Into the Cracks Where Fall and Winter Collide

Here is a guy sitting in the stands by himself.

So, here's a weird thing. I actually went out and did something tonight. And not just one thing, I did several things. I'm still sick, so I was thinking about just staying home and getting better, but then there were options and so I went with them.

The first place K. and I went was to the Bijou to see a movie called King Corn, a documentary about two Harvard grads who go to Iowa to raise an acre of corn and the things they learn about how our country eats. It was really good and funny. It also seemed a little timely after my food post this week.

After the movie ended, we met K.'s roommate J. at a multi-media art installation thingy. There was some interesting spectacle and and a few parts of it I thought were kind of cool. It was in all these different rooms, and in one of the last rooms we went into there was a girl wearing flesh colored underwear and being painted blue by another girl. Her image was being projected onto a screen while an old porno movie was being projected onto her torso. Did you get all that? Yeah, it was all very Laugh-In-y.

Once we had our fill of culture with a capital K, I stopped at home to check on Coadster and her friends who were playing Guitar Hero. I had to ask the obligatory, "So, no one's having sex, right?" question to which Coadster answered,

"Yeah, right. Because if any of my friends would have sex in my house, it would make me vomit." Good girl. I stayed long enough to embarrass Coadster in front of her friends a little more, and then K. and I stopped at our friend I.'s house. Her husband and kids were out of town, so she decided to have a party. I told K. I was going to just do a drive-by, because I didn't feel well and sometimes I.'s parties can have some grad studenty and artsy types who aren't always necessarily all that friendly. Tonight though, was actually pretty fun. There were plenty of people we knew there and we even solved a mystery. Our friend T. had lost a scarf at a show at the Hall Mall a little while ago. She knitted it herself and it was very, very cool. While we were standing in the kitchen tonight. Someone told this guy that they loved his scarf and it turned out to be T.'s He said he found it on the floor of the Hall Mall and no one had claimed it by the end of the night. How cool was that? We figured T. would be happy that he loved her work as much as she did.

Caught Between Confusion and Pain

Here's the dealio. My interenet server sucked and wouldn't work for me at all last night and not even this morning. I'm in hate with Mediacom right now. So, I wasn't able to finish the very last day of NaBloMe. AND, AND, AND, since I had to live in the real world all night, I started noticing what a mess my house was and I cleaned the hell out of my bathroom. Yeah, how scary was that?

So, if my internet provider gets off its hairy ass and starts working in my neighborhood this weekend, I'll try and bore you some more later.

Perhaps There's a Thing or Two I Think of Lying in Bed

Here is a picture of a snowy half-drained swimming pool.

Okay, kids. Here's the deal. I have a bad cold and it's making me all stupid. I'm absolutely sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm old and I thought it was a good idea to stay out until 5:30 am on Sunday morning. God. I'm never allowed to have any fun at all.

That whole first paragraph up there was written to let me off the hook from having any cohesive thoughts or anything to write about tonight. I seriously haven't done anything in the last two days but go to work, come home, go running, make dinner, watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special last night and take a nap tonight because the girls were at their dad's house. I've even been too sick to play video games, so you know I really feel like crap.

Sooooo, um. I'm trying to think of even random things to write about...Okay, here's one. When I was running this weekend, I accidently had the iPod set on Coadster's playlist. It was kind of okay at first, I heard "Sonny" by Bobby Hebb, and "Loro" by Pinback. Then as I got more into my run, I heard, "From the Beginning" by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, "Island in the Sun" by Weezer, "Into Your Arms" by the Lemonheads and "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn and John which I can finally listen to again after it was so overplayed a few months ago. But just as I was a few blocks from home, some weird song came on that reminded me of Catholic guitar masses from the seventies. I was a little worried I was going to find some brainwashing tapes from whatever cult Coadster was joining under her bed, until I placed the song. It's called "By My Side" and it's from Godspell. I guess I'll never cure her of her love for musicals. I also stopped worrying about her when "Lovestoned..." by Justin Timberlake came on directly after. Whew, she's still 15 after all.

I promise this will be my last random thought tonight. Last week, I was talking some shit to my co-worker John, and so he thought he'd be all clever and shoot a rubber band at me. Little did he know I'd been working on my rubber band ball for the last few months and it had reached an impressive size. (remind me to take a picture for you, I'm pretty proud of the old girl) I snuck up to his cubicle and lobbed it on the pile of papers that were in front of him. He jumped about a hundred feet and his hands did that fish out of water flopping thing they do when John really spazzes hard. It was the best thing that's happened at work in months. He tried to retaliate this
week by rolling a two liter bottle of soda at my desk like it was a bomb, but I was unfazed and then he had to wait to open it, so it didn't explode all over him.

Mouth is Alive With Juices Like Wine

Hey, so I'm a little behind on this, but I'm finally doing the Saturday Scavenger Hunt photos on Tuesday night. Yeah, I have already told you all several times that I'm not good with structure, so now I guess I'm showing you too. Okay, on with the show.


The magic word this week was food. Living in Iowa, it's not hard to take pictures of food. This top one was a weird, rotting meat display from the Iowa State Fair. If you weren't a vegetarian before you saw this...


This is the before shot here. This cute little calf may someday end up in the rotting meat display. All I gotta say to that, is please pass the tofu pups.



So as not to upset your delicate sensibilities, I thought I'd shift my focus over to something that won't make you want to change your eating habits. You call it corn, we call it maize.


See, corn has ears, but it doesn't have big sweet, brown, eyes when it's younger to make you feel bad when you eat it. Maybe if you're really good, sometime I'll take you on a photographic tour of some feedlots and meat processing plants. Then we can all read The Jungle and never, ever eat again. Okay. That's my take on food. Don't you wish I taught your kids in preschool so they could get a head start on therapy?

I've Been Waiting to Awaken From These Dreams

Here is a picture of the condom/lubricant machine in the bathroom of my friend C.'s bar. There should be something there for all of your needs, and a bargain for just 75 cents.

I am so pissed at my computer or blogger or whoever's responsible. I can't upload photos to Blogger the way I normally do. Now, I have to go the Photobucket and make an html code for them and then copy and paste that into my post. It's kind of a pain in the ass, and more importantly, I'm worried that there's some kind of weird virus causing the problem. Wah.

So, tonight I watched the weirdest football game I've ever seen. Since it was on network television, we could go to my friend James' house and watch it in high def on his movie theater sized screen. Normally, that is really awesome. Tonight, it was more of a sloppy mess (that wasn't just the rainy, muddy field) and no one scored even one point until the very end of the game. I was kind of bored and tired with it, but because of my special powers, I was afraid that if I went home and stopped watching, the Steelers would lose, or worse it would go into overtime and ultimately the game would never end. So, I stayed and the Steelers won 3 -0. I think they said that's the 6th game the Dolphins have lost by three points this season. Weird.

