Kroger. These are not isolated incidents. Crap like this happens all the time. Kroger hates me, and I hate Kroger. If Kroger were a little old lady crossing the parking lot, I'd run her over.

In recent months, I have been struggling to quit smoking. I go a few days, fall off the wagon, get back on the wagon, you get the picture.

When I finally got health benefits at work, I was thrilled to find out they would cover smoking cessation medications, even over the counter ones. I trot off to Kroger (which is also for some twisted reason I don't fully understand also where I have chosen to do my pharmacological business) and present my new card.

The tech looks at the card, looks at me, and says, "We can't bill insurance if you don't have a prescription."

"Even for an OTC item? Nicotine patches?"

"You have to have a prescription."

So I leave, condemned to smoking for another day at least.

I call my doctor, tell him what I need. His nurse says I have to come in for a physical. To make sure I am healthy enough to quit smoking, I presume.

I wait two weeks to see the doctor. He gives me a prescription. I take it to the Kroger pharmacy. They tell me to give them a few minutes. I go and do the rest of my shopping and return to the pharmacy where there is now a line of snuffling, sneezing, wheezing and generally miserable people in front of me. I am certain at least two of them are Alzheimers patients. I wait.

It's now been at least 40 minutes since I dropped off the script. When I finally get to the window, the tech says, "Oh, it's not ready yet."

The store is hot, and two flies have been dogging me from the moment I set foot in the store. I haven't had a cigarette all day, and my will power is crumbling rapidly.

"How can it possibly take so long?" I ask. I know I'm losing it but I can't stop myself. All I want to do is go home. And smoke. A lot. "It's not like you have to count it or mix it or even label it -- it's over the counter nicotine patches, for Christ's sake! You just take them out of the cabinet here and you take my insurance card and then you let me the hell out of this store."

Everyone in the pharmacy is looking at me now.

The head pharmacist says snippily, "If all she wants is patches, then go get them out of the cabinet and she can take them up front to ring them-"

"I already explained to you that i need to pay for them here to use my insurance," I tell her. "My insurance pays for this!"

"If insurance is going to pay for this, then you have to wait your turn."

"How much longer is it going to take?"

Snotty smile. "Could be as long as another hour."

I left the store, my head filled with visions of carnage that would make Quinten Tarantino proud. I did not get my patches yesterday. I don't know if I can stand to go by and try again today. I'm still too pissed off.

If I lived even a mile closer to the nearest Publix's, I would shop there, and tell Kroger to piss off. But Publix is a good thirty minutes from my house, and in the summer time, ice cream would puddle before I got to my driveway.

I love Publix. The people who work there are kind, smiling, eager as puppies to cover me with slobbery kisses. I can get sushi there, and the seafood guy will steam fresh shrimp just for me while I shop. They have scones in the bakery, and I get a nice meal of samples as I wander through the store. I go in and come out smiling, so unstressed and relaxed that I always tell the cashier and bag person how wonderful they are, and how much I love shopping at Publix.

Sure, things cost a little bit more there, but it's worth it, to me, to not be pushed to a homicidal rage every time I run out of milk.

Or pimentos.

Please God, let Publix open a store closer to my house. It may well one day save a life.

The Eight Stages of Termination

2009-06-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

There are distinct stages of termination realization -- I can unequivocably claim expertise in this area because I've lost three jobs in three years. I don't like saying I've lost a job, because it's so inaccurate. I mean, I know exactly where my jobs were and still are.... it's just that someone else is there doing them.

The First Stage sends a rush of stunned tears welling into your eyes. You don't dare blink for fear those traitorous rivulets will go streaking down your cheeks and make room for more. Lips tremble. Hands shake. There's a queer hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach as it shrivels into itself like a black hole collapsing. This is accompanied by disbelief and denial, a desperate hope that you have not heard correctly, or that this isn't a termination, but a poorly expressed promotion of some kind.

As the full knowledge begins to sink into your numbed brain, you enter the second stage. Now, if you are at home alone, for example, you can slide directly into Stage Three: hysterical sobbing. But for me, having all three of my terminations coming in the workplace, where you are exposed -- naked -- in front of the world as the rug is pulled from beneath your feet -- well, then Stage Two is one of the worst.

