KEEP IT COMICAL

JOIN ME AT THE INN

2010-05-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

It's time to get ill - Beastie Boys

2010-05-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

This one goes out to Chag. To the common blogger he's Cynical Dad. I've known him and believed in him for 4? 5? years. I've never met him. I'm not sure I even know his christian name. I happen to know him as Change Agent. He's Cynical because he's a Dad. He's a Dad because somebody's kids have to save the world. Check in with me right around 2020 and I'll let you know exactly what his kids are up to.

Hey Chag! I'm not selling anyone out, I just finally have enough passion to buy back my value.

* * * * *

The dress rehearsal is finally over.

I'm about to get psych-ward-worthy crazy. I figure if I warn everybody who's waiting on the world to change, t a l k r e a l s l o o o w, and then start from the top, we can absolutely preempt any calls of a three-digit nature. See? An old dog can learn a new trick just like that! Bow? Wow!

These days, everlong, the world is my laboratory. Dude's hard-earned ad dollars generated by the "consumer's" purchase of Coca Cola and Old Spice and anything else that America's great independent ad machine can peddle comprise the just-about-adequate grant that funds my operation -- which is to say YOU do. What he's doing with your money as we speak? Ironically, blogging. Adding emotional value to an emotionally bankrupt world. He claims even the LA Times thinks so, but I'm not so sure.

Instead of bringing you sugar in your Coke, he brings you everything you didn't ask for. Because it's pretty good to look at, you don't notice the message (p.s. there isn't one) but you enjoyed the entertainment. As mentioned previously, ad nauseumly BMC-style, I never sold ad space or sold my story or sold myself or sold out. I do everything for love, not money. Which is to say I do everything for passion, not power, position or prestige. I was born entitled to all that shit, and I can assure you the batteries of passion are not included with that luxury package. Nor is a sunroof.

In my world PASSION = MONEY, thereby neutralizing the all-consuming power of either.

I'm going to stop here, because I have also learned during my short tenure as the interweb's resident unrehabilitated crazy, I scare people. I am manufacturing little white flags to hand to people before I start the crazy machine up.

I've taken to secretly predicting the outcome of any and all interactions with the world outside my head regarding the basis for my experiments in the lab of my life. According to the professor, I'm rockin' an A average, and can kill a pop quiz in a hot millisecond.

If you're here watching from the other side of the DMZ (Divorce Mesmerization Zone), do join me for tea and bedlam at the Inn.

The exit's to your right, I'm headed left. To the coast. For good.

See you at the Inn,
xodt

it's time to get ill

2010-05-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

this, my dears, is the moment we've all been waiting for. i'm finally done talking, thinking, trying, failing, crying, screaming into the ethers, and always winding up along -- as if there's something wrong with that. weary, but more aware than ever, i know now that until i actually DO something that's worth infinity times its weight in the value and power i am accused of poaching from its rightful owners, nobody (and he knows who he is) will hear me. possibly my only fear. my only only fear.

the more i reach out for a line of communication to those who once had a mind-body connection within themselves about my vision and my potential, the more i realize, it takes as long to shuck the stink of crazy when you aren't in fact crazy as it does for the average person to process one of lifes more insidious losses. take your pick: death, divorce, job loss, loss of self.

on mother's day i tried to do the one thing ever mother is hardwired to do: bring peace and balance to my family. and because i've taken to predicting on paper the outcome of every interaction i have with the people to whom i am bound the tightest, i have learned that i am right often enough about who is going to do what when under what circumstances that i am here right now.

i'm standing on the edge of the ocean. literally. i'm about to drown in it, metaphorically, because that's what i have to do to convince you and me that it is possible for your average human to walk on water. it all depends upon what you believe about water. not what you think you know about it.

so i'm going to start from scratch. with everything.

starting with transparency.

i am on the oregon coast. i am here to finish what i started on april 6, 2009, which was nothing short of a revolution. it's taken me miles of pacing in circles to parse out the form of this declaration of independence. some people would call that crazy. i call that all balls.

so i'm just warning you all now, since i was way too fucking subtle last time i decided (as opposed to having it done to me or for me) to get lost in my mind and bring passengers on the long road to ruin* a front row seat to my program.

(High) Cinco! de Mayo de Freddy, via ebox

2010-05-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

My Mom sent me this and of course I thought of you.
Possibly there is a reason I seldom drink soda....glad to see that beer wasn't mentioned in a negative light!!

Water or Coke?

WATER

#1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.
(Likely applies to half the world population)

#2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak
that it is mistaken for hunger.

#3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one's metabolism as 3%.

#4. One glass of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs
for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of
Washington study.

#5. Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

#6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of
water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain
for up to 80% of sufferers.

#7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term
memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on
the computer screen or on a printed page.

#8.. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of
colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast
cancer by 79%., and one is 50% less likely to develop
bladder cancer. Are you drinking the amount of water
you should drink every day?

COKE

#1. In many states the highway patrol carries
two gallons of Coke in the trunk to remove blood from
the highway after a car accident.

#2. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of Coke
and it will be gone in two days.

#3. To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the
toilet bowl and let the 'real thing' sit for one hour,
then flush clean. The citric acid in Coke removes
stains from vitreous china.

#4. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers:
Rub the bumper with a rumpled-up piece of Reynolds
Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.

#5. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour
a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.

#6. To loosen a rusted bolt: Apply a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola
to the rusted bolt for several minutes.

#7. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into
the baking pan, wrap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake.
Thirty minutes before ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.

#8... To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of Coke
into the load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run
through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen
grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your
windshield.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

#1 the active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid.
It will dissolve a nail in about four days. Phosphoric
acid also leaches calcium from bones and is a major
contributor to the rising increase of osteoporosis.

#2. To carry Coca-Cola syrup! (the concentrate) the
commercial trucks must use a hazardous Material place
cards reserved for highly corrosive materials.

#3. The distributors of Coke have been using it to clean
engines of the trucks for about 20 years!

Now the question is, would you like a glass of water?

or Coke?

The people I know and love now are vastly different yet equally aware as me; as equally and oppositely as the person I loved most and hardest (but maybe not the most passionately, after all) and who knew me not at all. I am finally in the right family.

There's a backlog of drafts in waiting.

Mercury's in retrograde again, so you know that stems a prolific bitch's flow. But it's my main priority to set those brain droppings free, at altitude. Without a braindump there can be room for no more rightness of such grandiostic magnitudinum.

i for one, don't drink canned killer chemicals laced with nostalgia and shame. i likes organic tragic lemonade. homebrewed.
xodt

p.s. i think i gave literal birth to metaphoric baby unicorns. even rarer than the original size, but way more concentrated.

2010-05-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

Three days strep/flu/whateverthefuck got me so good my restauranting associate took her position as my In Case of Emergency contact and literally brought a medical doctor to my couchside armed with a literal tool box. Questions, tongue depressors, antibiotics, admonitions, excellent assumptions and sweet relief. I'll take big pharma from my deathbed. That's not hypocrisy, that's laziness.

My trusty suspect of a pal knew the warning signs of impending doom when I was entirely nonplussed by offers of late-night lemondrops chasing pickle-peppered cheeseburgers. She found me on my couch, incoherent and uncomfortable, but not in my usual everyday way. I will say this:ZOOMCARE SUCKS. SUCKS. SUCKS. SUCKS. In the years that I have attempted to use them on my behalf or those of my children, it's a shitshow. Misdiagnoses, not open when posted, can't make an appointment, can't get a human on the line, can't get a doctor only a nurse practitioner (often fine, but not when i want the doctor who's advertised), failure to call with test results, forgotten prescription printouts or call-ins. So not worth it.

Not one to need urgent care services (unless they're foisted upon me) often, I succumbed to the achey overwhelm and spent 50% of the shutdown crawling in and out of the tub, 50% of the time wishing I had the energy to clear out a walgreens, and 50% wondering where the power went. Total grid shutdown.

The last time I was shut down for three days against my will was -- this is me pointing the microphone at the crowd so you can spare my lungs. Dave Grohl rips through my chakras when I hear this song, always right on time

This is a black out, don't let it go to waste

This is a black out, I want to detonate

Sometimes I wish that I could change

I can't save you from my poor brain

I had to shut down to get back to not shutting the fuck up. I always retreat to what I know. For you that means more words on the screen and fewer out of my mouth, which my associate will be glad to hear.

One thing I know is that I'm lucky these horoscopes showed up in linear order right before I posted a major gut-says-no-no post about my daily antics. I could hear The Hook kicking my ass and she would have been right. But I don't think I can't sit on all this juice 'til my unemployment checks run dry. It's not fair to you. But for now I will keep that comical to myself.

Time for me to power down. Because apparently I have some things to tackle tomorrow. And you kids know these bitches can't lie.

* * * * *

supreme confidence, and other crimes of passion

2010-04-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

for once, everything in my head makes sense. i know who i am, where i fit in, why i'm here, who i'm here for, and why i do the things i do. i make sense to next to nobody, which makes perfect sense to me. you say money, i say passion. you say sacrifice, i say but, why? you say stay strong, i say i've been pretending to lift these weights for years. you say bitchy, i say yep. you say funny, i say packaging. you say alimony, i say unemployment check. you say crazy, i say "if you say so." you say "i get it," i say you either do or you don't. you say writer, i say thinker. you say parent, i say mentor. you say shame, i say "nah." the tiny little bread trail of memories i left for myself seemingly haphazardly along the path i've been stumbling along all these years just jumped out of the bushes and reminded me of the one thing i know most for sure: everything i know.

you say "get a job, " i say "this is my job."

last week i was ispeaking with fospo (yep, back to that one. can't come up with an appropriate title for his majesty going forward. suggestions welcome!). we were having a shitty little text battle when i childishly told him to enjoy his run to nowhere. texting by iphone whilst jogging? in case he needed to hold a meeting in his mobile office? likely. at any rate, his shitty retort to me was something on the order of, "that's amazing coming from the king of nowhere."

what was intended as a lead bullet hit me like a golden arrow. the amateur archer turned alchemist.

to understand failure, you must be very intimate with risk. to be intimate with risk means you respect the passionate urge while holding no grudge against whatever outcome ensues. if you take no risks, you can have no failures. if you have no genuine life-forming failures, your capacity to understand that visceral place that drives one to risk for the sake of conviction, but without the promise of reward, is limited. deeply. you can have no empathy for those who challenge risk to cough up its rewards. by the time we meet our well-known successes, their years of failure to succeed have been cleared off their value bankruptcy statement and the ordinary man reveres him as if he were a success all his life. and maybe he was. but not if he didn't think so no matter the size or style of his "failure."

the only value in failing can be discovered once you've managed to get back up only to do it again and again and again. because once you've learned to fall, you start paying better attention on the way down and pretty soon you're just a stunt double to yourself and falling's just a job. when you fall publicly, voluntarily, that's clearly some stunt double footage. most of us like to keep our most glorious failures trapped in a vault, and that is if we have any to hide in the first place.

this is what i do. i fall down. i get up. i type about it and then stir the simple syrup of irony into my musky cauldron of tragic lemon compote and see if i can convince anybody it's kool aid. drinking of my cruel aid means that you might just have it in you create to that very delicate pairing of anchovies, cold fruity sugar water, and the ground-floor perspective of just punishment for committing a crime of passion -- which is what taking a big risk is when the motivations are genuine. it's some fun shit. they call it life.

you know how they say there's no way to fly if your feet never leave the ground? you say 36 years, i say running start.

xod

* * * * *

all that said, inertia outside my brain is the order of the moment.
granny's birthday was tuesday. we're celebrating alone this weekend.
my restauRANTing associate was out of town for a week. that eff'd our flow. both kids have been sick -- two days of much-needed mother/mentoring. i missed those mofos because i had to move the last of my worldly possessions out of the house that hasn't been a home for a year and some pocket change. what was supposed to be a 4-hour scenario turned into an unfortunate, 3-day test of my will, but now we're really bursting at the seams of this little apartment. the ~~scapegoats~~ kids are getting walk-up fever and so am i. we're ready to find our home together. it feels like its coming soon, but only because it's been getting nearly all of my attention lately. the house is in foreclosure and the banks are suddenly on my johnson, so the divorce finalization is on hiatus, apparently. i'm sick of ex-husband euphemisms, legal bills, those without inspiration, being root-bound in tiny spaces where there's no room to grow, and wondering what i'd be by now if i had taken my life's biggest risk sooner. cookies are calling. crabby chic couture is calling. restaurant smoke jumping is calling. jacket copy is calling. getting the fuck on with it is calling. the professional amateur is standing by to take those calls. but not until she returns all the ones she's been dodging for the past year, finds a home and gets all moved in.

30 days or less? a ridiculous goal. which makes it totally worth pursuing.

Please Stand By.

2010-04-17T04:20:00.000-07:00

I have not disappeared forever. Things are nutser than usual, is all.

While you're holding, Patricia of TO, I'm holding the Coffee + Xanax apron for you. Send an email to getnicecakes@gmail.com to let my money-matters associate hook you up. We're offering my readers $25/apron + shipping ($13 to canadia. ouch.). Buy 5, get one free. Use DANA IS CRAZY in your subject line, and she'll ship that sucker off to you just as soon as the ca$h hits the paypal.

Misfit Hausfrau and anyone else who covets overpriced aprons made of passion -- here you go. But do me a favor and don't buy it off of Etsy because we can't control the pricing that way. And to reiterate, we're offering my readers $25/apron + US shipping ($4.75) (canadia = $13 for priority). Buy 5, get one free. Use DANA IS CRAZY in your subject line, and she'll ship that sucker off to you pronto -- just as soon as the ca$h hits the paypal.

I hope that clears up where I've been. When I wasn't making aprons and logos and hangtags and giftcards and websites and pretty pictures and all the right publishing contacts, I was working things out with the skittles. Bub's had a few cooperation challenges, and Foo is next to impossible to convince into a Hooky Day anymore. Harumph. At this rate, she'll never learn to fuck off properly. So we asked her dad for a few spare hours over the weekend to make some badass Ts.

So much to talk about, no time to type. Not ideal for a writer, but way ideal for a lady living her best revenge.

Be back soon/eventually/possibly even later today.

xodt

alibi

2010-04-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

holy cheebus.

it's been too long. i have about 16 looooong diatribes encapsulating, incorporating and excising the demons of my year. but seemingly all of a sudden, there's not much time to write what i want to say.

a couple of blogkeeping points:

Patricia of TO -- hanging onto the sex + candy apron for you. email my associate at getnicecakes@gmail.com to organize shipping to your canadian coordinates.

anybody else who wants/needs an apron:
we're etsying our way to a microempire

hindsight

2010-04-09T00:16:00.000-07:00

i was all balls deep in recounting the past year's dain bramage last night -- on the heels of throwing myself a Psych Ward Release Party at the restaurant where i pretend to matter. only my attorneys, the children's teachers, and my one lone, close associate were in attendance.

one year ago today i was set free from all that encumbered me.

i learned from the law office gate keepers (also in attendance) that they weren't sure what to do with the crazy sounding, but clearly articulate woman calling from the parking lot of an emergency room because she had to decide between admitting herself to a hospital for crazies or a law firm for crazies with money (also known as "eccentrics").

apparently, i sounded crazy that day. but something in my crazy made enough sense to them to take the only NO-assets divorce in the firm's history. gatekeeper #1, whom i will refer to as Fred-with-a-Y passed me along to the firm's triage nurse, Karen -- gatekeeper #2 -- who passed me along to the managing partner -- The Hook -- rather than hooking me up with the ubertall namesake attorney of the firm for whom I called in the first place.

The Hook brought me on board as a novelty item and quite frankly, think I nailed that role, tyvm, LPH. i am proud to say that i think she is my friend. my kids are in love with her kid, and foo has asked repeatedly "to see [the hook]". her rodeo-riding, bull-castrating understudy associate, formerly known as T. Justice, will henceforth be known as Tatebot. that guy can fake deadpan like someone's paying him six-figgas to do it. probably because they are. and i think i might love the guy. he's a good egg, and not in a humpty dumpty kind of way.

they did the best they could for me, but i am the only client they've ever had who only had one out of three evaluations/recommendations returned to the custody evaluator -- a man who decided he knew me well enough after meeting me for a total of 5 hours for the insignificant sum of $7500 to decide that i am an unfit parent.

as i mentioned, over the past couple of months or so i have been righting my self-perception, self-diagnoses, self hatred, self doubt and selfish tendencies. i have taken ownership for the demise of my marriage -- i walked out (before the po-pos showed), afterall.

the manny poignantly and possibly even prophetically told me that he was able to exact all this suffering upon me because "you will be fine. you're always fine." when he said that, i thought to myself, "but how? without you how will i be fine?"

and the truth is that until i started doubting myself based on others' misunderstanding or distrust of my MO, i thought i was pretty amazing. give the interwebs an opportunity to lob diagnoses and a free-for-all of negative assertions at you, and you would doubt yourself, too. or maybe not. i'm not you. i'm me. and i'm probably not at all like you, even though 9 out of 10 custody evaluators would probably say otherwise.

i made a fatal mistake in asking 3 people who had known me well, but seen me with the children most recently to send in evaluations on my behalf. two of them failed to produce. which may or may not have given the impression to the custody evaluator that i have no support, no friends, no people. which is pretty effin true. but that's because i'm usually fine and i don't ask for much in the way of help

intermish: psych ward release party

2010-04-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

This entry was penned last week, April 6. I've been so busy living, literally, I have not had time to lay an egg in the roost. My wings are tired, but I'm back. Just like the Foo Fighters said (and I predicted last year):

Into the night we shine
Lighting the way we glide by
Catch me if I get too high
If I come down
I'll be coming home next year

I am home. I mistakenly thought home was where the marriage is. Turns out, home is wherever I am, and no place else.

without further ado:

woo fucking wee. i thought running a cafe into the ground for a year was hard work. not so much compared to the last year i've spent. i'm 365 (+ 1) days free of who i never meant to be. tonight, one year ago, i was cracked out in a pharmaceutical anti-pscychotic coma to counterbalttle the existential coma from which i was trying to wake. the only explanation i can offer you to decipher that statement is: you have to spend 72 hours in the custody of social services' most mediocre, surrounded by some of your local society's most psychologically and socially unfit (not to be confused with social services' most mediocre) to comprehend the the soundness of your own sanity. i remember it as if it were last week.

speaking of which.

last week i wondered how i could possibly celebrate such a momentous anniversary. one of the recurring themes in my police report, psych ward records, and supposedly hypomanic rants was the unibomber and kurt cobain. i may or may not have mentioned those two infamous side shows in the context of "dying or getting reborn." the point lost on all 911-callers in question is that for a person who finds sleep to be a necessary nuisance/abysmal waste of precious time, an eternal dirt nap is not really a first-tier option. rebirth however, and not in an evangelical kind of way, was what i was after and what i have ultimately achieved -- in 364 days or less.

the biggest lie i've ever told to my mind, my life, and my single-sided history is that it matters what other people think of me. as soon as i let that negative perception, exaggerated and exascerbated by my losses and failures, wheedle its way into my grandiose and everything-is-possible soundtrack, i imploded. easy as that. i realize now that i can't blame any of this on anybody but me. the me who didn't want to walk out the door, but apparently needed to.

remember when i was foo fighting my way to acceptance:

Doll
You know in all of the times that we've shared
I've never been so scared
Doll me up in my bad luck
I'll meet you there

I wish i never had taken this dare
I wasn't quite prepared
Doll me up in my bad luck
I'll meet you there

Monkey Wrench (hi, chag ; )
One last thing before I quit
I never wanted any more than I could fit
Into my head I still remember every single word
You said and all the shit that somehow came along with it
Still there's one thing that comforts me since I was
Always caged and now I'm free

Don't want to be your monkey wrench
One more indecent accident
I'd rather leave than suffer this
I'll never be your monkey wrench

Hey, Johnny Park
Come and I'll take you under,
This beautiful bruises colours,
Everything fades in time it's true.

Wish that I had another,
Stab at the under cover,
Was it a change in mind for you?

It's impossible,
I can't let it out,
You'll never know,
Am I selling you out?
Sit and watch,
Your every mood.

My Poor Brain
This is a black out
Don't let it go to waste
This is a black out
I want to detonate

Sometimes I wish that I could change
I can't save you from my poor brain

Wind Up
I have a choice between the bat or the belt
Each time I hear about the hand you've been dealt
Spare me confession it's confession you sell
Maybe I'll fall behind but I don't mind because I'll catch up

Will I be happy on the back of the shelf
Will you be happy when we're sharing a cell
Spare me your questions since you know me so well
Someday you'll realize that I get shy and I choke up

I want a song that's indelible
Like manimal
I hope you never see me wind up
What is wrong with this animal
I'm terrible
I hope you never see me wind up

Farewell my sweet paramania

Up In Arms
I was the one who left you
Always coming back I cannot forget you girl
Now I am up in arms again

My Hero
Too alarming now to talk about
Take your pictures down and shake it out
Truth or consequence, say it aloud
Use that evidence, race it around

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He’s ordinary

See You
I'm done resenting you,
You represented me so well.
And this I promise you,
How could I end up in the hands of someone else?

These notes are marked return to sender
I'll save this letter for myself

February Stars
Even though
I watched you come and go
How was I to know
You'd steal the show

One day I'll have enough to gamble
Ill wait to hear your final call
And bet it all

February stars
Floating in the Dark
Temporary scars
February stars

Everlong
And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when

Walking After You
If you'd accept surrender, I'll give up some more
Weren't you adored?

