I Don't Believe in Fairies Anymore

Here is a photo of some boats. I'd like my ship to come in, but I'd settle for something smaller too.

I've been weird lately. Okay, weirder. Whatever. Shut-up. I wanted to blame it on hormones or the full moon or the fact that the seasons are changing, or that the world economy seems to be going straight down the shitter or that I pretty much let my boy prospects dry up heading into hibernation season (stupid, stupid, Churlita), but I think it's something else this time. I realized tonight that I've been waiting for something to happen. Not just anything. I realize that when I don't specify that I want that something to be good, I get hit with a veritable shit storm of bad things and so, I'll just make a point to say right here and now that I'm waiting for something good to happen.

I've been letting things go - forgetting to pay bills until the last minute, leaving a trail of kicked-off shoes in my wake once I get home, my plants are all completely parched and the lightbulbs should be changed. I think I've mentioned before that I know when I need to get my shit together when I have to walk two rooms away in order to find a light that actually works in my apartment. Well, I'm getting close to that point. Meanwhile, I wait for things to get taken care of. I'm passively hoping to get saved. I'd settle for a Mary Poppins if she would promise not to be so annoyingly cheery and singing all the time. Money would be another great savior. Can you imagine being able to pay someone to simply take care of all your annoying shit for you? Don't get me wrong, it's not just the details, although taking care of the details is what I'm the worst at. I would also like to find something to get a little excited about. For most of this year, I had my trip to plan and look forward to, and now I'm just kind of hanging out.

When I was at the training academy for the Conservation Corps., one of my co-workers asked our crew leader if he had some kind of energy pill to help her get started cutting fire line. He just laughed and said, "Yeah. It's called my boot in your ass. Is that the kind of pill you were thinking of?" Which is what I probably need, to essentially kick myself in the ass and get going on shit. Because, when I think about it. I probably go through this every year about this time, when I'm broke after the Summer and I've used up my vacation time. Sooner rather than later, I'm sure, I'll just get over myself and clean my shit up, figure out a project to work on and just save my own damn self.

I Must Confess, I Still Believe

Here is a dark photo of the birthday girl and her husband through the smoke of the book burning.

Today was a million times better than yesterday. I had the worst migraine I've ever had on Monday. Today though? Today was migraine free, plus the weather was amazing, plus I got to run my six mile route, plus it was my friend I.M.'s birthday and fun cookout - which equals awesomeness all day long.

My girls had their own stuff going on. Coadster studied and went to The Airliner for cheap pizza night with some friends. Stinky had a meeting with her dad for religious education classes. She wasn't super happy about it, but it's important to her dad, and a little organized religion never hurt anyone...Except for the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and centuries of religious oppression. Okay, but you know what I mean.

So, yeah. The birthday party was great. When I first got there, one of I.M's guests was inviting her neighbor, who just happens to be a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, to the party. The author said that it was his birthday too that day, but didn't come over. Which is too bad, because I think it would be fun to help a Pulitzer Prize winner celebrate his birthday. Don't you?

My beautiful friend S. was there with her two boys and K. and my friend, Wendy showed up with the best sangria I've ever had in my life. It was made with raspberry wine and ginger ale and some kind of lemonade vodka and tons of fresh fruit. I only had one glass, though, because I had to drive.

Earlier, there were about a hundred million kids running around like banshees, but they all went home after it got dark and I.M. started a fire in the backyard with a bunch of her kids' artwork that she couldn't keep anymore. We talked about just how many trees had to die so our kids could give us 54,782 adorable pictures of trees and flowers and dinosaurs. There's only so many of them you can keep without renting another place just to house them all, you know?

As we were sitting around the fire, the guy pictured above came and sat down with us. "I.M. said you guys were friendly, so I hope you don't mind if I join you," he said. Since there were about seven women and our friend Matt H. sitting around, no, we didn't mind one bit if a cute, fun, young, guy came and sat down with us. He was great. A couple of other, younger hipster type guys followed and we all commenced to talking shit.

I.M. put an old encyclopedia on the fire and when a few eyebrows were raised about the book burning, I.M. said, "Shut-up. It's an obsolete encyclopedia that's been sitting outside for a few weeks and it's a little damaged anyway."

"Kind of like me?" I asked.

"Maybe. You've been left outside and you're a little damaged?" the first hipster boy asked.

"Yeah. I guess that doesn't sound so hot, huh - to describe myself as damaged."

"Well, you're only a little damaged. Everything sounds so much better if you say 'it's a little' whatever it is," The first hipster boy said.

"So, if I also described myself as a little heinous, that doesn't sound that bad either, right?"

"Right," he assured me.

"K. remember what I told you the kids in high school called me?" I asked.

"Churlita Tiny Tits?" K. guessed. (My real first name starts with a T. , so the real life nickname actually did flow better together)

"No. That's what they called me in junior high. In high school, we moved to Ottumwa and some of the kids would describe me as being nice, but just a little bit diff'ernt. But they put 'a little' in front of it, so now I'm thinking it must not have been all that bad."

A little later, my friend Matt H., who has this weird fascination, or maybe, obsession with Britney Spears, had K. call him, so we could hear his Britney Spears ringtone. After a good (or bad) listen, one of the hipster boys said, "So, this is what I imagine hell to be like - sitting around a fire, burning books and listening to Brittney Spears."

