Chillyrodent

Outfit to be Tied.

2009-08-26T07:44:00.005-04:00

My mother has a very tidy mind. I don't mean to say that she is a clear thinker, or a deep one. I mean that it is swept clear of distracting details, bits of ideas, or fragments of plans. She thinks in themes, in motifs, and in monochrome.

When I was a child, she never bought me clothes, she bought me outfits. Before I was old enough to protest, my outfits matched not just themselves, but hers. In a photograph I unearthed this week, I am fishing with my father while I am wearing a dress. With a fish appliqued to its front. Because she stayed behind at home, I don't for one moment believe she was wearing a fish dress herself. My mother believed in costuming.

In 1975 she bought beautiful lacquered Korean furniture from a young military wife who was tired of reminders of her old life and wanted new American furniture. So, my mother acquired enough furniture to fill our house. The new shiny black hutch held colorful bridal dolls from Seoul. Our intricately-inlaid dining table stood thirteen inches high, and we sat on satin pillows to eat. She did her makeup at an extravagantly lovely vanity piece that also needed a pillow on the floor.

I didn't mind this; I agreed it was exquisite. Then the accessorizing began. The carpets needed to be red or black. Throw pillows, blankets, plates, cookware - all had to pass chromatic muster. Because she knew of no Korean cat breeds, she brought in the meanest Siamese she could find, and hoped the thematic disruption wouldn't be noticeable. It's unclear how the Pomeranians and I escaped the western purge.

Once, she decided to decorate her bedroom in orange, and so any item - useful or not - was welcome as long as it was the right shade. The right shade was orange. Look at the fruit. Books, lamps, curtains, rugs, picture frames, perfume bottles, knick-knacks of any kind. A gift needn't be useful or fun in any way, it needed only to be orange. A still-life for her dresser? Oranges are the only fruit.

Photographic evidence suggests I carried on the tradition into my first marriage. My clothing continued to be outfits. Skirts in suits, trousers in pantsuits. My kitchen was done in strawberries. A well-meaning friend gave me an apple cookie jar - a tragic misinterpretation of the theme - and I proudly displayed it on my counter until she left.

Today, the pendulum has swung to the edge of its arc. I struggle to match shirts and pants in cases of dire necessity (weddings, funerals, job interviews). They don't pass as outfits, but, I hope, as tastefully coordinated separates, thrown together in an appealing, devil-may-care recklessness. Roxanne is always thinking about more important things than her clothing. Go on - ask her about Spinoza's God!

Neither can I be accused of having anything like a tidy mind. I'm no clearer a thinker than my mother, but I do harbor mental shelves full of bits, fragments and distracting details. I keep them around in case I can make them into an outfit.

Watkins Glen marina

2009-08-22T16:06:00.001-04:00

Watkins Glen marina, originally uploaded by ¡Vizcacha!.

Slogging around like a tourist, wearing clothes to match.

Dressing to kill

2009-08-20T07:46:00.006-04:00

I used to think about my clothes a lot. You will be surprised to know that I still do. That’s enough surprise – now you’re just judging. Now I think about whether it’s time to throw away the Provincetown t-shirt I got during Women’s Weekend seven years ago and have worn twice a week ever since. Or, I wonder if I should make it a dusting rag, but who am I kidding.

When I was 20, I made myself a dress designed by someone named McClintock. The dress was pink and had many layers of lacy frills and satin ribbon. It had an unforgiving set-in waist panel so that I looked lovely but felt miserable. So I wore punishing high-heeled white sandals with it, the ones I wore in my sister-in-law’s wedding. That’s a bonus triple misery score.

I must have looked fabulous, though, because Nancy made one just like it in white. Hers was two sizes smaller, looked just as good and caused her the same pain.

I got these pants at K-Mart for $5. I never buy new clothes (it’s my way of interrupting the flow of consumption), but they were $5. I think someone wore them and brought them back – a workman’s prom with tags tucked inside – so they don’t really count as new.

