burn

I wasn't surprised 5 years ago when John told me about his drag performances. "Giiiirl," he told me, "I could do your makeup. I'm good, for real. I can do you up glam, or I could make you look totally fishy." "Fishy?" "You know, like a girl. A wo-man." "I am a girl." "Yeah, but I could make you look like one." Last night I answered the phone and got the latest on my dear boy, who's little brother is having a very special wedding soon; "Yeah, girl, I'm ordained. Thank you internet, I'm a minister." "Wow! Does it expire?" "Nope, as long as I keep good records and don't get in trouble, I can marry anyone in the state of Hawaii forevers. Nice, eh?"

IKE-AAAH

"Smell that mountain air, suck it in. Mmmmm." We stood at a rest area outside Frazier Park, admiring the breeze while Gavin stomped around with his lip out. "I'm tired of driving." "Well, we'll let dad drive for a bit, then." As we drove on into the Left Armpit of Hell (Burbank), Mike pointed at a fire hazard sign. "Do you think it's ever not 'high'?" "Maybe when it snows? I dunno." The drive took longer than normal because Gavin thought false pee alarms would make the trip go faster, and we arrived at IKEA around noon. IKEA had it's way with us, and as we drove back over the mountain, a wall of smoke hit us, covering the highway in a white haze for more than 10 miles. The sun was a pinprick of orange. As we got back to Frazier Park, a line of firemen were spraying the wildfire. Bushes burned on the black crispy mountainside. We slowed and stared, made bad jokes about how hot we were, and decided never to move to Frazier Park after all.

tonight

Librarians On the Town Part II. Seeking further answers to pressing questions: does everyone have a cool name except me? Should I change mine to Reina Deth? How many bars downtown have pool tables, and which ones will allow me to win?

And for posterity, the week's Reference Questions Du Jours:

Where are the spiderman books for kids who can't read? Like, with no words?
Do you have a printout I can have of all your nonfiction books? Can you make one?
How much does it cost to rent a book?
Where are the books on how to kill yourself?
What do you mean 1183 minus 1133 is 50? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? It should be much higher, in the hundreds! How does that work? HOW? What kind of calculator are you using? TELL ME.

(feel free to add here, Marc.)

Mother's Day: liver is in the air

The day began early, cat sailing out the bedroom door after yowling me awake, groggy self shuffling into the bathroom to find up some advil and take a shower to get the smell of chicken wings off me. Gavin tackled me with his Mother's Day card, which I pinned up on the fridge. We ate cereal and sat over his baby album, reminiscing. Mike and I stood in front of the stove, eating rum cake with our hands. By noon we had a mission; liverwurst. We hadn't had any since the last time we were in New York. 

The deli was closed. The other deli was closed. The deli near the library was out of business. The deli across town was closed. Supermarket after supermarket we came up empty, so finally we bought a log of mass-market stuff and I texted J. to see if he knew where to get liverwurst. This led to a long thumb-spraining explanation of what liverwurst was. On the one hand, I now have info on the location of a German meat market on the east side. On the other, I have to beat J. at pool in exchange for my earring that he is holding hostage. Wily.

But it was a good day, a good long weekend. Happy to get back into the work week.

"Yes to Methamphetamines!"

You stop blogging for a few days and everything gets wadded up around your armpits.


Gavin and I went to see a jousting tournament and came away smelling like porcupine pee. My brief appearance at the library tent before being derailed by alpacas has circulated through the higher-ups, yet nobody has said anything about a certain reference librarian's purple pantaloons. Except me. Pantaloons!

My computer was fixed for two easy payments of chocolate chip and lemon cream cheese cookies. Also I bought rum for my "Mother's Day Cake".

Some jerk at the Beale stole Superman's briefcase with his costume in it.
Showed boss the soiled anatomy book and had it confiscated, bagged, labeled as biohazard, and was ordered into restroom to scour clean. Had not occurred to self that perpetrator most likely had not washed hands to peruse remainder of book.

Marc helped me cobble the auditorium tables into a Horseshoe of Craftiness for a very successful card-making activity with snobby scrapbooking material. Browbeat xfh into bringing child to ensure own Mother's Day card. Taking this train by the horns and riding it all the way into a cliff of triumph. Also moment of bragging: my baby can write his own name.

Tonight: Pool! Jukebox! Lemons and straws!

raining babies!

I have a new cousin! Fetus Ted joins the family.



Beth and I sat around patting bellies with Chris and Gavin, back when birds twittered and ideals were shiny. Now everyone is rolling onward, and my life fell off the side of the road in an unceremonious blip. I originally made the predictable phoenix metaphor just to steer through it all, but you don't really get reborn, you just get all mangled and disgusting. 

