i obsess.

good, not great, post about my almost-suicide yesterday.

I hesitate to share this.  I worry.  I worry that I holler “wolf” and you say, oh.  Sure.  Heard it.  And then you go away and watch something more entertaining, where people commit to things and follow through and do so with quiet determination.  You know.  Interesting behavior.  (That’s what the director of my acting school said, that the actors who are most absorbing to watch aren’t the ones who give in easily to crying; it’s the ones who *fight* the tears.  Struggle to keep from losing their composure, losing sometimes for a moment, but mostly managing to keep a stiff upper-lip.  Face the hardship with stalwart strength.) 

I didn’t choose to apply those lessons to life on the stage.  I decided to use them for real life.  I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME TELL YOU WHY.  Me, the girl who delves to the part inside where there is poo-flecked flotsam, where there is detritus and sturm-und-drang and there is also a misplaced key from that one apartment where the memories are haphazard and patchy and drunken and stumbly.  Where the world revolved around sleeping until 3 p.m. because of working at a strip club until 2:30 a.m. followed by a tired-toed exodus to the nearest Denny’s where a few of us would gather to eat questionably-cooked eggs and laugh at the torrid events of the night, sometimes rejoicing over our good fortune, sometimes despairing over where next week’s rent-and-utilities bill money was to come from. 

The reasons for applying acting lessons to life would make sense if I were to unravel them.  I shall.  (I shall try.)  Jeff, my brother, was never normal.  Neither were my parents.  I looked to them for behavior cues in the early stages but recognized the discomfort those behaviors caused in the people around us when I got to be, I don’t know, grade-school age?, and thereafter did my level best to act like anyone else (with, need I mention?, little success).

Enter acting school.  Use it for acting?  WHY?  When I could use it for something far, far more imperative: fooling others into appearing normal on an everyday basis.  DUDE, sign me UP.  I took the lessons from the classes and incorporated them into my daily life.  I don’t know what kind of actor I was (though I did enjoy it, I think, but that wasn’t what I was there for and never pretended it was).  I only know that it taught me how to blend, and that’s what I sought.

I almost took my life (took it where?  Took it to the park?  To the zoo?  The department store?  A movie?  Grocery shopping?  For coffee?  On a personal journey?  Oh, ahhahahhHAHAHAHhaha, I slay me) yesterday.  I stayed home from work, and, against my husband’s beseeching request, as he readied himself for work, remained in bed until nearly lunchtime.  I slept, mostly.  But when I woke, nothing was more logical than the thought of getting up and walking straight into the kitchen where my adhd medication (generic Adderal) resides, stoic, in the cabinet alongside the other medicinal soldiers, the whole regiment a little imbalanced because some of the bottles will simply not click into place, being round, or some daredevils who resist squareness and maintain their rectangular-yet-slightly-oval’d shape, WEIRDOS (aspirin – *sigh*), I thought-counted them into my hand, gingerly, careful to amass the even amount, ten, or twenty.  Yes.  Twenty would do it.  But maybe ten would do just as well?  And if I could get by with ten, why waste the others?  I’m not a fan of overkill.  KILL, yes.  Overkill, no.  (Shut up with your pointing and hand-covered mouth to the gigantic, neon “irony” sign right there in the way of the rest of this post.  I see it too.  Who could miss it?  I don’t WANT to miss it.  I want to ignore it.  Fucker.)

(The sign.  Not you.  I dislike your pointing and guffawing but I don’t dislike you.)

Seventeen pills, though, is messy.  I like even.  I like aligned.  I dislike imperfect, I abhor unfinished.  I’m unfinished.  I can’t finish.  Anything.  I am an utter failure at all I lay my hands on.  This blog is a relevant example.  I’ve never been consistent in my blogging.  When I can really write.  Write well.  I can.  I know I can.  (Today I know.  Yesterday I didn’t, and I won’t tomorrow.  But today, I know.)

So ten or twenty it had to be.  But the decision, another roadblock of Everest proportions, the decision of which, I could not make it.  Instead, I lay there, pondering the pills, wondering at their color, a dusty teal-blue, sort of oceanic, but dusty, so maybe what the ocean would look like if it were covered in desert sand, where the sand was stained, tainted, ruined by the ocean’s heaving bosom of color.  The crosses stamped on their wee roundness.  Crosses.  So tidy.  So easy to parse.  So easy to hang from.

And I decided, but I needed Caleb to know what happened.  Only, I didn’t have the balls to tell him.  I had to tell someone else.  I don’t have Jenny’s number anymore since I accidentally erased my entire phone book in my phone a few weeks ago when I updated the software and didn’t back up the contents (oh.  Hi!, i-do-dumb-things), but I would have probably called her if I had it. (And if you click through the link you'll see why I feel so stupid about complaining that I'm miserable ONCE AGAIN, because I've blogged similarly so often and for so long. 

I cannot stand myself.) 

I do have Gwen’s number, so I called her.  Partly because I knew she would answer (even though she’s in Switzerland, it was after the girls were in bed and she’d be home and have time to talk).  Partly because I knew I could ask her to contact Caleb, even if she just used twitter to DM him.  I could tell her.  She could tell him.  She could explain.  Explain why.  She’s so logical.  So capable of translating things from illogic to logic.  I reasoned thusly, dry-eyed.  I felt no compulsion to cry.  What’s sad about something so smart?  So sane?  I would finally free everyone from having to bear the burden of me.

It wasn’t until I called her to tell her that I was going to do it that I cried, not sobbing but still, choked up, and with tears running, ugly, down my cheeks and into my hair.  Onto my pillow.  I heard myself, how lame I sounded.  How weak.  How defenseless.  I knew I would resent Gwen for having to hear it.  I wished I hadn’t called her.  But then, somehow, she got me to laugh and think of something else.  And then my crying was more coughing, and I wasn’t as fixed on the dusty-blue cross-stamps on the Adderal, I was agreeing that it would be good to put on pants, to brush my teeth, to go and stand in the middle of Trader Joe’s and drink a smoothie and watch, watch the people in all their imperfect glory as they wheeled by on their ordinary errands of sustenance and routine and wonderful prosaic chip-and-salsa banality.

She says I owe her the Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” at karaoke in New York at the BlogHer conference this summer.  (If I go.  I may go.  Money is sketchy.  Let’s not talk about it.)  I agree.  She knows it’s funny for me to sing something so obvious.  So do I.  (And I have to fight against the urge to spew the opposite of the truth, or, that is, to deliver the wretched rejection of someone who held me by the hand as I scrambled my feet in gravel on the ledge, rather than the heartfelt gratitude I know I owe.  But: to owe someone to that great height, it's horrible.  I know she understands and won't rub it in or try to take credit, will lightly dismiss the whole business as having been entirely up to me, and I tremble at the thought of thanking her when I recognize my own future possible desire to erase her from my life so as not to have to remember that phone call, I AM A FUCKED UP FUCKWAD, <---evidence.)  I think keeping such awful desires obvious, keeping the light focused on them, is really important.  It’s only when I begin to pretend that I’m not going to occasionally long to (say it, Debbie, JUST SAY IT) -- kill myself (ugh!, shudder!), to act as though I’m fine, I’m doing fine, to act this pretend-part of fineness,

to act,

that I lose the essential piece of connectedness to whatever keeps me from foraging for an even number of the instruments of potential self-killing.

So I’m not consistent.  So I’m uneven and probably as bipolar as I’ve denied that I am to myself for years after the labored diagnosis of bipolarism (combined with adhd, which makes it all so much more confusing, like the bipolar is multiplied by the adhd to the fourth power, or vice-versa) in November of 2000, so I don’t finish things and I quit and I have uneven commitment to all the things I have professed, once upon a glorious time, to love.  So I do all of this. 

It doesn’t mean I am going to quit trying to live.

I’M NOT GOING TO QUIT TRYING TO LIVE.

Okay?  Okay.

*

And then I did a brilliant thing and submitted this piece to Brene Brown's amazing blog, A Week of Worthiness, in answer to her request for pieces on working to be okay.  Which I'm doing.  Just, well, some days are harder than others.  This is the best I could do yesterday.  Which means I! WIN! (for now).

(Good enough.)

pricked.

I hate having my blood drawn.  The only time it was easy, the one, one time - THAT one time, was the day I held a several-months-old Jack, a wriggling, heavy babe, and I was so intent, so wrapt in minding him, so he wouldn't see what they were doing to my other arm that I forgot to be scared while they pulled the deep hued liquid from what is apparently a monster vein.

Today wasn't so bad.  It only stung for a moment.

And then in twelve days I hear from the doctor as to whether I have eggs enough to build-a-baby a second time.  Without IVF.  (I have nothing against IVF, aside from envying those with the duckets to incorporate it into their reproduction style.  Envying.  I don't only save my envy for them, though, rather, I envy all who can afford what I cannot.  It seems I am destined to forever play catch-up to my peers in this life.)