I bought a beautiful dress from a catalog when I was 24. I loved it so much on that willowy model. Pale Sahara-brown flowers on a creamy background, and when I put it on I was a mortified pig in a blanket. The Pillsbury dough boy in a wraparound. I didn’t send it back because it wasn’t the dress’s fault and another ten pounds would certainly solve the whole problem.

I always buy my underwear new. I know what I said before, but there are limits. Panties’ demise aren’t easy to predict, either. Not like socks. You see it coming with socks. My favorite ragg wool socks strove to live up to their description, until I could feel the floor through the threadbare parts. Come on. Just be a hole so I can move on with my life, but the socks just got thinner until I had to make the hard choice.

But, underwear is stealthy and hides its infirmity until you are on a job interview and they begin a southward migration. Oh job interview panties! How you have betrayed me!

I used to own body smoothers. I wore them so my real body could not be seen beneath my fitted ivory dress. They worked, of course, until I actually needed my liver or a lung. Those were the days I wore high-heels because a look that hot should never be marred by comfort. I was a body-smoothed, mincing size 10, but fashion doesn’t follow the Geneva Convention. We drove past Laser & Brewer last Sunday, where a sign shouts WE HAVE SPANX! DO YOU? I muttered to Annie, “Fuck Spanx.”

True Fact: If you wear pantyhose tight enough to “slim and support” you, your inner thighs will actually extrude out through the knit and rub together anyway.

I still think about my clothes, but now I think “is this shirt clean?” and “can I trust the elastic in these underwear?” Today I’m thinking, “Did that workman get lucky in these pants?”

Footnotes

2009-08-18T20:43:00.001-04:00

I knew a man who was afraid of feet. I wondered, for a while, if it wasn’t just revulsion, but no. It was fear. His close friends teased him by putting their own bare feet near him, but I thought that was better left to them, since frightened fists aren’t in control, and then there’s the trial. “Your Honor, I invoke the Piggy Defense,” and then I would have to show my feet to the jury so they could understand his terror and acquit. I hear he has married. His bride agreed, before God and these witnesses, to wear socks at all times when they were together. His own feet he just pretended were not there, the way I avoid my face in the mirror in the middle of the night.

My son’s feet started out miniatures of mine, broad chubby things with fat toes attached higgledy-piggledy. A little pigeon-toed, so I bought him white high-tops until the bird stage flew past. Fat feet stuffed into tall shoes; he became sturdy and fast. Those feet grew into his father’s feet and beyond, and today he is proudly stylin’ in his 13s.

I can’t pass by baby shoes without comment, and filled with baby? Irresistible. Shoes so tiny Annie says they should hang from a rear-view mirror. I admire the sneakers, so short and broad that they’re round. She favors the work boots. The wee Mary Janes are sweet, but I’m alarmed by their slick soles and inferior athletic potential. Send a child out in patent leather and she will not make the track team.

When my husband relaxed, his feet were perpendicular to his legs. Ninety degrees of bone and tendon. I teased him, commanding his foot to point; his toes contorted as though they intended to manage with or without the foot. Later he didn’t think it was funny anymore, and I started to see him as one big, rigid ell.

I’m fond of my own feet – my toes are cute. I don’t decorate them, though, because they are shy and avoid attention. They perform well whenever they are needed. They remember dance moves I’ve forgotten. They walk around like champs. When I swim, so do they. I don’t turn my back on a friend, so when one started to hurt, I bought them both the best arch supports the aisle at RiteAid had to offer. No excuse was too flimsy to wear Birkenstocks. I installed insoles inside my fluffy slippers. All this and more I would do for my feet.

I can’t remember owning a pair of high heels after 1986. [I first wrote high hells. This is the degree of my animosity.] My son was born, and it seemed as good a time as any to take the vow. When you’re carrying something plump and unpredictable, like a baby or a slippery Virginia ham, the more rubber on the road, the better.

I heard a story about a chicken who had no feet, so I stopped feeling sorry because I had no shoes. His owner wraps his feet so he has better traction on his stumps. I learned a lot from that chicken, and now I’m satisfied if my own stumpy feet are wrapped for traction, if not for style.

