Chillyrodent

Emma in the boat

2011-02-15T13:29:00.000-05:00

If they need me, they'll just have to come get me, even if I did take the only boat. Virginia is too big to cry for milk when she can get it from the icehouse as well as I can. Silly spoiled child. Let her listen to the twins yowl while Mother rests.

Are there really Indians on this island? Father always says so, but Father says Virginia is sweet as syrup, so his judgement is suspect. I might go ashore, or I might not. If there are Indians, I'll pay my toll in lemon drops - I brought enough for a tribe. Another reason for Virginia to howl when she learns I didn't share them with her, for once. The boys would already have stolen them, if they knew.

I'm goin to stay here until the quiet fills up my head and pushes out everything. Virginia's whining, and the boys' yelling and fighting and calling out More Sweets! More Sweets! I will stay here until I hear ...

... absolutely nothing at all, all day long.

Looks lie, she told me, and pointed to the painting over the buffet. My sister, Emma. You're so responsible, Emma! Such a big help to your mother, Emma! So generous to the young ones, Emma! Well, Emma never sat for that painting but she sat in that boat so much that IT could have painted it. As soon as Mama lay down every morning just after breakfast, Emma hiked up her skirt and ran to the dock, a paper sack full of lemon drops from Kirk's General Store balled up in her fist. If we were "lucky," she'd show up again just before Papa got home, and get busy finishing up the supper I'd made. Papa thought Emma was a great cook, and she never told him otherwise until he needed to stay with one of us and she told him "it better be with Virginia, Papa - she's the cook amongst us." Never mind those boys, who made themselves absent once they grew up and left home.

Emma wanted a headful of silence all the time, said she had important things to think and I wouldn't understand, having smaller thoughts that could be thought just fine while chasing the twins and taking care of Mama and keeping house. And so, she gets that from me now, a present: all the silence I can give her.

Emma in the little dinghy

thinks her family is too clingy.

Wants to sit out here and float,

drifting in the still waters just off the island.

2011-01-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

What I wouldn't do, honey, is call him again.  He isn't worth it and you're too good for him.  What I would do is get a dog, because a dog already knows he's not worthy of you.

She attempts to tell the truth about true romance, but finds she can't because she doesn't know the first thing about it.

Five smooth stones and a miracle, you say, but first he was already a very good shot.

The woman who wrote too much started out complex and kept a lot of thoughts inside, but gradually leaked them all into notebooks. Don't try to talk to her because what you see is only her shell. Read the notebooks - they're all that's left.

She told us a movie changed her life and afterward she never lied again. I wondered if I could watch the movie backwards and stop telling the truth.

First, let me explain that I'm not usually like this it's just that I'm so surprised to see you here and I'm your biggest fan, in fact, I'm in love with you and I think we're destined to be together, did you get my letters? You know me as well as I know you now and let me buy you a half-caff soy latte with agave like you like and we can talk and I know you'll feel the chemistry, but I'm not nearly as fit as you are so please slow down a little and I'll tell you about our plans for the evening PLEASE stop running I can't catch my breath and didn't you love the picture of us together that I 'shopped and posted on your website? It kept getting deleted - I had to post it a hundred times and please stop shouting, you're making a scene.

All wounds

2011-01-27T13:59:00.005-05:00

My dearest Clara,

I have begun this letter at least a dozen times and each previous version has landed in the fire. I yearn for your company, for the feel of your small, cool hand in my own, but I finally understand that this longing shall nevermore be satisfied. Lovely Clara, I wish I could say that I have reconciled msyelf to this loss, but truly I remain bereft and lost.

You said that you were through with me, and of my sort, but I cannot bring myself to believe this. I cannot, Clara! Throughout the years we have been together I never sensed your restlessness, your discontent with our life together! How, how could I have missed the signals? My own eyes, ears and mind have fully betrayed me, and yet they remain as my constant traitorous companions, while you alone have gone.

Is it only the silence and desolation you crave? I would rip out my own tongue to see you again in the dooryard, and my poor heart is more desolate than the plains that call to you. Cattle, my dear - I shall cover our hillside with the creatures you adore.

Say I have not irretrievably lost you. Describe for me your most outlandish wishes and I will build your dream.

Your miserable, loving M.

Dearest Clara,

Although I dare not hope for an Express junction in the Territories, I did foolishly wish for your response this past fortnight. I am rather morose and lonely, but have begun cooking and cleaning again in the vain desire to see you riding up, dry and exhausted from the trail, wishing for a good meal and clean bed. I know I am foolish.

Your sister, Chloe, kindly brought me a supper plate Sunday. Naturally your mother came along, as well, as Chloe's reputation could only suffer from an unchaperoned visit. I was touched, as I had always sensed Chloe's (and certainly your mother's) disapproval of me. The wrong sort, I once heard her say quietly.

I miss you dreadfully and I beg you to write, if only so I might hold the paper you have held, and imagine our hands touching without the intermediates of paper and distance.

I remain your loving M.

Dear Clara,

I imagined your ranch to be remote and wild, far from civilization. Why else would you decline to answer my letters? Any other reason would be cruel. And yet, I was stunned to hear Chloe say, over the picnic lunch she brought, that the Lazy Bar J is barely five miles from the town where you go every two weeks to spend your pay.

Surely, Clara, you are not so hard-hearted that you would deny me the comfort of your correspondence! Say I am mistaken!

Sincerely,
M.

Clara,

Your siser, Chloe, surprised me greatly by agreeing to move into the storage room in my cottage. She has been a great comfort to me in my sorrows, and I cannot deny she is a wonderful cook. Buffalo has never been so delectable!

I hope that you are not upset by this, as I'm sure you would not wish a barren, still house for either of us. This is, of course, an arrangement of convenience. I do need help keeping the cottage, and I never was as good as you at maintaining your lovely garden.

Don't worry, my dear. It appears that Chloe is also "the wrong sort," to my delight. Your mother is not so delighted, and perhaps would appreciate a letter from you.

Best regards,
M.

Clara-Bear,

I hope you don't mind, dear, but we've had your dresses remade to fit Chloe. She is quite a bit smaller than you, so the waists had to be greatly altered. I assured her that you are happy to be rid of them, as they do not fit your life of hard work and solitude.

Please take this little ring you left behind as a token of my affection. Even our talented goldsmith would not be able to reduce it to Chloe's size, and really she deserves to have some things that aren't second-hand.

Be happy for us.

Your pal,
M.