Since the book was unreadable so I didn't have to feel guilty, and the company was great, and the Britney Spears was funny and didn't last very long, I thought it was closer to heaven.

Will I See You Give More Than I Can Take?

This was the spot of our Wednesday night meetings and where I used to tutor some of my co-workers to help them get their GED's.

I don't have a lot going on in my regular life, so I think we'll just take a trip in the way back machine, okay? Since this weekend's talks with Mr. B. have had me thinking about relationships lately, I thought I'd go back to 1985 and the scene of the beginning of my first real relationship. Ready? I'm not so sure I am...

Jimmy being a dork and wearing two pairs of sunglasses while building trails in the back country at King's Canyon.

I came to Leggett, California because of a guy. Originally, when I moved to California to join the Conservation Corps., I was planning on living at the site on Turtle Island in the San Francisco Bay. I had some friends moving to San Francisco, and we figured I'd be able to go into the city and hang out with them on weekends.

I met a boy named Jimmy at the training academy in Angels Camp, Ca. We spent three weeks there learning how to fight wildland fires and floods and getting in shape for the physically demanding work we would all surely be doing for at least the next year. Jimmy was smart and funny and we had that casual high school kind of thing where he never asked me, but it was assumed by everyone including us, that we were going out. He was going to do Salmon Restoration work in Humboldt County and he tried to get me to go with him. He said in San Francisco, I'd just be picking garbage and he assured me I'd get tired of that in a week.

I was nineteen and all of my plans were subject to change anyway, so I decided to go to Leggett. It sounded like more of an adventure. When we got there, Jimmy suddenly changed. We had been hanging out everyday at the academy, but once we got to our site, he ignored me and seemed really annoyed whenever I stopped by his trailer. Since I'd never had a real boyfriend before, I didn't know that he expected me to pine after him - that it was part of the game for him. Instead, I just figured he wasn't interested, and I went my own way.

Here is a picture of Neal in the girls' trailer at our site with the He-Man action figure we found while working in Willits , California.

The second week I was there, I was walking down to the swimming hole on the Eel River. Everyone else had already headed down, and since I was being pokey, I wandered there by myself. When I walked past the last trailer in the row, I saw Neal standing there watching me. I noticed him the first day we arrived, but he scared me a little. He was too good looking and I thought he was a lot older than me. (he was actually only a month older than I was) Since I was only wearing my swimsuit, I was even more self-conscious than I normally was around cute guys. I nervously said, "hi" and kept walking. When I reached the edge of the woods, I looked back and he was still watching me walk.

Here's another recycled photo of me learning how to run a chainsaw in the California Conservation Corps.

Neal was one of the saw specialists and in charge of teaching us new guys how to run saws so big, that I could barely lift one when I first started. One day he had a project where he needed one person to help him break-up a mini log jam. He picked me and later on, he told me he had it all planned out. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. The log jam was located on a double waterfall, right next to a gigantic Redwood grove. Since it was pretty precarious, he did most of the sawing, while I removed the wood from the water, busted them into rounds and Neal and I both bucked them into a crib where we'd store them until the Winter when we could come back and safely burn them.

We ate lunch and Neal finally talked to me. He seemed so quiet before, but when there wasn't anyone else around, he let loose. He asked me about myself, and was really open about all his shit. He told me he had his eye on me since I first got there, but he wasn't sure what was going on with me and Jimmy. I told him, "Apparently, nothing."

Within the next week, we were dating. We basically spent almost every second of the day together for the next year. He's probably the only person I would be able to spend that much time without strangling. We could be fun and social together and both be quiet and live in our own little worlds together when we were at home.

Here is a blurry photo of Neal, a year later, when we lived in San Francisco.

We definitely had plenty of problems. We were nineteen when we started dating and broke-up when we were twenty-two. He grew up with a lot more money than my family had, but we were both weird in the same ways. We were the youngest kids in our families and our mom's were both artists. His dad was a merchant marine, and mine was a photographer. In other words, we had similar abandonment issues. The thing I really liked about Neal and have a really hard time finding in other men, is that he didn't have to constantly label himself and create that persona. He painted and refinished antiques and made his own steel drums in his backyard, and read every book I recommended to him and did tons of environmental work but he never went on and on about being an artist or a musician or an intellectual. Those were just things he did.

Sometimes I wonder what he's like now. My friends and I talk about how different men get as they age. A lot of them get really cranky and set in their ways, and they all seem to get more emotional. Some men can deal with those emotions and become better people, but some freak out and can't admit that they have them. My big fear is that I would run into Neal now and he would have turned into one of those mid-life crisis forty-three year old guys who hang-out in bars and keep trying to prove to themselves that they can still get twenty year old chicks. I also wonder if he'd be disappointed by the forty-three year old I've become.

You Must Be Joking. Oh Man, You Must Be Joking

Here is Coadster visiting the fortune teller at the arcade.

I need to take new photos, I know. Right now I'm still using the vacation pics. Tonight I thought I'd put up some things that creeped me out on our trip.

Now that I've completed my assignments, I can talk about the weekend. Friday night it was rainy and icky and the girls both went to the high school football game and had their social events to do afterward. It sounded like the perfect set-up for me to stay home, put on my jammies by seven o'clock, eat leftover enchiladas and watch movies. It was so wonderful.