Postscient

2009-06-09T11:14:00.006-04:00

It didn't shift in an instant, not like the tungsten glows, then extinguishes. Falling out of love is not just the opposite of falling in. The flash of recognition, the nights spent dreaming with wide-open, starry eyes. The element of surprise. "Falling out" is slow, sneaky and wily, and you often don't know you've fallen until you feel the thud. Then you understand the gravity of your situation.

So, in just that insidious way, I have fallen out of love. My beau leaves me cold, bored and unsatisfied. I work with his friends, and that's awkward. In fact, they're not just friends, these people. They are all in love with him, too. He has so many lovers, and just as many haters, but few ex-lovers. These people won't understand. Not at all. I'll lose that crowd in the divorce.

How will I replace him? A ridiculous question, when the real question is how to leave. I want us to stay friends. I'll still read his letters, some of them. I can't forget him; he's all around me. I'll always remember when he showed me Fibonacci's number. What is more delicious than the feel of Avogadro against my molars? He gave me that first - I was only sixteen. The voltage! The resistance! Ohm my God. I had all of that with him, and mho.

I can't even say it was a childish passion, this parabolic rise and fall, this astronomical, meteoric flight through variables and constants. Let x= whatever it wants to be - he was my x-axis and I never asked y. You can't calculate the factors that made me love him. The rithm, the log of my obsession was natural, both real and irrational. It was a sine, not a tangent. I didn't need a proof.

I'm no fool. I know I can't live without him. Neither can you. I just know I can't be his mistress any longer. I must unwind myself from the double helix of his devotees. The bonds have loosened. The resonance is gone. I have to leave his house to be real, but he has always paid my bills. What new lover will take me in when I have divorced Science?

Everybody must get

2009-06-09T10:46:00.004-04:00

Sharon Stone
Stone Phillips
Chris Rock
Kidd Rock
Rock Hudson
Rock of Ages
Like a Rock

It traveled the earth never leaving its own Pangean neighborhood, the way I travel the solar system at home in my bungalow. Maybe it heard the news - Plates Shift! Families Separated! or maybe it lay like a stone waiting for something to happen to it. Silly stone. Pack a bag and take a trip, before you're sand! You were a mountain once, a continent; you've got to see where this is going! Another billion years will be gone before you know it and you'll be just an eroded shadow of the You you are now.

Taking nothing more than the dirt it could grab, it finally had an adventure. A rolling stone gathers no moss. You eased yourself into the slipstream of glaciers. You stop when they stop, where they stop. Were you disappointed to stop in Ohio? It's not a bad place for a stone to spend a few millennia, not a bad place for a girl to spend seven years. Were we the first of our kind you ever knew? A man and a girl, on a sunny hillside in the spring. A story about glaciers in the heartland, cycles of Ice Ages and global warmings, a little stone taking a trip and getting buffed along the way. Another story about a man, a flood his boat and a poop deck. A girl can't choose both stories, and a rock doesn't care, knowing its own truth but keeping mum. The man has no particular credibility and the other is a mother's story - infallible.

The stone didn't stop in Ohio. There are too many other sights to see inside a cedar box. It isn't fair for a stone to have seen such things and to have been tumbled and polished, and then land in a box without a view. I should have at least put it in th9e windows of the nearly thirty homes I've had since then. And maybe, like me, the stone is ready for another journey.

As Heard In Our RV™ (Roxi)

2009-06-01T13:39:00.001-04:00

If this trailer's rockin' ... come on in and help us tear out carpeting.

The Sow of Pooh.

2009-05-02T13:46:00.003-04:00

Thanks, BoingBoing.

In the Pink of an Eye

2009-04-17T08:30:00.002-04:00

She had very rigid standards for other people. At first I thought it was cute, endearing, charming, but I was a prisoner in the Kingdom of Poor Judgment. I was falling in love.

Pink disgusted her. Made her need to vomit. I almost didn't notice I had stopped wearing it; when I felt strong and independent I would slip on a pale pink t-shirt. Nice shirt she'd snarl, but didn't want to seem rude so she'd say she didn't mind it as long as it was mostly covered. When something pinkly-pigmented crept into her own wardrobe, she'd clarify that it was mauve. Dusty rose. Salmon. All names for Butch Pink.

