DEATH MATCH - :Made up inside my head:

Working for the government is just a long slog through paperwork. Paperwork to do more paperwork. Waiting for the faxes of that paperwork to attach to other paperwork to submit with additional paperwork. There is paperwork to save other people from doing paperwork that no longer needs to be done, and paperwork to defend yourself when they panic and cc all your bosses because they don't know how to stop doing the paperwork you're trying to spare them.

 So yesterday I started devising a resignation speech in my head. It was in all-caps, and involved stapling things to people. I said as much to sarah, and she replied, "Do the resignation with a top hat and a cane."

This is excellent advice. And coincidentally, the Internet was in need of more pictures of cats in hats.

So here I present a DRAMATIC RE-ENACTMENT OF RESIGNATION WHICH HAS NOT YET OCCURRED.

Scene 1: soliloquy - "fucks I do not give." 

Scene - wait, oh no. Actor is drunk.

REENACTMENT CONTINUES WITH NEW ACTOR

Good day sir. I SAID GOOD DAY.

Much better. It really wasn't a complicated speech.

And all resignations are better when you end them with something random and confusing. ROBOT IN A TOP HAT.

the pigeon, the hobo, and the police

Hyperventilating hobo came into the library, upset about a pigeon that had been looking in the front windows for 3 days. He gestured wildly and claimed it was a pet dove, a very special and important pet dove, like a pirate's parrot. Probably a homing dove. No, a pigeon. Definitely Filipino. Filipinos like pigeons. You can tell by the bands on its legs, it's a highly trained animal, someone is desperate to have it back, it's very smart and very important. It probably rode here in a car. Someone needs to save the Filipino pirate pigeon!

I went outside and had a look at the bird. It was fat and white and had colored, numbered bands around its legs. I promised to stop by the police station and ask them for animal control's number while I was on the way to pick up the library mail, and closed the door on the hobo mid-rant. Drove to the station. Officer blinked at me. A pigeon. Yes, a rogue pigeon. One of our hobos is freaking out because it is looking in the windows. He says it's Filipino. Fili- what?! That's racist. I know, right? You can't just ask a pigeon if it's Filipino! Here comes Ofc. A, tell him! It's on the campus, that's his area. Ofc. A! There is a pigeon menacing the library. Go arrest it. Not again.

I got back to the library, tossed the pigeon part of a hot dog, called animal control, and was told it was a racing pigeon, probably blown off course and resting, and please don't make them send someone all the way out there to chase it around. Went outside and stared at the pigeon with my janitor, discussing the likelihood of it being used as a football by asshole middle-schoolers when the bell rang. Pigeon looked affronted, made a big show of stretching its hamstrings, and flew away.

And that was the thing about the pigeon.


In other news

I'm keeping my hands busy again. Like someone treading water. Not like a serial strangler.

Picked a bag of guavas from my friend's tree, and made a small batch of luminous jelly. No ants were murdered this time.

Working on a Christmas stocking (the argyle stripes and name go on afterward).

And because I just had to make sure sheep are out to kill me, it is made of wool. We all went into fits of asthmatic death-coughing. I had to put Leif's head in the freezer again - which is difficult, because I only have a deep-freeze, and had to hold him upside-down. Have packed the stocking off to work, where I am continuing to kill myself discreetly over lunch breaks.

Trimmed Leif's quilt for binding. Finally.

Worked on the most boring blanket ever. Am going to snap and go wild with the stripes soon. WILD.

Made a head out of sculpey for next illustration project.

Have been entertaining fantasies of quitting my job, getting an agent, finding a mainland publisher, and going full-time with it.

Hmm.

Book #6

It is out! Copy arrived in the mail. It was a bit of a rush job, but I didn't mangle it too badly. 

The kids liked the derpy pig.

And this one has a CD included! I have not listened to it yet, because that would involve prying it out of its pristine packaging, but I will.

Unrelated: these things for snack today.

I am told they are called "Dragon's Eyes", and this time I am almost certain they have magical properties. Not like those hairy apple things my janitor made me eat last year.

break

In some failed relationships, there is a moment when the circling and waiting finally swerves and crashes, tearing apart into a debris field of separated belongings, removed photos, deleted computer files, empty liquor bottles, spatters of mental anguish, and glossy chunks of heart tissue.

The emotional shrapnel isn't mine this time, I am just ducking and cussing to myself. This is a lot of fallout for a 4-month relationship.

But before I finally said the words, "You need to leave," there was a perfect Labor Day weekend with my kids and their dad. He wrote about it here.