I finally watched the new HBO show, True Blood. It had vampires and lots of violence and gratuitous sex, so, of course, I liked it. I noticed during the credits that one of the writers in town is working on it. He was in the workshop when I was in college, I know his ex-wife pretty well, but I've only talked to him a few times at some parties and when he's stopped by to pick up his son from our house. His son is the one who gave Stinky a plunger as a gag gift for her birthday a couple of years ago. Anyway, it's fun to see a hometown boy making good.

Stinky was supposed to get a ride home with some guy friend from the party she went to after the football game. Coadster told me I could trust the boy and she's probably more protective than me when it comes to that stuff, so I gave it the okay. Stinky had to work at 6:30, so she was supposed to be home by 11'ish. When I didn't see her then, I called. She said the boy was on his way to get her. It turns out the boy was on his way to the party, but he decided he wanted to stick around and decided not to give Stinky a ride home. Awesome. My car has been having problems since our trip, and I can't really afford to get anything checked out right now. I use the car to get groceries or pick up the girls, but something's leaking and I don't trust it to go out of town. Of course, this party was out in the country past West Branch (Herbert Hoover's birthplace) and so I had to drive there at midnight in the rain and stress-out the whole way there and back. By the time we got home and settled, it was almost one. Crap. So much for my nice relaxing Friday night.


Here's this other creepy thing from the arcade. I didn't get close enough to see what her purpose was, as you can see, she was scarier than a clown and I kept my distance.

Saturday morning I got up and took the girls to Kinnick Stadium so they could go to work, and I went right back to bed. When I woke up the second time, it was still raining. I did some really great putzing around the house, and then I wandered over to my friend G.'s garage sale. I did some sitting and girl talking and it was really nice. I heard my girlcrush was headed into town and we all made plans to go to the Dublin in the evening.

At around three o'clock or so, my girlcrush was there with her hubby and some of their friends and J. and D. were starting to make pina coladas. It sounded great, but I know myself well enough that I'm sure if I started drinking at 3, I'd be asleep by seven. So, I went home and ran my short route and hung out with my girls until they went to their dad's. Mr. B. texted and called me throughout the night. As I've said, he's a great guy and really fun to talk to, so that's where we are right now.

Here is a photo of a poster they had for a Dali exhibit at a gallery by Ghiradelli Square. Coadster loves Dali, so she made us go in and take a look. The paintings were actually cool, but Dali himself frightens me too.

I met the fun kids at the Dublin a little before nine, and it was packed. I hadn't hung out down there since I've been back from vacation and there are a lot of people I miss seeing. It was great to catch up. A little before midnight, everyone seemed to be leaving. My friend D. and I walked home together, and even with all the drunk people wandering around after the football game, we didn't get hassled once. It was a miracle.

And I See Losing Love is Like a Window in Your Heart

Today on my blog I'm fulfilling two assignments and posting some more recycled photos. The first one is the Saturday Scavenger Hunt. Mrs. Big Hairy Woman chose the word, which, not surprisingly, was hairy. There's a lot you can do with that, but I'm taking it literally. I've used this pic before, but nothing illustrates the extent of my hairy issues at such an early age like it. So, here's my family looking like its own version of the Village People when we lived in Phoenix, before the Village People existed. I'm the five year old white girl with dreadlocks, wearing the blue and white cowgirl outfit (probably for the fourth day in a row). See why my roommate in college diagnosed me with acute hair phobia? I'm sure I'd be tidy and well-adjusted, if only I had nice straight hair that didn't get all frizzy and messy looking.

Here's my oldest sister with one of my parents artsy/beatnicky friends in Chicago in the sixties.

My other assignment was given to me by Dana at My Gorgeous Somewhere blog. As I'm sure I've said before, I don't really trust or understand poetry. I love it, but I have no idea what makes a poem good, I just know that imagery in certain poems, can make me want to write prose. I also feel a little betrayed by poetry. All that counting of syllables, is like math disguised as language and you know how much I hate math. It's also why poetry would be an excellent discipline for my messy, cluttered brain, if only I weren't so damn lazy.

I mentioned to Dana that reading her writing, makes me want to write and that was one of the biggest compliments I could ever give a writer. So, Dana being wonderfully Dana, gave me an assignment to write an American Sentence about whatever her poems inspired in me. If you are like I was, and don't know what an American Sentence is, you can go here. Basically, it was a form invented by Allen Ginsberg as an American answer to the haiku - a sentence made up of 17 syllables.

Here is a line that Dana wrote that made me think about the whole child/parent guilt thing:

We make coffee
for ourselves but
not for our children.

At first, I thought it sounded selfish, but then coffee isn't good for children, so then it seemed sensible, if not protective. It made me think about that weird parent guilt that you feel when you do something for yourself that doesn't include your children. Then I extended it to the guilt children(and when I say children, I mean me) feel about being a pain in the ass, and complicating their parents' lives. Since my mom didn't live long enough for me to thank her or make things up to her after I became an adult, I still have a lot of remorse.

Here is another recycled photo of my mom at a party before she had children.

So, here's my American Sentence:

My mom had more fun and nicer legs before I was born - is that my fault?

Well I'm Near the End and I Just Ain't Got the Time

Here is a picture of some fire damaged Redwoods. Don't these look a little like the trees in H. R. Puffinstuff?

It's finally the end of the week and boy am I wiped. I don't really have any plans for the weekend. It's the Iowa/Iowa State game in town, so things should get stupid crazy drunk around here on Saturday. There was a little talk about maybe going to Fort Madison with some people for Fiesta, but I haven't heard anything about it recently. I hear the food is amazing and we'd go to our friend C.'s bar and hang out, but if it's going to rain all day, it might not be worth it to me...We'll see what happens.