In parting, the correct phrases were "goodbye, see ya, take care, be careful." God help anyone who said bye-bye. "Bye-bye?? Did you just say bye-bye???" Apparently, the idea was to train everyone she met, and I was an able student. No hon, silly, I said "Fuck you!" Have a good day!

I suppose we should have known it was over that shopping day. I unloaded bags, boxes, bundles. Pink socks, pink boots, pink slippers. Seven pairs of pink panties, all embroidered with Any Damn Day I Please. Not a molecule of rose in the lot. Mauve? For pink-lovers who are still in the closet. This was straight-up, in-your-face, Mary Kay pink, and I had come out.

The garish pink rose swag went up in the living room, over the bedroom door. Just a reminder that through this door lies a lot more pink. "I hope you sleep well on the pink sheets. Bon Ton was having their yearly Pink Sale."

"Oh hon, you feel nauseous? Let me get you some Pepto-Bismol. A Canada mint? Cherry Rolaids? Strawberry Starburst?"

I came home one autumn day, just after noon. She was sitting limply on the Candystripe slipcover, shielding her eyes from the suffuse glow of the Baby's Breath Pink wallpaper I'd hung from three walls. The fourth was a tasteful Ice Pink accent paint (from Sherwin-Williams' "I Adore Pink!" collection). "I tried to start dinner," she mumbled faintly, "but the cookware made me feel weak."

"You have something against Cooking For the Cure?" I sniffed.

"No, I just ..." and she pulled the opalescent throw pillow over and curled into a fetal position.

I suppose it was foolish to have installed the new Petal Pink bathroom fixtures, and I did feel a little guilty later when she had to be sick in the petal-y bowl. "Poor dear," I cooed, "think of the toilet as Dusty Rose."

One night, as I brushed my Didi Conn-pink hair she asked, looking away, if she was sensing hostility. "Don't be silly, dear. Tell me if my Hello Kitty jammies match my Cotton Candy bathrobe."

She seemed to be growing more fragile, and one evening she barely managed to climb the stairs. She unlocked the door and fell onto the Peppermint Stick carpeting, tossing Jungle Pink seat covers onto the Ice Cream Shoppe Formica tabletop. "I ... can't ... use these. It was a ... nice ... " and she rested there a while until she found the strength to get up.

"That's okay, Gumdrop. Just relax until supper is ready. We're having borscht."

By the start of winter, she could barely rise in the mornings, and would have stayed home, I suspect, but for the healthy glow of the bedroom. Personally, I liked it.

Just after the New Year, she begged me to meet her at a sports bar. "Which one, Hon?"

"It doesn't even matter," she said, "but … could you wear Syracuse orange?"

When I arrived, she began. "I've been thinking we're not getting along. Too many of my needs aren't being met. I don't think my standards are unreasonable, and if you can't meet them, maybe I should go."

"Go? Really?” I bit the tip of my Pink Passion pinky nail.

“It’s really for the best. Our relationship isn’t good for me.” She handed me back the rose gold band inlaid with Forever Pink cubic zirconia. I saw it had burned her finger.

Tears formed behind my Swiss-made fuchsia contact lenses. What else could I do? I hugged her and dropped the circle of pink Kryptonite into her back pocket. She’d be dead by morning, if she didn’t find it first.

“Well, then, Bye-Bye!"

Before

2009-04-14T16:46:00.006-04:00

I am born and there are vaccines for everything and I am safe. I get measles, but everyone gets measles and that's okay. I get strep throat and then scarlet fever which reminds me of Gone With the Wind - such a pretty name.

But, before that, my parents were married twelve years, and did they wait until it was safe? My mother never talked about polio, or parents dreading summer or staying out of the water or hearts in mouths when a child stumbled. And today, right now, I wonder if polio viruses still frolic in streams and ponds and wonder why no one respects them anymore. Or, did they vanish into laboratories to live forever in a cell in a bottle, giving smallpox the idea? I had a teacher who survived polio, but she was so old I thought it was a Civil War disease.