We're not giving up yet, though.  Until I hear the odds are slim, we're keeping on with this shot at kid number 2.

I have a fricking present for it, is the thing.  I bought it a few years ago.  It's a little hand-made elephant, sewn of quilt pieces (I think; I don't accurately recall because I hid it well away after I lost the baby last summer).

I can't have bought that present in vain (in vein?).  I believe in that future baby's blood as much as in the blood the man drew from my arm.  If I have monster veins, then I can have monster faith in my ovaries.

you people in there inside the internets over there: get ready for some crazy-pie. (crazy DELICIOUS, and you know this.)

*I wrote this last night.  I was un-sober.  Go forth and read, if you dare.

Jersey-Shore-speak has embraced my tongue, it would seem.  Like a snake dry-humping a mongoose clothed in a colloquialism.  And you thought I was gonna say codpiece.

I'm sort of enchanted by that notion.  There's an exoticablayciousness imbued in the image of a snake wearing clothing.  Snakes don't strike me (YES! score) as the most sartorial of creatures on their good days, let alone the first couple bites at an all-you-can-eat lunch.

You know something weird and completely unrelated to the above?  (Because I'm sure you are ready to shiv me for leaving behind the thing about a snake at a buffet joint wearing golfing pants and a short-sleeve button up.  Polyester takes the lead!)  It's this:  Writing funny, writing in a deliberate, pointed fashion gets -- heyyyyy.

I just figured out something that's about twenty-five (okay, I LIKE even segments of time, GWEN, I appRECiate them because I'm a dullard, THERE) layers of everyone-including-my-four-year-old-knew-but me - namely, habits:  THEY'RE HABIT-FORMING.  My god.  Semantics knowledge, even in a limited amount, would've been tasty in my broham sandwich, back there.  HEY SEMANTICS, YOU WEREN'T HAM.  YOU WERE KRAFT SLICES.  NO.  NOT PLURAL.  SLICE.  SINGULAR.   

*laughs at Semantics' weak baby-tears*

(Semantics, as it happens?  NOT SO TOUGH AFTER ALL.)

I came here by way of the idea to post about Ella through this.  I know, technically, how it's going to feel to lose my pet, my dog, my family, but I don't know how to

/

/

/

I don't know how to lose another pet.  Not with a kid to watch me break down.  Break down.  I'm gonna break it down.  Imma make a workout video.  NO.  I'M GONNA MAKE A WORKOUT VIDEO.  Only I'm serious.  And it's gonna be me, working out to my gorgeously lame mom music that was hip anywhere from 5 to 20 years ago, and the only current thing I know about is Lady Gaga, which, seriously, I challenge you to find five people who haven't heard of Lady Gaga who aren't simultaneously in comas from watching other people in comas who were married to the people who invented comas.  But where was I about my fucking rad idea to make a workout video where I dance to my momtunes and make breakfast and call that a workout?  Like, I truly believe I've worked out?

YEAH.  THAT SHIT IS GONNA BE INSANE.

I should go.  I should note before I do that tonight, Ella went to sleep on Jack's bed.  Validly so.  Where he was asleep before her.  I SAID, HE was asleep. BEFORE HER.  *historic annotation here*

She lifted herself up after he went to sleep and lurched down from the bed, then trotted downstairs to hang out with her human dad.  It's weird to say that.  But he is.  Well, if not dad, pack-leader, then.  Important figure in her life.  Person who gives her food.  Dude who used to let her sleep on all the furniture before pack-mom put her foot down.  FELLOW DOG WHO WILL ALSO SLEEP ON EIGHTEEN-WEEK-UNWASHED SHEETS.  There.  It done got said.  As is proper.

I like her, okay I love her, I'm terrified to lose another dog.  Buffy (shut up my mom's fault not mine) was our dog from when I was eight until I was twenty four.  *soft whistle*  In some ways I'm *still* recovering from that loss.  I was scared to get another dog.  The thought of loving another creature even nearly so much as I did Buffy feels like curdled milk in my throat.  Jesus.  And in some ways I've kind of totally held myself away from her, always with the oh, the dog hair and the oh, god, the stank, and the get-out-my-way!  Not wanting to have to say goodbye in twelve or fourteen years.  And this - it's not been eight yet.  She's too young.

When my grandpa Ray died, he was eighty-four, he was (limp)armed and ready.  He had lung cancer and that's what killed him, but he was tired before its advent.  He died in our living room after lunch on a Sunday, and we put our dog down the next morning, skies gray as wet cement.  Buffy had been so ill, infirm, incontinent, my dad carrying him outside to piss and shit for over a month.  They didn't want to prolong the thing.  They'd actually kept him alive for Grandpa, who was staying with us during the last stages of his cancer, Grandpa, who loved the shit out of that dog.   And the shit, it was coming out.  Poor Dad!  Carrying Buffy!  Several times a day, even. 

And they'd already decided.  When Grandpa went, so would Buffy. 

It fucking sucked to mourn them both and not be sure who I was crying about.

I know, now, that even though I was incredibly angry with my parents for that decision cast in red-hot-poker-pointed iron, pressed to my skin, to my brother's dog-devoted flesh, I can't be so angry with them.  I find, again, my hypocrisy rearing its head and growling at my aware-brain when I see that I face a similar choice, a situation beyond my control where I must make a snap judgement and a split decision and it's for my family, this group of fellow travelers, I no longer have the liberty to point and say, you, you did this.  Because the finger hits me dead-center in my gut.  Golly.  That shit hurts.

I love my mom and dad even though they've hurt me.  I wish they accepted my non-acceptance of their religion.  If they could see it, see my choices, recognize their validity, 

that would be awesome but it ISN'T GONNA HAPPEN LET IT GO GEEEEEEEEZ.

I need to close.  Nothing's coming to complete this outline-for-the-lay-of-a-madman's-mind and wrapping-up hour hath arrived on wings of nascent taco chips (I had these KICK-ASS taco chips today from last night's burrito dinner and taco chips sound right now like kind of the next best thing to eating a roll of sour candy from the flat of Andy Samberg's palm. 

Oh, that's it, I've hit on the thing to close on.  Shy Ronnie. 

Have you ever even HEARD of such a piece of middle-age-lady-bait as Andy Samberg?  You know what that last sentence needs, there?  It needs a term that defines "middle-age-lady" in fewer syllables.  Gosh.  I surely wish there were one.

Poo.)

(But seriously, have I ever regaled you all with my vexing almost-toxic lust for Seth Rogen and all of his weirdbeard, Geeky with a TM friends?  I have a problem. 

I may be Stiffler's mom.)

Phew.  And you were worried this was gonna get sappy all over again.  I wouldn't do you like that, Boo.  I would not.  *kisses fingers, lets kisses ooze from hands like ladders of blood from an open wound*

why i started blogging.

Thanks for the (much-needed) reminder, Mrs. C.

not to be read if you possess a blueprint for enjoying your life.

The thing is, I'm going through a mid-life crisis, but it's kind of precious since it's my first one of what is certain to be a regular item on the menu of my life for the next, oh, fourteen-odd years.  It's kind of sweet and darling and golden in its twirly, twirly petticoats and its first-serious-wrinkles way.  It's adorable in its holy-shit-that-old-broad-in-the-mirror-is-me kinda fashion.  The genuine taken-aback by the quasi-unrecognizable element - it's nothing short of bizarre.

I was never traditionally gorgeous.  I wasn't a looker in high school.  Allow me to qualify that statement: I was not asked out on dates.  This was possibly more a lethal-to-sexual-development combination of an older, protective brother who was a well-known senior upon my arrival as a freshman, who most likely warned everyone of ugly mishaps if they so much as dared to turn their head while I bounced in blissful unawareness down a locker-filled hallway, and my being a gigantic fucking nerd.  I wasn't nerdy in dress, but I was nerdy in reputation, having been a member of the TAG (talented and gifted) program for all of grade school, etc., bla-dee-blowhard-blah.  I got academic awards and achieved - uh, stuff.  Good grades.  High marks in fitness, even.  Presidential fitness award.  Played classical piano for school assemblies.  Was in choir.  Church-attender.  "Good girl."  You know.  Typical hallmarks of your classic nerd.  (That and I have adhd and don't edit my thoughts super-well and was much, much verbally stumblier than I am now, and I am now very stupid in social settings so you can guess at how gawky and stumbly and unpleasant I was in all my excited, bubbly dorkiness.

Big-ass sigh.)

So.  Threatening older-brother who was a decorated athlete and over six feet tall in high school, x nerd signs all over my personal front yard = devestating lack of courting from all but the most annoying male members of the society of my high school for the bulk of my participation in its circumference, unwilling as I mostly was.  This informed my theory of How I Looked To People, Both Male and Female.  I.e., unattractive.