One-Ton Rita

2011-01-26T07:00:00.001-05:00

By February 2nd every year Rita weighs two thousand pounds. You can't tell by looking at her. Her red down coat looks a little salty and soiled, but no more so than anyone else's, and not so you'd guess she has reached an English ton. Every morning she can still get her leaden feet into the same size 8 zip-up boots, always still white from yesterday's salty salvation. She never complains about the salt, because when two thousand pounds slips on the ice, two thousand pounds gets its red coat even dirtier and calls her chiropractor.

One-Ton Rita can still wrap her soft green plaid scarf around her tree-trunk neck the way she could when she was little Rita three months ago and a Halloween cold snap sneaked up on everyone. You can only guess how much Rita weighs by the way she walks (if you can catch her walking) and by the look on her face (if she would meet your eye). Bus drivers see that Rita weighs two thousand pounds before she reaches the door, and the bus kneels before her. ALL HAIL 2000-POUND RITA! Your Massive Majesty, please enter your carriage! and she does, somehow, not because she is interested in going somewhere else, but because she remembers vaguely that somwhere else is expecting her.

Every February second, so reliably that we wonder why we still ask, a woodchuck in a sleepy Pennsylvania village becomes alarmed, not by his own shadow cast by a huge electric floodlamp, but by the flash of cameras suffering a slow news day. Rita is not from Punxatawney, but subscribes to a weekly paper there. She has recorded the wather there on 2/2 for as long as she has enjoyed her subscription, and twice was sunshine reported. She clipped out both reports and slid them under the glass of her coffee table. They have never seen enough sunshine to yellow.

Rita is not the only two thousand pound woman in Ithaca. One-ton women are common here. They're the same women you notice at 120 pounds wearing Flax and Birkenstocks, gliding up Aurora Street deciding where to eat al fresco. Ithaca's gravity is very strong in January, which is a good thing because it keeps people stuck to the ground here. Rita wants to leave every winter, but weighs too much to stand up and pack. She's too heavy to buy a plane ticket. Too huge to get into a southbound car. This morning she lost 1800 pounds, but before she could pull out her iPhone to book a flight the sun was gone again.

Silent haiku

2011-01-25T14:32:00.003-05:00

2011-01-25T13:31:00.001-05:00

Apart from that unfortunate incident in the garden, Winslow had never eaten a fruit softer than a mango - thought that anything easy to eat was a socialist plot. Unaware that her name came up at least once in every meeting of the Junior League, she wouldn't have cared anyway. She had almost no patience for soft things. Foolish, giggling, gossiping, soft-headed women were the worst, and bananas were nearly as bad.

The pillows on her mother's gray chintz sofa annoyed her, and Winslow hauled the pillow-top mattress away the day she got the dump permit for her old Ford pick-up. Soft-shelled clams, soft-boiled eggs, angora rabbits, candlelight, pudding: she wanted no part of these indulgences. She treated herself to unpopped corn on the weekend while watching documentaries on the buildings of England.

Still she wished for company now and then, so she had joined a book club that met once a month. She attended for a month. It had turned out to be a drinking club - not that she had anything against a nightly glass of sherry - but wine with a book makes one's comprehension soft. A neighbor talked her into a knitting group, bu the silky cashmere wool drove her nearly to distraction before she could wrap it back into a ball and drop it into the green steel trash can on her way out the door. She thought a church community might be a good thing, and she approved of the unpadded pews at the Mother of Perpetual Sadness Catholic Church, but soon learned that Father Robert was soft on sin. She decided to keep her cold, hard tithe in her pocket.

Winslow had had a lover once, a man whose flinty jaw and sharp wit had attracted her until she noticed his thought processes becoming flabby and his abs muddled. Distraught, rolling his American Tourister through her living room toward the door, he appealed to the tenderness of her heart, which just showed that he had never known her at all.

Networking

2011-01-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

It used to be that an old friend could stay lost forever so that we always know her with braces and acne but then she got them off and went on tetracycline and was a slut all through her sophomore year. We used to think How great it would be to catch up and see if we can pick up our friendship! but no. She must have married after I left and I'll never find her. Heaps of poign and wist later, some jackass invents Facebook and fast-forwards your easy, pimply friend into your life with pictures of her and her 37 grandchildren all gathered at Bible Study and "click if you like Jesus Christ our Lord and Personal Savior." Awkward. You quietly defriended Jesus fifteen years ago and now he's going to see that you really didn't quit Facebook like you told him in your break-up instant message.

Losing

2011-01-12T13:55:00.001-05:00

I lost an enemy today. I didn't plan it. I didn't see it coming. It was an idle, thoughtful word - I should never have said it! - but there it was and I couldn't take it back. I saw the grateful look cross her face and I could have kicked myself. You dolt! I thought. This cannot be undone! The healing is out there between us and I would give the world to go back in time and ungive that heartfelt compliment. Years of contempt and mutual animosity thrown carelessly away, and I can only blame myself and the hormone replacement therapy. We each walked away, arm in arm, and we knew nothing would be the same again.

Possible and Probable.

2011-01-11T13:54:00.000-05:00

Between the probable and the possible I watch the Possible because it's everything. The Probable fits into a lunch bag of the expected and the Possible is huge, as big as everything. The Possible needs a big bag, a box, a room. You need to move the Possible outdoors, into a meadow big enough to not hold it. Possible says it could happen, and I'm left to try. What would I try if I couldn't fail? Bring it to the Possible meadow. You won't find everyone there. Your mom will remind you to take a sweater - it gets cold in the meadow at night - and she will suggest you carry a bag of Probable with you, just in case. Just in case things don't work out with the Possible, and you need cab fare home. You never know, Mom says, hoping the meadow grass will feed your heart but suspecting you'll need the bag.

2010-03-10T17:18:00.009-05:00

Since Jessie's layoff (she called it "semi-retirement") she spent part of every day scanning old photos and adding them to her online family tree. It was a solitary task that suited her down to her socks, but what she missed was being able to talk about it. If Hank cared one whit about this project she could talk to him about it, but whenever she tried he changed the subject. He wanted the real family, not the idea of family. Finally he was blunt about it and she got the point, but she pouted and refused for a week to answer his calls.

"I know you're screening, Jessie. C'mon, get over it and pick up." She did, and he apologized, but she didn't try again to interest him. He did like to get pictures of Edgar, though, and there were plenty. Edgar never met a camera he didn't like, and even as an older man they liked him back. Today, drinking her second cup of coffee from her favorite mug with the Emerson quote, or maybe it was Thoreau - she had to check every time - she stared at the last picture of him she had taken. He and Louise were still living in the mountains near Ashville. Louise had gone back to Lloyd County with Hank (still Henry then) to see her mama, and Jessie had come without Rob or Bobby. If she had realized Louise would be gone she would have waited and come later. Visits without Louise got too honest, more raw than she was comfortable with. She remembered thinking that someday she'd want to know all this stuff about Edgar, but not right now, and probably not even this stuff. Definitely not that story about his mama.

