I Feel Numb. Burn With a Weak Heart. Guess I Must be Having Fun

Here we are taking a clean "before" pic. We were headed to a metal show where things generally get messy.

So, Saturday was WAY more mellow than Friday. I had been invited to a couple of BBQ's but after I ran and did some stuff with the girls, I fell asleep. I missed both of them and had to do a bit of scurrying to get to the Dublin my 9'ish.


There were plenty of tattooed folk at the show. Apparently, my friend K. takes her tattooed folk very seriously.

We had a drink and were off to see the RAWK! at the Picador. It was a lot of fun...If not very loud. A guy in one of the bands came up to me and told me he couldn't find his camera and wondered if I'd take a few pics of them playing. What a question...I was going to anyway.

Until she sees something funny. Then she's over the severity of it all.

Mr. B. said he was going to be at the show, but I didn't believe him. I was right. He never made it, and I was pretty glad. One less thing.

Here is FMDM playing his geeeeetar.

We got there just in time to see FMDM's band. They have been playing on weekdays a lot, when I can't go, so it was nice to finally catch them again.

Here are some boys making suggestive rock hands.

Here is my friend John blocking out his bandmate's face.

Around midnight, I was pretty beat. It's hard for me to go out two nights in a row, and I usually really feel it on the second night. So, even before the last band finished, I decided to take off.

Here we are in our "after" shot. See why we make a point to take the earlier one?

I made it home before one and went straight to sleep. No muss, no fuss. I love a dramaless night.

Picking Up the Pieces, Putting Them Away

Here are the girls riding bikes when they were younger. I think that was Stinky's first broken arm. She has made us old pros at emergency room visits.

Yes, well. Today has been pretty long again. I didn't sleep very well last night and a lot of today was spent trying to get a certain Stinky girl to drink and eat something...Anything. The drinking was the most important. She kept telling me everything tasted weird. She had some water, a little Sprite and finally pineapple orange juice. The Dr. said she had to drink things that had calories, so any of those fancy 0 calorie Propel type drinks were out.

As you know, my girls and I are big eaters, so this whole concept of trying to get Stinky to eat and her not wanting to, is extremely foreign to me. It took her over four hours to eat a piece of cinnamon toast and a few raspberries. I got smart at dinnertime and made her favorite food - a BLT. She's never said no to bacon before, and this was no exception. She ate a half sandwich and it gave me hope that she was getting better. Behold the power of smoked pig.

Tomorrow I'll go back to work, sit in my beige cubicle and try really hard not to call home every five seconds for updates. The sound of my daughter's coughing and belabored breathing will be replaced by the guy who sits behind me with the bad acid reflux trying to disguise his chronic belching by saying, "bwifff" or "bwarrrf". I'll ask him if he's speaking Klingon like I usually do and we'll both laugh and things will start to go back to normal. Being reminded of what the alternative can look like, normal sounds pretty good.

Was Your Mind Squeaky Clean in the First Place?

Here's me making my monkey face (just pull your ears out and put your tongue under your top lip and you can look as pretty as I do here) at George's in 1999. This photo got posted on Facebook recently. I had no idea it existed. Facebook is a veritable field of photo landmines. Ouch.

So, it got into the 30's here and felt like Spring. It seems like as good a time as any to get all bawdy. I'm nothing, if not inappropriate and I think sex/ relationships between men and women are hilarious. I thought I'd post some conversations I've either heard or taken part in. Most of them are sweeping generalizations and I know that, so don't get your panties in a wad. I also promise not to identify who said any of this, on account of the incrimination factor.

1.) A friend of mine likes to say that all women are crazy and all men are stupid about them. I disagree. I know plenty of crazy men and tons of women who are stupid about them. I think everyone is crazy, and you have to find someone who's crazy you can deal with.