For those of you who hate football, and America and apple pie, I'm trying to think of an ending for this post that will interest you...Um, sometimes when I get really tired, I think I see things out of the corner of my eyes, plus as my friend Jo Anne pointed out, being old and tired makes my face look like it did when I was tripping and 19 years old. So, maybe that's why almost no one doses past the age of forty - we can just get all sleep-deprived instead. That's enough...Okay, too much bullshit for one blog post. I'll just try and get some sleep, because feeling all sleep-deprived at work is one really bad trip.

Her Heart's Been Broken Just Like You Have

So, I wasn't quite sure how to write this post. Should I get right to the point, or should I do some kind of teasing build-up? Ah, hell. You all know I have no patience, so...Woooooo-Hooooo! I'm back in the game, bitches. That's right. I'm actually playing Make-Out Quest 2007 for real now.

Just let me start from the git, okay? Here's how it went down. Like I mentioned, K. and I went down to Fort Madison to see our friend C.. What I didn't say, was that her other friend, who I'll just refer to as Mr Awesome, was going to be in town as well.


Here is K. looking adorable at C.'s bar.

I haven't had that much fun since probably in forever. Mr Awesome was so quick and so funny, that K. and I had to actually ask him to stop for a minute, in order to process what he said, double over with laughter, wipe the tears from our eyes and let him dish up some more. I honestly don't think we went five minutes without laughing that night. Needless to say, Mr. Awesome and I hit it off. He was very direct, and open and affectionate and all those things I never thought I'd find in one guy - especially one that insanely funny.


Here is Mr. Awesome exhibiting his mad cigarette holding skillz.

At one point, he was making fun of my laugh, so, of course, I told him that I hated his stinky, fucking, stupid ass, and he said, "Oh my god. I love you. We should go somewhere RIGHT now and make-out." While it sounded like a nice idea, we didn't really do it. later on in the evening he asked me for my number, which I gladly gave him. Then he asked, "So, if I call you, will you go on a date with me?"

"Oh, hell yeah," I responded.

"Then what do you want to do on our first date?" Of course, by that time it was around three in the morning and I was super tired and very distracted by his presence, so I couldn't think of anything. "Be careful," he said. "If you let me decide, I'll make us wear leg warmers and dance around." Which, now that I think of it, would be a great first date.


Here is Mr. Awesome oh so subtly expressing his affection for me.

My original plan was to drive back home that night, but the boys were really trying to get us to stay. Finally, after much more talking and, uh, flirting, I told Mr Awesome, "Well, I better leave, before I don't." Hey, so maybe I do have a little self-control. Who knew? K. and I drove the hour and a half home in a fun girl fog. Right before we got back into town K. asked,

"So, did you ask him if he had the other half of your amulet?" Which is kind of what it felt like. You know? Like he probably really does have the missing half of my amulet that we got from our home planet of freaks?

Because I'm old enough to know better, I'm not just assuming this will take. He lives an hour away, he's eight years younger than I am, and even though we could be good together on many different levels, I just don't know him very well. So, at this point, I just figure if he doesn't call me, at least I can say that I spent an amazing evening with Mr. Awesome.

Don't Give Up Walking Cause You Gave Up Shoes

Here is a picture of a dirty ashtray. Have you noticed how you don't see ashtrays out in public much anymore?

So, my original plan for tonight was to stay home and geek out watching movies and playing video games. But now things have changed, and I'm off on a road trip to Fort Madison with my friend K. We've been talking about going down there forever. My friend C. took over his dad's bar last Fall, and I still haven't gone to see him or it. I figured since I've had an extra day or two this weekend, I'd finally quit being such a lame-ass and check out the scene.

I promise I'll get around to posting my Saturday scavenger photos and I really will try harder to write a more interesting post in the next day or two. It shouldn't be too hard, after these last couple.

Okay, I still have to get ready, grab my iPod, gas up my car, inhale some caffeine, grab K. and ease on down the road to Fort Madison - the land of prisons and cheesy strip clubs and, and, and...What all else is down in Fort Madison? I guess after the prison and the strip clubs, what more do you need?

So, yeah. Maybe you should wish me luck, just in case.

After Midnight We're Gonna Shake Your Tambourine

Here is a photo of a dark hallway.

Dear Gentle Readers,

Today I was a total marshmallow. It was great.

I'm just writing another quick post in order to comply with the NABloMe quota of one a day this month. Since I'm going out soon and won't probably be back until after midnight. I'm writing now. The good thing for you, is that I won't be writing later when I'm drunk, because we've already witnessed that horror before, and I like you all too much to put you through it again. The bad thing is, that I don't have time to fashion any kind of interesting post - or any post at all, really. So, here it is. It's a picture of a dark walkway and me writing an entire paragraph of absolutely nothing.

Love me,

Churlita

Straightnin' the Curves, Flattenin' the Hills

So, yeah. Thanksgiving was pretty okay this year. The girls got to get all up close and personal with their younger cousins. My aunt tried just one more time before we left to get us to stay. Since it was snowing pretty hard for a while before we left, she suggested that we just stay and not have to drive in the dark, with the deer jumping out, and she would get a fire going in the fireplace. It did sound kind of nice, except for the part where we didn't go home.

The food was very good and my nephew Sam even put in his bigger teeth in order to be able to eat more of it. Before we were getting ready to leave, I got a call from my friend J. who wanted to know where the hell my XBox and Guitar Hero were. I'm absolutely sure he also really wanted to see me too, but just forgot to say that. Don't you think?

The ride home was a little more stressful. This was all I could see out my windshield. Like Coadster said, it was kind of like the scenes in Star Wars where they're flying and the stars are all coming at you. It stopped by the time we got to Brighton and we were fine the rest of the way.

After we got back, Stinky and I went to K. and J.'s house and we all played Guitar Hero - even my friend K. I think she was a little hesitant at first, but then figured it out and by the time we left, J. was joking that he was going to come home some night and find that K. had purchased a gaming system and was obsessively playing Guitar Hero in their living room. J. also thought it was really funny to take pictures of us playing. Especially me, since I'm such a spaz and I look like a total dork when I'm on it. I'll be sure to post some of those if any of them are particularly funny.

Frost Had Bit the Ground Below

Well, whatdya know? It snowed some here this evening. Stinky had to celebrate it by, what else? Taking photos of herself in it

It's kind of weird writing around the holidays when you know very few people are going to read it. In some ways it's kind of freeing. Who knows? Maybe on an evening when I'm not so tired, I might just get a little philosophical or something. Tonight though, I'm wiped out. My getting philosophical would probably sound something like this: Derrrrr. Uh, duh....What was I going to say?

My goal for tomorrow, (because a girl always has to have a goal) is to bring my deflector shield to my aunt's to try and protect myself from the guilt that will surely get thrown at me. Over the phone, my aunt already told me that she wasn't going to make too many sides, because it's not like me and the girls will ever stay for very long. I was really good and didn't bite. Instead, I just said, "You're right. We probably won't need a lot of extra food." Good of me, huh? We'll see how I hold up tomorrow when I'm in the thick of it.