On the day she had snapped this shot, he had been wearing a red Nike sweatshirt and Jessie had thought he must have picked it out because he looked so good in red. It wasn't true; Louise would have picked it out and even gotten it on sale. Jessie wished again that Louise was there. she preferred Louise to Edgar, preferred Louise to her own mother. Louise had forgiven her for that horrible time when Jessie was twelve, that unspeakable betrayal that Jessie hadn't forgiven herself for. It still made her wince to remember. It hadn't occurred to her to explain, to put the blame where it belonged. She had kept the guilt all to herself and marinated in it. One of her therapists twenty years later had used that word, and Jessie had to admit it worked. Her wife still reminded her that guilt is a useless emotion and mostly, almost always, she believed it.

"You oughta come down sometime when you can meet Henry. He's not a bad kid. My favorite son, you know!" Jessie had nodded agreement. It didn't need to be said that Hank was the favorite, without a qualifier. She had felt vaguely disappointing for eighteen years and had been frankly relieved when the baby had been a boy. Relieved that she hadn't had to be named Henry after her grandfather and relieved not to have been named after anyone at all. Her mother had picked up a baby name book and chosen something she liked, and Jessie had always been happy enough with it. Girls don't have the heavy lifting of carrying names and passing them off like batons to their own children.

Hank loved the picture and responded almost as soon as she hit SEND. He remembered the sweatshirt and confirmed that his mom had found it at a thrift shop the same day he had picked out a red Schwinn at Myer's General. He'd had to wait a while to get the bike. Louise put it on layaway and he'd started X-ing off the days on his oversized wall calendar. He had drawn a bicycle in the square for the day the layaway would be paid off. There was a photo attached, Hank on the bike grinning at the camera and Edgar standing turned slightly away, looking off into the distance.

Hank had sent other pictures, too, and still sent one from time to time. Jessie saw other people's lives in those shots, lives she could almost touch but not quite. Hank was there, she was not, and she gazed into the faces wondering if, behind the smiles, anyone was thinking about her.

Returned to sender

2010-03-08T16:24:00.002-05:00

Jessie worried off and on that she hadn't done quite enough to end the estrangement with Edgar, so every few years she sent a letter of towards Texas and hoped for the best. She liked the romance of addressing an envelope with only "Edgar Markey, Texas," sending it out into the universe, but instead always looked him up on the internet. If that old SOB wants to stay lost, he's met his match with Anywho.com, she thought, but he won this round and the letter came back with the rubber-stamped pointing finger of failure. It didn't matter as much as she thought it might, since Aunt Mary Ann had sent the information she needed. Rena, the cousin of a cousin, had gathered more family facts than Edgar ever could have remembered. Plus, Edgar had a way of being coy with facts and memories, stretching them out like he'd be around forever to give you the next installment. Jessie didn't have the patience. Facts would die with his generation and eighty-seven is no age to be an information coquette.

Aunt Mary Ann disapproved of the way Edgar slipped through people's fingers. She felt uneasy never knowing if she could pick up the phone and expect him to answer. She knew why he avoided Jessie, and she didn't like that, either. Hadn't she had a son, that child of her heart? Hadn't she loved him no matter what, right through his last breath, and still? She loved Edgar fiercely, but didn't see how he could feel so righteous. Jessie suspected he didn't feel righteous at all, that there was something else keeping him gone.

Jessie had pieced together a lot, and the more she worked, the more it felt like a picture. It was a puzzle, with sections living and dead, and she was finally a piece that fit somewhere. Edgar was there, too, like Hank, but it didn't matter so much anymore whether either of them cared or not.

By the time the letter had come back she couldn't remember what she had written. Probably a quick question about his well-being first. It would have been sincere. Jessie wanted to know about hereditary problems like the high cholesterol and blood pressure. Next, probably a question about his grandfather - his name or profession - that Mary Ann or Violet answered weeks ago. Not even relevant. Probably a line or two about Edgar's grandson, but without details about too much weed or a lost driver's license. Jessie could say enough true things without all that. Then a simple "Love, Jessica." She almost tossed it into the recycling bin before she remembered she had enclosed a stamped envelope. No point in wasting that.

Her computer beeped and it was a new email from Hank. His oldest daughter, Ella, was in some sort of a thing at school, a play or a concert, and Jessie was glad they lived a thousand miles apart. She couldn't imagine the kind of family time Hank would require. He didn't care about the tree, about their lineage. He wanted the real family, and he wanted his father. He was relentless. She wanted to stun it out of him. You don't always get to have your daddy. Man up, for chrissake! but she kept it to herself. Susan got exasperated sometimes, too, but she knew where her own father was, and knew where he had been all his life, too. She wouldn't get it, so Jessie had to.

E.M.

2010-02-16T15:23:00.007-05:00

Edgar Markey had lived a long time and was happy to go on living a lot longer. He was afraid to be a burden, and so he had let a lot of people worry instead of help. He imagined dying under the front porch like Blue had done, and Girl back in Jasper. A few had been hit by cars - Edgar didn't see that as a reasonable option like slipping under the porch - and he had buried them all along the way. No cats ever. He had dropped that Siamese along the highway near the shelter and the kid would just have to get over it. Life is hard and there's no sense in hiding that from a child.

Edgar did have sisters. Vi was fifteen months older and Mary Ann thirty-two months younger. They're the only ones left now to worry when they don't know where he's staying. Harv died in his sleep when he was already an old man. Their sister, Anita, was home babysitting four of her grandchildren and just stopped reading Stella Luna to them in her old rocker.

His second wife stopped worrying a dozen years ago, the last time she heard from him. He left while she was grocery shopping. He packed a bag and his tools into that old green Datsun but forgot to leave a note. Going out - back never. Louise is a practical woman. "If he doesn't wanna be here, I don't want him here."

He had had two kids of his own through the years, eighteen years if you care to be exact, and they hadn't met until Jessie wrote to Hank on the occasion of his college graduation. They had started emailing after that, both of them only-children so long and hungry to compare and make sense of their father. Hank had suggested hiring a private detective to find him now and Jessie was indifferent but said she'd chip in, if that's what he wanted. He seemed so determined and eager, and she couldn't see herself dissuading him. Why should she be the downer when she was pretty sure Edgar would greased-pig right out of their grasp again?

