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.

the donations bin

I stood in front of the overflowing mountain of donations Marc was sorting through sadly. "Ok, fine, I'll help you." He made a strangled noise, "When these came in on Saturday - that was my crying time." We tossed yellowed paperbacks and moldy Grafton novels into piles.
"I am instituting a No Baldacci Ever policy," I said.
"I think all novels should have pictures of falling people on the covers. Oh, look, another," he said..
"Eew, that one was erotica, and it smelled funny."
"Hmm, this is a nice sticker, but I bet someone already licked the potency off it."
"Wait, don't lick it, that's erotica, too."
"Why don't paperbacks have little windows cut out on the front anymore? VC Andrews. Look, it looks like little birds but open it up and - oh no! It's a falling man!"
"Did you mean to put this Playboy compilation in your pile? It's in good condition at least."
"Yeah? How far into it?"
"Gross. Wow, the 70s were good to erotica. Everyone looks so happy in these pictures."
" ...Who donated these?"

 

Things found in the donations pile:

Little known fact about Henry VIII (after all, we are just now learning that he actually looked like THIS)

Wow so clever:

"Teach that book to mutine!"

Easter Fun! Except for you in the middle.

 

...Propping the chihuahua's head back on?

no biscuits for us

Eventful day. Gavin vomited from 1am-6am, claimed he was ok because he "just ate paper". My new drawing toy arrived, Gavin went to his Easter party at daycare after a healthy morning, then Mike forgot to pick him up for the first time and I had to go after work to get him on the way to the Condors vs. the Steelheads.

Yes, I went to a hockey game, drinking a plastic cup of beer in the middle of a group of mormons and nursing mothers. I sat where my boss told me to sit, then got ousted to another seat by a grumpy old man named "Cowboy" who pretended he didn't believe that my boss had any friends to bring. She shushed him with a burp rag. Marc shrugged when I asked if the scoring was like baseball or volleyball, having been strong-armed into bringing his wife and baby despite not being interested in hockey. Gavin sat on my lap with fries and a burger, asking which ones were the bad guys as the crowd roared and clabbered cowbells.

A fight! Best part. My boss - Heather - hooted as the crowd cheered. "That's Number 55! The one that comes to the library!" she said. "Myspace?" "Yep!" Gloves and helmets flew, the two players were allowed to punch each other for a few moments before their teammates leaned past the watching refs and pulled them apart. The stadium pounded and roared with approval as the opposing team member was sent to the penalty thingie. Gavin laughed. By the end of the night the salty old Cowboy was tickling him and ruffling his hair as they craned their necks up at the remote-controlled blimp that dropped coupons on the crowd. He even pulled a hockey puck from his weathered jeans and gave it to the kiddo.

I've never really liked sports, but it was good feeling to be in the middle of my own group of people - kissing baby knuckles and passing food, having my ponytail tweaked and watching Gavin tussle with my boss's husband. While the boys watched the Zamboni races, Heather handed me a stack of book reviews and we bent over them with highlighters.

The opposing team scored, we lost our free biscuits and gravy promised by the Voice of God, and 4,750 fans streamed out into the balmy night. Gavin admired his puck while we talked about the merits of teamsmanship and violence on the way home.

Next stop is Easter. Looking forward to some Sparkling Beet Cups.

Scraped thin

I feel transparent. Here, doing my job, talking with friends, reading. No longer waiting for life to start after school or marriage or kids - this is it, the Rest of My Life, and it feels empty. Meaningless. My co-worker says it's human nature to feel like whatever we are feeling at the moment is what we will be feeling forever - love, sadness, loneliness - and of course it always changes. I've stopped looking ahead, trying not to look behind at the crash scene, just watching my feet and wondering when they'll land on something that feels more like home. I'm not depressed, exactly. I am going places, seeing things - it just all feels thin, like I'm doing it all from so high up I can't quite hear or breathe. Sometimes a memory or a song will make my chest clench, that sharp pain and warmth that feels like your heart really is broken and bleeding, and then a moment later I'll be laughing again. How engaged in life can you be when you know that at any moment you can be stabbed in the chest?
 

Thinking about this Maya Angelou poem:

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.