That's about all I got tonight. I have to sleep so I can get up, go running, shower, make au gratin potatoes and leave town by 11'ish. How much do you want to bet that I leave a little later than I'm supposed to?

I Don't Want to Work, I Just Want to Bang on the Drum All Day

Here are some drums and cymbals.

The girls are off school tomorrow, and both went off to their different functions by ten o'clock tonight. I won't tell you what I did, but I'll give you a hint - it involves totally geeking out. Unfortunately, I still have one more day to go before my four day weekend.

As always, my fantasy for this weekend includes a lot of running, a lot of hanging out with my girls and enjoying my home comfort sanctuary in my jammies. The reality of my four days looks more like this:

Day one: Get up earlier than I want. Try to run. Prepare this cheesy (and you know how good I am with cheesy) potato dish my aunt asked me to make. Make sure we have a decent road trip play list on the iPod and drive to Ottumwa to see the family. My cousin is supposed to be down from Wisconsin with his wife and kid and my sister will be there with her youngin's, so there should be plenty of little kids for me to harass. Drive home from Ottumwa. Make pumpkin cheesecake bars. Gather up the XBox and Guitar Hero games and head over to my friend K.'s house. Stay for as long as I can before I pass-out from over stimulation. Go home and sleep.

Day two: Wake-up very, very late. Run. Make a huge point NOT to go anywhere near a mall. lounge around and maybe clean if I feel like it. Take Coadster to a friend's house so she can babysit. Go to the Picador and watch people play rock. Stay for as long as I can before I pass-out from over stimulation. Go home and sleep.

Day three: Wake up very, very late. Run. Make another huge point NOT to go anywhere near a mall. Take care of my recycling and put a little more energy into cleaning. Once my house is clean, put some serious energy into lounging and relaxing. I'll probably play some games and I may watch The Departed, you know, just in case I was worried I wouldn't experience enough violence with my video games. Turn off the TV before I pass out from over stimulation. Sleep.

Day four: Wake up very, very late. Run. Go grocery shopping. Get things ready for the upcoming week. Lament and dread having to work FIVE WHOLE DAYS IN A ROW. Wonder what the hell I did the last four days and why I don't feel all that rested.

So, how will you all piddle away your extra time?

I Can't Keep Up With What's Been Going On

Here is a picture that I love that Coadster took of me walking away from her in a parking lot.

So, I have two kind of weird/funny things tonight.

1. I was dropping Coadster off at show choir tonight, and I saw this guy walking out of the same door Coadster was going to enter. I asked Coadster, "Hey, who's the kid with the seventies hair?"

And Coadster responded, "You need to put on your glasses. That's not a kid, that's Jackson Browne." Oops. I totally forgot there was a rally for John Edwards at the high school tonight. Bonnie Raitt was supposed to be there too, but we didn't see her. Oh, and I have a question for you. Why do you think it is that anytime I hear of Jackson Browne, the first song that comes to mind is "Lawyers in Love"? He's actually written some decent other songs, but that's the only one I always think of and then I have to remember the video and giggle to myself.

2. You know how when I first started hanging out with my cell phone I was all enamored? I couldn't believe I met one device that met most of my needs - it had an alarm clock, an mp3 player, a calendar and it freed me up to be able to go places without my daughters? Well, it's not that I don't still really like it, but I've realized I've become a little complacent about it. I still think it's pretty and I definitely appreciate it, it's more that I don't feel the need to take it with me everywhere I go and sometimes, (please don't tell it this) I kind of forget I even have it.

So it was last night, when I went to bed and was going to plug it in, when I realized I had missed a text from my friend K. two hours before. I checked it out and it said:

U suck.

I replied:

Why do I suck this time?

I was surprised K. was awake after midnight, but she immediately responded thusly:

The Steelers lost in OT. We're blaming u.

Holy shit. Can you believe it? I didn't have time to go to The Vine on Sunday and I totally made the Steelers lose by not watching them.

To those of you who love the Steelers, please know that I wasn't having any fun during the game. I had to pick Stinky and her gaggle of girlfriends up from the mall. When I drove onto I-80 there was a fresh accident up ahead and I had to basically sit in my car for a half an hour and crawl to the next exit ramp off. Then, while I was driving down the Coralville strip, a car with Nevada license plates cut me off and it was wet outside, and when I hit the breaks, my obstinate car wouldn't stop. It finally did, just before I would have slammed into the Nevada car and it would have served him right, but it wouldn't have served me right. Anyway, it sounds like both me and the Steelers had a bad day on Sunday.

It's Hard to Imagine That Nothing At All Could Be So Exciting, Could Be So Much Fun

Here is yet another post from me this weekend. I really am trying to make them short. Right now I'm doing the Saturday Scavenger Hunt pics. The word this week was paper. I thought I'd again bring up the fact that two years ago I promised to do a little multi-media piece of this photo I took of Coadster at the Bloomington St. laundromat when she was seven or eight. Of course, she was unhappy to be at the laundromat (like we all are) and didn't like getting her photo taken - giving her the perfect attitude for this picture.

Part of what I was going to do with the piece, was paint the background on a canvas, but using the beautiful seventies orange and gold of the dryers, instead of the black and white of the photo. Then I was going to use some awesome paper my friend Sara helped me buy to draw Coadster cartoon-style in black ink over the white paper and paste it over the dryers. This photo here, is one of the experiments I did when my friend Sara was showing me how to work with ink and handmade paper.

So, even though I've been drawing different cartoon versions of Coadster and planning that damn thing out, I still haven't actually finished it. Maybe once I'm done smoking the most addictive Japanese crack that is Beautiful Katamari. If there was any way I could shoot a video game into my veins, even at the risk of losing everything that I hold dear, I would do it for Beautiful Katamari. From what I hear, having a real life is highly overrated anyway.

I Can't Hardly Stand It

Hey, here's that one picture of me shoveling shit and flipping you, yes, you, the bird.

So, this will be quick. In the interest of adhering to the rules of NaBloMe, I'm doing a quick post before I go to Ames. I'll have you know that it's really messing with my self-diagnosed oppositional defiance disorder to have to write such a lame-ass post just to comply with a blog contest. Don't worry, I'm just as resentful as you would imagine. Then why am I doing it, you ask?I'll tell you why...Because I'm a winner, godammit!

I Love to Take a Photograph

Here are some of those feathery plants I seem to like so much.

Hey, you know. Now that I think about it, today wasn't really all that bad. I've been better about sleeping lately and holy shit, does it make a difference in how I deal with being at work. If I have problems again next week, I've discovered a wonderful cure. All I have to do, is sit through a meeting about cash handling procedures where they make me listen to a taped presentation at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. If this afternoon was any indication, I'll be out like a light in about 5 minutes.

