As the Days Fly Past, Will We Lose Our Grasp, Or Fuse It In the Sun?

Here is an Iowa Winter scene.

When we were running through Hickory Hill Park on Saturday, it reminded me of the last time I went sledding there. Here is a repost from 2005, where I wrote about it:

Yesterday Stinky and I went sledding at Hickory Hill Park. The hill was packed with a lot of kids from Stinky's school and since we got there later in the day, according to the laws of sled hill seniority, we had to hang out on the bad side of the hill. What makes that side of the hill so bad is that there is this odd looking man hole cover thing that rises almost a foot out of the ground in the middle of the field at the bottom of the hill. It's pretty dangerous and I wish they would surround it with hay bails or something but instead, they just tried to mark it with a tall rusty pole that someone painted green.

Stinky and I got on the sled (she was in the back and I was in the front) and scooched ourselves with our hands and feet far enough off the top of the hill so the sled could start zipping down unaided. We were riding one of those inflatable sleds that look kind of like an inner tube but are impossible to steer. Of course, we plowed right into the pole and slammed into the manhole cover thing. Stinky had the foresight to slip back behind the sled before we hit it, but I held on, thinking it might give me some cushion. Once I hit the manhole cover, I was propelled upside down and hit the ground on my head, neck and shoulder and then the whole right side of my body slammed down after.

There was a couple cross-country skiing right by there when we crashed. The woman stopped and asked me if I was okay. I think I said something like, "Huh? Oh yeah. Um, I think I hit my head." Then she started getting on my shit about the pole and how I needed to put it back in the ground so that no one else made the same mistake. Yeah, even if I had been together enough, I wouldn't have worried about it. The problem has never been that people can't see the manhole cover, it was always more that it's hard to steer around it. I told her that the pole caused more pain than the manhole cover did. Then she got all exasperated and put down her ski poles.

"I guess, I'll just have to do it then." She tried, but of course the ground was frozen and it wouldn't work and then she gave me a dirty look. Whatever. I already told her I hit my head, if she wanted to judge me for being stupid and lame, she was going to have to get at the back of a long, long line.

I could tell Stinky was really worried about me so I told her I was fine but that we had to go home. Then halfway back up the hill, I started to cry. I have no idea why, I wasn't in that much pain. I think I may have been startled more than anything. Stinky has hardly ever seen me cry so that worried her even more and I felt like shit for making her worry. Plus, I was really embarrassed because I was crying and it was so cold that all the tears and snot froze and I had that hideous glazed doughnut face.

Because of the way the trails were laid out, as we were nearing the end of the woods, we crossed paths with the bitchy, judgmental woman again. She gave me one of those, overly concerned, condescendingly, pitying looks and I was so glad I didn't have tourettes because in my head I was screaming, "Quit friggin', frickin', fucking looking at me!"

We got home and I was fine. I made an appointment to see my chiropractor and I have some impressive bruises, but I didn't break anything. I do feel like it might be a smart time to start hibernating, though.

Take All Worry Out of Your Mind

Well, kids. I only have to work for fours hours tomorrow. Even I can handle that. It will be nice to get away from all the speculation on budget cuts at my job. No one knows for sure what will happen, but everyone really seems to like to obsess over it. Frankly, I'm tired of it. So, tomorrow when I leave work, I plan to turn off that part of my brain that stresses about stupid stuff I can't control...And if that doesn't work, I can always go get drunk. There. Now at least I have a plan.

Other than that, I'm not sure what all I'm doing this weekend. My friend G. and her roommates have invited me over to dinner on Saturday, so they can tell me stories that are too private to tell me in a bar. Judging from the things they normally tell me in bars, I am REALLY excited to hear what they have to say.

Now, I will leave you with a post I wrote on my old blog in November of 2005. Holy shit, that was a long time ago, yo. Its about nicknames we gave to customers at different places I've worked. Read on:

Zira - Planet of the Apes

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine about a neighbor who I thought was kind of annoying. I never mentioned his name but because this is Iowa City, she figured out who he was and told me that she and her friends used to call him Senor Scratchy Patches because of what she described as "an unfortunately placed skin condition that he felt at liberty to touch". Gross...but that's what makes it funny.

Ever since then I've been thinking about nicknames and remembering monikers that were given to different cutomers at all the various bars and restaurants I've worked. When you wait on people, you don't always remember their names and nicknames really help reference people. Sometimes the monikers are based on their order - like there has been a mocha man at almost every coffee shop I've ever worked at and when I worked at The Mill there was that jesus freak guy we always called the chicken man. Then sometimes the nicknames are just mean and those are usually reserved for customers who are annoying and/or rude and people who don't tip well.

One of my favorites was from when I worked as a bartender at Macy's in San Francisco in 1986. There was a woman who we always called Zira-Planet of the Apes. She was never just plain Zira, it was always the whole, long name. I thought she looked more like a combination of Zira and Ruth Gordon but it would have been way too long to say, Zira-Planet of the Apes-Ruth Gordon. I have no idea what her real name was. She would come in every Monday and be horrible and never tip the waiter but she would put tons of money in the jar for the pianist to play "New York, New York" at least 6 times a night. She always ordered a VERY dry vodka Martini. Which meant she didn't want vermouth. Which meant what she really wanted was vodka with an olive but she was too pretentious to order that. So, instead the waiters would come up to the bar and sing, "Zira-Planet of the Apes" and I would know exactly what to make. It was way more fun than giving me the order the regular way.

But while I was laughing at all the nicknames I've always labeled other people with, I did have to stop and wonder what nicknames people may have for me. It's not like I can stop one of the guys at the Co-op and ask them if they have another name they call me. I'm sure they wouldn't tell me if they did and would I want to know? If it was bad enough, I'd have to start going to the Coralville Co-op and never be dumb enough to ask a question I didn't want to know the answer to again.

Come on, How Many Guys You Know Make Love?

Here is a photo of Coadster and her friends that was in the paper today. Remember how I told you it was so cold at the track meet yesterday? Well, here's some visual proof for you.

Okay, kids. Here's the deal. I'm exhausted. The girls are at their dad's house, so I thought I might try to watch the pilot for that new HBO series The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency. I started it, I liked what I saw, but then realized I was way too tired to watch anything. So, since I can, I'm going to sleep now. Here is a post from my old blog that I wrote in February of 2006 to keep you company. It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek, pretend manual on how to talk to your kids about sex. Have at it:


When talking to your kids about sex, you might first try to remember how your parents told you about the great and beautiful mystery of life. What did you find valuable or not so valuable in the information they put forth? If your mother was trying hard to be open about it because when she was a child her own mom was, "very uncomfortable and (she) had to learn everything on the street, " you may have thought yourself lucky. But then when you asked her anything other than the essential birds and the bees, oh say, like what a blow job was, she honestly didn't know. You were left to surmise that she must have been the only person living on her "street".

You may first think that teaching your child morals would be a good way to keep him/her sexually responsible. Then again, it's possible that you would also remember that one of the most aggressively moral and judgemental girls in your high school got knocked up her senior year. Because of her earlier preaching, the kids in your high school were all a little too happy about the karmic turn of events. You then might choose a different angle.

Fear seems to be the most effective deterrent in almost any situation. If you have been blessed with boys, your task is very simple. Describe any sexual encounter as the cause of either the loss or the painful shrinking up of their most prized organ - whichever you think would be more frightening to your incredibly, precious, golden, male child.

If you are the proud parent of a sweet, little girl, your task is more complicated. Because the machinery, as with many other girl issues, is more complex. Luckily for you, there are sexually transmitted diseases. Many STD's do almost no damage to men, but can cause sterility, pelvic inflammatory disease (just know that it's really painful), cervical cancer and death. If your gorgeous little angel is young enough, you could easily get away with telling her several cautionary tales that begin with, "Pregnancy is the least of your worries anymore." Then end your stories thusly, "...and because she had sex before she was ready, (you will have earlier established that "ready" meant menopausal) she first became hideously disfigured, started to emit a terrible odor and died a lonely, slow, painful death."