Whatever problems Mike and I have had, getting along has never been one of them. For three days, we laid around the hotel pool, visited the aquarium, played mini-putt, ate ridiculous quantities of good food, harassed parrots, and watched movies in our jammies. And every time we got into the car, this song played, until we were smacking each other and making accusing eyebrows as to who's karma was trying to make amends with who's:

As soon as the plane left with the man on it, Black Parade started playing. I laughed helplessly. The radio is possessed. Or the car.

Notable vacation moments:

Thai food - eaten on the hotel coffee table, as if by ravenous wolves.

The aquarium shark tunnel, filled with small children holding their parents' iPhones, running in schools to capture every sea creature that swam by the window.

Leif slipping off the pool steps and tried to drown, necessitating a leap into the water while fully dressed by his heroic mother. "I sinked. I was skeered," said the shivering boy afterward. We went back to the hotel room and played with the Playstation.

Mini-putt, under an enormous fake volcano with cascading waterfalls.

Bumper-boats. Everyone rammed each other and the kids assaulted us with water cannons.  Not a good time to wear a skirt.

A dubious encounter with "Green Burrito". With cardboard pornstaches in the kiddie meals.

Use of age-old traveler's trick for finding good breakfast joints: drive around and look for crowds in some hole-in-the-wall cafe. We scored fantastic biscuits and gravy, with cinnamon buns the size of a baby's head.



It was good. We needed it.

CCDM - EXPIRED MILK

She was too old for this shit.

Babies are for people young enough to be delighted by hats shaped like produce and diapers with jeans pockets printed on them. She was tired, her stitches were showing, and she just wanted a glass of red and 2 minutes in the toilet without being screamed at.

But that 2 minutes was 20 seconds, and that glass was a bottle.

Thank goodness for the pump-and-dump.

a weekend

Waioka is a riverbed of tall white rock and broken boulders, cutting away into a cliff overlooking a large pool by the ocean. The waterfall only runs after hard rain, leaving warm basins of green water in the dips and cracks. Young people leap from the edge of the cliff into the brackish water, their families shouting abusive encouragement from the sidelines.

This place, only with heckling dads waving beer bottles.

 

Gavin jumped from the lowest rocks into the water with his friends, paddling to the edge and floating in the shallow parts with giant goggles strapped to his head. Leif and I sat on the rocks, dipping our legs into the water and watching tadpoles nibble the bubbles on our skin.

Leif slid into the pool while I mentally considered the bacterial bouquet of the stagnant water, then grinned, "Help, mom! I can't get out!" and pawed at the loose gravel helplessly, sending tadpoles fleeing. I lifted him out of the water, and he said, "Thanks, mom, you're my superhero." My kids don't often express themselves in cute clichés, but it charmed the hell out of me.

---

Paia is a small tourist town with a beachy bohemian vibe; two intersecting streets lined with imports, hemp clothing, coffee shops, swimwear, and restaurants with lots of beer on tap. College kids with dreadlocks and flowing skirts walk around finding their spirits and eating gelato.

Leif and I had breakfast at an outdoor cafe, browsed shops to look at crystal jewelry, and wandered the health food store for obscure menu ingredients.

Children who go on solo excursions with their parent enjoy indulgence, and we filled the basket with  organic cheesy poofs, socially responsible chocolate, and rabbit-shaped mac and cheese.

Walking around with Leif is fun, because it is like walking around with Cindel, from the Ewok movies.

Everywhere we go, people stop to squeal at him about his hair. And I puff up like a proud thing because I was SO IN LOVE with Cindel as a child, I totally understand the urge to grab fistfuls of those curls and boing them. I do it constantly - it's amazing the child has any hair left.

The local radio stations haven't had any new music since 2006. As we drove to Kahului, the radio played a string of songs on my quarantine list, like punching me in the face repeatedly. Welcome to the Black Parade. Creep. Right Here.

I didn't switch them, because old familiar heartache is a comfortable place to take refuge when a new, scary one is looming over and around you. Black Parade played twice more before the afternoon was out, and I eyed the radio suspiciously.

Back home in the evening, my stomach rising up into my throat. I let my hair down and combed my fingers through, looking balefully at the strands lying in my hand. It's nothing, and everything.

But it was a good, sunny day with my boy, and Gavin curled up against me on the couch to watch Farscape in the evening and read The Search for Wondla before bed. These are the bits I pare off and eat.

This life, I tell you.

all the fails

Things are derailing, as they do when you get pulled along by someone because you don't want to hurt them by yanking your hand away and staying on safe ground. I once found myself trapped for a week at vacation bible camp because my high school boyfriend snowballed me into signing up, even though the roster of other campers looked suspicious. I suppose the good thing that can be said about this type of gullibility is that it almost always results in an adventure. The party you shouldn't have been at, the nudity that should have been avoided, the vehicle you shouldn't have tried to operate, the masseur you shouldn't have trusted, the drink concoction you were volunteered to taste test - adventure! Adventures are usually no fun when they're happening, though.

