nomads

i miss throwing things into bags and taking off. didn’t even remember what that was like till sunday, when reasons i will leave undisclosed made it necessary to vacate these premeses - necessitated flight. i felt like a fleeing demon – tossing books and shoes into plastic grocery bags, trying to find a hair brush and double-checking for my camera – i tucked underwear and extra socks in my purse, made sure i had the proper pill bottles and gloves, and was out the fucking door with my shoes barely tied. it was exhilarating, familiar, comfortable. i shook my foot the rest of the day. shook it with the shoe half off, dangling, its mind not made up. staying, going, staying, going. joe strummer in my foot.

now i want to move. live in a winnebago. live in my car. stash my flashdrives, notebooks, three shirts and a jacket in a tote bag and toss it into the car. anything missing can be found at a gas station at 3am.

what do we need? really? what do we need? i can see us in a winnebago for life, adam at the table with his colored pencils and geometry books, glasses perched on his 6-yr-old nose (i always picture him as a kid with glasses – it’s special, jerrod would get it, he was a kid with glasses, too), me with a notebook, drooling against the window as the scenery ticked past, stripes of color, eric at the wheel with his big fake serious driving face on but smiling at the eyes. the only way to raise an american child without him becoming an xbox child.

dreaming this for us. we own our appliances, but so fucking what? there is no security in the world. and i like my possesions with handles.

loved that big turkey in Skinny Legs and All. that would really top off the fantasy.

the formica on the fold out kitchen table would be orange and gold flecked, and adam’s glasses would be gold-rimmed – he’d be drawing comics on graph paper, old-fashioned schoolbooks scattered around, oversized batman shirt, sock feet. i would be barefoot and in a sundress, my head would be nearly shaved. the laptop charger and camera charger would be near each other, but i would scribble in the notebook. eric would wear a white t-shirt and aviators, shorts – and flipflops of course, because the crazy bastard would maintain it was illegal to drive barefoot. my yoda bobblehead would be glued to the dash, and in the fantasy we are somewhere in new mexico, of course – the road is straight and flat and the only colors outside are blue and sand. the radio is low, i can’t quite hear it, mainly we listen to each other and bob marley and bluegrass.

this is fantasy. i like trees. i like roots. i like knowing where everything is. i like our horses, i like the pregnant dog. but i also like WIND.

eric’s birthday & adam’s letter to santa (photos)

Not Enough Xanax in the World

both sets of parents live in this town. that means 2 dinners in one day. that means 2 turkeys in one day. that means 2 FAMILIES in one day. that means 2 entirely unique sets of etiquette in one day. that means 2 entirely unique sets of personal family problems in one day. that means 2 sets of thinly veiled resentment for doing half the time with each family. that means leaving early from one dinner and arriving late at another dinner. that all means we should probably move to canada….

tomorrow is eric’s birthday, he’ll be 34 and is probably most thankful that his birthday doesn’t fall on thanksgiving this year.

sunday november 21st (photos)

they’re both almost too gorgeous to be real <3

an evening of “theater”

munchkin is off to candyland for the night, so i’m forcing eric to go with me to see the jackson high school fall production of Alice In Wonderland. even though it will most likely suck. even though we will spend the majority of the evening gripping hands, gritting our teeth and avoiding eye contact to keep from bursting into laughter, and i will throw furtive glances around, trying still after all this time to steer clear of mr. kight.

why go? because i did it. because i loved the fall plays in high school. because we worked really fucking hard on a lump of shit, and got so excited about it, and there was never enough money or enough boys or even close to a full house. because even though the director always gave the prime roles to the girls from her church sunday school class and the REALLY NICE girl who couldn’t sing or act for shit but tried so hard you pitied her and goddamned if she didn’t go to the tanning bed the 3 weeks before opening night in her role as dracula’s wife because the sequined dress she was wearing as her costume would ”just look weird” if she were pale, even though every year the backstage area was one big naked dressing room UNTIL the mormon kid told the principal and we had to start trekking up and down the stairs to the locker rooms to change, even though we mainly used our own costumes and makeup and money and ingenuity – it was still A STAGE.

we still got to be ON STAGE. and when i was 16, i had the best 2 months of my highschool experience after 2 new inexperienced directors signed on and cast all my friends and i in the leads. the play was super short so we had to re-write it, we made it naughty. drank before practice out of the tiny SoCo bottles from the liquor store. my best girl friend, best gay friend, and the boy all 3 of us had crushes on were the lead detectives in that play, and we had a blast. the play sucked, the acting was clunky and the rewrites got us in trouble, but damn we were famous for a weekend – and for a few weeks before that we were hardcore (half-drunk) SERIOUS actors.