I cannot be without you, matter of fact
I'm on your back

Big Me
Big me to talk about it
I could stand to prove
if we can get around it
I know that it's true

Stacked Actors
God bless, what a sensitive mess,
Yeah, but things aren't always what they seem.
Your teary eyes, your famous disguise,
Never knowing who to believe.
See through, yeah but what do you do,
When you're just another aging drag queen.

Stack dead actors, stacked to the rafters,
Line up the bastards all I want is the truth.

Breakout
You make me dizzy running circles in my head
One of these days I'll chase you down
Well look who's going crazy now
We're face to face my friend
Better get out
Better get out
You know you make me break out
Make me break out
I don't want to look like that

Learn to Fly
Run and tell all of the angels
This could take all night
Think I need a devil to help me get things right
Hook me up a new revolution
Cause this one is a lie
We sat around laughing and watched the last one die

And I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright

I'm looking for a complication
Looking cause I'm tired of lying
Make my way back home when I learn to fly

Gimme Stitches
I'll always be the one who runs from everyone
Cause everyone's just too weird
Sink with someone tied to me
I'm making you volunteer
Another one has come and gone
They crawl along, make them disappear
Dress me up in stitches it's now or never
Tired of wearing black and blue
Dress me up in stitches it's now or never
Dying to get my blood on you

Generator
Lately I'm getting better
Wish I could stay sick with you
But there's too many egos left to bruise
Call it sin, you can call it whatever
Eating deep inside of you
Well if it were me, it's all I'd ever do
Steal me now and forever
I'll steal something good for you
The criminal in me is no one new
Till you find something better
When there's nothing left to use
And everything starts going down on you

I'm the Generator, firing whenever you quit
Yeah whatever it is, you go out and it's on

Time Like These
I am a new day rising
I'm a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?

It's times like these you learn to live again

And finally,

Over And Out
Restless little one
Comfortable and warm
Let me fall apart
Crippled in your arms

Chase me through the dark
Ready on your mark
First to reach the stars
Wins a broken heart
One that broke apart
Shattered from the start

Are you there?
Do you read me?
Are you there?
I don't feel you anymore

Cages and alarms
Keeping us from harm
I will be the guard
Hope to rest upon

Could I be the one
To break a will so strong
Pray it won't be long
Til your will is gone
Everything is done
Nothing left at all

if living well is the best revenge, then i am exacting vengeance with a vengeance. if you've been wondering what i've been doing with my time lately, i can assure you with great conviction that i am doing exactly every.single.thing. i have ever loved doing all at once, thanks to my unemployment check (a.k.a. glorious alimony)

While you were sleeping

2010-03-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

As usual, I checked out of the virtual world for an unintended, unexpected stay to do some work on my own reality shitshow. Over the past month or so, nearly on the eve of the anniversary of the death of my marriage (April 6 comin' your way! how does one celebrate such an anniversary?), I've had a pretty profound life epiphany. There's nothing about what was, what has been or what will be that I can change. And I'm always trying to change things over which I have no control, and that's some pretty futile shit. I waste more time trying to make "what is" better -- in my eyes -- that I lose sight of living all up inside "it is what it is."

The bottom line clearly indicates that I can't change what happened to my marriage and the family that came with it. I can't bring Granny back from the dead. I can't bring my cafe back from the dead. I can't make She of The Nameless understand me, and it's not really my business to care whether or not I am understood by others. I can just be how I am. I is what I is. And regardless of whether everything happens for a reason, things happen -- with or without my influence. I can only control (or not) my reactions and own them fully. Oh, and I do. I have examined my choices. I can enjoy the unhappiness of loitering around in what was and what isn't no mo', or I can get the fuck on with my program -- the exact same program I was rockin' when BMC was in full effect, the same program I was killing during my marriage, and not coincidentally for about almost all of the rest of my life, including the centuries to come.

The court documents haven't yet been finalized officializing the d-i-v-o-r-c-e, so I have refrained from recounting the final hours of the final days of our lives. Restraint? Moi? Nutz, I know.

Another admission from which I have refrained from making is that I have an actual friend. I mentioned her over the summer but haven't really exposed our friendom the way I did with She Who Shall Not Be Named because, well, that didn't end well. And then I realized, as if that ever stopped me.

So I'll go ahead and officially introduce my doppelganging associate, Chantessa of the Amazon. She has a mighty fine backside to behold. And she hates it when I say that. She owns the restaurant where I am her volunteer apprentice/bitch/entertainment/a*muse*ment/pastry chef/self-assigned understudy manager. She'd pay me, but she can't afford it. I'd let her pay me, but I eat and drink and break and waste as much at her restaurant as my time and value is worth. She's the reason I don't have adult food and drink expenses. She feeds me almost every single night, by way of the restaurant, but there's no way I'd eat that healthfully or well if I weren't on her company dole. In a word, she's been good to me for at least long enough now (9+ months) that I think it's fair to give her a nod on the Crazy Channel.

Let me break her down real quicklike:
+ she owns a successful restaurant and her staff and guests love her
+ she has crazy ideas and isn't afraid to execute them -- quickly, well, and without regret if it fails
+ she bakes for pleasure with a side order of business
+ she's a pisces (she post-dates me by 3 years and 2 days)
+ she's half funny, half bitchy, half brutally honest, half evil genius, half pussycat
+ she's fiercely driven to have fun in business and pleasure
+ she's a gen-u-ine genius, emotional and otherwise
+ she can do anything. anything anything. and everything, while she's at it
+ she's not afraid to fail because success is too easy
+ she knows and understands my brand of crazy because she's spent her life subduing her own
+ she once lived in vail and loved it
+ i laugh at almost everything she says because it's usually an even snappier retort than the snappy tort i torted at her in the first place
+ she's a brilliant creative mind
+ she calls me out when i entertain gentlemen callers who are beneath my intellectual station

It's like kicking it basically night and day and night with a funner, funnier, snarkier, more genius, more talented, more interesting, more insane and equally saner version of me. And as you can imagine, that tends to frighten people. the chef at her restaurant has been busted on many occasions recording us bickering/battling/badgering/belittling/beholding the inner beauty of one another through the bake station window.

"What the fuck are you doing, John?," I'll ask him as he skulks and snickers through the kitchen with a shitastic grin on his face. "Oh, nothing. Just a little research for my sitcom about a restaurant owner and her quirky friend. {ha ha ha]"

We'll stare at the kid, emboldened by the freneticism of our nobody-else-can-hear-us discourse; an air of "don't fuck with us" written in stone on our faces. He thinks it's funny. We think he doesn't even know the half, soon to be revealed. But we let him think his idea is for dummies. Let us just say that everything I ever said I would do is being done; and at the same time all of the things I ever have done, or will do, are all the same things I do, have done, and ever will do again. I always come back to me at the end of a major life episode. Phew. That ride took a while. Hey, me! Good to see you again!"

I could drone on about Chantessa, who speaks in empires, grandiose fantasies, and "when we's" instead of "what-ifs, but honestly, you couldn't even begin to get the frequency upon which we vibe.

Here's an example.

"Hey, yo. You wanna help me make a couple of aprons after work on Saturday night? I have a bunch of scrap from all the server's aprons, and I just want to use it up," casually mentions Chantessa.

"Sure. I actually have a bunch of scrap from back in the day when I bought an expensive sewing machine and did precisely one krunkt project with it. I'll dig that box out," says I.

"Cool. You can cut the patterns and pin them together. I'll sew. I sew fast and straight and you're a little more, uh, big picture."

"MMMMmmmmm, fast and straight. You know that's how I like my mens. But wait, did you just say I can pick the fabrics out for you? I have a $30,000 master's degree that says I can probably handle the aesthetics and the merchandising if you ever want to sell those little nuggets. If I'm getting promoted to Creative Director, I need to call my mother. She'd be proud."

"OK. But your title will be "My Sweatshop Bitch". You keep my prosecco full, and I'll keep your bong loaded."

"Deal."

And so it was done.

That was a week ago.

There was some discussion today about whether her apron-making project hijacked my life, or the other way round. I vote for Option 2. I will admit however, I find no greater exhilaration in anything besides that at which I can be or become good at almost immediately. FCKNA. Nailed it this time.

She created the patterns, sewed the shit out of everything in sight, and reverse engineered/project runway'd a couple of other aprons in the time it took me to cut one pattern. I assembled almost all of the designs, named many of those bitches (easily the best, most fun part), styled and shot the photos, wrote the "copy" and impressed the fuck out of the both of us in the process. (click on the album name to enter a whole new layer of my crazy)

GET YOUR NICE CAKES RIGHT HERE: FIRST RUN COCKTAIL APRONS

Not sucking doesn't suck.

I never considered being happy without Britton. I never thought I *could* be happy without Britton. Turns out I was happy without him, I just wasn't happy he was apparently happy to be without me. But hey, can't do anything about that neither.

My body is wrecked from hunching, hovering, designing and self-deprecating.
Lemonade without the tragedy kinda tastes sweet.
I might just make it yet.

To quote an old ghost, Kisses on your faces.

The old girl is back. And I can't wait to see what else is up my sleeve.

xodt

p.s. i should probably mention that i am in the process of waiting for the results of a pretty significant skin biopsy that resulted in the removal of a completely exaggerated 67% percent of my flesh. i look like i've contracted a hot case of ebola in the spots where the sutures aren't wrecking my flow. i'm sure it'll be nothing, although i generally find subtle cause for alarm every time they tell me they want to scoop out a new spot. good times. however, i can't change how i abused my skin as a teenager. 96 sunburns too many on an authentic redhead, and you too would steel yourself against the inevitability of a cancer diagnosis, too. i'm unconcerned, but i'll keep you posted.

Bub of Ir(jew)ish

2010-03-17T04:20:00.000-07:00

MISSING: One rainbow, one pot o' gold.
If found please call this guy -- if you can find him:

xod

me & my shadow / 90s remix

2010-03-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

a real update coming your way sometime soon. so busy. so good. kinda happy, but if you tell anyone, i'll hurt you all.

xod

I'm only 36 years late to the rest of my life.

2010-03-02T04:20:00.000-08:00

"Stoners. We are not a punctual people."
-- Dan, my old boss/mentor from the medical
marijuana clinic of last summer

I know I owe you a post-nuptial post-mortem (amen) in addition to a fierce rant (which is coming together quite nicely, thank you) about New Jersey's sham of a medical marijuana law; which is really nothing more than big-pharma bullshit thinly veiled by a layer of political bullshit. The Garden State, my ass.

For some reason, ever since my New Years party last week, all of the parts of my life that had stagnated in the most paralyzing of ways have simultaneously reactivated, resuscitated, reconnected and, well, I kinda feel reborn in a lot of ways. I will tell you the irony of that last statement (and how it turned into The Manny's amusing little 911 call) when I finally get to a plane in my brain when I can encompass and encapsulate everything that has transpired in the past year, right up until the very end, which will equate exactly and succinctly into a parse-able version of almost every.single.thing. I said when my wasband and half of the interwebs told me I was ranting on like a certifiable loon (via KBD and the end of BMC) last April. And maybe I was, but in hindsight -- hunker down for a cliche -- everything happened for an extraordinary reason.

I don't know what it is either yet, totally, but it smells like anchovies, tragic irony, and a thumbwrasslin match between passion and money. Almost all of my most very favorite things.
In the meantime, so fucking much has transpired over the past six days that I have to get back to my to-do lists and mine/his issues so that the rest of my life can get on with itself.

I think it's a good thing that my melon and my immediate future's schedule are so full that I don't have time for any brainfoolery to lend to negative pursuits at the moment. The life that left me is absolutely behind me in my mind, but my heart has a few tears left to purge. Just not now.

Everything is happening all in a rush and I finally feel free to believe in *everything* again. Everything I ever have done has found its way back to me in the past week. Old associates writing to thank me for having this or that positive impact on their lives. Faithful readers feeling that it's safe enough to peek out from behind the curtain and finally offer a caged mama elephant their hand -- for there is no fear it will be bitten off.

The children are older and smarter somehow. I don't even aytch-ay-tee-ee The Manny anymore; and while I do harbor distinct and direct empathy for him, I feel nothing else. At all. Ultimate liberation. Solid closure.

I have reached my self-allotted time for this brief dear diary, but I can never best what my little crib notes to the stars have to say about me. I could not have said it better if I had invented the stars myself.

wishing on a february star,
xod

Welcome to the day Passion Killed Money -- A Preview

2010-02-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

* * * * *

As promised I'm back on February 25; my New Year.

For my birthday, my legally ex-husband gave to me the one gift I never wanted to get: Le divorce. Signed, sealed, delivered, and read on the record that we agreed to make the divorce immediate and final. Today.

I almost called this post "For My Birthday: One Wedding and its Funeral"

If you bring the sugar, I'll bring the lemons and come back later to fill in the glorious blanks. But for now, here's whatcha need to know:

The Hook is a mutherfukkin apocalyptical fart. Silent, deadly, and without a drop of passive to her aggressive. I raise my pearls to you, dear litigating badass of universal proportionality.

T Justice, The Hook's lady slayer and crowned prince of the family court rodeo, never failed me. Except when he failed to respond appropriately to my benign emails and phone calls rife with hilaria (hilarity/hysteria). If you weren't my attorney, you'd be my bro, bro.

In short, The Manny lost his ass. And his ass's ass. Word to the potentially separated: It's cheaper to keep 'er.

He told me a short time after I left him last spring that his job is more important than his marriage. Which is ironic, because he's married to that job now for a long effing time. And that's about all he's got to show for 10 years of some good love that could have lasted forever.

The settlement was read on the court's record and the divorce was finalized as of today. A birthday of sorts, indeed.

I'm off to fetch the skittles and revise my Happy Birthday sign into a Happy Divorce sign in time for cocktails at Tapalaya.

I have to admit, although I got vindication on just about every point in question, there are no winners here. Only a family that lost everything over nothing but one man's refusal to try to save it all. In my heart, there is nothing happy at all about this divorce. Period.

I am pleased to have some closure, some decision making power for myself and the kiddoos, and a whole life ahead of me to right my cookie cart and get back to what I know best, which is myself.

Fist bumps, team. I'm just hoping it's a fairy with butterfly wings that busts out of this cocoon. It feels like it could break open any minute, but I'm afraid of what's left inside now that it's all over.

I'll take my tragic lemonade with a shot of vodka tonight -- the good stuff. Finally I can afford it.

Big ups to the crew at SKJH, my mother who's been here all week and will finally get some restitution of her own, and all the loves around this globe who sent it my way in the form of vibes, emails, gifts to the kids, and hugs full of hope. It worked.

FKNA, you guys.

Twist one up and hand it over here.
I gots a light.

more soon,
xod

up(chuck)date

2010-02-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

financial mediation on monday.
trial's set for 3.3 if we don't work something out first.
skids are money.
i'm plotting and scheming.
the only thing i hate more than taking a hit is not making an attempt at a comeback.
still don't know what or who i will be when i grow up, but i'm not going to decide til after the divorce dust settles.

back to our newly scheduled cannabis programming.
i had a reader question about the newly minted New Jersey medical marijuana law, which actually is one of the suckiest cannabis acts on the books. stand by staci, and i'll explain why next. i have to dash off to attend to some unsavory post-nuptial hassles at my barrister's facilities. divorce. not recommended. cannabis on the otherhand, dot dot dot.

more to come.
you know i don't know how to stfu.
xod

New Jersey is hardly The Garden State

2010-02-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

Last week I mentioned that if you live in a state where medical marijuana is legal, you should be able to get it for free legally by growing your own, or by paying for it -- the equivalent of street prices in most cases -- in state where only dispensaries are legal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/nyregion/12marijuana.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nj-medical-marijuana-law-ignores-chronic-pain-sufferers/story?id=9574509

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/medical_marijuana_question_answers.html

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/article_0e9689d2-082a-11df-b126-001cc4c002e0.html

just call them angels of the morning, baby

2010-02-17T04:20:00.000-08:00

off to school.

we're good.
so good.

those poor jokers. they look just like me.

2010-02-16T04:26:00.001-08:00

Don't Be a Dope: Quit Paying for Weed

2010-02-16T04:20:00.000-08:00

I've seen hundreds of hours of footage on the subject of marijuana, hemp, weed, chong, ganj/ganja, sensi/sensimilla, endo, cannabis, herb, bud, nugs, the dank, tetrahydrocannabinol. This is by far the best documentary on the subject: The Union. The Business Behind Getting High. I always rate the sublime greatness of something based on the enthusiasm with which I say to myself, "Dang. I wish I did that." or "There was the documentary I would have made if I ever had the sack to attempt to try to think about herding all the quicksilver in my brain." I learn something new every time I watch it, which sparks an interest to pursue a new line of research every time.

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High (from wikipedia)
Synopsis

The film explores the illegal growth, sale and trafficking of marijuana. Its theatrical run was limited to film festivals. The film follows host Adam Scorgie as he examines the underground market, interviewing growers, police officers, criminologists, economists, doctors, politicians and pop culture icons, revealing how the industry can function despite being a criminal enterprise. The history of marijuana and the reasons for its present prohibition are discussed, often comparing it to the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1930s, suggesting that gang drug warfare and other negative aspects associated with marijuana are a result of prohibition, not the drug itself. The gangs that grow and traffic the drugs are likened to those that appeared in major U.S. cities during the Prohibition, with the intention of profiting from the sale of illegal alcohol.

I'm not going to tell you how to spend your time, but this is great background music for obnoxious domestic chores. The narrator has a sexy Canadian accent, Joe Rogan is funny and articulate (and actually weirdly sexy), Dr. Lester Grinspoon is an effing legend, and if you never knew about the industry of privatized prisons, prepare to be disgusted. Pharmaceuticals, politics, paper, and pretense are all interconnected to defy the laws of what's reasonable. Further, industrial hemp is an economical and environmental panacea much like the medicinal flower of the plant can mitigate many physical ailments when the appropriate preparation of the herb is administered. And holy ganjamole, you have got to appreciate the McGuyveresque ingenuity of a the train-car growers. Ten interconnected train cars all lined up like the girls in Madeline, a diesel tanker to power the generators, and a mountaintop underground grow op of epic proportions. Politics, pot smoke, and prohibition. Not to mention a stigma on a substance that will never kill you. Eh, and don't even talk to me about Watermelon Girl. She beat me to the kitchen. Tommy Chong makes an appearance, which warms my cockles because of my personal favorite slang term for the precious jewel in the eye of the stalk. Greg, the MS patient at the end, will break your heart. It's hard to sit through his segment the first time.

I don't care if you're a cancer/hospice/aids patient, a recreational user of chong, a closet stoner, or one of those people who thinks you get all paranoid from it [I guarantee you, you're taking it wrong, you're smoking some horrible shit that was commercially grown that you bought on the street and is probably covered in toxic pesticides, or it interferes with all those prescription drugs and booze that you're taking and makes you dopey mcdumbags.] But if you're an insomniac, a jittery skitter bug, a borderline personality bi-polar trainwreck, or a benzo enthusiast, you'll pop a pretty silly pilly to make whatever it is all go away, doctor's orders. Bah. Doubt you ever mention the couple of drinks you couple that with to take the edge off.

I'm no pioneer on the subject, but I do have a different voice, a different perspective, and a lot of personal experience with both cannabis and pharmaceuticals to cure that which may or may not ail you. But if you're buying your secretly consumed marijuana on the street and paying the equivalent of hundreds of dollars per ounce (no matter how much you consume), you're a moron. In some states, one ounce of street-procured marijuana is worth more than gold (whuuuuut the fuuuuuck?). In 14 states , you can get it for practically free (or buy it in some states) and legally, support your local economy (as opposed to criminals) in the process, and quit hiding your right to informed consent. How?

We're just getting started.

The Union is the class syllabus, the impetus, the call to all my past resignations and the springboard for sharing what I know about an ancient plant and how you can benefit from its legalization whether you choose to consume it or not. Watch it. I promise it won't make you dumber.

Pot and Parenting Non Neurotypical Children

2010-02-15T04:20:00.000-08:00

As a mother of two neurotypical, textbook healthy children, I've been told that I have no idea what it's like to parent a child anywhere along the autism spectrum by three mothers who do. They are so right. I do not.

In doing research, I came across this blog post about a mother who treats her autistic son with cannabis, the safest drug known to man, as an alternative to hardcore psychotropic pharmaceuticals that many parents of non neurotypical kids readily dispense without due diligence and informed consent because they are at the end of a very short, painful rope.

I know you three moms are lurking. And I know you roast bowls. I'm tossing you this cookie because my cracks are now also cannabinated for patients registered with the OMMP who need the digestive benefits of the herb are too ill to smoke it (smoking produces less effective pain relief and sleep aid results).

I'm not advocating the use of cannabis or any other homeopathic or pharmaceutical medication for any child or adult without first learning about all of the side effects of each and every thing you ingest that isn't food (and even then). I do advocate the use of cannabis as a safer alternative to almost any pharmaceutical solution to hundreds of ailments.

Why I Give My 9-year-old Pot

October 12th, 2009
Goto comments Leave a comment

The Autism News | English

He has autism and a medical marijuana license.

By Marie Myung-Ok Lee | Double x

Question: why are we giving our nine-year-old a marijuana cookie?

Answer: because he can’t figure out how to use a bong.

My son J has autism. He’s also had two serious surgeries for a spinal cord tumor and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us. He can say words, but many of them—”duck in the water, duck in the water”—don’t convey what he means. For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working. He began to bite and to smack the glasses off my face. If you were in that much pain, you’d probably want to hit someone, too.

