inveil: round three, mofo.

Am I repeating myself yet?

2006-02-09T13:13:00.000-08:00

I started having panic attacks when I was four. We lived in this little suburban ranch house in a wealthy, coke-infested neighborhood and our well dried up. Someone had to come dig us a new one. Since it was going to take a while and at this time in my life my family was apparently shitting money, we stayed here while everything was going down:

I was so excited. I've always loved hotels. It's that fake-air smell when you first walk in and it's so cold and comfy - I don't even care that all the blankets are undoubtedly coated with ten years' worth of semen and blood.

Anyways. I remember a little restaurant in this center courtyard. We would have breakfast there and I would drink orange juice and try to come up with ways to make my dad's face turn purple and his voice get REALLY LOUD and I would watch the elevators go up and down. I think they were glass. Like little spaceships.

There was cable and a pool and an ARCADE, which is where it happened:

RAMPAGE! Where you're a giant ape [are you? I never played it] and you DESTROY SKYSCRAPERS AND HOTELS and you KILL INNOCENT SMALL BLONDE GIRLS WHO ONLY WANT TO SIT IN THEIR HOTEL ROOMS WITH THEIR MOM AND WATCH SESAME STREET ALL DAY.

When I saw that stupid pixelated ape, that's when the big panic attacks started. I couldn't eat. Or breathe. Or sleep. Or stop crying. Any second, the monkey was going to break through the wall of the hotel and EAT me. I was SURE of it.

And. While, eventually we went home to our house [ONE story! Nothing for the ape to climb! Nothing to fear from the monkey!], I forgot about the game. But I kept the panic attacks. Because my mom was going to die. The planet was going to explode. We were slipping into nuclear war. Dinosaurs were going to come back to life. Someone was going to kidnap me and I'd learned from Oprah that with every passing hour, the chances of my survival became slimmer and slimmer.

After my parents got divorced, my mom took me to this therapist who wanted to try biofeedback to calm me down. She sat me down in this dark little office and attached these little things to my fingertips. She turned it on and there was this superloud BUZZZZZZZZ and then the machine STOPPED.

Because I BROKE it.
With my superhuman TENSION.

I hate that fucking monkey.

I can hear my pot pie boiling.

2006-02-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

I would like someone to explain some things to me:

∙ Why does Anna Banana try to eat my cat's fur while it is still attached to the cat?

∙ Why does Anna Banana crave poop?

∙ Why can't I manage to eat more than 17 saltines a day?

∙ Why does everyone laugh at me when I cry now?

∙ How did this pot pie get so beautifully-crusty-golden-brown in my microwave?

I love you, Marie Callendar. Really, I do.
Now. Find a way for the baby to let me KEEP this damn pie.

...baby is trying to kill me...

2006-01-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

Days are spent sleeping/ gagging/ sitting down/ making a face like I just saw someone kick an old lady/ breaking into coldsweats/ panic attacks.

My doctor [not the one who will be delivering the baby] suggested that I go off my anxiety/ depression medicine last week. So I did. Yeah, that lasted four whole days. I'm still waiting for it to kick back in, curled up in a fetal position on the couch grimacing and shouting 'WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME' over and over again at Poor, Dear Tony.

So! Doctor Number Two [the one who IS delivering the baby] told me on Sunday afternoon after I paged her hystericaly crying and begging to JUST BE ALLOWED TO TAKE HALF A PILL...she told me, 'Hun, you're going to be okay. I think you should probably take a whole one.' The GOOD thing is that there are no side effects for the baby...apparently, I was supposed to stop taking it this month ANYWAYS...pregnancy or no.

The BAD thing is that it hasn't kicked in all the way yet and I'm pretty sure the girls at work are sick of seeing me hugging myself and sobbing in the file room.

Ugh. I wish she'd told me to take two.

Cheetos is not in the dictionary!

2006-01-24T19:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, so maybe writing break up letters to half of my friends was an act of those legendary Crazy Pregnancy Emotional Outburst Hormones, but what the hell. My life is kind of cluttered, anyways. Less time for friends means more time for blog. And sleeping. And cheetos, currently the most important of all three.

Oh god, I love cheetos now.

A non-broken-up-with friend of mine is studying to be a midwife AS WE SPEAK, and she does...doula...stuff [what is the verb form of 'doula'?!]. She wrote me today, offering her services to me. She promised me that she won't touch me a lot or be 'all up in my junk' [I'm so fucking classy it's UNREAL], and I'm thinking of taking her up on it. Might be nice to have someone who's just a friend [I mean...not my husband and not my mother] around towards the end. She's done it a few times already, and I think she'd totally barter with me...possibly accept sweaters and knitgoods for services rendered. You know. Instead of money. Because today I found out that cribs cost about seven hundred thousand dollars and - as it is - I barely have the extra money to keep myself in cheetos from week to week.

Man, cheetos are awesome.

Breaking up is hard to do.

2006-01-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

I'm six weeks pregnant, due September 23rd. Tony and I had tried for months, so it came as a total shock a couple of weeks ago when I found out. I thought I just had the flu, but I took a test anyway. The line was so tiny and faint - barely visible. We took three more tests, two with the same result and one digital one that just flashed PREGNANT. So, I've been to the doctor but my first real, pregnant-lady visit is in February, two days before my birthday. It's amazing how excited my family is. This baby is going to be the first grandchild/ great grandchild in all the American families, so I keep getting tearful phone calls from grandmothers hundreds of miles away, demanding to be told the EXACT MOMENT labor starts, because they're driving to the hospital. Oh, and I now have roughly eight people planning my baby shower.

...at six weeks.

It's funny, though, how major life changes like this can bring the worst out in your friends. I've decided that if you can't even PRETEND to be happy for me, then I don't need you around. This is going to be hard enough without worrying what YOUR problem is. Seriously.

That being said, OHMYGODIAMSOEXCITED.

Dear My Inlaws,

2006-01-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

First of all, I would like to thank you for leading my husband on. For every time he's gotten off the phone, smiling, eyes shining and said, 'They say they can't wait to see the house!' or 'She says that they can come down this spring!' I thank you. I commend your Amazing Powers of Manipulation and your Thousands of Empty Promises.

Now. Maybe I am a LITTLE offended that you don't give enough of a shit to come see where we've lived for the last three years. Maybe it does annoy me a LITTLE bit that every time Tony wants to see you, I have to take unpaid time off work, have week-long anxiety attacks and nightmares about mean customs officers and drug my dog...all to spend a fun-filled week perched on that old couch next to the Man, watching televised horse racing in Italian, fighting the urge to bash my head in with that nasty-as-shit espresso maker you keep on the stove.

But, please. Please. When I invite you to my home to surprise your son for his thirtieth birthday party...MAYBE you shouldn't talk about what a HARD trip is it and how IMPOSSIBLE it seems and it just WOULDN'T BE FAIR TO THE DOG.

Fuck your dog.
Seriously.
She's old.
And irritating.
She could kick it any minute.

Do you think that if she DIES before Tony's birthday you could make it down for a visit?

Yeah.
I didn't think so.

Love,
K

P.S. Maybe next time you could come up with a halfway decent excuse? Yeah. Work on it.

I am a genius.

2005-12-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

Last night, I decided to paint my bedroom at 10pm. BUT. I had to leave the doors closed to keep the Banana from eating all the paint [paint is expensive!] and I forgot to crack windows. End Result: Stumbling through WalMart at 12:30 last night, tripping over every step, dizzy and knocking things off racks everywhere...on a desperate mission for drinking water [we've been out for two days. I am parched.], but instead winding up in front of the Nintendo DS games case. God knows how long I spent in front of that infernal display.

I woke up this morning with the inability to make a fist, a terrible, nauseating, splitting headache, and...surprisingly...no video games. Oh, and a bedroom which wound up looking like some sort of undersea cave, which is fucking. awesome.

I need to take some pictures of this shit.

Been a while...

2005-12-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

We moved into our new house this week. Only took 18 hours of painting to cover up the Clubbed-Seal-Sickeningly-Violent-Red they'd painted the living room and the foyer. Also, even though all our friends stood us up and we had to move ALL BY OURSELVES [you guys are DOLLS, SERIOUSLY], it was supereasy.

Considering I threw all of our stuff away.

This makes for a wonderfully organized house, but there isn't really anywhere to sit.

The last two weeks of my life have been spent in a continuous Oh-My-God-I-Am-Now-Three-Trillion-Dollars-in-Debt-WE-BOUGHT-A-HOUSE-IN-FUCKING-INDIANA-WHAT-ARE-WE-THINKING state of total panic. So. Instead of writing, I've been very busy crying because I cut that skinny girl off in the mall parking lot and screaming at my mom on the phone because I can't find my goddamn cookie sheets. Coincidentally, things don't cook evenly on cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil.

So. I will take my medicine and write again.
Eventually. Soon as I find my fucking cookie sheets.

Some good news for once.

2005-11-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

People are always telling me things I don't want to hear. Like:

Yeah, my whole family died in a house fire a year ago. This dog is the only friend I have left. [cries for ten minutes]

Or
This tastes really good, but every time I chew my mouth sore REALLY HURTS.

And

That stupid fucking dog ate my anal beads.

Yeah. I think that last one is the best, too. Even though I washed my hands for about three days straight after she said that to me.

The worst thing that anyone has EVER said to me [EVER!] was when Tony and I were on our way home after the three days we'd spent at his parents house in Toronto. I'd never met them before, and my mom had surprised us with the plane tickets the previous week. Going through customs, we were stopped by a sour, soulless man with a thick French accent who told us that while I was free to go home, Tony had no business in the United States. We didn't have the proper paperwork. But we're married! I said and held out our brand-new marriage certificate. He took it from me. This? People get married all the time. THIS HAS NO MEANING AT ALL. IT'S NOTHING! In my confused and tearful panic, I was suddenly sure that he was going to pull out a giant VOID stamp and declare us Not Married.

So. Three hours in the customs office, a year and a half in my in-laws' basement in Toronto, countless nightmares about Gestapo-like immigration officers grilling us under hot lights, thousands of dollars, at least thirty passport photos with the three-quarter frontal view showing the ENTIRE EAR - NO SMILES, seventeen TRILLION pages of paperwork, and approximately twenty-four refills of lexapro later, WE ARE DONE.

No more fucking paperwork. No waiting. No sweating at the border [are they going to let us through this time?] No carrying around temporary visas and calling service centers so robotic voices can tell us that they are sixteen months behind processing paperwork. DONE. Tony is a PERMANENT permanent resident. Soon, he will get his greencard that will NEVER EXPIRE.

We're done.
And it only took four years.
And roughly one-third of my sanity.

