Even keel

Quite a week.

* Was politely rejected by a decent-looking man, before I could even properly thoroughly embarrass myself. edit: word has reached me that I did, in fact, properly embarrass myself.
* Ran into a guard rail while dodging a cement truck on the Curvy Road of Doom. edit: the road claimed one of our friends yesterday.
* Missed a call at 4am from my mother, worried because the wasband had gone missing. He was eventually found (not by me).
* My mother subscribed me to groceries-by-mail, so several boxes of bread mix, nutella, coffee, cat food, and canned meats arrived. I love mail. I love food. This was amazing.
* Dragged the boys out to beaches all weekend. Jogged in the surf, nailed them with water canons, yelled about a breaching whale, sacked out in a bikini listening to Led Zeppelin, and talked trash with friends.

I couldn't be assed to take pictures, but we were here (Hamoa):

That big fluffy tree on the beach there? That is me laid out under it, trash-talking. My friend and I watched the paddlers off shore, and I tried to convince him that we should start a Sad Sad Single Person Canoe Club. We agreed that if we just went back and forth in the bay, we could totally watch our kids play on the beach. Exercise AND good parenting. We just need to find boats to steal now. 

Back at home, I made black-eyed peas, fresh bread, and tiny coconut cakes.

There was frisbee in the back yard. We are terrible at it, and all of us are now striped with horizontal bruises; mostly because Leif's strategy is to charge up while you're not paying attention and clock you in the shins with the frisbee (which he calls "playing musubi").

Gavin does not know the rules, either.

Weekends like these are great. Even if I can't get a date. Which brings me to...


Sexy men, please stop reading here

I am not a doll person. I am also not a cat lady. But I remain afflicted with too many cats and I am secretly charmed by miniature things. This would probably manifest like Barbie trashes her dream house if it had free reign. Which it does not. But it would be awesome.

Try to deny this. ALL MINIATURES.

So, having established myself as not a crazy doll person/cat lady - when I was six or seven, my mother shelled out her precious working-college-student dollars to buy me a Sasha doll. This was a doll that could make any little Newfie girl in my Catholic school cluck their tongue enviously and yell, "That's a siiin!" We weren't really clear on what "that's a sin" meant, except that whatever a sin was, it wasn't fair and we wanted one. Later we realized it meant, "that's a shame", and I still use it to annoy my mother if she catches the roast on fire.

This doll traveled to the reservation with me, dressed in little poufy hand-made dresses. I lost one of her shoes - which now cost the same as actual human shoes - and that little white leather shoe has been sitting on some dusty shelf of guilt in the back of my brain for twenty years. My mom stuck her in a box and mailed her to me this week, packed in holly-leaf tissue and padded with mini liquor bottles (my mom wins at package-making).

So I knit her a sweater. And a hat.

And while I sewed on the little clasps, my brain tripped on a 5-htp pill (or one of several mini liquor bottles) and started thinking things like, ooh, I can make tiny Scottish arans! And fair-isle! And Hogwarts uniforms! And I can open an etsy shop and sell doll sweaters for $50 each and get a publishing deal for a book of doll patterns and OH MY GOD SHUT UP BRAIN.

(cat picture, which I BROKE)

"DOLLS LOL"

And you shut it, too, cat.

Hawthorn

I sat outside in the evening and finished the sweater. It's really heavy and way too big, but soft enough to inspire narcolepsy.

I'm a bit lost these days, drifting around with the kids and my coffee and my knitting and sketches. Leif has been sleeping through the nights, and I'm finally in my own bed, pinned down by cats, reading until all the electric candles turn off at 10pm. Sleep is still a thin, shadowy thing.

But maybe not anymore, with a narcolepsy sweater.

ok, I'll play again

copying Jiveturkey for two years in a row.


1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? ate tiny tacos, saw a real hipster mustache, made cryptozoological porn.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't remember. That points to no.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Rose! Rose did! And I totally noticed on her fb feed days before she gave birth! I am a terrible, terrible friend.