J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting about J’s tantrums, which were affecting his ability to learn. The teachers were wearing tae kwon do arm pads to protect themselves against his biting. Their solution was to hand us a list of child psychiatrists. Since autistic children like J can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal—Thorazine for kids...

I urge you to read on. She's funny and honest and intelligent and offers a perspective that is worth consideration if you care about kids.

i lose. and apprently i suck, too.

2010-02-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

i found out today that the custody evaluator thinks i'm an unfit inept moron. i'd go so far as to say he thinks i'm borderline retarded, but i haven't actually read the report. i threatened the hook with things that crazy ladies would say if she sent it to me.

the question you should be asking yourself is this: who's the manny now?
uh, it's mommy.

according to the evaluator, i am not fit to have any legal say in my children's education, medical decisions or religious indoctrinations. my thoughts, ideas and opinions on these important matters have no value and britton gets to call all the shots. i have no value except before and after school. breakfast, dinner, bath, books, bed and any other time i'm called upon to babysit. except he never calls. he pays other people or calls my sister.

i thought my life ended when i was told my cafe had no value. then i thought my life ended when the only person who thought i had value died with dignity. then i thought my life ended when i realized the love of my life had a life of his own and no love for me. then i thought my life ended when i lost the skids for far too long this summer.

then i did everything i was supposed to do. i stayed strong. i followed the rules. i jumped through his hoops. but i also decided to fight for my decisions, and my choices, and my methodologies.

and then i realized your life hasn't really ended until you're told everything you think and do and feel makes you unfit to raise your own children in your own way. i found their amazing schools, but i'll never have that power again. i chose their physician who's on the top doctors whatever list in the portland monthly this month. britton couldn't even tell you her name. i'll never get to pick a doc for them again. religion? he's got their heads filled with santa claus. they're christians now.

i know there is more to parenting than breakfast, dinner, bath, books, and bed. but the crux of parenting is everything you think and do and believe and feel and hope for the future; and it's your obligation to share those things with your children as you guide them though this earth. i have extreme and extensive thoughts and feelings about their education, medical well-being, and
religious exposure: the the holy trinity upon whose bench i am disallowed to sit. that's called legal custody. the evaluator recommended 50% physical custody, but that the legal trinity choices go to britton.

i was just told by the grand decider that everything i think and do and believe and feel and hope for the future -- everything i am -- is shit and therefore should not be passed along to my children.

luckily for all of us, i am no virgin to that rough fuck. but sit for a moment. spark a doob in my honor, and put yourself in my socks (i don't think they allow crazy people to wear shoes) and think about how that would do you. the loss of all your influence on the people you made out of love.

/exhale

and then know that i am ok. at least i can finally make some decisions, which is kind of ironic. the only decision i have to make now is what to do with myself. nobody cares what i think about the kids as long as i'm available to babysit before and after school.

i am, for some reason, magically fine. knowing for sure that nobody believes in me at all is more of a relief than simply wondering. i don't know what i'll do with myself now, but no decisions need to be made right this second. so i'll just wait for my next babysitting shift to end before i am going to figure out how to start over. again.

i guess you can't buy back your value when you've got no money and no collateral. and no value.

i have a large supper of crow to prepare before i teach my grow class tonight. i'm kind of stunned and numb so i hope my autopilot has a chance to warm up before the first student arrives.

if i had a heart left to break, i'd probably be bawling. if i were crazy, i'd go burn down the house. if i were really serious, i'd find a guy with some contacts. but since i'm just me, i'll take my lumps, turn tail, and play possum and share my opinions with myself.

i doubt i'll make a comeback to the interwebs after today. retiring all of my public opinions in perpetuity is probably wise. ironically, i published one copy each of all six books i wrote over the past 9 months. books that will never see the light of day. books that i'm proud of, but books about a life that's lost. nonfictional novels.

i'll leave comments open, reserving the right to publish all or none. i don't really need words of encouragement, sympathy, support, or guidance. i don't really need to be validated for how and who i am; i just am, so it is what it is. i don't really think i need anything. it's hard to know what you need when you're told you're not needed, ya know? it's like watching your own funeral and nobody shows up. kinda like my 30th birthday party.

i really thought i didn't suck that bad.
huh.

thanks for hanging on til now. this wasn't the happy ending i had overpromised, but you're probably used to that from me by now -- and luckily you get to hear about it and i get to live it with it. i've been told by a trusted source that i blow everything up all by myself. appears 'tis so.

a trial is pretty moot. the custody evaluator's report has the most influence on the court. and i will never get over it, but i will get around it because that's what granny always told me to do. i'm always fine, even when i'm not.

off in search of ex malo bonum,
-i'm changing my name tomorrow so it doesn't even matter

- i really am fine. really. swear. i'm good at failing : )

i lose.

2010-02-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

the custody evaluation is out.
as it turns out, i am as useless as the manny believes according to the evaluator.
my valuelessness is increasing by the minute.

i was right all along, the only one who believes in me is me.
and i don't recommend that to anyone.

anyway, i won't be back on February 25, afterall.
my work here on the interwebs is done.

i don't have any stories to tell except for how i lost everything i ever loved.
not very motivating.

i know i'll be back on top one day, but by then the interwebs probably won't exist.

trials and chongulations

2010-02-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."
--Kurt Cobain

* * * * *

The notorious and dubious custody evaluation hits news stands this week. What secrets it holds in its maws is anybody's guess. In whose favor it falls is in the subjective opinion of the beholder in most cases, but I've now read enough redacted custody evaluations to expect the light in which we are both portrayed to be somewhat unflattering. I'm no virgin on that score, but The Manny may have a bit of self reflection to consider when he sees an objective opinion on the demise of our enterprise. After the trial I will be addressing the process by which custody issues are monitored and determined in a case such as this. Mediation is the safest place for divorce and children of divorce. We'd be safe if The Manny would have agreed to any of my last 12894571829374 pleas to mediate. But he won't because he "don't have to," which is shitty but legally true. He'd rather be reasonable by order of the court. A court to which he's going to have to explain why he's made some rather unhealthy choices on behalf of our kingdom.

First non-marital witness to the stand: My shitty little sister.

Today I spent two hours with The Hook and T. Justice in front of a 6'x8' wipe board with my life mapped out in fine print before me. As a professional courtesy to my inner attorney, I'm allowed to be involved in the pre-pre-pre trial prep. A trial that is T-minus 20something days away; the moment we've all been waiting for. Mad props to both of them for recalling much of what I had presumed they'd forgotten during the horrific lag time in getting this shitshow in front of a judge.

I'm still kicking it at the restaurant on the weekends, but my days are spent mightily trying to forget the facts of my life in its current state. The only antidote to that of which I am aware, is to keep busy and focus on what I love. Since what I love most is in school all day, I have turned back to educating people on what I know best: le chong. In aid of this I am now a volunteer at the happiest place on earth, or at least in Po(r)tland, the only place where anybody's ever told me, "You're beautiful, articulate, and a master grower. Oh lord, I just met The Perfect Woman." And by the master of the local master growers himself, no less. If you want to come visit the cafe (and i highly recommend you do), you'll have to have an OMMP card. If you don't have one of those, get in touch. I can send you to any number of medical clinics that can sort that out for you right skippy.

At the chong cafe I have run into a number of my former grow class students from last year who were obscenely complimentary of my class and their growing success as a result. Doesn't take much to make me warm and/or fuzzy. All those years of BMC'ing it in Portland, I withheld the fact that I was a legal marijuana grower and patient. Not quite the usual mommyblogging fare, but more interesting than fashion tips and breast pumps, oui? It's nice to be out with it, and advocating for moms who medicate -- a subject about which you will hearing more than you ever thought you wanted to coming here soon. I have only recently succumbed to the accusation that I am a fucking encyclopedia of indoor micro-farming of boutique-grade chong and medical applications for the use of all parts of the plant, an amazing patients-rights advocate, a formidable educator, and an expert on cooking with cannabis. Name me one other mommyblogger. One. I would like to meet that bitch and kiss her on the mouth. Then we can launch a conference for birds like us called BudHer. Oh, pipe dreams -- the way you plague me.

In doing some research on an unrelated matter, I learned about a fateful sliver of tragic irony. According to nautical folklore, you should "Never start a voyage on the first Monday in April. This is the day that Cain slew Abel." April 6, 2009. The first Monday in April. The day money slew passion and The Manny slew my heart, and I was off on a new voyage. Oh, the bible -- the way you plague me.

Anyway, we're still set to meet back here for the rest of my life on my new year's day: February 25. My parents will be in and out of town over the next three weeks, so that should spark some good family fun.

In the meantime, you know my sleeves are full. But there's no telling what's up there. Not yet, at least.

Until then,

xodana

adrift

2010-02-06T12:23:00.000-08:00

According to this, I am a veritable nautical metaphoric nightmare.

Never start a voyage on the first Monday in April.
This is the day that Cain slew Abel.

April 6, 2009: The day he sent me away. The first Monday in April. A new journey for me. The day that Britton slew Dana. The story of Cain and Abel, who unbeknownst to me were the children of Adam and Eve (not much of a bible reader, go fig), is ironically lemony.

Avoid people with red hair when going to the ship to begin a journey.
Red heads bring bad luck to a ship, which can be averted if you speak to the red-head before they speak to you.

Swallows seen at sea are a good sign.
Swallows are a land based bird and seeing them at sea implies that land is near and your prospects are clear.

A shark following the ship is a sign of inevitable death.
Sharks were believed to be able to sense those near death.

It is unlucky to kill an albatross.
They host the soul of dead sailors and are considered to be an omen of bad luck at sea, especially if killed.

dead like me

2010-02-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

I found a short-lived series that spoke to me, Dead Like Me. It's about an 18-year-old girl whose life ends courtesy of a flaming hot toilet seat racing through the sky at 10,000 light years per hour. Her destiny in death is to become a grim reaper, releasing the souls of the about-to-die so that they can move onto whatever's next for them. In death, as she was portrayed in life, she's a smart, morose, too-honest-for-her-own-good dead girl roaming around among the living, disallowed to do the one thing everybody else gets to: rest in peace.

* * * * *

I think after 10 months of this life, I am finally ready to face the fact that I have never been so deeply unhappy. During this time, I have intentionally isolated myself out of existence, and it's working. When a newfound stranger asks me if I have a family, I say, "Two kids. Everyone else is dead." Friends? "Far. Or dead. But I'm not a very good friend, anyway." Job? "Dead." Dreams? "Dead." Ambitions? "Dead." Trust? "Dead." Granny? "Dead."

Love? "Dead. Dead. Dead."

I'm almost 36. The love of my life betrayed me in a way that has left me so hollow and barren, I am bereft -- bereft of the capacity to feel anything much anymore. I can't will it away, no matter how determined I may be. I can't cry it away because crying for that long makes my eyes puffy and is a horrible waste of ~~tish~~ time -- much like driving and sleeping. I can't fuck it away, no matter how many double digit anonymous lovers I listlessly leave in the middle of the early morn. I can't buy it away; I can't even buy myself dinner.

When someone asks me my name, I lie. I used to be Dana, but I don't feel like me anymore so I give a fake name to go along with the rest of my faked existence. Pretty soon here, my answer to the what's-your-name question will become "what do you want it to be?" at $25 a pop; that is unless I can panhandle enough for a winning 5-play quickpick powerball ticket.

...if I could just get Granny on the line...

Even when I'm not fine, I'm fine. And that is the truth. I am fine. It's my life that fucking sucks. I matter to exactly two people only between the hours of 7-8.45am and 4-8:30pm Tuesday-Friday, and on alternating Mondays - the other half of which were hijacked from me by The Manny. That's about 23 hours of purpose in a 168-hour week. That makes 13.6% of my life meaningful. Not a very promising statistic. The other 86.4% of my life is spent waiting around to become meaningful to exactly two people once again. An even less promising statistic.

* * * * *

Besides Scrams, I don't dump my shit onto anyone besides the interwebs and the occasional whinefest about the lethargy and unfairness of divorce to T. Justice, my deputy attorney. I have three friends in town whom I've loved long time (and they me for some unknown reason) and know me enough to really know me as well as anyone who is not me could ever possibly know me. They hear the words of woe fall from my face as if I'm telling someone else's story and am thusly not emoting. They're all married as happily as I presumed myself to be for about 10 years apiece. And if any of them didn't insist that I see them, I probably wouldn't. I'm sick of talking about the only thing I think about.

"I cant believe he hasn't talked to you since April. I couldn't imagine if (my significant other) and I suddenly stopped speaking like that. No answers at all. It must be so hard."

They know the circumstances of our Empire of Love falling to shit, and my material security chasing it down the toilet. They knew me when I was high. Happy, if I ever was such a thing. And in the midst of my deepest blues turning black, they all remark upon how "myself" I seem to be*. Happy, sharp, funny as ever, looking good ("Divorce must be agreeing with you!!" as if anything or one ever agrees with me). They offer compliments about beauty and strength, and I want to believe them. But there is something about having 83% of your self-perception diminished and besmirched by memories of what was and what simply isn't any longer that keeps me from believing anything I hear anymore. I have pre-empted a thousand unearned compliments, walked among the living, and basically pretend to be someone I may have used to have been. I am still made of self confidence, but self respect? Not so much.

*One of the last things Rebecca said to me (in my hour of need) besides, "don't ever contact me again" was "you are not yourself. i don't want to talk to you until you are yourself again."

huh

2010-02-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

it's been ten months since this mess was spilled all over the fresh white shag carpeting of my life. i can't take it anymore.

and i think to myself, what a wonderful girl

2010-01-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

i worship,
xodt

whispers in the dark

2010-01-28T04:20:00.000-08:00

Ironic. I was quite surprised to be invited to a wedding today. That'll kick you in the nuts, mid-divorce. Especially when you remember every moment of your own. And then I made that face to myself where you may have just received an unusual piece of information, or you stuck your nose in a carton of rotten chocolate milk. In any case, imagine puzzlement. I didn't realize I knew anybody who would a) think to invite me to their wedding or b) would want me at their wedding. I learned my lesson about being taken on as a social liability. It never works out for the other person/s. Probably not wise to attend, although I do genuinely wish them better luck and love than I managed to muster. And I thought I nailed it.

It's hard not to write. My long windiness manifests in emails, unfortunately. Have you ever seen an 8 paragraph answer to a Yes or No question? I got one right here for you.

All hearings (even the "emergency" one) and trials are scheduled for March 5. Divorce is a long, painful death. Let me stress the long. And the painful. And the death.

Effecting a move out of this apartment is nothing short of annoyingly challenging. For obvious financial reasons, but also the available inventory in the neighborhood where we really need to be for the sake of close-to-school convenience is literally about 3 places that totally won't work. Tick tock. Wait wait. But I can't wait much longer. I have an immediate problem that necessitates an expedient, long term solution to my housing crisis. This:

(... any way you want it/that's the way you need it ...)

If you're leaving comments, not to worry, I'm getting them - both in the literal and the metaphoric. And I thank you all. I have no sense of who is or how many are still hanging on since I sent sitemeter the way of facebook and twitter ages ago, so I appreciate the hellos and all the tiger woods jokes.

no more typing for me; i never met a diet i couldn't break. otherwise, i'm quite fine.

how cute is bub?
xodana

tiger, tiger woods, y'all

2010-01-25T04:20:00.000-08:00

Just read this. Had no idea Tiger was such a pussy.
Holy cheebus, I was married to the Tiger Woods of advertising.
Awesome.
xod

hit it

2010-01-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

the skids have started music lessons.

before the lessons there was some question by the teachers about their age readiness for their chosen instruments. bub nailed it. his teacher said he's good to go. and he knows his right from his left - but only if there're stix in 'em. now i have to find a kiddie drum kit and a house to put it in. kid can't practice without a rig.

because foo is 5, she's a little small and young to start on guitar. i've been trying for months to find a teacher willing to even let her try. she pish'd the idea that's she's too little and impressed the shit out of her teacher (foo's her youngest student ever!), and learned the E chord within minutes of trying. she's been practicing at home, and was kind enough to share her knowledge.

i woke up to find this note the other morning.

(translation: To Mom: I love you because you are great. Love, Foo)

And not to worry friends. I am fine, but if I don't find a place to live and money to live on, I'm honestly more fucked than I've ever been in my life. Writing needs to go on hold 'til I can sort it all. Emergency $upport hearing coming up soon, I hope. The mofo is in contempt of more court orders than an LA Law attorney, and I am ready to throttle his completely unethical ass. I had to quit writing for a bit because my hands are covered with boxing gloves.

I'm pissed and I want some semblance of a life back. I sure as shit don't need the husband, but everything else is mine to keep. And I'm sick of waiting to get it back. It's not my way.

OK. Hush, now.

Behold the music. The skids and I are finally starting up that Foo Fighters cover band, Food Fighters -- just as soon as they can play anything. No sense in letting all those lyrics go to waste. I think by mid-first grade we'll be all dialed.

xodana

lost

2010-01-19T13:29:00.002-08:00

2010-01-19T13:29:00.001-08:00

On Saturday I was at home alone getting ready for my weekend restaurant gig and slipped on the no-slip mat suctioned cupped to the perfectly finished floor of the deep porcelain tub in my tiny apartment. In one fell swoop, a thousand sacks of potatoes went crashing to the ground and I edged up the sides like an X-gamer shooting a halfpipe. When my battered-but-not-yet-bruised body finally found inertia at the bottom of the bath, I laid frozen for an hour or more as I let the falling water muffle my wails and shower away the thousand gallons of sadness flooding the drain hole. I didn't know if my body was hurt, and I didn't care.

All I could think about was my aloneness at the bottom of a tub or a well or whatever stupid metaphor works at the moment. Instantly, I knew I could have died there and nobody might have noticed until today. And then I wondered if I did die, would The Manny care? Likely not. I mean, why would he care about me if I died if he doesn't care more than this about me when I'm alive? And what busted ass story would he tell the kids? And what if they coincidentally sent my former fireman friend to fetch my bloated, naked corpse from the bottom of the bathtub -- which is entirely plausible since his firehouse covers my hood? Boy, wouldn't that be embarrassing? He always told me that the dead ones are always naked for some reason. And never dead, naked, and good looking. Just dead, naked, and gross. Not ideal.

But that's not why I was crying. I was crying because I did that thing that you should never do. I imagined my funeral; you know, should I have met with grave misfortune at the business end of that bath tub fall. Instead of a well-attended funeral I envision much more of an interactive online thingy where face/twit/blog networks implode from the simultaneous news spreading. "DING-DONG the bitch is dead! Release the ~~gimp~~ ~~hounds~~ doves!" But then I got real, "eh. nobody's heard this tree fall in the woods for aaaaages..."

I have no In Case of Emergency contacts. Not one. In case of emergency, nobody who cares is close enough to do anything, and nobody who's close enough to do anything cares. I learned that in April. And I'm all, "Aaaaand if nobody else cares about me, then why should I exactly?" ~~Easily my life's most painful realization to date.~~

Ironically, I also have no will. I've not one thing to leave my children in case of eternal emergency. Not one. ~~Easily my life's most painful realization to date.~~

I took inventory of my limbs and lumbars, and diagnosed myself as pretty banged up. The base of my skull felt achey, I somehow managed bruises on both the inside of my forearms and my elbows seemingly simultaneously, besides my right knee being pretty effed. But I was alive, able to extract myself from my embarassing folded state, and well enough to grab a towel.

I wasn't even dry before morbid curiosity got the best of me.

Alone. People say that's how we're born and how we die. I say that it's how you spend the days in between that matters more. And based on the past year of my life, I have no faith in the buddy system whatsoever, so the status quo set at either end of the continuum is where I'm (and you are, to be honest) safest. Alone. Easily my life's most painful realization to date.

Without people there are no networks. Without friends there is no support. Without partnerships and trust there is no building of anything. Families, businesses, communities. All the things I thought I wanted to do can't be done by me alone, and even more pointedly have been done better by worse. It's humbling to come to the realization that you're not as much of a genius as you are a plain old pain in the ass.

quiet time

2010-01-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

closed for renovations.
will return 2/25.
i'm fine. just lost.
don't send a search party.
i'll find my own way back.

be well.
until then,
xodana

2010-01-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

When I arrived at Scrams' office last Thursday, he smiled and said, "It's good to see you." I'll surprise none of you when I say that I don't hear that one ~~ever~~ much.

I assumed my usual position to the far left of his fugly sofa and like always, he sized me up with squinty yet piercing blue eyes. Without ado or delay, I summarily began whining about how I'm sick of talking about things that nobody can fix and whining about whining about The Fucking Manny all the time. Who the fuck is this guy and what has he done with Boyband? And why do I care?

"Pft, I don't care," I tell Scrams as if he were the wall to my wail. "I don't care about any of this shit. Being all alone is safer for me, and everybody else apparently. A lot of good caring about my husband brought me. If I stop long enough to wonder or care why I was deposited on the curb like Thursday's garbage and left for somebody else to clean up, I'm donezo. That's the kind of shit people kill themselves over, for fuck's sake. And all of the people who could or would have been in a position to lend a hand or a heart at that time either couldn't or wouldn't. But in any case, I don't fucking care. " Sob. Sob. Sob.

"You say you don't care so you can protect yourself from being hurt, and I have to admit you're getting pretty good at that. But if you don't care then why are you crying?"

Sob. Sob. Sob.