2.) A friend of mine was drinking at a bar called Joe's Place. A guy came up to her and said, "You look like you have the kind of ankles I'm attracted to hidden in those boots." She said she doubted it, and that her ankles were bigger than most men liked. His response was, "I knew it. I love a woman with big, solid ankles." Of course, she gave him her number. Every woman I've told that story to said they would too. Nothing is more attractive to a woman than when a man makes her feel sexy about the body part she's most self-conscious about. (Guys, if you were paying attention, I just gave you a freebie. You're welcome.)

3.) Some people at the bar were talking about getting dumped. One woman said you should have sex with someone else as soon as possible after a break-up or you'd end up masturbating to your ex, since they were the last sexual experience you had. She said nothing was more pathetic than that. One of the guys lamented that it was much easier for women to do that than men, because women could get laid by hot guys anytime they wanted and it wasn't the same for men.

Another woman said that was true, but men had an easier time finding relationships than women did. She thought that was one of the fucked-up things about it, as far as she was concerned. Most women she knew could get all the casual sex they wanted, but mostly wanted to be in relationships and most men she knew could find women who wanted a commitment from them, when all they wanted was to get laid.

4.) A woman was detailing her experiences with dirty talk and said that she liked it, but it made some of the men she "knew" uncomfortable.

The guy in the room started laughing and said, "The only reason it would make a guy uncomfortable, is because he wouldn't know how far he could go. Most guys are afraid they're going to talk too dirty and ruin the whole thing." Then someone brought up a Seinfeld episode to illustrate that point.

Okay, those are just a few things I have for now. How about you? Do you have any funny sweeping generalizations about male/female relationships on this fine Friday?

Come On Feel The Noise

I am on my way out the door to meet my girlcrush and some other folks, but I wanted to at least do the Saturday Scavenger Hunt. The word was chosen by Tara at Eclectic Spaghetti and it was noise.

On New Year's Eve it was plenty noisy. The first photo is of my favorite bartender S. with his wife and my friend D. Looking on. Believe me, he doesn't need any help being noisy. He does just fine on his own.

Here is a crowd shot of the Dublin right before midnight. All those people can make quite a racket.

Okay, that's all folks. I'll be back tomorrow. I think I'll start getting a little more reflective now that the holidays are over and I'm spending more time by myself with some peace and quiet.

I Wanna Be Free to Know the Things I Do Are Right

My favorite bartender S. giving us a flash. After I harped him into it.

So, hey. What do you know? This weekend was almost perfect. All except for the part where I'm still broke, but luckily I live here where everything is cheap and most of the people are generous.

On Friday night, I stayed home like I said. I got some drunk texts from guys at the Dublin. Apparently, it was one of the bartenders birthday and they were trying to get people to come down to play. There was no way in hell I was going to leave my couch, except to transport Stinky and her friend to their social event and back.

I had tons of alone time on Saturday afternoon. Stinky had basketball practice and then she went to a friend's house for most of the day. I did very little of anything. I ran outside and even though it was cold, I came back so much happier than when I left.

On Saturday evening, I dropped Stinky off at another friend's house to play cards and spend the night. I made it to my the mojito party a little later than I wanted, but then I usually do. It was fun and much like what I expected. My friend Sara made some very strong but very kick-ass drinks. I didn't have a mint julep, and I only had one mojito, but as I've said many times before, I don't have much tolerance, so even one drink got me loopy. I talked to a couple of professors that I knew. One was a film production instructor and her husband taught photography classes.

G. had called me before I left to tell me that she and D. were heading to the Dublin. I told her I'd sneak down for a drink in between my two other things. It was pretty slow, since most of the students have already left for the holiday. The people who were there were great. At one point I tried to badger my favorite bartender into flashing us his undershirt. For some reason, he was being all coy, so I said, "Just shut-up and do it, bitch." And then he obliged. Instantly, some woman approached us about joining the new roller derby team they were starting in Iowa City. G. and I thought it was hilarious. I said, you're just asking us because we're loud, tough bitches. She basically said, duh.

Sam bending Ed's ear for a tick.