[I think I made you up inside my head]

2005-11-18T20:15:00.000-08:00

Tony and I have a tiny little bit of extra money and we've decided to buy ourselves a present. I've been running through the mile-long list of Things That I Want all day, trying to figure out what the perfect present would be. First, I wanted a PSP but had to deal with the realization that I can't have one right now because I would hide it from Tony and never let him touch it and that would be UNFAIR. Tony wants an Xbox [he swears he didn't say actually say this - probably because I threatened his life the second it escaped his lips]. We thought about a television that would be large enough to allow us to read subtitles and see facial expressions, but.
Christ that's dull.

Since our less-than-ordinary courtship, we've both been really attached to a certain Plath poem, Mad Girl's Love Song. Melodramatic as it is, I think it's beautiful. In one of my crackhead-manic-I-CAN-DO-ANYTHING phases, I'd decided to teach myself latin and I started by trying to translate that poem. I'd mail him little snippets of it scrawled inside Brian Andreas greeting cards. God knows why he continued to correspond to - let alone marry me - after that, but he did. And now every time we come across a little Plath, we both get a little misty eyed.

So that's it! I thought. Tattoos! OHMYGOD Plath tattoos!

I know it's terribly cheesy. But I only want the first verse and I'll probably do it in another language so nobody can read it and make fun of me. Us. Because I'm gonna make him get one, too.

I have fear.

2005-11-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

Seriously.

Today was an early day for me. Left work early. Cleaned apartment. Got everything I've been putting off done. Stared at hole in my face. Baked some sypathy cookies for myself.

Now. Maybe it's because I've had one cookie and two glasses of wine for dinner. OR, maybe it's because I have Supernaught on repeat at a deafeningly high volume [Take THAT, Mr-I-Like-to-Cook-Sausage-And-Cabbage-All-Day-So-it-Permeates-Every-FIBER-OF-
YOUR-BEING-Man-Across-The-Hall] .

But. This shit is seriously messing with me:

This, and
This, and
This, and
This.

What the fuck is this? Is this robot-generated? Is it a code? AM I SUPPOSED TO READ IT BACKWARDS?

I just don't know anymore.

Little Germans. Germen.

2005-11-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

The dermatologist office was okay. It was full of old people: I shared the waiting room with the woman who owned the first building I ever lived in [she was a thousand!] and half of a famous duo from a popular syndicated radio show.

It took forever. Mostly, I spent my ENTIRE HOUR WAIT in the waiting room looking at this picture:

You can't really tell, but there's a little speech bubble right above the girl's head that says TIMMAH!.

Once in, the four-foot-tall doctor explained that while she wouldn't necessarily worry...if it was HER, SHE wouldn't want to walk around with 'A thing on her face'. So she cut it off. And burned my skin. And gave me a bandaid.

And. The End.

[I didn't even humiliate myself this time!]

So I'm a little emotional.

2005-11-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

I am a fearful person; I am afraid of many things. The quasi-comprehensive list of the things I am afraid of is as follows [listed from minimal to incapacitating]: using someone else's bathroom -> spiders -> being punched in public -> large manila envelopes -> immigration officers -> being sent to prison for a crime I didn't commit -> cancer.

Cancer beats everything. It's like rock paper scissors. Paper beats rock. Cancer beats the whole fucking world. It's completely terrifying to me that my body could right now at this very moment be slowly turning against me.

My brother-in-law went to the dentist three years ago to have his wisdom teeth removed and walked out of the building with gum, jaw, and sinus cancer. Inoperable. They tested him and found out it was in his lymph nodes. They gave him two weeks to live. He wound up making it through those two weeks, so they started him on chemo after they removed half of his jaw and the roof of his mouth. He's still alive and -from what I hear- doing well, but neither he nor my sister will answer/ return any calls. They're in hiding. I don't blame them.

Last week the side of my face swelled up for no reason. It went on for days. I was having trouble eating and sleeping because my face and jaw hurt so much. It hurt to talk. Finally, we decided to go to the ER in the middle of the night because it had gone on long enough. I was terrified that it was cancer and the doctor would walk in, disheveled and sad, to tell me that they were going to have to remove my entire face. Or something. I cried the whole time. The nurses and doctors looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn't stop crying. At least three people filed in, looked at the inside of my mouth, left the room. A resident, a sweet, pimply boy who couldn't have been much older than me walked in with a serious look on his face and handed me something they'd just printed for me to read. It was headed: Treating cold sores.

I'd never had one before! How was I supposed to know they could be so painful?

So. Today at 2pm I have an appointment with a dermatologist to have something biopsied, which is a terrible, despicable word. But I am trying to keep the image of myself hysterically crying in my hospital gown, hunched over on the examining table in some storage closet in the ER, looking incredulously at the chubby resident and half-shouting 'COLD SORE?'. Maybe this will keep me from making a spectacle of myself. Again.

Zepplin is totally fucking deep.

2005-11-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to grow my hair long. I was driving towards the promise of Chinese food at my mom's house after work tonight, staring at the Tennessee license plates on the car in front of me, wondering how long my hair will be by the time I actually manage to have a baby. No warning, Stairway to Heaven came on the radio and I had an epiphany. I work for a doctor and Tony works at a bookstore. We have no education, no trade experience. We're buying a house. Having a baby. There's going to be no time left for college or trade school. I can brag about my childhood all I want - the Good Jobs will not accept the fact that I was doing pre-calc at eight years old and reading Les Miserables in fifth grade in lieu of a diploma. We are screwed. Panic! What kind of vitamins can I take to make my baby's brain super-healthy? I need to give birth to a super-genius - one who will invent the new Internet/ cure for cancer/ home-hair-cutting-device that actually works at the age of twenty or younger in order to support her uneducated, underpaid parents. And then: Shit! When am I going to lose weight? If I have a baby now, I will never be thin again! I've missed my chance! Everything is fucked! Why does this baby want to destroy me?

Stairway ended. And then Taking Care of Business came on. I remembered that I am NOT pregnant and I'm NOT quite painted all the way into the corner yet. Mostly, I started thinking about Sesame chicken. Then I felt fine.

Also: No, we did not make an offer on the White Trash House. We made an offer on a nicer house a couple of miles down the road. And they've accepted. And we move in mid-December. I want to have a party, but I am afraid nobody will come. But. Some of the best parties I've ever been to only had me in attendance. So we shall see.

I'm whitetrash, but. You know. Not whitetrash.

2005-10-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

We've been spending our evenings and weekends looking at houses. Funny how they're all different. It's strange how much you can tell about a person by the things they leave out in their living spaces. The people are gone, but they've left their dog-eared copy of Coping with Codependency on the dining room table next to the completely-full ashtray. I like to look in their pantries and refrigerators to see what kind of food they eat. I think this information tells more about people than anything else. 'This house belongs to a recently seperated man who is balding [indicate 30-plus hats hanging on the hat-rack], smokes a pack a day [indicate ashtrays], eats out three times a day [no food in pantry, trash full of McD's wrappers], and can't seem to get it together without his wife [Codepentent No More! etc. littering the countertops in the kitchen].

Sometimes it's easier to tell what sort of people live in the houses we're looking at. Like when they don't leave the house we're touring. My favorite to date: We walk up to this cute little suburban ranch. Sidewalk covered in cigarette butts, lawn un-mowed. They're not taking very good care of this place my realtor says. She always rings the doorbell - just in case - before she punches her keycode into the giant lock hanging from the doorknob, but this time someone answers. He's middle aged, dirty, wearing greasy denim cut-off shorts and a wifebeater. He's smoking. Are we interrupting something? My realtor asks, incredulous. That's when a terrifying voice bellows out from somewhere within the house...deep, redneck, loud...TELL 'EM TO COME ON IN. IT'S AWFUL DIRTY, THOUGH. TELL 'EM IT'S A MESS. We walk inside and are greeted by one of the largest women I have ever seen. She's sitting on a once-brown-now-yellow-grey recliner in the corner, leaning forward against a cane. Smoking. Drinking one of those giant, 8473-ounce cokes from Village Pantry.

Oh. You're renters. Notes our Genius Realtor [she really is!]

YEEEAAAAHH. WE'RE JUS' TRYIN' TA FIGGURE AUHT WHERE WE S'POSED TA GO. MAYBE THE HOSPITAL! [loud, terrifying laughter] ...what?

I'm holding Tony's hand so tightly I can't feel my own anymore. This is so terribly awkward. There are sandwich wrappers everywhere. On the floor, on the furniture. I can see an old McDonald's cup on its side under the recliner, between the Giant's feet. In the bathroom, a tub of Country Crock margarine lies on its side next to the toilet. The sink is full of Hardy's cups, while the bathtub/shower looks like it's never been used. They obviously sleep in seperate rooms - hers holds nothing but a matress on the floor and old food.

His is full of porn and Hustler magazines.

Neither one say bye when we run out of the house, all holding our breath.

Mrs. Roydes needs therapy.

2005-10-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

Tony and I have been looking into buying a house.
Well. We've been looking at houses.

The actual-real-'Let's-Make-an-Offer-on-This-One-Right-Here' part was delayed be someone named Mrs. Roydes.

I had this credit card three years ago. It defaulted three years ago. And then I paid it off. And now I don't have it anymore. Except - it's still on my credit report and it still says that I owe them money, which I don't. I know this because it came up two months ago, when Tony and I bought our new car. It popped up on the credit report then, so we couldn't get the loan until the credit card company sent me a letter stating that my account balance was zero and Everything Was Fine. It actually took so long for them to send me the letter that my bank just gave me the money and made me promise to bring the letter to them when I got it. I got the letter. I remember holding it in my hands and thinking, Finally. Those fucking assholes. This is where all memory of the letter fades away. I have NO IDEA what I did with it.

So. I needed another letter. For the mortgage lady. I called to get one and Mrs. Roydes picked up the phone.

Mrs. Roydes: This is MRS. ROYDES.
K: Yeah, hi. I have an old account that's still showing up on my credit report, so I need a letter saying that the balance is zero and the account is closed.
Mrs. Roydes: Says here that we sent you a letter on August 21st, 2005.
K: I know. I don't have that one anymore. This is for something else.
Mrs. Roydes: Well. You only GET one letter.
K: But! I! Neeeed! Okay. We're trying to buy a house and the bank -
Mrs. Roydes: YOU ONLY GET ONE.
K: But what if I don't HAVE the first one?
Mrs Roydes: Sounds like a personal problem to me.
K: Yeah. I need to talk to your supervisor now.
Mrs. Roydes: Management doesn't take phone calls.

-Mrs. Roydes hangs up on K-

And I'm not even exaggerating this time!