"I'm crying because I can assure you that the only thing worse than actually being alone is being surrounded by people who make you feel entirely alone. Sob. So quit telling me that you care about me and that you worry about me. Sob. You're paid to do that, you asshole. Paid very fucking well, might I add. Sob. Sob. So unless you can sit there in your fancy fucking suit and tell me how to solve my housing crisis, my economic crisis, promise me that the custody evaluation will land in my favor, and assure me with actual numbers in actual bank accounts that everything is gong to be all right for me and the kids in perpetuity, then I beg you to quit telling me that I care. I can't. I'm crying because I can't care that I can't fix any of this myself or I will crumble. And I can't crumble. Can't you see that?" Sob.

"I'd like to think that you coming here to see me is helping making things better somehow."

"Define somehow. Because last time I checked, nothing is 'better'. Furthermore, I do all the talking. And the therapy. Do I ever roll in here without a clear view of the problem -- my problem, and a thoughtfully pre-considered and insightful sociological and psychological determination of how I arrived at the problem, how others impact the problem, and my impact on others based on the problem?"

(pause, pause) "Fuck." (pause, pause) "No. You don't. That's why you're such a fascinating patient."

"So let me get this straight: I come here to you for help, I talk, you legitimately agree that I am well aware of my shit -- all of it, I amuse and fascinate you, you can't fix one of my fucking problems, and yet you get all the money -- the only thing that can solve any of my problems. Please tell me you see how this is very fucked up."

"Arguing with you is a pain in the ass."

"Now that, my friend, I hear all the time."

* * * * *

And the truth is, I am a pain in the ass. I used to be a good kind of pain in the ass. Enough redeeming qualities to keep around. Nowadays I'm a liability to everyone I encounter. So I'm going off the radar for a while. I don't feel like baking or thinking or writing or even talking to anyone. I think this is what it feels like to give up but I'm not totally sure. I'm not depressed, just disappointed in myself. Not so much the weird genius I always fancied myself. Come to think of it, almost everyone who has ever called me any kind of genius eventually tells me I'm actually just a pain in the ass. So I'm going to keep my ass pains to myself for a while.

The other day an associate told me that she never would have guessed my life is such a blazing fucking mess. I'm always so smart and funny and positive and put together. Except for I'm not. That's just what I want everyone, including myself, to think. Doubt c

fucking and punching

2010-01-13T04:20:00.000-08:00

When you don't hear from me for spells at a time it's not for lack of content. I stifle the urge to set e-type as often as Hank Moody, lead character/warshed up novelist of Californication, gets an offer to inspect a dewy young vagine at point blank range. I do not write for lack of material. I do not write for self-preservation, for everything I say is not what anyone else would ever say and those are the things that get used against you in a The Manny-said-I-said type of situation, no matter the context.

During my apparently thumb-twiddling silence, you all have been lobbing perfectly legitimate questions at me. The first of which I should have addressed ages ago, but alas I did not. What ever became of BMF, is what folks want to know. The short answer is that he made the fatal mistake of falling in love with me, something I simply will not tolerate any longer. My career in high-altitude masonry started going down around the time my marriage was going up in flames. I kicked everybody out of my castle and built a wall taller and thicker and more impervious than anything Henry VIII could have envisaged. But it is narrow, and well-like in its wallness. Nobody is invited or welcome in. It's safer that way. The only way to peek behind my wall is for me to levitate out of it fueled on nothing more than the fumes of my very own grandiosity.

I pop out for a little while, land on the slippery terra firma you civilized people of the world call home, open my mouth out of which apparent bile falls, and don my pointy hat and broom once again to descend back into my well until it's time to resurface again.

The thing about misfitery is that you have to be ok with being a misfit among your own to go on. I am an odd type of misfit. A white collar Jewish girl trapped in an anarchist's brainhole. I got a good public school primary education, followed by excellent schooling all the way through my master's degree, married a right gent with mad earning potential, got a fine big house with all the trappings of happiness, started a business that got bigger than I could handle. Then I lost the most meaningful beacon of hope and love I ever knew, followed by my true love, my children, all that money, my home, and my compass.

Now I'm bobbing along a familiar sea of aloneness, no life jacket, no fear of sharks. For as much as I wish I weren't a misfit, I am. I don't change, I won't change, and I can't change. The Manny finally told me he didn't want me anymore because I said I wouldn't change. And then I began wondering once again if I had become someone different than who he met and loved. Could I have possibly changed that much? This idea weighed heavy on my mind until I found this letter of referral on behalf to the graduate school I ultimately attended, weeks before I met and after which I married The Manny of my dreams.

As my parents et siblings will attest, as would Granny, the Consuelo who raised me, and anybody else who ever dared to know me well would attest themselves. Amen. Don't. Won't. Can't. I live with the fact that I suck just exactly as much as I don't. Thusly, I am not almost anyone's cup of tea. Totally.

Scrams pointed out to me that every time I get shoved down, I come back swinging harder. That's not necessarily the best thing when you're already abandoned anchovy flavored tea. When I feel personally put down, for some reason I unconsciously but doggedly try to lift others up -- probably so I can hear myself talk with some pep. So what I'm working on right now is trying to curb the urge to encourage others to be more like me; to find solutions, surmount ridiculous odds, dream big then live it -- even if it's slow getting there, take your lumps and learn as much as you can from them, find a way around the system, and keep your eye out for what's next. I come off like a grandiose motivational speaker/life coach. And what others call grandiose, I call self confidence. But if I I didn't have a tanker of it on reserve, The Manny would probably have me locked up in a tidy little sanitarium somewhere by now.

Scrams calls it The Drama of the Gifted Child.

The Drama of the Gifted Child (Das Drama des begabten Kindes, 1979)

In her first book (also published under the titles Prisoners of Childhood and The Drama of Being a Child) Alice Miller defines and elaborates the personality manifestations of childhood trauma. She seeks the truth about her own childhood experiences and in so doing defines the model that has become widely accepted^{[citation needed]} in psychotherapeutic circles, such as the Tavistock Institute. She addresses the two reactions to the loss of love in childhood, depression and grandiosity; the inner prison, the vicious circle of contempt, repressed memories, the etiology of depression, and how childhood trauma manifests itself in the adult.

And what others call Gifted Child, I call ~~no shit~~ self confidence. If nobody else believes in you in the way that you believe in yourself and you happen to have a bottomless well (wink, wink) of self confidence, there are bound to be some dramatic accusations of grandiosity. Because every time I feel like I'm the victim of an emotionally violent life fucking, I come back punching with some pretty big ideas. Scrams also likes to remind me that I've spent enough money in therapy to maintain my strengths and acknowledge my weaknesses. That's a good thing when you're the clean up crew on an anchovy tea flood.

Agggghhhhh.

And then I read these.

Ahahahahahahha.

In other news, the house is in foreclosure even though The Manny claims not to have seen the foreclosure notices chained to the door. Oy goddamn vey.

I need to move. Foo's school is overcroweded, so they are tightening the boundary restrictions. There are exactly two places for rent that could accommodate us, but not comfortably. The search continues.

I was approached about a business venture. I've spent the last week doing research and crunching numbers. The zeroes are mindnumbing. But possibly not incentive enough. More to come.

And lastly, Foo started singing along to a song in the car because it reminds her of Daddy.

Funny that. It does me, too. (june 09)

My little brainhole is formulating a plan while making no decisions. Whatever I do next needs to support me and the children as much as I can for the next 60 years. It's a deep well. But I got myself into it, I'll get myself out of it.

talk soon,
xodana

alias(s)

2010-01-08T04:04:00.000-08:00

Every time I get crazy ideas -- like standing outside The Manny's employer handing out leaflets about he's not the man he appears to be: mannerly, kind, and honest -- I get a swat from The Hook because that sort of thing does not look good to people draped in black robes in the final analysis. Way back in May, The Hook admonished me not do anything that smacks of the story of the woman who went door to door in her white collar neighborhood with a few hot copies of the probably true story of how her husband spent his spare time -- inside the nanny. True as it may have been

a tempest. a cyclone. a goddamn hurricane.

2010-01-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

Most people traditionally mark the passing of the outgoing year by swilling it out of memory, and paying richly for it the next day. I have never been one of those folks, mainly because I refuse to buy into the commercialized import of a new year's kiss, or that everything changes once the clock hits 00:01 on January 1. My new year, such as it will be, is recognized February 25 of each passing year, as it is the anniversary of my existence. You've got a solid seven weeks before you have to worry about wishing me happy anything, and by then it should be true. But happy new years to you all, just the same.

* * * * *

I have spent the past several weeks watching some of pay television's finest offerings. Dexter, The Tudors, Californication, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and most recently Mad Men (this one gets its very own post one day since it basically details the last 10 years of my life in long format crammed into a time machine) to get ideas for treatments and music and timing and dialogue and interwoven storylines. My research led me to the not-so-amazing-albeit-unpaid-and-oddly-entertaining LA Ink. Foo caught an eye of an ad for the spectacle and said she wanted to watch the tattoo show, so we sat and watched quietly up until one of my old associates and part-time roommates loped across the screen.

"ALEX?!?!" I scared the shit out of Foo with my startle.

"Who, Mama?"

"Holy bleep! That is my friend Alex from Vail! I knew him well for a little while."

She tuned me out and I tuned into memories some 13 years old.

When I lived in Vail, I had a boyfriend and a dog, Jamey and Genghis respectively; although at times perhaps their names should have been switched. Jamey's lived there since about a season before I arrived to the nook in the Rockies where a highway runs through it. He just recently sent me a "Hi, howya doin'?" from Argentina where he's kicking it in the homeland of his current 24-year-old girlfriend. Ha. I used to be his 24-year-old girlfriend. Thirteen years ago. And every girlfriend he's had since has been approximately 24. Some things never change. All my friends hated him; I guess we have that in common. But he was one of the first people I called when I got engaged, and one of the first people I called when that backfired on me some ten years later.

We broke up in a shitty, dramatic way, courtesy of Jamey and his bent for nonmonogamy, but somehow we remained friends and lovers for two years more. We'd reconnect between other paramours, his parents (his father died of cancer in '04) always admonishing him not to let me get away. When I moved out of the home we shared together with nine other dudes, Jamey moved in with a pack of his riding buddies (boards, not ponies), one of whom just bought a house up the hill; in with a bunch of Malibu rich kids with big black pick ups and incongruously hot bitches in tow -- a party on all the time. With names like Hoser and Weasel, you could guess what we were dealing with there. Their ladyfriends were given nicknames like Sack 'o Nickels and Fishstick, unbeknownst to said ladyfriends. Needless to say, I was more comfortable being one of the guys than one of the girls; although the rowdier the party scene got there, the less often I visited.

Alex owned the house where Jamey lived and was easily one of my top three favorite characters that I have encountered in my life. Alex was born with one of the most amazing good-times-i-don't-give-a-fuck chips of any human I have ever met, chong notwithstanding. He had this disarming ability to walk into a room and totally affect any vibe he wanted with a smile and some ridiculous but true story; always living in the moment, always the life of the omnipresent party.

While the guys settled into the living quarters upstairs, Alex pimped out his downstairs flat in a way that I love describing at dinner parties because it was ridiculous and amazing all at once. Alex's home was monochromatic on a room-to-room basis. In short order starting with the kitchen -- the floor, ceiling and everything in between was early morning sky blue. Moving into the living room you would have found a carpet, upright piano, trim, sofas (seating for 20!), ceiling tiles and all all attendant furnishings done in a lush and vibrant shade of kelly green, and onto the boudoir where it was all magenta all the time, from the diamond upholstered vinyl walls bedazzled with jewels to the queen sized bed suspended from the ceiling, Alex always had some silly ideas but took many so far as to execute them. Like the time he shaved male pattern baldness into his head (clearly he doesn't have a hair loss issue, but his head was buzzed back in the day -- and he wasn't sporting a gold toof). It's amazing he never went home alone. That pack of jokers regularly got us thrown out of every bar in town. Not gonna lie, it was good times. It was short times and high times, but it was good times.

Next thing I know I am sitting on my couch in Portland watching random episodes of LA Ink with my five-year-old (she's fascinated by the art itself and the body placement, which I think is pretty cool), and there's Alex walking into my frame looking like he's spent a thousand hours looting some Hollywood stylist's closet, livin' la vida "Orbi," touring with various bands as a drummer, and smacking just a tad of the Nelson (or is it olsen) twins. It was weird, but somehow comforting to see him even though the episodes were a couple of years old. He happens to be the son of Roy Orbison, but that is merely a tangential fact, not an integral tidbit.

The important part of this story, that I have neglected to mention because the Alex thing took me so by surprise, is that is jammed me back to time when my life was altered by the failures of true love, the challenges of starting over, fearlessness of the future and how capable and inspired I felt to become someone who cared about shit and did something about it. Everything was possible because anything was within my grasp. And then I went to grad school and met The Manny, who I then convinced everything was possible. My bad.

(Aaaaand then, I was looking through future episodes of the show to see if Alex ever got his heart unbroken by the tat diva, Kat, and found myself looking at the smiling face of one of my old cafe customers who apparently did short stint on the show, too. Weird times two.)

So as the rest of the world starts their new year this week, I've got seven more to plot my return to myself, accept my failure to perpetuate true love, formally readdress the challenges of starting over, and remember that I am capable and inspired to become someone who cares about shit and does something about it. I don't make resolutions; those usually end up in the great paper shredder of life, don't they? My only intention for the year is to truly live well in every variation on the theme.

I've been doing a lot of pacing, thinking, and late-night scribbling on bedside note pads. You should see the 5x7 wipe board in my kitchen. Single thoughts that are the soundtrack of my mind. My life isn't that much different than it has ever been; constantly swirling, constantly searching, constantly writing, constantly adding notches of non-carnal womanhood on my belt and a metaphorical hairshirt on my chest. Although every time Foo insists that Daddy and I love one another because we are a happy family (always on the heels of explaining why we no longer live together as one), yet another hair on my head goes white. If I could afford a proper dye job I'd tend to it, but in the meantime I'm on the fastrack to looking like Bea Arthur by 2011.

The skids were with me with all week last week, although all of us with varying degrees of infirmity a'blazin'. For four days we caught up on old times, lazed about watching programs and reading the same books over and over (gawd, what the eff is wrong with children's books? do they ALL need to say "hate" and "stupid"), huddled and scuttled, and remembering that we're in it to win it, together. I remind the kids often that they are loved by many, but most important is to love thyselves, love the fact that so many people love them, and to spend their lives finding more things to love about the world because there is a lot of cool shit stuff out there to know about that doesn't involve Mylie Cyrus or watching football.

I don't believe for a moment that any dream is unattainable, but everyone knows what happens when you fly too close to your own chosen sun. I've burned and crashed so much lately that I haven't properly dreamt in a long time. My reality is my nightmarical dreamworld. The machinations in my brain reverse engineer and reconfigure everything I ever thought I wanted and wanted to be on an incessant but necessary basis, which I suspect is why Alex crept back into my eye's mind just now. When I was 22-25, everything and anything were principal components of my literal lifestyle. The people I knew just did what they did; nobody bother me, I no bother you. Life was small and I liked it that way. I was the editor of the business and real estate section of the local paper, wrote columns on the state of the local vacation economy and small business marketing. I thought I was on my way to becoming a business journalist somewhere, some day. I used my brain to think and my body to do what girls in their young 20s do. I kept my professional life in balance with my joie de vivre. And vivre I did. Learned that by watching Granny.

If I could live anywhere, I'd pack the skids up and head back to the mountains. The place where my oldest and bestest resides, but also where I committed myself to everything and anything. I'm hankering for something that I recognize in my life that feels right; that reminds me of what makes sense. A 7-days-a-week life with my children. A genuine place to call home. A vocation/job/career that I adore. Headspace to think about what my life could still become, rather than what has become of it. Every aspiration I might have is ambushed by the loss of what I thought I wanted. But it all fell apart when I foolishly flew too close to the sun.

The problem is I don't know how to control my aspirations of anything and everything. And I don't really want to. This persistent problem of mine has been top of mind for too long running now. Finding the anything and everything within life's limitations is the only reason to live.

* * * * *

Whilst the children were with The Manny last weekend, I watched the following in the following order.

Mad Men -- Start at the beginning

The Union

The Medicated Child

The Persuaders

Medicating Kids

This an example of a daily occurrence that only gets attention when celebrities die. Unacceptable. This is yet another epidemic.

And then I was just trying to figure out what to do with my life with all of this information and memory of mission statements gone by and happened to see this video.

And then I had an idea (which has mushroomed into a plan). And because I do not accept "no"s or "here's why not"s in 2010, a change of personal policy - not a resolution, I'm going to follow it down the corridor and see where it leads. Anything and everything could be waiting for me there and I can't resist peeking.

Hi, passion. It's good to see you again. You've been missed.
xodana

2010-01-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

Mad Men
STart at the beginning

The Union

The Medicated Child

The Persuaders

Medicating Kids

This an example of a daily occurence that only gets attention when celebrities die. Unaaceptable. This is yet another epidemic.

And then I got in the car this morning

2010-01-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

One of my major interests when I joined the medical marijuana clinic was the overmedication and diagnosis abuse -- in my case especially -- of psychiatric patients who are summarily diagnosed and medicated over the course of an hour's visit or two with a total stranger. Often the wrong diagnosis and the beginning of a long complicated career of exprimentally bouncing from one pharmaceutical to another, not knowing in any case the long-term effect on any brain, but most certainly a small child's brain. Say a 2-year-old child, for instance. Much of the non-keep-it-comical writing I have been doing involves further research into this industrial phenomenon.

Spit Fire

2009-12-24T04:20:00.000-08:00

Hi. It's me. Coming atcha live and direct from the inside of Granny's pink bathrobe. I wear it when I REALLY need her near. It smells just like her around the neckline. Of course it will never be washed again. I can never forget her scent.

Right now I should be scrambling to pack up the last of the kidlet beach-going business that we'd need to spend a whole week south of LA. But I'm not. The Manny decided that the children are not allowed to join me on this trip, see their maternal grandmother, or enjoy a week of fun in the sun. Why? He's mad at me.

For what?

Existing.

Not gonna lie, damn near kicked a puppy down the street after he threatened to haul me in front of a judge claiming contempt of court for violating a 6-month-old custody agreement that doesn't say shit about me leaving the state with the kids. That was the last thing filed with the court (in JUNE!!!) and restricts my access to the kids severely, but has been out of force for months and months and months. But go ahead, issue Amber alerts and trump up some charges -- best served cold, no?

Dirty dealings. Punishing innocents for the sins of their father.

~~I'm beyond hate, spite, revenge, and disgust.~~

Time will surely take care of those things.

But in the meantime, The Manny is a bad, bad man.

Apparently, there is also no vacation from this for me. I'll be right here, basking in the sunshine of my spotless little minds, wishing we were poolside just north of the border, cursing The Manny's filthy name and wishing ill upon him. I do have a nice hot lump of coal to cram up his posterior Christmas cavern. It's a little present from Jesus himself by way of that oversized red and white striped fictitious asshole that you've convinced my little Jewish babies exists solely to bring them presents. Bollocks!

(I hate Christmas.)

Mid-Christmas day, a day that has only ever been spent by our nuclear family sitting poolside somewhere with my mother in an expensive locale far from home ignoring Santa and Jesus and wrongfully felled trees, the babies will go back to The Manny's for a little more benign neglect whilst he works and facebooks all day ("daddy's always too busy working," says Bub). I will be spending the evening on a non-romantic date with an attractive, brilliant doctor -- an internist, no less -- in a bougie restaurant downtown discussing the merits of medicinal marijuana and rebranding the local chong movement.

Two-thousand-holy-fuck-this-was-the-worst-year-of-my-life-and-nine needs to end tout de suite. Another fortnight of it might just kill me dead.

But 2010? Oh yeah, baby. That's my jam.

It's not sunny in Portland.
Yet.
xodana

Thanksgiving for Christmas

2009-12-22T04:20:00.000-08:00

One of my mother's best and oldest friends is quickly and painfully deteriorating from pancreatic cancer. Lois has 7 children. Six boys, one girl. Lois has somewhere on the order of 25 grandchildren - from toddler to teen. Two of Lois' sons were my first babysitters. Lois will die any minute, which is horrible. But she will be surrounded by approximately 40 *immediate* family members whose lives she touched every day -- her children and their children and their partners in childrening, and that is beautiful.

Forty loved ones. Imagine counting all those blessings as you drift off forever.

I can count mine on a peace sign.
Apparently I have some work to do.