Often you have to stammer some kind of response to the person who has just sentenced you to peanut butter and jelly for the foreseeable future. What do you say, anyway? Thank you? I'm sorry? Please, please, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T DO THIS TO ME?!!?

It's all you can do to hang on to the last shred of your dignity as you stumble to your desk, blindly cramming all the personal belongings that will fit into your purse and inevitably missing some of them that you will never see again.

The last two times, I was escorted by supervisors to my desk. This is adding insult to injury with the unspoken suspicion that you might be capable of either theft or sabotage if you are not watched carefully. Maybe they are worried you might have an automatic rifle hidden under your desk, i dunno.

This time, it was assumed i would simply not be at the office, and therefore was told not to return to the scene of the crime. But not having gotten the message until the next morning, there i was at my desk. The woman whose messages I returned told me DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING FROM YOUR DESK. But i was damned if i was gonna leave the more important items sitting there. Even so, I felt like a thief as I gathered what I could.

Stage Two also includes downcast eyes and averted face, trying desperately not to meet anyone's eye. You don't want to see the look of confusion and the question in their faces. Or worse, you don't want to see THEIR failure to meet your eyes because they KNOW you've been fired. It's like a scarlet letter on your chest or a mark of Cain on your forehead. Suddenly you have the plague and even your friendly coworkers want you gone quickly for fear you're contagious. Even the most sympathetic looks are an anathema to you, because the slightest hint of pity will cause you to plunge into Stage Three. When one of those sympathetic eyes do meet yours, asking what's wrong... This triggers more sniveling tears as you was forced to whisper those hateful words that you will be repeating to everyone: "I've bbbbbeeeen.... TERMINATED." Snivel, sniff, sniff. Wipe tears from your cheeks.

You don't want to enter Stage Three until you are absolutely safe from the eyes of world because it isn't pretty. I managed to save Step Three until I was hidden in my car in the parking lot. I couldn't start the car yet, because I was too busy sobbing in full force. It's always sobbing, not crying. Crying is too timid and lukewarm a word to be truly descriptive.

It's either the kind of sobbing pulled from so deep inside you that there is no sound but for the occasional gulp of breath in between gut-wrenching facial contortions. Or it's the type of crying that comes with moans of pure vowels, like an animal in a trap. I started with the former and ended with the latter. Either way, you are pitiful pathetic mess, not caring that snot is running freely from your nose.

Step Four begins when you can manage to put the keys into the ignition, and leave the parking lot. You are trying to stop crying, and begin to snivel and whimper. You may slip back and forth into the hysterical sobbing, but all of it is accompanied by the first thoughts you can actually begin to form. Most of these thoughts are "why? why me? what did i do? Why don't they want me?"

I really thought i was doing well at my last temp posting, the one that was terminated early. I had gotten a raise in the first two weeks, and told that they were very pleased with me. Then BOOM. Why did they let me go? I was told only that I was "still asking too many questions." Or it may have been that the week before was that terrible drop in the stock market that had scared the crap out of every corporation on earth.

Stage Five begins with the childlike disbelief as you turn that reason for your termination over and over in your mind, trying to bend your brain around it. I began to whimper, "But i thought i was supposed to ask questions? Everybody told me, you can ask the people around you, we're glad to help. You can't possibly get all of this stuff down right away."

Stage Six begins when your attempt to understand start to gel into anger. What do they mean, i asked TOO MANY questions? What was I supposed to do? Just make stuff up and get the caller off the phone and let them call back an hour later when they realized the problem still wasn't fixed? I'm not stupid, after all. The people who trained me said I was catching on quickly, faster than most of the other people they had trained... In Stage Six, you are crying in anger and outrage and disappointment.

(All i can figure is that maybe I was trying to hard, refusing to give up when the standard troubleshooting failed to resolve the problem. And because, in my belief that I should be learning as much as possible not only about how to solve the problem, but what caused the problem in the first place, maybe I was asking too many questions.I had said just the day before to Rhonda that i hoped I was doing okay, that I hadn't gotten any feedback yet about whether my stats were acceptable... and Rhonda's response was: "Don't worry. If your stats are bad, they will tell you."

