August 25, 2009
Good Lord. Lost my mind for a minute or a few years. Whatever. Reading back over this shit blog makes me feel like a smart misguided idiot. I think I got it now. Thank you karma, thank you pain. Thank you joy. Thank you for letting me hate myself forever. Thank you for the nonstop challenge. Thank you for lettin’ me be mice elf again….. thank you for life.
August 17, 2009
Library officials on Monday located a Plus Size Librarian who had been missing for more than two hours after she was believed to be oversleeping or overdosing, or both, a top Library official said.
The Librian was located at her basement dwelling, in the bathroom, via cellphone, said Library Administrator Peavey Higenbotham. “The Librarian has been moved to our anti-social subversive employee holding area where she is sarcastically answering questions,” Higenbotham said.
The questioning aims to clarify all circumstances of how she disappeared and why she did not send any (emergency) signals or call her branch library to alert them of her whereabouts.
The Librarian, who often uses various aliases such as “Lefty” or “Cherry”, had not been heard from since Saturday. When last seen she was carrying approximately 20 pounds of extra weight, several tons of excess baggage and a rather large, scabbous cold sore on her bottom lip and chin.
She was scheduled to arrive in her branch library at 11:30 a.m. Monday morning. The news came from several bitchy employees who had immediately begun speculating that the Librarian was cavorting with a local Jamaican male, known for his propensity for late night showering.
The U.S. military also had a report last week that the Librarian’s car had been seen skirting the runway at McChord Air Force base south of Tacoma. She appeared disoriented and totally clueless that she was headed in the oppposite direction of Seattle where she was destined according to several sources. The U.S. military was not involved in the search.
The branch Manager, Helmut Schmidt, had previously spoken to the Librarian about her irratic behavior and ongoing acts of anarchy within the branch. While he had considered placing her on suicide watch, he was waiting to see if her antidepressants would kick in at some point over the weekend.
“The Librarian has now arrived at work, she is missing the majority of her hair and several bald spots are visible but she appears otherwise unharmed, unless you count the cold sore which persists and the strange rash that has appeared on her chest, just above her rather abundant cleavage. Disciplinary action could be forthcoming depending on the Librarian’s willingness to provide free blowjobs for management, once the cold sores and rashes clear up.
August 4, 2009
1. Act like you believe all that is around you and follow along.
2. Never cry in front of you enemies.
3. Don’t overthink your decisions
4. Make some decisions.
5. Keep tweezers handy at all times.
6. Give it a shot…. get up before noon.
7. Look in the mirror after you dress for work.
8. Look at all that is around you and realize you don’t have to pretend it is how it is. And you don’t have to follow along.
9. Stop poisoning yourself. And stop poisoning your entire existence.
10. Listen to music, sing, play an instrument and don’t be afraid to sound stupid. But keep your audience small…. perhaps just yourself as audience. And a dog if you have one.
11. Eat food. Even if you think you will die from it.
12. Try to be as honest as you can, but only if you can take it as well as you can give it.
13. Cuddle some form of life daily.
14. Write trite shit on your blog if it makes you feel better. Because only you read this blog and it will remind you of what you feel someday.
15. Wish everyone would quit co-opting the song “Mad World” because it was your personal favorite secret song that has now gone viral.
16. Log off. But not forever. Because you still have options. Tomorrow you can question your integrity.
17. Don’t forget about Cuttlefish. They can tell you a lot about survival.
August 4, 2009
First trash news I read or heard about today was Ryan O’Neill “flirting” with his own daughter at Farrah’s funeral. He didn’t recognize his own daughter. She had to tell him it was her, Tatum…. And I thought my childhood was fucked up. Or my adulthood more likely. Or one gave way to the other…. blah blah blah….
On other fronts, I have many, many thoughts but probably not the chops to report on them. If you want deep, thoughtful and consistent blogging: GO ELSEWHERE.
But I do have a few things. One is this idea of getting A PHYSICAL. Of which I am supposed to be starting the process in the a.m. I figure I can have all these stupid tests and they will tell me what I already know. I am dying. How many years do I have left? Probably too many. My life expectancy far exceeds my financial ability to maintain, I fear. . But that’s an old crybaby tune I’ve been wailin for too long. “I’m a baby with a diaper and no one to change me” (diaper speak wanna be poet pun) was my college anthem. Either you get it or you don’t.
What? I’m not lugubrious enough tonight? Funny. I made a conscious decision the other morning to stop being so sad about everything. Funny how that works. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the crazier you become, the easier it is to say YES!!!!
