In an effort to keep the forest from swallowing the road, crews have been cutting back the treeline, leaving ragged stumps and naked stalks jutting up like broken bones. Someone took inspiration and propped a deer skull atop one of these, like a mile marker from a Cormac McCarthy novel. Such have been the days.
A young patron was trespassed by the police after a fight outside the library doors. We pointed fiercely, sending teenagers sailing away from the glass and back into their seats as if casting spells from our fingertips. The next day, a drunk and angry father paced the floor in front of the desk, his elbows raised like a wild creature. "Cause he's a COP he can tell us we can't come in here?" "Yes. And also because I said so." "Who are YOU." "I'm in charge." I stared at him as he paced, face relaxed and heart slamming, and the moment he banged out the door, my fingers were on the phone. We watched the patrol cars fill up the parking lot, and I said, "This week is stupid. It's kind of awesome."
Key vs. Chevy
The cupboards ran dry after a month without groceries. I laid out a jar of port jelly, a container of rice filled with weevils, and a bag of stale tortilla chips. Couldn't think of an improvisational dinner, so we packed up the kids and made the trek to town.
Winding back home that night, we blew a tire and pulled over on the dirt shoulder as it started to rain. "Sabotaged by axe murderers!" I exclaimed, nose pressed to my window eagerly. "Nope. Evidence points to ninjas," said the man, indicating a piece of metal jutting from the tire. "Well, they didn't think that through all the way. They're probably a mile back, running to catch up."
Upon extraction, the metal in the tire turned out to be this.
Yes, that is a key. I don't even know how that happens, outside of being shot from a crossbow by Adam Savage. Such an act of extreme improbability can only suggest that we are at the beginning of a cascade of events wherein I will wind up in singed leather pants and hanging over a pit of sharktopuses while reaching for the key, which has fallen onto a ledge just out of reach. What a pain in the ass.
Artwork and squirrel tendencies
I ordered plastilina and aluminum wire so that I can start sculpting again, and began hiding $20 bills for a plane ride to faraway who-knows-where. Maybe I will fly to Oahu to pour bronze this fall. Maybe I will ride off to San Francisco or New York or Toronto and eat pastries in a city cafe. Maybe I will have to buy three new tires after we run over a chopstick, a comb, and a nail file. Hope springs eternal.
Theme: dark and slashy. Or squirrel attack. Or murderous mayhem. We got confused.
My problem in these challenges is that I don't have a style. I leap from stuffed animal to sculpey armatures to pillow creatures. It would be a lot easier if I had a signature critter, which I could rig up according to theme like SENSIBLE PEOPLE. Will work on that.
In the meantime, I decided on a freezer paper (ie 'cheater's silkscreen') project, then discovered that all my exacto knives were broken, having been used as screwdrivers. Decided on something else, dropped down on the couch to draw plans, and splashed into cat pee. Stripped the cover and cushions, put them in the washer, and made an axe to skin the cats with.
My mom was unimpressed, and said, "I don't understand why you're doing these things." Well at least I haven't taken up recreational vagazzling, or collecting miniature animals made out of fruit.
Memory got the better of me. The man walked across the living room to put his hands on my shoulders and I stiffened and burst into tears, left him standing in confusion as the door banged shut and I got in the car. The rational part of my brain drove and listened, embarrassed, while I sobbed at full volume.
Got to the library and sat in the car for a minute, suspecting that maybe the Dalai Lama might have done all that differently. Imagined him in his robes and little glasses, bawling into the steering wheel with his eyeliner smearing. It was slow and quiet in the evening at work. I went into the bathroom and made faces in the mirror to see what I looked like crying. Holy Buscemi. Resolved never to cry again without a balaclava.
At night, I hunched over thread and needle, trying to drive away thought with lines of blue stitches. We split a beer and talked. Went to bed and I touched his ear briefly to say that everything was okay. I was worried about falling asleep and seeing it all over again; in my dreams I stayed awake all night, looking for a place to lay down. Exhausting.
I know better than to look at things. On things. With my eyes. I know that the man had three affairs (give or take a DOZEN or however many I feel like imagining - with maybe a few murders thrown in for good measure) and that they were a long time ago, and everything is over with and probably fine. I know these things. But it still feels like I've swallowed boiling oil when I stumble across evidence that it really did occur. In real life. And with complete and utter twat waffles.
It sort of ruins me for the rest of the day.
Didn't want to tell the man what was bothering me. Instead, I yelled at him when he tried to kiss me goodbye after lunch, burst into tears, and drove away sobbing like a lunatic. Got to work and wondered if maybe the Dalai Lama might have handled things differently. Imagined him in his robes and tiny glasses, bawling into the steering wheel with his eyeliner smearing. Went inside, got in front of the bathroom mirror, and made faces to see what I looked like crying.