So, it's going to be tricky posting tomorrow in order to meet the NaBloMe guidelines. Stinky and I will have to leave for Ames to see Coadster in the All State choir around 1'ish. We have to meet her around 3:30, take her out to eat and then hang-out for another two hours before her show. The performance won't end until around 10, which means it should be after midnight before we get home. I guess I'll just have to post before we leave, so it will be kind of back-to-back. Stinky said she'd make a fun road trip playlist on the iPod for us to listen to on the way to Ames and back. If Stinky makes it, we should be listening to a lot of eighties music, which is just fine with me.

Maybe I should have just used bullets for all my random thoughts tonight. Anyway, I bought a new camera tonight. I had to have one to take photos of Coadster tomorrow. It sucked having to spend the money, but with a sale, and a coupon, and the fact that the prices have gone down in the last couple of years since I bought the last one, it cost about the same amount for a WAY better camera. Just don't expect the photos to get any better. I still live in Iowa, so you'll be continuing to see hogs and barns and feedlots and farmers wearing seed corn caps.

'Cause I'm Back on the Track and I'm Beatin' the Flack

Here are some leaves congregating by a sewer grate.

Tonight was definitely a girl night in our world. Coadster left for Ames today, so it was just me and Stinky. I decided to plan something that Stinky would like, but Coadster probably wouldn't. We went to the big scary maul with my freinds K. and T. As I've said before, Stinky loves hanging with my girlfriends, mostly because they're awesome but they're also more girly than I am, and they all point out cute things to each other.

Tonight, all that girl energy was particularly helpful to me. I decided to go shopping for that little dress to go with my boots. I originally wanted a red one and had something particular in mind style wise too. I tried on a lot of cute (there's that word again) red dresses with black polka dots or with funky designs, and some with lace that came out of the bottom of the skirt. I found one I liked, but since I've almost gained back all the weight I wanted, I have a little too much junk on top to wear it without it looking obscene. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with my current weight and finally getting my junk back, it just makes me the wrong build for certain clothes. I was, however, the right build for the adorable (see? I own a thesaurus) short black velvet dress I did buy. Stinky tried it on with my boots - that I've usurped from her, and it looks perfect together. In case you're wondering, (and I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their seats right now) I also bought a pair of black hose with the seam in the back. I think I'm ready for the Santa bar crawl now.

I promise that I'll make tomorrow's post less girly. Hey, I know. I'll write about the mix CD I made K. this week. How's about that?

I Never Met Him, I'll Never Forget Him

Here is a picture of the side of a trailer.

I'm going to try so hard to write a shorter post today. I've just written three really long posts in a row, and I know it's a lot to ask you all to read that much crap about me, me and me.

Apparently, I don't deserve a night to myself, because I'll just piss it all away anyway. I've been having trouble sleeping again. Since Sunday, I'm lucky if I've gotten close to four hours a night. By today, I was kind of a mess. I planned to take a quick, one hour nap when I got home, because the girls were actually going to their dad's at seven for the first time in months. But one hour turned into five and there was kind of a fun dream in there that included a guy I saw at the store on my way home from work. And my, won't I be a little embarrassed when I accidentally run into him again. Now though? Now, it's almost eleven and I'm still exhausted and I haven't done one damn thing around my house.

All I can do, is hope that I'm not up the rest of the night, which will make me weirdly sleep deprived again tomorrow and I'll start this whole vicious cycle again. It might all be worth it, if I'm guaranteed the fun dreams too.

When the Routine Bites Hard

Hi kids. It's time for round two of the meme tonight. Man, I'm glad I have it to do, because I haven't done shit to blog about in the last couple of days.

10. What are the things your friends count on you for?

I'm sure that all my friends know I would do pretty much anything for them. Aside from that, they can count on me to make them crazy mix CD's, feed them whenever they'll let me, get pissed off at any assholes who dare to give them grief (which includes creative ways to curse the assholes and imagine bad things befalling them). I've already given almost all of my friends a dork-ass theme song and I'll sing it for them on command. I'm pretty sure my friend K. counts on me to make a fool of myself and jumping to it, anytime she commands me to make my downs syndrome face in front of all of our guy friends.

This is my first real live boyfriend, Neal wearing the corpy uniform we all had to wear.

11. What is the best part of being in a committed relationship?

My first thought, being on the outside looking in, is getting laid on a regular basis. Wait. What is this, how you say...committed relationship? No, really. I've been in a few of those, but only one healthy one and that was my first boyfriend Neal. I think the best part about it for me, was having a best friend who I knew always had my back and had seen me at my very worst both looks wise and behavior wise and he still loved me and knew when to make me laugh and when to give me space.

I remember once after we had been together for 2 1/2 years, I was working two jobs. I didn't get home from my one job until after midnight and was supposed to be at my next job by 6 am. I overslept and when I woke up and realized it, I threw myself one of those, "I hate my life" fits - complete with foot stomping. I then ran to my job and when I saw Neal again later that day, I was all sheepish and asked him how scared he was of me. He said, he thought it was great since normally I seemed so perfect. He meant it too. All I could think was that he had to be either totally insane or totally in love with me. I don't think anyone else who knows me, would ever describe me as perfect.

12. What is the hardest part of being in a committed relationship?

Finding one that doesn't suck.

13. Summer or Winter? Why?

I'm a Summer girl. I grew up in Arizona. Heat, for the most part, doesn't bother me. I hate being cold. I do, however like the change of seasons, but with my ADD, I just like the beginning of the seasons. I really only want them to last a month or two. See what you can do about that, will you?

14. Have you ever been in a school-yard fight? Why and what happened?

No, thank god. I'm a runner, not a fighter. I'm also a terrible smart ass, so anywhere I've lived, it seems the toughest and most ethnic chick in my school has wanted to kick my ass. I'm not proud. I freely admit to hiding and running home from school to avoid getting soundly whupped.


15. Why blog?

Duh, because I don't have a life. Really, I started blogging as a way to make me write every day and to not feel like I was writing in a vacuum.

My family back before anyone had heard of the HIV. Of course, I'm the ragamuffin in front with one shoe on and one shoe off. Maybe I'm projecting, but I always think my mom looks so tired in this photo.

16. Did you learn about sex, and/or sex safety from your parents?

Um, my mom tried. She died in 1975, and back then there was no AIDS, so there was never any talk of safer sex. My mom did say that we should feel free to ask her anything, since her mom was so uncomfortable talking about it and so my mother had to learn from friends. Apparently, her friends didn't know shit, because once I asked my mom what a blow job was, and she honestly had no idea.

17. How do you plan to talk to your kids about sex and/or sex safety?

I've been talking to my daughters about it since Stinky was five and asked me what "gay" meant. When I worked in the clinic, I saw enough pregnant 12 year olds, to make me want to educate my girls in any way I could. We don't just talk about mechanics, we discuss power issues and emotions too. So far, they have been very open with me about boys and kissing and whenever a big group of their friends are over, getting ready to go out I say, "Don't have sex," before they leave. I'm usually answered with a big chorus of, "Gross!" It's funny every single time.