(A year in Brasil as an exchange student during my junior year, as a sixteen-, and then seventeen-year-old horny-ass girl in a foreign locale rife with seriously hot, very willing protagonists, UNaware of my nerdy persona nos Estados Unidos and aWARE that I was a horny-ass Americana, gave me a new perspective on my appearance.  I still chalked up the interest in my sexual wares as my being foreign, being American, sort of like how boys at my school would've probably behaved toward the female French exchange student, no matter how mildly attractive, if we'd ever had one, simply because of the stereotype about how sexy French girls are.  There sure as hell was a stereotype about American girls in Brasil, thanks to American cinema.  I was a disappointment to an awful lotta fellas who assumed we'd be fucking within seconds of an embrace based on the myth.  So I had enough sense to recognize I wasn't merely attractive as a result of my physical merits.  I just wasn't sure what the balance was.  I got that I was taken more at my current value than I would have been if I were still at home, attending my regular school, allotted all of the baggage of having grown up alongside the people there.  Still - a somewhat muddy reflection of me, in the end.)

Once my sentence at public school had been served, with time off in the foreign spot for good behavior, etc., I began to have a better idea of my appeal.  I wasn't sure, despite that, because the adhd is so off-putting and socially crippling.  I'd assess the mirror for hours, turning this way and that, smiling, pouting, mincing, but it never gave me that final assent: yes, you are pretty.  No, you are not pretty.

I just wanted to finalize it, just nail it down, so I could carry on and walk through my day either confident that I was, and behaving accordingly (whatever that fucking would've entailed), or not.  I settled on -- feeling unsettled.

I had a few boyfriends after high school, between the years of nineteen and twenty-one, one of whom was very outdoors-adoring, and once I'd been on enough adventure-dates with him I realized I hated a) makeup and b) him.  (He was an utter ass; lovable, but really, just as ass as a human can be.)  The important thing I took from the relationship was how stupid and pointless makeup is (I'd already come to this conclusion about bras that give the appearance of larger, rounder breasts) - the deception is just embarrassing once the moment of truth arrives, and then you feel like you owe the lucky person an explanation, which sort of totally sucks the sexy out of a moment like nothing else. 

So I was determined to discover the level of my attractiveness to those-who-would-be-attracted based on my natural appearance.  (Also, I figured out just how much I genuinely liked sex, having it, and not allowing stupid shiz like embarrassing, oh!, my breasts are NOT double-Ds! moments to complicate or, truly, dilute the pleasure potential.  HEY, YOU, EMBARRASSMENT: GET OUTTA MY ORGASM.)

Enter stripping.  (I know, it ain't classy-sounding, like "burlesque."  I don't sugarcoat.  As already explained w regards to the makeup and bra business.  You will eventually adjust.)  The convoluted beginnings of the stripping I may have already explained in some prior post, but I don't remember, and I don't much care.  That was that story, this one is this.  And I cannot pinpoint just what it is making me so pissy about refusing to extrapolate that part.  Guess it's my dislike of the imagined audience giving me a scolding look.  Your scolding looks are angering me.  Especially the imaginary portion of the (imaginary) audience, which, btw, includes you.  Yes.  You.  Stop smirking.  Let's un-de-rail this thing, shall we?

It took a while, and some coaxing on the part of many acquaintances/friends made in those cloying strip-club dressing rooms that were sometimes closets with a mirror and a low shelf and a bulb dangling from a string, to recognize the validity in costume for the role of stripper.  I had to be almost held down at one point, by a woman who viewed herself sort of club-queen at the Pure Platinumb (the "b" in that is my clever addition) marched me over to her chair, who plopped me down and proceeded to clown my face out of existence under several trowels-full of heavy makeup.  The works.  Then she shoo'd me out of the dressing room where I'd been dithering and into the dark club, where I was suddenly reacted to by SEVERAL customers at once.  As in, more than two.  Possibly as many as three.  It was weird.

After that, I got more comfortable with the idea that I was attractive.  I got used to being whistled at or looked at as a pretty, a beautiful, woman, though -- not really.  I was always sort of surprised by it when it wasn't at a strip club.  If someone spoke to me on the street or wherever people say random things or make animal noises at pretty people, it always sent a shock of color to my face and a mumbled thanks or stupid thing that would burble helplessly from my lips.  The reason this is kind of amazing is because, if I were dressed in a two-inch skirt and fishnet half-shirt minus any undergarments, with a full face of makeup and hair pinched and prodded and six-inch stilettoes, I had no difficulty firing back immediately if someone said something to me regarding my appearance, or really, anything at all.  It was the costume - it empowered me to be bold in my response to an approach by a strange person, woman or man.  In my day-to-day, where I wore large, balloon-ish, clown-y clothes that never alluded to my job, I was incognito, and as such, unequipped to respond to comments about my looks.  Shocked, even, when people would hit on me when I was dressed - goofily, in thrifted, sloppy, ill-fitting things that hid my shape, my hair in a low bun, my fifties-librarian glasses with no lenses masking my face.  Why would they? - I wasn't pretty.  I didn't have any of the markers of a pretty girl on my person.  Surely it was fool-proof (it wasn't). 

So looks are mostly about markers, I figured out, especially because I leapt from dancing to acting school, and got even more into costumes and props and markers and what does and does not conspire to make someone react to one's appearance.

At a certain point, I realized that there was an element of basic, good genetic shape to my physique and my facial structure that made people think I was pretty or good-looking or whatever, but that I could disguise it, mask it, or I could appeal to a certain sub-set of people based on the costume I was wearing at that moment.  Some days, I deliberately appealed to the crowd, because I needed it.  I needed them to tell me I was pretty, good looking.  I needed them to approve of me without knowing me, without learning about my tics and my dorky, shivery-lapdog behavior that would out me if I were sans costume, because I needed the ease of approval from strangers.

Some days, I did not want that approval.  I would go as far as I was allowed (particularly at work, where, uh, looking ugly and unappealing was rather frowned-upon, but I pushed it as far as I could, just to test the people around me, test them to see if they would discover an attractive person beneath the ugly, crusty, off-putting exterior, because I wanted to believe that if *they* could find that attractive person in there, maybe she really did exist).

(This was all very organic, very indirect.  I wasn't aware of all of this on a conscious level.  I can see it now, plain as day, natch, but back then it was just some foggy feeling I intuited about how I should operate, some weird, ingrown vibe that I found irrestible and was obedient to.  No better explanation for the behavior than that, which seems sad, somehow.)

And then some good and bad things happened, and I quit acting and I quit life, sort of, at least, I seriously tried, and would have succeeded but this dude who eventually became my husband intrigued me and then insisted that he wanted me to stick around and have his babies and be his incredibly argumentative wife who refuses to do or be anything he would really view as "dream girl" quality but then be horribly contrary and work tirelessly to do and be all of the things that constitute that person when he isn't expecting it, and oh!, did I mention, my husband's a (medal pending) saint?  Because he is.  A grumpy, mostly perfect saint.

So here I am.  Thirty-six and grabbing the last dregs of these days of what I finally realize are pretty ones.  But get this: it's already nearly gone.  The sands have shifted downward, they have slipped trickily out of my grasp even as I scrabble over the surface of my body of my face of my head of my sanity and clutch, clutch, clutch.  The costume days are drawing to screechingly abrupt halt.  I am - aging.  I am not pretty any longer.

I wouldn't resent it so goddam much if I could have ever, just for one goddam day, really believed it in the first place.  I didn't know I had it 'til it was gone.   And - make no mistake.  It is GONE.  Irrevocably, irretrievably departed.  My costumes now will involve ridiculous old ladies.  How much costume they'll be is anyone's guess.

I reach out for old age and I beg for it.  I am no pious patient.

*attempts to leap over yawning chasm onto opposite shelf where old age rests, refusing to acknowledge how that maneuver has never yet worked, that cutting in the line is impossible and the growth necessary in the interim is vital, and in fact the attempt to cheat somehow seems to delay the growth so much that it will arrive later than it does for everyone else and she will be left, standing, alone, behind, ashamed of her attempted circumvention of the necessary route through painful reality and its resultant pain will lacerate her more as it is coupled with shame*

Eat me, oh, young, oh, youth, oh, offspring.  Pierce me with a skewer and devour me.  Save me from this slow, wretched amble into obscurity, into the dust, into ever-deepening madness.  I am not so dried and hollowed that I won't still make an excellent meal. 

Just be sure to put some gravy on the table.  In case.

far overdue drunken-blogging sesh. (you're pleased. i can tell from here.)

It's that time, ladies and genitals, to produce a blog poo, er, post, where I'm all hopped down on booze.  So what's to stop me?  Nothin'.  Nobody.  My fella's in bed with a sick.  And the son is -- god, please -- asleep. 

I am not pregnant.  I repeat:  Not.  Pregnant.

I am sad.  I repeat:  I. am. sad.

*wishes there were more beer in the growler, but there isn't because she poured it into her glass and syphoned the last drops out with her mouth, she's SO CLASSY LIKE THAT*

So.