If your clever little dearheart seems immune to sexual fear, there is one last-ditch, surefire tactic. You can start talking about your own sexual exploits. This will have long lasting effects especially if you try to be as vivid as possible. You may feel like mixing it up a little. First talk in great detail about your sexual experiences with their father and then regale them with stories about your past lovers and old college boyfriends. They won't be able to decide which is more nauseating. For the rest of their lives, anything you had peviously described should create a powerful mental image that will quickly and violently yank them out of their surging sea of hormones. Because, as you know with your own family, there are very few things more disturbing than picturing your parents having sex.

And the Body Looks Fine, So What If It Runs Slow

I'm stealing another photo Coadster took in NYC. This is the naked cowboy, with a well placed guitar. Coadster didn't know the women in the pic, she just aimed and shot.

I've been exhausted all day. I have no idea why, I just know I don't want to feel like this tomorrow, so I'm going to bed as early as possible and stealing from the old blog. I wrote this post in August of 2006. It was right after I got back from my trip to Minneapolis where I visited my friend S. and The Walker is an art museum there. I think that' s all you need to know. Here you go:

We spoke in S.'s kitchen with her friend who worked at the Walker. Her friend was telling us about how she met her boyfriend and it was all very sweet. She had gone to the Apple store to buy a computer and a hot guy with a Nordic sounding name waited on her for over an hour while she figured out how much of an investment she wanted to make. In the end he helped her carry her computer to her car and mustered the courage to ask her out. Now, however long after, they were living together.

"Those things never happen in real life. Who gets asked out by someone they don't know anymore?" I said.

"I know, " she agreed, "He said he had let too many other opportunities slip away because he had been too afraid of rejection and he vowed he would take a chance the next time. I was lucky that I happened along after that."

Move ahead in time and place to Friday afternoon in Iowa City:

I was riding my bike back home after mailing some letters downtown. They were paving the street about a block from my house and there were two men in neon greenish/yellow vests directing traffic. When I approached the corner the heavier-set guy motioned me forward with his hand.

"That's okay, I'm turning anyway," I told him and he nodded.

The other, younger, squirrelly looking guy sporting a shaved-on-the-sides mullet said, "No. Come this way. I want to talk to you." I laughed and rode away. In my head I was thinking that he looked familiar. Maybe I had gone to high school with his mom.

Skip ahead to yesterday - still in Iowa City but this time I'm on my way home from work.

The two men are both still directing traffic on that one corner. This time the older heavier guy motions me forward and we smile at each other out of courtesy. The barely twenty year old looking mullet wearer comes running over. "Hi," He says and I say hi back. My "hi" is very cautious, however. "Hey, didn't I see you around here on Friday?"

"Yeah. I live around here." I worry that I've given too much information. It is a bad habit of mine. But I comfort myself by thinking the engine of the paver machine thingy is so loud that the mullet boy/man probably can't hear me. I am apparently lying to myself.

"Really? What's your name?" I don't want to give it to him and I haven't had much practice quickly thinking of a fake name recently. I tell him my name, speaking as closely into the loud machine as possible.

"Kara or Laura?" He asks.

"Yes," I say.

And here comes the part where I overanalyze the situation. You are welcome to stay, or you could just run away screaming.

Now I can't say, "that kind of thing never happens to me", because I did get approached by a guy I didn't know. If I were still in college, I might compare myself and my situation to the Walker worker woman and her experience by thinking that if we were cars, I'd be a Chevy Nova and she'd be a Volvo. It would explain why she got hit on by the interesting guy who was at least near her own age and why I was approached by a man twenty years younger than me, who huffed tar for a living. But now that I am older and kinder to myself, I prefer to look at it this way: In Iowa City we don't even have an Apple store for the hot nerdy guys with Nordic sounding names to work, and since I either walk, run or ride my bike nearly everywhere I go, it's only logical that I would meet the guy who works a seasonal job directing traffic where he is free to rock that mullet all day long.

See how I did that? I made it a matter of circumstance. That's all.

A Time to Break and a Time to Chill. To Act Civilized or Act Really Ill

Here is a photo of a dead end. Nowhere to go but up, I guess.

Well, kids. I'm tired and I'm going to try hard to go to bed really, really early tonight. To that end, I'm stealing from the old blog. This was from March of 2006. It is a quaint little story about me finding out what my B-girl name meant. Oh, and for those of you who have only seen me on my blog, I have curly hair. I just straighten it when I go out. There. That will help this story make more sense. Enjoy:

I had been living in Iowa for about 6 years before I moved to California to join the Conservation Corps. In 1985, you still had to attend the training academy before you were placed at a site. The academy was a converted minimum security prison in Angels Camp, California. Most of the people who joined the Corps were from inner urban areas except for me and two refugees from Ethiopia. The Ethiopians were probably less foreign to the training academy world than I was.

At that time, Yo! MTV Raps was still three years away and there was very little exposure to Rap culture anywhere else. A couple of the girls on my track team in high school would bring music back from their relatives in Atlanta and in college there was a station on KRUI that played rap for an hour on Sunday nights. So, I had heard The Sugar Hill Gang, Grand Master Flash and George Clinton's "Atomic Dog". There were a couple of local white boys who would bring their boom boxes (or ghetto blasters as everyone called them then) to the ped mall and attempt to break dance, but very few people in Iowa knew much about eighties urban culture, including me.

At the academy I was one of the few women of any color - White, Black, Latina Asian or Native. So, some of the guys tried to flip me shit to see how I'd react. I laughed and flipped them shit back and we were cool. They even gave me a B-girl name. The called me Jheri curl. I asked them what a Jheri curl was and they laughed for days. One guy tried to explain it. "See those brothers over there wearing the shower caps? They all have Jheri curls they don't want to mess up out here. Just wait until the dance on the last night - they'll take them off and then you'll see."

"Okay, but until that time, can you just tell me if Jheri curl is a good B-girl name or a bad one?"

"It's good. For real." I took his word for it, but I was a little anxious to see what about me reminded everyone of a Jheri curl.

The night of the dance, we were all packing up and getting ready to go to our assignments. There were 5 of us going to Leggett to work on The Salmon Restoration Project. We all walked down to the dance together - we figured we'd better start getting used to each other. Once we hit the cafeteria, my friend who had previously tried to describe my B-girl name to me came over to say goodbye.

"Hey Jheri curl. Are you ready to see what you're named after?" Hell fuckin' yes, I was ready. He pointed over to the group of guys who I had never seen without their shower caps. Their hair had been loosed and was curly like mine, but oh so much wetter. "See," my friend said. "I told you it was good. Don't you think they look good?"

"Sure?" but I wasn't. I suppose my B-girl name was better than some I've heard. I wasn't the human beat box, or big legged girl, sex machine Nicki (who's real name was Doris) or the Ethiopians who were only ever called "the Ethiopians". To this day though, I'm not sure if I should have been offended or not.

Here In My Car, I Feel Safest of All

Here is a photo of some I-80 traffic on our roadtrip this Summer. I'm so photoless, I'm going through Coadster's vacation pics now.

We're almost at the weekend now and I am so happy. I want time to stay home and relax. I don't have any real plans, except for my friend Libby is coming from Chicago and we're planning on lunching together on Sunday. I got some shit to do, so I'm stealing from the old blog again. I wrote this in June of 2006. Read it and weep:

I have always been a freak magnet. It doesn't matter if I'm in a bar or walking down the street, you can guarantee that the only homeless, no teeth'd, crack head, psycho who ditched their meds, will come up to me and get all up in my grill. I used to think I had some kind of special sign around my neck that only they could see that said, "Lick me on the face and call me sucker." But today I think that sign fell off of my person and attached itself to the front of my car.

I had just dropped Coadster off at the baseball fields and was heading to the store to pick-up a few things, when I saw a woman standing in the middle of the street just ahead of me. At first, it looked like she was stupidly running in front of traffic, but then she turned around to face me and held up both thumbs. I stopped my car and she put her hands on my hood, then she kept her hands on my car and moved around to the passenger side window.