So. After Mrs. Roydes hung up on me, Darling Tony called back and complained. He put me on the phone, still crying and sniffling, so I could tell the guy what she said to me. At the end, voice cracking, I cried is it TRUE I only get ONE LETTER?!. He laughed and said he could send me ten letters if I wanted.

I only asked for one.

But I DID make five copies.

Formulas.

2005-10-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Kittens have come to my mother at the precise right time in her life. They're three weeks old and wobbly. She has to feed them from a bottle every two hours. Before feedings, they crawl over each other and wiggle and cry, hungry. Today I sat on the floor with her as she cooed them and shushed them and held them like babies, wrapped in towels. She pleaded with them to drink the formula and rocked and burped them when they were done. When they finish eating, she rubbed them softly with all-natural baby wipes to clean them and teach them how to someday clean themselves.

It's tragic and beautiful to see her care so deeply about these little orphaned kittens - especially at a time where the stress and heartbreak are plenty in her life. I'm glad they're here, though. Otherwise she might be too sad and focus on the problems too much. Become trapped inside herself. I'm glad she has the distraction.

Corpse Bride is no Nightmare Before Christmas.

2005-09-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

'The great thing about movie theaters is' Tony says - crumbs flying everywhere from his mouth full of popcorn - 'it's the only place where you're allowed to litter. And it helps the economy'. We're standing in the lobby of a giant multiplex, waiting for our friends to buy their candy. I've been staring at this tall, hulking, slightly stooped, sad-looking boy behind the concession stand, trying to figure out where I know him from. I look down at Tony's feet, and they're surrounded by popcorn kernels, straw paper, a napkin. 'No, seriously. Think about it. The more trash I drop on this floor, the more people are going to have to clean it up. And the busier the staff is here, the more people they have to hire. I'm creating jobs.' I, for probably the tenth time that day, resist the urge to kick my husband and realize that I know the tall boy because he works at chick-fil-a and I go there every fucking day. This saddens me.

I need to start taking my lunch to work.

Do I look busy?

2005-09-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

Late last week the bald man I email my school assignments to wrote me to tell me that my effort seems to be on the decline. Also, he noted, I need to complete one assignment every ten days for a year if I want to finish the Program.

So. Shit.

The only thing worse than the sinking feeling that I am failing is the panic that takes me when I spend yet another day NOT DOING ANY SCHOOL STUFF. I don't know what's wrong with me. I WANT to do the school stuff. I really do. But. I have so many other things to DO. For instance:

Taking pictures of myself wearing various animal hats and masks.

I really do find all this Montessori stuff fascinating. I love to read her biographies and essays. I love the science behind all of it. I love the idea that maybe one day I will be able to get a real, grown-up sort of job. But. There are SO MANY animal hats out there.

Today I got off work six hours early, which should have given me plenty of time for school stuff. But! I baked a cake. And cookie bars. And reorganized my yarn supply. And cleaned out two closets. And played/aborted four thousand games of medium-difficulty spider solitaire. Oh, but there's still lots of time left, right? Except! I have to make a sauce, some chicken, pasta, salad. Maybe another cake. Life is all about choices.

And. Avoiding work. No matter how much I actually like it. Don't tell the bald man.

I AM ZEN, MOFOS. Shut up.

2005-09-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

I lack motivation.

I have mountains of unfolded laundry, stacks of dirty dishes. I have piles of schoolwork that I've actually completed - but I can't seem to find the energy to type it up and email it to...that guy I'm supposed to email my assignments to. His email signature includes a small photo of himself - shiny-bald, standing in a pool with goggles hanging around his neck squinting into the sun.

I had my secret interview at another doctor's office last week. They only offered me three more secret dollars an hour [as opposed to the five that I asked for], so I told my current doctor about it and wound up with a nice, healthy raise. Which is also a secret. Shh.

I am also practicing/ designing my own method of achieving workplace Zen. Mostly, it constitutes squeezing my eyes shut and yelling, 'SHUT UP YOU'RE CHALLENGING MY NEW WORK-ZEN STATE GO AWAY' when they ask me stupid questions at work.

So far I have been successful. Maybe I should publish a self-help book.

Anybody wanna hire me?

2005-09-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

These are uncertain times.

Tony and I fought silently over the Canada Ordeal for days. And then we both remembered MICHIGAN, that magical land that lies half way between BOTH families. So. He gets to take daytrips to see his parents whenever he wants, and I get to figure out a way to talk my Michigan grandparents into being my primary daycare providers.

...when I get around to needing daycare.

I'm freaking out because Michigan is far away from my mom.
Also because despite the fact that I am pretty much the only person working in my doctor's office, I may have an opportunity to make nearly five bucks an hour more somewhere else. And. While this is FUCKING AMAZING, I am simultaneously filled with a sense of OVERPOWERING GUILT.

Also. I printed out an ovulation calendar today.
You know. So I can know when I'm ovulating.
And then have sex.
And then HAVE A BABY*.

...this is insane.
[I am so excited.]

* No more tranquilizers and my doctor says my medicine is A-OK for pregnant ladies. Apparently. She did, however, agree that I have the mentality of a 12 year old.

Babies smell.

2005-08-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm twenty four years old and I've been married for three and a half years. I have one husband, one dog, one cat, three guppies and an eel and we all live in an apartment in Indiana. I have two jobs. Neither one pays me anything close to "enough". I have no children. There are several reasons for this:

I may be twenty four, but I have all the emotional characteristics of a twelve year old 75% of the time.

I have crazy, week-long, incapacitating panic attacks

I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Rituals. Mind games. If you don't rip that post-it into exactly five pieces, something terrible will happen to you. Are you SURE you ripped it into FIVE pieces? Better dig through the trash and make sure. Wait. Dump it out. What if there's six? Jesusgod, what are you going to do?

I take medication for above facts. An every-day normalization pill and the occasional the-world-is-beautiful-let's-frolic-through-fields-of-daisies horse tranquilizer.

My husband will be thirty in April. His brother just had the family's first baby. Tony's been crying since fucking Friday. Isn't he beautiful. Isn't he wonderful. I can't believe how small he is. Oh look, Ralph, you made that. Oh, he sneezed. He blinked. He crapped himself. How lovely. Everyone has babies up here. Everywhere we go, Tony's got somebody's baby in his arms and he's rocking it and smiling like he just won the fucking lottery and he says things like 'I can't wait until my baby cries.' and 'I can't wait for my kids to grow up with my brother's and sister's kids. All together'.

Except. WAIT. HOLD ON.

He asks about hospitals. He asks for recommendations. I growl that I'm NOT having a baby in Canada where my mom ISN'T. I am going to have one where she IS. IF I have one at all. He says he's "making small talk". So. Every time he makes small talk it's like a hot knife in my chest. Knocks the breath out of me. I feel like I am in a constant state of having to choose between my mother [subsequently my home, my family, my peace of mind] and Canada [Tony's family, dirty hospitals, more immigration proceedings and very possibly more Total Emotional Shutdowns]. He gives me these long, searching looks and it makes me want to run into traffic - I'm miserable because I know I can put off the inevitable for a while longer, but sooner or later I'm going to have to come up with a Final Decision.

I want to go to one of those old Sanitariums in the mountains where you just sit in a rocking chair on the porch with a plaid blanket in your lap all day. And I want to take my tranquilizers.

Babies are slow.

2005-08-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we spent six and a half hours at the hospital. There was no waiting room in the labor and delivery unit, so Tony and I camped out on the floor next to the registration desk. He did eight crosswords. I read an entire book. Every once in a while, Ralph [the Dad-to-Be] would come out, looking haggard and worn down and say something like, 'No change' or 'She's sleeping' or 'Dear fucking god she's been at six centimeters for THREE HOURS'. Well. I screamed that last one myself. It echoed in the dingy hallways.

Here's my thing: So Canadians have free healthcare. Good for you guys. But. Seriously. Do you think maybe your hospitals could at some point acquire a BROOM? Or some FUCKING CHAIRS? How about a couple of BEDS? Sarah finally had the baby despite the fact that his middle name was never changed. He's over eight pounds and twenty two inches long. While he appears to be beautiful, I cannot say this for sure as I have not been allowed to actually SEE the baby yet. Because. We're not allowed into the sterile delivery room, but that's the only place the hospital HAS BEDS. We camped out in the hallway, hoping that at some point, Ralph would be able to sneak the baby out for us to see. Under his shirt or something. I offered him my purse. Every once in a while this nurse in a red shirt would walk past and say, 'Guys, it's going to be a while. We don't have any beds. Maybe you should try tomorrow [sympathetic smile, giggle, tilt head]. She started repeating this at about ten o'clock, which was two hours after visiting hours were officially over. BUT. She NEVER ASKED US TO LEAVE. I figured that the hallway was a safety zone. Like in freeze tag.

SO, she finally had the baby. At 10:30. Tony and I paced and paced and paced and waited for Ralph to come running out the doors, Zachary held high above his head, followed by a small army of angry, Canadian nurses. It never happened. He did, however, take my camera in the delivery room and return with some of the cutest damn baby pictures I've ever seen.

We were winding down, hugging and looking at the pictures when the nurse in the red shirt walked past us, stopped and turned around. She'd been so nice and honest and smiley all night, I was about to thank her. Before I could say anything, though, her mouth opened and she yelled: 'SERIOUSLY LEAVE WE HAVE SECURITY FOR THIS KIND OF THING GO NOW.'

...And then she trotted down to her semi-private room in the psych ward, turned on some nice music and called it a night.

'Canada' in American spells 'P-O-R-K'.

2005-08-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

Ohmygod, all we do up here is eat bacon and sausage and homemade salami. I don't feel so good.

We drove up to Canada on Sunday after I got off work at four. Two Big Things are happening: My brother-in-law and his wife are having a baby - she was due nine days ago and if it doesn't peek out anytime between now and Thursday they're going to yank him. His name is supposed to be Zachary Cosmo, after Tony's uberItalian father. Being the early-thirties-arty-hipsters that they are, though, his parents-in-waiting have decided to name him 'Cosmos'...'You know. Because it's a little bit of dad, and...it's like the universe...and everything.' Tony and I are maintaining that he has launched a silent, solitary protest of his middle name and is refusing to come out until they come to their senses and change it.