But, before that, what did my grandmother worry about? I know some things about her, but they're not about her, they're about my mother. I know the picture of my grandmother, Vera, whose caption is "Mom at 212 pounds." I took a snapshot in my head yesterday at the doctor's scale: "Me at 213 pounds." A family history of chub, a genealogy of our war with numbers. My mother's numbers are small; she stands in history between fat women.

I know Vera had high cholesterol because she liked the fat from meat. I don't know why I have it. I know she died from being 212 pounds. But, fifty years later, my father's siblings die, round and 90. They didn't get the memo.

Before me, before my mother's first makeup or first date or first husband, Vera was a Spiritualist in Freeville. She saw things and read tea leaves and divorced her husband and broke his nose. He was not 212 pounds. She built a house and raised wild children and ran a business and took no shit. She got married twice and lost a young husband who laid down sick one day and died the next, one of Tioga County's flu statistics. Her second husband lasted longer.

I didn't meet these people and I don't know any true thing about them. I know what my mother said and the stories, but those stories belong to her. I am writing down stolen lives. But, before me, Vera had a boyfriend and the kids didn't like him. There is a story about pudding and X-lax that ends and he never wore those pants again.

After that, my mother and I visited the nursing home Vera ran; the current owner was pleased to show us around. Oblivious to possibilities, she showed us a tiny attic room painted midnight blue, and who would paint a room that color? But, before us, Vera would.

Now I make Vera what I want her to be, because I can, because my stories belong to me and so does she. Four dozen years I've looked for me in my mother's face, but I'm not there because she doesn't belong to me. I have to look past her, through her, to the other side. Biology insists I have half her genes, more or less, but which ones? I don't say this in scientific company, but I think Vera bundled hers in a sack and tossed them to me, right over her daughter's head. Monkey in the middle.

But first, Vera was a lesbian. [This is my story.] Sure, she married a man or two, but I made the same mistake seventy years later. It's okay Grammy, I get it. I never broke his nose, but I broke his heart, which was just about as gristly and hollow. I see things, like which way the wind blows, and I read signs, like writing on the wall. And now, I tell stories and they're as true as yours, as true as they need to be.

Fooled again

2009-04-10T18:08:00.001-04:00

His pharmacy sells Yankee Candles and Gund stuffed animals and Precious Moments figurines. Such a handsome young man, and I think about my single friend John who is also cute, and would they hit it off? and it's none of my business really, but I can't help thinking. The pharmacy is small and the Yankee Candle smell is everywhere at once, Apple Pumpkin Spice Pine French Vanilla Pie. He flashes that beautiful smile at me and the gorgeous woman behind the counter is his fiancée and I'm stunned. The candles lie.

Crash

2009-04-07T19:21:00.001-04:00

The gin mill was dark and smokey, but here was nothing wrong with my peepers. My eyesight was 20/20, and all forty were on her. She was a looker. I mean to say, she was one hot little dish. Curves that make you want to speed up when you ought to be hitting the brakes. My shutters met her baby blues across the room. They wandered all around the rest of her and made their way back into my mug. She moved like a half-mile of the French silk she was wearing. She was TNT, and she was lighting my fuse. There was something about her ... but, hey. I figured I was goofy.

She flowed my way. But, did she really, that was my question. She lifted my fedora and my hair fell around my shoulders. Put my hat on her own noodle and smiled. Yeah, maybe she does flow my direction. Maybe I'll make it into the boat.

She asked my name. I played coy, I played shy, but she was playing a different tune. A tune I recognized. A tune I couldn't stop humming. "Middle initial?" My head was already spinning, but that seemed dizzy. I told her. She asked me who I liked in the fourth and I got a chill. A dame who looks like this and plays the ponies, too? Easy does it, I told myself. You've been taken for a ride before. A great set of sticks, a gorgeous button and I was off to the races. Not this time I said. This time, I'm keeping it in the starting gate.

She slid her warm hand under my jacket and I froze. She'd already felt my roscoe, and I knew I was getting sloppy. "You got a buzzer?" she asked.