Holy Buscemi.
Resolved never to cry again without a balaclava.
I am still trying to decide if this means I can go buy a Diet Coke. I'm completely, completely crap at kicking bad habits.
This is my destash year. The year I have sworn off buying fibery wonderment. So of course, on New Year's Eve, I got the man sloshed and persuaded him to buy me a cartload of knitpicks. My box of shame arrived in the mail yesterday, and I hid the contents in my stash cupboard like a teenage boy with an armful of smutty manga.
To assuage my guilt, I pulled out the rogue balls of tweed I had somehow acquired, and knocked out a little cabled pullover for the infink. Made it up myself! With no pattern! I am the Top Knitter!
And...
He hates it.
Next time I will knit him a sweater made out of glow-in-the-dark yarn and funfur. He will love me forever.
(If anybody has a child in need of an 18-24m[ish] cotton sweater, let me know.)
The nights have been cold, and the blankets get kicked aside by small feet. I dreamed that I was lying embraced in big warm tattooed arms (with a man attached), and woke shivering against the wall in the dark. For a moment I just laid there, wondering what time it was - perhaps 2 or 3am - and suddenly my teeth gritted as a jolt of electricity surged through my head, from the base of my skull upward, in a violent drilling sensation that sounded like a dentist's tool. My eyes snapped open, and I was still flexing my hands and feet, wondering if I had had a stroke or something, when another one shot sideways through my brain, again with a surging, drilling sensation. What the HELL. I have not been endowed with psychic visions or paranormal body-finding skills, and have been unsuccessful in causing the hobos to combust with my mental super-powers. I'm out of explanations.
Last summer, the infink stuck a splenda packet up his nose. He clawed at it, grabbed my hands, and slapped at his nose until I got him to hold still. I got a pair of tweezers, picked a little ball of yellow paper out, and saw more farther up. We practiced snorting and blowing like a pair of congested ponies, and finally, just as I was suiting him up for a trip to the doctor's office, he sneezed the damned thing out. Cheers and photographs abounded. The child seemed cured.
Spoiler: he was not.
A few days later, he got a runny nose. It ebbed and flowed as the weeks went by, and we blamed the larger child for bringing home school grossness. We kept getting whiffs of garbage, and blamed the cats for having rank kitty breffs. When I got my poor little moles cut off, the drippy nose and the smell vanished completely. When they came back a few weeks later, we had a Dr. Google epiphany and realized that I had been on antibiotics, and he was still nursing a bit, and that meant that the smell was probably an infection. That fucking Splenda packet!
All of this led us to the Otolaryngologist's office yesterday afternoon.
Leif sat on my lap, trying to hide in my breasts from the doctor, who was wearing one of those big circular mirrors strapped to his head like an old-timey bonesaw.
I tipped his head back, the doctor prised his nostril open with silver pliers, and he said, "Yep, there's something waaay up there." He spritzed a medicated mist up his nose (the infink's) and ran off. Leif champed his teeth and asked for a tissue, certain that he was drooling all over his chin as the medicine leaked down his throat and made his mouth numb. He tucked the tissue to his nose and put his head on my chest while I sang a bit of Sea Wolf to soothe him. Nothing like a song about drowning the woman you love so she won't be shot to death to alleviate the tension in a room.
The doctor sat back down, trepidation all over his face. I pulled Leif's head back, wrapped my fingers over his eyes with one hand, and reached across his body to hold his arms down with my other. The doctor had to use both hands to open the nostril and insert the scary foot-long tweezers, which meant that one arm was smashed right up against my breast. We exchanged an eloquent glance which said, "Boob? What boob? This is science," and then, with a deft movement, he slipped the instrument up the infink's nose. Leif screamed in pain and arched his back, but kept his arms down with visible self-restraint, and then, POP! there was a horrifying grey wad of rotting paper at the end of the tweezers. "That was up your nose," I told the infink. He gave it a hard look. "Eew." And then, "Awesome."
Pulling something out of a toddler's nose and saving the day in under 10 seconds must be the best damned feeling a otolaryngologist can have on a Thursday afternoon. The doctor was really happy.
We pivot-flicky-kick'd to the toy drawer and let the infink pick out a plastic car. Leif sniffed, laughed, and then breakdanced everywhere we went for the rest of the day. Perhaps it wasn't just a Splenda packet he removed; perhaps it was a brain slug, or a nugget of Evil. I'm going to have to send that doctor a gift basket.
The theme this week was "underwear as headgear" because, evidently, not everyone spends New Year's Eve asleep in front of bad western movies, waking up just in time to see a rerun of the ball dropping before crawling off to bed.