18. What are you most thankful for this year?

These two chuckleheads are what I'm most thankful for. Look at them? Who wouldn't be?...Don't answer that. I'm thankful we're all healthy and happy and functionally sane. And as I've tried to say on here as often as possible, I'm thankful for my kick-ass friends and family. I am a firm believer in appreciating the hell out of people while they're around, because you never know when they won't be.

So Soft Hard Feelings

I've been asked to do a couple memes lately, and you all know how hit-and-miss I am on doing them. I've already done the "Weird Things About Me" Meme last year that Tara tagged me for. I also feel like every post I write is a list of about a hundred weird things about me. So, as much as I love Tara, I don't have much to offer to that one. The other one I was tagged for was from Not Fainthearted. She made it up herself and it is so much better than those Myspace memes targeted at thirteen year olds. You know the kind? the ones that ask you if your crush knows you like him and if so, how many times he IM's you? Yeah, well I'm forty-muthahfucking-two years old, so if I had a crush who IM'ed me all the time, he'd probably be young enough that I'd end up going to jail for him.

Anyhoooooo. I am going to do Not Fainthearted's meme, but I'm only doing half tonight and the other half tomorrow night. I think we all know how much I like to yammer on, and it is, after all, 18 questions long. So, let's all take a nice deep breath and begin.

Here is my sister Moira and I (I'm the one kind of standing up) climbing around in Tonto National Well in Arizona as kids.

1. What were you afraid of as a child?

Um, everything? I don't think I could make a list long enough. I was terrified of bombs going off, and even a ticking clock would make me nervous. I was finally not allowed to watch the news when they showed Vietnam war footage anymore. Rattlesnakes, which in Arizona are sometimes hard to avoid. The Exorcist and Tubular Bells. Of course, my mom loved that soundtrack and could only play it when I wasn't around. Any strange noise at night. I could never sleep as a child and so my mom would let me listen to a radio all night to drown out any other sound that might freak my shit out. Now you know why I know the lyrics of almost every cheesy pop song ever written and can recite most commercials from the seventies.

2. When have you been most courageous?

Getting out of the two abusive relationships I was in. The first with my ex-husband and the second with that one asshole I dated almost five years ago. People always wonder why seemingly strong women stay in those things, but I don't think you could ever understand unless you went through it. It's not like the guy is suddenly a jerk. It's subtle things where the guy seems too good to be true and then gets kind of bad, but that behavior becomes normal and then he kicks it up again, so that becomes normal, and so on and so on... They also wear down your self-esteem, so you believe you deserve to be treated a certain way. It's kind of a double and triple whammy. I've been lucky enough that I've gotten out before things ever became too violent.

3. What sound most disturbs you?

The sound of violent retching. I spent a fun filled evening in the emergency room in the general hospital in San Francisco once with my ex-boyfriend who got sucker punched at a party and had a detached retina. There was some guy in the next room who retched for hours and I thought I was going die.

4. What is the greatest amount of physical pain you’ve been in?

Easy - 36 hours of labor with my first daughter. Why didn't anyone tell me that natural childbirth was for pot smoking hippies? I also should have known just exactly how stubborn that Coadster would end up being. That girl was going to come out when she was good and ready and put me through hell, until then. It's kind of the way she goes through life.

The girls when they were nine and ten years old respectively.

5. What’s your biggest fear for your children? (or children in general if you don’t have some of your own.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's global warming and nuclear war and stuff, but my biggest fear is that something will happen to me before they are adults, and someone else will raise them. Of course, it all comes from being raised by my abusive (are we detecting a theme here?) aunt and uncle after my mom died. Even if someone wonderful raised them, they still wouldn't understand the girls they way I do. I would hate to think that my daughters would have to grow-up without that unconditional love.

6. What is the hardest physical challenge you’ve achieved?

The hardest physical challenge was probably in The Conservation Corps. We had to hike with eighty pounds of grip hoist cable strapped to our backs and a tool in each hand uphill and through rocky creek bed and use chainsaws that were so big and heavy that I could barely lift them when I first started, let alone run one for eight hours. Fighting wild land fires sucked too. I have this weird suffocation complex and it didn't exactly jive with all that smoke inhalation.


7. Which do you prefer: Mountains or oceans/big water?

Both. but if I had to choose, I'd say ocean. I'm a total water girl. My California boyfriend used to call me a mermaid because he couldn't keep me out of rivers, lakes or the ocean.


8. What is the one thing you do for yourself that helps you keep everything together?

Run, run and run. It is my meditation, my exercise and my happy pill. I've been doing it since my mom died and I can't imagine my life without it.

9. Ever had a close relative or friend with cancer?

Yeah. One of my best friends in the world, had sinal/nasal cancer for five years before he died at 31. He had been my roommate, our daughters were born 6 weeks apart and we saw each other almost every day for ten years. It broke my heart to see him in constant pain and it pissed me off that even after two back-to-back open brains surgeries, he was still smarter than I can ever imagine being.

Well, on that happy note, I'll continue with it tomorrow

Are You Ready Boots? Start Walking

Here is a picture of a shed and a lawn mower.

I was going to do a meme that I was tagged for on another blog, but I actually have some bullshit to write about, so I'll save the meme for tomorrow when I'll probably be in need of a topic.

Man, I gotta be careful what I fantasize about, because I will surely get it. I was knocked on my ass by my migraine for most of the weekend. I literally was in my jammies from Friday morning until Sunday morning. Damn. I was going to wish for a ton of money, but with my luck I'd be walking under a building just as someone was throwing gold bricks out the window.

So, Saturday night while I was home watching a movie, I got a text from my friend K. that just said, "Make Out Quest 2007" - no details or anything. It was the meanest thing you could do to a loser like me, who's home on a Saturday night and needs to live vicariously through others. On Sunday morning, she messaged me and said she'd tell me the story at the Vine while we watched the Steelers. AWESOME.

She showed up along with our friend James and another friend who came up from St Louis named Erik. I won't go into any of the details, but it sounds like we need to start frequenting bars in the suburbs of our town, because that's apparently where the hot guys hang out. I was laughing about how I was definitely losing the game because I'm such a shut-in and it's not like any guy is going to come to my house and ask to make out with me. My friend Erik said, "I would. I would totally come to your house and ask to make out with you." Did I mention that Erik is very good for my self-esteem that has been badly bruised since this Summer?

Later when my friend James and I were talking about our love for the old school video games, Erik said that he loved Galaga. I informed him that I'd been playing that a lot recently and he offered to come over and make out with me and then play some Galaga. Now that I think about it, if you threw in some beer and barbecue, that could be the perfect date.