"Private dick, since you asked."

"Can I see your ticket?"

She was one smooth operator. I whipped it out. She snatched it and ran it through her pearly whites. She's queer, this twist, but she's standing between my uprights so I don't mind so much. She starts chinning about cases I've solved. Tells me I'm smart, tells me I'm a pip. Tells me I'm cunning. I tell myself I'm not so smart right now, but it doesn't matter. She could pull my rod right now and I wouldn't mind. Might not even care if she plugged me.

She leaned into me, close. A litle trickle of sweat rolled down into her plunging neckline, and I wanted to be that drop. I wanted to ride the rapids through that valley and end up in her ocean. She slipped my wallet out of my back pocket. I didn't care. She could take my last fin. She left the cabbage alone, though. My papers, that's where she was.

"Ooh, you drive!" and she ran her tongue across my license. "You got a boiler?" I wanted to tell her I'd drive her anywhere. We could leave tonight. She mentioned a speeding ticket I'd had fixed. She was good. She should work under me.

"I love a woman who reads," she purred into my ear as she slid my library card over her lips. I was reading her loud and clear. I read between the lines. I read her like an open book, like a book with one chapter. I wanted to dog-ear her pages. She asked if I liked Fitzgerald, if I'd finished The Great Gatsby. This doll is my Zelda. If I could just crab what it is about her ...

That was six months ago. I'm no sore loser - she looks great in my suits. She's a top-notch dick, and I'm proud to work for her. She likes the way I look in a tight little dress, says I'm a tomato and I know my stuff, besides. I ought to know it; it used to all be my stuff. I sit up on her desk and take her dictation, all of it. It's hard, but it's not a bad lay.

Still, something's whacky, but I can't place it. Something missing. Or something too much there. You'd rank her and tell me I'm bing, but I can't help it. Like, when we work late; I'm so joed I could croak, but she just keeps going. Like she never has to bunk.

I miss using my old moniker, though. She uses it now - I'm just Sally. She let me pick my new name; I guess she's a right gee. It was the name of my ... the business, too. She changed that. Seemed to think it was some swell gag, this new name. She calls it Uncanny Valley Private Eye. What's so funny about that?

Things I Know.

2009-04-04T19:38:00.003-04:00

Shunning won't kill you.

Shunning has killed people. Don't do it.

Speed is overrated. Settle for getting there.

Winning is overrated. Settle for playing.

Say something kind - it's a win-win.

More is not always better. Two cats is a good number.

Avoid drama unless you're an actor.

Staying in your head is boring.

Staying in your pajamas is wonderful.

Staying in your bed makes your back hurt.

Listen to older people - they know stuff.

Enough is enough. Notice when you've had enough, then leave.

A dog's uterus is not shaped like yours.

Wheat germ is a bag full of embryos.

You can have a bag full of bats. Some of them may have rabies.

Don't get too close to a fresh mammal carcass.

Chicken pox virus is like a stalker.

You could be run over by a Prius and never hear it.

Cats lick furniture.

Even a nice neighbor can be too much neighbor.

Even nice towns can get small.

There's no such thing as Reefer Madness.

Steve Don't Eat It is funny and gross at the same time.

Facebook will make you think your friends are idiots.

Twitter will confirm it.

A cat's teeth can chew through solid oak.

Getting rid of things makes you feel light.

Dr. B. will give you drugs and she's cute.

Getting laid off is a lot better than being fired.

American Sign Language is different from Signed Exact English.

When you introduce yourself in ASL, always declare your hearing status. "I'm hearing."

Deaf culture does not consider deafness a disability.

Online catalogs are easier than paper ones, but they're not as much fun.

Sometimes reading on the bus will make you queasy, and sometimes it won't. You never know.

Ithaca has 115 sunny days each year.

Flagstaff has 255 sunny days each year.

Vitamin D can fight depression.

ArmyOfWomen.org lets you volunteer for cancer studies.

Good mothering is not instinctive.

You can curdle egg white with alcohol.

When you drink tea, you have to choose between milk and lemon. You can't have both.