To Lois,
xodana

2009-12-21T11:48:00.000-08:00

Nick Drake (26) - musician, anti-depressant overdose, disputed suicide.
Dorothy Dandridge (42) - actress, singer, anti-depressant overdose.
Bridgette Andersen (21) former child actress, alcohol and heroin overdose.
Kevyn Aucoin - photographer & make-up artist, kidney and liver failure due to Tylenol toxicity, due to prescription painkillers addiction.
Florence Ballard (32) - musician, The Supremes, cardiac arrest strongly exacerbated by long-term drug abuse
John Belushi (33) - of the Blues Brothers, actor, and comedian, heroin and cocaine overdose (speedball).
Len Bias (22) - basketball star; died of cocaine overdose before ever playing in the NBA.
Tommy Bolin (25) - musician, Deep Purple, drugs overdose and/or alcohol poisoning.
John Bonham (32) - Drummer, Led Zeppelin, acute alcohol intoxication
Tim Buckley (28) - rock and roll musician, heroin overdose
Paul Butterfield (44) - musician, drug and alcohol overdose
Truman Capote (59) - writer, liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication.
Steve Clark (30) - musician, Def Leppard, accidental death (anti-depressants, painkillers and alcohol
Chris Farley (33) - comedian who rose to fame on Saturday Night Live, cocaine and morphine overdose (speedball).
Sigmund Freud (83) - neurologist, long-term cocaine use, physician assisted morphine overdose (euthanasia
dam Goldstein (36) - AKA DJ AM, American club DJ, accidental drug overdose—specifically a lethal cocktail of cocaine, OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, Benadryl, and Levamisole
Michael Jackson (50) - musician, heart attack due to drug overdose.
Russell Jones (a.k.a. Ol' Dirty Bastard, 35) - hip hop musician, accidental overdose, cocaine and prescription painkiller^[5].
Janis Joplin (27) - rock and roll and blues musician, heroin overdose.
Rick James (56)- musician Died August 6, 2004 of a drug induced heart-attack
Heath Ledger (28) - actor, accidental death Combined Drug Intoxication of various prescription drugs, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, temazepam, and others^[10].
Bruce Lee (32) - actor, martial artist, died of acute cerebral edema due to a reaction to compounds present in the prescription pain killing drug Equagesic.
Marilyn Monroe (36) - actress, overdose of barbiturate-based sleeping pills
Jim Morrison (27) - musician, The Doors, heart failure, alcohol abuse (cause and fact of death disputed).
River Phoenix (23) - actor, overdose of heroin and cocaine (speedball).
Brad Renfro (25) - actor, overdose of heroin and morphin
Anna Nicole Smith (39) - Playboy playmate, actress, reality show star, lethal combination of chloral hydrate and various benzodiazepines.

Judy Garland: Fame wasn't kind to the legendary star of 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'A Star Is Born' and mother to Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft. Long plagued with drug and alcohol problems, Garland met her end by accidental drug overdose, just days after her 47th birthday.

http://www.pharmacytechs.net/blog/18-celebrities-who-died-from-prescription-drugs

http://www.popcrunch.com/busted-100-celebrities-arrested-for-drug-possession/

it's just a plant

In spirit of the recent Michael Phelps incident...

1.) Barack Obama. El Presidente de Los Estados Unidos!

2.) Bill Clinton “…but I didn’t inhale.” Fomer U.S. President!

3.) Bill Murray. Yep, everyone’s favorite actor was arrested for possession.

4.) Paris Hilton. Socialite. Night Vision Porn-Star.

5.) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Basketball star

6. George W Bush Politician and professional hypocrite.
7. John F Kennedy. Politician.
8. Steve Jobs, co-creator of the Apple computer.
9. Queen Victoria.
10. Bruce Lee.
11. Aaron Sorkin, creator of ”The West Wing”.
12. Art Garfunkel , singer, Simon and Garfunkel.
13. Abbie Hoffman, Activist.
14. Al and Tipper Gore Politicians
15. Aleister Crowley, Author and Famous Satanist.
16. Alexander Dumas, Author - “The Three Musketeers”
17. Ali Campbell, Singer with UB40
18. Alice B. Toklas. Famous Cook - Wrote recipe for Hash Fudge Filmed as. ‘I Love You Alice B. Toklas’
19. Allen Ginsberg, Poet. Andrea Corr, musician, “The Corrs”. Anjelica Huston, Actress. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Actor. “I did smoke a joint and I did inhale.”
20. Art Garfunkel. Singer of, “Simon and Garfunkel” fame.
21. Arthur Rimbaud.
22. Balzac.
23. Beatles.
24. Bill Gates. Not confirmed, just very strongly hinted at in his Playboy interview.
25. Bing Crosby. Famous crooner of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas”. Now the Film “High Society” makes sense!
26. Bix Beiderbecke Jazz musician.
27. Black Crowes, musicians
28. Bob Denver, Star of “Gilligan’s Island”.
29. Bob Dylan, musician.
30. Bob Marley, musician
31. Burt Reynolds, actor. He left his first wife because of her drug use. But he has been seen in Cannabis Cafes.
32. Cab Calloway, Jazz musician. Claimed he only used it once.
33. Carl Sagan, Scientist - SiFi writer - film “Contact” More info here.
34. Carlos Santana musician.
35. Carrie Fischer, Actress
36. Charlie Sheen, actor.
37. Charlize Theron, Actress.
38. Charles Beaudelaire, Author.
39. Cheech Marin, Actor
40. Chris Conrad, Author and expert on Cannabis Hemp
41. Chris Farley. Comedian.
42. Chrissie Hynde, musician.
43. Chris Rock, Actor, Comedian, Producer, Screenwriter.
44. Chubby Checker, Musician. Sang; “Lets Twist Again”.
45. Cilla Black, Musician and presenter.
46. Claire Rayner, Agony Aunt.
47. Cody Kasch Actor. TV series Desperate Housewives
48. Conan O’Brian TV Host
49. Count Basie, Jazz Ban Leader
50. Dame Margot Fonteyn, Prima ballerina.
51. David Bailey, Photographer .
52. Dan Quayle . Politician.
53. David Hockney, Artist.
54. Diego Rivera Mexican Artist
55. Dion Fortune Welsh occultist.
56. Dionne Warwick, Famous singer of “Walk on by”.
57. Dioscorides Pedanius, 1 st cent. AD. Greek physician. Wrote ‘De Materia Medica’, used for 1,500 years.
58. Dizzy Gillespie, Jazz musician
59. Dr Francis Crick. Nobel Prize winner.
60. Dr Lester Grinspoon.
61. Dr R.D.Laing
62. Dr W.B. O’Shaugnessy Re-introduced cannabis to European medicine.
63. Drew Barrymore, actress.
64. Duke Ellington, Jazz Band Leader.
65. Elliott Gould. Actor.
66. Eminem, musician.
67. Emperor Liu Chi-nu, made medical recomendation for its use.
68. Emperor Shen-Nung, made first known medical recommendation for its use.
69. Errol Flynn, Actor
70. Evelyn Waugh. Author.
71. Francis Ford Coppella, Film Director.
72. Frances McDormand , Actress
73. Fats Waller, musician.
74. Fitz Hugh Ludlow - wrote ‘The Hasheesh Eater’.
75. Francois Rabelais. 16 th French author
76. Friedrich Nietzsche, Used it as a medicine.
77. Gary Johnson. Governor of New Mexico - Reformer.
78. Gene Krupa, Jazz musician.
79. George Gurdjieff , Russian Mystic.
80. George Melly, Jazz musician.
81. George Soros, Financier and reformer.
82. George Washington , grew it and there is evidence that he prepared it for smoking.
83. Gerard de Nerval French writer
84. Graham Greene, Author.
85. Grateful Dead musicians.
86. Harrison Ford, Actor.
87. Howard Marks. Ex-smuggler and Raconteur.
88. H R H Prince Harry, Third in line to the British throne.
89. H R H Princess Margaret, sister to Her Majesty the Queen.
90. Howard Stern
91. Hua T’o Medical use as anaesthetic .
92. Hunter S. Thompson, Author
93. Isabel Allende, Chilean author. Mentioned in her book “Paula”.
94. Jack Kerouac, Author
95. Jack Nicholson, actor.
96. Jackie Gleason, actor. Another whom the DEA kept on their pot files.
97. James Brown, musician
98. Janis Joplin, musician.
99. Jane Fonda, Actress.
100. Jennifer Aniston, actress.
101. Jennifer Capriati, Tennis champ.
102. Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota.
103. Jim Morrison, musician.
104. Jimmy Dorsey, Jazz musician,
105. Jimmy Hendrix, musician
106. Joan of Arc, was accused of using witch herbs (another name cannabis).
107. John Belushi, actor.
108. John Denver, musician. He recorded a song about it.
109. John Kerry . Politician. US Senator
110. John Lennon. musician.
111. John Le Mesurier. Actor.
112. John Wayne, Actor, “I tried it once but it didn’t do anything to me.”
113. Jonathan Miller, Theatre Director.
114. Johnny Cash, musician.
115. Jon Snow, Channel 4 News presenter. (UK)
116. Julia Roberts, Actress,
117. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laurate, Biology.
118. Ken Kesey, Author
119. Kenneth Tynan, Playwright.
120. Kurt Cobain, musician.
121. Larry Hagman, actor, of “JR” fame.
122. Led Zeppelin, musicians.
123. Lenny Bruce, Comedian.
124. Lewis Carroll, Author
125. Lewis Wolpert, biologist.
126. Little Richard, musician.
127. Louis Armstrong, Jazz musician.
128. Luke Perry, actor.
129. Louis Hebert, French Botanist
130. Macaulay Culkin. Actor, Home Alone.
131. Mark Stepnoski. two-time Super Bowl champ, Dallas Cowboy.
132. Mick Jagger, musician
133. Mike Bloomberg. New York City Mayor.
134. Mike Tyson, Boxer.
135. Miles Davis, Jazz musician.
136. Milton Berle, Actor
137. Mo Mowlam, Minister
138. Modigliani. Sculptor.
139. Montel Williams Chat show host.
140. Montgomery Clift, actor
141. Neil Diamond, musician.
142. Neil Young, Musician.
143. Newt Gingrich Speaker of the US Senate.
144. Norman Mailer, Author.
145. Oasis, Noel Gallagher
146. Oliver Stone, Film Director.
147. Oscar Wilde, Author.
148. Pablo Picasso, Artist.
149. Pancho Villa, Revolutionary Leader.
150. Peregrine Worthstone, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
151. Peter Fonda, actor.
152. Peter Sellers, actor.
153. Peter Tosh, Poet.
154. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Former Prime Minister of Canada.
155. Pink. Musician. Mentioned in Playboy interview (11/02).
156. Pink Floyd, Musicians.
157. P. J. O’Rouke. Author.
158. Ram Dass, Philosopher.
159. Ray Charles, musician.
160. Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize Laureate physicist.
161. Richard Pryor, actor.
162. Robert Anton Wilson. Philosopher .
163. Robert Mitchum, Actor, was jailed in the 40s for possession of marijuana.
164. Rolling Stones, musicians.
165. Ross Rebagliati, first ever snowboarding Gold Medallist, 1998 Winter Olympics.
166. Rudolf Nureyev, Ballet dancer. Also see entry for Margot Fonteyn.
167. Rudyard Kipling . Author.
168. Ryan Farrell, Australian Sprint Car champion.
169. Salvador Dali, Artist.
170. Samuel Beckett, Author.
171. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Author.
172. Sinead O’Connor, musician.
173. Sir Paul McCartney, Musician.
174. Sir Mick Jagger, Musician.
175. Snoop Dogg, musician.
176. Steve Martin , Actor.
177. Stephen King. Author.
178. Steven Soderbergh, Film director.
179. Stephen Sondheim. Broadway composer and lyricist.
180. Sting / Gordon Sumners, musician.
181. Ted Turner, of CNN fame.
182. Terence McKenna.
183. Terry Pratchett. Author of the “Diskworld” books.
184. The Who, musicians.
185. Thelonious Monk, Jazz musician.
186. Timothy Leary
187. Tomas Enge, Formula 3000 World Champion.
188. Tommy Chong. Actor
189. Tommy Lee, Musician.
190. Tony Booth, the father-in-law of Britain’s Prime Minister.
191. UB40, Band.
192. Victor Hugo. Author ‘Les Misérables’
193. Walter ‘Stumpy’ Brennan actor.
194. Walter Benjamin, Philosopher.
195. Wesley Snipes, actor. Has been seen in Cannabis Cafes.
196. Whitney Houston, musician. William Butler Yeats. Famous Irish Poet and Occultist.
197. William S. Burroughs, Author.
198. William Shakespeare. Dramatist. More here.
199. Willie Nelson, musician.
200. Woody Harrelson, Actor and reformer.

name that tune

2009-12-21T04:20:00.000-08:00

thanks for the reminder, bub,
xodt

i

2009-12-17T04:20:00.000-08:00

Ever read the book e? It's a "novel" about the dirty dealings at an ad agency written entirely in the form of email exchanges. Good read for a poolside lounge.

I have just downloaded software that allows me to view and print off entire text histories from my iphone to my computer. Holy cheebus. Reading over years' worth of text exchanges with The Manny, She Who Shall Not Be Named, a fireman named Dingus, and all of the collateral humans moved to contact during the emotional avalanche of last April -- there are no words to describe the repetition in my words, emotions, expressions of hurt and anger, and how much I tried to reach out to everybody I loved while we were all still in love. It's the stuff of which books, movies, and Showtime series are made. Reading back over it made me think that this story could be told entirely in text messages. i, if you will.

It's frightening to think that legal closure won't come until one year post-apocalypse, even though every moment of the madness is fresh in my mind (which it wouldn't be in any form or fashion if I was borderline, but whatevs. diagnose me, everybody's doing it.). The texts fill in situational and dialogue blanks that I couldn't place or remember verbatim. And those texts also woefully recount the obvious downslide in The Manny's original emotional decision to try to keep our family together, his mother moving in to raise my children while he worked, when he found his new male therapist after making his first one cry by telling her our story, and how he suddenly became crueler, colder, and more draconian by degrees. Frankly, I didn't think that was possible after that fateful 911 call.

The very idea that he would foist diagnoses on me that my own personal psychiatrist (of hundreds of hours) refutes -- to a formally trained custody evaluator with a 20+-year career in psychology, no less. Downright foolish. You're really going to diagnose me, The Manny? To the guy who you're paying close to $10k to evaluate and diagnose us BOTH psychologically, or didn't you know that? An exercise in buffoonery, summon the sweat bands.

As you may have already guessed, situation has gone septic once again and we are currently at loggerheads over allowing the children to travel with me for a week to meet my mother south of LA for A Very Jewish Christmas, just like we do every year in one locale or other. He's retaliating because I won't agree to modify the current custody situation which leaves the children with me four nights out of the week -- the same four nights I don't work, but when he is most likely to be traveling for his bogus corporate enterprises. So now he's pissed and trying to force me to cancel the trip, for which the children have already started packing.

The level of frustration in dealing with a person unwilling to go to mediation after several requests, but totally willing to annihilate any chance at civil relations over an unethical misdiagnosis and some estrogen gone bad -- trust me, you'd rather be eviscerated, unanesthetized, with a rusty cream cheese spreader. That one was for you, Dingus.

Thinking about getting a divorce? Think twice. Thinking about getting married? I'll give you the same lecture I've been giving folks since my lover and I signed and sealed with a kiss that public social contract; one which was ultimately set on fire and shoved up my lubeless Danus: It's a calculated risk; proceed with caution. Once children are involved there is no hope of a clean break and a new life. What's left are only old festering wounds, new heartache, bloody heads against brick walls, cauliflower ear, and the decision to let it break you or embolden you. Not being bound to him for the rest of my babies' lives would be preferable, but either way I will not be broken. Not by a weakling with a taskforce of incompetents and a ration of oedipal issues. No can.

I can't stress enough that people who were in love like we were would never treat one another this way, for better or for worse. People who are one/septillionth as in love as we were find ways to make it work without lobbing accusations, forcing bankruptcy, and defaulting on every major promise ever made. For my part, I have been cruel. Starting most pointedly after I realized how diminished I felt, how little he cared for my feelings, and how I felt truly worthless if the one who claimed to loved me most proved himself to care for me so little. Anger is a logical and normal reaction to the decisions he has made on all of our behalves, and it's never been my way to zip a lip when I feel that my sensibilities have been violated. It's been nine months of shadowboxing with a robot operating via overcrowded control booth. It's hard to employ the art of war when your enemies are fighting via remote.

I often wonder if I could just find the man with a soul somewhere inside that foreign suit of tin, if he'd let me lead him back to the wizardry of our togetherness. But I know that daydreaming is futile. He's smuggling inert air in his cold-plated suit of metal, even though he's behaving more like the lion, the scarecrow and the tin man all rolled up into a fatty for me to poop on. Apparently I make a better wicked witch than a Dorothy (although I have been very popular among the gays lately), but no matter. These brooms were made for skwaking.

There's been a lot of mishigas clogging my brainhole as of late. Every planet in my solar system is spinning on an axis faster than I can draft their orbits -- raising children, finding income-friendly work, career opportunities, impending dissolution of my marriage, making friends, losing enemies. There is a certain weightlessness I've had to adopt to stay agile enough to rise above the surprises, disappointments, and dog-legged turns of the yellow brick road. That weightlessness makes me impervious to name-calling, attempted character assassinations, and the insipid depression and foreboding that comes with a major life change so sudden and irreversible. I do not feel deterred. I do not feel ashamed. I have been precise and intentional in the cruelty of my words, but the truth behind them is valid because it is mine. I don't like having to justify my thoughts and feelings, but I am going to have to answer at some point for the words I choose to use. You know, the ones nobody else would ever consider stringing together so as to affect scalpel-like incisions of white-hot truth. Bring on the hemlock.

Scrams is amused by my diatribal monologues, mainly because he says when I'm pissed, I'm really fucking funny. And everyone agrees with that sentiment until that mean/angry/funny is levied upon them. Then there's not much laughing, just the accusation of my ultimate bitchiness and an admonition of eternal damnation. Am I a bitch? Yeah, probably. Do I get mean when I feel attacked or unjustly slighted? Yeppers-dang-doodle. Do I have the capacity for genuine love and commitment? I used to. These days I am ever-learning to completely trust no one but my own stupid self. Somehow that's kept my North true, my children well-protected, and my resolve steely. After reading over the i-lectronic recounting of my life's recent loves lost, I know I tried. The children will certainly know I tried. The Manny can continue on diagnosing my problems, but my love is written all over the life that BMC knew, for however long that life was actually true, and within the blood-curdling hurt of the cries of Katie. It was the best I had to offer, beauty marks and warts and all.

As someone untrained in the psychiatric arts, I have done enough couch-sitting at $200/hour to at least be diagnosed as knowing that I know myself, I know my children, I know my mind, and I know what I don't want in this world. I may not have a permanent home (the perils of second-floor living with shorties) or an official paying job, but I have in my possession a limitless recycled income of hope for our future happiness -- even for The Manny, the belief that the children and I will come out ahead in the end somehow, enough passion to fuel the three of us all until money kills it off again or I simply die of natural causes, and the kind of determination that sinks ships and launches space shuttles. If none of this were true, I wouldn't be able to look my perfect memories in the eye without spilling one tear while watching them go by (created April 28, 2009: 20 days after my hospital release).

Remember when?

I need some new memories to replace those. And I'm not canceling our family vacation just because the robot might rust outside the swimming pool gates.

Over and out,
iDana

Hemlock Martini, Up

2009-12-14T04:20:00.000-08:00

I've learned in my short career as a bartender that I'm really good at making martinis, although I admit to never having tasted one myself. Up. Dirty. Extra dirty. I can do those things. Well. Even my ice chips are chipper. It's a tiny skill of which I'm proud.

* * * * *

This morning I was telling Scrams of my most recent visit with the man who holds my parental fate in his hands: the custody evaluator. I was forced to face The Manny's false and predictable accusations about my alleged unfitness for motherdom late last week. A couple weeks back when the evaluator informed me that I would have an opportunity to respond to these accusations of an ad man, a strategist no less, I explained that I was looking forward to perhaps finally finding the answers to some of my own questions among his. With eyebrows raised, the kindly family psychologist told me that was an interesting way of looking at my impending inquisition.

This morning I hunkered down on Scrams' ugly couch, rattled off the topics about which I was questioned, verbatim'd my answers, often to look up and find my esteemed psychiatrist's eyes slammed shut with his nose acting as a cork to hold back the disapproval; all as if to prepare for impending doom.

He took a deep breath and told me my biggest problem is telling too much of the truth. Which is what he also told me when he said that my writing style reminds him of Henry Miller. Which is why almost everything that I have written since Katie Bar'd the Door has gone unpublished on the interwebs. It's my truth, lots of it almost nobody knows, but also the truths of all the lives that have touched mine and vice(squad) versa.

"You remind me of Socrates," he said today once he managed to unlock his crumpled face. I looked at him as if I didn't know of this So-Crates (hey bill + ted!). "Socrates was sentenced to death for speaking the truth in the public marketplace. They made him drink hemlock." Death by hemlock sounds like it pretty much sucks. First your legs go numb and then it's full body paralysis until your heart stops. Kinda smacks of the trajectory of this ultrastupid divorce.

"Then please diagnose me with something juicy, pour me some hemlock, and end the suspense."

Combustion of the brainhole is the only most recent best psychiatric diagnosis that could be made of me at present. All demispheres of my psyche are colliding after the revelation of a confirmation of an earlier suspectation I had about the deflation of my matrimonialization.

I guess the only other fear I have besides success is learning that I am often right when I suspect a truth to exist that has not yet publicized itself. And, sadly there among all of the custody evaluator's questions, I learned that I already knew the truth.

Several months ago, back when I was still angry Katie, The Manny's mother had moved into my home and changed the locks, and he began seeing a male therapist who I have to yet to be able to locate via Google or any other reliable research tool. A few weeks into his therapy with this, ahem, psychiatric health care professional, The Manny informed me that I had particular personal problems that smacked more of a diagnostic symptom inventory than a genuine attack on my specific issues within the context that they live. He also, after having no psychiatric training or treatment in his life before this time, suggested that I look into a particular kind of psychiatric treatment called dialectical behavior therapy. I googled this thing and learned that

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a therapeutic methodology developed by Marsha M. Linehan, a psychology researcher at the University of Washington, to treat persons with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

What the WHAT?

So I then set about researching borderline personality disorder. And really? I knew that I was fucked. My suspicion was that The Manny told his foggy version of my truth to his therapist who diagnosed me as suffering from borderline personality disorder. Unfortunately, one of the most unethical things a therapist can do is diagnose a person whom they've never met or treated.

