Saturday I'm Running Wild

I took this on my way home from work. If you haven't heard yet. Iowa's supreme court just legalized gay marriages on Friday. Let the celebrating begin! Wooooo hooo!

Jeez! but it's been one long and hectic weekend. On Friday I went running, grilled brats and then Stinky's friends started coming over. She invited a couple of her girlfriends over to watch movies and spend the night. One of the neighbor boys goes to the local Catholic high school and must have received some kind of girl radar there. He always seems to sense when Stinky is having a girl night and he and his buddies magically show up. They were fine for the most part. I gave them the living room and Coadster and I took over my room. I came out and checked on them often. At one point the guys were jumping around and wrestling and I made them stop out of respect for the upstairs neighbors.

Coadster and I watched movies. I chose the first one, Married Life. It was a pretty bleak look at marriage in 1949 with Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson and Rachel McAdams. It was slower moving and quirky but Coadster and I both really liked it. Coadster chose the second movie we watched, Milk. It was pretty fitting for the recent Iowa news. We both loved it. The acting was amazing. Josh Brolin continues to impress me.

On Saturday we ran a few errands, but then headed down South to the anniversary party. It was fun, but hectic. The girls got to see all of their cousins. The younger ones are pretty damn adorable aren't they?

It's been a while since I posted a mastiff photo, and I figured it was about time. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the giant drool strings she was carrying around for a while though. Sorry.

Here's another gratuitous cute niece photo. Come on, you knew it was coming, didn't you?

As is par for the course at our family gatherings, there was some decent kid wrasslin' matches. These two are in the same grade, but the girl cousin has several inches and pounds on the boy cousin...

So, the match ended with the boy cousin getting some support from his father/trainer.

Don't worry. He was back and demanding a do-over in no time - only this time he wanted a cage match.

Today was my catch-up day. I tried to get done all of the stuff I usually do on Saturday, plus the normal grocery shopping, and getting the girls ready for their choir concert at St Mary's church this evening.

The concert was really beautiful, it was just very long and on a Sunday night.

Whew! Now I'd like another weekend to recover from this weekend, thank you.

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.

But I Hear the Call of a Lifetime Ring

Here is a shop window full of delicious candy canes.

I woke up today to a recorded message telling me school was canceled. I checked outside and wondered why, since it just seemed to be some rain. Then when I actually started walking to work, I finally got it. My world was covered in ice. I was careful to walk in the grass, but driveways and street crossings were particularly treacherous. I had no idea what a lucky break the ice would be for me today.

The girls and I have been trying to figure out when we'd be able to go see our holiday matinee that we've gone to every year for forever. There are always show choir workshops, or basketball games and practice, and there's no way in hell I could afford to actually pay for the three of us to see a movie at full price without dipping into the girls' future therapy fund...And with me as their mom, they'll need every penny I can scrape together for that.

Coadster texted me at work this morning to see if I could take them today, since they wouldn't have practice for anything anyway. Perfect. I took off a half hour early from work so we could get to the 5 o'clock show of Four Christmases. The girls loved it, and all I can really ask for is a movie that the girls love and that I can stand. it definitely had it's funny moments and the usual Vince Vaughn schtick.

When we got out, Coadster said she wanted to go to the rec building and work out with me. I don't run outside when it's icy anymore after that one time when I fell and hit and bruised up my face. It gave my co-workers WAY too much pleasure. One of the office women tried to spaz me out by telling me I had to go to the doctor because I could have bone splinters that would enter my brain. Another guy at work said that I would totally be attractive to abusive guys, since they'd already know I could take a punch. Thanks, co-workers...For nothing. Anyway, it just seems to simplify my life, if I run indoors during the icy times. So, Coadster and I ran and my iPod seemed to love me by playing great running music, like Spoon and Michael Jackson and Buddy Miles and Sufjan Stevens and The Specials. Best of all, there was some guy juggling without stopping or dropping a ball the whole time we were there. God, I love this freaky little town.

So, now I'm home and I'm exhausted, but in the good way. It was so different from my normal Tuesdays. I guess I didn't even realize how much I needed a break from my routine until I got it.

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.

And After It Rains, There's a Rainbow

Bags grow on trees here. it's true.

I'm sure you probably get tired of me always showing photos and yammering away about my town, but I'm going to do it again. It could be the weather, or the trees changing or the fun I've had recently, but I'm feeling particularly crushed-out on Iowa City lately.

Here is a picture of some guys taking their copy machine for an afternoon walk.

I've always had a thing for this town. It's weird, and quirky and it wears its politics on its sleeve, or The Pentacrest or downtown... It's always been really sweet to me too. When Coadster got in that horse and buggy accident when she was almost five months old, or after Stinky got meningitis or when we got hit by that tornado, it seemed half the people here asked what they could do to help. Iowa City has been extremely thoughtful that way.

Iowa City has really strict leash laws. So, don't go bringing your tables and chairs downtown without tying them up.