Happy Valen-Tiny Day

2010-02-09T13:43:00.005-05:00

This week, a very small tribute to:

Ritchie Valens-tiny,
The Small Bopper, and
Itty-Bitty Holly

~~~~~~~

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice, sure, but not because she's lonely. You think rice fairies clean up after superstitious rituals? Elanor pulls out the old Electrolux, yanks on the cord and tidies up after the latest 50% chance. Some people are optimists, but Eleanor Rigby is the church cleaning-lady.

~~~~~~~

She's a pip, that Apple Seed. A tutti-fruity cutie. She mixes business with pleasure, looking so sweet that a little cyanide won't kill you.

~~~~~~~

It turned out that Miss Bitty wasn't all that small, which was fine with her and so what if other people didn't like it? Of course, not many people would say they didn't like it, certainly not to Bitty's face and then definitely not more than once. The first time you could chalk it up to being mean or foolhardy, but the second time would just have been pure stupidity. Bitty didn't suffer fools gladly. She was much better at gladly making fools suffer.

Not that big is all Bitty was - oh no. Bitty was a force of nature. Not nasty or destructive, like a bolt of lightening or a tornado. No, if Bitty liked you, she loved you and that was all there was to it. Then she would be a force of nature like a big live oak tree that you sit under on a Florida August afternoon. Otherwise, she was like the sun on the same day. You wanted Bitty to like you no matter what you had to do. That sounds like it was hard, but it wasn't, not if you were sweet and nice and not mean like Elmer Sneed. He was just plain mean, plus stupid, which is a bad mix anywhere but especially around Miss Bitty and especially especially if the stupid is bigger than the mean. And that's all I'm going to say about Elmer, because it's not right to speak ill of him now. Before last March you could speak ill of him all you wanted. Bitty didn't bother with talking though, and that's why someone like me needs to tell the story, because it isn't going to tell itself.

What I Want to Tell You About Water

2010-01-25T10:41:00.002-05:00

I walked along the same path every day; it was just a concrete bridge over a stream. Only once was a fat dog trapped in the water. I skidded down the embankment and pulled the dog out, but he didn't bite me and I didn't hurt myself, so it's not much of a story.

Heedlessness
Deep water
Lifeguards' whistles.
Alternate endings told in semaphore.

We stood at Niagara's fringe in yellow slickers and I laughed to imagine the great Falls soaking me one drop at a time. He reproached me for too much fun. Maybe he really died from lack of joy.

Cats don't mind water, but are terrified of shampoo.

I have been practicing Navy showers, which are best in July. In January I leave the water running and tell myself there's time for conservation in the desert.

We floated down the Ichetucknee River in inner tubes while snakes swam past without even water-wings. Clear-water streams meet tea-brown rivers and are swallowed. I shudder to imagine being pushed from the light into the dark and disappearing.

Beer is mostly water.

An Act in Three Plays

2010-01-24T10:13:00.000-05:00

He picked up the flask, glanced at her, put it down. She watched him without expression. He studied a knot on the pine floor; it had oozed resin as a green log and the sap had hardened into amber, trapping the past. She watched him. He picked up the tiny bottle, fingered its jade cap, worn smooth from centuries of decisions like this one. He looked into her jade eyes, similarly worn. He hesitated. He set it down. Her expression didn't change, but he grew more agitated. He pulled his fingers through his hair repeatedly. Like a man leaping from a pier into the eternally icy waters of Hell, he unstopped the flash and drank it down. Finally, she smiled. She took his hand and they left the house together.

The fluid was called Verdigris after its gray-green shimmer in the bottle, but no one had ever explained exactly what it was or how it had come to rest on her mother's dressing table. She had heard the story, of course; she could already tell it perfectly herself, but she still loved to hear the aunts tell it. She had asked questions every time, sometimes the same old questions, sometimes new ones as she grew. Always the reaction was the same. the sisters' eyes would open wide and one finger would cover their lips. A warning.

Her mother permitted her to touch the bottle, even to pick it up when she got older. She felt very grown-up the first time, even though her mother cupped the tiny hands in her own. How many times had Mama warned about carelessness? Too many to remember but the secret danger made the flask larger than life. Maybe larger than death, if she had been a dramatic child.

When the cup breaks, Mama had said once, the tea loses its shape. You will see it briefly on the earth, then it will be gone to you. This made no sense, no matter how many times she turned it in her head. She tried to remember if Mama had been drinking tea when she said it, but the memory felt like a voice in the fog.

She watched the colors play on her hand as she held the flask to the afternoon light in the window. Even things that must never break sometimes do. She woke from a daydream to hear an animal scream in the distance as the fluid danced briefly on the floor like mercury, then vanished. She jumped away from the shards to confess to the sisters what she had done, and the house remained silent.

My mother taught me to use less perfume than I needed. "People stop smelling themselves," she warned, "but other people smell them just fine." I heard it as an etiquette lesson and nothing else, until I saw The Bottle. The Bottle had come from a roadside shop, the kind that sells Evening in Paris and Orange Blossom Express. I was drawn to those cobalt bottles, sure that something magical lived inside. Maybe not just a delicious scent but a tiny genie who could actually whisk me away to a French twilight or an open-air train through the Florida groves. This Bottle was different, and someone should have known better than to leave a Bottle like that lying around, even if that someone was my mother, and someone should have known better than to pick that bottle up, even if that someone was eleven years old.

2010-01-23T09:54:00.000-05:00

On the bus I get mean, and sometimes I'm afraid that the bus Jessica is the Real Me. I start wondering why two people so stupid and ugly keep making babies, I mean GROSS! Or why that old man gets on the bus every day and goes back up to Cornell, even though he's way too old to be really working and everyone there must feel all sorry for him because he doesn't have anything better to do. There isn't even anything to do on campus besides shop, and who wants all that stupid Cornell stuff? I'm never going to school here! I'm going far from here, either to UCLA or Brown or Northwestern or SUNY Cobleskill. Cornell sucks. Except for hockey. Hockey rules and I don't kow if they play hockey at UCLA because it's not very cold there. Anyway, I hate riding the bus some days because everyone is such a loser and even when I sit on the outside and put my earbuds in people want to sit down next to me and I have to move over. Someone fat - gross! - and it wouldn't hurt you to stand up, lady cow, it burns calories! But, see, that's what I'm talking about, because in real life I'm super-nice and friendly! Ask my friends! Christy and Eric and Rain and August and Andrea - they all totally like me. Except for August and Eric. I think they're mad at me because it seems like they hate me. Sometimes I think they all hate me because some days I'm fat and disgusting and I hate me, so why wouldn't they? I got a zit this morning and even the stupid fat losers on the city bus didn't want to sit down next to me. I make me sick!!! I feel so gross.