So welcome to the world, cousin! Don't mess it up, this is your chance.

you learn something new every - oh god no!

I guess technically everything you see in life is something you can't un-see, but some of those things just really stick it to you more than others. This week I have seen 3 un-un-seeable things. The worst of these things was the video on the Bakersfield Californian news website of a Gavin-sized girl being killed by a car. They didn't even edit it, they wanted people to be mad and help find the driver. Secondly, I put my face way too close to a mysterious smeared substance that had glued two pages of our library's anatomy book together before realizing which bodily fluid I was looking at. Threw the book and took a hot scouring shower. And then earlier this week Harris wrestled the remote away from me and snapped off the television after Rachel Ray popped on grinning manically outside a familiar-looking headshop, "In this episode we explore a place dear to my heart, the place I grew up - Lake George Village!" I howled. My heart hurts.

Cinco de Mayo. In celebration of this legendary battle against the French, Gavin and I will eat chips and guacamole, watch cartoons, and go to bed. Rawk. Will try to make up for it by finding tomorrow's jousting tournament and watching men stick each other with pointy things.

wrecked

"Would she like the Amber Bock, you think?" Harris yelled across the bar. The bartender looked me up and down. I flexed. He had a shaved head, heavy mustache, thick tattooed arms, and said in a soft, high voice, "Nope, no way. I'll make her something she'll like." He clunked down a fruity Southern Comfort drink in front of me and I pretended to like it. I would have rather had the beer. We filled up the jukebox and bobbed around the pool table under faded Saint Patrick's Day streamers. I took a carefully measured shot and sent the cue ball flying out the doorway. The bartender bent down and scooped it into his hand before it hit the pair of policemen beside him, who looked at me and then followed an angry woman into the back alley. "When you retell that story, make sure to mention how you hit the cop in the leg and had to have the bartender save you." "Will do." Note to readers: edit the previous accordingly.

As the tavern filled up with nervous prom-goers with fake IDs and glassy-eyed regulars huddling protectively on their favorite stools, we ran out of quarters and gave up our pool sticks to sit around playing with coasters. He said, "I saw [my high school boyfriend and Harris's ex-bandmate's] mom on Molokai, she gave me his cell phone number." We sent him an obnoxious picture message. Back at my place for checkers and cards, Harris talked for a few hours about various substances he enjoyed, and at 5am I tried to sleep while he maintained a death grip around my ribs. I pried him off periodically, jammed the pillow over my head, then finally gave up and made breakfast.

And that was the Bakersfield nightlife. The rest of the weekend was spent around the pool with Gavin (curse those college kids with their coolers in the kiddie pool), shopping for a couch (unsuccessful but good for free coffee samples), baking cookies (using pound-plus slabs of TJ's chocolate), and visiting health food stores (picking up 5-HTP as recommended). This morning Harris crushed me goodbye, promised to come back in 6 months when his visa was up, and threatened to carry me off if I was still a love pariah. That is somewhat sooner than 10 years, I calculated on my fingers. Ack.

alsatian insurance

Yesterday: I had just spit up my tea over a picture of a 1950s Betty Crocker meat pie when a message dinged, announcing the sudden arrival of a houseguest. Harris! Fresh off the greyhound and loose on the streets. My pocket hobo. 

Over pizza and bread pudding, Gavin exploded into narration of his weekend trip to the train station, sandwiching himself between the layers of my double-decker air bed as we turned the livingroom into a flophouse. After the house was quiet and my candles had guttered down to nubs, we curled up on pillows beside our empty wine mugs and I told my tale of woe while Harris prodded my torso and I slapped his hands away absently. Getting a bit sniffly at the end, he squeezed me crushingly, "In ten years if we're still alone, I'll come and marry you." Since the last person I had made this particular pledge of consolation with is now engaged, I laughed [wheezed] and agreed, "We'll show those wild dogs! Nobody's going to gnaw on our dried up carcasses except us! Ha." We flipped through high school photos, plotted devious [unsent] text messages to ex-friends, then shuffled off to our respective beds and listened to the cat yowl all night. 

Gavin wrapped his arms around my neck, and I dreamed a happy dream for a change, interrupting my ongoing streak of boring nightmares.* 

Today: we ran through the aisles of Trader Joe's in the morning, ate dried fruits over chai at lunch, skipped arm in arm to a sushi dinner. He may stay another night, maybe another week, before packing his bindle and heading back to Mexico. Tonight I think we'll make biscotti while he talks about eastern spirituality. Dieters and Dieties agree: cookies enhance spirituality. 