true, at the time of the yearbook photos for this particular fall play i was being detained by a police officer in a cemetery for leaving my keys and purse in an unattended car (some flower-bringers had discovered it and called the po), and by the time everything was explained and we were free to go to practice we’d missed the pictures and my participation in this play is barely documented, it was a helluva time. best teenage autumn ever.

so. i’ll go. i won’t laugh in a way anyone can hear me. even though it’s the highschool play, it will be held in the middle school (which was the OLD highschool) because when they built the brand new highschool with the better-than-most-colleges football field, they didn’t put in a real auditorium. gotta do the plays at the middle school.  eh, teenage commerce. violence and sweat will always sell better than unintentional comedy.

and because it’s the fall play, my spirits will be riding high on nostalgia and there will be much debauchery afterwards…..

Stickers on Me

adam found an incredibaly aged sheet of stickers that go with some sort of  Truth or Dare kit or game, and over the course of the day exactly 5 of these ended up on me. because it’s thursday night, because it’s finally quiet, because i have 10 minutes to kill, i will answer these stickers.

right shoulder: Q: what’s the one thing you think about all the time?  A:  my kid, the neuroses i may be inflicting upon him.

left shoulder: Q: what’s the most disgusting thing you ever did?  A:  wrapped my feet in plastic bags and mopped up human feces in a BP bathroom. (oh yeah, why not be honest??)

right underarm: Q: what’s the worst thing you ever did and got busted A: the important people know the answer to this one. and everyone i know THINKS they know the answer, and i suspect the answer would be different from everyone….

right knee: Dare: stand on your head and sing old mcdonald. response : no. i spent 45 mins popping bubble wrap this evening, i’m frickin exhausted.

left knee: Q: have you ever borrowed something and not returned it? like what? A: EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER BORROWED. books, clothes,  shoes,  jackets,  jewelry,  you name it.  hand it over and i will keep it.

also, i’ve decided to finish a novel. i shall have help.

Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn

headcold household, day 3, last day. over the course of sunday and yesterday, eric and adam have managed to watch almost all 3 original star wars movies – they have 45 minutes of Return of the Jedi left, which i suspect they will finish tonight. adam’s favorite is R2D2, which he pronounces slighly different each time. he gets a consistent 3 out of 4 of the letter/number combo right. he also says yoda is a cat, a GIRL cat, and calls him toyoda (like “toyota,”  hot wheels enthusiast that he is) half the time. it’s been a pretty good sick household. characterized mainly by exhaustion and mouth-breathing as opposed to crankiness and coughing – i’ll take the former combination any day.

but we’re getting better. if eric could curl up on the couch with us it would almost be a pleasant sickness, it’s just bone-cold rain and grey skies outside the last few days anyway. being sick while the sun shines is a waste. being sick while it rains cold november – i’m gonna pull myslef quickly away from a guns n roses reference and move along – anyway, sick in this weather is just good time management. get the change of seasons colds out of the way before the sun comes back.

plus, cold pills make me sleep like the dead, so i’ve not been fighting the insomnia. i sleep through the night and hear nothing – unless adam speaks. it’s a weird characteristic of motherhood – eric can rattle around in the room, fight the dogs on the porch, i don’t hear a thing – but if the kid sits up across the hall and peeps “mommy?”  i’m immediately conscious. only children’s voices would call people back through a ouija board, i think. only your child’s voice could pull you back from the dead places. morbid maybe in what is essentially a christmas shopping post, but true. you can only wake your parents from the dead….

SO. point was, i started wandering around on etsy looking for xmas presents of the affordable and original variety while the boys bonded over “light savers,” and while shopping for a nameless lady friend in the owl watch section i ended up in the batman section and remembered either falsely or by actual memory her fondness for Poison Ivy, and from there of course wandered into the bizarre relationship with Harley Quinn, whom i only knew a few details about – since last night i have submerged myself in a cold pill haze of comic book pages, cartoon clips and fan art based around Ivy & Harley, and may have stumbled into an entirely new framework to show love, and caricature our relationship in a fun and gorgeous way…. that is, IF her love of Poison Ivy is not false memory…. 

all i’ve actually ordered so far is 2 sets of aqua globes for the females-in-law. kiddo is eating appleasauce and mouth-breathing watching ppg while i drink coffee and watch batman cartoons on youtube…. and you know what?? poison ivy was based on bettie page. whoda thought?

http://media.photobucket.com/image/poison+ivy+harley+quinn/WolfsRain0617/Alternative%2520ART/poisoniveanharley.jpg

Indian Summer (photos)

Ketch & Yoko

chalk up another to my “almost get to have sex with someone (semi)famous” dream affliction.