"Can you help me? I need help." I thought she might be sick or injured but I didn't have a cell phone. We were right by a gas station, so it seemed odd to me that she didn't go there. "I need a ride to my daughter's house over by Sheraton Street. I'm so hot and tired that I don't think I can go much further without fainting. Please. You're a lifesaver."

"You mean SheriDAN Street?" I asked.

"Yeah. Whatever. My daughter lives over by there and I need a ride. Please?" By that time, there was a line of cars behind me. If I had the girls, I would have said, no for sure. But I didn't have them. I used to hitchhike when I was younger, so I felt a little hypocritical not taking her. Although, I would never have been that aggressive about it myself.

"Um. Okay."

"Oh thank god. Shit. I'm on these new meds and they're fuc... I mean, messing with my system."

"Hmm, " I said. I didn't want to have to have a long, tiresome conversation about her meds, so I didn't ask her about them. I was just happy she was taking them.

"You know where Sheraton Street is? It's over by Summit. She don't live on Sheraton, though. My daughter lives on a street right off there."

"I know where Sheridan Street is."

"Hey, where you going? I don't go this way. I go a different way."

"This is faster than going to Court and then tracking back. It will still get us to Sheridan."

"Oh, this is Sheraton. You gotta take a left here."

"Left? Okay."

"Now we're back where we started. It should have been right over here. Drive around some more."

"You don't know where your daughter lives?"

"I would, if you'da gone the other way. Just keep driving around." I used to be a huge push-over when I was younger. It was that orphan thing where I thought I was a huge impostion to everyone and it was my job to help people and put up with all their shit. I continually felt like I had to make up for my being alive and breathing someone else's air. I'm finally old enough and have met too many people who were happy to take advantage of me, that I have gone the other way. Now, I push back once it's clear to me that the person I'm dealing with is shot full of entitlement issues.

"Actually, I'm not going to drive around. I was being nice to take you here, but I have things to do. I was going to Hy-Vee, and we were right in front of it, when you stopped my car..."

"So, what? Do you expect me just to walk around and look for the house by myself?"

"Yeah. If you don't know where your own daughter lives, how would I know?"

"Do you know where Summit Street is?" She said this slowly and loudly, like she thought I might be retarded.

"Yes. It's back the other way."

"Okay. Take me there and maybe I can find it that way."

"I'll take you to Summit Street, but that's it. I have things to do." I turned around and headed for Summit Street and two blocks away, she said,

"Stop! That's the street. I know it. It's here." I pulled over to the side of the road to let her out. She picked up her bright pink purse and said, "Thanks, so much. You're a lifesaver. God bless you. I'll be sure to pay it forward." And while I'm sure she'll be paying something, I doubt it will be forward, backward, or sideways. I have a feeling it will be straight to her dealer...Er, I mean, daughter.

Cause When You're a Celebrity, It's Adios Reality

Stinky with some of her friends when she was in grade school. This was the same year Sally Field's granddaughter went there.

Okay. I'm going to try again to get some sleep tonight. I'm posting something from my old blog again. This one is from November, 2005, and it's one where I do some name dropping. Wheee! Also, I messed around with the color of the text and it won't let me turn it black. Sorry. Here it is:

Since my last blog post, I got on this celebrity kick and so I'll be wearing it all the way out. Because that's what I do. The other day, the girls were watching Mrs. Doubtfire and while I stood there and watched with them for a second on my way to clean the kitchen, I realized that I had met both of the stars of the movie. Now, when I say met them, what I really mean is that I was in the same room with them and if they didn't speak directly to me, they at least spoke in my general direction or to someone else I knew. Close enough.

It's amusing to make connections between myself and people I see on TV. I love the idea of famous people. They never seem real. Which is why it is so much fun to talk about them. I like to make sweeping generalizations about them - really, about everyone and everything. I like to say things like, celebrities are just like us but they're shallower (my dictionary tells me this is more correct than saying, "more shallow" even though it looks awkward). Or, famous people are just like us but they're Scientologists. There is so much shit you can talk about celebrities. I don't even think celebrities think of themselves as real people and that's why they do such stupid things. That could be one of the reasons it is so weird to see a famous person in the flesh. They become real and it's not as easy to make sweeping generalizations about them. They also look different without all that make-up and kind lighting.

I met Robin Williams when I waited on him at the Courtyard Cafe on 24th St in San Francisco in 1986. He only had one son then and he was with 2 women. I think one was his ex-wife (his current wife at the time) and the other one could have been his nanny who turned into his next wife. She may have been someone totally different than that, but it's more fun to speculate and create fun fiction that you pass off as reality whenever you can. It could have been true. You never know.

All the other waiters kept asking me if I said anything funny to him. What did they expect me to do? Go up and say, "Hey, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the table...", or reprise my lame-ass Mork impersonation from junior high? Honestly, I think the last thing he would want is for some bonehead to come over and try their shtick on him while he ate in order to get discovered. So, I kept it low key and did my job and he was the perfect customer. He was pleasant, kind and he tipped well. I judged everyone back then by what kind of a customer they were, so to me, he was also a good person.

I met Sally Field two years ago at International night at my daughters' grade school. Her son Peter had been in the workshop in the early 90's and like many workshop alum, he moved away and then came back. His daughter was in kindergartern at Horace Mann and Sally was visiting during the event. She was very gracious and everyone was talking about it, but very few people came over and bothered her. At one point, my daughter and her friend were walking toward her and being all squirrelly about her being there but too shy to say anything directly to her and Sally (we're on a first name basis now) laughed and said, "Hello girls," and I think they both actually squealed. At this point in my life, I judge people by how nice they are to my girls and that's why I think Sally Field is a good person.

The thing about celebrities, is that they are like us but smaller. Both Sally Field and Robin Williams were about 4 feet tall close up. Sally was so tiny, I could have scooped her up in my arms and cradled her like a baby if I had wanted to. Obviously, I didn't want to. Even I'm not that fucked up.

Now, I think that may be just enough name dropping for one post. Come back tomorrow when I'm sure I'll drop some more. Because celebrities are just like us, only more interesting.

What Did You Do to End Up Here?

Kids, I seem to have lost my internal germ battle, and went home sick from work. I must have a fever, because I'm super dizzy and most of my co-workers practically shoved me out the door, before I could infect them too. I've been sleeping on and off all day. So, I'm stealing from the old blog. This post was from January 2006 too. It's about a time I got sick from meat and marijuana poisoning. Some might say that would be a perfect illness. Anyway, here it is:

Because the Conservation Corps was a state organization, we got pulled wherever they needed us. We were all trained to fight wildland fires and floods and once a couple of groups had to go to an area in the Sierras and comb the backyard of serial killers named Lake and Ng looking for teeth and personal items of victims. Since we lived right on the border of Humboldt County, one summer we were summoned to cook for CAMP (campaign against marijuana production). No one wanted to do it. For one thing, we didn't believe in it, for another it was dangerous. Most of the growers were Vietnam Vets and had all their fields booby-trapped with fish hooks at eye level and other ingenious snares. If they found out we were connected in any way, it could have been very bad for us. The bigwigs told us that if we didn't do it, we would all be fired. Myself, my boyfriend at the time and 2 others agreed to go so that everyone could keep their jobs.

CAMP was made up mostly of CHIPS cops (man, the state loves it's acronyms) from the LA area. Picture Panch and John, overweight and dressed only in camouflage. Do you feel the bile rising in the back of your throat yet? Yeah, me too. Of course, they wouldn't speak to us and just assumed we were prisoners. We were reminded several times a day to make sure we wore gloves when we served them their food. After all, you wouldn't want us convicts passing on the HIV to them.

Their job was to fly around in helicopters looking for weed (No more lookin' for weed in all the wrong places...). When they found it, they would land, cut it all down and confiscate all the shit on the property. Then as we saw, they pinched enough of it not to get caught - the stuff, not the weed. The weed was all still green. They then flew back in the helicopters with the cut down weed in a net hanging from the bottom of it. The helicopter always looked like it had lost one of its cajones when it was flying in. Once they arrived at the camp, they would put a bunch of gas on the weed and burn it in a huge, expensive and sad bonfire.