4. Did anyone close to you die? if "anyone" includes "a dog", and "close" means "a few feet away", then yes. Humans Family are all accounted for. DON'T GET ANY IDEAS, PEOPLE. edit: I failed to note the horrible, sudden death of one of Mike's close friends. I try not to catalog his griefs among my own, but it is terrible not to mention it.

5. What places did you visit? New York, some Dunkin Donuts in New Jersey.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011? Fidelity. OH SNAP. Ok, that's out of the way, let's proceed.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Haahaha, no. Erasing them all with booze - applied straight into my ear.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? This is depressing. Wait - a book! I published another book! Why do I keep forgetting this?

9. What was your biggest failure? I'm on application number THREE for childcare assistance, because shit keeps happening to my paperwork month after month. I would like to get that hammered out so I can buy food again. I was only half-kidding about sharing the cat food when I fed the horrible cats tonight.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? injury of most pride: cut my thumb on my oatmeal. Also: ongoing mystery ear problem, split my foot on a stocking holder, got my first inhaler, and fell down stairs again.

11. What was the best thing you bought? the Harley jacket - except I didn't get to wear it, because I kicked out the guy with the motorcycle before I could learn to ride. So... not that. The red dress, then.


12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Leif, for not peeing on my rugs anymore.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Well, I did listen to the new Nickelback album. Also, the cat has been peeing on my rugs.

14. Where did most of your money go? rent. Half for a house I loved, half for a house I do not.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? I get a kick out of packages in the mail. Especially when they contain paintings of Bakersfield, giant robots, Steelers merchandise, tiny bottles of cognac, homespun, and Aero balls. You guys blow my kilt up.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
This song by this guy who looks disturbingly like me.





17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? sadder
b) thinner or fatter? very slightly thinner
c) richer or poorer? kind of a lot poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? naked sunbathing

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? talking to people after 2 drinks. SHUT UP, SELF.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? walking around the mall, getting up at 5am, eating things.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011? Ahh, no. I really did not.

22. What was your favorite TV program? Misfits. Being Human. Doctor Who. Parks and Rec. Dexter kind of tanked this season. Psych couldn't decide when it was on. I'm waiting for a new scifi series, syfy.

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2010? drink moscato and eat cake with my mom.

24. What was the best book you read? The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor. Just started reading The Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon's latest, and the first sentence has "cock" in it, so that's off to a good start.

25. What did you want and get? coffee from space.

26. What did you want and not get? Childcare assistance. Attention from someone I have no business wanting attention from.

27. What was your favorite film of this year? I think I'm going to have to sneak behind Harry's back and say True Grit for this one, actually.

28. Did you make some new friends this year? Yes, but he requires a lot of paperwork and I'm scared of his wife. Also I found a kitten. Because I needed 4 cats.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? ... a yule log.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? lazy Hepburn

31. What kept you sane? friends, running, my sons, passive internet stalking

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Nathan.

 and Mitchell.

I like mops of hair and eyebrows, I guess.

33. What political issue stirred you the most? The whole pay cut for state employees thing really blew.

34. Who did you miss? B, G, H, M, P, J, J, J and R. That was illuminating, wasn't it?

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. Don't set your pot mitts on fire while you're wearing them.

Christmas 2011

Christmas Eve - my mom's house

Roast beast, yorkshire pudding, neeps and taties, moscato, pear tart with gorgonzola. After the feast, we all sacked out in front of a Christmas Story, the boy wrote his letter to the fat man, we put out a shot of the Glenlivet for Santa, and my mom found the cat up on the table gnawing the roast. He's old and decrepid and mostly toothless, so we were kind of impressed.

how I want to spend my old age

Christmas Morning

 The boy dragged his granny downstairs at 5:00am. I woke up to the glow of tree lights in the hallway and prodded the sleeping child next to me. Halfway through the candy and present fracas I discovered that Santa had somehow misplaced a Beyblade arena in the closet, and I nearly took out the tree by falling off the stairs with it. As I went down in a shower of ornaments, the plastic arena flew behind the branches, and nobody was the wiser. Smooth.

It was the year of the Zim for the boy. Through a hassle involving defective used electronics and a tired Apple Genius, Gavin had a gleaming new iPod deposited into his hands, and we didn't see him again for two days.