Big Thing Number Two is the Godfather-style wedding of my husband's sister. There will be 260 people in attendance and the hall they rented for the reception is costing the family four thousand dollars LESS than what I make in AN ENTIRE YEAR. They saved money on the wedding planner, though, in that they didn't hire one. My sister in law has planned the whole thing herself. She even made all the centerpieces and nameplates. I'm a little nervous. The last time I was a witness to the planning of a wedding of this magnitude, it was an ex-boyfriend's sister who was getting married. She stayed so busy, running around, arranging the flowers, arranging the pictures, the sanctuary, planning the menu. She was so hectic and stressed out and sleep-deprived that it hardly surprised me at all when, at the rehearsal dinner, she hiked up her dress and flashed the minister - revealing to many that she'd forgotten her underwear. A little more surprising was the total and complete emotional breakdown that followed. They never made it on their honeymoon. At the airport, she kept running away from her new husband and flinging herself at strangers' feet, telling them tearful stories from her childhood. It took months to get her corralled in and on enough meds to control her outburts - an arrest to keep her from spending all night swimming half a mile across the lake in her underwear to use the neighbor's phone at 3am.

So. Since Monday morning I have been perched on the couch - the Banana at my feet, a cheesy Minette Walters mystery in one hand and a piece of bacon in the other. I'm listening for the phone call that will inform us that Zach has decided to grace us with his presence, and also for the sounds of emotional strain/panic/angry paranoia in my sister-in-law's voice. So far there has been no breakdown. BUT. We still have four days to go. At least she's the type who would never go without underwear.

Dangerous waters.

2005-08-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

Right outside our patio there is a lake. Or a pond/drainage area/unofficial waste treatment center. Whatever you want to call it. It's nice, especially at night, when I can sit on my patio and watch the lights reflect on the water. Very relaxing. The Banana adores it, as the Pond provides her with a near-endless supply of ducks and geese to bark her little [it IS a little undersized] head off and occasionally rush right through the screen door, taking it all the way off of its little track-wheels. We even have a couple herons who live on the pond. SO WHATEVER, IT'S NICE. Anyways. I was somewhat disturbed to come home after running errands to find what appears to be a disembodied floating crocodile head with glowing eyes on a string hanging out in the middle of the water. It doesn't really look like a toy, so I can only assume that it's a tool of some sort, but I can't even begin to fathom what its purpose could be. I mean. It could be one of those floating pool-cleaners, or something, but. It would take about a million of those to clean the scuzzy, moss-green waters of our beloved pond. And. As I can deduce by a quick glance at the bottom of my shoes, it sure as hell isn't scaring the geese away.

It's Me vs. Mandi.

2005-08-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

The manager of our apartment complex used to be an old woman. She wore readers on a chain around her neck and sweaters tied around her shoulders. She was afraid of dogs and had soft white/blond hair and soft, glowy pinkish skin. She looked like a walking glamour shot - sans the mall hair and turquoise sequined low-cut gown. Most importantly: She was nice. She understood that the little things...our furnace leaking carbon monoxide, all of our kitchen appliances breaking simultaneously...were not our fault. They were our APARTMENT'S fault. And it was her job to fix them. We had a nice agreement.

We have a new manager now. HER name is Mandi-With-An-I. Her very name makes my soul ache. When they flooded our apartment, she didn't do anything to help us. When we asked about mold, she was condescending and snotty. When we asked to move, she lead us on for a week and a half and then basically told us no in the nasal, eleven-year-old-girl-whiny message she left on our answering machine. I don't like Mandi. When our apartment flooded, I had to move some wet things outside to the patio to dry. Two days later, I got a letter informing me that I was breaking my lease agreement and needed to move the things off my patio under threat of "repercussions". I am 78% sure that she hovers outside our patio fence, waiting for the one time we let the Banana use the outdoor facilities without cleaning it up RIGHT AWAY. Because we get letters. Oh, the letters. Misspelled, poor grammar on fluorescent paper. Short and to the point, always signed 'Sincerely, Mandi' and promising us fines or eviction or Chinese water torture or whatever the hell it is, exactly, that she means by "repercussions".

Anyways. We have two cars: One that runs, one that doesn't. We haven't had enough money to fix the dead one and it's been sitting in the same spot for about three months now. We're also leaving for Canada on Saturday, which is stressfull and expensive. We have so many bills to pay right now I'm not really sure how we're going to pay rent, let alone gas to fucking Canada. Stress. Lots of it.

My bright yellow letter delivered today informed me that maintenance is repaving my lot and I need to make sure my cars are moved to the other side of the complex by tomorrow night. Or else. You know. She'll just have to have it towed at my expense.

YOU'D LIKE THAT, WOULDN'T YOU MANDI.

Ahem.

THANKS FOR THE FUCKING NOTICE, MANDI.

Please someone send me a house.
Or a car.
Or. Something.
Save me from Mandi.

I have a cell-phone-shaped tumor on my brain.

2005-07-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we had this night of Hellacious Demon Storms; my mom and I were driving back from Bryanna's wedding shower and it was terrifying. We couldn't see anything. We couldn't even hear the radio over the thunder and hail. The lightening was so frequent and bright it was like daytime. My mom was driving me to her house where Tony was supposed to pick me up. So, we made it through the storm and I sat in the front room, waiting for Tony. And I waited. And I WAITED. And he didn't show. I sat right by the window - Every time I'd see headlights coming down the street my heart would beat fast and my throat would close up, but it wouldn't be him. I sat by the window for forty minutes, waiting, sure that he was dead or stranded or worse.

Pair this with the fact that we keep driving to Canada with the engine light on and we find ourselves facing a necessary evil: the cell phone.

For years I have abstained and turned my nose up at these annoying little machines. I've hated them with a passion. I've rolled my eyes at the greasy executive in Kroger, pretending to scream at his broker to sell a million shares of some imaginary stock in the express check out line. At work, I've done entire pretests with bored housewives who refused to stop chatting with Blanche Down the Street about the mink-lined mules she got at Von Maur long enough for me to use the goddamned puffer. I've had entire confused conversations with people [studying me very strangely] who were NOT actually talking to me [although they were LOOKING at me], but to someone speaking to them through one of those tiny earpieces. ANNOYING.

But then I thought Tony was dead.
And I broke down.
As the great Bruce Silberburg once said to me [when I was a wee lass of seventeen] O, how depressing that my gods have feet of clay.

But. Christalmighty these things are convenient.

P.S. Could be worse, I suppose. I could be Tony. HE bought the belt-holster.

Because I am too tired for anything aside from a disjointed list:

2005-07-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

It's been four days now since I've helped/seen/imprisoned any homeless people. I guess the word is out and they're all avoiding my neighborhood.

Yesterday at work we were forced into a two-tech/ 25-exam day. We usually have at least four girls and do somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-20 exams. My brain is mush. Last night, as I was closing, an angry woman who was upset about her husband's long wait for the doctor came in and started yelling at me. She wouldn't leave. She kept HALF-leaving and then turning around and running back - shaking and obviously fighting back tears, saying over and over 'YOU JUST CAN'T TREAT PEOPLE THIS WAY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?!' I was so exhausted from my Day From Hell, I giggled through the whole thing. Had to try extremely hard not to answer her I'm not coming back here ever again with a Do you see the THOUSANDS of files behind me do you REALLY think I give a shit - I get paid the same. Was successfull. Subsequently, am not fired.

I'm moderately happy because I only have to do three things today: Vaccuum, upload all the pictures from my best friend's wedding, and two months of schoolwork that I've been putting off since MAY.

The jaws devour; the jaws are devoured.

2005-07-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

Last night on my way to pick Tony up from work, I saw another homeless man in front of the hospital. I mean, I assumed he was homeless - he was laying in the grass, all sprawled out at 8:45pm. I couldn't see his face, but somehow I knew he was an old man. As I was driving towards Tony's bookstore, the status of the horizontal old man started changing from homeless to possibly dead/dying. I asked everyone at Tony's work what they would do in my position and - universally, unanimously - they all told me that they would ignore the man and continue on their way.

So I called the state police, who gave me the number for non-emergency assistance. I called them and THEY connected me to emergency assistance, who hung up on me after I admitted that I didn't know the cross street of where my dead guy was. I was a little frustrated, but. Absolved of all guilt.

I drove back down the road with Tony a little later just to see if he was still there. Getting closer to the Mystery Cross Street, there was a firetruck, an ambulance and two sheriff's cars all with their lights on. It's a good thing you went ahead and called, Tony said. He actually needed help, Tony mused. Hey, why does he have handcuffs on? Tony asked, incredulous.

So. Good Samaritan that I am, I called the authorities because I thought the poor old man was dying, AND THEN THEY ARRESTED HIM AND HE WENT TO JAIL. What?

My life is ridiculous.

Homeless pizza.

2005-07-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw this homeless man twice. He was tall with long hair and he was walking around wrapped in this thick, dirty looking, black wool blanket. It was huge. The first time I saw him, he was walking down the sidewalk in front of the hospital, staring at his feet. There was something about him that wouldn't let me look away. You know. Until I had to look away. Because. I was driving a car. A moving one. The second time I saw him, Tony and I were on our way to this white-trash pizza buffet we're addicted to [all you can eat bread and cheese and sausage for $3.99! Erm. No wonder the gym has NO EFFECT ON ME...] and he was sitting on the side of the road, right outside the restaurant. He was holding a sign that said, 'homeless...please help'.

So. I'm generally too shy to do things like this, but when we were done eating, I bought a takeout box and filled it as full of pizza as I could. I was really nervous about giving it to him. I didn't know what I'd say and I didn't want him to be embarrassed. While I was moderately calm due to the fact that I was currently under the influence of fucking elephant tranquilizers, Tony and I got in the car and started driving toward where he was sitting and I practiced what I would say to him. After much deliberation, I figured that I would say something like, 'Here' or 'This is some pizza...I hope you're not a vegetarian because there's pork all over this shit'. But it didn't matter. BECAUSE HE WAS GONE. I made Tony drive up and down the street, but he was NOWHERE. I was really depressed about the whole thing. That is, until we went to D's house and I mixed my sedatives with some malt liquor and spent the rest of the night drooling on myself and playing Dr. Mario.

I gave the pizza to D who is, coincidentally, a vegetarian.
Fuckit.

Embrace your inner snake.

2005-07-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

Monday morning I called my doctor's office in hysterics. Twice. Because that's how many times it took me to choke my phone number out correctly. I remember saying something like, "MY NAME IS KELLY AND I NEED HELP PLEASE HELP." My mom came over while I was waiting for the doctor to call. She mainly took the dog out and hugged me for three hours, promising that my soul is not black and charred, nobody is out to get me, it's all because of that Geraldo show I saw when I was four when the little girl got killed and left at the side of the road, and that I would once again feel human.