One day when we worked there, they had confiscated 180 lbs of Thai stick in the San Francisco Bay. It was quickly shipped up to Humboldt and what didn't get taken by the CHIPS guys, was burned in a bonfire for over a day. We took turns going down to the trailer where the pot fire mountain was and emptying the already empty garbage can. By dinner time, we had been slow roasted in pungent herbs. The CHIPS guys liked steak. Every night, they liked steak. I hadn't eaten meat for over a year at that point, but the steak looked so good. Duuuuude. So, I ate half of a steak and then got very, very sick.

The best part of this story is that the next day, my new boyfriend's mother was coming up from San Francisco to meet me and apparently judge me very harshly. Even if I hadn't had the hazy fazies from too much weed and been lost-enzyme-sick from eating steak, she still would have hated me. She was originally from Trinidad. In our first meeting, she asked her son very loudly in front of me, "Why do you want to date this woodsy looking white girl when there are so many beautiful, refined, black women in the city?" Then the rest of her stay, she constantly brought up his ex-girlfriends who were all still single and brain surgeon super models. I met a few of them later, after we moved to San Francisco and I was sorely disappointed.

I dated Mr. Man for 2 1/2 years and got to know his mother better during the relationship. She was totally crazy and always still wished I was black, but she ended up liking me in the end. When we finally broke up, she kept voicing these scenarios about how her son and I would meet when we were in our thirties and both finally had our shit together and we'd live happily ever after - who knows, maybe I would submit to some kind of pigment enhancing procedure too.


My ex-boyfriend's mom took this picture the day we met and as you can see, I'm not the only woodsy-looking person in it. Can you tell I'm still green around the gills, though?

Who's Gonna Plug Their Ears When You Scream?

Hey, it's my older sister's birthday. She turns 112 today, which makes me only 110. We both look really good for our ages, don't we? So, here's a picture of her in my dad's studio when we were younger and either right before or right after she and my brother accidentally closed my fingers in the bathroom door. So, let's all wish my sister, Moira a happy birthday, shall we?

Now, I'm also going to post a piece from my old blog tonight. I'm keeping with the driving - or not driving theme. This was also written in January of 2006. Here it is:

I didn't learn how to drive until I was 30 years old. My aunt wouldn't go to the notary to sign my permission slip for driver's education which meant I never learned in high school. After high school it was difficult to get any consistent instruction. I had a million friends who said, "Oh, I love to teach people how to drive. I'm really good at it. I've taught everyone in my family how to drive." But since they were all in college, anytime I asked them, they had other plans or they were still hung over from their previous plans.

My brother was the first person who seriously tried to teach me to drive. I was 18 and a freshman in college. He was a year older than I was and we both fooled ourselves into thinking that we were more mature than we were. My brother has always been a suck-it-up-and-deal-with-it pragmatist and I have always been the opposite. So, in his older brother wisdom, he decided to take me for a driving lesson during a snow storm. Because, as my brother said at the time, "If you can learn to drive in a snow storm, you can drive through anything." No. After I slid his 75 Caprice Classic into a dumpster, he told me that my first instinct was to spaz (which I don't deny) and punched me in the arm.

My next attempt at driving was when I lived in Norhtern California. In the Conservation Corps, in order to become a crew leader, you not only had to have a driver's license, you had to have a CDL so you could drive a van and transport passengers. My friend Kathy took me to a gravel parking lot in her Gremlin and I turned in circles a couple of times. That same week, one of the guys we worked with was driving his motorcycle down an old logging road that simply stopped but he and his motorcycle didn't. He was fine, but we were all a little spooked. The first time Kathy had me drive out on Highway 101 it just took one huge, insane, logging truck to come around a curve going 80 mph taking with it much of the paint on my side of the car, to make me decide that I didn't really want to be a crew leader anyway.

After I moved back from California in 1988, my friend Mel took me driving at the catholic high school parking lot in her diesel VW Rabbit. We were fine at first but then Nancy Sinatra's version of "These Boots Were Made for Walking" came on the radio. Mel's boyfriend had just cheated on her for what Mel described as a "skanky slut", and so she felt compelled to turn up the radio and sing loudly with her eyes closed. At the same time, another car came up behind me. "Shit! What should I do?" And exactly as my brother had predicted, I spazzed and just stopped the car where we were and the people behind us honked and drove around flipping us off for a good block with their hand out the window to make sure they were being clear enough.

I finally learned to drive from a driving school. My aunt must have felt some guilt, 15 years after the fact and she and my sister went in together to pay for my lessons. I spent a few weeks of the summer with a man named Randy who was fifty years old, and apparently pregnant with triplets. I'm still not sure how he got behind the steering wheel. He was a proud member of The Promise Keepers and liked to go into full detail about all the rallies. I finished that course over a week early and passed my driving test with flying colors. Proving that there is no better motivation than the prospect of spending more time in a small car with a chatty, sweaty Promise Keeper.

Oh, Won't You Hop Inside My Car?

Okay, kids. I had this kind of raunchy blog post about the different ways men and women that I know view sex and dating, but then I just got done watching Gran Torino and it was intense enough for me to need to process it. This weekend I saw The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire back to back and felt like I could use some therapy too. Anyway, I'm not so in the mood for the bawdy dame post. Try me again tomorrow when I've had a chance to recover. So, it's another old blog post. This one is from January of 2006 about my hitchhiking experiences. Here it is:

When I was nineteen I had fucked up most of my classes and was asked to leave the university until I could get my shit together. I didn't want to stay in Iowa City like a lot of my friends who were just working at restaurants and going to see different bands every night. My roommate's sister had been in the California Conservation Corps and really liked it until she met Dina Shore's son and eventually left to live in a little town outside of Eureka with him. I was up for an adventure and so I thought I'd sign up. In order to join the Corps you had to have a California address. My roommate's sister and Jody were nice enough to let me use their address and even forwarded me my mail.

I decided to move to Santa Rosa because one of the dishwashers at The Mill told me it was a cool place to stay. I flew there by myself and stayed at the Redwood Motel. It was a very charming town. At the time, they were shooting, Peggy Sue Got Married and they wouldn't let anyone go to the downtown section since it was a period piece. I had to take care of a lot of business before I could get accepted into the CCC and then once I was signed up I would have a month to kill before I started. I needed an interview, a physical and to take care of a lot of other paperwork. Since I didn't know how to drive at the time, I had to walk everywhere and make a wide circle around the downtown area. It was so much easier to hitch a ride. Of course, now I know how stupid that was, but at the time, I needed a ride and people (meaning men) would just pull over and ask me if I wanted one. I liked to tell myself that since I didn't stick my thumb out, that I would be able to choose. If someone pulled over that looked too scary, I'd just tell them that I was going for a walk and didn't want a ride, thank you very much. In reality, by the time I said, "thank you very much," they could have me pulled into their car and driven off with me anyway.

One of the other really stupid things I did at the time was take caffeine pills. This guy I knew in Iowa City, ordered a big bag of them out of the back of one of those punk rock magazines and I kept them with me wherever I went. I thought the pills made me more alert, but really they just made me spazzy and more annoyed with people than I already was. Bad idea.

Most of the rides I got were fine. Usually, it was some smarmy middle aged guy who wanted to talk to a young girl. They never asked about me, which was perfect because I didn't feel like talking, they would just go on and on about their jobs or their families until we reached our destination. The day before I left, I had come out of my physical where I learned for the first time that I had a heart murmur. The doctor referred to the kind of murmur I had as a "fad". I guess I never thought of myself as being all that trendy. So, on the walk home, a very nondescript man asked me if I wanted a ride. I got in his car and everything seemed fine. About a mile out, he stopped talking and became agitated. I could feel how pissed off he was. He wouldn't look at me and just gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter. I finally asked him to pull over.

"We're not there yet, " he said and kept driving without looking at me.

"That's okay. I forgot I had some other errands to run so if you could pull over right here, that would be great." He didn't say anything and didn't pull over either. I was really nervous at that point and the pills were making me hysterical.