Normally I don't go all achilles over a little name-calling. In fact, I can verbally ginsu a person's self-esteem into lovely bits of contaminated sashimi on demand, but as I've mentioned to the interworld before, lobbing psychiatric diagnoses around is a dangerous game. Especially in this case. My theory at that time is that once The Manny's new therapist diagnosed me and suggested a pretty extreme treatment likely to yield little result, he also explained a very important thing about those unfortunately afflicted with borderline and those entangled in their webs. Borderline personality disorder has a poor outlook because sufferers often do not comply with treatment because they are in denial of their symptoms. The best thing to do if you're involved with a borderline person is run like hell.

And run he did.

Flash forward six months to me sitting on the custody evaluator's ugly couch last week. "[The Manny] says that you suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder and/or Bi-Polar disorder. How do you respond to these allegations?"

Someone with borderline personality disorder would not have been able to suppress the anger of realizing she was so fucking dead-on right about her former paramour's complete and entire lack of understanding of her and as such would also not be able express the heartache of realizing that not only was that union doomed in any case, but the memories are predicated on lies.

"Aha. Well, your question is the answer to mine. And last time I checked [The Manny] is entirely untrained in psychiatry. So if he's making diagnoses, that's a bit presumptuous. If he's taking diagnoses of me from mental health care professionals who have never treated me, then that's unethical."

I recounted this exchange to Scrams and he listened intently with a smooth face. Before he had a chance to say anything at all, my voice stopped him mid-breath.

"Scrams, do I have borderline personality disorder?"

"No."

"Are you sure? How do you know?"

"See all those books behind you? I wrote them. All those books are basically about how you absolutely do not have borderline personality disorder. I studied borderline personalities extensively when I ran The Menninger Clinic. "

"So, what? You're saying you're an expert on borderline? A fucking authority?"

"I promise. Your biggest problem is that you're thirsty for hemlock."

Ironically, So-crates and I think similarly on questioning that which we think we know. According to an online source

Socrates and Plato refer to this method of questioning as elenchus, which means something like "cross-examination" The Socratic elenchus eventually gave rise to dialectic, the idea that truth needs to be pursued by modifying one's position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. It is this idea of the truth being pursued, rather than discovered, that characterizes Socratic thought and much of our world view today. The Western notion of dialectic is somewhat Socratic in nature in that it is conceived of as an ongoing process.

It kind of strikes me as tragically ironic that I remind the man who knows me the most honestly and spends the most time with me of Socrates, and yet the man who loves me not and lies to me long time wants to use a modern day psychiatric practice that was born of the thinking of Socrates to prove that I don't think right.

And so, a hemlock martini up and dirty it is.
Ice chips courtesy of my heart.

To misquote someone who pushed me over the borderline, sometimes I hate it when I tell the story til it comes true.
xodana

Pushin' Three

2009-12-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

The amazingness of three years' worth of change and growth is astounding.

In his short time on this planet, Bub has become exactly the type of man his mother always wanted: self-assured, yet emo; compliant, yet unafraid to test boundaries; joyful and kind; but most especially loving. A guy any woman would be proud to love (or even marry, like I thought I had).
He was a two-month-old boobie grabber in the original shot. Now he's a three-year-old attention grabber.

And let's be clear, he's perfect. Just like his big ol' sister.
These people are my people. DNA, joie de vivre, limitless imagination, self-assurance and all.

If that much magic can happen in three little years, the next thirty should be money.

Happy New Year, my boy.

December 12.

Let us celebrate.

To three!

xodana

2009-12-05T16:23:00.000-08:00

I am trapped at home with a violent case of the Rose Colored Eyeholes. That is my keeping-it-comical spin on the worst Punk Skunk Stunk Eye infucktion of all time. I look like I just spent 15 hazy days trapped inside Snoop's hookah. 'Tain't so, though. Granny used to say "'Tain't so" when you'd made a statement of egregious error toward her personage.

I have accidentally abstained from television of any kind for the past 24 months. For reasons you are wise enough to glean, for the past couple of weeks -- and especially during my ocular convalescence -- I have been voraciously consuming some of pay television's better programming: The Tudors, Secret Diary of a Callgirl, Californication, Dexxxter, and a handful of documentaries including Commune, the seies This American Life, and Indie Sex, which details the history of sexual images in cinema. During the middle of the last century, there was a sexual revolution of sorts in cinematic execution that pushed the boundaries of what was considered to be proper and acceptable. I half listened to the first episode of Indie Sex as the soundtrack to my housework. Five days with the kids and a killer schedule for all of us makes for plentiful domestic obligations by the time the weekend cometh. I listened to the cheers for the radically honest pioneers of great modern filmmaking. And in doing so I heard a name that instantly took me back to a thousand dates with Granny. The name: Elia Kazan, famous filmmaker who according to Granny was investigated by the Federales (during a time when The Manny's grandfather was ironically head of the CIA in the Southeast) for being a communist in the 50s.

And that got me thinking about Granny's very best friend, Anna Hill. Also known by Elia Kazan as Anna Hill Johnstone. Granny spoke of Anna Hill more fondly than any of the other birds I came to know and recognize by name through Granny's beautiful

One Ray of Sunlight to Hold In My Hand

2009-12-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

I know I promised you an epic post. It's done. And writing it nearly did me in. I've been hesitant to post it because I fear it's my magnum opus. The one single best thing I ever may write. I have not been able to reread it since the final edit, and I've shared it with a couple of random people who were told it was "some woman's lifelong short story." They were left sobbing and smiling simultaneously by the end of it. Just as I was. I need some distance from it before I post it, so I hope you'll forgive the delay.

* * * * *

"Look, Mom. I drew a perfect lower case "a."

"You sure did. It makes me proud of you to see you so proud of yourself. You're getting to be an awfully good speller and reader."

"Thanks, Mom. Is that why you love me so much?"

"No. Acutally, I love you so much because you are kind and polite and loving and a wonderful sister. But also because no matter what you try to do, you don't give up until you succeed or decide that you could really use some help and then you ask for it. But not before you try your best. That is the mark of a truly successful person."

"What's successful?"

"It means that you can do whatever you want to do and be really, really good at it."

"Even when I grow up?"

"Especially when you grow up."

"Well, when I grow up, I want to be a writer...

...but I might change my mind. Just so you know."

By the time she finished her proclamation, I was sobbing and smiling simultaneously.

Amen, my baby.
xodana

she also made me sign her up for the Wizard of Oz auditions at school. she said she'd be a munchkin, but not a flying monkey. she has boundaries, afterall.

Thanks, indeed.

2009-11-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

We built a fort city so everyone would start out in their own beds every night. Working like a chizarm.

She copied the image on her shirt because she loves it but it's too small. She doesn't know I cut the front of said shirt off and am going to sew it onto a bigger shirt for her by the time she comes back to me.

And how can this not make me thank his lucky tushie that he has such a flounce to his softer side? This from the boy who prides himself on "peeing standing up!" He'd probably clear the bowl a little better with the leverage from a pair of neutral wedges. I should leave them by the commode.

Do you know how much I love you?
xodana

Taking Pride

2009-11-25T04:20:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is a time of gathering with your friends, family, and other random loved ones in aid of giving thanks for abundance and the health of those around you whom you love.

I always spent Thanksgiving with Granny. Or Boyband and the Family of babies and friends we made together.

And so this year, just like last but for very different painful reasons, I will abstain.

This year giving anything more than what has already been taken from me doesn't sound all that celebratory.

Please hold. My phone ringeth (it actually barketh, which makes me laugh ever time). /whispers with hand over receiver/ It's my boss/mentor/maybe business partner. Just a sec." /holds up index finger and mouths sorry/

"Hey, I just wanted to tell you thanks again for keeping an eye on the restaurant for me while I'm on the East Coast visiting my grandmother for Thanksgiving. It's been an amazing trip and I never would have been able to relax if you weren't there keeping the Cajun taco afloat."

"No sweat, yo. Foo and Bub want jobs, though. I told them to drop their resumes with the manager on duty."

"I'm serious. The staff respect you. Your suggestions are amazing. You've already done so much. We love you. Thank you."

"Giving me something to be proud of myself about for a change is thanks enough."

"You're nuts. But I am really glad you're there. I miss you."

"Gross. I miss you, too."

After I hung up, I thought about the contents of my restaurant emergency pack: the keys to the joint, the company debit card, $900 in back up cash for the till and a list of tasks and responsibilities that I have almost entirely met, save for the salty bourbon pecan pie I need to make for a guest's Thanksgiving feast after I hang up on you jokers. Her job. I am doing her job; owning a restaurant.

I've been working on an epic post that's taken me three days to write. It never takes me more than an hour on the long end to drool any of this drivel, but I have had to stop for hours at a time to simply compose myself, rehydrate, and clear my mind of the mist. It's deep, it's intense, it's everywhere, it's heartbreaking, and it's the truth all at once. It is the sum of all my parts, past and present, but most of all future. I will post it end of Thanksgivingish tomorrow. I don't know where or what doing I will spend the day tomorrow, but I know it will be spent with someone I can be proud of. Besides my children, that is. They will be with The Manny and a former fan of the Bite My Cookie era. Yep, he's spending TG with a blog reader (along with her husband and kids -- all of whom were unbeknownst to either of us prior to BMC) of mine when mine was still ours. Raise your glass of lemonade and say it with me: "To irony!"

In the meantime, while you are bouncing in between potato peeling and turkey brining, please share your thanksgiving with me. But let's do it my way. Tell me, my babies:

What makes you most proud of yourself right now?
Give thanks to you.
I do.

I'll go first:
I am proud that I am still standing here. I am proud of my children who love me and I them in a way that I am sure Granny and I and you only know. I am proud that I have not cried more than a thousand times over the death of Boyband. I am proud that I have carved out a little bitty home for my redacted family and that we are happy together. I am proud that I have been able to remember myself when my heart is brokenest. I am proud that I have something exciting in my life to look forward to that looks and smells and tastes just like a real-live restaurant. I am proud that somebody I admire and respect wants me to work with her and trusts me even when I don't trust myself. I am proud that Granny would be proud of me. I am proud of my burgeoning new life. I am proud of not fearing change, as much as it may hurt to face in the face. I am proud to learn that I truly am a wonderful mother, I gave my marriage everything I had even though it wasn't enough, and that no matter what happens to me for better or for worse, I am strong enough to withstand it. And I am extremely proud that no matter how many of you are still here hanging on (one of the primary tenets of Keep(ing) it Comical is to say fuck stats and reader tracking), you're here. I'm not alone. And neither are you. And for whatever that's worth, I'm proud of it.

Your turns.

Gobble, gobble.
xodana

Behind the cerebral curtain

2009-11-19T16:20:00.000-08:00

As you are well aware, I am quite known for disappearing for a while only to return with bombshell after bombshell, no matter how small the shrapnel pattern. Today shall be no different than any other day.

* * * * *

The most important lessons learned from the medical marijuana clinic: Don't Trust Anybody But Yourself; and Don't Let Anybody Steal Your Joy. Amen, brother Ben. Shot a rooster, killed a hen -- as Granny used to say.

What I have learned most pointedly in losing my cafe, Granny, my marriage, my perfect family, and any semblance of self-worth in this world is that I have almost nearly but not quiiiiiiite developed the ability not to trust anyone but myself -- even though it's the one thing for which I long most. I miss you, Granny.

* * * * *

In coming to terms with the status of my current life station, I have had to painfully and objectively as possible scrutinize everything and anything at which I have ever tried and failed -- which is a metric fuckton of assloads. That said, it should be noted that more or less, I have reached every goal I have set for myself, even if I ultimately failed in one way or another. By trusting in myself, my abilities, my inabilities and my potential for creating some sort of minuscule greatness, I have overcome personal and professional roadblocks, pitfalls, shortcomings, incompetencies and debilitating fears.

I have no fear of failure. No fear of loneliness. No fear of letting my own self down. Just a fear of trusting in others, letting others I admire most trust too much in me, loving anyone other than my own flesh and blood without reservation -- and even then with some learned trepidation (not including my progeny), and of course fear of great success. The only way to learn is by failing harder. And I have never met anyone who can fail in the successful fashion that only I can, for I am deeply flawed.

On a side note, I bring to you this quote coined by a recent but intense acquaintance who decided that I am nothing but a cancer to this world, for I bring the promise of inspiration, motivation, and dedication, but when one needs too much of me, I evaporate. Much like dating a rock star it is supposed. This is not ~~at all~~ all together untrue. All fun and games for an appetizer, and nothing but a steady diet of dis for the main course. When I suggested that maturity was the one thing my antagonist lacked most, I was informed by way of intended insult that "a conscience is but one of the many flaws you lack." I could not have put it more eloquently; and I've always loved a good compliment dressed as an insult.

Back in April when my life fell to shit, I killed off my created online persona Bite My Cookie: Professional Amateur; probably to run as fast and far as I could from the things that I loved but decided to hate because true love betrayed me. When I was the woman who created Bite My Cookie, I felt rather unstoppable. By the time I realized The Manny had molested my heart and left me for dead, I felt quite literally like nothing. To numb the phantom limb pain from my amputated parts, I swore off writing professionally forever. I swore of baking forever. I swore off restaurants forever. I swore of business ownership forever. I swore off blogs and BFFs, my own self-wrought public humiliation, and trying at anything at which I could fail very hard. The full force of my life's rejections had all at once emasculated the unstoppable me, which seemed implausible for a broad with self-diagnosed diamond-encrusted balls of titanium. I felt angry and abandoned, blaming everyone who was obligated to love me by blood, true friendship or ~~money, ultimately~~ marriage for deserting me when I needed them most. Karma kicking my ass at point blank range, I suppose. A cosmic check cashed in arrears, with a tragic side kick of automatic payments of ~~humiliation~~ humility at regular intervals for a lifetime of future transgressions. Because really, as loyal a friend as I can be, I can also be a rancid tempestuous sack of liability laden anchovies. Not very admirable.

In making these realizations, I think I have come to the penultimate crux of my social and interpersonal requirements for success. Some people I observe and were formerly married to surround themselves with and keep people close at hand who deeply admire them. To keep themselves admired they twit and book face readily for envious minions so as to fuel the admirement machine. I sheepishly admit that perhaps the bitten cookie was my face twitting. I suppose I thought I had cause for admirement, although we all know what a farce that turned out to be.

If I ever was a person who shamelessly bullhorned about my perfectistic existence, /clears throat/ please forgive me for being such an asshole and continuing to do so ad nauseum. In my pathetic defense, I have always rattled out the good news bones and the bad news bones from exactly the same closet.

I look around and I don't wonder why I the friends I choose to keep close at hand at this time and who I would twitface regularly if I did that sort of thing are people whom I admire. People who possess the skills, abilities, talents, and expertise to which I aspire but have usually failed. People who were born and are hardwired to be successful. People who know what I know but have used it for success in all the places I failed to achieve it. People from whom I can learn. People who don't need anything from me but reciprocity of admiration, rather than the one way street of you think I'm great and I think you're OK. The people who I admire are happy to share information in exchange for nothing but the knowledge that it will be gratefully received and retained. It's the same rush I get from teaching my class.

To keep myself, my mind, and my body occupied whilst trying to avoid debt collector calls, inflammatory text exchanges with The Manny, and pining for appointments with the ever-vacationing Scrams, I have been spending all of my spare moments behind an apron, wearing sensible shoes calling out incoming and behind to my co-ed passersby as an intern apprentice pastry chef at a restaurant co-owned by three people who I greatly and mutually admire. My moonlighty internship is at the same restaurant where I can now be found every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights bussing tables, slinging housemade Cajun potato chips, filling water glasses, and washing dishes. During the weekdays I hustle around a commercial kitchen making salty bourbon pecan bars, pot de creme, biscotti, and coffee.

I almost can't believe that I really work in a restaurant again. Further this internship is unpaid because I am getting a first-rate higher education in all of the places I failed before: ops, books, employee management, overwork, organization, and grace under glorious pressure. I will be cross-trained in all back of house ops, bartending and bar management, pastry cheffing, and prep cooking. So far, I'm fucking good. That is, when I'm not fucking things up. As a result, I have been approached about making a slice of the Cajun taco my own by a mutual admiree.

I smell the stink of my own fear, my friends. The success bug is biting me and I am tempted to bite back.

Further making a liar out of myself, I've been writing professional style again. Three books in the can and a heartbreaking screenplay of cookie biting, katie barring, tragically comedic proportions, if I don't say so myself. It's not hard to write a book or a movie if you're grandiose enough to blog your dirty secrets on the interwebs, complete with dialogue. Where the blogs leave holes in the swiss cheese, texts and emails do the talking. Sometimes I feel like my own best luck charm.

So I'm back at doing most of the things I swore I'd never do again. The ashes are still smoldering, but I'm feeling competent and confident enough to poke my head out and make sure it's safe to wander back into what I thought I lost forever. I do not think I will ever marry again, though. Not a person, at least. That concept I will swear off altogether until muchmuchmuch further notice.

In the meantime, don't look now but I think I'm becoming an Amateur Professional. And I kind of like it.

But don't tell anybody,
xodana

Gah

2009-11-17T16:20:00.000-08:00

there's only about one form of non-self validation in this world that carries much weight with me right now. and this is basically one of the only two people who are alive and capable of judging me, whose opinions i will accept and whose love i can unreservedly return.

even though i receive about one of these cards a day, it'll never get old. true love never does.

i cannot hit replay enough.
xodana

A Girl's Best Friend

2009-11-16T16:20:00.000-08:00

I was making dinner, as usual.

They were drawing while I cooked, as usual.

She drew a picture, put a caption over it, and proceeded to make me swoon.

As usual.

Seriously. I had no idea she'd be this p-e-r-f-e-c-t. I know that's a bad word in mommy circles, but fadopflsdfbkwjebrkewqbkwe. She just is.

Still swooning,
xodana

In Memoriam

2009-11-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

It's like she wrote it herself.

All inkwork done by Mike V. (single and DELICIOUS!) of Imperial Tattoo (formerly of Tigerlily).
111 NW 11th Ave. in the Pearl.

Love and kisses, indeed.
xodana

Comicles

2009-11-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday during Custody Evaluation 2009: Round 742589478957289, I was asked what is the best thing about my parenting. I should have said that 1)I am not responsible for this:

And 2) Clearly she got this "I'm gonna write a book" business from me. She's authored and illustrated about 10 books on her own. Don't mind the spelling. She's working on alladat.

And finally 3) I can kill an impromptu acoustic set-up. Like it's my job. Because it is.

Foo Fighters :: Big Me from the album Skin and Bones

Miles of squid vids forthcoming. These mofos have been rockin the face off the clock.

Foo Fighters just came out with a new song that smacks of Tom Petty (their last album had an obvious different influence for each song = amazing) and his heartbreakers. We're deep into lyrical harmony practice. They know almost all of the lyrics to 46% of all Foo Fighters songs. Makes a mama bloated with pride.

Wheels :: Foo Fighters

I know what you're thinkin'
We were goin' down
I could feel us sinkin'
But then I came around

And everyone I've loved before
Flashed before my eyes
And nothin' mattered anymore
I looked into the sky

Well I wanted something better, man
I wished for something new
And I wanted something beautiful
And wish for something true
Been lookin' for a reason, man
Something to lose

When the wheels come down (When the wheels come down)
When the wheels touch ground (When the wheels touch ground)
And you feel like it's all over
There's another wheel for you
When the wheels come down (When the wheels come down)

Know your head is spinnin'
Broken hearts will mend
This is our beginning
Comin to an end

Well, you wanted something better man
You wished for something new
Well, you wanted something beautiful
Wished for something true
Been lookin for a reason man
Something to lose

Amen, Davey el al.

After I tuck them in, I'm going to crawl into Granny's pink bathrobe, huff the mist from her perfume bottles wearing her glasses on my head and her lipstick on my mouth, cradled in the comfort of her neck pillow and how much she loved me. Unconditionally.

Just like I do my own babies. Unconditionally.

Putting the MED in comedy,
xodana

Yahrtzeit

2009-11-10T04:20:00.000-08:00

11.11.2008

Weeping

Granny never liked going to funerals and so, rarely did. She preferred to celebrate friends, loved ones, and acquaintances while they were here with us on this earth. "It's too much," she'd say. All the crying and carrying on. All the memory-telling and reminiscing that the identified patient couldn't enjoy. Funerals were sad times, and Granny didn't believe in being sad, just feeling "punko" from time to time and getting over that fast.

I always used to joke with her that not only would she outlive us all, but she probably wouldn't even go to her own funeral unless we forced her to. We both always expended a good chuckle over that one.

Nobody is chuckling today.

Granny, as gracefully as she lived on this mottled ball of depleted natural resources and seawater, has permanently gone fishing. Even though she's no longer of flesh and blood, I can clearly see her riding her horse on the beach, the headdress of her 1930's dancing costume flapping in the nor'easterly breeze as she heads for the end of the pier to cast her expertly baited line, singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" quietly under her breath while she waits for the first flounder of the evening to come find her nicely appointed hook.

She's gone, you guys. The one thing in this world I thought she'd never be. The one person in this world I thought sure I'd never be without. The one person I'd always wanted to please and impress, although my just being here was pleasing and impressive enough, as it turns out.

Last week, the news of Barack's grandmother dying hit me like a concord. Here he was on the eve of some of the most amazing history that has ever been made, and the woman who helped him find himself left his life. On top of creating a family and an up-til-now impressive professional career, she lived almost long enough to see her grandson do something historically profound and he will use her momentum and life lessons to lead us in a better direction. I cried for his loss.