I finally made it to the thing at The Mill. It was nice acoustic music and a lot of people I knew. After about an hour, I was more than ready to go. The Mojito was still kicking my ass. Luckily, one of the guys who goes to Supper Club was there and drove me and K. and her boyfriend A. home.

Today was so wonderful. Originally, I thought I'd spend most of the day cleaning in preparation for my sibings visit on Saturday. But then Coadster came home, and I picked up Stinky. The weather was amazing, so I ran my six mile route and when I got back, both of the girls were saying how they would love to see the movie Twilight. I realized that it was the first day in forever that the three of us were all home together. So, even though my house needed to be cleaned and I don't exactly have a ton of extra money, I said fuck it, and we went. I figured the mess would still be there when we got back, and we all needed a fun, relaxing day together. Damned if I wasn't right. We got back and the mess was there waiting for us, right where we left it.

I decided to do this new thing this week. I'm going to clean for an hour a day and see what gets done. I'll have all day Friday to finish it all up. I'll let you know how it worked.

There's No Time for Her to be Afraid

Here is some more low art for you. I found all this stuff on Saturday when I was driving home from the mall. I went back the next day and shot a bunch of pics. I just remember three years ago when I photographed the girls in front of a really cool graffiti face that was cleaned up in less than a week. I wasn't about to take any chances.

Today was a particularly long day. Yesterday I had my annual and then today I had to go get my mammogram. If you'll recall, last year I had a bad one of those. So, they made me come back every six months to monitor the badness. What was at first a possible tumor, became a calcification. The rename didn't do a lot to assuage my fears. I didn't sleep all that well last night. Luckily, my appointment was first thing this morning, so I could get it over with. After they took a million different views, and a doctor studied them, he called me into a room and said that the calcification had suddenly started to dissolve. Hmmm. I mean, it's great news, but it seems kind of odd. Anyway, what it means for me, is that I can sleep a lot easier tonight - which is good, because I'm exhausted. Oh yeah, don't forget it's breast cancer awareness month. Timely, isn't it?

I much prefer graffiti pictures to words, unless it says something really prophetic.

Oh, did I mention that I'm all randomy again tonight? Or did I not need to, because I already said how tired I was? Anyway, while I was walking to my doctor's appointment in the rain yesterday, some stupid asshole sped up and drove really fast into a puddle in the curb and splashed filthy street water all over me and laughed as he drove away. It reminded me of reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school and my lit teacher talking about the turtle scene at the beginning of the novel. I can still hear her saying, "There are some people who will swerve to miss you, and others will swerve in order to hit you." Ain't it the truth.

Look. How festive - spray paint balloons on a retaining wall.

Right after my appointment, I had to go to a meeting to learn the new computer system they're loading next Monday. Because I was late, the only seat was by one of my bosses and my favorite IT guy. Man, I thought I had ADD, but these guys were even worse than me. The IT guy can not still still for two seconds and he sings songs to every sentence anyone says just like I do too. When the speaker was talking about rolling all the changes in on Monday, he started singing, "Monday, Monday" and when he kept making the same mistake, he went right into, "Oops, I Did it Again". It was just another example of how adorable it is when I do all those dumb things, and how annoying it is when everyone else does them.

I particularly like the old-fashioned boom box. Oh, 1984, I miss you so. Where the hell did I put my breaking board?

Tonight was supper club night. We went to a Chinese restaurant in Coralville. At first, I thought about laming out, because I was so tired and hung-over from all that unnecessary stress, but then I made myself go anyway. I'm so glad I did. Our little group is so awesome. Everyone is so funny and nice and full of witty repartee. It was exactly what I needed.

Here are some E's painted under the Hope signs. That reminds me, I need to go vote early for Obama at the library this week.

After eight days in a row and about 50 miles, I finally took yesterday off from running. I cleaned my kitchen and did a few loads of laundry instead, which was not half as much fun and didn't include any kind of endorphin rush whatsoever. Seriously, why even do it then, right?

This is the messy blue paint leftover from the graffiti. It seems a little excessive, doesn't it?