Fuck YOU, people younger than me who had your second kid already.  And FUCK YOU, people who are older than me who have had your second kid already, and FUCK. YOU. if you're having your second kid now and you're younger or older or the same goddam age, to the minute, but mostly, FUCK you if you already had your second kid and you aren't broke as shit and you aren't living every minute like it's all about to blow up, like you're grasping an unpinned grenade in one hand while you wash dishes and fold laundry and work like mad with the other.

FUCK YOU.

It ain't happening up in here, up in this potentially-tapped uterus.  I don't know why.  I only know I have resented any of you who are not in my particular boat, this one shaped like thirty-six years, this one, with its increasing creases and its warping bow and its more misshapen shape, daily, its less attractive form, its unripening entrails, its heartbreaking, spirit-defying, maddening  - ness, you aren't here, so I hate you.  Not rationally. Rationally, I'm all smiles and pretense.

But inside, I hate you from stem to stern.

I'm sorry.

I don't want to.

I just -- can't help it.  I can't help how much it makes me spit and fume inwardly to know that you have your heart's desire.  And I don't.

I DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING KNOW this was my heart's desire until a few years ago, when I got an F on a pregnancy test, and it hurt.  And since then, every single one has hurt more, where now, it's a willed mastery of all my strength to not break everything in sight when I discover my uterus is empty, emptying, dumping its stupid bloody contents into my porcelain nightmare of disposable heartbreak, FUCK YOU, UTERINE BULLSHIT.

Uteri get it so easy.  They just lounge for twenty-thirty years, in most cases, then work for ten-twelve months and then another break for a year or two or three, then maybe one more go of a year, and then done.

Granted.  The uterus takes on an Herculean task when it labors.

But the bitch gets to recreate forEVER after.

I envy my uterus?

I'm just so tired.  I'm envying everyone.  I'm envying those who are better-dressed, better-looking, better-aged (ahem, younger) or more comely in their aging (ahem, older and better-kept).

FUCK ME.  For not rolling with the punches.

Punch and Debbie.  That's who I want to reincarnate into.

pregnancy tests aren't such humbug, as it happens.

Not that I've ever suggested they were.

I should've known I wasn't pregnant, even though I was almost two weeks late; when returning my Xmas Uggs (in a sumptuous cognac, the quasi-knee-high ones, the almost-too-cozy ones that I ordered too large and then never bothered to return until Friday, and a day in late February is obviously not the time to be ordering up more dead-of-winter footwear, ... *soft sigh*), I tried to make myself go in the direction of the "sensible footwear" section.  It didn't work.  I padded over to a pair of shoes that were sort of more the exact opposite of sensible. 

So even though none of the other parts of me connected with my non-pregnant status, given the tardiness of my cycle, given the convincing I was doing from the top down: my laser-sharp shoe-sense knew.

The catalyst
 

the "health" exception.

I had an abortion when I was about seven weeks along.

I was working as a temp at the time.  Twenty-six years old.  No health insurance.  I made about $1200 a month.  Couldn't afford to live on my own because I couldn't cover rent, car insurance *and* living expenses simultaneously.  I had just moved out of my best friend's one-bedroom apartment, where I had been paying slightly less rent than she, with her in the bedroom and me in the eating area of the kitchen (I'd rigged up a wall of cardboard-and-fabric between the breakfast bar and the kitchen for "privacy").  Was in-between, uh, well, just generally in-between (and, yes, I'm referencing The Cure here, along with my horrific life in my terrible twenties).  Staying at my parents while I hunted for a reasonable place to rent that would be close enough into town that I could give up my car and just bike to work.  Had discovered a teeny 1-bed next to Laurelhurst, somewhere near 32nd and Stark - but adjacent to the park, so sort of between Stark and Burnside.  Just where the crummier houses leave off and the mansion-y places begin.

I was still sort of suicidal from being wrecked by my experiences in Alaska the summer prior; being molested by one of my roommates there really fucked up my head and I spent that winter after I returned being an utter mess.  I won't describe it.  I've done so before and I don't feel like going down that path just at this moment.  It was horrid.  I wanted to die but I didn't exactly want to have to be directly implicated in the process, so I just did all kinds of self-destructive things instead.

The abortion was out-of-pocket.  My boyfriend paid for it, as well as for the additional general anesthesia expense (more than doubling the cost, making the total around $500, as I recall).  He had allowed me to make the decision (I'm sure it hurt him very much to leave that up to me, particularly because of the one I did make) as to whether I would terminate the pregnancy, but he insisted that I have general anesthesia as opposed to local.  He knew I couldn't face such a thing if I were only locally anesthetized.

(I still live with the guilt of having had the privilege, the luxury, of general anesthesia for the procedure; because of all the other women who experience it with only local anesthetics, their thoughts of what is happening to them intact afterward.  It is - it is unfair, it is cruel, and I will never forgive that small part of me that was too weak to face what I was doing to myself, to my would-be baby, too weak to watch.  To be present.  I am still ashamed at my own cowardice in the face of it.  When others *must* face it because they cannot afford to do otherwise.)

I never allowed, to myself, to him, to anyone, that I was hurt.  That it hurt me to do such a thing.  I only cried when I tried to get assistance from the state of Oregon in order to cover the cost of the procedure and they turned me down, because, as they explained, I made approximately twenty-seven dollars too much for them to give me even their most basic level of coverage.  The person I spoke with said that I would have to have a child in order to receive benefits.  I explained, but you see, I plan to remove any need for Oregon to have to cover me on their plan on a long-term basis through this procedure that I need and cannot afford, if you could only help cover it.  I'm SAVing you! - the state! - MONEY!, I said, plaintive.  The woman simply shook her head, her mouth a line.  No.  No, she told me, adamant, you can't receive coverage *until* you have the child.  I said, hah aahhaahha hahah.  That's so funny.  I am trying to terminate the thing that would require you to pay for my insurance.  I just need a little help to do so.  And she said, Yes.  I understand.  You still can't get coverage until you *have* the child.

(The irony, of course, is that those who would insist on a woman having her baby regardless of the circumstances, is that she must then scrap and scrape and save and work three jobs in order to support the child, because there is simply NO WAY those same insistent folks will fork over the social services, i.e., their taxes, to assist such a woman in caring for the baby after it is born.  No! to the welfare! queens!, they scream.  Get a job, loser!, they scream.  Have your baby, even if you were raped!, they shriek, and in the same breath, they blaspheme you for leaning on the system to raise that child.  The one they said you had to have because otherwise God would smite you.  You shouldn't have had sex, they simper, if you protest.  You slut, they imply, the corners of their mouths tucked in just-so.  That the man who fucked you and didn't have any requirements post-fuck?  Ah, well.  Such is a man's luck.  Oh, shame on those men, they cluck, their feathers bunched tight around their big asses.  But where is the man?  And where is the evidence?  And does that man get to go on and have a profitable, head-held-high kinda life?  While his child's mother toils and strains and struggles, the system with its allure of come-hither-and-have-your-child, the system giving you another good fucking-over, once you've had it, where you must place your child in daycare and work during the day and maybe another part-time or full-time job at night to pay for the daycare and the health care and the fucking mandatory car seat that costs a minimum of $150 for a decent one, never mind the pricey kind that consumerreports.org insists on if you're a good, mindful parent and want your child to actually be *safe*, the $300-and-up variety, and there are the co-pays and the medicines, the over-the-counter cough syrups and inhalants that you try to give your sick, miserable child in vain in order to help them sleep so you can sleep so you can work so you can pay for the care and the medicines and the formula because you couldn't breastfeed because you had to go back to work when the baby was six weeks old and you couldn't afford a breast pump and then you find out that the formula and the bottles and cough syrup are possibly, no, DEFinitely toxic for your baby, your sweet, sweet baby they insisted you have because God would curse you and where in the world are those people now?, you wonder in the spare moments when you have the energy and presence of mind to wonder and not fall into the pit of despondency over your life, your whirlwind maddening life of work and toil and never seeing the child you gave birth to because they told you you must, backed you into a corner and threatened you with everlasting hell if you didn't listen, and now the aspersions and looks and glances you get on a daily basis when you're with your child, the whispers and the looks and the withering eyes that burn you, because, while it's no longer socially acceptable to comment to a single mother that she's a slutty sinner, the eyes still have it.  Oh, they have it.  And the man is off somewhere in Ibiza with his new girlfriend, the one he met in college while you were with your baby working sixty hours a week and barely surviving.

And the irony of the system giving you the fucking-over after you've already been fucked over is not lost on you.

But I know you're already aware of that.  I just had to say it.  It feels good to say it.)

I left.  Head high.  Stumbling a little on the way out to my boyfriend's car, and letting that be the reason I cried.  But then, crying, because I knew, if I couldn't acquire state assistance, on my oh-so-robust wage, that there were women already with babies and kids who HAD to live on less than I was doing in order to receive state-provided benefits.  SHITTY ones.

and I cried for myself because I had to go through the procedure because I was too unstable to have a baby.  Drunk.  Drugs.  Series of relationships too miserable to recount.  Latest boyfriend totally, bizarrely different, but -- based on my experience leading up to him, I knew better than to rely on the notion that it would survive my - me.  however, I wrapped up that crying portion of the crying menu quick.  didn't need to linger.  this was too important.