I made it to the doctor's office and left minus two vials [the black and red marble kind] of blood and holding approximately eighteen different prescriptions for various sedatives/nausea pills/seratonin-fixers/work excuses. The FIRST vial told us that I am DEFINATELY NOT - NO WAY POSSIBLY - pregnant. My lungs may be full of fluid, but my womb is empty. Bone dry. The SECOND vial was supposed to blame my anxiety disorder/ paranoid hysterical outbursts on my thyroid, which sadly proved false. But I knew that, anyways. I've been like this since I was four. Every so often, it's like my brain/psyche just needs to shed a few layers and begin anew. Like a snake. A really crazy snake. One who thinks that everyone is out to get him and the FBI have set up cameras in the dark window of the house across the street just to make sure he's behaving. Poor snake. The Man wants to crush him with his giant lawnmower of oppression but all he can do is tremble and count everything in sight.

The nice part of all this is that while I was de-crazyfying [I took TWO WHOLE DAYS!] I did nothing but sit on my couch and watch the entire first season of Popular and read the entire first half of Bellefleur. God bless TeeVee and Joyce Carol Oates. GOD BLESS.

Anyways. So.
The moral of my story:

Sedatives. Are. Good.

The End.

2005-07-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm having trouble eating and sleeping. Happens every couple of years. I'm weak and shaky and tired as all fuck. I'm afraid of everything. Today it seems like every bad thing I've ever done is looming black and sinister on my life's horizon. I'm afraid that if I don't make amends, something terrible will happen to me. I leave the house and see smiling people driving their cars and walking down the aisles of the grocery store and waiting for their greasy pizzas. I look at their normal faces and feel like I am the only person in the world who has ever done anything shameful. I feel tarnished and horrid when everyone else seems to shine - towering, shimmering pillars of fucking virtue.

I know somewhere that everyone has secrets. I also know that the reality is that my secrets are cuddly little bunnies compared to the fiery monster-secrets MOST people have. [considering the fact that I am emotionally paralyzed by the mere thought of doing something mean or wrong or bad or illegal].

I just want to feel normal again, and as usual, I'm afraid that I never will.

Strep is the best diet I've ever been on.

2005-07-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

My arms are lead and I'm dizzy when I'm sitting down. Whatever it is that's wrong with me quickly surpassed "pregnancy" and became "some sort of crazy X-files virus" last night. I came into this room with the intention of cleaning it, but had to sit down and rest for a couple minutes. I mean. It's a good fifteen feet from the couch where I was sitting to the office where I am sitting now and I can't seem to catch my breath.

Since I only have these two days off this week, I'm trying to convince my friends and family that it's okay to hang out with me. This is becoming difficult, seeing as how I now sound exactly like a Skeksis from the Dark Crystal. If only my throat would stop closing long enough for me to laugh without falling down on the floor coughing. Or, I would probably settle for the energy to pull myself back up again.

Please pray for my immortal soul.
Wait. Don't.
Bake me some fucking cookies or something.
Mail me some slippers before I die.

73.5 reasons not to have sex while you're ovulating*.

2005-07-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

So I bought a pregnancy at the grocery store near my house this morning. It was locked up in a plexiglass case in the pharmacy - along with about four different types of condoms and eight thousand different types of home yeast infection treatments. I'd walked up to the counter to ask someone to help me and wound up having to ask some seventeen year old boy to unlock the case for me. He was apologetic and told me that he doesn't understand why they lock that stuff up. I crazily, desperately mumbled something about old women stealing their yeast infection medicine, snatched up the cheapest test they had and took off for the register.

I decided that I needed to buy the test after two days of dizzy spells and not being able to eat anything besides baby carrots and cherries. Today, they sent me home from work six hours early, when I started gagging and tearing up, insisting that the old man twenty feet away from me looking at safety glasses smelled exactly like burnt cheese. Because he did. And. I think he winked at me. But I suppose that's beside the point. Anyways. I took the test and was blessed with one red line which means I am still only one person. Although: After I took the test I noticed that I'm not technically supposed to take it until at least one day after a missed period and since that's not going to happen for another week, I suppose today's test results may be considered pretty much worthless. Regardless, pregnancy or no...It bought me an almost-three day weekend, even if I'm going to spend the whole thing on the couch with my arm over my eyes, exhausted and groaning because I can smell the neighbors and it's making me FUCKING NAUSEATED.

Butseriously. Don't worry about me. I have industrial strength fans. And everyone knows: FANS HEAL ALL WOUNDS.

* According to Blogger spellcheck, "ovulating" is not a word. Seriously?

The Lazy Days of Summer

2005-06-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

I had a whole day off today. No jobs. Downside: It's 5:00 pm and I've already had a pap, a tetanus shot and a biopsy ordered by my doctor. Also, my ENTIRE FUCKING APARTMENT is flooded. Well. Not the whole thing. Just both bedrooms and all of my closets. Some sort of pipe connected to the sprinkler they like to let run for 36-hour intervals outside my bedroom window broke somewhere. Or something. I don't know. Maintenance did, however, fix my dishwasher after FIVE MONTHS of continual maintenance requests. Much to their troll-like, oily surprise, this did not make the four thousand gallons of water in my house magically evaporate. But. I really thought it was going to work, too. When I left they were peering suspiciously inside my toilet grunting at each other and making wide, flamboyant arm gestures.

We went to the office on our way out to point out that:

a.) Our apartment is flooded because maintenance is incompetent.
b.) Our furnace leaked carbon monoxide for the first three months of Winter because the maintenance team is incompetent.
c.) White trash kids shot our window.
d.) "High-functioning" group-home individuals have been caught sniffing our unmentionables in the laundry room.

They pointed out that everything will be okay. Maintenance has fans. OF COURSE! Thank god. I apologized on the spot for my lack of faith in my apartment community. I mean. WHY didn't they tell me in the BEGINNING that they had FANS? I cried and offered to pay an extra hundred a month. I mean. I hear these fans can be very expensive - I don't want my apartment community to lose money because of my selfish request for a dry, mold-free apartment with a working dishwasher, safe carbon monoxide levels and minimal panty sniffing. She smiled benevolently and told me that THEY are the management team and it is THEIR job to provide the fans.

Fuck.
Thank god for fans.

P.S. Do you think that I would go to jail for punching an old lady with Costco glasses in the face? I'm leaning towards 'Yes, but do it anyway because that bitch is totally asking for it.' Maybe I should take an internet poll.

I'm too tired for this shit.

2005-06-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

So my brain melted. I worked over 60 hours last week because we fired someone and can't get anyone in to replace her. I need some fucking time off. I got out of my second shift in the lab tonight and left the office a full hour early. I had such high hopes for today, too. I have papers to write, an apartment to clean, a Banana to cuddle mercilessly, twenty-odd pounds to elliptical-away at the gym and [ironically, subsequently?] a weeks worth of cookies to bake.

More like. An hour of Zelda, fifteen minutes of standing on a rickety chair in my kitchen, peering into the dark cabinets above my oven and realizing that I am forced to go *without* cookies seeing as how I can create NOTHING EDIBLE with rice crispies, coconut milk and molasses. Follow with another forty minutes staring at the lake outside my patio, desperately trying to figure out - somehow - how long it would take pasta to cook if I simmered it in the actual sauce.

I really want to cook the pasta in the sauce.

...like I'll actually even make sauce...

Giant red crosses.

2005-06-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Wedding in Kokomo: I spent the first thirty minutes glaring suspiciously at my copper-painted nails. The color looked so nice in the bottle. Tony assured me over and over that it was fine, but I still think it makes me look like a cut-rate Vegas showgirl.

The invitation said "dress casually". While our friends were being married, I was trapped behind an old lady with big, frizzy hair pulled back into pigtails by those thick, fuzzy hair ties that four-year-olds use. There were two little kids on either side of her. One was swinging a pigtail back and forth and the other was rubbing her arm. Poking through the back of her shirt, I could see the purple straps of a bikini tied into a bow. Next to me, this man in plaid pants with a matching plaid vest and a short-sleeved monogramed white collared shirt kept grinning at me. Even his camera was from the seventies.

The reception was dry. Tony and I sat in the corner under a giant, wooden cross. We found some cards and taught some girls I work with how to play asshole. I was having a little too much fun yelling "ASSHOLE" in the church. Another man I work with, a part-time minister came and sat with us so I, being sensitive to other's needs and emotions, changed the name to "anus". While we were trying to teach one of the girls how to say "sphincter" [she just couldn't say it. for some reason], I looked over and noticed that the whole time we had been playing, there has been a video camera not three feet away. The lens was pointed towards our newly-married friends. The microphone, however, was pointed towards us.

The best wedding present I've ever given.

Two weeks! I went two weeks!

2005-05-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

I work in a doctor's office. I'm the assistant manager. Around this time last year, I left the doctor's office for another doctor's office. I was tired of my job and the people and the patients and the fact that I was not the manager. So, I went to this other little place by my house and was dubbed receptionist. They paid me fifty cents more an hour and I could read at work. It was awesome. Then the ladies I worked with went crazy, decided I was some sort of Satanic whore and started giving me the silent treatment. Then the doctor I was working for started spending all of his spare moments watching gay webcam porn in his office with the door open.

So, that bothered me a little.

Even worse was the day he got his own webcam in the mail. He attached it under his desk - right under the keyboard. I was a little confused at this, seeing as how he also recieved his bi-monthly shipment of viagra in the same mailbag. Oh. And his wig was always crooked. ALWAYS CROOKED. I never once looked at his actual face. Every time I had to communicate with him, the wig was our go-between.

I quit and went back to my original doctor's office. I lied and said I was going back to school and got the fuck out of there. I ran back with my tail between my legs, thanking them endlessly for taking me back even though they didn't have room for me. They made me assistant manager and gave me a dollar raise as a way of saying, 'We know how much you do around here...but. Instead of giving you what you deserve take this bullshit and stop rolling your eyes at me.' I was grateful, though.

But. The old resentments and feelings are back again. I'm finding it hard t make it through an entire day. Every time one of the girls says something like 'It's I before E except after Y' I die a little more inside. It's getting really hard to hide my annoyances. At least once a day, when asked why someone in the office did something, I answer 'because they're fucking retards'.

I have a second job in a lab that I love. I have friends who work there, there is absolutely no customer service involved. They want me there full time, and the manager sat me down and explained all the quasi-shady ways he was going to give me enough raises so they could at least match what I'm making at the doctor's office. Only thing is, the office and the lab are right fucking next to each other. We even share a lunchroom. I'd feel so guilty, I think...Leaving again after only six months back after everything they've done to try to make me more comfortable.

But it's only a matter of time befre I stop imagining jumping across the exam table jungle-cat-style and clawing someone's eyes out and start actually doing it.

I love my Brown-Brown Burrito.