My mom inspected her new DDR and ate dubious Japanese melty candies while the infink and I set up an imperial bagel shop.

On my part, it was the year of the caffeine. My mother gave me a device that delivers coffee from the future, humming from a little red craft that punctures foil pods and beams them into steaming single-serve cups of stimulant. I have named it Dr. Brew.

and I love him

While my mom laughed with her baby sister in Canadaland on the phone, I assembled the Christmas meat pie with the surplus roast beef (trimmed of old-man cat slobber), with little dough cutouts of the boys on top, all crafty-like. By 7pm, Leif had just about enough of this festivity shit.

The moment he realized he still had get through a meal before he could go to bed

He managed to drowsily eat all the beef out of his pie without passing out face-first into the gravy before I brushed him up and chucked him in bed. When I skidded back downstairs and reclaimed my glass of cherry wine (from French Lick - which got funnier and funnier the more of it we drank), mom pulled out the old bottle of Braddah Kimo's Undrinkable Grain Alcohol Rum and set fire to the plum pudding.

secret ingredient: your eyebrows

It didn't seem to be enough of a fire hazard, so she poured on more, and the flames shot a foot up. It was magic. Flaming pudding is one of the best things ever.

Boxing day


Terrible DDR dancing, stories over coffee, leftover gorgonzola on pear slices, and then back to the airport.

I had a horrible moment in the airport when I had kissed the kids goodbye, gone through security croodling my appliance box, and a woman at the gate turned to admire it. "Oh, is that a single-serving one?" And I started crying, because I was leaving my children behind and going home with a single-serving coffee machine.

Felt better when I saw the Tardis-coffee in the morning, though.

What's been going on

My doctor would not give me fancy drugs to make me happy, because my anxiety is "situational". I know, right? What a quack. Sure, I'm stressed because of money and time and responsibility, but does knowing that make me any less likely to drive the car off a sea-cliff? Well, yes, but only grudgingly. I'm loading up on 5htp, instead, and waiting for the hallucinations and lucid nightmares.

This would be a good place to note that the kids are not with me, because they are spending winter break with grandma and their father on another island. So I'm by myself, which makes it totally ok to be irresponsible with vitamins.

And because I am the sort of person who worries about dying from vitamin overdoses, I've been jogging and cleaning and knitting and in general getting on in a really impressively boring manner. I am filling the time and loneliness with paring down - my belongings, my expenses, my underpant size. I don't need to be able to afford meat, because homemade bread and soups are fantastic. My furniture is good quality, my dishes are sturdy white china, my blankets are hand-quilted, my sweaters are hand-knit, and all I have to do is get rid of the detritus - junk mail, old toys, unused diapers, ratty blankets, that pot mitt I caught on fire - and try to keep the place simple and clean. Ta daa. Take pictures of my house for Shack Chic, I am Amanda Blake Fucking Soule.

Clearly, the 5htp is working.

And my patrons keep me engaged. There is the hobo who spends all his crumpled, sweaty dollars on our book sales, hoarding hundreds of books in mouldering piles for an orphanage in Thailand he claims to be starting. There is the muumuu hobo with a little dog she scoots around in a baby stroller, with a card to show it's a service animal - that service is elusive until you realize that baby-dog is the thing keeping her heart afloat. There is the hobo we all suspected of being a crazy child abuser, who was just arrested for being a crazy child abuser. My hobos keep me strapped to humanity, which is tender and tough and horrible in ways that are really important and funny and scary. I love them. Except when I hate their fucking guts.


And here is a draft I wrote a few weeks ago and never got around to posting because PATHETIC:


-------------------------


12-10-11
I took Friday off to attend Christmas program and fundraiser stuff with the boys. Dropped them off at school and had a few hours to kill. The landlord had not paid the garbage men to pick up the Thanksgiving refuse, so I pulled on my shittiest jeans, opened all the windows of the car, and loaded two garbage cans of rancid rotting turkey into the hatchback for a ride to the dump. Chased an optimistic stray dog away from the maggoty bones I dropped. Drove off with my head out the window, trying to find a song on my ipod loud enough to drown out the smell. The wind sort of whipped the putrid carcass odor around in circles inside the cab. It was a tossup between forensic anthropology and library science for grad school; my current profession at least gets me laid more. Which is to say not at all, but at least I smell better while not doing it. Did not gag, though, which was a nod toward my ass-kickingness as a would-be corpse-examiner. As I pulled out of the dump, I passed a good-looking man I have been passively keeping an eye out for, and gunned it when he braked and waved because, well shit, maggoty carcass stink is not the best way to earn a place in a man's heart. I hope.