Random: Watching Anthony Bourdain touring an underground bat habitat in Jamaica. Sliding down to a hot core of earth covered in “cockroach and bat feces” and whining about how awful it is. But no one is wearing gloves or any other protective clothing. You listen Bourdain! If you’re going underground into a sludge pile of feces, you wear gloves … at the least!
Stories. It’s all stories. And the telling…..
July 12, 2009
I found this post title in my draft posts the other morning. I think my intention that late night back on July 3, was to write about my ratty who I had discovered dead at 3 a.m. when I got up to get a glass of juice. Wonder what I thought I could write in my sleep walking state? Oh well… that shall remain a mystery. At any rate, as those 2 of you who read my drivel know, I have had two black hooded female rats for a couple of years. Delilah came first and then we decided she needed company and bought Baby. They have been delightful creatures but I have found them to be fairly high maintenance and somewhat demanding. They’re smart, so they need attention. I am guessing since Baby died, Delilah will probably go soon since they were each other’s world. These will be the last rodents we will own. Ever. We have had white mice, hamsters, pygmy hamsters and now rats. They don’t live long and the cemetary plot is getting full.
Scout’s ashes came back in a sweet little wooden box. We put it by a photo of him and my daughter and put his purple collar over the picture frame. The loss of Scout still looms on my psyche’s horizon. I never fully grieved his death. And now we have Willy. Crazy Willy. He’s like a giant Scout with brain damage. It all makes for some very weird feelings. Developing affection for a new dog is not difficult for me, being an avid animal lover, but still I feel like I’m betraying Scout in some way. It’s as if I took my emotions and stuffed them in a bag and then just tacked them onto Willy. Weird and disorienting on some level.
On other fronts, the train keeps barrelling down the crazytracks. I’ve decided to just start chasing butterflies and give up on worrying about anything. Besides, I hear conflicting stories about the world ending or being beset by solar flaring in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar, so if I can just keep the bill collectors at bay for a few more years I should be set.
June 30, 2009
I will not talk about seeing the Jackson Five when I was 12 and one dad drove 6 of us to the one venue in Columbia SC that could handle such a crowd….. and how we screamed and laughed and cried and loved those black boys and how back in 1970 it wasn’t yet cool to love black boys (except on the vinyl) … and I took a classical piece I had learned for piano recital and added words to it and would play it over and over… “Tito, Michael, Jermaine, Jackie, Marlon ….. ” and then i forget the names= were there only really 5? seemed like more) “The Jackson Five is my favorite band forever” la, la, la………. all set to a white girl’s classical etude….
Thanks for the memories.
June 28, 2009
Saturday at the library:
1. A very tall, very kind-faced older man brings his mother (I assume) into the library several times a week. She is so bent and frail he must support and pretty much carry her with a sling that wraps around her back, to hold her up as she walks beside him. He brings her into the library very tenderly, and seats her at a table, making sure to scoot her chair up close, lest she fall to the floor. He proceeds to browse the Large Print books as she sits bewildered and disoriented in her seat. From time to time he comes to her side to whisper to her that he is nearby and she need not worry. Then he whispers to her gently “but I know you will worry” and he says it so lovingly I cannot look away as I watch from the reference desk.
2. M., an 80 or older-something woman with thinning hair and a stoop of her own, comes to the library often with her mentally disabled son D., who loves to waive and say hi to everyone. He must be at least 50. They have no other relatives in Seattle. M. has other sons in far away states, but she is the sole caretaker of D. She is getting very frail and old but always has a good question for me at the reference desk and after all these years we are on a first name basis. She loves to ask for Martha Stewart recipes. But today she is asking for information on gynecological oncologists. This causes me some alarm or at least a bit of concern, but I do not probe. I simply give her the information she wants. She hobbles out of the library, these days using a walker. I ask if she needs any help to her car. She refrains from taking my help as her polyester elastic waist pants sag down below her waist. I wonder where D. has gone, but he appears at her heels within seconds, waiving goodbye. I wonder what will become of him when she is gone.
3. A young girl lingers in the Teen corner of the library for a while. I notice. Her mom is nearby. I finally ask if she’s finding anything to read. She says “you came to my school”… which in fact I did. Her mom tells me that I had “inspired” her daugher to read. That she took notes about the books I talked about, and all of the girls in her class did the same. The girl is not embarrassed or shy about this interaction in the least – she is open and enthusiastic, not what I am used to. I feel true happiness at this point. This is when things come together. They are both so nice and interested in books and reading and for a moment I feel Golden. And they are Golden. We are Golden together for an instant. And, to top it off, her name is Kenedy. One “n”.