So I have done what I did at vacation bible camp; called my mom and cried to come home. I've also sent a whole bunch of flaily, hysterical emails to sarahapple, who mustered the forces and cried DEATH MATCH!

So next Friday TUESDAY (because I still can't count), we will be posting a new death match challenge. The theme: SPOILED EXPIRED MILK. Here's hoping it doesn't end up in a pile of torn scraps like all my other recent projects. I've already broken my sewing machine and taken to stitching the whole thing by hand. Can do this.

I fail at fake parenting

Things are not going well. There is no way to explain all the particular reasons why without hurting someone more than I already need to, so I will use "I statements".

I have been unhappy since combining households, despite the architectural excitement of the new place.

I am allergic to smoke.

I do not want 4 children. 

I don't like my hair falling out from stress. I'm going to look like Dobby soon.

I want to be with my family. My mother developed problems with the electrical systems of her heart over the summer, another of my aunts has moved to Oahu, the kids should be near their father, and I don't want to lose any more years with them all. 

I am making plans.

The party - posterity post

Top on my list of hateful jobs I never want to have is Wedding Planner. Followed by Event Coordinator. Followed by Performer of Any Sort. I hate entertaining. This is not to say I hate celebrating - I flip right the fuck out for holidays, and spend entire days cleaning and decorating and cooking and drinking. Family traditions are my favorite; party games are my natural enemies.

So I took the whole day off to tackle Leif's party. One hot plate and one toaster oven vs. 10 lbs of chicken, potato salad, and a birthday cake. Got up at 5:30am, rolled out the brioche dough I had made the night before, set cinnamon buns to rise, and managed to get them cooked and stuffed into the kids by the time Gavin had to get to school*.

This was a good start, and I organized an assault on the rest of the menu items, searing and simmering and broiling with my ridiculously inadequate appliances. By lunch, one of the part-time kids arrived home from school, because kindergarten lets out early in the first week.

Being an only child to a single mother, the dynamics of large families are confusing to me. And these boys in particular are difficult for me to relate to - they do things like deliberately break their toys, play games that involve crashing and throwing, and they hurt each other, then cry because they were caught, not because they realize what complete dicks they were. On Sunday our friends came back from vacation with their daughters, and when the boys chased the youngest up a tree to pelt him with hard projectiles like something from the Hunger Games, the girls felt so bad about it that they organized everyone into making flower crowns for the kid and dragging him around in a laundry basket like a sled to make him feel better. The girls have empathy. The boys have a sense of justice - and it is not yet in tune AT ALL.

This is all to say that I have not been dealing very well with suddenly having 4 boys around half the time. The volume and crashing and stampeding of feet makes me want to run away to Ontario. The  kindergartner in particular has been making my hair fall out (or it is falling out anyway, maybe because at this point I am about 70% hair) and so I brought out the mixer and made the two small boys help me assemble cakes - determined to be the model of serene matronly love and comfort, damn it. And it worked. They helped me stir, licked the beaters, ate the cake tops I cut away to level the layers, and tested the ice cream to make sure it wasn't poisoned. I WIN AT FAKE PARENTING. Or real parenting, not sure.

When stuffing the piñata, I made sure to only pack it with toys and chocolate, because hard candies are the turds of the devil. Conveniently, not all of it fit, and I put aside a pile of mini kit-kats as a grown-up tax. Gavin got home from school, found my stash, and helpfully crammed it all into the piñata. I was thwarted.

By mid-afternoon I had won the battle against the hot plate and toaster oven, so we packed the car and hauled everyone over to the ball park. Here I collapsed under a plate of potato salad and wings and let the party take care of itself. The guests arrived, the children played, the adults drank prohibited beverages from plastic cups, the men strung up the piñata, I lit the cake and made everyone sing, the boys went into a frenzy over the presents, and DONE. Home by bedtime. May secretly be a natural party-thrower. A skill which I never plan to hone or cultivate. Unless it involves panty-hose potpourri or cakes on fire like Amy Sedaris.

 

I like you, too, Amy.

 

* Oh yeah, and school has started ALREADY. I made him pose for a picture on his first day of 4th grade, and he slumped and made lemur face. I tried. 

Leif turns 4

Today, I have one of these.

He's stubborn and loving, smart and straight-forward. He twines his fingers in my hair at night when we read stories, grabs my face with both hands and kisses me in the mornings, runs across the house to hug me when I get home from work, lays on the floor with his brother for hours playing with Legos and building dragon houses on my iPhone, and watches Futurama with us after helping make the popcorn. I love him so much.

Happy Birthday, Leif.