I got a Facebook profile recently. Earlier in the Summer when I was trying to find my old California friends, some people suggested looking them up on Facebook.They all had really common names and I didn't know where they lived anymore, so it was almost impossible. I use my real name on Facebook, which isn't all that common and I figure, if any of my friends are looking for me, I won't be that hard to find. Facebook seems a lot less creepy than Myspace. I've only had one friend request from a guy I didn't know and didn't have any friends in common. I told my daughters that I would understand if they didn't want to be my friend on it. Coadster added me right away, but Stinky didn't want to. I put up a bunch of really cute baby pictures of the girls and then tagged Coadster in all of them. After Stinky saw that, she said, "See? That's exactly why I didn't want to be your friend." What? What?!

Finally, here is a whole box full of graffiti. Somebody must really like elephants.

I think I'm going to make Thanksgiving dinner a month early this Sunday. The girls and I have all been craving it. I'll just have to get creative with the leftovers and make some turkey soup or maybe some turkey enchiladas and then some turkey cheese cake served up with some turkey ice cream. Mmmm.

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.

Tell Me That This World is no Place for the Weak

And today I was so tired. I think it was post vacation let down and financial stress, but I took a three hour nap this afternoon and I can barely keep my eyes open right now. Don't get me wrong, I loved our trip and it's something that Coadster's wanted to do since she was a little kid (that and a Cubs game and I'll try really hard to make that happen for her next Summer), it's just that I did a hell of a lot of driving and had absolutely no alone time for two weeks and I'm broker than broke, so I just think my body needs to shut-down for a bit. Anyway, wah, fucking, wah. I know. On a less whiny note, here is the account of the first two days of our trip:

The storm a'brewin' off the interstate.

We got out of town right at eight. I had a two day long playlist, a cooler full of drinks and a ton of food. We were set. There was so much promise, so many possibilities. Then just a couple of miles out of the Dubuque Street exit, I must have been in the blind spot of the gigantic semi driver and he started to merge into our lane. As usual, my first instinct was to spaz, and so I honked like crazy and he corrected himself and got back in his lane until I was safely past him. Coadster and I joked about how tragically funny it would have been if the semi had crashed into us and we all died only minutes out of town.

I drove twelve hours on my first day. I didn't know I could even sit still that long, but I did it. I have no idea what Nebraska's fucking problem is, but I've never been able to drive through that state without getting caught in a horrible, terrifying storm. We were close this time, but right before we hit Wyoming, we got slammed. My girls were both awesome about reminding me to turn on the defrost and helping me see all the trucks pulled over on the side of the road. I realized too late that the one thing I forgot to pack was Valium. Damn it. It's always something. Anyway, we made it to Laramie and went almost straight to sleep...And that concludes our first day of the trip.


The second day, we drove only six hours to Salt Lake City. We checked into our Motel 6, Which Stinky described as ghetto, and not in the good way. We tried to get to The Great Salt Lake, but couldn't find it. Even when we stopped and asked for directions, the guy at the convenience store said he knew how to get there, but couldn't give us directions. Huh? Whatever. We went back to our room and after an hour of resting, I made the girls get out and walk around town with me.

Our motel was only a block away from the projects, and a lovely liquor store, but after that, we were right by the Mormon temple.

Coadster decided we should take a free tour of Brigham Young's house. As I've said before, I grew up in Mormon town, so I didn't think I needed the tutorial, but I went along for the ride. Imagine that, us going to the doors of Mormons and bugging them in their home. Only we weren't wearing suits and riding bikes. The tour was actually interesting.

Then we did our usual dorking-out around the Mormon Temple. Here's Coadster and I doing our obnoxious show choir moves around a reverent, important Mormon statue. So respectful.

And here are the girls at the fountain in front of the temple.

This is the temple itself. They don't let commoners in the temple very often. I was inside one when I was a kid right after they opened it, but that was a special deal. We did have fun wandering around outside of it until I almost fell trying to photograph it and said, "Shit," too loudly. Coadster tried to cover for me, "You meant shoot, right mom?" Why, yes I did.