You can compost cat waste, but eventually your neighbors will complain.

You can compost human waste, but eventually your family will complain. Plus, it makes it harder to sell your house.

People dream in color.

A pint's a pound the world around.

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.

Not everything can be autoclaved.

Listen to your gut in a job interview.

Don't try to boil your toothbrush.

Microwave a sponge to sterilize it.

Microwaving metal doesn't always cause a spark.

Stainless steel is easier than silver. That's why it was invented.

Not everyone will like the movie Brigadoon. Reference it for fun on every foggy day.

Scott Adams is funny and smart.

Douglas Adams was funny and smart.

Don Adams was funny ... and Smart.

Jean Smart is funny.

Someone else's idea.

2009-04-04T18:53:00.002-04:00

I love this idea: Start a SwapLuck to Share the Things You Make and Do.

How do you think it would work? What if no one wanted my jewelry and I had to Gypsy Rose it home with me? What if three people got into a lather over Ernestine's lavender-sage bar soap and we had to take the hose to them? What if I offered to write something funny and everyone laughed?

I want to do this. At your house.

V-V (say "vee bar vee") Ranch

2009-03-27T21:19:00.000-04:00

Jimmy-brain

2009-03-27T21:17:00.001-04:00

I feel disconnected lately, but not unhappily so.

I (we) have not stopped seriously thinking about relocating to Arizona, and we're planning another trip in the drop-dead of summer to take in the worst of it. If we're lucky, maybe we'll catch the edge of monsoon season, too. I'll start my layoff July 1, and we're thinking about heading out right away.

The plan is a road trip through the state. We know we like Sedona/Verde Valley, but there are a lot of other places that look great on paper. If you know things about these places, speak up! We're looking at Golden Valley, Seligman (outskirts), Kingman (outskirts), Paulden, Prescott area, Chino Valley. Also weird outlier: Crown King.

What we would do for work there: I don't know! Details, details, Devil, details. Research is scarce out there, except in cities (Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tucson), and we're not wild about any of those places. I suspect Flagstaff is neat, but it's freaking snowy there. Like Ithaca on 'roids. Med lab technicians aren't licensed in AZ (CLAs and MLTs are), so that's a possibility for me. Annie has done everything, and well, so I know she'd find something. We'd both love to be able to eke out a paltry living from home, but the cheap whore gig has lost its luster. Let's face it, I'm tired.

Ideally, we would rent out there for a while, until we knew what we wanted from a property, but we have, you know, eight cats, and unless we dress them as homely children that's not an option.

Separate-but-related: Oh my god, ennui. I never thought I'd be tired of this area. Thirty years, and it just got better. Except this last year, when the magic started to rub thin. I have always seen Ithaca through Magic Hannukah Glasses, except not as Jewish. Through Magic Jesus Glasses, but not as Christian. Just a city full of emerald Magic Glasses. It's a good city, just a very bad wizard.

Just read I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, and it gave me a little post-trauma flashback. Now I'm reading Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex to cheer myself up.

Annie's having a marathon migraine, so I stayed home with her to make it worse. Really, I was afraid she would need a medical intervention, and I didn't want to have to limp my way home to help.

Some friends invited us out to dinner earlier this week, keeping me from abject hermitude. There was a conversation about home inspector porn. What are you wearing? A thick pink layer of R-26 insulation. Talk dirty to me: Mold ... dry rot ... wet basement!

¡Vizcacha! likes this.

2009-03-27T21:08:00.001-04:00

I've tried so hard. I know my friends expect it. Society expects it. It's just so hard to fight the current, to swim upstream endlessly when I'm so tired of resisting.

But, it's true.

I hate Facebook.

It's the way a status update can turn something that was probably profound into inanity.

Margaret J. McDoodleson is really bummed out about world hunger.
Izz So likes this.
Dusty Wankerman: amen sister famine sux!!!!!!!!
Ophelia Bottoms: I feel your pain. It's like this morning, when I forgot to
eat breakfast and then I was SO HUNGRY by 11 AM that
I. Thought. I. Would. Die. I HATE world hunger.