Maybe I was naive to think that someone would say, You know, Belinda, you're not doing this right. If I had known that firing could come so quickly and so unexpectedly, I would have keep my mouth shut about anything and everything. I wouldn't have asked where the bathroom was. I would have just wandered around till i found it. Maybe that was what I was supposed to do. Shut up and fake it. sigh)

Stage Seven begins when you have to force yourself to stop crying, because you have no kleenex in the car or your purse, and you can't breathe. A numb sort of resignation creeps over you, and a bone-deep fatigue begins to pull you down. All you want to do is find a dark hole to crawl into. Your only motivation to keep moving is to get to your bed where you can clasp your pillow like a life-preserver and curl into a fetal position.

Stage Eight is spent in that fetal position, pillow over your face, the pillow case soggy as you are tossed back and forth on waves of tears. You may even backslide all the way to Stage Three and have to start all over again.

I have now settled into a fatalistic cynicism, broken only by bouts of hysterical sobbing that is now rooted in panic about what the hell I am going to do. (I know I keep repeating "hysterical sobbing" but there is really no other term for it. It is sobbing... and hysterical.)

Sure, there are occasional bursts of a soul-deep self loathing as I wallow in total rejection, a growing certainty that I am worthless, incompetent and useless, of being judged as not good enough. Doubts that in my personal life and my art as well, I'm unwanted and worthless, second-class. A fuck-up. Again those outraged cries of "but this is not who I am.... I am not the kind of person who gets fired. I'm smart, I'm competent, I've always been the good girl that gets things done....how in the hell did i get HERE?"

My Thanksgiving Nightmare

2009-06-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

For many people, holidays like Thanksgiving are something they look forward to only slightly more than root canals and rigid sigmoidoscopies. Me? I generally like the holidays. I get to spend just enough time with my family to remind me why I don't live in the same state anymore. (I'm joking.... really. I love my family. I do. Don't look at me like that.)

But this past Thanksgiving was.... well, a nightmare. For the first time -- for stupid reasons I now regret -- I took my cat Dolittle home to Savannah with me. And he proceeded to get lost for SEVEN nerve-racking, miserable days.

Understand that my mom is not a cat person, so it was a very big deal for my cat to get an express invitation to visit. But she wanted me to be able to stay a while without having to hurry back to check on Do.

He did relatively well on the trip down -- the vet gave me some sedatives for him -- though I did spend a bit of the nine/ten hour trip with a cat wrapped around my neck and head. He seemed to want to be as close to me as possible. He spent most of the trip literally under my seat, resting his butt against the back of my shoes. (Don't bother telling me it was dangerous and dumb not to put him in the carrier, but i couldn't listen to him yowl for nine hours.)

When we got to Mom's, Do was a little freaked. Strange place and all, and my mom... well, i think she made both of us nervous. If she'd caught him on the kitchen counters, my clean-freak mom would have had a heart attack. (She doesn't understand why i haven't "trained" the cat to stay on the floor. Obviously, she has never spent any time around cats.)

But we let him out on mom's screened porch, and he seemed to really like that. So much so that he didn't want to come back in the house when it was time to go to bed. And since my mom was dead set against letting Do sleep in my room, and I didn't want to put him the carrier (with all the attendant piteous yowling), the porch seemed a good compromise. He had his litter box, food and water, his own comfy pillow from home.... and yes, we checked to make sure the very sturdy door with a wooden lower half was latched securely. The entire lower half of the porch is paneled with wood.

The next morning at eight am, a frantic mom bursts into my room. "Is the cat in here with you?"

My first groggy thought was: "Are you kidding? I wouldn't bring the cat in here after you said no way; I have no desire to die, thank you very much." Then I realized why she was asking, noticed the panic in her voice, and bolted out of bed.

Somehow, that damned cat had managed to open the door. Within minutes, we were both out in the yard, walking around the neighborhood in our pajamas, calling "Doooo-kitty... kitty kitty kitty..." (Do actually will come when called... 90% of the time.)