I can relate to the theme, however, because my head is the only place my underwear will fit now. Somehow, two weeks of baked goods, brandied eggnogs and fancy chocolates resulted in 6 lbs of horror getting packed onto my backside. Have purchased new athletic shoes, which I will use to... ah, massage away the cellulite while watching netflix.
The infink heard my mutterings as I mangled my 4th stuffed head at the sewing machine, and got into his "dyabba dyabba" undercrackers to console me.
That is his "I appear to have just dismantled my brother's toy and now face the options of either attempting to fix it, hiding the evidence, or throwing the pieces up in the air like confetti and dancing in them" face. Guess which one he chose?
1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? Had a hot toddy, saw a raccoon... I really didn't do anything remarkable, it appears.
2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Failed parlously. Making same resolutions for next year, but adding punitive measures - as yet undetermined or committed to.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Not close in a phone-call or email-announcement way, but it seemed like just about everyone with working equipment was producing babies this spring. I even got to stand awkwardly in the back of a baby shower, supervising the shrimp platter.
4. Did anyone close to you die? No, but my mother came unnervingly close. Giving myself full credit for nursing her through it by supervising medication and thai food intake.
5. What places did you visit?New York , Oahu, various snorkling and waterfall destinations, and a bbq joint next to a sex shop.
6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010? A left breast.
7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Oh, the usual: regretable holidays, awkward visits with ex-in-laws, unexpected gropings. Honorable mention: the day Mike thought he would cheer me up after inviting overnight guests without telling me by sending a picture of himself with a new handlebar mustache - in which he forgot to put on a shirt or smile, popping up like a felon's OK Cupid profile pic in my email.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Having 3 books published and not reading any of the reviews.
9. What was your biggest failure? Didn't achieve dieting goals, through complete lack of effort or exercise and the use of "the ipod is too small to type on" as excuse for not tracking anything.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Flu, root canal, a fall down a set of stairs, most horrific blister ever, and two oven-rack burns on my forearm.
11. What was the best thing you bought? I didn't buy anything particularly awesome, but the dumbest thing was probably that jug of magic alkaline water.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Mike's.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Mike's.
14. Where did most of your money go? rent. This quiz is starting to make me sad.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Moving to a real house! With avocados! Where I can watch Dexter and Peepshow and get naked without someone staring in through the glass doors!
16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? happier b) thinner or fatter? thinner c) richer or poorer? richer. Ok, this quiz is redeeming itself.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? hobo-chasing. They are all scared of my co-worker because she knows all their moms.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? talking to people after drinking wine.
20. How did you spend Christmas last year? tip-toeing over rotten neighbors and eating lots of roast beef
21. Did you fall in love in 2010? only with tv shows and yarn.
22. What was your favorite TV program? Dexter. Peepshow. The Good Guys. Bones. Evidently I watch a lot of tv.
23. What did you do for your birthday in 2010? Knitted while my mom told stories, ate cake, got a few nice presents, bought boots and a cardigan which looks as if I knitted it but, in fact, I did not. Reputation to uphold at work.
24. What was the best book you read?Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon. Hope you like writing paranormal and zombie fic, Gabaldon, because Jamie and Claire are not allowed to die, ever. The Hunger Games was also good. And a Dirty Job. Under the Dome was pretty great. Evidently I read a lot of books, too.
25. What did you want and get? to see Deathly Hallows with the kiddo, even though I knew he would cry over Hedwig and Dobby and be mad at me. Which he did, and was, but it was still fun.
26. What did you want and not get? I am sure whatever it is, it's under the tree at this very moment. RIGHT, MIKE?
27. What was your favorite film of this year? Deathly Hallows. Yeah, I know, shut up. Anyway, the only other movie I saw in the theater was Eclipse (with 10 year-old girl dragging my sleeve), and I'm waiting for the MST3K version.
28. Did you make some new friends this year? Yes! Really. I did. But the old ones are still invited to EMAIL ME SOMETIMES DAMMIT.
29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? A fist fight would have been nice. Also, I really wanted to kick in the men's room door and bust the guy who was spooging on the floor, but he learned to use tissue before I got the chance.
30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? breast-obscuring
31. What kept you sane? knitting and correspondance. I am an old lady.
32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? My favorite picture on the Wall of Bang is of Rainn Wilson in a teddy bear codpiece. But in general, I don't fancy people anymore. All my fanciness has been distributed and is long gone.
33. What political issue stirred you the most? Politics, no, but there were a few deaths in the news that bothered me a lot. Toddlers and people on roadsides and the like.
34. Who did you miss? I miss more people than miss me in return. Thanks, quiz.
35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. Don't bend over in cowl-neck shirts.