Or, something that shouldn't even have been said into something I had to read.

Arne Knott is still recovering from this morning's difficult bowel movement, but appreciates all your good wishes from last hour's status update.

It is possible that I resent being so very in touch with my friends' fleeting notions.

It's also possible that I am in a stink mood and have no remaining internal censors for the things I type.

Oh, so very grouchy!

ETA: Here ya go:

Jim invited you to join the Facebook group "Your Car/Truck/SUV Does NOT Need Four Headlights!". Does it come with an application, Jim?

Quick-change artist.

2008-12-06T21:48:00.002-05:00

Reading a friend's blog made me think about change, and how I approach it.

Sometimes, a choice is so obvious that thinking it through is just a nicety. When I was laid off in 2005, it seemed a perfect time to hit the books full-time and finish my degree. When it occurred to me, I immediately stopped feeling at loose ends; at that point, I couldn't wait for the layoff to commence. I used the remaining three months to arrange my affairs, get all the money together that I could and get ready to hit unemployment running.

Other times, a change seems too unthinkable or painful to even consider. About 13 months ago, Annie suggested we might want to think about a smaller house as we age. I dismissed her idea as preposterous, and a month later we were making an offer on this house. I was ready to move ahead.

In the "unthinkable" category, in June, 1994, I made the decision to get a job that would support me and my son (after eleven years out of the lab and the job market), forsake my evangelical religion, leave my husband, suffer my parents' and extended family's disowning, and lose (almost) every friend I had made in 33 years of living. A year and a half later, I had done it.

Compared to Annie, I'm quagmired. She seems not to suffer change's pangs, or not to notice them. I whine and thrash. I don't go easily. I see myself as anchored to the present, though, and I'm really not. I wanted to write this so I can see myself more accurately.

Every cat accounted for, ma'am.

2008-09-15T09:08:00.002-04:00

A windstorm rode through last night, without a drop of rain. The only damage we can see is that the tarp roof of the cat enclosure blew off.

It's no big deal to fix, but the cats can't be allowed into the pen without a roof and armed guards in the towers.

Six of them join me here on the couch to help me write this. Tell how it whacked me on the head and I could have died! Tell how I almost blew away and I could have died! Tell how it blew the hairball back down my throat and I could have died!

On my walk.

2008-08-04T15:07:00.002-04:00

Self-contained bliss.

2008-08-04T11:45:00.007-04:00

Okay! So that's out of my system. Happy!

I'm about to walk to the post office. Walk! Such a concept, the walking to errands. I might walk! to the library, but maybe I'll save that for another day. These are the good things about village life that really do make me happy. Stay focused, Rodent.

I'll take my camera. That cheers me up.

Another very good thing: happy things on the walls. Arts are good.

Love, Loss and the Little House.

2008-08-04T11:21:00.002-04:00

I'm staggering, lately, under the weight of what I've cast off. Ironic. I'm laughing wryly.

I want to be happy within myself, regardless of what I have or where I live. I was pretty smug about my self-contained bliss, until I realized how easy it was to be blissful in the stillness of the countryside, in the ease of my big house, in the utter bigness of the vista. What bullshit. Big talk for a little mind, Missy.

Of all things, I can't find room in my life for my plants. My plants meant a lot to me, and now I'm putting them on the curb. FREE: whatever I used to like a lot. Pure crap. Apparently, I don't have a Buddha self, or a Gandhi spirit. I am full of shit.

We have to install some new heating system for the simple pleasure of not having the house smell like piss and shit. Booyah!

The new half-acre yard? Needs a fucking lawn tractor. Because this move has been all about getting simple.

The old house? Still have it. Can't sell it. Still paying for it. Still mowing it. Still maintaining it. Simple! So simple! It's Fuck Me simple!

Separated at Birth?

2008-04-28T08:49:00.002-04:00

I took this picture at the Farmer's Market.

2008-04-28T07:56:00.004-04:00

Ronnie

2008-04-09T17:44:00.001-04:00

Ronnie, originally uploaded by Little Bay Poo.

What.