You know what kind of men love smelly carcasses? Bears.

There is something empowering about throwing all your shit out at the dump. I peeled out of my clothes, burned them*, found my running shorts, and went sprinting outside to run down the road to the bay. I didn't even stop to walk and pretend to fiddle with my ipod when trucks drove by, so they received the full visual impact of my jiggly parts, which are unexpected and alarming. The beach was empty, billowing with cold mist from the surf, and I did a skipping-hop-run to the music down to the pier and back again. Nearly died of muscle spasms on the way back up the hill. Showered all the garbage and running off, collapsed on couch. Much better than crying into knitting. Idiot-epiphany.

Lost it at the Christmas program, though. The kiddo was adorable and a bit of a ham, Leif sat on my lap and clapped dutifully, and all the other parents had plans for the weekend that did not include hanging out with my sorry ass. 'Holiday baking with family', and that kind of nonsense. I took the kids home and cried quietly into the laundry for a minute or two, then washed the car, grilled some sandwiches, made cookies, and put on a Christmas special while handing out egg nog. Mine was mostly brandy. Gavin curled up and said, "Ahh, best day ever," and I said, "Huh, where?"

Because when you can't make it, fake it. Their memories are more important than mine right now.

*threw them in washer

lizards, wolves, and a red sweater

Look. THERE WAS YELLOW. And then there was black and grey and purple again. It makes me mad looking at it. I want to slap it and tell it to put some pants on and get its fingers out of the nutella, life's not that bad for fuck's sake. Then I hear a wolf howl somewhere off in the middle distance, and knit another row of purple and grey.

But there is also red. Am making a sweater out of babby-melter acrylic, since sheep hate me, and because it is very slightly cold outside. I promise not to wrap any babies in it and set it on fire.

And I am drawing giant hair-snatching lizards. 

Since my computer died and I got left with the laptop and no wacom tablet, this next book is going to be fancy, with paper and pencils and paint and all that. I am excited about this one, because I get to do stippling and also because the lizard horrifically maims the protagonist.

Which reminds me, I completely neglected to mention the new book. Sometime in October, I received a nice box with a big stack of pantless Christmas mice, said, "Ooh! That's lovely," and then forgot to show anyone or do anything with them. Partly because there won't be any book signings this year, since all the book stores went out of business. It is a hollow accomplishment without the free lattes and harassment of Nook salesmen.

Now I am sad and have to take my scarf out to Hot Topic.

not the new normal

After my mom flew home, I cried all over everything. Doing the dishes, in the shower, into couch pillows. I didn't mean to, it just happened; some instinctive response to stop us from getting separated from the herd and falling into a tar pit. I didn't need a tar pit, though, because I also had a head cold, and was busy burying myself in soggy tissues. And I couldn't sleep, except long enough to have short, crappy dreams about not being able to sleep.

After a few days of this, though, I was feeling bushy-eyed and overtired. Maybe it was just because I changed out of boots and into sneakers during lunch break. Sneakers are made out of the hides of very energetic creatures. Wikipedia tells me that they are made of "vulcanized rubber". So in my Vulcan-hide sneakers, in the late evening, when the library was quiet and empty, I raced my book cart around the stacks. I dug out all the sex and gore books hidden by 5th graders behind the comics and replaced them with better ones. Found a novelty cookie cutter in my bag and took a picture of it. Felt kind of okay for a bit.

In the morning I hid my face in my coffee cup, embarrassed about acting like a damn idiot. Is this like when someone dies and you feel guilt the first time you laugh? Nothing wrong with being a damn idiot. I put on Hepburn swoops of eyeliner, dressed in new pants and a nice black shirt, adjusted my bosoms, and found some stupid stripey green fleece socks. Start small.