My mom wants to go shopping on Saturday. Why can't she get her own friends?? Except, if I go with her, she'll probably get me whatever I want, even the low-rise jeans at the Gap if we have lunch first and she's not so grouchy. She eats all the time - seriously- she's eating like three or four times a day. I eat an ice cream sandwich for lunch, but she makes me eat something for dinner that was a plant once. I'm trying to lose five pounds by the wekend so I don't look like a cow at Andrea's pool party. I'm so gross. 112 pounds. I look totally disgusting.

Andrea is acting so immature - what is she, 12? She says something ridiculous about me and laughs like a big idiot about some joke no one else gets. I want to smash her stupid face in and laugh really hard and see how she likes it.

On the way home I have to ride with Mrs. Loud. Her voice could, like, break glass. She's so stupid, too, and I can't get her voice to stay out of my head even when I turn my Nano way up. She should be one of those tour guides or a teacher who shoves knowledge into your ears whether you want it or not. Except, she's not saying anything smart or funny and the only knowledge she shoves into your ears is how much she paid this week to fix her stupid car. And she's always talking to some other stupid woman who acts like its the most interesting thing she's ever heard and I want to smash both their faces in and see if they think that's interesting.

I heard this great group, Aerosmith, and I told my mom she should hear them, but she just laughed. Whatever, it's your loss.

I just started yoga and I'm getting so enlightened!!! It makes me feel really super calm except that it lasts too long and I get bored. It's still pretty cool, though, and I get filled with great love and peace. That's why I hate riding home with loud, ugly, stupid, fat people because they ruin it for me. Why can't I have a car??? I'll be driving by next summer and should definitely have a car ready. It doesn't have to be new. I keep telling my parents it could be like a 2009 or a 2008. If it's something like a Beemer or a Mini Cooper it could be a 2007, because they hold their value longer. That's what I'll say to Dad, because it's pointless to talk to him about what's cool. He still thinks his PT Cruiser is cool. If I had my own car I would probably never get mad again because I'd never, ever have to hear stupid people talk.

She Said

2010-01-22T10:30:00.001-05:00

There's no time to wash your hair, he says. You look perfect, he says. I just thought of it this very minute, he says. I have to listen to my genius when she speaks.

Mystery, my ass. I haven't had my coffee, and this is last season's dress. He said it matched my eyes, but my eyes are not green! As though it matters. Leonard, you big flamer, you're not even looking at my boobs. I am smiling. Look, if your genius was so hot to see my teeth, she would have given me two minutes to brush them.

Ecch, I feel slim. All I can say is, no one else better ever see this painting.

Threes

2010-01-11T16:23:00.001-05:00

102° in the shade, and what could possibly be so important that we sit out here in the sun waiting for some damn train - pardon my French. And, a girdle? You have got to be kidding, and you are lucky I even put on these stockings, rolled down below my knees. What is the point of that, anyway. Not even a damn water fountain - pardon my French. Naturally, Isobel has on her girdle, but she still has a man at home, God help her. I buried Frank on a Saturday, rest his soul, and by Thursday that ring was in the jewelry box and the girdles were in the garbage. If it's not gold to choke the life outta you, it's Lycra. I wish I had a beer.

Dear sweet Lord, it is hot! Esther doesn't give a fig about how she looks, but I'd take a backside full of lumps if I could slip out of this girdle. Henry would go apoplectic if I ever left the house like that. It's probably what killed Frank. Oh, I don't mean that. Esther's my best friend, but she's too set in her widow's ways to ever find a man again. Will that train ever get here? Darlene getting married in velvet - land's sake. But who expected a September like this? I can't believe I walked out of the house in white shoes. I guess my brain don't believe it's September neither, and my feet don't care. I wish I had a Coke.

My word. these gals sure look hot. Why don't Esther just roll them stocking right on off? What is the point of that, anyhow? Sitting over there, looking like she'd bite you soon as look at you. Just the heat, I guess. Land! It sure is hot.

I guess I done alright by Isobel. Henry's a good man. Not one for having a good time much, but that suits Isobel just fine. I don't imagine she's had a good time since she accidentally had fun at the church picnic. Which shows you you shouldn't drink beer in public no matter how hot the day.

Quit checking your watch, Isobel. That train is not going to roll any quicker if you look at the time. What's your goddam hurry to get to another wedding? Another wedding for Darlene, of all things. One man apiece is more than enough without sniffing around for extras. I wish I had my Joe.

Of Her Own

2010-01-10T10:51:00.004-05:00

Her mother was scandalized by her Nevada divorce, nevermind that it was her second. She thought she was keeping it secret pretty well, but damn Ed and his big mouth. Selfish. And that had been the whole problem. That had been part of the problem. He was selfish. She was selfish.

The things he wanted were things he could only get from her: a clean house, children, holiday dinners. The things she wanted she could only get for herself. The divorce wrung her out, and so she had remained for nearly a year. Juiceless, balled up and paper-dry.

The words, at first, were tightly wadded things. Dense, clotted bits of her soul that she seemed to hack off with her pen. You can still read them somewhere, in one of those old notebooks. She would be mortified to think of someone reading them now; in fact, you may feel a little dirty as you open the pages. Like reading your mother's high school diary. So, go read them or don't. I can only tell you so much.

Her first marriage had been almost too brief to count as a marriage, but too long to be annulled. After two weeks she sat across from him at the breakfast table and wondered, "Is this it?"

The words began - so slowly! - to unclench inside her. They weren't easy words. Some of them were ugly, and some days they made her ill. That's when you or I would have laid down the pen, but she couldn't. Not yet. It’s no wonder she never wrote when she was with Ed. He reminded her of her bedtime each night and reminded her he was hungry. He kept such regular hours. He had a tidy mind. And so, as he breathed, he wrote. Pages flew from his hand as sandwiches and coffee appeared at his side and empty plates and cups vanished.

One morning she mentioned her own office. Ed laughed. She knew which room it should be, and she pressed him. It isn't that he forbade it; that would have been absurd. It's just that that room was to be a nursery soon and what's wrong with writing in the kitchen? The table is spacious, and may we please discuss this after lunch?

She never wrote like he did, like breathing or daydreaming. For her it was laboring (she imagined) to deliver a child that never quite got born. When she read the words back -- those red, angry, wailing thoughts -- she was disgusted, but she didn't stop.

Her biographers say her work came from her pain. From what I could see, it was entirely the other way around.

Silk Noir

2010-01-09T09:37:00.002-05:00