Tonight, I'm in the mood to look at photos of pretty trees and countryside. Speaking of country, I think I'll just list the songs on the CD I made K. last night. You may or may not recognize anything on it, but I don't have much else going on in my life and I'm going to actually try to go to bed at a decent hour. Soooo, are you ready for some Bluegrass?...No. Probably not, but here it is anyway.

Here is a picture of the road leading us out of King's Canyon.

Old Timey Country and Bluegrass CD:

1. "El Paso" - Marty Robbins. When Coadster was a baby, my ex-husband used to sing this to her but he replaced, "I fell in love with a Mexican girl" with, "I fell in love with a half-Mexican girl". To this day, I'm sure Coadster thinks those are the actual words.

2. "Big Mon" (instrumental) - Ricky Skaggs. I went to see Ricky Skaggs play in a gym in Marshalltown with the guy I was dating at the time, some tattooed friends and a ton of senior citizens. The music was great, but in between songs, Ricky Skaggs would go on and on about god and his love for Billy Graham. While Ricky was speaking, the guy I was dating would whisper/chant, "Less talk. More rock" until they started playing again.

3. "One More Dollar" - The Nashville Bluegrass Band.

4. "Green Pastures" - Dolly Parton, Emmy Lou Harris, Ricky Skaggs.

5. "Girl on the Billboard" - Del Reeves. I warned you there would be a trucker song or two on here.

6. "The Grass is Blue" - Dolly Parton. I really like Dolly Parton's bluegrassy stuff. Okay. I also love "Jolene" and "9 to 5" and a few more of her songs. I understand how cheesy she can be, but I kind of like that about her too.

7. "Jolene" - Jack White. This is an excellent cover of this song.

8. "What Goes On" - Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys. If you haven't already noticed there are a lot of covers here.

9. "Manzanita" - Tony Rice

10. "A Fool Such as I" - Tasty Licks. Interesting name for a band, huh?

11. "Hickory Wind" - Gillian Welch and David Rawlins. This is one of the songs from the Gram Parsons tribute album. Again, another cover.

12. "Rocky Road Blues" - Dwight Yoakam. I'm pretty sure that every country CD I make has at least one Dwight Yoakam song on it because I heart him - even when he was the scary white trash guy in Slingblade.

13. "Hello Darlin'" - Conway Twitty. This song is so creepy sounding it cracks me up.

14. "Rebel Rouser" - Duane Eddy.

15. "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" - Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice. This song is a classic example of the "suffering hero" daydream I learned about in my high school psychology class.

16. "I've Just Seen a Face" - The Charles River Valley Boys.

17. "Wild Flowers" - Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt.

18. "By the Mark" - Gillian Welch. Have you noticed that I really like Gillian Welch too?

19. "Walls of Time" - Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys.

20. "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" - Freddy Fender.

21. "Can't Find My Way Home" - Rob Ickes and Tim O'Brien



Here are some tree silhouettes.

Okay, that should be enough country for any one person. I can almost feel Evil-E wincing right now.

Have a great weekend with as much or as little countryside or country music as you can stand.

It Seems Like This Whole Town's Insane

This tag was from a wall by the Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently done by a San Francisco native.

It's another one of my, "It's late and I'm tired posts". I worked on an old timey country/bluegrass CD for my friend K. tonight. I'll put the playlist up on the blog one of these days soon here. Even if you don't know a lot of bluegrass, there are also a few trucker hits and a cowboy song, and some of the blugress songs are covers of songs you might know. I had to import a lot of my bluegrass CD's and then I decided to load my iTunes up with some other CD's I had while I was at it. So, I kind of screwed myself over for blog time tonight.

This was a leftover wall painting from the Olympics. Coadster was obsessed with finding any remnants from the Salt Lake City Olympics while we were there.

Which means you all get a mostly photo post tonight and some random ramblings about whatever enters my pea sized brain. (I almost spelled: brian - just so you know what you're dealing with tonight)

I decided to dip into my vacation pics again and pull out any photos I could find of my favorite kind of art - low art. I'm still working on that one painting and it's supposed to be a bit murally, and comic booky and graffiti-like and since it has taken me two years to really get going on it, I've had plenty of time to collect photographic examples of what I'm going for.


This mural was a side part of the mural below this. It was so big that Stinky had to photograph it in parts.

The wedding date guy drunk texted me on Saturday night. I hadn't heard from him since the text non-break-up, so it was kind of surprising. The first text was long and similar to what someone might write in your yearbook your senior year in high school. He basically said that he was glad he got to know me and that he wanted me to be me (?) and that we had to stay friends. I was tempted to write back, "It was really fun sitting by you in study hall. Don't ever change. I hope we see each other at keggers at the Lagoons after graduation." But I was good. I knew he was drunk and just wanted attention from someone of the opposite sex. We've all been there. I texted something about having had a great Summer with him and that I would always be his friend. Which was all true.

This was the main part of the mural. There were all kinds of groovy famous people painted within this one and the girls tried to identify all of them. Yes, we are dorks. What's it to ya?