dreamed amy and i were in athens to see old crow, super-exclusive tickets to a very small venue where they were filming a concert video for release – we ran into mitch and told him we’d sneak him in with us, we were front row and figured we’d just go right up front and if there was an extra seat next to us he could just confidently sit in it and it woud be no problem – this turned out to be exactly how it worked out.

the place was super small, with those old-fashioned chipped wood fold-down seats of an old theater at a super steep angle, i’d guess 100-max capacity.

in the course of settling ourselves i spotted the side door to the left of the stage and managed to weasel my way confidently back there (as is my way) after explaining where i was going to amy & mitch. there were only a couple people in the “backstage” area, it was more like a plain waiting room type area with generic dark green upholstered chairs and a long table with snacks and a coffee pot on it, i struck up a conversation with ketch (main objective from the beginning of course, go right for the money – money not meaning money of course money meaning dick - shameless me) and i remember he laughed and was nice and flirty and we talked and he remembered meeting me from  long ago (i’m so damned MEMORABLE and effortlessly charming in my dreams, these people are powerless to resist me), notably a real life concert in athens at the blue gator in  2006 when i honestly had managed to weasel my way  backstage through sheer honest politeness and hang out with the band for the half hour before they went on – to namedrop even more, the kid that goes by the name Woody Pines now and just introduced himself as Woody then was also there and he ended up guesting with them onstage playing washboard and harmonica, but that’s enough real-life BACK TO THE DREAM - anyway, ketch remembered me, we were talking, there was arm-touching of that hubba hubba flirty way, but what got me and made me think he LIKED me and the conversationing was that he took the styrofoam cup of coffee from my hand and poured it into a mug, things like that strike me as kind as opposed to just get-in-your-pants, and the mug was red and ended up on the table, i missed my coffee later, but i digress…

it was closer to concert time and more people were occupying the backstage area and suddenly a dumpy blonde yelled at me from across the room to stop hitting on her husband – i’m not going to play dream-ignorant and say i was unaware in my subconscious of the existence of lydia peelle, but my dream was UNKIND to her appearance, her arms were not in fact her low point - and everyone around got this embarassed sort of vibe and kept conversing though it was at a lower decibel, and i was incredibly brave and turned and asked what she wanted or something equally neutral and she said she was the WIFE and the mother of his CHILD and she wanted me OUT there was going to be a concert and they were trying to get ready and suddenly everyone was on edge and i told her that she wasn’t a member of the band and if i was to leave then her husband should tell me so and i would gladly return to my seat, and i whispered sort of out of the side of my mouth to him to aske me nicely to leave, because i remember feeling it was very important that i not back down to her, it was bizarre. so he sort of apologized quietly and she started to yell and he said “maybe you should go, we’re getting ready to start” and she was yelling and someone was escorting her out, too.

got back to my seat (sans coffee) and amy and mitch asked me what the hell was going on and i said i’d been hitting on ketch and his wife came in and started yelling (i remember laughing while relating this, and mitch was very lowdown in his seat expressing extreme guilt on his face for his stolen seat, he even had a toboggon low on his head, but amy was laughing with her hands over her mouth)  and as the band was coming onto stage some people came and asked us to leave, and we were a bit confused but the lights were going down and the audience was clapping and i knew they were filming so we went, and in the lobby the manager was there and the wife, and everyone seemed to want to know the deal and the wife (dumpy redneck subconscious-loathing version of lydia peelle) started yelling at me again telling me to leave, she was responsible for us being escorted out.

the manager lost it and started yelling at her about always starting this shit and blah blah and to shut up about the father of her child, everyone knew the baby wasn’t his etc etc, there was a very jerry springer-like scene in the lobby and it became clear this whole thing was the LAST THING the manager was going to take, this fight had been long-brewing and i was morbidly satisfied i had been the catalyst.

i also realized during the fighting that the concert was NOT still going and the doors to the mini-auditorium were open and the rest of the audience was hearing everything, and the band was off the stage, and the manager was apologizing to us and telling us to go back to our seats and as we went in the wife yelled “if she’s going to be here this concert is not happening!” and the manager yelled back “you’re not in the band, so what you think doesn’t matter!” and the doors were slamming and there was confusion and i was talking to ketch again at the foot of the stage, he was apologizing and asking me to not leave after, not leave, explain, talk, blah blah, and the concert organizers were apologizing onstage to the audience, explaining that they were going to start over from the entrance because of the filming, and the lights went down and the band went backstage, and it was all starting over….

and here’s the kicker – the 3 of us were incredibly happy with the way things were turning out, until halfway through the show when the venue people came in and kicked all three of us out for stealing a VIP seat!!! priceless and hilarious, right? amy and i were laughing and mitch was NOT as they physically walked us out through the dark theater and i was wondering how on earth i was going to get back in after the concert….

