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.

My one and only wrecking ball

The plane departed. The kids cried, then fell asleep in the car. As I drove along the edge of the island in the dark, my brain reached out to feel the cracks of my heart to see how deep the injury was. It isn't safe to have an emotional breakdown while handling a car for two hours, so I shoved my brain and heart into opposite corners and drove home with red, tired eyes. After the kids are safely tucked in bed I can reunite the brain and the heart and lose my shit as much as I want.

Later.

waiting game

I tried to bow out of the party, which was mostly for the men anyway. Nobody wants two people in the middle of a breakup at their birthday party. It's weird and uncomfortable. I explained this to the host, but with some teasing and painful elbow nudges, I was egged into coming over.

By 7:30pm, I was laughing and trash-talking the dart night guys. Something seared into the side of my face. It was the man's staring eyeballs, from where he sat like a basilisk on the kitchen landing. I stuck out my tongue, and he got up to use the bathroom. At 8:00pm, Leif tromped in and announced, "Time to go home and go to bed. 5 minutes, mom," and tromped out again. Someone looked around. "Where's Mike?" I found him outside in the dark, sitting on a lawn chair. "I can't do this," he said. "Oh, for fuck's sake," I replied. "TWO MINUTES," Leif yelled from the toy bin.

When we got home and the boys were passed out in their beds, the man took me aside and made his announcement. "I think I'm going to move back to Oahu." He cried. I didn't.

This is good. This is the sound of wheels gaining traction after spinning uselessly. This is moving forward with a feeling of relief, and suddenly realizing you are sliding toward a drop off. Oh shit, childcare. Oh shit, no backup for parenting, sick days, holidays, grocery shopping.

I'll figure it out.



Turning comments off again.

Beatnik sweater

It is done! A finished sweater that I am allergic to! And it is very unflattering!

After discovering the rogue ball of tweed in my basket, all it took to finish it was some misdirected anger, three episodes of the Walking Dead, and half a bottle of my kid's allergy medicine.

And I totally had yarn left over.

What was I worried about?

Finished objects mean action shots. Which mean balancing the camera on the weird window/hole between the livingroom and kitchen, focusing it haphazardly because the auto-focus is broken, and running down with 5 seconds to think of something action-y to do.

Which is usually the chicken dance.

Which, I am realizing now, makes me look as if I am holding two giant invisible cocks.

Get your goggles on, folks.

On the pattern for the sweater, there is a cute photo of a woman jumping. I tried jumping, too. 

sweat-hurr

So there it is. Done. 

Note my amazing seaming. I don't understand the flailing about having to seam a sweater; it's still just needles and yarn.

And now I have to focus on other things. Like getting this MAN OUT OF MY HOUSE. I threw him out on Wednesday, and he's back again. I got a drunky email from the next room last night, saying how sorry he is and how pretty I am. 

Maybe I should take up pan-throwing. Or archery.