I'm going to try really hard to remember to bring my camera to work tomorrow. Today there was a group of god people holding these GIGANTIC signs about how we all suck and we're all sinners and blah, blah, blah. These particular zealots, all seemed to be very attractive college aged kids. So, I was walking across campus toward the bank to drop off the work deposit, when some young buck tried to hand me his pamphlet. I politely declined it. Then he said, "You need to repent, ma'am. You're hopelessly lost."

I wanted to say, "Listen Buster Brown. If you call me 'ma'am' one more time, I'll make you repent." But once again, I was good and kept it to myself. People who know me, will be shocked to learn that I do indeed have a filter. I just forget to use it most of the time.

Stinky after hawking Hawkeye apparel for work last Saturday.

Stinky was talking about how glad she was that she and Coadster were getting along lately. I had noticed it too and it made me happy. I'm sure it's my orphan issues talking, but I always hoped my girls would be close, so they'd have each other if anything ever happened to me and their dad. I also realize the importance of having someone to make fun of your parents with. It's not like you want anyone else talking shit about your folks, but let's be honest, most parents deserve to made fun of at some point. Lord knows, even as much as I make fun of myself, it still doesn't seem to be enough.

Remember how I told you I always dance as much as possible around the girls' friends to make up for them embarrassing me at the store when they were two and I had to carry them screaming outside, while everyone else either gave me the apologetic smile, or that "you are a child abuser and I am this close to calling DHS" glare? Anyway, tonight Stinky was listening to Thriller and I started doing one of my dorkiest dance moves ever. "Hey, what if I danced like this in front of your friends? How would you like that?" I asked, trying to bait her.

Stinky glanced at me for a second and said, "You already have, mother, " and went right back to texting and instant messaging about 7,000 kids at once.

Here is a blurry Stinky, minus the Hawkeye cowboy hat, the fake face tattoo and the peace sign.

So, on Sunday night I watched the VMA's with Stinky, because I couldn't get her to watch the Bears game, damn it. There were a few times where I wanted to be all appalled at shit, as if Madonna never simulated masturbation back at the 1984 awards when I watched MTV on a regular basis or anything, but then I thought I'd just try to be objective and ask questions.

Me: Why does Lil Wayne keep grabbing his package like that?

Stinky: Because he's gangsta.

Me: Oh, okay. Now, are all those quiet spaces where they're bleeping out the swears?

Stinky: Yup. This song is a lot better without that.

Me: Well, yeah. Since 70% of it is dead air this way.

Well, She Held a Bass Guitar and She Was Playing in a Band

Here is a picture of me and some dorm kids when I was at UNI in 1983. I'm the one without sunglasses on. Too bad you can't see my argyle sweater vest with the black t-shirt underneath, because that was such a great look back then.

Tonight the girls were supposed to go to their dad's, but Coadster has show choir almost all night and Stinky would rather be at my house, so she stayed over. Stinky wasn't feeling very well and basically went to sleep at 7:30.

I decided to make some refried beans and fry up some tortillas to make tostadas to go with all that de gallo I made over the weekend. While all that was going on, I also tried to work on this 80's college radio mix CD for my friend K.. K. is eight years younger than me and said she hadn't heard a lot of the more alternative music from the 80's, so I told her I'd make her a mix of some stuff. When I went to open up my Public Image Limited CD, this other homemade CD that an ex-boyfriend made me almost ten years ago, was in the case too. I forgot I had it. Of course, there was no song list, but I new it was different versions of songs. So, I spent some time trying to figure out which band did what covers. It was tricky, like I think the version of "Lowrider" was done by JFA, (Jody Foster's Army) but I'm not absolutely certain.

Anyway, after I finished obsessing over music, I finally made my friend's playlist. Talk about your nostalgia. All this stuff takes me back to that time in my late teens and early twenties when I was too fucked up to know just how fucked up I was. I tried to include several genres, but there is definitely a hardcore bias (shut-up, it's my nostalgia music). I also fudged a bit on a few songs that were more late 70's than early 80's, but they still had tons of college radio play well into the eighties.

Okay, rip up your t-shirt, shellac big spikes in your hair, put on your motorcycle boots and wear safety pins as earrings. It's my 80's college radio station playlist:


Here is my college roommate when I transferred to this fine institution with some of our guy friends. She sings and plays stand-up bass in a band out of the Bay Area called Red Meat. At the academy awards, they played the song she wrote for The Monster's Ball soundtrack when Halle Berry went up to accept her award. See the guy tilting his head? His dad used to be the head of the international writing program here and his mom is an East Indian writer who had been in the workshop, but I think she lives and teaches in Berkeley now. So, not all my friends were as messed up as me.

1. "Public Image" - Public Image Limited

2. "The Model" - Kraftwerk. This is one of those from the late 70's but I figure they pretty much fathered the whole techno movement, so they deserve to be on here.

3. "Viva Las Vegas" - The Dead Kennedys. This was one of the ones on the found covers mix CD.

4. "Take the Skinheads Bowling" - Camper Van Beethoven

5. "Beverly Hills" - The Circle Jerks

6. "I Love a Man in Uniform" - Gang of Four. Along with Camper Van Beethoven, this band reminds me the most of my time in San Francisco in the mid 80's.

7. "Making Plans for Nigel" - XTC. I think this came out in 1979, but my boss Ciaran at my first job, played this album all the time and I had the hugest crush on him in 1984. I finally admitted it to him this Summer and he was like, "Why the hell didn't you tell me? I would have dated you in a heartbeat." But at the time, I was sure he'd never like me. Self-Esteem? What's that?