I walked Leif into preschool, eyeing him for signs of my head cold. He looked fine. A few small sniffles, a cough over his cereal that morning, but nothing gooey or rattling - and anyway, his teachers would call me at work if he started spouting green snot. One of the dads walked by.

"How's that cough?"
"Oh?" Leif isn't coughing, was he coughing yesterday? Our kids aren't even in the same class. "Seems ok. He has allergies, a bit, so it's hard to tell what's cats and what's cold." What am I talking about?
The dad said, "Because he can just keep that cough to himself! Haha."

I started to say, "HAHA. IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE I'M DOING THIS ALL BY MYSELF," but I did not say that, because that doesn't even make any sense. Holy shit, I'm already turning into an unhinged hermit. I need to get a trespassers will be shot sign and a string of squirrels. (Fun fact: when I do a google image search for "hermit with squirrels", I get a bunch of furry porn. Don't do that.)

The "new normal" is going to find me soon. And I won't be a crazy-eyed, squirrel-porn-nightmare-suffering  person when it comes.

clink clink clink

Yes, I'm doing this again, shush everyone. Do I look ok? I'm wearing red, I'm fancy. Did anyone else snitch the turkey? It's ridiculously good. I'm a little worried about it. They must be injecting them with something new this year, because turkey isn't supposed to taste like that. WELL. It's a smaller table this year. Unless you count the cats. We seem to be overrun. If things keep going like they have been, we might be having smaller roasts next year - yeah, watch it, Po. So this wasn't the best year we've had. It was pretty spectacularly crap. Nice touch there, mom, breaking your toe for the holidays, I saw that. Still, it's like I've been saying, the bigger the disaster, the better the story. So there was the layoff, and moving, and Josh died, and the dog got run over, then there was the pay cut, the ride in the ambulance, I developed that allergy to all my wool, my favorite patron died, mom's bird was murdered, and now we have the breakup ordeal and childcare issues. But we're all still alive. That sounds flippant, but it's really not. The spectre of Death has been in the wings - but we can come to this table, and sit here together, and eat until we're sick, and drink until Charlie Brown is funny, and everything is ok. We are all here, right now. And that counts for so much - we would claw through the years just to get back to this time, some day. I hope your shirt is absorbent, mom, because I have some crying-on-my-mom to catch up on this weekend. And I made the casserole without onions, just because they make you violently ill and you're tired of throwing up every holiday. No respect for tradition, I tell you.  So let's eat, and sit around trash-talking the tv and listening to the kids sing muppet Christmas carols. And everyone get along, because the pie is watching us.

Cheers.

Week 1

It isn't really week 1.

Week 1 happened 5 years ago. I watched the car drive away, turned away from my father-in-law's front door, and realized that everything had changed. I was standing in the first minutes of a long walk through a lot of years. I think Oliver Stone did a rack focus on me. 

But in this most recent reset, things are easier. Still complete shit, with the lonely nights and detached limbs and financial landmines, but not bleak or hopeless or lost. I'm just hanging around, with the dinner dishes and bedtime stories and laundry folding and bitten fingers from pilling my asshole cat (who is still peeing on everything, just more comfortably). 

There is some laying around on the floor listening to Led Zeppelin, the Black Keys, trashy angst rock, and the Muppets with John Denver.

and noticing that the rug smells funny

And I drew a bit.

Gave up on knitting when I got to the armpits, because armpits take counting and I am too damned lazy. And because the cat barfed on it. Twice. In the same spot. I hate her so much. She's just lucky she's so skilled at tap-dancing, or there would be no reason to keep her.

There is the shmoopy shcarf, which I have been adding a row to every day based on my feeeelings. The yellow was clearly a waste of $2.99.

read from the bottom up

Grownup bed! Slept in! All night! Memory foam causes instant comas. It's magical stuff.