Hey, wasn't I going to tell you about the Steelers game? So, it did not look good for our boys at first. I was kind of surprised, since they usually do so well when I'm viewing their games. I must have said that out loud, because my friend James suggested that I call and tell them that. I promptly picked up my phone and pretended to talk to the Steelers (like any sane person would). I made them aware that I was indeed watching their game, so they needed to get their shit together and win one for me. And while I was at it, I gave them a list of players and one very hot, young coach who should fly directly to Iowa to visit me and my friend K. The crazy thing is, it worked. They started scoring right after that and finally won after a failed field goal attempt by the Browns at the very end of the game. All you Steelers fans can just thank me later.

While we were eating tons of greasy food and watching one of the other Steeler fans at the bar pacing the room when the game was close, Erik mentioned that the Santa Crawl thing he hosts every year was coming up on December 6th. I said I'd try to make it, and then K. and I talked about what we should wear. We now each have a pair of tall black boots and so we figured we'd wear those and work up from there. I was thinking I'd find a cute, short red dress or skirt to go with that and Erik was adamant that I wear black hose with the seam that shows in the back too. Then this guy who Erik worked with at Bruegger's in the eighties, turned around on his bar stool without hearing the beginning of the conversation and said, "You are definitely going to have to wear some tall black boots with that." I assured him that we already had that covered, and then he said, "Okay. I just wanted to make sure you did it right." I thought the whole exchange was kind of funny, but both Erik and James agreed, one thing that looks sexy on any woman no matter how big or small, is that combination of tall boots and short skirt together. I was a little surprised that that many guys had such a strong opinion on it. So, I guess it's time for me to go shopping, huh?

Career Opportunities are the Ones That Never Knock

The word for the Saturday scavenger hunt picture thingy was "work". I thought I'd even play nice this week and put up a photo that I actually took. I also figured I'd write an entire post about my feelings about working. Are y'all ready for this?

This first one is kind of a ridiculous picture of me, with my squinty, squinty eyes. I've posted it before, but I think it's hilarious how dorky and spazzy and happy I look encased in my beige cubicle. You do know not to believe that for a minute, right?

I've never been one of those people who dreamed of a career. I don't think I've ever wanted to be anything practical when I grew-up. I still don't. I studied English in college, not because I thought it would get me a good job, (not even I am that foolishly hopeful) but because I love literature and reading and writing and it was the only time in my life where I ever had the time or the structure to study it.

Here's me writing in my journal in one of the trailers on our site. As you can see, I was in love with my dictionary back then too. Oh, and for those of you youngins , that's a real live typewriter on the desk there.

Most of my life I've worked shit jobs. I've worked every kind of restaurant job there is, including cleaning toilets. Nice, huh? I've worked retail, I've modeled for art classes, I've literally dug ditches, and detasselled corn every Summer through high school (like every good Iowan). The few jobs I really loved didn't pay for shit. I loved being a nursing assistant in the ob/gyn clinic. I'm really good at drawing blood, and even found a vein on a pregnant meth addict, who told me I'd never be able to and when I did she said, "Holy shit! Where did you find that?" I sure as hell wasn't going to tell her so she could go shoot more drugs into her poor fetuses system. My favorite part of that job was being a patient advocate. I know I've said this a million times, but I have had way too much practice dealing with crazy people and I can calm almost anyone down in a stressful situation. Unfortunately, I get paid over twice as much to sit on my ass all day inputting codes into a computer and answering phone calls.

See? I actually took this photo of an erosion control project on a bank of the Eel River.

I know I wrote about this on my old blog, but I think I deleted that post too, so I'm digging it up again. My other favorite job was working on the Salmon Restoration Project on the border of Humboldt and Mendocino counties in Northern California. We all lived in trailers on this tiny site outside a town of about 150 dope growers. Everyone in the program was between 18 and 23 years old and most of us were from inner urban, or poor rural areas.

I think what I liked the most about it was that we worked outside all day, doing hard physical labor, and the work we did changed almost every day. Oh yeah, we also fixed the loggers bad practices and increased the salmon and steelhead trout populations along the Eel River.

I'm the girl in the middle of the madness here, trying not to get squished. It's nice to know that over twenty years ago, my eyes were just as squinty.

The hardest part of that job was that the twenty or so of us, all worked and lived together and had very little contact with the townies. I'm sure you'll be amazed to learn that dope growers aren't super social creatures. In fact, they tend to be a bit paranoid (who knew?) and many of them were Vietnam vets who booby trapped their fields and had 50 gauge shotguns so you had to even be careful where you hiked. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of drama and weirdness from day to day. I eventually solved that by setting up a tent with my boyfriend right off the site in order to get away even if only for a few hours a day.

I Wandered Home Though Silent Streets And Fell Into a Fitful Sleep

Here is a big ol' sleepy pig.

So, remember how yesterday I was joking around about needing alcohol and pills and stuff just to get through the day? Well, apparently I didn't have enough. I got slammed with a migraine and had to go home this morning just a couple of hours into the day. Yes, I did get a day off, but no, it wasn't much fun. I basically went straight to bed, and didn't wake up again until after three. I didn't even eat anything until around six, and you all know what an amazing food eater I am. Whacky, huh?

I felt better after I got up this afternoon, but I'm still all hazy fazy. My synapses aren't quite firing like they normally do and I find myself thinking something, and then I'll forget that train and go,"Whaaaaat?" all slow, like I've been pulling bongs all night.

Because I'm so out of it, I'll end with this one thing and put us all out of our misery until tomorrow when I hope to be back to my normal, scary self.

When I was walking back home this morning (it was about forty degrees out), I saw this girl walking toward me wearing a tight pair of jeans and a white wife beater tank top, with nothing other than her false eyelashes, day-old, caked on make-up and Burberry scarf tied around her neck to keep her warm. Through all my pain, I was still catty enough to wonder why she didn't just wear a sign that said, "To all you boys who like your women on the crazy side, I'm too psycho to even feel the cold" It would have accomplished the same thing as her outfit. Yeah, and I suppose I could have skipped writing this paragraph and written, "Meow" instead. It would have accomplished the same thing too.

It's Not Reality, It's Just a Fantasy

Here are some pretty yellow branches - to make up for the scary photos from a couple of posts ago.

Well, kids. All I gotsta do is get through tomorrow and then I get a weekend. Once again, I'm going to try doing as little as possible. Next weekend Stinky and I will go to Ames and watch Coadster sing in the All State choir. It will be interesting to see me try to find my way around Ames. I've only been there once when I was in high school.

Wait, wait, wait. Back to this weekend...My fantasy goes something like this: I somehow make it through a full day of work. I'm thinking it will take some junk food, a few pills and swigs off my flask, much verbal abuse directed at my co-worker John (you know, just to make me feel better about myself) and a lot of illegal web surfing.

After work, I want to go running, eat some pizza, get the girls situated at whatever social functions they've got going on and then jump straight into my jammies until I have to go back to work on Monday. It'll never happen, and I realize it's like the lamest fantasy anyone in the world has ever had ever, but right now, it sounds like heaven.

Does anyone else find it bizarre that Thanksgiving is only two weeks away? Maybe it's because I'm old, or it could be that I'm really boring, but I don't even really remember what I did this year? Shit. I'll have to go back and read my old blog posts to find out.