*I have been having the same nightmares for a year now, broken briefly 2 weeks ago by a fantastic run of superhero and ninja dreams before the reruns continued. Tired of repetitive emotional nightmares, I rented a bunch of horror and war films, hoping to battle some real monsters - only to find myself sitting in a cracked bathtub full of blood being comforted by eyeless ghouls while crying over being heartbroken. I count this as mild improvement.

fun with bears

Put down the very important reading I had borrowed from Marc's house on Sunday, and looked at the clock. 9:30am, had to be at work at 12:00pm. Plenty of time to prepare material for my afternoon presentation and draw for a bit. Ended up preparing vat of chili instead. Chili can only be made in vats. Even if you don't particularly like chili.

1:08pm. Looked up to find two circ ladies standing over me at the reference desk. "Come with us." They walked away. Intrigued, I followed them to the nonfiction. Took one look and ran for Marc. "Paranormal phenomena!" We all bunched into the aisle. Cookbooks were lining all the overhead beams, the floor, even propped up on the step stool. "Fairies!" "Bears!" "Tall people!" "Probably those giggling teenagers we saw last night."

Kernville

The 3-day Big Bend mama camping expedition was rained out. Looking at my fortune's worth of new camping gear, I decided to make the best of things and use my long weekend for a mother-son camping adventure in the mountains. Motel camping - I really wasn't interested in pitching a tent in 35 degrees.

The mountains were amazing, we pulled off on a remote side-road and hiked around the boulders until Gavin said his stuffed cat was tired. Lake Isabella twinkled, the rental fishing boats bobbed at the docks. As Gavin threw rocks into the water, I poked around in the sand and found a burned up lace high-heel shoe and scraps of clothing. Looked around for a dead body, but didn't find one.

In Kernville, we parked by the river and watched a bunch of girl scouts in wet suits practice paddling the air for their rafting adventure. The entire economy of Kernville is centered around white-water rafting. It is also run almost solely by desperate young men, which is either romantic or creepy, depending on how you look at things. We walked through the village from lodge to lodge, discovering that seasonal rates begin whenever the hell the owners feel like it. At one inn, Gavin rang the desk bell and a redheaded man with a tragic handlebar mustache popped out, did a double-take, got weird, and gestured us into a back room to ask the owner about rates. The owner appeared like a wolf - or a chupacabra - while the mustache man stood off to the side like someone who was about to watch a snake swallow a frog. I was the frog. After discussing rates with the leathery, tattooed, man we made our escape. "Oh god! My heart! Heart attack! Oh, my heart!" I heard him say from the doorway as I hefted Gavin up onto my hip to hurry across the road. I don't know what that was all about, but I was not sticking around to get murdered.

We picked the motel that fleeced us the least and headed up the mountain to find the redwoods. Gavin fell asleep in the back seat, his head bobbling from side to side on the switchback roads. It was closed. Coming back down from the roadblock, I followed three lumber trucks. They pulled aside to let me pass them next to Durwood, my great-aunt's lodge which was a magical place when I was a kid. As I stared nostalgically at the cabins, one of the truck drivers intercepted my loving gaze and thought it was for him, leaping ahead of the other trucks to chase my car down the mountain. I stepped on the gas.

We played by the river, explored a hobo-den under the bridge, watched a troop of boy scouts hunt for the troop of girl scouts in the campground, and ate dinner at the restaurant. As the sun went down, we headed to the hotel. After about an hour, Gavin declared he wanted to go home. What!? Well heck, if he wasn't having fun it wasn't worth the $85 to spend the night, particularly since the mountain trail was closed and there would be no redwood hiking in the morning. I got half my money back, counted it as a loss, and then backed into their carport. By which I mean the support beam, not the parking space. Great. During the ensuing insurance hassles, the manager's young daughter came out and discovered Gavin. The two played ball with her uncle, who gave me a bag of lemons. As we finally buckled up to leave, Gavin declared that he wanted to stay after all. I banged my head on the steering wheel. We drove home in the dark.

But it was awesome anyway, a beautiful day in our lazy village in the wooded mountains. Finding our way home, bit by bit.

donation treasures

Donations.

Nice. Marc found this one, not me.




Ernite frage. German for "oops I shouldn't have built my house on the edge of a cliff, sorry son."




"My comrade, we tried our best, but all of the missiles failed to make contact. The statues continue to mock us."




Jiggly fishes. The aforementioned aspic. Only 2 pts per serving.