But this only brought the three stray cats my mom has been feeding to the back porch, expecting their breakfast.

I spent hours walking around the neighborhood, then both of us in our cars driving around.... still no sign of the cat.

I was sick, crying, frantic. Mom was guilt-stricken and miserable.

Needless to say, Thanksgiving dinner was pretty dismal. By the next day, after more hours of searching, asking neighbors... and still no cat... I had cried so much i had a gushing nose bleed.

I found every cat in a two-mile radius around my mom's house over the next six days, but still no Dolittle. No one had even seen him. We made two visits to the local pound, and I cried some more in disappointment and just from the sight of all those poor cats and sooo many kittens.. oh, god how many kittens -- so cute, so furry, so innocent, looking out of those cages, reaching out their little paws....

I'll just say it right now: if you have an animal you haven't spayed or neutered, you deserve to burn in hell for all eternity. I know that almost all of those sweet cats and kittens I looked at will be probably be gassed in the next week, and it just breaks my heart.

Worst of all, i had been through this before with my darling lost Luci, my first cat. I still don't know what happened to Luci, and all of this was so miserably familiar. By day four, i was certain i would never see Dolittle again. I was sinking into a deep, nihilistic depression marked by a certainty that my life was such shit that even my cat had left me. I had no job, no money, and certain other people had let me down that week.... It was just more shit on top of more shit.

I did something I haven't done in... hell, twenty, twenty five years? I didn't just offer a quick prayer to God that I'd find Do. I got down on my KNEES and prayed, "Lord, please have mercy on my poor cat... Let me find him. Let him find his way home."

Understand, I don't believe in prayer. Even if there is a God, I am pretty sure he has more important prayers to answer -- an end to famine, war, disease, people in deep and dire pain and suffering -- and if he hasn't answered a significant number of those prayers, I don't expect him to worry about one cat. Even if he did, I'd be a pretty lame asshole to barter for favors after years of a distinct lack of faith. Still, i did it. I prayed, "Don't do it for me, do it for Dolittle. He's just a poor little cat, after all."

Finally, a friend of mom's called and said he'd spotted a cat fitting Do's description three streets over. We rushed over, I crawled through back yards while Mom slowly drove the streets... and found the cat the friend had seen, but it wasn't Do.

I hadn't expected an answer to my prayer, but still, I was a little resentful. I'd swallowed my own principles to beg on my knees, and God still wasn't cutting me any slack. God couldn't even be bothered to throw me the bone of getting my damned "lost cat" ad in the local paper.

The complication, of course, was the holidays. Even after we called and emailed an ad in, with assurances it would go in Saturday, the ad never showed up. We called again on Sunday but, of course, got no answer. (I mean, really, the Savannah paper is more like a big flyer.) We placed it again on Monday and were promised it would definitely go in on Tuesday.

I was, frankly, reaching the breaking point of my endurance for family, a bed not my own, a shower with lousy water pressure..... i wanted to go home desperately, but was loathe to leave without Do. I wanted to find him just to have the weight lifted, the omnipresent worry ended.....

Monday afternoon Mom had me raking her yard (and we won't even go into details on what my mother's standards for yard work are; if she could find a way to get rid of dirt altogether, she'd do it.) I decided to walk around the outside of her backyard privacy fence one more time.

And that's when I saw it: Do's bright red reflective collar and tag. It was snagged on the top of the privacy fence behind Mom's. Now I was sure, without his collar, even if someone found him, they wouldn't know to whom he belonged. I was sure I would never see him.

But I looked at the collar and thought that at least I now knew what direction he'd gone in. I went walking around the street behind Mom's again... and this time i managed to stick my head into the back yard with the privacy fence where I'd found the collar.

I was calling, "Dooo kittty... kitty, kitty, kitty" as I'd been doing all day, every day for seven days. But still nothing.... I began walking away toward the next yard.

And then I heard a meow. And then another meow. It sounded like Do, but then I'd thought I'd heard him before and it only turned out to be one of Mom's strays.

I pressed my face against the slats of the fence one more time.....