It's a tough business. She was sweet - that's the thing. She was a picture that didn't need a caption. I fell for her like everyone else. Eyes as black as the coffee I drink to do my work and hers, too. Eyes like the chocolate I slide onto her desk before she gets in around noon. My desk. I don't mind so much.

She wears dresses that could stop your heart. Those dresses pull the clients in by the rings in their noses. Even that tough old dame who wouldn't give us the time of day. Go figure. It didn't matter. We were stuck to her like flies to the tape.

See, she gets the clients, but we're the grunts. Didn't start out like that. I was the Big Dog before she came. Curves like a mile of Tennessee road. Fellas slipped me chocolates on those days. That was all before her. Now she runs the show. Owns us all, heart and soul.

Like I said, I was Top Cat. They called me The Broad Who Can, and it ain't 'cause my can is broad. We had a spot, needed an agent. I put an ad in the Gazette: Wanted: Cream of the crop Commission only Bonus if bringing clients DEarborn 6-1234 She shows up - no call. Pretty brassy. In my doorway, but giving Johnny and Theo that smile like a high beam. Those headlights weren't lost on me, either.

"Thanks, boys. I'm sure this dame can hold herself up now. Can't you, honey?"

"I can do better than that." She turned that smile like a lighthouse beacon on me.

Easy does it I thought. You've made a fool of yourself before over a pretty face and a killer figure. This little number is just like all the rest.

"I asked for the best, Missy. Whatcha got?"

"I bring five clients. They jump when I jump."

"Where're you jumping from?"

"Best you don't know, due respect." She's a tough nut. "It might create an "ethical dilemma" for you. Know what I mean?"

One cool little cucumber, but I was feeling hot under the collar. If I had been wearing a collar. Her eyes plunged like my neckline, danced around my collarbones, then jumped back into her head and met my gaze. This lady was reading me like a book, like a box of corn flakes. She was reading me like a billboard. I didn't like that one bit. I liked it a little bit. She was dangerous. A loose cannon. A joker in the deck.

Those five clients made me tingle, too. This agency needed clients, and times were hard. I had to think about the agency.

"Come in tomorrow. Eddie'll find you a desk and you can get started."

"I can start Monday, " she says. Cool little number. I could see I was gonna have to remind her who was queen bee around here. I'd shown those fellas, and she was no different. She was a little different. But, I'm a professional. The agency comes before my private life, and that's just that. Private.

I came around my desk. In these heels, I'm as tall as the men, and I've gotta be. Keep their respect. I shrugged. "We need someone tomorrow. It's you or it's someone else. Your call."

Her eyes never left mine. They went all sad and soft, just like I was going all soft in the head. "This is the best shop in town. I'd kill to work for you! I just can't start 'till Monday. It's a promise I made, you know?"

She made for her purse like she was going for a tissue. Her hand brushed my leg. I told you. She read me like a road map. She read me like a street sign. "Fine," I told her, kicking myself. "Nine a.m. sharp."

She flashed that smile like a miner's lamp. "You won't be sorry," she said, all cool again just like that. Oh yes I will be, I thought. Just not on Monday.

That was fourteen months ago, that Tuesday. I know how she likes her coffee. When I come in to take dictation - just a favor I do her - she shares her chocolates. She doesn't know I brought them. She might know. We all do it. I've been growing my hair since February. She likes that. She gives me fashion tips, too. Says her clients like to see a secretary looking like a dish. "You're keepin' 'em coming back." She winked at me. She slid my dress over my knees, like the girls on Randolph wear. Almost like that. "Like this." She didn't move her hands. "Those gams are killer." And turned on that smile like an emergency flare.

Every Day is Ladies' Day

2010-01-08T08:53:00.002-05:00

You had to have someone like Lailey in a beauty parlor. Curled, plucked, painted and rouged, the blue velvet dress she wore every Tuesday just set off her Forever Amber eyes. I saw a cat with eyes that color once, but never a stand-up-on-two-feet woman.

Her apartment was so splendid. She invited me up one Tuesday after her manicure - she lived two buildings over, just over the Set-A-Spell Diner - and I just stopped right then trying to be sophisticated and elegant. Her curtains were red velvet like the rope outside the ticket window at the Bijou. Like the curtains in a bordello, Frannie would say, but she has a mouth on her and no client of hers has ever invited her to tea. Frannie likes to say Hair today, gone tomorrow! to the old ladies under the dryers when they can't hear. She has another irritating mannerism, but it's not a good one to talk about in polite society.

"... wasting time on gin rummy" was all I caught from what she was saying and I figured I ought to say something about that, but Mama spends a lot of time on gin rummy herself, especially on Saturday night when Miss Shellynn and Miss Rachel come over, Miss Rachel always bringing a half-filled paper bag holding yesterday's crullers. Mama sees those crullers coming and says under her breath I guess our troubles are over, but she's been saying it so long she doesn't make herself laugh anymore. Sometimes it tickles me, though, so I guess I'm keeping it going.

That apartment was like sugar on pie. It had kind of a funny smell, like maybe the litter pan was just one day past due, but I didn't care one whit. She turned on a lamp next to her fancy sofa, and it gave off a beautiful pink glow. She had draped a scarf over it, and I was afraid it might catch fire, but that's none of my business and she's twice my age so she's been turning on lights longer than I have and knows a thing or two about not catching things on fire.

"Have a seat, dear. This is normally my afternoon for whist, but today I just can't face the familiar phobias of my three dearest friends." I nodded like I could just imagine how trying that might be for her. "Bernice has a fit until I turn off this lamp. She is sure I'm going to burn us all up as we're bidding." I nodded again and made a little face to show I couldn't imagine worrying about such a thing.

"Tell me something interesting about yourself, dear," and I blurted out the first thing I thought which was that next Tuesday is my birthday. "Will you be taking the day off?" she asked me, but that was something I hadn't thought of before. I started thinking how Clarice and Pug might not care much if I took off, especially if the parlor isn't so booked up, or else maybe I could call in sick Tuesday morning. I could call first thing while my throat is still froggy and I sound all croupy, but then I remembered that they're both invited to my party that night and would see how I'm not so sick after all. I should invite Lailey! It would be Tuesday, so she'd be wearing this same dress but she'd be sitting in our kitchen with the chipped white sink and the light over the table with the string instead of her beautiful pink-light lamp ... and then I remembered that she had asked me a question and I just said "No Ma'am." And I decided Lailey should never, ever be sitting at Mama's old Formica kitchen table, cake or no cake, gin rummy or whist.

"You know what I like about Beulah's salon, Dipsy?" I shook my head. "Every day is ladies' day!" and she laughed a tiny laugh like she hadn't thought it was all that funny, but she didn't want to hurt her own feelings. I tried laughing that same polite way, but I accidentally snorted the way I do when Frannie says something naughty in fake French while she's sweeping up hair. Lailey didn't seem to notice, but I wanted to fall into the floor and die, or maybe just die and let someone else worry about what to do with my dead body.