I could not do that to another human, not knowingly.  Not with the little handful of sanity I clutched, desperate, like a miser with a small collection of dirty pearls gathered from dustbins around a large city with dark pockets.

I had a dream about it, just before the procedure.  A morning or two prior.

I don't want to relate the dream.  But I remember it.  I still don't know what it meant, if anything.  But that it has remained with me, that dream, makes me feel its significance, all of these years hence. 

I woke up after the surgery and I was sick.  So sick.  I threw up.  A lot.  My old friend happened to be a nurse's aid, worked with the doctor who performed my surgery, only at a different clinic.  I'd requested that she be present during the thing to - watch over me.  She held me while I barfed in the clinic's toilet.

Weeks later, I still bled freely.  New, orange-red blood (because my uterus had been swept clean, so the lining had to replenish itself, which takes time).

I will never forget.

I will never forget what it meant to decide with lightning speed that I would not produce a child that I could not give up if I were to carry it to term because I don't trust people.  That I could not be a mother to. 

I occasionally -- maybe once every few years -- do the math.  Think about him, especially now, in relation to my son.  How old he'd be (of course I have no idea whether it was a boy or a girl but I have somehow, in more recent times, chosen his gender as boy.  Not sure why). 

My health exception was life-and-death.  My own life.  The child's life.  My prescience regarding this subject was crystal clear, the cleanest pane of glass you ever laid eyes on.  I could not mother that child, I could not give it up to some stranger to mother.  I would have done terrible things that the child -- oh, I don't dare think of what I would have done.  I cannot.  They are unspeakable.  Unthinkable.

I was not in the third trimester.  But my health was at stake.  Sanity.  My life.

Now - I have a child.  One who will be (relatively) unscathed by my current bordering-on-insanity, because of, thanks to, my supportive, wonderful parenting partner, and our family.  (I hope.)  This, after I've aged and settled down and done some soul-searching and taken some anti-depressants and other shit, besides.  Grown up a little (as much as someone stricken with the permanent childishness of adhd can).

Is that not to be made exception for?

I would not have this now, my son would not exist, this life we have now, it would not exist, if I had not been able to decide to release that first child from me.

Is that not a health exception worth excepting?  Accepting?  Is that something someone, anyone, could have possibly decided for me, given all the details I have deliberately not shared here - the ones that would convince the most ardently anti-me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was choosing correctly - that is, if thou hast spent any longer than a sliver of time inside this skin, this spirit?  That thou canst do if not in possession of this uterus, this heart, this head?  And to think, for but a moment, that thou wouldst attempt to do so for any NUMBER of women.  I am mortified by it.

Am I a blip on the lefty-liberal agenda?

dry.

I think about my grandpa a lot, lately, while I paint.  I think about his having been a painter, coming home from work at the end of the day smelling of turpentine and sweat.  I like to imagine, as my brush goes over its canvas of wall and wood, what he used to think about as he crouched and stood on ladders and peered into corners, his steady hand at work on the task.  I like to pretend I can smell him, hear him, hear into his head, to know how he felt about his family, his life.  My father has described how, when he was small, he would beg to go to work with his father, just so that he could be there to pick up small items, run for things grandpa needed, help lay drop cloths, wash brushes.  He said he felt such pride in doing these things for his dad. 

When grandpa came home, down the alley, in his ancient truck with the running boards on the sides, my dad and his siblings would rush toward the vehicle and leap onto the boards, riding back to the house, yelling and screaming, excited as all get out, because Dad was home.  About what he might have saved for them in his tin lunch pail.  Maybe a scrap of sandwich, a piece of cookie, something.  From what my dad says, no matter the item; it was always a treat when it came from grandpa's leftover lunch.

I like to think about these things as I hunker down in the face of the economic storm headed toward us, uncertain of its breadth and its speed, pondering my grandpa, pondering his having faced such a storm with my grandmother and already one son in their care (my dad's oldest brother, his senior by ten or so years). 

I drag the bristles up and down through the paint as it toughens in its hastily-drying state.

And I whistle at the rapidity of things.  Of the mind-skewing surreality of our time.

sick *and* tired.

Caleb called me while I was at the Dem Convention last week -- maybe it was Tuesday?  Yes.  Tuesday.  Anyway, he called me Tuesday after getting back from his appointment with his physician to inform me that he had been diagnosed with pneumonia.  And I wasn't scheduled to come home until Friday in the a.m.

That would've been tough enough to take if I hadn't already been feeling beyond useless, given that my laptop crapped out completely the day I arrived in Denver and refused to stay on long enough to let me read email, let alone post anything.  So I was unable to participate at all in writing my experiences about the events unfolding around me, ostensibly the reason I'd attended.  So, hearing the news about Caleb's being very ill and with me stuck in Denver, unable to help, knowing he would have to continue to solo-parent and work while I sat on my ass in the blogger hang-out and did some blogging 1.0 (yes, I read JD Salinger books and wrote things using a pen and paper), it was kind of TOTAL BULLSHIT.

Then on Monday, when we had planned to attend a Labor Day function, we found ourselves at urgent care again, only this time it was for Jack and *his* diagnosis of pneumonia.

Also, some random thing that's sweeping the universe, called cough-variant asthma; both he and Caleb have it.  Enter the ventilator-thingies that little kids loathe and scream over.  Super-double-awesome.

I went to work with Caleb today to make some extra do-re-mi.  I worked on the production line.  The people I worked with are super, duper nice.  They didn't make me feel like a weirdo, and while I've known one of them for a long time (Caleb's been working there since before we met, which means that some of his co-workers attended our wedding, etc.), the rest were virtual strangers, so having them all be so nice was a pleasant experience.  Usually I feel totally stupid in that kind of situation.  But I didn't today.  Just, you know, content to be doing something, working hard, helping out, making a little money.  I worked as hard as I could, too, and they were complimentary, and even a little surprised, I think.  Which was - satisfying.

I'm doing it again tomorrow, and Jack won't be happy about daycare on Friday (it's his first Friday bout of daycare, and since he and his classmates just switched rooms to preschool this week, things are already kinda horrible in that realm, but it can't be helped.  We need the money, and we all just have to hang tight and try to manage.  It's hard, but I'm so certain that there are a trillion people in this world dealing with harder things that I simply refuse to let it get to me).

Hope you all have a nice weekend.  I may or may not be around.  I had a suicidal bout yesterday and am worn out by it on top of the physical exhaustion from today, and don't have a thing to say that isn't dull as dirt.

(Although I suppose the insertion of "suicidal bout" could suggest un-dullness.  But I didn't put it there for the sake of being incendiary.  I'm just being honest.  It sucked.  I really had decided I was done.  Through.  Caleb talked me down, and then I rested for several hours, and felt better enough when I woke up to eat and shower and pretend I hadn't been entertaining such thoughts until -- well, just now, I suppose.  Don't please say anything.  I just needed to get it out of myself.  I'm okay today.

Really.)

three.

She wipes the counter with the once-white wash cloth, the one that has acquired some smudgy, dark patches, even though she washes it in earth-friendly non-chlorine bleach.  She says, look, honey, this is the wash cloth they sent home with us from the hospital after you were born, although they didn't realize momma was sort of accidentally stealing it.  You say, oh, mommy?, Why you dood that?  And she shakes her head, laughing a little under her breath as she wipes quickly and with sure strokes.  You look quizzically at the cloth, for, while you understand "hospital," you only know one thing for certain, that is, that you have always been here.  You have always stood, with your sensitive skin and sensitive soul, in this place, this now, and the thing she speaks of, the time before you, it is incomprehensible. 

You run quickly out the back door and into the streaming sunshine, gliding through it, laughing, chasing the dog, your speed a lightning-quick accusation to her that the moments escape so quickly and she has no more capacity for their importance than a moth does the lurid, shimmering glow of the lantern's beams.

She puts down the cloth and runs after you just for a moment, chasing your little, sweet, precious body down as you scramble away from her, your laughter afloat, wafting to her like pollen, and she catches you up and kisses you abundantly on the full, soft cheek, her heart awash with the perfect beauty of the feeling of your skin, of your body, your lengthening body, and her scaled-down form as it grows leaner and less taut while yours sharpens, she rests you on the grass and dashes the quick-form'd tears from beneath her grinning lids, absorbing it.

This is your time, now.

blogger prom blues.

It's just kind of hard to get worked up about the conference, even given the awesome people I'll get to foist my embarrassing selves self on, because of the people who *won't* be there.

Cristina won't be there.  She has a "wedding" to go to that weekend.  She's supposedly in said wedding, or some fancy waxen-spun tale of that nature. 

Sure, C.  Sure. 