In some small way, I understand that to mean I have that same responsibility to my family: to use the lessons I have learned from Granny for good, not evil.

Knowing that I was able to spend those two weeks with her last month, and that I was able to take Foo with me so they could kiss and hug about it all offers little solace. Because I am a selfish bitch, I don't want there to be no future. I don't want to face talking about her in the past tense. I don't want to believe that this fairy tale could not have a magically happy ending. And in the same little brain, the thought "she feels no more pain" cuts though all those little ribbons of selfish thinking and turns them into white doves floating beneath the cloud line.

Granny is gone. Summon the angels. Prepare the xanax drip. Locate the lotion-infused tissues. Fuel up the jet. And look the fuck out.

If I want as hopeful a life as Barack promises and Granny realized, I have a lot of work to do myself. But first I must figure out how to share this ~~pain~~ information with my daughter (who only just asked for her Gigi yesterday) without humidifying the air with all this face rain. ["I don't want you to cry, Mommy. I still love Gigi even though she dies." AAAAAgggggggffghghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!]

Granny. I know I always used to ask if -- no, insist that -- I was your favorite. Of course it only now occurs to me today that it doesn't matter if I was your favorite. You were mine. Still are, always will be.

Oi. Air is hard to find. The lights seem darker even though they are on all the way. Coffee tastes bitter instead of nectarly. My head is swimming with water. My eyes are stuffed with sadness.
My heart is shattering one fine cleft at a time. With every memory that we will never remember together again, another vein of sorrow erupts.

To the most beautiful human I have ever known, I am glad I never knew that loving you this much meant hurting this hard. I promise to try in my own way keep the ripple effect of your amazingness in motion as long as I am here, and pass the tools you have given me to Foo and Bub in your honor.

To my family, I am sorry for our loss. Our family tree has beautiful roots, though. I will see you all soon.

I love you, Granny.

* * * * *

I just spoke with Granny's caregiver who has quickly become part of our family in the fivish years she has been part of our family. Apparently Granny had a big day yesterday. She asked to be taken to the grocery store first thing in the morning and promptly went shopping. Then she caught a Madagascar 2 matinee, indulged in pastrami at her favorite deli, cruised the Krispy Kreme window, and spent most of the day laughing as she was chauffeured past all of the landmarks in her memory. She asked Nikki to drive her downtown to check out the old department stores, her childhood home and elementary school.

Last week my mother was sending me text messages full of pictures of Granny-On-the-Go. Pedicures, hair-doings, luncheons with all the other old birds.

She was cramming it all in. As much as she could stuff into this pillowcase called life. I'd say if ever there was a mode of living that could surmise Granny's life credo since I've known her it's "Live it up." Crack open the champale. It's Granny tribute day.

11.15.2008

Red. hot. and blue

We spent the entire early afternoon plotzing around the Richmond airport awaiting the first stint of a 3-legged return flight home. The original itinerary got misread, so we got misplaned, and then we were all really effing miserable. Bub was being a whiny bee-eye, Foo was being a pushy know-it-all, Boyband was being a sulky gyna because he was the itinerary holder and he thought I was mad, and I? I just didn't really give a shit. I wasn't mad. Just numb.

I feel like I've come home in a deeper state of unrest then when we left. Tireder, bitchier, loster.

The flight back east was uneventful, save for the fact that our seats were literally flung far about the cabin due to the last-minute acquisition of tickets. The attendant audibly addressed the fully loaded airbird without the benefit of the megaphone. "We have a family of four here traveling together, but the small children have been separated from their parents. Will anyone be willing to trade seats so they can at least sit together two and two?"

Cue the crickets, blank stares, and averted glances. Nobody said dick. Not one parent on that plane? Guess not. Nary a kind soul? Nope. Apparently not one. A point more finely sharpened when the little girl sitting one row in front and to the left of us (once another attendant finally took our seating matter into his own hands) starting puking her face off, all over her parents and her infant sibling - the mother wailing in horror "Help! Help us!" Having been that mother every time I boarded a plane with Pukonia McFooBags ages 0-2.25, I scrambled to find a bag, a raft of paper towels, and my best empathetic demeanor. I totally wasn't up for the challenge, but I wasn't going to sit there and let that poor woman know she was completely alone at the back of that plane.

In reference to another topic entirely, my oft-assholish brother-in-law summed it up best, "When the economy is this bad, people stop caring." I will simply add that in reference to this particular instance that people simply stop caring about other people. The mindset seems to be, "How are you more fucked than me?" Hey YOU (the universal assholey you that doesn't help a separated or puke-laden family on a plane), there's always someone more fucked than you. All ways. There were people on that plane more fucked than us, to be sure, but I still wansn't flying with one each of us seated in rows 6, 14, 22, and 38, much as I might have likedta.

We disembarked in Richmond, picked up our Grand Caravan, and I promptly laid myself out on the funeral home parking lot by concussing my head with the tail gate. A goose egg and omnipresent migraine ensued.

We entered the visitation (for lack of a better, I have no idea what to call it since the Jews don’t rock a public open casket) near the end and were greeted by the loooooooong faces of my mother’s sister and my mother’s sister’s daughter. If I write anything more ~~negative~~ detailed about them here, my mother would beat my ass. That said, if I ever do write a book, there will be a full 400-page chapter on my mother’s sister. Thank cheebs for pseudonyms.

I made eye contact with my older sister as I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Dana?” I proceeded to be introduced (try to follow along here) to the First Lady of the pentecostal church Granny’s granddaughter-like caregiver (for whom I have a very deep affection, so no shit-talking) attended. I remember nothing of the conversation after that point because I was still trying to make sense of the introduction. Did Nikki just say first lady? Tell me she brought Michelle Obama with her.

As I scanned the room looking for the First Lady-Elect, surprisingly, something equally surprising caught my eye. “Is Granny in there?” I asked my older sister, gesturing with my head toward the coffin lining the back wall of the room. She nodded. Why I wasn’t prepared for the sight of the plain box containing my Granny as I used to know her, I could not tell you. Oh wait. Yes, I can. Whenever there is a family gathering, Granny is at the epicenter of the festivities. Holding court. Carrying on. Not lying dead in a box along the wall. Not a fan.

I milled around aimlessly trying to avoid certain aforementioned relatives while getting right with the idea of Granny in a box.

My milling brought me to the feet of my mother’s sister’s husband-type-guy. He and I usually get along very well. We both remarked that Granny would most certainly not approve of the situation, what with her hating funerals and all. It was all so prescribed. So proper. So funerary. We decided, not at all jokingly, that we should abscond with Granny and her caskety place of final repose, haul ass to the beach, and bury her in the back yard of the beach house. That sounded about perfect to us. Just like Nate did on Six Feet Under when his wife met an untimely death. He switched the remains, giving the family some faux cremains, and buried his wife (an actress I can’t stand), boxless and uncharred, in Joshua Tree National Park.

My mother interrupted our scheming to offer us the opportunity to say goodbye to Granny one last time. To see her. My mother’s sister’s daughter tried to talk me and my own sisters out of our acceptance of this offer. “I don’t want to upset anybody, but you should know she hasn’t been embalmed,” added Mom.

“Oh god, then definitely not, you guys,” said my mother’s sister’s daughter (a Fulbright-winning anthropological doctor, you should know) moments before she split. The funeral director appeared from the shadows and deftly set to work revealing a perfectly still Granny, sleeping as I’d seen her do a thousand times over through the years. I’d swear she was breathing, but precious logic prevails. I hated to succumb to the realization that it was only the ruched top exposing her clavicle by way of a very flattering neckline that was playing morbid pranks on me.

My sisters began crying. Instead of crying immediately, I spoke to her. First order of business: I gave her permission to haunt me, as per Kat’s instructions in my comments. My sisters chimed in, “Me, too.” “Me too, Grams.” Then I told her what I told you, that “even though I always insisted that I am your favorite, you are mine and that’s the only thing that matters.”

As my sisters took their turns saying all of the things we have each said to her daily, weekly, annually, adoringly, I smoothed her kinky hair. I gently kissed her frigid forehead a thousand times and reached for her ice-cold hand, holding it in mine as if it would warm her back into my life. As you may have guessed, it did not. But I kept trying anyway because her skin was as soft as I had ever remembered it, and if I let go and the casket got closed, I would never have the opportunity to remember that softness firsthand again.

As my sisters stood holding one another, and I Granny’s hand, a thought occurred to me. Besides climbing in and going with her, what can I put in that box so she won’t be alone in there for the rest of eternity? I gently let go of her hand, so as not to hurt her, and darted over to my satchel sitting nearby on the table. I paged forward to the sheet in my daily planner that contained my birth date and scribbled her a note. I told her that if she was going to be gone forever, I wanted to be with her and that this was the best I could come up with on such short notice. If I were more organized, or it had occurred to me before that instant, I would have sent her off with a care package of photographs, memories, and inside jokes. But I was there with her in some infintesimil way nonetheless and we would always, always, always be together. My sisters followed suit, each of us sending Granny into forever with little bits of lovenote crammed into that tiny final resting place with her.

Granny was famous for her note writing. That was how her friends and relatives knew she was probably ill. For the first time in damn near a century, nobody had been receiving notes, birthday, or anniversary cards. Red flag city. If you called her to talk to her, you’d never know anything was wrong because she’d never say so, nor would her words or demeanor betray anything. You all know more than most of her friends about how ill she was these last few months. Few people knew about her heart attack a couplefew years ago. Nearly nobody knew about the cancer. That is how she rolled. She literally saw no sense in complaining. Just suck it up and get crackin’, skeeter.

I kissed her one hundred last times and told her I love her times infinity. If I had stayed any longer, her clothes, face, and hair would have been positively soaked with saline. But I would have stayed there forever if I could have.

That was Wednesday.

The funeral was on Thursday afternoon, graveside. Many of my mother’s old friends, associates, and her only former husband – my father -- made the two-hour trek south from DC to pay their respects to the most respectable, including one of my best girls Lib – yet another one of Granny’s adopted grandbabies. She adopted our friends like they were her own flesh and blood.

The rabbi wasted no time pointing out to the collection of mourners that it was pissing down rain; my vernacular, not his. He explained to us that it is widely accepted (by Jews, maybe?) that when it rains on the day of a funeral, god is crying for the loss of one of his most prized creations. The moment the rabbi said that, and I think we all know how I (don’t) feel about god, I swear to all that any of you may believe in, the intensity of the rain heightened and the rabbi was forced to raise his voice to speak over god’s overzealous sobbing. Granny was likely remarking that we needed a good gullywasher. That it’s good for her azaleas. In any case, and that may be the only moment in my lifetime one could call me a believer, I believed the shit out of him.

Of all the notes, emails, cards, and condolences my family has received from those who genuinely knew her, nearly every single one says the same thing. Your grand/mother made me feel like I was the only person in the room when I was with her. She was absolutely the most positive person I have ever met. She was the most warm, welcoming, kindhearted, selfless person in the world. She adopted me as if I were her own. I loved receiving her cards and letters. She was genuine, funny, loving, and loved. She was an inspiration. If it weren’t all true, it would be a grotesque cliché.

After the funeral, when my mother asked the room to show by raised hands those who thought they were Granny’s favorite, you can imagine not one hand was left behind. That’s how she made everyone feel. No wonder I thought it was me, her favorite. I am honored that I have such good company in her favoritism, as much it pains me to see that literally everyone was, indeed, her favorite. Sneaky bird, or old bat, as she liked to refer to herself.

It only occurred to me this morning that in my nearly 35 years on this rotting ball of waste and economic crises, I have never heard Granny raise her voice once. When she busted me with cigs the summer at the beach I lived with her, all she said was, “You better hide these before Poppy sees them.” I’m going to have to work on channeling that one particular bit of Grannyness, for I like to yell. Lately, I have been doing far too much of just that and I am embarrassed by it.

It is Jewish custom for mourners to aid in the burial process by casting earth atop the casket after it is lowered into the ground. It’s a symbolic gesture; a sendoff of effort and love; a promise to remember her always. As I filled the business end of the shovel with rocky earth, I could not bring myself to allow the dirt land on her, letting heavy rocks hit her, scaring her with a thud. Every time a rock sounded from someone else’s shovelful, I cringed and apologized to her in my mind. When it was my turn, I couldn’t shoot for the coffin, instead aiming for the outskirts of the well. As the dirt left the shovel, my tears followed, staining the coffin from several feet above. Another bit of me in there with her. Foo, at my side, picked up a fistful of dry mud and told Gigi she loved her and missed her as she set the muck free to fall.

When we returned from the funeral, discussions were had regarding which of Granny’s things would be dispersed to whom, as my mother’s sister et al would be leaving forthwith. I don’t mean to imply that scavenging was happening. But it would be the only time for a face-to-faces en masse and every single one of us has a thing or things that truly and viscerally remind us of her. After forfeiting the only piece of her furniture I requested – the completely out-of-tune piano – because my mother’s sister’s daughter wanted it too, I went about the task of identifying all the other things of hers I needed.

My entire inheritance list is as follows:
Two tubes of half-used 99¢ lipstick
Six small, ancient fancy perfume sample bottles she used to display on her dresser
Her everyday glasses
The neck pillow that relieved her neck arthritis
Her most recent bathrobe and shower cap
A wad of used tissues from the bottom of her purse
The gold clip-on earrings she wore daily during the 80s
Her egg coddlers: 2 small, 2 large
A set of ceramic measuring cups from England

For Foo:
One of her many charm bracelets
A gold locket necklace with three little hearts

For Bub:
A wall map of the world

When I told my younger sister about the things I wanted and had taken – being the only one of us who had no designs on furniture or anything else of monetary value -- she looked at me quizzically, “Jesus, Dana. Are you going to try to clone her?” Uh. The thought had genuinely not occurred to me. But now that you mention it…

By now we’re on the second leg of the three-legged journey home. The kids are finally sleeping after a hellacious time wrestling Bub into compliance, and trying to keep Foo in check without losing our collective shit. Boyband has been nothing short of heroic in his wakefulness, watchfulness, fatherliness, and vigilance – especially since I got completely shithoused the afternoon before we left for the funeral, even though I still had to concoct the kid food to keep up my end of the tuition bargain and deliver it before our 6am flight with the help of a friend Thanks for the airlift, Dingus. I love you and I owe you.

Granny, I think, was relieved that I had found a mate who not only is so perfect for me, but is just so perfect all by himself. She adored that handsome Boyband and spoke of him like a crowned prince. I think out of all of us – me and my sibs, that is, she was worried about my decision-making in that department the most. I am grateful that I found him early enough to introduce our beautiful spawn to her for her amusement and mutual adoration for the short time they got to know one another.

Last night, as we were having one final toast together as a family to honor of Granny and all that she gave us, my mother paid me the most wonderful flabbergasting compliment of my life. I will never forget it, and I may never need to hear my mother say another kind word to or about me again. “I dunno, D. I think Grams was a repressed you.” Were it only true, amen.

We’ll be back home any minute now. I don’t expect my face to stop leaking any time soon, and I don’t have the strength to try. I need to get home and get haunted by Granny. I need to bury my face in her neck pillow and figure out how to enact being more like her. No ~~Much~~ Less complaining, making lemonade out of life’s lemons, trying to treat everyone like my favorite, keeping up with ~~notes, birthdays, and anniversaries~~ email, being more selfless, and being a mother of whom my children can be proud. So that by the time I’m an old bat, my grandkids will love me as much as we all did Granny.

P.S.

* * * * *

2009-11-09T03:23:00.000-08:00

Because I don't have any sort of television connection to the real-time outside world, I have been obsessively instant-watching television programming and films while I do chores around the house and try to get my life in order again.

I'm literally currently deeply involved with Ira Glass' This American Life television series via Showtime based on the Chicago Public Radio program. I woke up to the distress calls of a very small Bub and once my brain started thinking all of my to-dos, there was no going back to bed. There are dishes to do, lunches to prep, laundry to schlep, and groceries to properly put away. Hatchback refrigeration is an old trick of mine, but since I'm awake, I figured I could get 'er done right quick.

The first episode of the first season's series told stories about people who are restarting their lives after living full ones. I related completely with a 63-year-old woman living in a retirement community. There was a segment on Improv Everywhere and Mortified that reminded me of all the things to love and hate about life. Episode 5 is about an old man who lost his wife and hangs out in the mauseleum where she is buried. When I was in love, that idea makes perfect sense to me. Radical Honesty Brad Blanton. Episode 6. The chemical in the brain that erases memory.

The last series the people you date bring out all of your issues according to Oprah

i might be the biggest loser

2009-11-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

Most of the clothes that currently exist in my wardrobe were procured during the gestation of Foo. Five years later, all of those clothes have served as my daily staples in schlubbery.

However, the perils of divorce, near poverty, custody wars, and self-esteem flagellation have caused me to do the one thing that my mother-in-law snarkily swore she'd never see: Me in the same jeans I wore in high school. Pre-pregnancy jeans, eat your asses out. I'm busting into the archives.

I didn't even notice nothing fits anymore until a rash of comments came flying my way all in one day. "Woah. Where'd you go?" "Are you ill? You've lost weight." "Baby, you look beautiful but don't you go wasting away on me." and my favorite, "Have you been working out?" BMF would cheshirely say yes, but the truth is decidedly no. I hate exercise for the sake of exercise.

Because funds are so frighteningly scarce, I use most of my allowance on food for the children while they are with me, and treat myself to one meal a day most days -- and that even includes fast food which was hardly on my radar at all before "all of this." Groceries go to waste, so I don't buy them for myself. My fridge is full of things this adult doesn't eat and the few ingredients I always keep on hand for baking emergencies.

I haven't looked in a neck-down mirror in a long time. To be truthful, I have never consciously owned one. People used to hate that when they came to visit. Where is your full length mirror? Huh? I never really cared much for how I looked, or how my body looked, or how other people looked at me. I am so ok within my skin that being chubby was and is nothing more than a visual personal nuisance, and I have a perfectly grandiose personality to camouflage that insecurity.

I'm headed out for a breakfast meeting (6am!), wearing my loose-fitting high school jeans, a face that apparently glows, a continued lack of fashion sensibility, and a see-you-next-tuesday smirk for my mother-in-law.

I guess I'm not that into vanities, just bonfires.

xodana

ADDled

2009-11-05T04:20:00.000-08:00

Everything's been everywhere, which is exactly where I've been.

I owe some updates, some anecdotes, some admissions, and some snark. Here it comes in spades.

I got custody evaluated again this week. We discussed The Manny's online and on-the-road indiscretions, in addition to the hickey aberration, but I was feeling a little frustrated that I didn't have any recent proof of his assholery besides all of the little text stabs we trade. At least that was until I heard a series of unfortunate rumors that resulted in the receipt of an email exchange between The Manny and a woman I happen to know who was hoping to find an encounter of the casual nature on Craigslist. The Manny responded looking for temporary attention of the online variety, which on its own does not trouble me. Par for this crunked up course and everybody needs some attention. However, the fact that I was hunkered down with BMF in a cottage lodged in the woods -- which should indicate to you that my children were not with me -- means that The Manny was looking for backyard love and bourbon with a complete stranger whom he presumably intended to have in. my. children's. home. while they were asleep inside. AGAIN!! Need I continue? I will not, with the exception of saying that I am forced by a power from deep within to refer to The Manny heretofore as Gavin (or Gav) whether by bhlag or to his eyeholes. The sheer squeeeeee! this gives me is positively anti-depressant. I invite you to do the same.

Speaking of BMF, he's still in the blurry picture. We took a weird little mutual breather while everyone assessed our respective personal abilities to enjoy one another's company so thoroughly at such tenuous transitional periods in our lives. Neither of us was/is interested in or capable of participating at the level where things were likely headed if we didn't quit hanging out so much. We both cranked the emergency brake at the same time and kind of spun out on distant courses there for a sec. Dating as an adult is interesting. A giant sociology project trapped inside a self-introspection laboratory. There is an entire book here.

The Squiddoos are perfect, minus the tremendous heartbreak and irritation of having to pass them back and fro over the abysmal chasm that divides the people who made them out of love. I was told last night by Gavin, Mr. Breaking Promises Faster Than He Can Break Hearts or Families, that I am ruining my daughter. Of course this was on the heels of my challenging his manhood and ridiculing his sexual abilities. Divorce sucks infected donkey nuts. It makes you think and say and hear things you could have never could have nightmared during the days when love was waxing. As much love as there was, there is equal and opposite requited hate and vitriol in its stead now. It is heartbreaking business if you have a heart to break. If you are considering it, what's left of my heart goes out to you. I never in all my ever.

When I lost my job last week, I kept a few things: my class, my hospice patients, and everything I have learned in the past four months. I can still work with patients and in aid of the cause, although I will admit that I miss being in the clinic setting and answering calls and questions about the state's program. I'm not giving up my class any time soon if I can help it. It's something that I enjoy thoroughly and I know my students appreciate me because they've come back to tell me so. It's rewarding much in the same way that parenting gives you those diamond crusted moments where you know you did something right and there's living proof right there. I like teaching.

Because my days are free, more or less, I am spending more time doing the things I used to love most: baking, writing, living, and scheming. There is a book I have have sketched out and am feverishly packing meat onto its bones. Its juiciness will be wholly dependent upon how biographical vs genericized it turns out to be. I've also been working on a new non-me related blog that's getting an aesthetic upgrade as we speak. Cracks? All I can say to that is yes, yes, yes. Please stand by. I've submitted a couple of articles to parenting magazines just to see if I have any differentiated content or ability from every other wanna/usedta be writer on the market. My pseudonym, soon to be my legal name, me thinks, is very likable. Although in a utopian world, I'd want to keep the same last name as my children, I'd rather just wash the stink of a love gone wrong off of me now and move forward. Going back to my maiden name is not an option.