I jumped up like I had springs on my behind and said "I got a manicure in five minutes, Miss Lailey. Thank you so much for inviting me to your beautiful lamp ... " and then I flew out her door and back to Beulah's. Nope. I was not going to invite Lailey to my house, not next Tuesday or in this natural lifetime.

LaFonda Fireberry

2010-01-07T09:18:00.002-05:00

She was the queen of the show, that La Fonda Fireberry. I never even liked drag shows, but Maria told me I was being a drag, so I paid my money and sulked. I pouted through Hedda Lettuce, wasting my salad days, and idly picked my teeth through Ginger Vitis' act.

Then, La Fonda took the stage. Curves that shouted SLOW DOWN: CAMP AHEAD! Curls the color of the sun in my Tequila Sunrise. I raised my glass to her. She sashayed her way over and sang just to me, and when I pulled that portrait of Jackson out of my pocket, she let me slip it right down the front of her dress.

These days I'm not so big on reality. La Fonda ruined me for all women. She left a fireberry-red nylon hair on my sweater, and a size 15 stiletto through my heart.

Broken

2010-01-06T16:27:00.005-05:00

It's too much, she thought, to think about tonight. Tonight I'll drink tea and meditate and go to bed. After all, tomorrow is another day.

She rummaged through the boxes for a teapot and settled for the ancient Lo-Heat stainless steel pan her grandfather had bought sixty years ago. It hadn't occurred to her before to wonder why Papa Joe had bought such fancy cookware. Nana had been dead thirty years - after that, the girls had done all the cooking. The story went that Papa would tease the girls by pretending not to know who had cooked that night. "I can always tell Norma's biscuits - dry as dirt!" Hazel and Norma both got themselves into a snit over stuff like that. Mary Anne was too little and didn't have to cook anyway.

It really was all too much to think about, but Orla thought about it anyway. She could never keep all this stuff. Matt would be patient for a few days, but after that would begin to fidget and clear his throat a lot, like he was starting to speak but had thought better of it. After a week of that, he wouldn't be thinking better of it anymore and that's when the fights would start. Orla wasn't ready to fight and didn't expect to be ready in two weeks.

Patrick didn't care about these things. Not really. He had heard the stories and had looked at the pictures. Maybe the three-dimensional glass and porcelain and steel would capture his heart and close the connection. She knew she was kidding herself. This stuff was not the reality, and no matter how many stories she told, she could never make these things real. What she needed was Smell-o-vision. Papa's house had always smelled vaguely like meat, which was probably the bacon grease in the green beans or the pork knuckles in the collards. Orla had tried cooking like that for Matt when they had been newly married, back when his patience was still thick and she was relaxed in her life. He had eaten it without saying much, refusing seconds. Before long he started mentioning saturated fat and cholesterol when they weren't at the table. He bought her a heavy non-stick pan and her mama's cast iron pots disappeared. She just realized that. When had she last seen them? No, really, it is too much to think about tonight.

Orla switched off the gas and looked around for a cup. Matt would have reminded her that that's what you do while the water is heating instead of staring out into the blackness just beyond the window. She opened the thick pecan cupboard door to the left of the sink, but it was an unproductive reflex because the cups were in a box in the living room. She padded across the old familiar planks to find what she needed. The first she came to was a white china cup that had been repaired at least once. Tonight it was missing just one triangular piece from the rim. Matt would have tossed it in one expert arc into the metal trash can in the corner. Something that broken isn't worth keeping. She pulled it out of the box and went back to the kitchen.

Orla stared at the cup then around the big kitchen. The light over the stove was on, but she had left off the bright overhead light with the long string. She reached into her purse for the phone and hit "Home."

Matt? I'm going to need to stay longer than I thought. There's too much. No, no need. Stay there.

Something that broken isn't worth keeping.

Wanted.

2010-01-06T16:26:00.001-05:00

I've wanted to tell you this for the longest time, but I never had a greeting card small enough.

A Borrower and a Lender Be.

2010-01-06T15:59:00.004-05:00

My mother hid in barrels and read all day. She took apples in with her. I think my Grandma Vera practiced relaxed parenting. I loved to read just as much, but never had a barrel and never wanted one. I preferred caramel cubes to apples, but I was willing to mix it up. Gnawed cores or cellophane wrappers - reading always leaves a tell-tale sign.

I went to the library this week, kickin' it old-school. I slid up and down the aisles, judging books by their covers, not even knowing how many stars Amazon readers had given them. When I met Annie she read a lot, and every book was new off the bookstore shelves. That's its own thrill, and I feel it, too, but when I asked her about her library card I saw one, two, three blinks of incomprehension before we were on the same page and could turn it. I've lured her to the Frugal Side.

It has always seemed that I should have to work to borrow a book. Maybe sweat into the oak card catalog drawer for a while. Run my fingers over the softened cardboard file cards with one hole at the bottom as a security measure. A brazen reader, indeed, who would rip the card from its steel rod. Then the scrap of paper, a stubby pencil and the hunt was on. I got dizzy the first time I realized I could ask for a book online and it would come right to my library. Now I'm waiting for the day it comes to my mailbox. But, it's snowy today - could you walk it to my door? Just leave it wrapped outside - I'm in my bathrobe.

Beware of This and That

2009-12-08T07:14:00.005-05:00

This is a waste of time, Innocence thought, and pitched the urn, the bicycle, and herself cheerfully into the abyss. Only her mother and the tabloids noticed.

Cecily's grandmother told her every morning to Beware of This and That, and Cecily had almost stopped noticing. Her mother often said things like "Watch out for boys with shiny shoes, " and "Look both ways seven times before crossing the street" and "Don't marry a man who smiles a lot," which were tiresome to hear while also eating a bowl of lumpy oatmeal without sugar because Cecily's mother also said "Eating sugar will make your children simple." But these warnings at least gave Cecily something to watch for. She could always cross the road, dizzy but unharmed, should a smiling man with patent leather shoes approach her, but how in the world could she be expected to Beware of This and That?

Cecily's grandmother thought Cecily's mother was dull-witted. Cecily wondered if sugar was to blame. Cecily's mother did lack imagination, she thought, but probably just didn't want her daughter to slip into the Abyss of Indiscretion, as she herself had done when a smiling man with shiny shoes hit her with his horse. Cecily's grandmother had been rather relieved at the time, having suffered great pangs of guilt for naming her daughter Innocence. Unluckily, Innocence had rummaged around in the Abyss, found the cracked Urn of her Reputation, and the crumpled frame of her Bicycle of Propriety and had resumed her ride with squeaky fervor. Only this time it was worse, because now she was wearing the Galoshes of Remorse. Cecily's grandmother knew the dangers of too many warnings.