"Pull over! Pull over right now! I want to get out!" I meant to sound forceful and angry but I think I sounded more like a squeaky, petulant, little girl. He did pull over however, and before he could come to a full stop, I grabbed my backpack and ran. You think that would have kept me from hitchhiking but I told myself I would do it one last time to get to the bus station so I could leave Santa Rosa which didn't seem quite so charming anymore.

A guy named Roy stopped to offer me a ride. He was wearing one of those gas station attendant shirts with his name embroidered on it. I had my army duffel bag and my backpack (everything I owned) on me. He asked me where I was going and I told him I was meeting my family in San Francisco. I figured if he thought I had people expecting me, that he wouldn't try anything funny.

"You oughta be careful down there in the city. You know, I seen a lot of pretty girls like you become whoores in San Fran. It's just a shame what happens."

"I'll be fine," I assured him. "I'm going to meet my family and then we're driving to Yosemite together. See? Nothing to worry about with me." I wasn't even fooling myself, so I'm sure he wasn't buying my perky girl act.

"Instead of going down there and running into some bad business, you know you could always stay here. I got a trailer. Really, I got two trailers. You could live in one and I could live in the other. I'm working a vein in a gold mine up there in the hills and I just need someone to cook for me. It wouldn't be nothin' sexual, just some cooking and maybe some cleaning..."

Even though it sounded like every girl's dream, I talked my way out of that offer and out of his car. I kept reassuring him about my family, but what I really wanted to say was that I would rather take my chances at becoming a whoore in San Fran - at least there I wouldn't also have to cook and clean for anyone.

Everything's the Same Back in My Little Town

Here is a picture of a recording device on a tri-pod.

Tonight I need sleep. I haven't been getting much, what with being so busy and all and now I'm pooped as pooped can be. Soooooo. Hey kids, what time is it? That's right, it's time for another installment of my old blog. This post I wrote in January 2006 and it is partly about how my town in high school was given the prestigious title of video game capital of the universe, or some weird shit. Anyway, it ties in with all my talking about King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Just know that I wrote this before that movie came out, so there might be some ignorance there. it shouldn't shock you too much, if you've ever read my blog before. In the other documentary who's name I can't remember, they talked about what those gamers were doing now, and none of them seemed all that accomplished or happy or sane really, so I guess I made some bad assumptions in this too....Yeah. story of my life. Okay, dig in:

I graduated from Ottumwa high school in 1983. When we first moved there from Chicago, I was really into making fun of the Ottumwa accent. A lot of people said warsh instead of wash, they did the deeshes instead of the dishes and the city's motto was "Ottumwa someplace special" except they pronounced it, "spatial" and that always amused me too. I only lived there the four years I was in high school, but in those four years, a lot of cheesy shit happened. We were on the Today Show, in Life Magazine and we were on That's Incredible! several times.

It's odd for such a small town to get that much publicity but there were a couple of factors that went into it. The biggest was probably the proximity of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. The Maharishis, more affectionately called Gurus or Fuckin' Rus, in general have a lot of money and come from either of the coasts. They used to have representatives come to our high school and try to talk about reaching spiritual enlightenment to a bunch of red necks whose only previous aspirations were trying to get laid in the back of their pick-ups. I always loved it when some guy in my class would raise his hand and ask, "So, if you guys can fly, then why don't you just jump out this window right now and show us?"

Maharishi International University also brought Andy Kaufman to Ottumwa. In the early 80's he used to hang out at Happy Joe's and ask the high school girls to mud wrestle him at the Ottumwa Coliseum. We all knew who he was, but no one wanted to take him up on it.

Another guy from Maharishi, gave us the title of, "Video Game Capital of the Universe"in order to promote his arcade. He started keeping the highest scores from all over the country and that first picture (I just posted that photo two days before, so you know what I'm talking about) of the post is from the 1982 year in review in Life magazine. The cheerleaders are from my grade but the nerds behind the machines were the best gamers in the United States at the time. I'm sure they all have WAY more money than I do right now (and probably an XBox in every room of their house).

We were on the Today Show for something totally unrelated to MIU. Somebody had a brilliant idea: they would take a bunch of men from Saudi Arabia, bring them to the heartland and teach them about computers. What they didn't count on, was that the Saudis would get corrupted by Western culture and start buying the high school girls cars and diamonds and all kinds of shit that their boyfriend's Wayne and Kinny probably couldn't even spell. Those girls may have taken Andy Kaufman up on his wrestling offer if he had offered to buy them a car. One of the young girls happened to be the sheriff's son's girlfriend and one day he and some of his boys shot up the house where the Saudi's were living. No one was hurt but it brought the Today Show to our town and believe me, they made the whole town look really tolerant and accepting. HA!

They solved the Saudi "problem" by moving them all down to Texas where there were no guns and people were much more accepting of other cultures. HA! HA! A girl in my class moved down to Texas with them, married one of the Saudis, found out he had other wives, divorced him and is now richer than god. I'm not really sure why I wasted my time going to college when there were so many eligible young men in my town. If I had only played my cards right, I could have an XBox in every room of my house. Hell, I'd be happy to own a house.

Tell Your Daddy and Your Mama Too, You Got Something Better to Do

Here is a picture of a snow covered tree in front of a parking ramp.

Okay, kids. FMDM called me to chat and I wasn't paying attention to the time and now it is ridiculously late, so I'm stealing from the old blog. This was something from December of 2005: I swear, one of these days I'll start writing real posts again. Who knows? Maybe I'll even start tomorrow. But for right now, I'm serving up this:


On Friday night, I was driving down the Coralville Strip on the way to pick up Coadster from an ice skating party at the mall. Stinky and her friend were sitting in the backseat and I was looking like a lame ass taxi driver alone in the front seat. Of Course, I drive a total mom car - I have that pine green Subaru station wagon, the same color and kind that everyone else bought in 1999. It's a wonderfully reliable car and I even have a, "share the road with bicycles" bumper sticker so I'm unmistakably a big, old mom.

That's why I was surprised when a car full of young men (and I use that term loosely) pulled up next to me at the light. At first I wasn't sure if they were high school kids or frat boys, but then they didn't have a very nice car or an Illinois license plate with a dealership sticker from the Northshore suburbs of Chicago, so I figured they were high school kids. They started honking and waving and yelling to get my attention. I looked over and they made that gesture for me to roll down my window. Which I didn't do. I tried to ignore them and Stinky and her friend giggled and made fun of them while they then attempted to race me down the strip. When I didn't play along, they slowed down to my speed and kept yelling and honking. What the hell? I'm old, I'm not playing - why bother? I could see them doing that to a car driven by hot young college girls, but I was even wearing the same Carhartt sweatshirt that I always wear so I'm sure I looked like the worst kind of farm wife.

That went on for way too long and they got so carried away at one point that they nearly ran us off the road. I think coming close to hitting us, sobered them up and they finally let it go and drove off.

That wasn't the first time this year I had some younger kids flipping me shit. This summer I was running down Rochester and two boys, probably around 10 years old, had their super soakers out. You could tell they thought about it for a bit, but then they both aimed and fired right at me. I think I said, "Knock it off you little shits." But they fired one more time before they ran off. I couldn't believe how ballsy they were. What's with kids today? Is no one taught any respect any more? Is it more fallout from too much MTV and video games? Or were we like that with adults when I was younger and I just don't remember it?

If I go all the way back to Arizona and try to be honest with myself, I can think of a time or two when we treated adults badly. Arizona is a state filled with fringe movements. I kind of like that large populations of Mormons and bikers can live peacefully in the same state. But then you have to imagine what it would be like if they got into a war with each other...Sure, the bikers would win at first, they have all the machinery, but then the Mormons who got away could retreat to their bunkers with all their hoarded food and make like the righteous progenitors that they are to replenish their armies. I would probably put my money on the Mormons.