8. "Banned in DC" - Bad Brains

9. "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" - The Cramps

10. "The Killing Moon" - Echo and the Bunnymen. This was one of my most favorite songs from the time period. It was almost as moody as I was.

11. "General Public" - General Public.

12. "She's Like Heroin to Me" - The Gun Club. I put this cut on every mixed tape I made back then, so I felt obligated to include it here too.

13. "Town Called Malice" - The Jam. This is the happiest sounding song ever.

14. "People Who Died" - The Jim Carroll Band. Was I the only who read the Basketball Diaries and listened to this album and felt all misunderstood in Ottumwa, Iowa in high school? Uh, yeah. Probably.

15. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division. It's so deliciously self-indulgent.

16. "Straight Edge" - Minor Threat. My friends and I always joke about how we wish we had been straight edge, so we could remember all the incredible shows we went to back then.

17. "Amanda Ruth" - Rank and File (featuring Alejandro Escovedo on guitar). I saw these guys when they played at the Crow's Nest. They put on an awesome show...From what I can remember.

18. "A Girl in Trouble (is a Temporary Thing)" - Romeo Void

19. "Behind the Wall of Sleep" - The Smithereens.

20. "Concrete Jungle" - The Specials. I remember introducing my California boyfriend to this album and he went crazy over them.

21. "I Got You" - Split Enz. This band reminds me so much of being in high school and going to speech and debate tournaments. We'd go to Iowa City, and try to expose ourselves to as much culture as we could in one weekend, before we went back to O-town.

22. "Ring of Fire" - Wall of Voodoo. You may know this band for "Mexican Radio". But I really like this cover.

23. "Los Angeles" - X. We thought X was so cool when they first came out.

24. "Marie Marie" - The Blasters. My roommate Jill, was so into these guys and now they play together sometimes. Weird how things turn out.


So, I think this post has gone on long enough, don't you?

You Think You're Higher Than Every Star Above

Here is a picture of construction being done on Clapp Street, on the way to Hotz Street - the sexiest part of town.

My stupid migraine followed me around all weekend. I would take my meds and get all spacy and tired, and then it would come back and I'd take more meds and so on and so on... I did make myself do a couple of things, so the weekend didn't seem like a total waste.

On Friday night, Coadster and I watched the movie Driving Lessons together and then I made a vat of fresh de gallo salsa. It was a nice, mellow night.

My girls worked most of the day on Saturday. I slept a lot, but I did make myself run my six mile route, because the weather was perfect and I know these nice days are numbered.

I drove kids around for a bit in the evening and then I sat around and watched the last Die Hard movie. My migraine was under control at that point, so I was kind of in the mood to watch people trade wisecracks and see shit blow-up. Weeee! My friend K. texted me to see if I wanted to go to a cookout and then to the Picador to see a band called Petit Mal. I passed on the cookout, to watch the end of the my shit blowing-up movie, and really didn't want to go to the Picador either, but I thought I should talk to adults at some point over the weekend, so I made myself.

I'm glad I did, because I had a great time. Some of my girlies were there and a lot of my guy friends. Oh yeah, and the band was awesome too. Plus, I got to have a guy use one of my new favorite pick-up lines on me. I thought the last band that played sucked, so me and some of my friends were going to the beer garden to hang out. Just as we were getting ready to head downstairs, some guy came up to me and asked me if I wanted to dance with him to the suck-ass band. I thanked him but told him I was going downstairs with some friends and then he said, "Well, um. I just got back from flying a helicopter. You know, just in case that fact would make you change your mind about dancing with me..." So, of course, I had to dance with him then... Just kidding, I told him I already promised my friends I would go to the beer garden with them. I thought it was hilarious, though and you all are totally welcome to use that next time you're trying to hook-up. I will warn you, results may vary.

I heard another funny thing on Saturday night. I was talking to this guy B., who I used to work with at Great Midwestern about ten years ago. He told me that I intellectually flustered him sometimes when we spoke. At first, I was all ready to take that as a compliment, but then I remembered that the last few times I've talked to him, he was really drunk and from what I've seen, most really drunk guys can get intellectually frustrated by a gnat, so I don't think it meant much.

Here is a hot air balloon that was making what sounded like heavy breathing noises when I stepped out of my house on the way to work a couple of weeks ago.

Today was our first football Sunday at The Vine. My friend C. was supposed to come up from Fort Madison, but he didn't make it. Stinky came with because she's a huge Steelers fan, but Coadster had to do some volunteer work and she watched the Bears game later tonight and got to feel superior because they beat the Colts. Anyway, we watched the game and ate wings and other greasy food and drank some soda and the Steelers won by so much, that the game was almost boring and my migraine seems to have lost its hold on me. The end.

Is It Getting Better, Or Do You Feel the Same?

Today I've been migraine girl. I took my meds which helped with the pain, but then it made me super wiped out and weak. So, I'm actually doing the Saturday Scavenger Hunt, but I'm too stupid to do much more than put up photos.

This week's word was chosen by K-srasra, and she picked, one. So, the first one is a photo of that one bridge.

The second pic is of one guy fishing.

And the last one is of one tree. One really tall fucking tree.

But We've Been Backed Against All Nature's Laws Far Too Long

Here's my shadow standing over the "Trust Jesus" signs that were painted on a lot of the sidewalks in Salt Lake City. Do you suppose anyone ever gets busted tagging for Jesus?