Donald Imagined Things: a Gorey story

2009-12-08T06:47:00.003-05:00

No matter where he went, Donald imagined things. Donald was not delusional, nor ill, nor even particularly special in any way. He possessed a healthy imagination and knew when he was using it. But, sometimes - just sometimes - he wished he wouldn't use it so much.

Donald's imagination frightened him a little, because he couldn't always turn it off once he had turned it on, and now and then he didn't care for the way things went. Tthis time, for example. In the daylight it wouldn't have mattered so much, but after everyone else was asleep it could be terrifying to try to get into his own bed when a small boy already seemed to be there.

Outfit to be Tied.

2009-08-26T07:44:00.007-04:00

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

2009-06-09T10:46:00.005-04:00

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 the 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

2009-04-17T08:30:00.003-04:00

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.

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. 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 zirconias. I saw it had burned her ring 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.

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

¡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

Remember?

2008-04-07T15:28:00.002-04:00

You thought you were The Shit, winter! Now you can bite me! You'll never win again, NEVER!!!

Where I get all Georgia O'Keefe on your ass.

2008-04-07T15:26:00.000-04:00

Look at me when I'm talking to you.

2008-04-07T15:05:00.001-04:00

Look at me when I'm talking to you., originally uploaded by ¡Vizcacha!.

2008-04-06T10:06:00.002-04:00

2007-11-12T14:14:00.000-05:00

They'll stone you and then say "Good luck"

2007-08-20T20:32:00.001-04:00

heavyfine(2), originally uploaded by Stefson.

The real origin of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats

2007-08-14T07:39:00.001-04:00

The real origin of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, originally uploaded by Ape Lad.

Well, color me duh. The grandfather of LOLCATZ.

Look Out! It's Green!

2007-08-06T10:36:00.000-04:00

NY Green Fest 2007.

Check out the topics! I'm hooked.

More rum, and better conditions.

2007-08-06T09:29:00.001-04:00

We've had nae wind for seven days, Cap'n, and we're tired o' the whip! All we want is some RESPECT! And some FUN! We want to ride on that boat!

Neighbors say: She Was A Loner; Nice Enough, Though.

2007-08-06T08:18:00.000-04:00

I've begun reading The Artist's Way.

That's just peachy. I'm here, admitting it to no one at all, but I don't mind. The thing is, during my third day of Morning Pages, I became so angry that I broke my pen. The Fuck? I flew into a rage. My quill became a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Because of ... uh ... what?

Self-discovery is all well and good, but what if the Me I discover is completely unhinged? Who will do the laundry?

I read things. I'm also musical, and an excellent driver.

2007-07-24T17:52:00.000-04:00

Hiding from Harry.

2007-07-24T17:17:00.000-04:00

I'm doing a frenetic little dance through the World-Wide Web: seeking information about my globe, while avoiding what really matters. So, I'm stopping here, my little oasis with absolutely no traffic. Like ducking into the Peruvian craft store at the mall.

2007-07-10T07:57:00.001-04:00

West of Watkins Glen, NY.

The Year I Died.

2007-07-10T07:44:00.000-04:00

The Year I Died

I wish I could say there was something in the air that year. Something that set it apart. Remember that year the cows wouldn’t calve and the wheat turned black in the field? There wasn’t. Winter came late, spring came, flowers bloomed, grass grew immoderately and harbored rogue dandelions without remorse. So normal. It will be the same for you, you’ll see.

Even my death sprouted quietly; a second look, a second thought, a second opinion: Does this feel strange to you? The surgeon’s receptionist, sympathetic, with a full calendar she squeezed me into. I railed against the ordinariness.

Wouldn’t you think a year would be time enough to finish? I did. In a way it was: It was time enough to plan. My emotions flashed around me like mercury. All business, like I had always been, I would dissolve instantly into fecklessness, then re-emerge.

It was time enough for loose ends. A friend told me I was lucky to have the chance to close things up. Get my affairs in order. He was right, but I never forgave him for saying so. You won’t either; should you have such a friend, you’ll see.

She could never cry easily. I always thought of the Wicked Witch, melting into her own tears. I waited a long time to tell her – too long. She hasn’t forgiven me for that, either.

The green plot I had planned on? I finally bought it, and made the funeral arrangements before she knew. Did I say she hates to cry?

She could never have chosen to put me in the dirt. Later, she liked it, the oak I had planted there, and the warm, rough stone that hugs the earth. She went there a lot. Eventually, she went less and less, but never stopped altogether, even when a new life began. Sometimes, the woman leans with her against my tree.

My son – so grown already! He was a man before that year began. He was past my worry, my dread for his future. He could already see his future, his life, his family. I got a glimpse of it, too. He got a little money, not much. I never intended to leave him a fortune, just an education and some good sense. The money became a down-payment on their first home, the one where both children were born.

I told you she hates to cry? That never changed. I wrote letters so I wouldn’t have to see her grief. So she wouldn’t have to see mine. Some of them felled entire forests. Some were a sentence long. Dozens burned.

You’ll love someone again, I wrote. You think you won’t, but you’re too good at it. I’m not saying you should meet someone at the service. Just don’t reject the idea. Some day it won't seem so impossible. You’ll see.

Don’t make any big decisions for a while, Sweetie. Don’t keep the house for me, but don’t decide anything for a year. Okay?

There’s a hornet’s nest in the lilac again – please be careful!

The password to my email is Gotcha! in case you want it. Tom B. is the insurance agent, and Edward D. manages my 401(k). Their numbers are on the fridge.

John is a smart kid, but he doesn’t understand money. Please try to get him to start saving now. Work with Becca – I think she has a good head on her shoulders.

I love you more than I can say. Keep moving.

And so on.

I have forgotten much of that year, that year I died. So have they, but that’s okay. They still get sad in the autumn, at that ragged time when the leaves have given up, because that’s when I gave up, too. Not because I was ready, like the romantics will tell you, or because it was my time. It was like all those summers in the pool, trying to break my own breath-holding record. Eventually, I had to give up and shoot toward the surface, desperate for the relief the hot air would bring.

Think of me as shooting toward the surface.

I take pictures.

2007-07-09T16:46:00.001-04:00

I don't worry that they're not perfect. You shouldn't, either.

Bob hates you

2007-07-09T16:41:00.001-04:00

Bob hates you, originally uploaded by ¡Vizcacha!.

I'll let you off with a warnin' this time, lil' lady,

2007-07-09T14:52:00.000-04:00

but potato chips must be finished off in one sitting. Eat safely, Ma'am.