And there was Do. He was just hunkered down in the middle of that back yard, meowing. Being the same cowardly little shit he is at home when he gets of the house. He just hides under the bushes and yowls, as if to say, "I changed my mind, I don't like it out here."

I could try to tell you how my heart leapt, the joy and sheer relief that flooded every fiber of my being... but if you have a pet, you can imagine better than any cliche I can put down here.

I had to force my way into that back yard's privacy gate, but worries of trespassing and damage to the fence only flitted through my mind for the briefest of seconds. I'd have climbed that fence if I'd had to.

Do let me grab him up, but it was quickly obvious that the cat was seriously freaked. He was staring around in panic. As i carried him back to Mom's, he jumped at every noise -- a car passing, a dog barking in the distance, a squirrel rustling through the leaves... and he began to struggle to leap out of my arms. He scratched me quite badly, but i kept hold of him, whispering in his ear that he was safe now, that I wasn't going to let anything hurt him. It scared me that he was so scared, even in my arms.

Finally home, he was still skittish, but he seemed okay except for a strange bend in his tail. Hair seemed to be missing, as if it had been caught in something. He still won't let me touch it.

That night Mom relented in her own relief (she was blaming herself, just as I was blaming both of us for his loss) and allowed Do to sleep with me. I was so relieved and contented to have my cat sleeping on my legs again. By morning, he was rubbing his face against mine, depositing his hair onto my lips....

The next morning, I got him in the car and broke the speed limit most of the way home. I just wanted both of us back where we belonged. I wanted that cautious look in his eyes completely gone.

He seems completely recovered now. He spent most of this evening in my lap, utterly deep in kitty dreams, limp and alternately curled into a comfy ball, then sprawling in that boneless way of cats.

I do not believe that my prayer brought him back to me. I'm not that much of a hypocrite.

But still, I prayed again, a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving.

Categories of Valentine's Cards

2009-06-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

Ah, Valentine's Day. It's all about love... real, genuine love. Love that lasts until the end of time. Love, deeper than the ocean and higher than the heavens. Love that binds two souls together and lifts them up on the wings of a snow white dove.....

What a load of crap. Pardon me while i retch.

February 14th approaches, and I'm generally pretty cynical these days about the L word to begin with. But this year? I don't even know if I'm still in a relationship or not. Do I buy a card, just in case? And if I do buy a card (without having my brain explode in the middle of the Hallmark aisle), what in the hell should it say?

Valentine’s day cards should be categorized differently. I know they have sections for mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, platonic friends and even 4-year grandchildren who can’t even read yet. But they need to break down the whole spouse/lover categories down to more efficient divisions, like how long you’ve been together.

On your first valentine’s day together you spent an hour considering all the romantic cards. The ones that say things like: “I’ve been looking for you all my life, you are my world, my soulmate, I’d drink your bathwater and lick the ground you walk on.” And you want the biggest, most elaborate card you can find, in the shape of a giant heart, trimmed in real lace and satin ribbon. Or the mutant cards that are 2’ x 3’ and not only take extra postage, but the postage costs as much as the card itself.

The first Valentine's Day is also the one where the man not only buys an embarrassingly mushy card that says things that would never in a million years come out of his mouth, but a dozen red roses, a box of Godiva chocolates and/or a stuffed gorilla who dances to “Wild Thing.” He takes you to an expensive, special restaurant and orders wine. That night you put on the sexy lingerie you paid too much money for and you have acrobatic sex all night long.

By the second or third valentine’s day, you’re both looking cards that say things like: “You’re still the light of my life.” And neither of you bother to write a poem on it. You just sign it, “Love, Cindy.” In bed that night, you surprise each other with oral sex.

By the fourth Valentine’s – if you’re still together – you’re sending the funny cards with cats wearing clothes and a caption that says “You are the cat’s meow, baby!” You give him a blow job, but you’re doing it with all the enthusiasm of ironing. He makes a gesture at going down on you, but moves on to the missionary position before you reach an orgasm.