that’s all i’ve got. we were bundling up in our winter gear in the lobby surrounded by security and laughing when i woke up.

tuesday night pleasantries

sometimes not finding sleep on a weeknight post-coitus turns into lonely internet rambling that underscores middle of the night Loneliness with a tinge of Melancholia, especially if your feet are bare and it’s november -

other times you wake up to an email from a friend you’d feared lost just after finding, a horoscope that says it might be okay to be a little two-faced (or double-sided like a coin, if you prefer), and discovering your grinning mug and that of your sister’s in a few photos (5,6,11) on the website of a lovely philosopher met on a lovely spring day: http://www.zentennyson.com/default.html  – i’ll link that in here permanently so angela and heather can more easily find it

my return to bed will be to sleep. this brief interlude of wakefulness has proved fortifying as opposed to alienating thanks to andrea, rob breszny & frank tennyson <3

p.s. amy has a picture of her own hand holding a FIVE leaf clover – i know it’s real because i recognize her thumb. it’s preposterous!

everyone looks better bald

… well, almost everyone. hair takes away from faces. yes, i was bored. yes, i left a lot of people out, but i still gathered some awfully pretty pictures….

(p.s. exceptions to this rule are tom waits and benicio del toro, who both have hair parallel to their personalities. especially tom waits, even though i also like him bald. yes, this is my teen beat indulgent sexy post and i’m talking about TOM WAITS…..)

balloons

the car is full of  balloons for adam’s big-boy-wearing-underpants semi-party. yellow cake, brown candles…. he’ll love it. he slowed down long enough to talk to me on the phone this morning for about 15 seconds, he was teaching Papa his numbers (apparently it’s the craziest thing in the world that my dad doesn’t know his numbers, so my kid has appointed himself tutor – love my dad for that) and didn’t really have time for a break from his lessons. we’ll have a hard time getting him home tonight, especially once he’s full of cake and ice cream.

the sky is flat grey. my organs are doing battle with each other, i think. there’s the feeling of jostling around for space. my eyeballs and brain seem to want the same space in my head. it’s the sky, i think. and bad sleep forever. and ever and ever. as soon as the sky breaks open i’ll start breathing normally again.

bellah is really starting to show. i am getting preposterously excited about a litter of illegitimate puppies…. maybe i should just put ribbons around their necks and hand them out as gifts to family members – mwahahaha. a fat black puppy with a red ribbon. nothing is cuter. 

no ending for this. being more promiscuous with my stories, just handing them out whenever someone shows interest. nudity.

balloons. cake. ice cream. grey sky. saturday.

Guy Fawkes Day

weird friday shakes today – my brain is exhausted i think – plus i think i’m hallucinating, because i could SWEAR it’s snowing. what the fuck? i have to press my face on the window and let my jaw hang for a moment while i assess this situation…..

well, i think it WAS snowing.

the outsides of my wrists and the underside of my mandible (falling into top 5 favorite words of all time) are red from scratching, another sign of exhaustion. luckily i cut my nails way down so i’m not actually scratching myself. i just get so ITCHY when the battery light comes on. feel like that creepy running-down teddy ruxpin voice is going to come out every time i open my mouth, or the sound a tape makes when you fast-forward it - WWWHHHHEEEEEEEEE – shudders and bursts before randomness dissolves into nothing.  i’m repeating myself to the kiddo – i can tell because he doesn’t want to play with me, he’s content to just play cars, drums, and just throw me those exasperated toddler looks now and then when i suggest something unappealing. tonight is grandparent night, he’s ready for a break from me anyway.

birds and birds on the wires. the flocks of blackbirds have been moving through the last two days, moving like schools of fish.

gonna break into a ramble, better wrap this up. it’s friday. there’s a netflix movie in the mailbox, it’s either robin hood (eric’s pick) or equus (combo pick).  tonight i’ll sleep. tomorrow i’ll sleep in, then watch judi dench in my pajamas with a cup of coffee, and by afternoon i should have most of my brain matter gathered back up. some of it’s in the bathroom, some under the bed, a LOT is stuck in between the keys on this keyboard, and the rest is on the bottom of all our shoes….

close to fragmenting. have to stop internet communication for the weekend, everything comes out wrong when i’m tired. this is all coming out wrong. sounds like a major deal when it’s just an average burnout from a long 2 weeks. i’ll be 5X5 tomorrow.

WHAT DOES 5X5 ACTUALLY MEAN?? where did that come from? is it about a square??? anyway, time to burn some effigies or blow something up, all depends on which side i decide to choose for the day – american film version or popular british version. normally i side with whatever includes the most fire, but this really is a can’ t lose situation.

In Other News

yeah, i’m going to vote. also, Happy Dia de Los Muertos!! and here are trick-or-treat pictures.

All Saints’ Day