4. A young boy comes to the desk to redeem his summer reading certificate. He has completed his 10 books and looks to me for the grand summation of the finishing. I am tired, depressed, slightly hungover and fed up with life in general. But I have to step up and be the good librarian, the enthusiastic congratulatory librarian… he has completed his Reading Record and now gets to claim his prizes!!!!.. I do this every 20 minutes or so when working the desk during the summer. It is alternately heartwarming and mind numbing. I help Henry understand all that he must now do: filling our forms, getting stickers, choosing a book, reading more books, blah blah blah. And then I realize Henry is the same “Henry” I recall as a 2 year old. A precocious 2 year old who was our favorite kid in the library ever. But now he’s 8 years old. I realize I am stuck in a time warp. I have expected my people to remain the same, regardless of time’s passage. Henry is 8? I have been watching these same patrons for 10 years and I’m still in denial that they would ever change.. that they would ever grow older, ever die, ever leave? I live in a time warp, I tell Henry’s mom.
In fact, I believe I do.
June 20, 2009
Modest Mouse. That song. “And we were dumb dumb dumber than the dirt dirt dirt on the ground.” Check.
Details are neither necessary nor advisable at this point. A self destructive streak can never be unpainted from the soul. Once placed, it remains at the core of one’s existence, manifesting in various forms. Sometimes it’s the “I can’t stop loving that man, even if he tromps my heart a million times” and sometimes it’s the “I can’t stop tromping on my own heart no matter how resolved I am to stop it.” In either case the end result is the same. Desolation. Solitude. Emptiness. It’s where I started out and where I end up consistently. The boot to the heart. Down in the dirt. Lower than before, if that can possibly be.
June 14, 2009
Spent yesterday splashing around in the backyard pool at the ex’s with my daughter and the dogs. It’s one of those medium size above-ground deals, not a real pool, mind you. But we floated around and ate hot dogs and watched the doggies chase each other and I wore a bikini, which was a sight to see, because there was no one to endure the spectacle besides my daughter and the ex, so who cares? Anyway it was pretty pleasant but the girl ended up with quite a sunburn on her back. Why this is interesting at all will be explained later in this post.
So last night, we were looking through my closet for a pair of pants I couldn’t find and she turns to me and says “Don’t worry, mom. I already found your dildo.” With her little mischevious smile these words came from her baby mouth??? I asked how she even knew the word “dildo”, to which she replied “I’m in 7th grade.” Ughhhhhhh…. Still processing the encounter. I didn’t make too big a deal of it. I guess the less said the better in this case. We did laugh a little over it, so at least there was humor in the interaction. My hope is that humor will save me from many bad parenting moments. And there have been so many, as you might guess.
Today, I am at work in my neighborhood library and she walked over from the apartment to see me here. Her back is killing her from the sunburn so I take her over to the drugstore across the street and buy some soothing spray for the burn. We come back here to the library and go into the public restroom. She takes her shirt off so I can spray her back. She can’t wear a bra due to the pain, so she’s basically nude from the waist up. I spray her back and then decide I have to pee so while she’s letting the air dry her back I’m there peeing and notice her hair has fallen into the wet spray. I hop up, pull up my underwear but not my jeans and pull her hair up so it won’t get wet. At that point the door opens (we forgot to lock it…. ) and a lady sees me standing there with my pants down around my ankles, E’s shirt is off and I’m standing right up behind her holding her hair. Ackkkkkkk! Child molester in the public bathroom!!!! We were laughing so hard and so loud, it was ridiculous.
I composed myself and exited the loo to explain to the lady what we were doing. Explained that I am indeed the librarian on duty and NOT a pervert. She seemed to think it was funny too. I hope.
June 2, 2009
The door opened. I was born. I can’t say I chose to come through that mortal portal, yet I must say I have never resisted the path that lay before the door. At times, I faltered, But I always continued down the path. Moss hanging from trees, spiderwebs, muddy swamps, golden trails of green, green grass .. trees in Spring, soft fluffy snow in Winter. Summer as I remember it. But mostly Spring and Fall – being born and then dying – beautifully and consistently. …… I kept following the path. I have no idea if it was by choice or predestination, genetics, bad luck, dumb luck. Chaos.
grindchopblend 