A dozen red roses have changed to a nice potted plant; the chocolates are now Russell Stover or Whitman’s; and if he grabs a stuffed animal, it’s small enough to get tossed into the back of the closet without attracting much attention. And yet you’re beginning to look at the cross-eyed teddy bear and thinking you’d rather have had the money he spent on it.

If you make it to the sixth or seventh valentine’s day, you’re sending a card that says something equivalent to “Thanks for still letting me live here.” You might have sex for the first time in months that evening.

By the ninth or tenth Valentine’s Day, you find a card in his sock drawer meant for his girlfriend, not for you. He sleeps on the couch, or at the Holiday Inn. The next day you go out and buy 1 lb box of chocolate that’s been marked down to half price, and eat every damn piece in the box except for the ones with the weird orange jelly centers and try to decide whether or not to just to have done with him and love and all the crap that goes with it.

Kisses change too, of course, In the first year, you’re sucking face with wet sloppy kisses and tongues that writhe like eels in a barrel.

The second year, you’re not opening your mouth anymore. And by the fifth year, the only thing you want him to kiss is your ass.

I had to take the cat Dolittle to the vet today, and he's still pissed at me. I'm off my meds, and he's the one chewing bald spots in his coat. Go figure. Maybe Do will buy me a card, and it will say "Meeroow' and I'll know it's simple, heartfelt and has no hidden agenda or message or anything.

Then again, where would Doo get the three bucks? He hasn't got any pockets for change, nor does he have a check card. I don't think he can drive, but then again, how do i know what he gets up to while I'm asleep? There is a suspicious amount of cat hair in the drivers seat.

I'll be 46 in a couple of weeks, on my way to becoming an old woman with a cat. Saturday, I will open a can of tuna for Doo, and maybe even draw a heart in his kitty litter.

Sunday I will go to Krogers and buy myself the biggest damned box of half price Russell Stovers they have. I will eat it all, every damned piece, in my pajamas in front of the tv, watching reruns of something -- anything -- with murders, explosions and more special effects than plot, and definitely no love story. Then I will cuddle up with my cat and take a long nap. Maybe I'll even take a stab at writing the erotic novel my agent keeps pushing, because she says that whole genre is "selling like hotcakes."

(And how, actually, did hotcakes get such a reputation for killer sales? Have you ever stood in line to buy hotcakes? Me neither.)

Will Marry for Health Insurance

2009-06-09T08:26:00.001-07:00

The reason is simple. I have pretty much given up on ever marrying either for love or money, and am willing to settle for health insurance.

I'm at the age where all the smoke and mirrors of romantic love have been scattered and shattered, and I realize that marriage may be most effective if it is viewed as a simple partnership for economic benefit and the clear and effective meeting of compatible needs.

So, I am simply putting this out to the world. If you are a reasonably intelligent man between 25 and death, without an excessive amount of personal baggage, who is financially stable -- not rich, mind you, though rich would be nice -- but stable, with a job and health insurance, have most of your teeth or nice dentures, and good hygiene, I have an offer to make.

I will sign a legally binding agreement to provide cooking and housekeeping services. Your home will always be clean, and you will have a nice dinner waiting when you come home from work, from a menu to be negotiated based on your preferences and my culinary skills.

I will also add my services as a personal secretary to handle your phone calls, appointments and travel arrangements. Additionally, I will handle making sure that your family and friends receive timely greeting cards for all major holidays and occasions. I will be your personal shopper for all gifts, providing attractive wrapping and even hand delivery when required.

I will make sure that your clothes fit properly, that they are clean and pressed and that you never leave the house looking like a homeless bum.

Additionally, I will enthusiastically provide standard intercourse at least once a week, with oral sex once a month, and additional sexual favors of your choosing on your birthday. In return, you have no obligation to provide me with either foreplay or an orgasm.

Fidelity is not a requirement; you may continue to date as long as you practice safe sex and that I am informed of any overnight guests at least 48 hours in advance. I will even provide one breakfast in bed a month for you and your guest(s) on mornings after.

In return, I ask for a bedroom of my own, plus another room for my arts and crafts and writing. I will be allowed to sleep until at least 10 every morning. On weekends when I have an art or craft event, I will be allowed to suspend other duties.