Sure, we've had our issues. It can be on the pretentious side. If I have to hear another sentence start with, "When I lived in New York... In New York, blah, blah blah..." I might have to punch someone's face in. It's also a little young for me. It's always so concerned with college classes and working on its movie or novel or band. How about a little less talking about it and a little more working on it, huh?

The walls of Iowa City closing in.

Iowa City can also feel like it's suffocating me. Sometimes I just need a little room to breathe, you know? Don't fence me in and all like that shit there. I do appreciate how much it notices things, though. I can't go anywhere without getting sighting information on my girls. I know it cares about my daughters safety and that means a lot to me.

A guy walking a tightrope on the Pentacrest, just because.

Mostly, I love how Iowa City is never boring. I can be ready to gouge my eyes out with my letter opener after inputting hundreds of high school transcripts at work, and think to myself as I leave for my lunch walk, "Okay, someone better fucking entertain me right now, or I can't be held accountable for my actions." And Iowa City always comes through. There's either guys walking tightropes or crazy people having in-depth conversations with inanimate objects, or I'll see some of the regulars who used to come into all of the restaurants where I worked and I'll crack-up thinking about the nicknames we gave them. I could easily be the mayor of this town of freaks...Okay, I'd have to get elected for that and I'm too lazy to run for office. How about the princess? Isn't that something you just fall into? I could be from some hidden royalty, don't you think?

Who knew tightrope walkers had groupies?

Whatever. I'm going through a HUGE honeymoon phase with this town right now. I'm old enough to know that the honeymoon can't last. In a month or so, when it's twenty below zero out, and icy and Iowa City is exerting its control issues by not letting me run outside, I'll totally bitch to my girlfriends and wonder what I ever saw in it, but right now, we're all rainbows, and unicorns and butterflies.

So, how about you? Are you crushed-out on your town or are you living together in quiet, or not so quiet resentment?

We'll Spend Some Time Forever

Well, those two last posts recounting the weekend were a lot of fun, but now I'm back on the chain gang. For the next two weeks, I'll have some kind of activity to attend for the girls almost every night. It's all great and I'm glad that my girls are so involved in stuff, it's just the whole time thing...Or lack thereof. When there's one of me and two of them, it seems like I get off work, get home, drive kids all over hell and back and then go to a choir concert, band extravaganza or soccer game. I come home to the messiest apartment ever and then it's pretty much time to go to bed. I know, wah fucking wah.

Honestly, I love my life, I love how chaotic and varied every day is and the only time I'm ever really bored is at work. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I can't wait for the next two weeks to be over so things can start getting on our slower, Summer pace. We'll be done with activities, and best of all, I've worked it so that for the six weeks after Memorial Day, I'll have at least one day off a week. How many times have I whined about needing at least one more day a week to get things done? Plenty. So, I just decided to give myself one for a while. Yea me!

Here is my oldest baby in her choir gown. I think she looks amazing in all that black, complete with matching hair. I can't believe she turns sixteen on Thursday. Holy fucking shit! She has to take an AP test on that day, and then she's going out for dinner with some friends to celebrate. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, it's kind of embarrassing that my daughter is more mature than I am and has been since she was born.

I Saw the World Thrashing All Around Your Face

So, I'll try to get that video thingy up on YouTube maybe sometime this weekend when I have more time...If I have more time. This weekend I'll be in town and trying to do a million things. I want to get my taxes done, I have to choose my new vision insurance, and I've planned dates to see girl movie matinees with both of my daughters. Of course, there's also cleaning and recycling and I might even get crazy and try to run outside in all the muck the next two days. As far as I know, I have plans for both nights too. I'm supposed to meet girls for drinks on Friday and Saturday night will be fun girl dance party at the Dublin. I have no idea how I'll fit sleep in there, but I'd like to do some of that as well.

Erik will be in New Orleans with a friend this weekend. Of course, I'll miss him a lot, but he promised to text me videos of all the people and places he experiences. It's kind of how we're able to pull off this long distance thing. Which, I've already mentioned is pretty tough for me.

Erik has been very good at making it work - he's done this many times before, but it's all new to me. I've told him what I need is reassurance and he's been great at giving me that. He's also been wonderful at making me feel like I'm part of his life, no matter how many miles away we are. We watched the lunar eclipse together over our cell phones last night and he called me during every commercial break while the debates were on tonight, so we could compare notes. He's probably more attentive than most guys I've lived with.

We are both very gregarious people, to say the least and obsessive documenters to boot. As Erik likes to say, we can certainly work a room together. So, this weekend, we'll have to work our rooms by ourselves, and then just text each other the videos of it. I can't wait to see the world through him.

Don't Miss It, Don't Even Be Late

So, Stinky and I met my family at the State Fair to celebrate my aunt's seventieth birthday. Contemplating the enormity of someone turning seventy, made me think about her previous year. Which led me to wonder if, by the time I'm that age, will I finally be mature enough not to try and get people to ask how old I am so I can respond, "Sixty-nine, baby. All. Year. Long." God, I hope so.