Those love letters were burned after reading. I snapped a few shots of the really tear-jerking ones, but really? Hundreds of love letters hand-written over 10 years and thousands more via e-device. Nothing but smoke and ashes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Scrams and I are still on the regular. I wish I could adequately describe to you the ways in which he completely understands me, which freaks me out entirely because he is a conservative catholic republican. And even so, he respects and appreciates my unconventionality, how different my "case" is from any of his other patients past or present ("you're not mentally ill, but you are incredibly interesting"), and can perfectly package an hour's worth of workshopping into a couple-minute summary. He hears and remembers everything I say. I have never experienced this phenomenon before. But I am sicker than a motherfucker of our soundtrack. We need some new topics.

Granny is haunting me. Just in the hollows of my heart, not as in visual apparitions.

One of my old business plans from a couple of years ago was ripped off by a landowner I showed it to when I considered buying his building. It's been executed to some the specifications that I suggested for a cart yard (but he woefully fucked up on the two most major points - an available-to-rent licensed kitchen and all-weather seating), he claimed it as his own vision, and when I drove by last week, it seems to be working well for him. I would bother wondering "what if" in the event that I would have gotten around to making it happen myself. But I didn't, and I never would have. My new blog should be called "Somebody should ___________." Then people with money can take my seedlings and pay to make them so for themselves. Somebody should.

Uh oh. Skittles are stirring. Bub's ready to rock some banana bread. He's almost got the entire recipe memorized. Sleeping Foo-tie needs to get a brotherly wake up call to join us in the kitchen. She got fierce yesterday after finding out that she slept through the muffin bakery. You would have thought I stole her crayolas she was so pissed.

After baking up breakfast bread, I'll drop the skids at their skools, myself on Scrams' couch, then cart me to the mountains for a meeting, pinch a quick soak in the hot springs, and drive back in time to keep BMF at an emotional arms-length over a bottle of wine and a candlelight dinner before my non-kid-night call to kiss and love mis babies over the phone.

This is easily the most trying time of my life.
But trying is all I know how to do, so on we go.

xodana

Lookin Good on Paper

2009-11-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

Food Stamps
Foreclosure
Unemployment
IRS Audit
Divorce
Custody Evaluation
Bankruptcy

2009-11-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

I read every word of every letter of love before I burned them into a pile of carbon flakes ten miles high. There is no doubt in my mind that the old love burned up in those ashes was once deep, reciprocated and genuine. Up in smoke, drowned in tears, six feet under. I will save the photos for the children, but those letters of love were for us, from one to the other, before the time when babies were even to be conceived in the mind. There was love once. Miraculously, now there is none.

* * * * *

On Saturday I attended the Halloween party for Foo's kindergarten class. I watched as the children arrived flanked by two parents, some of the same gender, hand in hand in hand in hand. And then I watched as my broken family crossed the street to meet me. Words only exchanged from parent to child, never parent to parent.

I wandered into the hostess' home, which was straight out of any Pottery Barn catalog I could have written when I was a happily married woman. As I took in the comfortable spaces, the family units ebbing and flowing, and my deloved pretending not to know me from across the room, I realized that I am the black sheep among the matriarchs of these other families. I kept to myself, recognizing that somehow I have managed to be different even from them, the other mothers. As I inventoried the higher class, I wondered how these magnificent women managed to keep their families together while I watch mine metamorphose into something I never wanted.

It's the first time I've asked myself why couldn't I keep my family from falling apart?

Or keep my marriage alive? Or keep my children from divorce? Or keep my cafe open? Or keep my cookies baking? Or keep Granny from dying? Surely everything except the last fell with in my scope of savior. Did I let go too soon? Did I try hard enough? Did I try too hard? Am I inept? Do I not deserve this? Do I deserve all of this?

Kids and chaos swirling, I pretended to need to follow Bub around, when actually he didn't need me at all. He bounced from play zone to play zone, hardly noticing that I was in the room. A couple of times I spied Foo between milling parents, upstairs being the most popular kid in class, receiving hugs from any child who hadn't yet said hello. She's exactly the kind of girl any mother would order off a menu.

I felt trapped. Trapped in a house full of women who were better than me because they hadn't lost their husbands or compromised their young childrens happiness. Trapped around

Out of the Editing Bay

2009-11-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

(And to those who say he's too old for diapers, you are correct. Ran out of pullups the night before and found an old diaper lurking in a diaper bag. He rocks the big kid unders by day, and the babypants by night. No bladder in the world is big enough to manage his flow all night long. Last week I even taught him how to pee standing up. Go, me.)

xodt

Light/Dark

2009-10-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, my pets.

Arrrrghh happy little pirate and his pegasus unicorn pony sister made a grand entrance at a costume party and swept the prizes. To the left of the pink pony is the straight outta project runway stylist who made the neck-down portion of the pegicorn happen -- my restauranting friend. Mad props.

Wishing you all treats, no tricks.

* * * * *

I will use a portion of my last paycheck in exchange for an appointment with my friendly neighborhood tattoo artist to finish up the work on the sparrows and pen my person with Granny's hand. My appointment is on November 11. One year from the day that love hit the dirt.

I sifted through old love letters from my grandparents to cobble together a memorial befitting our love.

Then I collected all the love letters The Manny and I traded over the past decade and set them by the fireplace so as to later cremate the memories of what was supposed to be the greatest ~~love~~ lie that ever was told. Reduced to ashes is about fitting. I should sprinkle them on his head.

I lost my job on Tuesday. The reasons are complex, but punctuated by my inability to show up when they expected me to in the event that The Manny suddenly needed to change his work schedule. For a change.

All tricks, no treats these days.

xodt

Komedy with a Kay

2009-10-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

My fixed part-time work schedule fell prey to The Manny's erratic last-minute travel schedule on Tuesday. I lost my job so he could continue to keep his. As it turns out, failure to show up at work on the designated days at the designated times results in a failure to perform your duties. Which is true. I have right of first refusal on the nights he's out of town. As if I'd refuse.

Negative, Ghostrider. That Pattern is Full.

2009-10-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

Not So Comical

2009-10-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

I miss Granny so much today it burns.

It will be one year next month.
But it feels like yesterday.

I miss her.

xodt

I need a favor of objectivity

2009-10-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

Besides draggin your hearts around the interwebs, I don't usually ask you for favors. But I feel a pressing need to do so at this time. I have three Family/Child Assessment forms that I have to return to the custody evaluator next week. It's hard to put a finger on who knows me best. When I thought to myself, "Self, who knows you best?" only one answer surfaced.

The interwebs.

And with that, I will invite you all to throw your $ .02 into the pishke. I will deliver your assessments to the custody evaluator as my compilation third submission next Thursday. Why the fuck not? You guys know me, my children, and our love better and longer than anyone except my few besties sprinkled around the nation. You've watched us grow up together, watched me and my beloved become me and my deloved. You know this whole story from stem to stern with more information than anyone he may have been schnookering me all this time.

So let's do this. (I probably won't publish the responses before submittal to the evaluating doctor)

FAMILY/CHILD ASSESSMENT
Re Parent: Dana
Child/ren: Foo, Bub

You have been identified as someone with knowledge of this child and/or family who could help in planning for this child's custody, visitation, or treatment needs. The information you provide is not confidential and may be included in an evaluation report. Thank you for your input. Please complete and return this form as soon as possible.

Date:
Your Name (first + last initial):
City/State:
How long you have been a reader of BMC, KBD, or KIC:
Comments and concerns:

Clearly my writing life online was a big piece of this craptastic puzzle. I'm grateful to each pair of eyeballs and the hearts connected to them. If you are so inclined, leave a comment below including the information listed above so there is some uniformity in response. Again, I may not publish these on the interwebs immediately -- or ever. I don't know yet.

I truly can't think of any other way to thank you for your propulsion of my voyage. If anyone deserves a fair say in this mess, it's you guys.

Please. My kids will thank you.
xodt

$hakin My Money Maker

2009-10-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

Holy Christmas in the Summertime.

Lots has been popping off around here.

The Custody Evaluation: I sat. I talked. I left. I have another appointment next week. You will never see a man or woman as deadpan and non-reactive as a child custody evaluator. It's disconcerting, but necessary. I get that, but I still can't really trust a person who can't crack a smile when I'm keeping it comical. More to come.

I am donating my wedding dress to Brides Against Breast Cancer. I was gonna burn it, but that's dumb. There's plenty of other shit I can burn that didn't cost $3500 and nearly my life (picked it up in NYC at 8.45 am on 9/11/01). Ironically (because it was unintentionally so) and apropos, the gown in which I was meant to step into the best years of my life was returned to me by the man who wanted to see me in it in the first place crammed into a 30-gallon garbage bag. BINGO! Couldn't have said it better myself.

I got an email from my high school boyfriend tonight. We've remained close-ish and I Love You-ish over the past 18 years. What the what? I didn't realize I was that old. His email said that he'd heard some news about me last night and am I OK? He's the only man who ever loved me who has asked me that question in the past 7 months. He's happily married to a girl I knew in junior high with three kids. He lives around the corner from my mother and his dad used to joke that I was a catch too good to pass up. Because of the overpriced baggage that comes with my hometown past, I don't have the heart to respond to him. I am ashamed at the ruins of my marriage. Bagged and tagged. The irony of the news of the divorce lawyer's daughter getting divorced has trickled back to the roost. Cue the bile, chill the Vihno Verde.

Because I have the kids so much more often, I have scaled back my hours at the clinic, although things are starting to get pretty interesting in the world of medical cannabis. I am hoping that my job will be entirely work-from-home in the very nearterm.

I have also taken a second part time jobby job as a sunday brunch back up dancer. I caught shit from The Manny for taking a minimum wage gig when I have a master's degree for feck's sake. Nevermind the state of the local economy, who's going to hire your ex-wife at an ad agency in town now that the word's been out for 7 months among the ad freaks that she is batshit crazee? Suck a bowl of narcissistic dicks. I gots babies to raise and I am lucky to have any jobs at all. Viva la $8.40/hour! Come visit me and I'll try not to schvitz in your mimosa!

I am also baking like a mofo in another commercial kitchen.

And, pssssssssssssssssssst.

In the meantime, the absolute focus of my immediate attention is my young, red lad. I kept him home from school today at his request and we hookied like no mother-son team have ever hookied before. In our hookie-age, we shot an impromptu baking show. It's in the editing bay as I type. Here's the trailer. It's long, but he's money.

If there weren't so much going on, I'd do better at checking in. I have a thousand post storms stewing, and I am getting ready to launch a blogging blitzkrieg of pallatial proportions. Just as soon as I duck out of the editing bay.

Missing you like a narcissist misses himself.

The Cracks Will Rise Again

2009-10-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

First of all, I just showed my son how to piss standing up. Like a little bubman. I'm a crazyproud mama right now. The only thing that might trump my parenting back-patting is the pink fuzzy winged unicorn suit I will fashion for my girlchild this weekend so that she may portray a pegasus pony fliying through the sky on mommy;'s borrow broomstick on all hallow's eve.

* * * * *

The only thing better than a manfriend with much better than average grade equipment is a ladyfriend with professional grade equipment -- who begs you to do it with her.

Progeny prodigy protégée

2009-10-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

I channeled my best girl this morning during my little life-hangs-in-the-balance meeting.

Sarah Bernhardt, indeed. My kinderapple took just the tiniest fall and a half roll away from the mother tree. Her drama is more comedy than tragedy, so I'm taking notes on how to live like a 5-year-old. And apparently that's all about keeping it comical.

Go fig.

The kid's a natural badass.

p.s. Before anybody gets all bent, "hate" and "shut up" and "hell" are on the adults-only list and she is free to change the lyrics should her obedient little mind lead her in that direction. She knows that is not acceptable conversational language, but for the sake of art rules must occasionally be bent. With parental permish.

No Fault? How 'Bout Yo' Fault?

2009-10-12T04:20:00.000-07:00

Today is the day I have been waiting for since early April.
The first leg of my in-depth custody evaluation begins at 10.
I haven't been personality tested since high school.

Oregon is a no-fault divorce state. As far as the court is concerned, they could give a rat's infected ass about Fuck My Wife ads, stranger-donated blow jobs on the couch with the children asleep upstairs, and that the philandering husband travels three to four days a week. As far as a simple divorce is involved, who cares? However, once children are involved, those sorts of things become custody issues -- and the only person who cares about those things is a custody evaluator. And a very expensive one, might I add. But he will take those lapses in judgment into consideration when he mades his reco to the court. A judge would have ignored it.

The Manny and his braintrust board of directors will be playing the crazy card, followed with a dose of medical marijuana harassment, followed by a rash of hot lies and exaggerations, and then try to drive it all home with a story about a lady who went bonkers and left her husband over a little high fructose corn syrup in a bunch of fictional women's soda pop. The five-page slamifesto his lawyers preemptively twittered out to the evaluator about my ineptitudes as a human/mother read like a one-hour dramady that smacks of Ally McBeal and the baby-dancing days. I received it on Friday via the attorneys I am trying to release (with little success). The Manny's granny's have very smartly written a letter purporting to be in his very own words. He hasn't written anything longer than 5-pages that wasn't in power point in about 10 years, but what's the harm in another little pile of lies?

The only thing at stake here is the children. There is no money. There is no power. There is no property. There are no assets at all. There is nothing left but the two people who demanded to be here on this earth, via my body and who are made mostly of me. They are used to a geographically absentee father with a work addiction and a mother who is ready and available for them at all times, just let me adjust my schedule. I am not saying he's not a good dad. I am saying he's a pain in my ass to have to share custody with because my life is beholden to his shitty last-minute schedule. I am not his wife anymore, which means I don't have to live and die by his work any longer. And neither should our children.

I've waited patiently for seven months for an opportunity to say so to someone who gives a fuck about the lessons about life and love I have yet to teach my children and is able to restore my rightful place in the better memories of their lives.

And with that, I'm off to fight fierce for love and passion.
Fuck money. That follows passion.

-dt

Thank Your Awesumnis for Beien Awesum!

2009-10-07T04:20:00.000-07:00

My brainhole has been a hot little vortex of combustion. The vapors from the afterburn spent last week freezing up my flux capacitor and burning down my generator. Fuckin A. Single parenting under divorce duress must have been invented by a married man with a loose eye and a wandering cock. It's too flawed of a system to have been invented by a woman, a mother, no less.

Here's a little sketch of last week:
Monday:
+ Sobbed in Scrams' office about the demise of love and trust
in honor of
+ My 8th and final wedding anniversaries - the 28th + 29th of September if you count the secret JOP wedding that we had in a friend's living room the afternoon before the $50k "event" wedding my mother and my betrothed insisted we have (my preference to elope and pocket the cash was ignored, but whatevs) where the buddy that we ordained for $19.95 on the interwebs pretended to marry us legally. Pish. I've married the same guy three times in 10 years. It don't matter. Fellas, if you like it then you shouldn't put a ring on it. But results may vary. Five point six carats and ten years down the pisser don't lie, though.
+ Toe Jam: Bub wrecked the toe I had surgically altered the week before and blew open the incision sites. Fucking ouch, Bubba. Not recommended. Next week: The Good Toe Goes Under the Knife. Mama's dying for a pedicure. : (
+ IRS Audit: Round 1. Ding.
+ 3 loads of laundry (at $1.25 per wash, $1.25 per dry)
+ 2 skids

Tuesday:
+ Slipped down all. of. the. stairs. whilst tending to 2 loads of laundry - completely bruising the entire right side of my body and about 40% 0f my left side. After slathering myself in cannabis tincture thrice daily all week, I did not have even one bruise on my body. And my skin is very supple. Go Chong!
+ The 2nd day of my last anniversary = one crunky bitch
+ My dad had a heart attack - he's home and fine and trying to take care of himself one angiogram and some hardware later. Oof.
+ Toe Jam: Bub wrecked the toe I had surgically altered the week before and blew open the incision sites. Again.
+ Attempted to release my attorneys - this is harder than you fucking think
+ Worked all day at The Clinic: had a heart warming/wrenching experience with a hospice cancer patient who has made me decide that I want to work almost exclusively with that population, in addition to my thing for veterans
+ 2 skids

Wednesday:
+ Received my once-monthly pay check
+ Took a class from a genius whose skills I admire very much
+ 2 skids = 2 loads of laundry

Thursday:
+ 2 skids: the week-long pattern you're noticing here is that The Manny was out of town on an extended business trip, yet again
+ Scrams, sans sobbing, however I'm fresh outta psych coverage for the year as I've burnt up about 150 hours is in therapy in 2009, and it's not even Thanksgiving! Good thing The Manny won't pay that bill even though he's insisting I see Scrams if I would like to keep my children, which I very much would. Allllll this just in time for the massive $7500 custody evaluation that starts on Monday!! Booyah. He keeps filling up the lemon trough, I keep squeezing the juice of tragedy sweetened with comedy.
+ Dad had heart surgery: all good in the hood
+ Worked all day at The Clinic
+ Bike lesson: Foo is learning how to rock two wheels and smarms at other children who still have their training wheels attached to their rides. And Bub got hisself a mad Hotwalk, which will keep him from ever needing trainers, which is cool if you're almost three (what the what?) and you're trying to be cool. BMF is a bike doosh and offered to give her a lesson or six when I told him she's so over training wheels. They're so 2008. He met us in the school yard popping wheelies on his mountain bike to teach them about balance. Turns out, both shorties have mad balance. That may be the only good thing they did not get from me.

Friday:
+ A morning of 2 skids, The Manny swooped in after 4.5 days on the road playing Willy Loman (10pts for auto-recog on the reference)
+ 2 shloads of laundge. Potty training's a pissa.
+ Toe Jam: Bub wrecked the toe I had surgically altered the week before and blew open the incision sites. Again again.
+ Drove out to Eastern Guam to meet with the executive overlady of my fine organization of employ to discuss my future in spreading the gospel of ganj under her umbarella, ay, ay; became apprised of some new information that may alter that trajectory. More to come to be sure.
+ Delivered medical cannabis to hospice patients dying to death all over Portland as night fell. Extraordinarily sublime. See you jokers next week!
+ On my delivery route, I got a call from BMF asking what I was up to. I revealed to him that I was secretly plotting a mission to poach a float in some hot springs about an hour away that I spied on my way back home from E. Guam. My body was aching from the stair fall atop a week of bleeding from my lady parts, kid hauling, bike schlepping, lack of chiropracting, and Toe Jammin. He told me to meet him in front of my place with towels, flip flops, and road sodas in 20, and we sped along the Gorge to a pseudo-nearby spot on the other side of the Bridge of the Gods to soak up some mineral baths, giggle at the band of Russian poolmates that flanked us, swirl around in hot spring water seasoned with minerals and soak off the stink of a week well worn.

The weekend was spent finally putting my apartment away. All of the files that have been haunting me have been shut down, all of the wedding pictures and memorabilia from a life interrupted has been sealed up and locked off*. When the shorties come asking about the time when we were still a happy family, about how Daddy and I met and why they are here, I will have but one answer for them: Because love makes amazing things happen and Daddy and I loved each other enough to make amazing babies happen. I love them and Daddy loves them, and as long as we love them and they love us, then amazing things will always happen. Just like them.

Speaking of which, yesterday an 8-year-old child walked up to me in Foo's afterschool program as I waltzed in to pick her up. This young girl looked at me with the seriousness of a pained adult and asked me if she could speak to me in private for a moment. Foo was jumping all over me screaming Mommy, but I was concerned for this little girl. I detached Foo from my lower extremities and asked this young lady if she was alright. "I just have to tell you, your daughter is just the most amazing little kid I have ever met. She's so cool. I just really needed to tell you that." Gobsmacked over the irony of this little kid calling my child a little kid, and then the heft of her earnest compliment, I thanked her, hugged her, and tried to high five/fist bump her. But she looked at me like I had four heads as if to say, "I don't do high fives," before she trotted back to her homework.

This morning I was going through all of the papers in Foo's kindergarten folder lodged in her backpack and found this, clearly not left by that too-cool-for-school third grader:
Every day I write a little note on Foo's napkin in her lunchbox. I think I know what today's will say.

My mother always used to tell me that everything I did was a reflection on her as a mother. I guffaw as I think of that. Because if everything my kids do is a reflection of me as a mother, then goddammit, pat a bitch on the back for doing at least two things right.

It's time for my awesum shorties to come looking for their fresh waffles, strawberries and whipped cream with a side order of berry smoothie, so I gotta skate. I know I promised you all a BMF episode whereby I exploit his naivete of the mommerwebs and that's what's up next. The shorties are headed to The Manny's tonight, and I have a class to teach to the infirm and those who love them. Love does indeed make amazing things happen. Even if those amazing things eventually have to come to a busted up ending.

Then again, if things weren't so busted up there would be no reason to keep it comical.

More chaos to come.
dt

* i found my looney bin threads in a box of wedding/marital shit. the stink of this schmata is six months old, but it and the wristband that went with it will serve as a reminder of what my former husband really thinks of his children's mother. nice, guy.

2009-10-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

I meant to post up some provocative prose about the funny weekend BMF and I spent two weekends ago camping on the beach on the Washington coast. It was an amazing short trip, a

Today's Anthems

2009-10-01T04:20:00.000-07:00

xodt