We finally left in search of cheap eats. There were tons of really expensive restaurants by the temple, but we were on the look-out for a reasonably priced slice of pizza. We found it after we walked through a train station and found this. That's right, we stumbled upon the church of Stinky - a gigantic outdoor mall. I think Stinky may even have genuflected at the sight of it.

The girls wandered around all the stores that we don't have here in Iowa City and we actually did get some cheap pizza. Then on the walk back to our room, we found this sweet ride and I took a photo of it. I figured it would be a nice image to keep in our heads as we walked past the projects on our way to our ghetto fabulous Motel 6.

You Show Us Everything You've Got

Here are some chives.

Today was my first day back to work after a week, and it was a little rough. I'm trying to get back into the old sleep schedule, but my body just naturally wants to go to sleep around one in the morning and wake up closer to nine. Sometimes you just can't fight city hall.

Last night I finally got to sleep and then received a text from someone at 2:30 a.m. letting me know of George Carlin's passing. I don't remember hearing the text noise from my phone, I just recall going to my phone to turn off my alarm and realizing it was a text and then accidentally calling the texter back instead of opening the text and then quickly hanging up. I almost felt bad, but then I was wide awake and the guy who sent me the text used to go out with me, so he knows I use my phone as an alarm clock and therefore don't turn it off when I go to bed and I figured we were close to being even on the annoyance scale.

I finally got to sleep, and woke up when my alarm went off for real in the morning with a nasty migraine. I don't wake up well, and so I'm one of those horrible people who hits the snooze about a zillion times before I finally haul my ass out of bed. Instead of going back to sleep between snoozes, I decided to try to relax my migraine away. I did that thing where you lie still and go from your head to your toe and tell yourself to relax each body part on the way down. The crazy thing about it, is that it worked. I got up and my migraine was gone and didn't come back the rest of the day. Even though it should have, because work was crazy. We had over a week's worth of mail to open and process and phone calls up the wazoo.

Most of the people were sympathetic to our plight, but there were a few who my friend J. always calls the "precious people", who apparently don't understand what an inconvenience a natural disaster can be. The worst part of the day, was that my favorite co-worker John wasn't there to be ridiculous and make me laugh. Normally, when I'm having a bad day, he'll come by my desk and do dorky little dances or he'll stop over with some work and when I ask him what he has for me, he'll reply by saying, "herpes" and it's never not funny.

I hope he shows up tomorrow, because I'm going to be super tired staying up this late and I'm going to need someone at work who is at least as inappropriate as I am.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

This is supposed to say "best friends". Apparently, they couldn't get all their feet in the frame.

Kids, I am exhausted. I've gotten so much done the last couple of days and I've been running at least six miles every day, that I'm wearing myself down a little. That's okay. I'll take it. I know better than to look a gift week in the mouth. I've had tons of time to hang out with my girls, I got new tires and my car realigned, I got new running shoes, I got the battery on my phone replaced (for free, I might add) and tomorrow I'm going to try and clean the hell out of my house. Whew. See what I mean?

Stinky and her friends took these funky shots the other day. They also drew all over the driveway in sidewalk chalk. My girls will probably never grow up either. Awesome.

This weekend though? This weekend is mommy's fun time. We were supposed to go to Elkader for canoing and camping for my girl crushes bachelorette party, but I think we all know what a bad idea that would be right now. So, instead, we're going to meet at a friend's house for Summer hijinks. We'll have a kiddie pool and Slip and Slide and Twister and I'm sure, tons of food and drink. We may end up downtown for a bit in the evening, but then we'll go back for a fire and camping in our friend's backyard. Seriously, how much fun will all that be? Tons. I know.

Here is Stinky in mid-cartwheel.

Now. All you all's job is to help me with the iPod playlist. What are your favorite dance songs/ Summer fun songs. I'm looking for happy, cheesy, faster songs that we can dance around like total idiots to. Got it? Please feel free to be as shameless as possible. You know I always am.