Neither will Mel, even tho I've spent hours via ma bell bullying her coaxing her gently and sweetly into un-hermiting for a few days' time, and promising spiked turkish delight and other equally sumptuous niceties in order to get her to be my prom date.  But no go.  She's too busy being into Portland and refusing to leave her even for a second.  But it's kewl.  I guess.

*sniff*

Jozet won't be there.  *senses searing, anguished pain in chest, realizes it's too soon to talk about how sad-making this is*

Ruth won't be there.  The best blogger-prom '07 roomie ever.  Oh, you may believe, you may even be convinced, that you had the best roomie.  But you would be wrong.  Because Ruth was the roomie, THE numbero-uno roomie, to be had.  And I got her.  And I frightened her.  And it was wonderful and perfect.   And I'm fairly certain I haven't violated the restraining order, seeing as how you live about three thousand miles beyond what I'm required to adhere to in distance-maintenance.  So, phew.  Love you, Ruth.  Call me?

Mary won't be there.  Gwen and I will be sure to make her ears burn regularly with our musings over her ingenious keystrokes, though, so at least there's that, M.  (*sigh*)

Anne won't be there, though she insists she doesn't care.  I'll bet she was just as cool at school, too.  I'll bet she rocked her feathered hair and her back-pocket comb and made all the girls jealous and all the boys swoon with her smooth-ass swagger.

Stacy won't be there, and GODDAMMIT, STACY, I swear you better go next year or -- *ends threat meekly* -- I'll be really bummed.  I'm looking at you equally testily, Mignon.  (yes.  you're both shivering and quaking.)

G won't be there, tho as of this writing, said information is unconfirmed.  I just figure, she's kinda busy with the paint chips and subsequent paint-toxins high.  Enjoy the ride, G.  Enjoy it.  For I shall miss thee as ardently as last year, even if we *don't* talk much anymore.

 

Mrs. Chicken.  I can only wish you comfort and rest in the last days of your pregnancy, though I would much prefer you were a few months postpartum and able to join us.

Binky, I just wish you were gonna be there.  It's not fair.  It's not fair that you're not coming.  Okay, now I'm just being selfish and pouty.  I'm sorry.  I know you're busy.  I just - I said that already.  Anyway.  Sigh.

*Updated to include Emily, because for some reason I had assumed she was coming.  Since, you know, I spaced that she LIVES IN ENGLAND.  Sigh.  My stupid is personal and it hurts.  p.s. Emily, I will miss your presence dreadfully.  I really DID think you'd be there.  Ai.  The idiocy.  Owwie.  *sees stars of stupid dancing across stupid eyes*

*Further updated to include Andrea, because, AGAIN, I was making this stupidly wildly incorrectly idiotic assumption that she'd be there.  Sans any reasoning.  Just - wishful thinking, I guess.  I r dum.  Such has been evidenced too often to count.  Let's not.  Rather, let's just be collectively sad that the brilliant author of Little Bald Doctors will be too busy digging around amongst steel thingies (?) on a business trip in MO-land to grace us with her genius presence. 

Oh, Andrea.  You will be missed.  So very missed.

*Doy.

Also, Julia and Mama Tulip and Sandra.  Goddammit.  You three - well, Julia, I missed you painfully there last year, and Mama T, I wouldn't have let you outta my sight last year *or* this year, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise (for you, not me) that you won't have to be subjected to my constant stares this time around, either, and Sandra?   Well, shit.  Who will I lust after if you're not around to make ga-ga wolf eyes at, with your golden, glowing, prom-queen bodacious (yeah!) beauty?

Oh, and Nancy!, Nancy.  You were there last year, and I didn't take nearly enough advantage of that fact.  I'll miss you dreadfully.

There are so many who will be there who I will piss myself to be near, but there are so many who will not.

Feeling all half-and-half.

*goes to the fridge, glares moodily at its contents, drinks straight from the milk carton*

i wanna be medicated.

Can't get an appt. to see a psychiatrist until the middle of July.  The 16th, to be precise.  Iow, the day before I leave for the SF BlogHer conference.  Prolly isn't a good idea to start dosing on something unknown the day before I reconvene with a thousand crazy-a$$ bitches and behave in the expectedly ridonkulous fashion that I will do.  (It's the hyper aspect of adhd - kicks in whenever I'm even mildly mentally stimulated by something in my environment.  Give me a thousand shimmery, brilliant stimulants?  And I'm dancing like a marionette on trucker speed.  For untold hours.  It's - annoying.  And embarrassing.  And tiresome.  And unpredictable.  Etc.)

I'm tired.  So tired.  I don't care anymore.  I don't.  It's all just so nuts.

Lying cuddled together with my kiddo a minute ago, because he had come into the room, suddenly, demanding a hug, and upon returning him to his bed, I discovered his playmates, some toys he's not allowed to go to sleep with - because he *doesn't sleep* when they're present - and then we sang some songs and snuggled.  And I felt his length, even with legs curled all pretzel-like around my knees, feet stuck randomly between my knees and thighs, hand curled around mine, and my breath halted, quick, brief, because - it's all happening.  So fast.  Too fast.  Blazes of light and *poof* and he's growing, growing, grown.

And I will have done nothing throughout his growth but bemoan my own beleaguered state, my own incapacities for things that - well, that I just am not, and cannot have, and cannot be, and yet I reach, I reach, waggling my fingers 'til they're outstretched to the point of pain, and my son, this beautiful, amazing creature, this creation, he is turning tricks and cartwheels and pulling rabbits out of hats all 'round me, and still I reach, and bemoan, and waggle, and pine for things.  Unknowable, invisible things.

And soon he will, too, be invisible, this smallness, this wee synapse of time, this sharp echo against the rocks of the ages, his once-tiny hands and feet and legs and elbows all crescendoing and I see its harmonic rise in such finite, too-fleeting, too-few moments.

Is nothing in life what it ought to be?

anyone got an abattoir they don't mind lending out?

You see, I have this, ... uh, this friend.  Yes.  I have a friend, named -- Shmebbie.  Yes.  Her name is Shmebbie, and she's interested in renting an abattoir for a short-term lease.  Extremely short-term.  Maybe, oh, -- well, how long does it take to travel through the interior of an abattoir?

She's willing to pay whatever the asking price is.  (Just what does the short-term lease for such things go for these days, anyway?  Not that I care.  This is for Shmebbie.  It's barely any of my business.  I've merely been requested to procure it for her, and find out the rates.  She doesn't blog; she's a recluse [iow, she has loads of friends, but doesn't go anywhere near the internet.  She's heard it gives out viruses by the truckload, and she's cyber-germ-phobic].)

Please feel free to email if you aren't comfortable discussing the details or location of your abattoir in the comments.

Thank you.  Er, Shmebbie thanks you.

what it's like when you have a disability but can't get assistance because you forget to call because of the disability:

I'm on hold but it's already afterhours for the mental health triage for Kaiser and I have a feeling I should've tried to call maybe slightly earlier than I did, which was, hilariously, right at five o' clock.  You know.  Quittin' time.  So, basically, I nailed la hora solid.

What I want to know is this:  after I get the help I need, and b'lieve you me, I need it, N.E.E.D., should I write a book about my ADHD experiences?  Now don't you all (hee!  I said "you all," like there are more than three of you reading) kiss my ass and say, sure, honey, you should do it!, sure's shootin', don't just blow a bunch of hot air at me; tell me if you think there might be someone who would benefit from my semi-horrific collection of disarranged, colossally messy life puzzle pieces, none of which fit together in any coherent fashion.

Or, conversely, tell me if you think that, oh, poor dear, she really *is* a big, sodden, ridiculous mess (and please take note of my having deliberately NOT described myself as a fierce, hot tranny mess, b/c I am simply not that interesting anymore, people), and she just needs to find somewhere quiet where she can whisper to herself and rock out in her kewl granny chair.

Book?  Or whispery chair scenario?

It all starts here, people.  IT. ALL. STARTS. HERE.  (It also all falls out of my ear, or ass, depending on your pov, or maybe quite possibly where you're standing, in which case, I apologize and -- you're right.  Absolutely no more beans/beer at the same time.  Scout's honor.)

Dweedle deedle dee!

it feels like the end. or, i'm hungover.

I'm sure it isn't, but it does.  Feel that way.  I mean, the hangover is only part of the equation.  There's also this awful broken feeling inside, beneath my gnawing belly, this sense that I'm beyond repair, and it (the feeling) was present prior to the hangover.  Which I came by honestly, in the form of delicious rose` (how the fuck does one make the little accent mark sit astride the "e" without having to perform keyboarded acrobatics of which I am decidedly unaware; anyone?) at Clyde Common, with uber-fabulous people to drink alongside, and properly offend by my drunkenness, and general boorishness.

It's the ADHD, it's the aging process, it's the failure to thrive.  I'm blowing it on every level.  I am watching my life swirl around the base of the drain and I'm thinking, how can I fucking stop this, or at least make it swirl beautifully before the giant sucking sound happens and all the life has swirled down into the black depths?