2005-05-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

I'm in the basement. The door is closed. I am sad because I know that at some point, the door must be opened, and I will be required to climb the stairs. And it is a war zone up there. Except. Nobody really realizes it but me.

My inlaws are planning this horrifically massive Godfather-esque Italian wedding. Upstairs, as far as the eye can see, are the presents. The prizes. Wrapped in pink for the wedding shower tomorrow. There are 75 of them. I am attending this shower. Me and four trillion old Italian ladies. I'm imagining floppy hats and lace gloves. Cheek-pinching. Not understanding ANYTHING ANYONE says to me. The family is angry, stressed out by planning. They are quick to the defensive and somewhat hostile. Tony brought pizza for dinner. Pizza that he made himself at the restaurant he used to work at. He was proud of it - it was cute. His sister ate once slice and said, 'Well. It's not DOMINO'S'.

I responded by flipping the dining room table over and tearing my shirt in two - you know, Hulk-style - and screaming WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE CAN'T YOU EVER BE HAPPY WITH ANYTHING STOP YELLING AT MY FUCKING DOG I AM SLEEPING IN MY GODDAMNED CAR TONIGHT BECAUSE I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE. You know. In my head. That's what I did inmyhead. Actually, I grabbed my precious Annabanana and took her for a thirty minute walk in the rain. In the cold, Canadian rain.

I think that things are a little tense between his family and I because yesterday, Tony told me that we're not "allowed" to bring the Banana when we come to my sister-in-law's wedding. And we're supposed to be here for a week. I can barely go seven hours without my Brown-Brown Burrito...let alone seven DAYS. I told Tony that they could go ahead and cross me off the guest list. So. I was gone for a couple of hours today, leaving Tony alone with his mom. They talked about it and, according to him, 'she was upset but everything is fine now'. He won't tell me what was said and I'm a little irritated that I was left out of the negotiations. Mostly, I'm just curious to know if she said anything bad about me.

Bet she did.

Jesuschristforfuck.

2005-05-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

I am trying not to cry.
He says things like, 'One last chance. Say the word and we won't leave. We won't go.'
He follows this with...'WE'RE FUCKING GOING. THERE'S NO WAY WE'RE NOT GOING'.
I am confused.
I point out that normal people don't drive all the way to Canada in the middle of the night with their "check engine" light on. I say that maybe if we had more than one car, it would be different. The risk wouldn't be so. Risky.
'...', he says, 'We HAVE another car'.
I turn and scream in my loudest, scariest voice that that car doesn't fucking work. It doesn't fucking start; It doesn't fucking run.
Because it doesn't. It doesn't work.

And I am furious beyond language, beyond gestures, beyond loud, guttural screams...I am fucking pissed off that he doesn't give a shit if we break down and get stranded on the way. He doesn't give a shit that we can't afford this trip, that we can't afford the time off work, that we can't survive without a fucking car.

He says: 'At least if it breaks down in Canada my parents will help us with the repair costs.'

And I think I'm dead inside now.
Bury me in my smashed and worthless car.
...put it on his parents' tab.

2005-05-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

So. My little brother's band concert. They did a ten-minute tribute to the movie Top Gun. This is the grand finale. Battle Hymn of the Republic, or some shit. There wasn't a dry eye or an empty shoulder holster in the house.
Posted by Hello

2005-05-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

So, ah...I guess you're all wondering why I, uh, called you here today...
Posted by Hello

2005-05-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

It took us ten minutes to get the hook out. But he lived. I swear.
Posted by Hello

2005-05-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

Ever since I can remember my grandparents have always worn velcro shoes. I think they're growing younger.
Posted by Hello

Bow down.

2005-05-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Clarity ebbs and flows.
This time of year has been historically hard for me.
People always seem to die or almost die or decide not to let my husband or me back into the country just about every year around spring-time.

The weather gets warm and I get itchty. The trees bud and I panic, wishing desperately for the snow to come and cover everything around me like a big frozen blanket. It dampens the sound. Winter is so quiet.

All for now. At work. I hate work.
Yesterday decided in a fit of paranoia that all my phone calls are bugged here. Am now over it.

Tony blames It on my "genius".
This is why he's awesome.

That damned rabbit.

2005-04-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

I've got a sister. She's in her thirties. She and I share the same dad, but her mom was married to him before mine was. I idolized her when I was young. She was tiny and beautiful and dark. Physical opposite of me. [everyone always said, amazed, eyebrows up 'you're SISTERS?!'] When she was in her early teens, her stepdad went to jail for molesting her and one of her friends. While I don't actively, literally remember any of this, I do know that from about that point in my childhood on, I was terrified of my dad. Didn't want t be in the same room as him. Couldn't talk to him. Wouldn't look at him. I had to go on a trip with him to this shit-town in Ohio for a model airplane convention [a lovely way to bond with your seven-year-old daughter] and I cried and cried the whole time. I remember him calling my mom from the hotel because he didn't know what to do. I sat in the corner and cried and he watched a movie where some girl got killed in an above-ground motel swimming pool.

I'm starting to realize that I have about four real memories of my dad, and two of them involve some shit he was watching on television. Maybe we'll discuss the other two when I know you a little better.

This week: Sick, exhausted, broke. News that one of my best friends is moving away, I'm slipping with school, housework, cooking. I'm so stressed out that even when I close my eyes and breathe deep and sit back on the couch and hold perfectly still, I can still feel the shaking. Somewhere. In my hands. Except I can't see it, which is a little infuriating.

So. What do I do to relax? I read this book. Because I am an idiot. 'Gee' I must've thought to myself, 'I know what will make me feel better. A bio of a woman with 98 personalities resulting from terrible incestuous sexual trauma that started when she was two! Ohyeah. This is going to be awesome.'

Think I'm slipping a little. I spend all day at work imagining the exact words they're going to use to fire me and then getting lost in thought, wondering where the homeless shelters are, whether or not I'm going to wind up with head lice. Last night my fish, Chewy II: The Revenge, died. He was a brains-on-the-outside goldfish. His outside brain fell off. You could see his little fishy skull. He hung on for about an hour and then floated peacefully to the top of the tank. Tony flushed him, and I spent a sleepless night staring at the alarm clock, panicked, trying to decide whether or not it is possible for me to contract a deadly, flesh eating virus from a goldfish. This morning, in the light of day, I still can't force myself to come within five feet of that diseased fishtank.

Maybe shoes will heal my wounds. Or a nap. Or valium. I'm not sure.

Dear Robert D. Friedman,

2005-04-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

I have your $0.21 red spiral notebook. The one that's got your application essay to Berkeley in it. Here's a tip: Next time, try to avoid things like '...try crossing your legs with an erection. Go ahead.' But. What do I know? Maybe they like that kind of stuff in California. I've only been there once. I really kind of like your notebook. My husband works at the used bookstore where people like you accidentally sell their journals all the time. Most are shit. Some are racy and almost interesting...like the fuzzy cookie monster diary we found once that detailed a lurid extra-marital affair some woman was having with her mechanic. Or neighbor. Or maybe he was both, it's really not important. Anyways. If I were you, I'd want this notebook back. It contains. Decency. Worthwhile thoughts. Drunken scratches about breasts and thirsty deaths in the Sahara. Girls' addresses. OHWELL. Hope you get into Berkeley.

Muchlove,
K.

The King of Food.

2005-04-20T20:34:00.000-07:00

Today was a thirteen hour work day, so I stopped for chinese on the way home. Figured that given the choice between deep-fried tofu and whatever-the-fuck-is-unwrapped-in-the-pantry-possibly-then-covered-in-vanilla-yogurt-and-Hershey's-chocolate-syrup, the tofu was the better choice. Albeit the more expensive one.

I always go to the same place, I've gone there for years. At one point, my relationship with my local Chinese restauranteurs was such that I didn't even have to order. I would walk in, sit down and watch the Discovery Channel documentary they would always have playing while the nice old man who looks an awful lot like a duck would start to make my food. There was no point in asking me. He knew what I wanted.

A year and a half spent in Canada put a bit of a damper on my relationship with Duck. He doesn't remember me. At least, not as the old me. I've been stopping in there now about once a week after I've closed at the lab. Usually, they're starting to close but I go ahead and order anyway, but tonight I was a little self-conscious, for some reason. I asked him if they were still open and Duck said, 'FOR YOU ANYTHING. YOU WANT BEAN CURD SZECHUAN STYLE?'.

So I ordered, and sat down to watch the documentary they had playing tonight. A couple of things: The TV sits on top of the buffet they use for the lunch crowd. Tonight, they seemed to be watching [now, this is a guess...there was no sound] a show about maggots. Completely grossed out by simultaneously watching those greasy little things wiggle around on moldy tree bark and smelling my food cooking, I was hypnotized. A little to the left of the TV there were terribly bright, dusty-looking fake plants everywhere. Second best moment of my Food King experience: I noticed that from between the fake plants, a picture frame peeked out. It was a glass frame and there are two smiling people hugging. The man was kissing the woman's cheek. Her shoulder was right above the bar code because the picture came with the fucking frame.

My food was done. Duck winked at me to let me know. As I walked up to the counter to pay, Duck shouted [because he shouts EVERYTHING] 'I'M SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG'. I told him it was okay. Three, maybe four times. Then. Duck stops, looks me straight in the eye and says 'YOU SURE IT'S OKAY? BECAUSE IF YOU SAY NO I KILL MYSELF'

True story.
I love the Food King.

I got a...royal flush?

2005-04-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

I started work this morning bright and early with a belly-full of Nyquil and carrot cake. I've been endlessly amused at work recently. The doctors are involved in a superexciting doctor war, concerning a smelly, horrendously stained old couch that one doctor insists he needs in order to perform his optometric duties. We moved our office a couple of weeks ago - we now have half the space and no storage, so every last unused square foot is fucking precious. Desperate for a place to lay down, take his shoes off and alternately watch Dr. Phil/ play his handheld Yahtzee! game, he carried the filthy couch in question into the store Friday morning by himself - bowed under the weight of the large communities of raccoon babies and cockroach families that must be residing within that thing. Seeing as how this particular doctor and I don't really care for each other [the other day he cut me off mid-sentence with a loud, nasal 'YOU'RE ANNOYING' for absolutely no reason], I have taken this as an excellent time to point out his flaws [read: tattle] to the doctor who owns the practice.

I can't wipe the smile off my face.

The first refill is always free.

2005-04-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

I’m in love with tragedy. Homeless ladies wearing five coats in August, the man who spends all day in blue and red sweats, boombox on shoulder, dancing in front of the unemployment office. The boy at Chik-Fil-A with the Jerry Curl and the coke bottle glasses. He’s never once made eye contact with me. Today, handing me my change, his hand grazed my palm and I saw him outwardly, obviously, cringe.