First, please allow me to notice for you how random I'm being tonight. Then, let me continue on with the randomness...One thing I've noticed from writing a blog post almost every day for the last two years, is that Fall and Winter tend to make me a lot more nostalgic than Spring and Summer. It could be because I'm actually out and about, almost, kind of, sort of, having a life when it's warm out, and when I'm shut-in girl during the colder months, I'm thinking about the lives I've lived. I guess I'm just warning you that there might be a few ghosts of Christmas past on the horizon for the churlish one.

Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, One Break Coming Up!

Okay, my computer is being all wonky tonight and everything is taking forever to upload. My XBox kept disconnecting too. So annoying. What it all means for you, is that I don't seem to be able to upload any photos. I suppose after yesterday, you're probably all kind of relieved.

Basically, I'm ready for a long Winter's nap and it's only November. Earlier today, my friend messaged me to tell me some girlies were meeting at the Dublin after work. Originally, I thought I'd go running first and then join them. But, I got home and had to wait to run because I had to pick Coadster up at 5:30 and then I had to run some errands. By the time I made it home again, the idea of wearing anything other than my jammies, let alone actually leaving my house seemed overwhelming, so I called and lamed-out.

In my defense, I went to a show choir concert on Sunday, watched football at a friend's house on Monday and went to a regular choir concert on Tuesday night. As they used to say in the McDonald's commercials, I deserved a break today.

The choir concert was pretty cute. Every year they do this thing to the freshman boys. They are supposed to wear black pants, socks and shoes. At the beginning of the show, the choir director has all the boys line up in front of the audience and makes them pull their pants up from the knees to see if any of them cheated on the sock color. This year, there was only one kid who wore white gym socks, but it was awesome, because he was blushing for the first two songs they sung.

So, yeah. I'm out of juice. All that lounging around in my jammies, and eating high fat foods, has really worn me out tonight.

She Could've Been a Killer if She Didn't Walk the Way She Do

Hey, whaddya know? I didn't find my camera, but a friend of mine took some photos of me and K., and emailed them to me tonight. So, a week later, here are some pics of me and K. as ghouls on Halloween. This photo here, kind of makes us look like your undead, inbred cousins from Missoura (that's how some of 'em pronounce it down over to Ottumwa). The only reason I'm posting it, is because you can see my lovely and charming slit throat scar.

Now here's something you'll see me doing during the most inappropriate of occasions - I totally have rock hand flashing Tourette's. I don't mean to make with the rock hands, but then I get excited and it just happens. At least I was at the Picador here, where no one even bats (get it? Bats? Halloween night?... I slay me) an eye.

I think this is the best of the three. When we first went down to the Dublin Underground, our friend Libby was hanging out with her husband Rob, who had had about four whiskeys too many and was driving Libby crazy saying quotes from the movie Jaws. She was pretty happy that we showed up, so she didn't have to break a bottle over her husband's head to get him to stop. She turned to me and K. and said, "If you two don't get laid tonight, you're not trying." Then she said, "no, seriously, if any guy even acts like he's trying to hit on you, you should marry him on the spot."

"Oh, I get it, " I said "That first part you said, was just you being facetious, right?" So, we didn't really get hit on Halloween night, unless you count a creepy tow truck driver expectantly asking us if we were really drunk and fishing around trying to find out if I had a husband, but we still had fun. While Make Out Quest 2007 isn't completely over for me, it may have to lie dormant until sometime in 2008, as Winter closes in and I only have eyes for my nice, warm lair.

Cause All My Rowdy Friends are Back on Monday Night

Guess what time it is? That's right, it's time for more of Stinky's self-portraits. No camera you say? That's what cell phones are for. This first one is after I gave stinky a haircut. Oh, and look. She managed to capture the dirty clothes in the hamper behind her. Nice shot.

You know how Stinky likes to take a million photos of herself? Well, Coadster is not all that hip to it. We have just as many pictures with Coadster hiding her face in her hands, which just makes it even more fun to try to photograph her.

I'm not sure what Stinky sprays on the mirror to make it all weird and cloudy, but it's kind of an interesting effect. Here she's actually wearing her glasses...And my shirt without having asked permission first.

Hey, there's our old camera. Oh camera, we hardly knew ya.

Many people have accused Stinky and I of making the same dorky, smirking faces when photographing ourselves. I'll just address that by saying, yeah. So?

Tonight I went to my friend James' house to watch the Steelers on Monday Night Football on his GIGANTIC screen in high def. It was so very awesome, and The Steelers kicked such serious ass. During the beginning of the second half, my friend James said, "Damn. The Steelers have gone over five minutes without a touchdown. I'm starting to get bored." You want to know how powerful I am? The only two games The Steelers lost so far this season, are the two that I haven't watched. Talk about a super hero power.

The only problem with watching football with K. and I if you're a guy, is that we talk a lot about how hot certain players are. At one point, James' roommate came into watch for a bit and James said, "Hey, Joel. I guess this guy is particularly handsome." So, maybe we commented on it a little excessively. You would too if you had seen him, and what's the point of watching football anyway, if you can't ogle the players?

You Never Do What You Know You Oughta

Coadster and Stinky, right after Coadster got her first shiner while she and her sister were jumping on the bed and Stinky's head hit Coadster's face. It was a proud, proud moment for the whole family.

Once the reality of not only having a baby, but a girl baby, sets in, a mother begins to contemplate her child's future - and stress-out hard. She worries about electrical outlets and bleach under the counter. She can see danger in big dogs, teenage drivers and scary, white van driving, child molesters. A mom will remember her own past and lose sleep thinking that someday, her daughter will have her heart broken by some pimply faced, testosterone filled loser who won't deserve her, and then that memory of getting suddenly sidelined by the group of girls, who the mother thought were her friends, rears its ugly head, and she thinks that maybe homeschooling isn't such a bad idea after all.

Last night Coadster came home early from her friend's house in tears. Apparently, there had been some weird drama and then there was an accusation and Coadster was left feeling confused and angry. I tried to find out what all the hub bub was about, and it all seemed ridiculous to me, but I do remember how all that shit was so intense when I was 15 too. Some girl was telling everyone that Coadster told her best guy friend who one of her girlfriends liked. Who cares, right? Coadster said she couldn't have even if she wanted to, because she didn't know who her friend liked.

I graciously offered to line up all those bitchy girls and slap them up Three Stooges style where I take my front hand all the way down the line and then switch to the backhand and get them all again.

"They're not worth hurting your hand over," Coadster said. Then I offered to make her some cinnamon toast and get every pillow and blanket we could find and lie around in my beautiful gigantic new bed, that I like to refer to as my comfort cocoon. I told her we could watch any movie she wanted and I'd rub her back. She was all for it, and fell asleep in less than an hour. Poor thing.