I am incapable of retaining things like learned social behaviors that everyone else is able to retain.  I'm stuck in this fucking toddler loop, and I can explain that shit to people I'm around until my mouth bleeds from the pressure of speech propelled through the tired maw (and delivered from the depths of a tired ma), but it doesn't matter, because in the end, I still come off like an asshole and people get tired of my excuses.

I'm tired of my excuses, too.  I want to change it, but the only way I can currently think to change it is to just hide, hunker down, slink along the lowest points, pretend I don't exist.  Sure, I have to exist on some level for Jack's sake, but I don't have to exist for my own sake.  If I'm only needed for familial support, I can do that without having to exist socially in my own right.

Granted, my husband doesn't love the energy I'm expelling into the atmosphere of our home when these are the turgid, clay-cloud thoughts that churn within the generator of my body, that I release this stuff and it deposits a thick layer of gray soot along the surface of the piano and the couch and the table and our bed and the chairs and the artwork and knick-knacks and the dog and the child and nothing and no one remains free of its drifting coat of heavy and clinging webs.

I am not able to do what others do.  I can't finish writing the papers or reading the books or completing the thoughts.  I can't flesh out the details and I can't complete the projects and I can't remember the important and the not-so-important.  I can't always remember to feed my child on time or keep him on his even sort-of-regular schedule and I can't recall to whom I told what and I can't keep track of my vocabulary so it slips in and out and there are plenty of occasions where I feel as though I've gone further backwards in my time on earth than forward, in fact, I am beginning to be convinced that the only things that have been allowed to grow are my ability to convey the pretense that I am an adult, like a great toddler-mimic, and my body has aged appropriately in order to push the pretense's believability up toward quasi-truth, but at bottom, in my gut, under my gnawing belly, I know that it's all just this gigantic farce.  I am a toddler who cannot remember how many months ago something happened, and thinks it was yesterday, cannot get beyond the oppositional behavior, cannot manage to pull off the necessities required of an adult life.

And I am beginning to be convinced that there is nothing that can alter this sequence. 

Which is why I was right to not want to have a child, ever.  It's why I always knew I shouldn't procreate.  I'm not capable enough to manage things.  I can, for awhile, but not for the length of time necessary.  (disclaimer:  I'm not suggesting my son is not amazing and wonderful; I'm suggesting that I am not capable of taking care of him well enough to merit his worth.)

I'm failing, and I'm failing hard and fast. 

And I don't believe there's anything I can do or think or inhale or swallow or drink or eat or work on or write or talk about or downward-dog or run toward or away from or above or around to fix it or heal it or aid it or even ameliorate it.

Everyone is having seconds, they're filling their bellies with second babies and more life and bigger chances for fear and failure and success and their courage in the face of such odds appalls me because I don't have that option.  I shouldn't have optioned the first belly full.  I am failing him, and he knows, he knows the way I knew with my parents.

Fuck.

(I'm leaving comments closed because to see the sad, round zero staring back at me two days from tomorrow will just make it worse.)

emotions, allow me to introduce surface.

Oh, hi, Surface!  Nice to meet you - again!  I mean, I'm assuming we've met before.  I feel like we must have, even though I totally can't remember.  Whatev.

Wouldn't you love it, Surface, if you and I could somehow form a permanent bond, so that whenever we meet, we don't have to be reintroduced?  Somehow, every time that happens, there's this surprising pain that Nervous System has to manage.  It's surprising because, well, there's that whole *ahem* (whispers) issue with Memory.  Yes.  I know, issue is being overused these days.  I didn't think that sort of thing bothered you too much, Surface.  I thought you were disaffected.  Cool.  Etc.  And I have this spidey-tingle that says you're about to launch into a long, tedious explanation as to why that's not true and cite several examples and precedents and DUDE, stop pretending to be a barrister.  Yeah.  I said barrister.  It's cooler.  You know that when you're not playing your never-knew-from-cool tired-ass bit.  But.  Back to what I was saying - about Memory having kind of sucked, well, all along?  It's not our fault Memory's so bad at her job.  Why we should have to endure this repeated pretense at not knowing one another?, and why Nervous System has to continually fend off the bouts of pain that result is totally stupid and illogical.  Which brings me to Logic.  Where has Logic even BEEN all this time?  Logic spends more time vacationing than anything, and is conspicuously absent on these recent bitter-cold, rain-soaked days, just when we need her support the most.  God!  This!  Sucks!

I have to go, Surface.  I promised Velvet-Lining-of-Chest Tucked-Inside-Inner-Depths-of-Soul I'd be back by lunch.  We're having toasted cheese and tomato soup.  Don't worry.  I'm sure you'll get some.  I'd just rather not have to watch, is all.  You eat like a mad cow.

Anyway, relax.  We'll meet again soon.  Don't start sobbing.  God.  You'd think you were Emotions.  Sure.  You can call me E. 

Just don't you fucking DARE call me Emo.

fluffy faces.

I've always referred to cats with whom I am familiar as "fluffy face."  I'll mutter it as I bump noses with the particular down-headed purring beastie I'm speaking to.  It's just like anyone else, I'm sure, who has made up a name they think is beyond all clever things ever invented by another human, and simply can't let go.

To the fluffy faces out there who have recently let go, to the detriment of the hearts of those humans left here without them to call them silly, adoring names by, with empty laps and wrung-out hearts, I say, oh, Fluffy. Face.  Sweet fluffy face.  You'll be missed.

So sorry, darling Dodo, lovely Nancy, Jenny doll.  And sweet Steph - you're in my thoughts, too.

Those fluffy babies are, I hope, now flanking the sides of my old, lost loves: Stan and Ollie.  I hope my little furry boys know to help the recently-arrived ones along as they get used to the new place.  Show 'em the ropes; where the best catnip is hidden, where the best corner to curl up and snooze, warm and soft, resides, how to refresh and learn to romp and gallivant anew.

Stupid heart pain.  Stupid, necessary evil part of the process.

What do we do when we go outside?  We put our collars on. 
What do we do when we come inside?  We take our collars off. 
Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  la la la! 
Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  Stan and Ollie!  laaaaaa laaaaaaa laaaaaaa!

today's blogging temperature brought to you by: hoarfrost.

Which is also, I'm pretty sure, the punchline to a joke.  The last bit, not the whole sentence.  I can kind of imagine it. 

What.  Surely you didn't expect me to tell you what I was imagining?  The joke, I mean.  Because, uh, I didn't *actually* have one in mind.  I just thought that the word "hoarfrost" really oughtta be a punchline.  You totally know I'm right.

Sigh.  This post is making my head hurt.  Worse.

We're home from Cali.  The trip was good.  I saw my luverly fry-end, Cristina, and I got to hold her little, soft, sweet-as-the-sweetest-thing-in-the-universe baby, and J and her M were all crack-a-lackin' in the restaurant where we went for lunch, cutting up and being little crazy people, and Caleb chased them around, which meant C and I had a few minutes of (voice drops into a whisper) actual conversation.  It was thrilling, and really nice, and I miss my dear friend a lot.  Wah.  Your house is too far away, C.  *stomps foot petulantly*

The ninetieth birthday party for Caleb's grandma was great, and pretty impressive.  Most of her offspring were there - the living ones, anyway.  And that's a lotta people when you consider she had five kids.  She looked lovely, as always, and I don't just say that lightly.  She not only does not look her age, but she is whip-smart.  Can join any conversation and participate with ease.  She's apparently invested in a wardrobe full of smartie-pants that won't quit. 

J was wild with glee over the time he spent with his older cousins - the two boys, C, age 4 1/2, and E, age 8 1/2, trying to maim one another relentlessly, but with these ridiculously detailed rules involved in said maiming, and J stood and watched, clapping and giggling and guffawing and bending over with his hands pressed to his mouth, laughing fit to kill.   He would occasionally rush in and involve himself, but the bigger boys knew to sort of gently move him aside, which he was totally okay with, because he kind of also understood implicitly about the maiming business, and how much he really didn't want to get hurt.  He's just SO much more -- little, I guess, than they are.  He's really just this side of a baby, at least to me, the mommy, and I was darned relieved to see that he wasn't into joining the death brigade of boy children.  His big thing was playing the hat-ar-mod-aka (harmonica) that Uncle Dick, Caleb's aunt's husband, kindly gave to him, tootling around on it all day long, besides.  Honestly, he's pretty good with it.  On the way back to Caleb's dad's house, a drive of a little over an hour, he squawked away, and if Caleb and I tried to have a conversation in the meantime, he'd stop playing, annoyed, and state, pretty yell-y, "Guys!, You need to be quiet!  I'm playing my hat-ar-mod-aka! right now!" and then get back to business.  At one point, we just gripped hands and listened as he played an alarmingly almost-song, with a rhythm and nice-ish melody, and it creeped us out because it was - kind of, well - good.

Are toddlers supposed to be able to just know innately how to play the hatarmodaka?