I don't know what it is, but the minute it gets even halfway cold out, my hibernation instinct kicks in. I'm ready to start storing food, put on my animal skins and retire to my cave. I guess I haven't really evolved all that much. (I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you that) It went from being in the upper eighties on Tuesday to barely sixty degrees and rainy today. I suppose it didn't help that I went to the farmer's market yesterday after work and got a bunch of basil, or that my friend J. gave me a ton of tomatoes from her mom's garden, so I had a great excuse to stay home tonight and prepare for Winter. I made four batches of pesto sauce to freeze. I think I'll make a couple more and that ought to hold us until Spring.

Oh yeah, that whole paragraph above was supposed to serve as my lame excuse for this post. I decided to just throw up some photos that are completely irrelevant to my post and yammer on about a bunch of dumb shit and call it good. Wait - that's pretty much what all my posts are like.

I thought I was being all slick snapping this photo in front of the Forever 21 store in San Francisco, until I realized a guy to my left and just out of the photo, was the other shoe shine guy and he made me pay him a dollar for taking this. Drat.

So, this weekend...I don't really have anything planned for this weekend. After last weekend, it's pretty much okay with me. I always tell my friends to text me if they're going to do something fun. So, who knows what will pop up in the next couple of days. If nothing else, I'd be thrilled to stay home and watch movies, and I thought I might actually go back to working on that weird painting I've been trying to get to for the last few years.

Here is Coadster walking ahead of me in Chinatown in San Francisco.

Tomorrow Coadster has part 2 of her showchoir marathon this week. She also got a job selling t-shirts and crap at Hawkeye games. She makes good money and she works with all her friends, so it's pretty social too. The only downside, is that I'll usually have to take her to the stadium at 6:30 on game days. Oy.

And here is Stinky's ponytail bopping around in Chinatown.

Stinky is going to a football game at the other high school in town on Friday night. Then I think she has a party or something to attend on Saturday night. Maybe it's good if I don't have a life, since it looks like I'll be spending most of my time shuttling my girls to their social lives.

Sooo, how about you all? Will you have lives this weekend, will you be facilitating someone else's life, or just hibernating in your caves with all your stored food and animal skins?

I'm Waiting for a Daydream to Take Me Through the Morning

I saw this on my way to work the other day. I have no idea what the hell it's doing in front of the Newman Center.

Today was our office retreat thingy. We do it twice a year around the beginning of each semester. Sometimes they make us play games, and wear name tags, and talk about ourselves in front of the other co-workers. All of those things stress me out a little.

This semester was actually pretty cool. Our boss got up and thanked the hell out of us for rising (ha ha) to the occasion during the floods. It always sounds more impressive when they can tell you numbers, and he said we took at least an extra 1,000 phone calls in two days. Jeesh! It looks like I was cranky for a reason. Then we got to meet our new boss. They finally hired a provost about a month ago. This guy speaks four different languages and has about 9,231 different degrees, but he's completely down to earth.

Back in June when I was taking all those extra 100's of calls and everyone was pissed off at me; like I personally caused the flood, or made the policy they disagreed with, I would make all nicey nice with them. Then after I hung up the phone, I'd say to no one in particular, "As soon as the big bosses ask me what I think, I'll be sure to pass all that crap along..." And then my co-workers and I would all have a great guffaw at our own expense. But today at our little retreat thing, our new boss actually asked us what we thought. No. For real. We were all quiet for a minute, because we weren't sure if we were hearing him correctly.

His big questions were about attrition and diversity and how to curb alcohol abuse. We batted shit around and he left saying he would keep our answers in mind when he met with some of the bigwigs. Whatdya know?

The other part of our retreat was that we all went on a tour with a guide around our fine institution and then we got to eat in the dining halls. Which is way better than it sounds. The food is pretty good and like Alice's Restaurant, you can get anything you want.

Tonight supper club was super kick-ass too. We went back to the Hilltop where my pint of beer and cheese fries still cost less than $5. My friend K. pointed out that my friend TRipple was in the bar and when I asked her what she was doing, she told me that our friend Jen was celebrating her birthday in the other part of the bar with our friend Gomez. I hadn't seen either one of them for a very long time. It was such a nice surprise.

Okay, I've had a busy, but really nice day and now I'm going to try to go to bed at a halfway decent hour, so that I won't get all sleep deprived and fuck up tomorrow.

You're Gonna Drive Me to Drinkin'

First I want to say how sad I was to hear of Jerry Reed's passing. Let me just reveal another weird thing about me - I love trucker songs and I loved Smokey and the Bandit. I'm sure it's because I was at a very impressionable age when all that trucker/CB shit was everywhere in the 70's. I'm also pretty sure it didn't help that Greg Evigan looked the way he did in BJ and the Bear when I was in junior high. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Trucker hits. Jerry Reed's death..."East Bound and Down" is one of my favorite trucker hits, right up there with Dave Dudley's "Six Days on the Road" and I'm sorry he's gone now.

My girls walking past a sculpture in Salt Lake City.

Now on to my riveting (cough) life:

So, you know how much I love Stinky, right? If you're a parent, you probably also understand how she drives me to drinking too. This weekend, was no exception. She wanted money to go to the catholic school's Fall fun festival thing. I told her what chores she could do, for how much money and after procrastinating, she finally got most of her chores done, with the promise to finish up when she got home. I only had a twenty, so I told her to give me the other half back. Apparently, she decided to use all of it and just do that many more chores without asking me. Bad decision.