I know that nothing separates me from these people – Nothing more significant than my measly – albeit regular – paycheck. My family. These are things I don’t take for granted because I know they can be torn from me any second. And, how can I be sure that I won’t wind up standing in the hot sun on the corner of 14th and Central wearing every coat I’ve ever owned? I can’t be.

I secretly see myself as a romantic figure. A dirty rock waiting to be polished and transformed into something beautiful and shiny and important - something a rich, bored, mysteriously wrinkle-free housewife wouldn’t flinch at dropping a couple thousand of her un-earned dollars on. Meaning. I want to be recognized for something. I want to believe that I will be able to accomplish this somehow working 60 hours a week in a mall and spending the remaining three hours of free time I have left alternately taking correspondence courses and playing the Playboy game on my Playstation. I want to believe that someday someone will recognize in me the potential for something other than what I’ve spent the last six years of my life doing.
So much in my life right now seems incredibly unfulfilling. I’m exhausted and restless, and I can’t decide which path to pursue. I want to do everything, but at the same time I can’t even start because I’m desperately afraid of failing. I don’t want to have to admit to myself that what I have now is all I’m ever going to have.

NUMBER FUCKING THREE.

2005-04-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

I would like to state for the record that I have not been as inactive as this blog indicates. I have written twice, but both posts were devoured by the Bloggerbeast. I blame Biz. Shutthehellup, Biz.

We've been moving the office this week, which is heavy. Also, I haven't had a day off yet - I got called in earlier this week when my coworker had to take her boyfriend to the courthouse. Seems he had a warrant out for robbery, which is a lot of things. But. Seeing as how my mother taught me to never write anything I wouldn't want to find on the front page of the newspaper the next day [after finding assorted violent, curse-infested hate letters that my friend and I had written to two boys in our sixth-grade class], I will spare you the details. As much as that pains me.

It's kind of like seeing a coworker on COPS. I mean, it would be totally awesome to make fun of them endlessly, but. Then you'd have to admit you were watching COPS.

So. Off to work for the 89,736 day in a ROW.

Maybe I'll get hit by a car crossing the parking lot. The hospital will let me rest.

O, sweet embrace of death.

2005-04-01T08:48:00.000-08:00

We moved our office this week. Even though the new office was two doors down the hallway, the complex had some stupid ordinance stating we couldn't move anything down the front hallways during business hours. Also: They gave us two days to pack, move, unpack, organize, calibrate the equipment. On the first day, the construction guys were helping us move our files [we have Jeter medical file cabinets - twelve rows high, maybe seven feet. Hundreds and hundreds and. Hundreds. Of. Files. Per. Jeter]. They dumped one and broke another, thus leaving the rest of the seventeen-ton-workload to two doctors and myself.

The good news is that the slightly-too-tight-pants I bought a week ago are now beginning to slide down my hips when I walk. The bad news: I have been dragging boxes of files, equipment, boxes of contacts, solution, office supplies, mechanical tables around without reprieve for the last twenty four hours. I'd move for twelve hours straight, all the while consuming caffeinated beverages by the two-liter and by the time I made it home I'd be so jacked up on caffeine and so stressed about the move I couldn't sleep. I'm so panicky about all of this I'm starting to shut down. I can't answer the phone and - all of the sudden - the only things I can manage to eat are cinnamon bagels and applesauce. Everything else just seems so wrong. Also: I cannot function in messy environments. We've moved into an office that's at least half the size of our old one. There isn't room for anything. It just doesn't fit. I spent all of yesterday [our first day open in the new space] fighting back tears and yelling things like, 'I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE OHMYGODJUSTCLEANIT BEFORE I HANG MYSELF IN OUR NEW TINY BATHROOM.'

The bathrooms, however, are neat and tidy.

Keep your damned badge to yourself.

2005-03-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have noticed by now that I am occasionally prone to 'paranoid delusions'.

When we were stuck in Canada, I developed this crippling, irrational fear of going to prison for...something. I never really figured out what I would go to prison for, but. I've never been one to get caught up in the details. After a year or so, I started thinking that Canadian Immigration was after me - I was terrified of being deported. I would hyperventillate and cry every time I saw someone in a uniform. For a while, I wouldn't watch the news, afraid that they'd be talking about me, and Canada's ongoing efforts to deport me. And. Send me to prison. For...something. The Absolute Worst: There was this house across the street from Tony's. The second story window was always dark but the curtains were never closed. I conviced myself that there was a camera in that window and they [Immigration, I guess] were filming me to prove I was in the country. Any day they would swoop in through the windows and carry me away to the cage in which I would tearfully carry out the rest of my days. It was a sting operation.

I'd never really talked about this.
Until tonight.
Over dinner, I told Tony all about it. He shook his head sympathetically and smiled at me.

Tony: You know, it's funny. Because the guy who lives in that house DOES do sting operation stuff.
Me: WHAT THE FUCKING HELL? WHAT?
Tony: Oh, I mean. He wasn't watching YOU...[watches me choke on pasta] Hey. You know I'm kidding.
Me: OhmygodIamgoingtoKILLYOU.
Tony: But he DOES work for Immigration.
Me: [stabs Tony with salad fork]

She calls her shit poop.

2005-03-21T18:04:00.000-08:00

I spent all day at work in tears. At ten thirty this morning, I dropped the Banana off at the vet - she'd been throwing up since 3am approximately every thirty minutes. Tony and I would wake up, clean it up, assume that the excessive vomiting was probably due to the fact that she wouldn't stop eating the lining under our box-spring mattress. Shrug. Go back to sleep.

Repeat every thirty fucking minutes until it's time to get up and drag your bleary-eyed, sick-with-sleepiness ass to work.

Except this morning she was really listless. She wouldn't keep her head up. Also, she wouldn't stop puking.

The vet called me at work around noon to tell me that she needed xrays, bloodwork. Banana didn't have a temperature, but every time anyone would touch her stomach she'd cry. I hung up after the doctor promised to call with xray results. All day all I could think about was that obviously the Banana had stomach cancer and obviously we can't afford chemo-for-dogs and therefore obviously she would have to be put to sleep. I sat outside on a bench in the parking lot, crying and imagining holding her little paw went they gave her the shot, or begging the vet for one more day with her or sleeping with that little pink cow she loves.

Well. Needless to say, she doesn't have a tumor. She still doesn't have a temperature and she hasn't thrown up since 11am. Also: Maybe this isn't related. I mean, I didn't go to vet school. But tonight, when Tony got home from work and took her out, she shit out a pair of goggles.

What is wrong with dogs?
How did she even swallow that?

Eight is enough.

2005-03-18T19:26:00.000-08:00

J's therapist asked him if he loves his puppy.

J frowned, stroked his chin. He edged forward in his chair and coughed uncomfortably.

'Well, I don't know. It's hard to say whether or not I feel love for anything when I simply can't feel'

So. This is the inane, melodramatic sentence that got the ball rolling. Tony and the slightly queasy feeling in my gut are both telling me that I am the soon-to-be coerced surrogate mother of an eight-week-old miniature daschund. Which is absolutely lovely. I can't wait until we have two dogs in my 900 sq. foot apartment. 50 lbs of dog, total. I am fairly sure the Banana has somehow already been informed of the coming change to her only-child status. As I write this she is crying and howling and biting my foot and throwing herself against my leg and trying to eat my pie while at the same time jumping up and attempting to balance her four chubby, two-inch legs on the right arm of my chair, failing, wiggling, stuck in the foot of space underneath said chair-arm. She does this thing when she's really upset. Belly and all fur legs on the floor, chin to the floor, she makes this wookie noise that blows her little basset cheeks out. It's the greatest thing I've ever seen.

Probably the Banana will eat the puppy. After I take her outside and she has her I-Just-Ate-a-Bite-of-Something-Twenty-Seconds-Ago-Poop, I will return to having only 48 lbs of dog. Well. Probably not.

I'm sure it will happen to you one day.

2005-03-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

I was saying goodbye to my mom in her office tonight. She has a little TV in the corner, it's always turned to CNN. Larry King was talking about Scott Peterson's sentencing tomorrow - information was scrolling across the bottom of the screen while images of the cold, detached, courtroom-Scott flashed, intermingled with shots of his crying in-laws. Where I used to work - six months ago, the bloodless, souless office I escaped from - the women were obsessed with Lacy Peterson. There were two teevees in that office and any time Scott would appear on screen, they'd hush the doctor and the patients and turn the volume all the way up.

'Oh, he's gonna get his.'
'I don't care that he killed HER, really...but. The baby!'
'You know. They're ALL capable of this'
'Sometimes I'm afraid to go home, or even to leave the house.'

Eventually I broke down. I told them. 'YOU DON'T KNOW THEM THIS DOES NOT EFFECT YOU YOU ARE A BUNCH OF CRUEL VULTURES OH MY GOD TURN THAT SHIT OFF FOR TEN MINUTES IT'S DRIVING ME INSANE'. They laughed and made fun of me.

As if I was the one with the problem.

Unrelated: Could someone please stop Sarah Jessica Parker? I live in fear of my television. Helpmeplease.

I think I would make an awesome dictator.

2005-03-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

In the words of the great Angela Carter:

'The axe falls. The flesh severs. The head rolls.'

I had to fire my first employee yesterday. I sat down and looked at her and went blank. My legs were shaking. I don't like to rehearse what I'm going to say before I discipline people. I like to think on my feet and just yell out everything that rises to the surface. One motion - right off, like a band-aid. It's worked pretty well for me thus far. For the first ten seconds or so, all I could manage were quiet, drawn-out 'Weeellllll's. She knew it was coming. She wasn't surprised and she didn't cry, which I will always be infinitely thankful for.

I gave my speech, my reasoning, my apologies. I finished. She stood up to go. Awestruck, I said something like, 'You don't have to go out right away... If you need a minute, you can sit back here for a while'. I'm not sure, but I think she laughed at me. She left the room first.

****

Why do those moonie-moms in the Ovaltine commercial call it Ovaltine Hot and not Hot Ovaltine?

Let me count the infec...erm. Ways. Ways.

2005-03-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

Our Anniversary:

Between the two of us, Tony and I have one infection for each year we've been married. It's a really awesome way to celebrate - Tony sits on the couch phlegmy and ear-infection-deaf while I slump somewhere near him constantly constantly constantly rubbing and itching and pushing my eyes.

Did I mention the menstruation?

This shit is perfect. Seriously.