I got back from Valencia to find that my Mike had not fed or given water to my cat as promised. A car pulled up in front of my apartment and he got out with his girlfriend. An hour later he texted me to say he had just gotten home and that he was going for a bike ride. Gavin spent the rest of the day asking why his dad hadn't come over to say hi so he could tell him about our trip. I explained as simply as I could, disappointed. You want to believe the people will change for the better when they say they are, but Mike has not seen a therapist, not stopped lying, continues to discard his promises and family when his sex life predominates his life. I want none of it.

madness

I woke up, climbed over my sleeping child, and foraged in the kitchen for foods. A peek out the window confirmed that the xfh had arrived home unkilled from his motorcycle trip over the grapevine at night. Oh well.

Mike knocked on my door at 7am. I looked through the peek hole and let him in, standing in my cupcake jammies holding half a grapefruit. He looked surprised, "Where's Gavin?" I took the spoon out of my mouth. "You're really hairy." Gavin ran out of the bedroom at the sound of his dad's voice, then went around showing him every new item purchased since the last time he saw him. I left the boys to enjoy each other and took a shower. Shaved one leg before giving up and deciding to wear tights.

Dressed, checked messages. Declined another of what sounded suspiciously like a date with co-worker. Felt reassured about my position re: dying alone and being eaten by wild dogs.

We gave Gavin a pep-talk about bullies, threw him out at daycare with kisses and pats. At work, I propped up a little paper bag containing one Smiths donut on Marc's desk as thanks for doing my desk duty while I was out sick. Settled into reference desk, scanning for new cartoons taped up around the desk. For angry noses! was freshly scribbled on the box of tissues. I admired the pasting job on the reference bear where Marc had added my suggested uniform of newsboy cap, cape, and spartan undies. The reference computer immediately crashed. The catalog stations kicked up their heels and died. "Well," I told Marc, "We can just tell them to stop complaining, it's Friday." "And they'll exclaim, 'FRIDAY!?' and run out the door waving their arms in liberated hysteria."

By lunch, the only person to do that was me. After going to the bank about a lost check, xfh and I sat in a booth at Sequoia talking about nothing much while he ate roast beef and I gnawed raw veggies. As he dropped me off at work again, he smiled. "Hey, I love you." I turned irritably. "Yeah, you, too, you jerk." He hugged me, I told him to shave and find a therapist, and that was that.

Jerk.

jerky and coke

My mother's visit came to an end. She kissed us goodbye early in the morning, leaving Gavin and I curled under the sparse blankets of a stiff bed at Motel 6. The two of us drove home from LAX by ourselves, eating a gas station breakfast of dry cereal, pink milk, and beef jerky. We crested the mountain to see an endless expanse of clear-skied valley, the highway disappearing into the northern horizon, and it felt like being hit by the sun.

Gavin and I cleaned up the visiting mess, put in laundry, rolled through Trader Joe's. We enjoyed the last of the evening light walking through the prairie dog field, throwing stones into the water pooled in the ruts. "I smell animal," I said, looking at the burrows ringing the wash. Gavin stood up straight and sniffed. "I don't. I smell dirt, and water, and grass." ""Well, that's a good smell, isn't it?" "Yeah, it sure is." We smiled at each other, listened to the silence of buzzing insects and talking crows, then walked back to the apartment. While Gavin snacked on letter-shaped cookies and crashed cars on the computer, I folded laundry and watched Stranger than Fiction. Po lumped herself on the balcony to watch college students walk their dogs. At the very moment the narrator typed, The phone rang, my phone rang along with the one in the movie. I jumped, grabbed it, talked to my mom and listened to my grandfather in the background. Pictures of the new baby up on my screen. I both happy and sad. Hiding among other refugees, waiting for the Next Big Thing. Looking at that horizon.

Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Oh, SHUT UP.

My mother has come to visit, while Mike has flown thousands of miles away. This has been great. Gavin knocked the papasan over onto himself, we went shopping at World Market, and I introduced my mom to Trader Joes. This week we have eaten Bakersfield's favorite chewy thingies, I got pepper spray up my nose, called a kung fu master, not called a clown, learned to make a "squirrel pole", watched Gavin learn to play volleyball, dug the volleyball out of a homemade grave he left it in, sat beside the pool in a bikini, washed the car while my mom and Gavin told me what to do, accidentally murdered the last Hawaiian car cockroach with soap suds, and bought a floofy dress with pink flowers on it.

Keeping busy.