...What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, respect. When we were kids we used to make fun of the bikers who lived at the end of our street. A big group of us would walk back and forth in front of their house and yell/sing the words to, "Motorcycle Mama". Mostly we would sing, "...Motorcycle Mama, the queen of the highway, and we'll see the world through my Harley.." over and over again until the dad came out of the house and yelled at us to get the hell out and then we'd run away screaming and wait a while before we got the guts to start it up again.

The other time I remember being mean to a grown-up was in second grade. There was a kid at our school who's mom volunteered to help in our class. She still had one of those really high bouffants and we couldn't get over it. We called her the Eiffel Tower and any time she walked by us we would all act as if the hair tower on top of her head was going to come crashing down on us. All the kids would push each other out of her way. The principal came to our class to talk to us about hurting her feelings and I think that was the first sensitvity training I ever had.

I guess the big problem with all of this is that my disrespect was really funny and the shit those boys did, was just stupid - ok, shooting a mom with the big super soakers would have been really funny if I saw it done to someone else. I think it's just more of my take on things: When I do something, it's really cute and endearing but it's kind of annoying when someone else does it. Hmmmm.

Whatever Happened to All This Season's Losers of the Year?

Me sitting between my neighbors at our block party in 2004.

Hey, here's a crutch I haven't used in a week or so. I'm going to steal a post from my old blog again. I wrote this in May of 2006. Now, I will take my leave and wash some dishes. Damn, I lead a glamorous life. Here you go:


I ran into my friends S. and J. at the store the other night. They're awesome and they live down the street from me. We had our usual neighborhood conversation about the tornado and how our houses were coming along afterward. Then J. asked me how my love life was to which I used my stock reply and said, "Imaginary."

J. who is quite happy with her girlfriend, S. told me that I should just give up on men and date women instead.

"You know, I've just never been sexually attracted to women, " I said.

"Really? Because I can't think of anything less attractive than a middle-aged man. So, what does it for you? Is it the bald head, the he-boobies, the back hair or th...

At that point I put my fingers in my ears, vigorously shook my head and started repeating my favorite mantra, "Watermelonwatermelonwatermelon..." until she stopped talking.

"Yeah, okay. I know," I said.

"Seriously, the other day I saw this gorgeous woman our age with this total putz of a guy and I felt bad for her because I knew that she just didn't have any other options."

Her point wasn't missed on me, but attraction, like love isn't logical. You can't help what you find interesting in people. After I turned 30, I found myself really attracted to balding men. I'm not sure if it was just one of those youngest child things like when I was a kid, I told myself I liked the chicken wing because I knew that I got last pick and that's what would be left and I would be happier if I liked it. I really didn't want to date anyone much younger than me (not that I haven't) and most guys my age were balding. So, despite the possibility of he-boobies and back hair, I do think many middle-aged men are attractive and I can't make myself a lesbian any more than a gay person can suddenly turn straight just because it upsets certain people's sensibilities.

And now, I will show some pretty pictures of clouds that have nothing whatsoever to do with he-boobies (although, I obviously think it's funny to write that word over and over). Coadster took these tonight just before the sun set:

Here's where I couldn't get the cloud photos off of my old blog and onto the new one. Sorry.

I Have Seen Your Face and It's Too Much for Me Today

Here is Stinky standing in between two friends and dressed as an elf for a local clothing store's promotion.

Tonight I was a good girl. I ran outside, picked Stinky up from basketball practice and then cleaned the hell out of my kitchen. Since I want to continue to behave and get to bed before midnight tonight for a change, I thought I'd give you this little post from December of 2005 on my old blog. It's a heartwarming tale of a sledding adventure with me and Stinky:

Yesterday Stinky and I went sledding at Hickory Hill Park. The hill was packed with a lot of kids from Stinky's school and since we got there later in the day, according to the laws of sled hill seniority, we had to hang out on the bad side of the hill. What makes that side of the hill so bad is that there is this odd looking man hole cover thing that rises almost a foot out of the ground in the middle of the field at the bottom of the hill. It's pretty dangerous and I wish they would surround it with hay bails or something but instead, they just tried to mark it with a tall rusty pole that someone painted green.

Stinky and I got on the sled (she was in the back and I was in the front) and scootched ourselves with our hands and feet far enough off the top of the hill so the sled could start zipping down unaided. We were riding one of those inflatable sleds that look kind of like an inner tube but are impossible to steer. Of course, we plowed right into the pole and slammed into the manhole cover thing. Stinky had the foresight to slip back behind the sled before we hit it, but I held on, thinking it might give me some cushion. Once I hit the manhole cover, I was propelled upside down and hit the ground on my head, neck and shoulder and then the whole right side of my body slammed down after.

There was a couple cross-country skiing right by there when we crashed. The woman stopped and asked me if I was okay. I think I said something like, "Huh? Oh yeah. Um, I think I hit my head." Then she started getting on my shit about the pole and how I needed to put it back in the ground so that no one else made the same mistake. Yeah, even if I had been together enough, I wouldn't have worried about it. The problem has never been that people can't see the manhole cover, it was always more that it's hard to steer around it. I told her that the pole caused more pain than the manhole cover did. Then she got all exasperated and put down her ski poles.

"I guess, I'll just have to do it then." She tried, but of course the ground was frozen and it wouldn't work and then she gave me a dirty look. Whatever. I already told her I hit my head, if she wanted to judge me for being stupid and lame, she was going to have to get at the back of a long, long line.

I could tell Stinky was really worried about me so I told her I was fine but that we had to go home. Then halfway back up the hill, I started to cry. I have no idea why, I wasn't in that much pain. I think I may have been startled more than anything. Stinky has hardly ever seen me cry so that worried her even more and I felt like shit for making her worry. Plus, I was really embarrassed because I was crying and it was so cold that all the tears and snot froze and I had that hideous glazed doughnut face.

Because of the way the trails were laid out, as we were nearing the end of the woods, we crossed paths with the bitchy, judgmental woman again. She gave me one of those, overly concerned, condescendingly, pitying looks and I was so glad I didn't have tourettes because in my head I was screaming, "Quit friggin', frickin', fucking looking at me!"

We got home and I was fine. I made an appointment to see my chiropractor and I have some impressive bruises, but I didn't break anything. I do feel like it might be a smart time to start hibernating, though.

All of Her Dreams Have Gone Dry

Another recycled photo of me and my sister in Arizona in the 70's. I'm the upright one.

Hey, kids. It's crutch time again and this stolen blog post is long, so here it is from my old blog, August 2006:

She looked sick when she woke me up for school and I told her so.

"I know. I'm not feeling well, but I don't have any more sick time left. I'll be okay. Don't worry about me."

I waited until I heard her leave the house before I got out of bed. I had on the same brown polyester bell bottoms and mustard colored shirt with the big collar that I had worn the day before. I wanted to wear it that day too and I was afraid my mom would catch me.

* * * *

When I got home from school there were at least five cars parked outside our house. My grandma told me that my mom had had a stroke on her way to work. She was alive but in intensive care at the hospital. My mother had been in and out of the hospital for uncontrolled high blood pressure most of my life. I could tell this was different. Usually, my grandma came over and took care of us when my mom was in the hospital. Sometimes she would go at night when we were asleep and we would wake up and notice that someone had cleaned the toaster and know that meant my grandmother was there.

This time though, there were aunts and uncles and cousins and talk of my mom's sister coming from Chicago and my mom's brother coming from California. This time there was a lot of food and everyone was being nice to me. This time I knew something was up.

* * * *

The next day my aunt and uncle flew into Sky Harbor. My mom was out of intensive care already, but they were going to stay for a while anyway. That night they went to see her at the hospital with my sister. Erin was sixteen and the only one of us allowed in the hospital. The rest of us stayed home with my grandma.

My mother died during Medical Center. I'm sure of it. We were watching and a patient flatlined and right then I knew my mom was dead too. If my family had come back from the hospital and told us everything was fine, I may not have even remembered that moment. It's only when a bad feeling is confirmed, that it becomes a moment.