I ask for complete health care and prescription drug coverage, plus long term disability insurance and a dental plan. $100 a month will be deposited in my 401k. You will pay all household expenses and provide a $100 a week allowance, with provisions for future cost-of-living raises.

I require a nice flat screen tv of my own with a complete cable package.

If you can additionally provide a yearly vacation to destinations of my choosing, with or without you, and an in-ground pool, I will provide two additional evenings per month of oral sex in the erotic costume of your choice. I will also make sure all our neighbors hear me screaming, "Oh, yes, you are sex machine! Do me, you stallion!' bi-annually, and tell all your male friends that you are hung like horse.

If child care is required, I will expect an additional weekly bonus at two-thirds of the going rate for a nanny, but you will lose oral sex once every other month.

If at some point you choose to divorce me, I expect a severance package of $35,000 a year for the next five years. I will, of course, keep the house unless you buy me one of equal or greater value. In return, you will get no sulking, no hurt feelings, no recriminations, no expensive and time-consuming time in divorce court.

Frankly, I think it's a damned fine offer. You take care of my needs, I'll take care of yours, without any annoying demands that you take out the garbage, cuddle or watch chick flicks. Just imagine... you will never be forced to watch a Hugh Grant movie ever again.

If you are interested, please provide a recent photo of you, your home, resume, bank statements and three credit reports.

I Need A New Career

2009-06-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

My "temp" assignment is supposed to be up at the end of June. Though I need a job -- any job -- I am torn between praying it will be extended and praying that it will indeed end.

I think it’s time to consider a serious career change. I’m not alone in this predicament; "they" are now saying that most people will go through three distinct careers during their lifetime.

I guess my first career was... i dunno, miscellaneous crappy jobs? I sold furniture in the Alabama branch of Hell, where I was fired every other week, once because there were no towels in the men’s restroom (yes, my boss was clinically insane).... then worked about six months as (don’t gasp too loudly) a nanny to a 2 year old.... then three years in medical records at St. Thomas, serving as the whipping boy/scream magnet for doctors too stupid to find their own charts or know where to sign their orders..... oh, and don’t overlook the part time job at Super X Drugs, where I learned just how many disgusting minor medical conditions the body is prone to (I learned more than I ever wanted to know about RID, hemorrhoids, boil medications, wart removal and erection creams.)

My second career was as a graphic artist, which seems to be coming to a close now. I send out resumes, but can’t seem to get even an interview in the last couple of months.

So..... I am considering possible alternative careers.... here are my top options:

1) Opening my own meth lab.
Sure, i don’t know anything about chemistry, but i figure if gang-bangers with seventh grade public school educations can figure it out, surely a college graduate of some intelligence could manage it. It would certainly be an outlet for my entreprenurial aspirations. The downside, of course, is the very likely possibility of blowing myself up. Or being shot up by the competition. I don’t consider being busted much of a drawback. In jail I would at least have better health care than I do now, and I could live with a lesbian lifestyle. Do you get cable in minimum security? Will I at least get to watch "Lost"?

2) Hooking.
This probably isn’t that viable an option. While sex is something I’m good at, and I’m not squeamish about it, have no moral qualms about providing a necessary service to mankind, i have to face the fact that a 45 year old overweight white woman is not exactly gonna have the johns lined up on the street corner. I don’t even think I could tap into the small niche market of fat fetishists, because I’m not fat ENOUGH for those perverts. I mean, they want to be able to get lost in the vast rolls of cellulite. Even if i was better physically suited, there’s the expense of motel rooms, condoms, mouthwash and knee pads. I don’t have the right wardrobe anyway. Not a single spandex mini dress in my closet. None of my earrings are big enough. I don’t even own any sky-blue eyeshadow.

3) Porn Star.
See above.

4) The Military.
Sigh. They won’t take me. I’m too old. And even if I weren’t, I’d die in boot camp. But it’s not fair really. I can step on a land mine just as well as any 21-year old marine. Why can’t I kill and die for my country and the oil companies like anybody else? Again, even the mismanaged and dangerous VA hospital system trumps my current health provider. By which I mean the very popular GNJGNHI HMO. ("Got No Job, Got No Health Insurance") I wonder if Hillary or Obama would put me on their personal health insurance policy?