For Those About to Rock

I'm making a special Thursday edition of "it's late and I'm tired, so this will mostly be a photo post". Usually it's on Wednesday, but since FMDM was playing his first gig in forever, I changed my schedule around in order to gawk at the RAWK.

I asked FMDM to act like a rocker right before the show, and this is what he gave me. Pretty convincing, huh?

Then I took some more photos so you could all see what metal really looks like. Apparently, when you can't find a fog machine, you have to resort to cigarette smoke to get the right effect.

This kids xylophone must be the new phase in metal. It actually sounded pretty cool.

It's also important to wear your wrist bands, if you want to convey to all the world just how absolutely metal you can be.

If you can incite the crowd, that helps you look like a total RAWKer. As you can see, wearing a black shirt is also very necessary.

Also, remember to drink your PBR, for maximum metalness/tude.

The other important thing to remember if you want to be truly authentic, is to flip me the bird when I take your photo. Nothing ensures your RAWK! status like giving me the finger...At least in this town, anyway.

Did My Words Not Come Out Right?

Here is a picture of a building in Davenport. I just liked the look of it.

Today was nice and warm and mellow. The girls were supposed to go to their dad's house, but they stayed with me until a little after nine. It was fine. I got to catch up on all the teen drama and tried to keep straight which friends they were on the ins and the outs with and then my head exploded.

This weekend was also on the mellow side. I caught up on sleep and got some cleaning done finally. I went out for a few hours both nights. On Friday we went to the Foxhead because our friend Brad was tending bar. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of people there who I loved and I had a great time. It's just that there always tend to be certain uptight pretentious grad students who are WAY too cool for school, who make me want to be even more obnoxious than usual. Mostly though, I had a great time and spent all my energy on my friends in the bar and some drunk texting to people outside of the bar and it was great.

On Saturday I met my friend K. and her boyfriend A. at the Dublin. It was one of those weird nights there where there weren't very many regulars. It just meant that we had to give Scooter the bartender more of a hard time. I asked him to make me a girly shot and he told me I didn't really want one (which is what I predicted he would say) and then when I assured him I did, he said he would surprise me and K. with one and made us a really good and girly pineapple upside down cake shot. My friend K. said he would be into it and make us something good because he likes to mix drinks, so she got to be right too.

We talked to him about Rock of Love 2, because he's surprisingly really into that show. Then, not more than a half hour later, someone called down and told Scooter that Brett Michaels' tour bus was in front of the bar. I told him I'd go check it out. He asked me if I'd knock on the door of the bus and I said, "Duh. Of course". So, I went outside and knocked on the door of the bus. An old guy who looked like he could be from Keokuk, Iowa opened the door.

"Hi. Um, what's this bus for?" I asked.

"It's a charter bus," he responded, only slightly annoyed. I knew better than to ask straight out if it was Brett Michaels tour bus because it was looking less and less likely to be true and I doubted he had even heard of Poison.

"Okay, but what's it for?"

"It's for a bachelorette party," he said and I thanked him. I knew he wasn't lying to try to get rid of me either, since I didn't see even one bandana or cowboy hat on that bus.

Words Have Always Nearly Hung Me

Hey, check me out. I'm doing the Saturday Scavenger Hunt on Saturday for a change. The word this week is communication. There are definitely many different forms of communication. Some people are talkers, others are quiet and let their eyes do their speaking for them, and some people (like me) gesticulate wildly and jump up and down and use their outside voices everywhere they go to spout mountains of bullshit. The other side of the communication, is the listener. I happen to have a job where I speak to many, many international students over the phone every day. I've had to learn to become a very good listener. That doesn't mean when I'm out with my friends, however, that I always listen well, or even let people finish their sentences before I get really excited about what they're saying and jump in. You know, we all have things we need to work on, right?

The picture above is from the state pool tournament when one of my friends wasn't quite listening to the other, when she told her she didn't want her to try to bite her breast. So, she quite literally made her talk to the hand. At that moment, it was the only language she could understand...And that's why she's my girl crush.