* * * *

I went to school the next day. No one thought it was a good idea. I went anyway. If I could just do everything the way I always had, things would go back to normal. I'd come home from school and play with my friends and then at 5:30 my mom would drive up in our little white Toyota that we had named, Helen Wheels. She would make dinner and we'd eat it while watching The Andy Griffith Show and then later, Little House on the Prairie would come on and even later than that we would go to bed and sleep until my mom woke us up again.

I told one girl at school that my mom died - Leanne Heaton. I made her promise not to tell anyone else. After lunch my teacher called me outside to talk about my loss. I was so mad at Leanne Heaton. I even wrote about it in my journal with the use of several underlines and exclamation points.

* * * *

My next theory was that my mother wasn't really dead at all. It was just a ruse to give her some time alone to rest and get better. Maybe if I was really good, everyone in my family would let her know that it was okay and she would come back again. It was very hard to behave because I was angry and I hated all my relatives - they were telling me what to do and they weren't my mom. I constantly reminded myself to be good. I would repeat it in my head like a mantra. When I walked to school I would think, "Be good, be good, be good, be good..." When I was going to the bathroom I would sit there a little longer to have some time alone so I could really concentrate, "Be good, be good, be good, be good."

But I was not good. I was greedy and angry and disagreeable. We were moving with my aunt to Chicago. She lived in a suburb called, Alsip. It was on the southside and had gigantic water towers painted red, white and blue for the Bicentennial next year. I was excited to see a basement and snow. I imagined that Alsip would look like places on TV.

Some of my aunts bought me wool sweaters in preparation for Midwestern winters. I hated wool. The sweaters itched and choked me at the neck.

"You'll appreciate those when it's below zero outside," one of my aunts assured me. But I never appreciated them, even in January.

My aunts took me shopping right before we left. I asked for anything I thought I could get. They bought me a teen magazine with John Denver on the cover. I loved John Denver and was sure that when I grew up, I would move to Colorado and live off the land. Be good, be good, be good, be good, be good.

* * * *

None of us kids attended my mom's funeral. It was a decision made by my older sister and we all went with it. Her thinking was that she didn't want our last memory of my mother to be of her dead in her casket. It only helped to support my theory - If I didn't see her dead, then it wasn't true.

I went trick-or-treating on Halloween. I have no idea what my costume was that year. I didn't do any tricks - no burning bags of poo, no ding dong ditch 'em and no stealing my brother's candy. Be good, be good, be good, be good.

The day after Halloween, I watched my uncle sweep up my room. It was hard to see a pile of my toys, stuffed animals and the ribbon I got for the best Bicentennial themed drawing of a Minuteman all mixed with dust balls and thown into a green plastic garbage bag.

* * * *

In movies and books, people were always saved at the last minute. The knight in shining armor showed up right before the princess married the hideous ogre. I was sure that's what would happen to me. I stepped up my mantra on the drive to the airport, even moving my lips at the risk of teasing from my brother and sisters. Be good, be good, be good, be good.

It wasn't too late. She could be waiting at the airport. My mom might be at the gate, with our dog and our cats that we supposedly gave to different neighbors. Supposedly. She would take us home and we would burn my wool sweaters together while I showed her my John Denver magazine.

On my very first plane ride, I simultaneously wondered if the new kids we would meet in Chicago would still be able to hear the Arizona stations on our radio and if my mother would be waiting in the terminal at O'Hare.

She Appears Composed, So She is, I Suppose

Okay. I am smack dab in the middle of a freshman in high school sleepover. As you can imagine, my brain is melting and my head is splitting open, so I'm pilfering from my old blog. Here is another one about that one guy I used to date...You know, since I was already on the subject the last couple of days. Ready?:

Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend of mine about relationships. He said he didn't think that any relationship ever truly ended. That even if you never saw that person again, you would still have a connection. The conversation got me thinking of the first boy I ever dated. Out of any of my relationships, I thought ours was the most compatible.

We were 19 when we met and for both of us, it was our first real relationship - the first time we lived with someone, the first time we moved somewhere with someone and the first time we were both willing to change plans for someone. I was still young enough, that I was sure my feelings for him could actually kill me. And he was young enough, that he couldn't admit he loved me without some kind of immediate qualifier.

"I love you...But there are many different kinds of love," he might say.

And since I was trying hard to be cool and funny about everything, (even though I wasn't fooling either of us) I would say something like, "And you love me like you love your dog?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. I really, really love my dog."

We broke-up when we were both 22. Neither of us had known what we were doing and we had made all of our mistakes on each other. According to my friend's theory, somewhere we still have a relationship.

I like to imagine that when we outgrew each other, we shed our old skins like snakes or cicadas. And the leftover shells of us are still together. Hopefully, at some point, I was able to get him to admit that he loved me at least as much as he loved his dog. And if he couldn't do that, then we would go through another round of shedding. Eventually, we would grow to a point where we didn't have to leave anything behind to be able to live together. I envision hundreds of husks in our wake. Would they dry-up and blow away, or would they remain, leaving a trail of our former selves? If I were a stronger person, I would follow it back and check on that fledgling shell - just to be reminded of the emotion that made love feel so terminal at that age.

I Can't Do the Talks, Like the Talk on the TV

Here's me in the Fall of 1985 at Standish and Hickey (hee hee) State Park right before we moved down to work at the ski resort.

Well, kids. It's late and so I'm going to steal a lovely Thanksgiving Day post from the old blog. This was written in November of 2005. It was probably the second week of blogging for me. Here it is:

It's Thanksgiving and we went down to Ottumwa, mostly to see my sister and her kids but my cousins were there too. The drive down, during the day was nice. We went through Kalona and saw a few Amish buggies trotting along. On the way home it was dark and I always stress out about the deer at night. Luckily, we didn't see any, but we did drive through a strange patch of fog. I know it was an optical illusion, but it looked like there was a big truck in front of us that just stopped in the road. I slowed way down and then realized that there was nothing there. Coadster saw it too and she is still sure it was some kind of apparition. She always thinks everything is haunted and to her it is totally logical that a Southeast Iowa ghost trucker would appear before us and then vanish.

Anytime I go on a roadtrip with my sister she asks me to make top ten lists or she has me tell her what my favorite thing, experience, person or whatever is. Especially when she's tired because it keeps her awake while she's driving.

So, while I was driving home and afraid I would nod off, I made myself think of what my favorite Thanksgiving was. I could think of plenty of shitty Thanksgivings I've had but I think my favorite one was when I was twenty. The guy I was going out with at the time and I had just moved to Big Bear Lake, California and gotten jobs at Snow Summit Ski Resort. We had previously been working for the California Conservation Corps up in Northern California, where we only got paid once at the beginning of the month and had to wait another week for our last checks. We had almost no money and were staying at our friend's parent's Summer cabin until we could get our own place. Earlier in the day, we took the shuttle van to the store and spent the last of our money on frozen eggrolls. It had just snowed and so we holed up in the cabin and ate our eggroll feast and watched The Twilight Zone marathon that was on one of the channels we were able to pick up from Los Angeles. At the time, we kept laughing at how pathetic we were, but now it feels like the perfect way to spend the holiday.

It's Like a Kind of Torture to Have to Watch the Show

You know how when you mix all of your paints together, they combine to make a weird shit brown color? Well, I'm going to attempt to put a couple of different blog projects together today and see if it turns to shit too. Sound good?

First of all, the Saturday Scavenger Hunt word today was chosen by the Woman With no Regrets. She chose Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I wasn't quite sure what to do with that, but then I found a friend on Facebook and remembered that I had written a post about him on my old blog. That's when I decided to mix the Scavenger hunt with my imaginary Facebook letters to people with my stealing posts from my old blog. I figured that word reminded me of being a kid and I would just post a photo (unfortunately not taken by me) that also reminded about something from childhood, that just so happened to go with the other two things. Exhale. Okay, so here's the post I wrote in February of 2006 about my friend Jim:


At work yesterday, we got on the subject of Fraggle Rock. You know how it is at work when everyone starts talking about Fraggle Rock, right? And then we had to move straight to The Muppet Show and everyone did their Beaker and The Swedish Chef impersonation and then we all realized what an unhealthy environment the office was in general. Next I wondered how I'd ever get through the next couple of hours until I got another brilliant idea and emailed my friend Rachie and asked her to kindly walk over and shoot me in the head but she didn't oblige. I'm sure she was only thinking of herself and how she couldn't go to prison AND grad school at the same time. She's so selfish.