Today, after the dust had settled, and before we went to Coadster's show choir concert, she found out what really happened. It was actually only the one girl who was causing trouble, her other friends didn't even know what was going on. My friend K. calls those kind of girls, shit stirring bitches and I think it's a perfect description for people who cause that kind of drama for attention, or because they want everyone to be as unhappy as they are? I've never understood what causes people to stir up shit that way at someone else's expense.

Anyway, we got through round one last night. I have a feeling we still have several more rounds to go before the girls get old enough not to have to deal with that crap. Is it too late to start homeschooling?

I Got to Get My Props

The magic word this week, was "sin". It was tough to think of what I could do with that. So, me being me, I decided to go ahead and cheat. Yes, I understand that we are supposed to take the photos ourselves, but I'm using really blurry pictures that someone else took of me and my brother and my cousins in the late seventies.

There is nothing more sinful then letting your kid walk around in public wearing two different shades of red and fashioning her hair like Robert Plant in 1969. No wonder I have so many issues now.

Today the girls and I were all in a mellow tone. We cleaned some, but mostly we lounged around. Coadster stayed home from school on Thursday and still wasn't quite up to snuff today. I couldn't fault her for lying on the couch most of the day watching college football, and drinking ginger ale.

Oh yeah. I am so bad about doing the blog fun stuff. A couple of different people gave me props for my blog in the last month, and I forgot to mention it. So, thanks to Not Fainthearted and Lady Who Doesn't Lunch. It's not that I don't appreciate it, I do. It's just that those kind of compliments make me uncomfortable and plus I'm too lame to figure out how to post picture tags of the awards on my sidebar. That having been said, I'm doing the NaBloPoMo thing again this year where you commit to writing a blog post every day for the month of November. I'm usually not very good with commitments, but this one's easy seein's how I write a post pretty much every day all year round. Some guy last year was calling it NaBloMe and I liked it so much, I said it until it wasn't funny anymore. This year, I plan on saying it so much, that it becomes funny again. So, you can all just NaBloMe.

This morning Stinky's friends played Guitar Hero. I was pretty sure I was going to clean up, but I was surprised that all those girls were kicking ass on the hard and expert levels. Damn kids, with their youthful manual dexterity, and finely honed reflexes making me look lame. Jaysus! For those of you who have babies, you know how they tell you to get your kid to pick-up Cheerios to help improve their fine motor skills? Don't listen to them, all it's going to do is give your children the skills they need to soundly kick your ass at Guitar Hero 576 when they're teenagers. Believe me, I know of what I speak.

Now, I must take my leave. I'm having another Saturday night, staying at home, date with myself and there are movies to watch, video games to be played and books to be read. Thank god I get an extra hour tonight.

You Better Make Up Something Quick

Here is a picture of the inside of a sunflower. Oooh, texture.

I only have a few minutes of quiet left before I pick up Stinky and her friends for their sleepover. Coadster's hanging with her dad tonight. The play he's directing went up today, so she was going to that and then there's some kind of discussion afterward which should go pretty late, so she's just staying at her dad's after that.

Earlier in the evening, I got the girls set up with pizza delivery and then went running. I took Stinky and her friend's to some other girl's house and then went home to play some more Guitar Hero 3. I managed a feat I never thought I'd master, but I talked on my cell phone and played Heart's "Barracuda" at the same time. Yeah, you know I rock. It's okay.

My friend K. called to say they were headed to the Foxhead, so I joined them for one drink. A guy I know was tending bar, and we got him to show us his high school senior picture. It was very entertaining. There was another guy sitting by us who helped interpret for the man next to him, who was so drunk, they wouldn't let him stay at the shelter house up the street. He offered to buy us a round, but we declined. He kept saying he wasn't trying to have sex with us, he just liked us a lot. Huh? I was pretty brain dead and spent most of the rest of my time at the bar, watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with the sound off and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Young Guns came on after that, and luckily, there was nothing really too difficult to understand about that movie. I totally got that Lou Diamond Phillips was the spiritual one without even hearing one word.

Now, quiet time is over. I gotsta go pick up some screaming Mimis. It could be scarier than Halloween at my house tonight.

Can't Replace or Relate, Can't Release or Repair

Here is the top of a bridge railing on Glendale Street.

So, let me try harder tonight not to be such a damn downer. Here is the portion of my blog where I am all full of the goodness of my fellow person and can see a little piece of beatific light in every human being I meet...At least for another hour or two, until I go back to my cranky, distrustful self.

Remember how when we left our heroine last night, she had just escaped the clutches of the creepy tow truck driver, and was all spazzy about her disabled transport device and the unknown fate of her beloved camera? Well, let me relate to you a heartfelt, feel good story that took place right here in bucolic Iowa. I am a girl who isn't very good at fixing things and even worse at asking for help. My friend K. knows this about me and totally worked around it. She emailed me at work today to say that she would take me car battery shopping after work and her housemate J. would be happy to install it for me. Awesome, huh? But wait, it gets better. Then she called me to say that J. was worried that I wouldn't spend the money I needed to buy a decent battery, so they just went out together and bought one and were headed to my house to install it. Wha? That's the kind of shit that can almost make me cry, it's so sweet.

As a single mom, one of my biggest fantasies is to have help. You know, that kind of assistance you get when you actually have a partner in crime? This, for me, was almost better. Who doesn't want some magic elves to show up and just fix your broken shit and make your problem go away? I am the luckiest girl alive.

The camera dilemma hasn't been so easily solved. I stopped into the Dublin Underground on my 3 o'clock break to talk to the owner. He's known me since I was eighteen, so he was sure that if they had found a camera, and it was mine, he would have known it. Damn, out of luck there. I can only think of a few scenarios for its disappearance. One is that I forgot to put it in my bag at the bar and someone swiped it. Two is that it fell out of my bag in the tow truck, but nothing else was missing. Now, I'm not one much for physics on account of all the math it requires, but don't you think that if my bag tipped over, other things would have fallen out with it? Three is that when I got home, I was spazzing so hard about the battery and the money it was going to take replace and wah and wah, that I took my camera out of my bag and put it somewhere logical, like in the freezer, and didn't even remember it. If I could invent one device to save my disorganized ass on a daily basis, I would make something where I could call every item I owned by a different number on my phone and it would make it beep or ring, so I could find it wherever the hell it was hiding in my house.

I will wait a day or two to replace my camera, just in case it does show up. Remember? I'm a sucker for false hope? I can't imagine being cameraless. How else am I going to obsessively document everything I see and experience? The big drag, is losing all the photos I took last night. There were some awesome ghoulish shots of me and K. and her dog freaking out about trick-or-treaters. I got good photos of costumes. One guy was dressed up like Ariel. (the Little Mermaid) He was a totally hot Asian guy, so the red wig looked especially nice - that and his big clompy, white tennis shoes under his fins. I even got a perfect picture of the condom dispenser in the men's bathroom at the Dublin. Oh, the humanity!

Hey, you know. One of these days here, I might even write about the fun things that happened on Halloween.