I don't think they are.

Whatever.

Anyway, sinister harmonica prodigies notwithstanding, the weekend kicked ace.  I feel rested, I ate food nonstop, good, beautiful food, because my step-mother-in-law?  CAN.  COOK.  Damn Sam, that woman is a testament to the potential for art in a kitchen.  And she does it effortlessly, and being at her house is like being on vacation.  Those people don't let us lift a finger.  I try, I do, I mean it.  I request that tasks be given to me, and lately I've taken to just swooping in and folding laundry as it lands on the gigantic oval dining table, which reminds me of a story that I have to interrupt myself with:  yesterday, there was a fresh, cozy-warm pile of assorted linens and whatnot in its usual place on the well-worn wood surface.  I was sitting on my keister in the family room, reading my FIL's copy of JD Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (the only Salinger book, incidentally, I've not yet read and also don't have in my personal collection, so you can understand, naturally, my joyous excitement at being able to finally sit and read it, undisturbed, in a very comfortable recliner near the fireplace, rather, uh, UNDISTURBedly).  Suddenly, I'm being pulled into the dining room, against my will, you know - uh, why is this happening?-ish, because I don't withdraw my brains away from books easily or quickly, it takes a little time for me to recognize my surroundings, I'm usually confused for a minute or so, and can't quite connect the faces with why they're in the room with me or whatever - like, hey, youuuu look famili -- you're that guy I'm married to!  oh.  right!!  etc.   Seriously.  I'm constantly amazed at the depths of potential for me to get real stupid, yo.  So there I was, being stupid, but not stoopid-def, just the plain, old regular-stupid version, and J was pulling me toward the table and muttering something about "pwetty, pwetty wahm, mommy" - and then we arrived, his face triumphant, next to the pile of laundry.  He smiled up at me and said, "mommy, you needa wpoeirjsdfj dis wandry, because it's pwetty, pwetty wahm.  It's cozy, mommy!"

So I folded.  I mean, what else was I gonna do?  He was right - it was warm, and cozy, and I felt good helping.

Also, I think he's been informed, somehow, as to my general duties.

Other than folding a little bit of laundry, though, I mostly just sat around and ate, and snacked, and drank wine, and took this insanely long bath in the deep soaking tub in the hall bathroom, still with the Salinger, because the SMIL, she watches our child and plays with him and keeps him entertained for HOURS, and we -- yes, both of us, simultaneously -- get to just chillax (and thanks, Ruth, for getting that one stuck in my head lately - dude!  it's been there all weekend!  *shoots narrow look at Ruth from thousands of miles removed), and I napped and drank and ate and watched movies and ate, and then I ate some more.  I also went to bed early every night and slept like a dog.  Long, snore-y, deep.  It was a thing of beauty, our weekend.  I want to frame it and hang it and look at it adoringly in the months to come, when I need a respite from the harried life that is our lot, currently. 

The plane today was small.  There was much turbulence.  I cried a little when we landed, because immediately prior to that I'd begun muttering, please, no, please, my son.  Please.  He's here, on the plane, he's too small.  We can't -- yet.  Please.  Please.

So the tears came of their own accord, I was powerless to stop them, and I ground them out with the corners of my parched-skin hands, before my husband spied them. 

The house was 52 degrees Fahrenheit when we came in because I had the genius revelation to turn off the heat before we left.  It took all afternoon to warm the house up to a reasonable temperature.  I probed my brittle nose gently at one point to determine whether it was about to simply disintegrate from being in the midst of the frozen tundra for too long.

J's crying right now, which makes perfect sense, because it's almost 10 o'clock, and he ought to be asleep and lord only knows why he isn't, but he just said my name, or, you know, mommy, and I suppose I ought to find out for the eleventh time just what he needs.  It's sure to be a blanket or beverage or I-dunno-mommy issue but I'll go.  I'll go.

We're home. 

It's good to be home.

I think.

*****

And Jenny, my sweetest Jenny, her kitty had to be put down, and I'm so sad for her loss.  Please go give her some hugs and kisses.  So long as they're air kisses.  And air hugs.  No one is allowed to come within a certain distance of her except me.  So, you know, you can probably guess at how much more she loves me than she does anyone else including but not limited to her only daughter and her husband.

But seriously, I am sad for her, jokes about her being my stalk-ee aside.  I want you to make her feel better.  Yes.  You.  The person who read this.  Please?  For Jenny?  Solace?  Love?  Comfort?

Thanks.  She'll appreciate the visit.  I'm sure she'll notice my directing a reader her way, too, given she gets so little attention or readership of any kind.  She's an island, that one.  Nobody named Guy Kawasaki has ever heard of her.  And she hasn't made any words up (today, anyway) that have landed in the urban dictionary.  She's really boring like that.  But still, she's sad, even given all her boring, island-like isolation in the blogosphere.  So be a chum.  Go give Jenny a distant embrace. 

Just remember that I'll be monitoring it to see that it doesn't get too embrace-y.  Because I saw her first.

we will never be well again.

Yep.  Still riding the sicky-train.  *throws devil horns and then has to stop to breathe*

This one's a doozy.  Phlegm like you've never dreamed of.  Giant, billowy piles of phlegm.  As we used to say in the dorky band I was in that played three whole gigs, but can I just tell you how so-full-of-revelry-that-I-will-never-have-any Lifetime-movie-regrets it all was, despite our gigantic, mind-flaying, wretched, corpuscle'd suckedness, despite my insane dance moves (I often meshed James Brown with Mick Jagger and threw in a little Bozo the Clown for good measure, because one CANnot have TOO MUCH Bozo, no such thing - example:  I couldn't do the splits, not even when I was five and everyone in the world including the boys could do them, but I would still, despite that, gamely try to throw myself into the splits onstage as my twenty-four-year-old-self with that cheesy-ass band) -- I was in a swoony, pink-gauze realm of love with those three brief, beautiful, horrendously embarrassing, awesome-beyond-belief episodes of on-stage rawk-n-role GA-LORY, um, what was I saying? 

OH. 

Right. 

Phlegm. 

We used to crack wise about phlegm (viva la phlegm!), because I smoked and drank quite regularly (!!!! -- gross!) back then.  And when we had our morning practices, sometimes as early as, shudder, ELEVEN IN THE A.M., and I would wear sunglasses for a good part of it because it hurt to open my eyes before noon, the leader, Sean, would say things like, Gee, Deb, you're singing phlegm-tastically today.  And I would say, Yes, Sean, I'm thinking of having a phlegm-oscopy later.  And he would say, you mean, you're probably going to drink too much beer and have several cigarettes and possibly smoke some weed?  I'm phlegm-static for you.  And I would nod and grimace because, for the love of GOD, it was still pre-noon, and people should not have to do anything but sleep when it is pre-noon.

*chuckles, to cover the sound of sobs emanating from the chest area, which is harder to mask than usual what with all the phlegmaginousness, because it's funny/sad that I used to approximate. illness. by concocting phlegm, like some kind of phlegm-atician, by doing things like paying for alcohol and cigarettes, with money, the PAPER KIND, the kind that also does things like pay one's mortgage and fits beautifully inside a college fund for one's child/ren, and it also looks really pretty inside of a wallet, rather than the other version, where the wallet is thin and sad and empty, and, see?  what I mean?  about funny/sad?  or maybe I meant sad/true - do me a favor; don't tell me which one it is - I'd rather not know*

Sorry.

Did I mention, I've been sick for like, approximately somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen-thousand weeks?  Or possibly just seven.  But it feels closer to the former than the latter. 

I love being sick, was really my only point.  It feels good.  I just can't get enough of it.  That probably explains why, lately, when I've started to rise back up through the ether to health-land, I find myself licking my son's face in hopes of picking up some stray sickitude, in order to remain ill for an indefinite period, AT ALL COSTS. 

p.s. Our Volvo is going away, soon, this week in fact, because we are pore and also stupid.  It was a lease that has now, uh, released, uh, itself.  We should not have been driving a Volvo, unless it was old x free to the third power.  But we were dumb, we were pre-parents, and now we know better, and we will begin driving the many-years-ancient American-made minivan that was bequeathed to us rather lately, i.e., this evening, by my parents, who are not as dumb as us  (I think they're going to eventually upgrade, that is, when they get back from their latest RV trip which begins Thursday, which I'm glad they're going to have but also bummed that they won't be here to rescue my pathetic ass when the menagerie of illnesses take a darker, menacing turn, which I am quietly afraid will happen now that my safety net is driving off to Florida for two months or something insane like that, I know, I can't blame 'em, but DAMN I wish I weren't so dependent on them these days).

(I am, in fact, psyched [!!! - dork!] to drive the minivan.  It equates to this:  not so struggle-y when putting J in the car seat.  And that is my life, melted down to its essence.)

Good night.  The end.

p.p.s. I give drivel a bad name, don't I.  Love me, love the drivel.

*departs from pc to hack up several pieces of lung*