I'm a jerk and I hate my cat

Still haven't had those gimlets. And I'm not going to. Drinking isn't therapeutic when you're the only person around to drive to the emergency room if the kids roll out of bed and crack their heads open on a cat or something. The plan now is to just ignore everything and see how long it takes before I have a horrible meltdown at an inopportune moment. The last time I did this, I made it two months without crying about losing the house before bursting into sobs at the word "avocado". Three days in, and so far so good. I am a bit grumpy, and sometimes I start to well up when people say things like "What did you do this weekend?" or "How are the kids?" or "Do I have any late fines?" but I'm cool. When people talk about their babies and husbands I totally don't say, "I SMASH YOU IN THE FACE WITH YOUR STUPID ADORABLE BABY/HUSBAND," because, as I have just said, I am cool. Cooly crumpling my emotions into a cool little wad and cooly stuffing them into a bottle of coolness. Case in point: earlier today I made fun of my co-worker for trying to walk next to an old lady without her feeling embarrassed about how slow she was, so he was sort of zombie-lurching and pretending to be very interested in the thermostat. Cool people mock their friends and the elderly. So there you go. I'm fine.

Now, at the library we keep the new issues of Cosmo under the front desk, because our copies get stolen by masturbators. I take the magazine out and flip through it from time to time, and it has assured me that by talking about my living arrangements, I can expect psychopaths to immediately come crashing through my windows, ready to throttle me with shoestrings. But I am going to do it anyway, because I am daring and stupid and I have pepper spray somewhere. Psychopaths are here encouraged to stop reading.

So I'm living alone now, with the two boys, and it is slightly unnerving being the only adult in the house again. After going on a manic cleaning and furniture-rearranging spree, I took the kids to the beach, thinking that seemed like a safe enough way to spend an afternoon, and there I discovered a dead kitten in the sandy walkway. It was still fluffy and adorable, curled under a stick which must have broken beneath it from the tree overhead. I paced around for a bit, thought about pretending I hadn't seen it, looked for someone to come dispose of it for me, got mad at myself for being an asshole, and finally decided to make a run for the car before the kids could see it and get upset. There was a box of to-be-donated-clothes in the trunk, so I grabbed a shirt, ran down to the kitten, and gingerly swaddled it up. Ideally, I would have liked to lay it in the forest under a dignified scattering of leaves and flowers, but my kids were trying to get eaten by sharks (which I could tell because they were whacking the waves with sticks and yelling, "RAWR, COME ON SHARKS!"), so I ran to a trash can and laid the little bundle inside with an apology. A picnic bench full of people was watching me throughout all this, so I gave them a Disapproving Librarian Stare and ran back to the water to scrub my arms down with sand.

This was not the best way to start my new chapter of single-parentness. I decided that the next thing to do would be to sleep in my very own bed like a proper adult, instead of cramming up against the wall on the bottom bunk in the kids' room. This has not happened yet.

Night 1: Changed all the bedding, for a fresh start. Po jumped up, purred at me, squatted in the middle of the bedspread, and peed all over it. I chased her around the house with a spray bottle, changed the bedding again, started the washer, and slept in the kids' room, because that was all too much work.

Night 2: Sniffed the bed, got under the covers, turned off the light, and made myself lay there. Managed it for about 20 minutes - eyes bulging, searching the shadows for shoestring psychopaths and listening for telltale scrabbles at the windows. Po jumped up, purring in a comforting manner, and - of course - started to pee on me. So I went running all over the house chasing her with a squirt bottle, changed the bedding again, thumped back onto the bed in a stubborn manner, and then heard a WHAM from the front of the house and sprinted to the kids' room - only to find it was my neighbor closing her car door outside. Slept in the kids' room, because that was all too much work.

Night 3: Put the spray bottle on the nightstand, got under the covers, and read a book until I was sleepy. Flicked off the light. Kicked Po when she jumped on the bed. Heard a scratching by the hamper. Turned on the light, caught Po peeing on a sock. Chased cat around the house with the spray bottle, put sock in washer, got back in bed, turned off light. Heard a thump. Turned on light, caught Po peeing in the closet. Chased her with spray bottle, threw her into litter box, cleaned closet, closed bedroom door, and went to sleep in the kids' room, because all that was TOO MUCH WORK.

Fuck it.

In other news, I changed my hair, because something had to happen to it and I can't bring myself to cut it.