Once I finally resigned myself to being stuck in the office for the next hour or so, I figured the only way to deal with it was to crack myself up. Talking about The Muppets reminded me of a time about a hundred million years ago when I was walking in downtown Iowa City right as the Spring football game was getting over and there were tons of people headed toward the bars. A guy I worked with at The Mill named Jim must have been walking directly behind me and thought it would be really funny to yell, "Hey, bitch! Excuse me whore." I'm sure he imagined that I would turn around and we'd both have a good laugh in front of all the bumble bee colored Hawkeye fans. He didn't count on my boundless sense of humor (apparently, no one ever does).

I thought it would be funny to pretend I didn't know him and so I ignored him and the huge pack of people were looking at him all shocked like he was the biggest asshole they had ever seen - and that was coming from a bunch of drunk people walking back from a football game. He tried one more time, because maybe I just hadn't heard the first two names he called me. "Slut! Slow down!" Which only made me speed up. He finally had to run to catch up to me so everyone who already shunned him would know that he really did know me and was only being funny. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha fuckin' ha.

"Oh my god. You are so mean," Jim said when he caught up to me. "You really are a bitch. I never wanted to tell you this before because it's not very nice, but now you've forced me. You know when you walk, you look exactly like Janice from Animal's band on the Muppet Show. Not your face or hair or anything. It's more the way you guys move. Have you seen how she bobs her head and her hair moves with it? Oh, and she slouches just like you do too. That's what you look like when you walk."

So, now every once in a while when I'm walking down the street and I catch my reflection in a store window, I think, "Fuck. I really do look like Janice from Animal's band when I walk." I guess Jim had the last laugh on that one. Although, he moved to Chicago a long time ago and doesn't know I still do that so maybe we'll just call it a draw.

When You Were Just a Young Girl and Still in School

Here's a photo of a weird 70's looking building where the Cambus stops by the Rec Building. Of course, this photo has nothing to do with my post.

I have been a bad sleeper lately. So, tonight I'm working extra special hard at getting my ass in bed at a decent hour. Hopefully, tonight I won't get a drunken text sent out to everyone on his phone by my friend C. letting us know he's coming to town on Thursday night, like I did last night at one in the morning. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph. Oh yeah, so in the interest of an earlier bedtime, I'm posting another thing from my old blog. It's kind of a companion piece to my list of cheesy 70's music from last night. There is one little change I will add to it, I've had some nightmares in the last couple of years since I wrote this.

This was originally written in April of 2006:

When I was a kid I was terrified of everything. At an early age, I was scared of the Wizard of Oz (especially that one scene - you know, where Auntie Em turns into the witch in the crystal ball?). Then I was afraid of the Vietnam war. After a while, my mom wouldn't let me watch the news because it freaked me out so much. They kept showing little kids all bloody and crying. I also thought that every clock I heard was a ticking bomb.

Then when I was about 7 or so, The Exorcist came out. Everything about it terrified me. The commercials were torture and the soundtrack...Oh my god, Tubular Bells made me want to buy a new umbilical chord and reattach myself to my mother. For years after, I had horrible nightmares about the devil. They were always the same. In my dream, I would be possessed by the devil and then realize I was in a dream and think I woke up, but I was really still asleep and then satan would hold me down and cover my mouth so no one could hear me scream.

It was partly my fear and partly my hyper-spazziness (I'm pretending this is a word), that kept me from sleeping when I was younger. I would lie in my room and hear my mom out in the living room either painting and listening to music or too tired to do anything but stare at the TV. As long as she was awake, I was fine. After she went to sleep, then Linda Blair, the Viet Cong and satan could all get at me. Most nights I would be so scared, I'd end up sleeping in my mom's room anyway.

In college I finally saw The Exorcist for the first time and I did think it was scary. But then I watched the second one and it was so cheesy and laughable that it took some power away from the original. Plus, the fact that Linda Blair dated both Rick Springfield and Rick James made me feel more sorry for her than frightened of her (it also steered me away from dating anyone named Rick).

Even as an adult, I still had the scary devil dreams. They were almost exactly the same ones I had when I was eight. Then when I was 31, I got divorced and became a single parent. I was always the last one awake in the house after that, but somewhere in there I stopped having nightmares. I can't even remember the last time I had one. I'm not sure what changed, but I'm totally cured of them. I'm still frightened of things - right now, the tornado sirens are my biggest fear...I'm also ascairt of boys, but unfortunately, none of them have kept me up all night for a long time.

Oh, You Cuss Around Women and You Don't Even Know Their Names

Here are a couple of scenic shots I took by the hospital.

Okay, if you read my blog at all, you can't be surprised that I'm a total lame-ass. Tonight, I'm tired. I didn't sleep very well last night for no reason in particular, and I've decided to lean on my new favorite crutch these days and put up another post from the other blog. This one was written in January of 2006 when Coadster was in 8th grade and it's a bit of a rant. Shocking, I know. Anyway, here we go:

I kind of have a thing for water towers. For some reason, I find them interesting.

Since I've been talking about lists the last few posts, I figured I'd add one more thing. Actually, I wasn't talking about lists per se - I was talking more about why I don't make lists but then I made a couple and so now I'm worried people may start calling me organized and screwing up my whole M. O. What's next? Will people start calling me tidy or girlie or rich and forcing me to start a campaign directing them to the picture in the previous post where I was wearing chaps and running a chain saw to dispel the evil rumors?

So, on with this topic of lists which happens to be very timely in my house. Some kids in my daughter's class compiled one of those horrible lists that have probably existed since the beginning of time. It named off about 2o of the girls in 8th grade and attempted to cut them down. Instead of the crumpled piece of paper that went from sweaty hand to sweaty hand in my school, this kid used a blog site called the "bitch site" to post all the disses. In true junior high form, each girl listed had something wrong with them; either they were hot but crazy or cool but ugly. Any well endowed girls were accused of stuffing their bras, some girls were described as fugly and the worst were the girls that were "fat fugly bitches who smelled bad". Coadster was on there. She was described as ok but ugly. I told her that was bullshit. Guys in junior high will call a girl ugly because they think it's the worst insult they can give. She was just surprised anyone knew her well enough to add her to the list at all.

I did control myself from saying, "Coadster, you tell those boys that they're shallow stupid assholes with low self-esteem. You let them know that you're mom thinks you're beautiful and they should all go straight to hell!" I really wanted to say it, but I knew that if I did, Coadster would roll her eyes so hard that they would never come back down and we'd only see the whites for the rest of her life. Instead I said, "Don't give them any power by posting a response. If everyone ignored them, they'd stop because it wouldn't be any fun." She promptly disregarded everything I said and spent a half hour composing a scathing comment on their site. I'm sure I would have done much worse if I were her age.

They didn't tear the guys apart individually but instead made a list entitled, "Gay Ass Faggots" and put about ten boy's names under it. I'm not sure if the "gay ass" part was supposed to be as opposed to "straight ass faggots" or if the guys on the list had heterosexual arms and legs and only their asses were gay. If I hadn't already told Coadster not to comment, I might have left one myself to ask for clarification. Then I thought about entitling my own blog post, "Lists and the gay ass faggots who make them" but I didn't want someone who didn't know me to think I was serious. I don't really think that way, I just make fun of people who do.

The thing that kills me about all of this is that the whole listing off of the ugly bitches and sluts in junior high has existed forever. I'm sure that some of those early cave drawings were really pictures of the fugly fat Cro-Magnon bitches who smelled bad. Will we ever evolve away from that kind of shallow, insecure tearing apart of our peers in junior high? Sure, now they use a blog instead of a crumpled piece of paper, but the sentiment is still unchanged. So, really all we've done is created better devices in which to dispense the same, stale, cruel, pubescent torture.