5) Phone Sex Operator.
Now, this has real potential. It’s lucrative and legal. I can speak, I have a good imagination and plenty of time during the peak hours of 10 am to 5 pm. That’s when men can call on the company dime and not get caught by their wives. I can fake orgasms just as well as Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally." I’d probably have to up my cell phone minutes and invest in a good fake photo, maybe my own website. But how many times can you say, in a suitably breathless voice, "Spank me, Daddy! Spank me!" before you start to yawn or giggle into the phone?

6) Marrying for Money: Becoming a Trophy Wife
Unfortunately, all rich bastards want younger, thinner, sexier, dumber women. At my current age, IQ and body type, I’m the first wife they’re all dumping. So to succeed in this career, I’d need a lobotomy and a plastic surgeon. Of course, having no health insurance, I’d have to finance it all with at least ten different credit cards. (Note to self: check credit limits.)

7) Customer Service Rep.
This would require either relocating to Calcutta, or at least learning how to say, "I’m so sorry that our product is crap" while sounding like Ghandi.

8) Janitorial Services.
Never mind. They probably have a union, and I don’t have the right contacts to get in.

9) Lottery Winner.
Oh, wait. I can’t win because I wouldn’t be able to say, with a straight face, "No, I’m not gonna quit my job. I may have 230 million dollars, but I’m gonna go right on working for the man every day until I drop dead." I have no job not to quit. And you have to buy at least one ticket to win, and they don’t take credit cards.

10) Being caught in a sex scandal with a leading Republican politician.
Shit, I’m the wrong sex. Never mind. No amount of foot-tapping in public restrooms is gonna get me on Jerry Springer.

11) Bank Robber.
It’s true, I know nothing about guns or stealing a getaway car, but I figure if I can get arrested for the meth lab thing, and spend a couple of years in the right prison, I can learn. It would be like going to college for criminals. You gotta invest in your career path, network and all that.

Of course, if I can find the right online sources, and learned to be a competent criminal without first acquiring the criminal record, my chances of getting away cleanly go up dramatically. I mean, really.... who would suspect a middle-aged, middle-class white woman of robbing the local SunTrust? I’d just jump in my SUV with the "I Brake For Yard Sales" bumper sticker, and go straight to the Starbucks drive-thru until the manhunt cooled down.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

2009-06-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

I am a writer, an artist, a crafter and most importantly, I am the center of the universe. Unfortunately, I've been fighting all my life for the rest of you to acknowledge this simple fact. Honestly, I don't see the problem.

So why am I starting this blog -- aside from my continued campaign for recognition as the COTU? Well, a couple of years ago, I lost my job as a graphic artist. (I didn't really lose it, i mean, I know where I left it...)

I immediately found another job that actually paid more money, but it turned out to be total mistake. Since then, I've been bounced from unemployment to temp jobs to unemployment to Shit Jobs. (A Shit Job is where you do shit, are paid shit and take shit, until you no longer give a shit.) My last SJ was Blockbuster. Oy vey. (No, I'm not Jewish, I just find some Yiddish expressions to be.... expressive.)

I am currently in a temp job that is just slightly above SJ. I'll call it a Crappy Job. For reasons of liability, I can't tell you where I work or what I do. I will just tell you it's clerical, tedious, and, some days, similar enough to hell to make me weep.

Now, the thing is, that due to the nature of the work, there are periods of time in which I have nothing to do. Now, my first thought for using this downtime was to work on my FaceBook Farm Town. I really ought to find a twelve-step program for this game, but I'm too busy planting and harvesting my crops.

But alas, as fate and the Devil himself would have it, I cannot access Farm Town on this computer. So that leaves me with posting status messages on FB every twenty minutes, until my friends there are begging for respite, and play mahjong and Super Text Twist until my eyes cross.

You can only play mahjong for so long. So here I am. Blogging away on my masterplan to force the universe to accept my place smack dab in the center of it.