This year at the Fair, I realized that it wasn't quite as family friendly as I had once thought. Iowa is wonderfully bizarre on so many levels, but did they really need to have a gigantic box of corn for my two year old niece to recreate her favorite "rolling around in food" scene from the movie Tommy?

After that, I started noticing not so subtle sexual content in almost every booth we passed. First we met Dirty Dan wielding his huge sledge hammer.

Then, I couldn't escape the plethora of fresh, firm buns waiting for me around every corner...

...And every girl's favorite, foot longs.

The fellas will be happy to know that it wasn't all just eye candy for the women.

The fair offered images of some of the largest nipples I had ever seen...

Not to be outdone by the meat-on-a-stick for ladies, this year they offered a heterosexual male option of egg-on-a-stick. Mmmmm.

As you can see, it might be safer and less obscene just to take your kids to Vegas next year.

When She Goes Downtown She Walks Like She Just Don't Care

Stinky making a goofy face underneath the Christmas lights.

So, the girls went to see a bunch of bands play at the Hall Mall as a benefit for United Action for Youth. They said it was fun, but they had to go outside a couple of times to get away from all the cigarette smoke. Stinky was telling me about what she saw downtown on a Saturday night.

Stinky: I guess there was this costume contest at one of the bars, so a lot of people were all dressed up. Most of the guys were dressed like people from the seventies, and all the girls were dressed like skanks.

Me: That's usually how it goes when college kids wear costumes.

Stinky: There were these girls who were walking around in nothing but corsets.

Me: Really? What did they wear for bottoms?

Stinky: They just had tights on and high heel hooker shoes. Then, these other, more rocker college girls came up to them and said, "Hey, you lost your pants...And your shirts...And your dignity.

Me: Nice.

Freakazoids...Robots...Please Report

Here's what our town will look like very, very soon. Even though right now, it doesn't feel like it will ever get warm enough for the leaves to come back again.

So, today at work we had this diversity workshop thing to go to. Normally, I do a lot of eye rolling when it comes to morale building or inter-personal relationship training. They are usually pretty lame-ass and I end up spending most of my time trying to sift through the corporate speak and hand clapping to figure out just exactly how they are trying to manipulate me. Today's workshop was actually okay, though. It was a group of four actors doing skits about dealing with diversity on the job and on campus.

At first sight, I thought the guy who wrote and ran it, was going to be one of those baby-boomer, fakely earnest, new-agey assholes, but he was actually pretty cool. He did go into his drug addiction and recovery for a minute, but, you know...We all have our shit. At least he was talking about it to give us some background, and not like he was saying, "Look at me. I'm a sole/soul survivor!" All in all, it held my interest and the message was good and not too preachy.

At the beginning of the workshop, the head guy asked us to turn to the person standing next to us and compliment them. Of course, I was standing next to my long-suffering cubicle neighbor, John. He really is such a good sport, but knowing that fact, just brings out the worst in me.

So, I turned to him and said, "Have I ever told you how pretty I've always thought you were?" It was awesome, because he never saw that one coming. I'm pretty sure he thought I was going to say something mean. He was speechless for a second, before he said,

"God, you're such a freak."

"So, was that my compliment from you?" I asked.

"Yeah. That's about all I can do right now."

"Actually, I'll take it... You're saying 'freak' like it's a good thing, right?"

Oh, I Just Don't Know Where to Begin

I got tagged by Bice to do a meme where I name six weird things about me. Since I'm just a big old pile of quirkiness, this should be the easiest meme I've ever done.

1.) I love Iowa in general and Iowa City specifically. I know I didn't grow up here, but it's the closest thing to home I've ever had. I think it's great that everything is so cheap here, all the janitors and most of the waiters have advanced degrees and that we grow food that feeds much of the world.

2.) I like everything to make noise. I press the ends of my hair together so I can hear the crackling sound it makes and I can get cotton sheets to make a popping sound. (according to my sister, I've done that since I was a baby)

3.) I'm a girl who hates shoes. I barely ever wore them when I was a kid and the only reason I wear them regularly now is because it's cold out and because I messed my feet up from going barefoot so often when I was younger.

4.) I'm also a girl who doesn't understand the point of jewelry. Okay, I understand the whole ornamentation thing, but it really isn't worth the bother of remembering to put it on and take it off.

5.) I pretty much lived in my tent for a whole summer when I was nineteen. I had a trailer to stay in when I needed to, but I preferred to hang out in my tent on the banks of the Eel River.

6.) I think and speak in bad song lyrics way too often. I also change them to fit the conversation. I've been told this is really annoying, and I'm sorry, but I can't help myself. I can also recite entire commercials from the 70's and 80's. Of course, all this pop culture trivia knowledge has crowded out any practical information my brain may have held.