I'm in this terribly strange headspace recently - we're averaging around two hours of Millennium a night and I've become hopelessly addicted to Oscar Zeta Acosta. Every waking moment I'm alternately wondering if the person I'm puffing is a serial killer/ whether or not a low-grade explosive in the L.S. Ayers toilet would help/hinder the Chicano movement.

Vive la Cockroach.

Hands off my Prada.

2005-03-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

There was a girl in her twenties smiling at my little brother. They were standing next to each other in line for crappy mall chinese food. I, in the middle of my chik-fil-a-and-DQ-blizzards diet, walked up behind him and told him I was going to grab a table. The girl looked up at me like I just knocked her designer purse out of her hands.

My brother came and sat down. 'She was nice. She works at JC Penneys. She asked me where I go to school. She said toodles.' I was horrified. The girl looked older than me. Surely, she must know that it's TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE to smile at my brother. And. TOODLES? Who the fuck does she think she's kidding? I've a good mind to go to Penneys tomorrow and hunt that statutory-starved-crazygirl down.

Love will tear us apart.

2005-03-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

In high school I was passionately in love with Ian Curtis. This mostly sucked, considering the fact that Mr. Ian Curtis hung himself a year before I was born. Although: Unrequited love is always so safe and painfully satisfying. My friend B and I would spend months together in the summer, alternating houses, eating nothing but pasta and butter, ripping all the pictures out of my old Art in America magazines and covering our walls. We were fourteen and we were going to go to art school in a big city together. We were going to share an apartment.

B made it to art school. We didn't talk much then. She came home a short time after falling off a cliff [um. she's. okay.] and now she's a nurse, which is a million miles away from artist but - admittedly - much more useful and a thousand times less irritating.

I haven't picked up a paintbrush since I was sixteen.

[and. speaking of artistic ability, Tony has that. He started a blog. Go say hi.

I prefer the liquigels.

2005-03-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

My head is full of something thick and slow and syrupy. I can feel my face swelling, puffing out when I breathe. Dizzy when I walk, shivery and pissed off all the time.

Sick.

Which is awesome, considering the fact that I am supposed to work 58 hours this week.

I caught it from Tony, who's been down for a couple of days now. We dropped the car off at the shop this morning, so we've just been wandering around the apartment all day, confused and sick and high on generic non-drowsy sinus medication. I played solitaire for two hours. Later, my mom took us to pick up our car and we went out for pizza. CNN was on. The screen said, 'DEMOCRACY VS. TERRORISM'. W was spouting some muted bullshit that I would have been unable to follow even if the volume had been turned up. 'LOOK AT HIS CRAZY WRINKLE FACE', I remember yelling, most likely spitting cheap, buffet pizza all over my brother sitting across the table.

I was almost too tired to chew.

Thankgod I only have two.

2005-03-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

Last night, in my dream, I was blind. I was blind and my eye sockets were hollow; they'd never been filled with anything. I saw someone once who was missing an eye. She didn't have a glass one, so the skin just grew over the cavity. The skin was pink and rippled. A giant scar. So. I had no eyes, I couldn't see. For my birthday a friend gave me a present in a tiny box - her dog's eyes. She had taken them out herself for me. Just so I could see. I was supposed to put them into my own sockets. When I did, I could see the dog's world superimposed over my own vision.

***

So. Maybe...considering the fact that I work for an eye doctor...maybe getting a part time job in a lab making glasses was a bad idea. I'm probably going to come out of this overworked, overtired and continually dreaming about eyes - muttering things about eyes under my breath.

I'll do anything for dairy.

2005-03-02T16:53:00.000-08:00

T and I are sitting at the dinner table. He's made gnocci with a thousand cloves of garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.

'Listen', he says. 'You know that mental problem you have. I think I know what your deal is. You have all these loose ends...All these loose ends in your life and you don't know how to tie them up - you don't know how to deal with them' I glared at him, but only for a second because I know he's right.

Tonight I sat on hold for an hour with three different companies. Even though we use Earthlink, I was paying every month for AOL and NetZero. I signed us up for all of them, frantically, last year when I couldn't get the internet to work in our new apartment. The third company was some stupid credit check service. I signed up for the sixty free days and would up paying for it for nine months. I never used any of these things - 'You never even signed IN! the AOL lady told me - I just couldn't bring myself to pick up the phone to call and cancel. I would look up the numbers I needed and wind up shaking, confused, deciding instead to just go to bed at 8pm, to just avoid it all.

It seems so stupid, my inability to do these trivial, meaningless things until I've spent at least a good six months coaxing and bribing myself. 'Okay. If you go to the bank and fill out a change of address form, we can go to the grocery store and buy ourselves some ice cream! Oh, won't that be nice? No? Okay. Well. Let's just sit here and reorganize this desk drawer four times. That's fine. We'll go to the bank next week. Well. Maybe after our birthday. That's good.'

BUT: Today was different. Today I called all three companies that had been charging me for their unused, neglected services. I feel light and airy. I feel like a girl who's credit card isn't going to be pushed over-limit by the credit-report fees [OHtheirony] this month.

...feels pretty good.
Especially since I promised myself a freezer-full of ice cream.

I can't quite get used to these...titles.

2005-03-01T10:41:00.000-08:00

I woke up in a cold sweat this morning realizing that I don't have a physical copy of my 2003 taxes. Tony and I have to register to have the conditions removed from his permanent residence status on March 2nd, and we have done nothing to prepare [I thought].

I crawled out of bed and got on the immigration website to print out the forms we need. I was so panicked that they were going to want tax information for the last three years [as they did when we filed for his conditional permanent residency]. All I could think about was having to call the IRS and ask for a copy and how much would that cost? How long would it take? Would they audit me on the spot? Surely this would all end in me being sent straight to prison. Oh my god. I'd better go take a shower, they'll be here any minute. All my tax woes dissipated, however, when I noticed the forms we need to file cost $1,300. Oh. Tears and panic. Tony rushed out of bed - What happened? Didn't you sleep well? and I just pointed at the screen.

But then we scrolled down.
And we found the real forms we are supposed to file.
The ones that cost under $300 and don't even demand one year's worth of tax information, let alone three.

This immigration stuff will be the end of me, I'm sure. It will cause my Final Meltdown which will inevitably result in my Final Hospitalization. I had never known fear and paranoia in such terrifying and pure forms before we started this whole process. And. No matter what we have to do, no matter what we have to file with them - be it adjustment of status or something stupid and simple, like changing our address - it all comes back. I'm a mess. I'm shaky. I'm snippy. The world's immigration offices and customs officials are out to get me. They want to catch me. Nothing would make them happier than my sadness. See? Fuck. Didn't you just see that guy with the camera? He had a badge, didn't he?? He took my picture, didn't he??

Oh dear.

Electricity is a beautiful thing.

2005-02-27T19:54:00.000-08:00

So, J again.

J is in and out of the hospital a lot. The, er, psychiatric hospital. There's a fairly precise formula to the whole thing:

1.) J has girlfriend.
2.) J breaks up with girlfriend.
3.) J cries, afraid to be alone. Dejected. Comes over a lot.
4.) J sees ex-girlfriend against his better judgment, they 'make out'.
5.) J threatens suicide to his therapist. Is checked into local hospital for electro-shock therapy.
6.) Rinse.
7.) Repeat.

You know. He's got his whole system down and it seems to be working for him, so I'm really in no place to judge. EXCEPT. J has added another step, which is:

8.) J buys a fucking puppy.

Okay. Unstable, in and out of the hospital, abandonment issues, clingy-love issues, lives alone, never home, irresponsible, has never owned a pet. Did I mention that he's allergic to dogs? Oh, because he is.

So. Dinner tonight at this cajun place a friend works at [loud jazz, annoying hipsters, free food, peanut butter pie]. J walks in. Sits down, shakes his head in the usual manner and spits out the same old words: I saw her at the library. We made out. I know you're disappointed in me - I didn't want to tell you in front of her [indicating me - I am the mean one that tells him to stop crying and not to touch me and points out that he is ALLERGIC TO DOGS].

So. Looks like I'm getting a new dog soon, if only on a temporary basis.
...anyone want a 8-week old puppy?

2005-02-22T18:58:00.000-08:00

The Banana on my birthday rug. It's very soft. Also, I am posting this from my NEW BIRTHDAY COMPUTER. The keys don't make any noise when I type and the processor doesn't sound like it has a cracked muffler. Today is good.
Posted by Hello

It's not my birthday YET.

2005-02-22T07:20:00.000-08:00

Every year I tell myself that this year, I am going to let my birthday go by unnoticed. No reminders, no writing it on the calendar, no slyly slipping the fact that my birthday is in TWELVE HOURS into casual conversation. Yeah. This year it didn't take, either. 'My mom bought me a birthday rug!' and 'I have to go buy something to wear to my birthday!' were the only words that escaped my lips yesterday - overandoverandover.

So. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm going to be 24, which seems old to me now. I'm upset because I feel like I really wasted my 'lucky year' [23 on the 23rd] - nothing really extraordinary happened. To be honest, this past year has been pretty fucking bad. [not with a p-h.]

Tony and I are both off today, so I've been instructed to decide what I want - whatever I want - and we're going to go buy it today. No restraints, no limits [uh. within reason. I can't spend more than we have...I've already tried that. A house! A million-dollar IKEA gift certificate! a pony!

I think that it proves what a loser I am that the first thing I want is a computer - which I desperately need - and after that...All I can think about is yarn. Do you have any idea how much yarn I could buy with that computer money? Sweetholyfuck. That's a lot of unfinished, ill-fitting sweaters right there.

Sorry.

2005-02-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, okay.

So cancer's not funny. Name changed.
Work and birthday dinner tomorrow. I guess I should be tired.

Creeping Paranoia.

2005-02-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

I don't know.
I guess it was bound to happen.

I switch apartments once a year - why not webspace?

Finding newgirl's diary at work affected me more than it probably should have. I hadn't really given much thought as to what would happen if someone I worked with stumbled across me on the internet. But now I have. And I have come to the conclusion that the end result would be: very bad.

I know that the whole blogging thing indicates latent exhibitionism, but I am in reality a very private person. I blush any time I'm expected to offer up information about myself.

Also. Turns out that certain people I may or may not have been spying on were actually spying back.

Damnit. That shit's supposed to be ONE-WAY.

So. I hope you love me enough to change your links.
The End.

Penguingirl.

2005-02-20T16:00:00.000-08:00

She came downstairs, drunk in her penguin suit, holding a ball of purple yarn and two knitting needles.

'Can you teach the penguin to purl?'

The banana kept attacking the feet of her costume. They were huge, stuffed, orange things - as big as pillows. I watched her struggle with the needles, commenting under her breath that it's hard to knit when you're drunk.

Guess I've never really tried.