When she told me what she did, I was pretty ticked. She hadn't even finished the chores she was supposed to do for the first ten dollars. I told her that now she had to clean the whole house, and she was grounded from hanging out with her friends until they were done. Stinky and I did go to that movie, but she said she'd get everything done when she got home. She didn't.

Here is a photo of Coadster looking at me and Stinky refusing to turn around.

What she did instead was try to get everything done after school on Tuesday, before she went to a volleyball tournament. What that meant for me, was a phone call the second I was getting off work. She was crying and told me that she was trying to mop the kitchen floor, but held the mop up too high and broke the light fixture and some of the glass hit her in the shoulder and she was bleeding. Great. I walk to work and it takes me about twenty minutes or so to get home. I asked her if she thought she needed stitches, but she said it wasn't that bad, it just hurt. Her dad lives a couple blocks away, so she called him and he came over to help her clean up all the glass from the light fixture. By the time I got home, it was all cleaned up and the bleeding had stopped. I have no idea what she was doing to have to hit the light, and I probably don't want to know either.

So, yeah. I've been through this boundary pushing stuff before with Coadster. It sucks to have to be on them all the time, but I know things would be much worse if I didn't. Just last week I was talking to Coadster about it and I said for the thousandth time, "My job isn't to be your friend. My job is to make sure you guys are safe, and that you grow up to be decent people."

Coadster said, "Good. I think those moms who try to be all cool, are kind of creepy."

"Well, you'll never have to worry about that with me. I've never been cool, and I don't plan to start anytime soon," I assured her.

"I know. I doubt you could be cool if you tried."

"Um, thanks...I think."

But I Got a Smile for Everyone I Meet

Here is a picture of food carnage from our neighborhood party.

The rest of my weekend went just fine. There was a little more to the story with Mr. B. He called me a couple of times on Saturday night and apologized for texting when he should have called, but ultimately, the end result between us was the same. I don't want to get into much more detail, because that pseudo drama really bores me and I don't want people talking a bunch of shit about him. Mr. B. isn't an asshole by any means, he's just going through some stuff. So, that's that.

Now, on to the next day. We had our block party on Sunday and it was hosted by my friend Bridget. She invited all kinds of people and I'm sure over 100 neighbors showed up throughout the course of the shindig or shingding, as my friend Joanne called it after she'd had a few to drink.

Here is a picture of someone trying to stop Bridget's dog from stealing hotdogs from little kids' plates.

Our neighbors are really great for the most part. We have some musicians and authors and tons of professors. In a town filled with pretension, our little block is surprisingly down to earth. At one point, a retired couple were on their way out and Bridget asked them why they were leaving already. The husband said, "Well. My Viagra wears off in 45 minutes, so time is of the essence." How hilarious is that?

Here are some neighbors under the little tent thingy eatin' and a-drankin'.

Bridget did introduce me to the "hunky" guy who was my age. She didn't tell him she was trying to get us together, and that was good. It was so much more casual this way. He seemed very nice and his kids are the exact same ages as my girls. He also didn't seem all that interested in me either. Bridget said he was pretty shy, but I think it really was a lack of interest. Which is totally fine. I'm defintitely not on a man hunt, and I like meeting people. Sometimes it's easier if there is no chemistry, because then it's safe and you can just be friends.

Today was a mellow day. The girls came over in the afternoon from their dad's. Stinky asked if she and I could do something fun, since Coadster had a showchoir workshop and then a potluck for that afterward. I told Stinky I'd take her to a matinee if she wanted. She definitely wanted. She said I could pick between seeing, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2, Tropical Thunder or The Dark Knight. I thought it was funny that she even had to ask. She knows what a comic book geek I am. So, yeah. We saw The Dark Knight and I really liked it. I know everyone has already reviewed it, so I won't do that. Suffice it to say, that we were both well entertained.

Now, I guess I shoud hit the hay. I'll be going back to the real world of beige cubicles, paper pushing and answering phone calls tomorrow. Awesome.

I Feel It in the Air, the Summer's Out of Reach

Well, our end of the Summer girly party all started innocently enough. We brought really good food and drank beer and listened to a cheesy 80's mix CD that I made and looked at our friend E.'s honeymoon videos on her laptop. It was all cute and quaint, right? Wrong.

I'm not sure how it all started, but someone may have found some leftover decorations from my girlcrush's bachelorette party and then someone else had the idea to decorate their little metal arch thing to make it look like where you would take a prom picture. Then our hostess J. may have happened to mention that she still had all four dresses from her proms in the early nineties. Then it's possible that there was some kind of prom dress wearing throw-down.

The next thing you know, the dresses are being brought down and girls are undressing and our hostess J. is closing the gate to her backyard and one of my lesbian friends is saying, "Now this is my idea of a party." We all do our cheesy prom poses under the arch, but apparently that's not wrong enough.

We have to make it even raunchier by posing as a threesome date.

Then, what the hell, we threw in a little minx with a cigarette and a bottle of liquor.

It was supposed to be an all girl party, but you know what happens when you have a yard full of girls - boys start sniffing around. So, we made a rule. Boys could join if they would put on a dress and pose for a picture.


We were even nice about it, and let them pose with their girlfriends.

But, if they wanted to pose together, that was fine too, of course.