Yesterday I went on a

And here I was all terrified this morning, because my thesis advisor wanted to call me at home and I have Cringy Puppy Syndrome. It turns out that all she wanted was to catch up with me and tell me what to get done while she’s on vacation.

Things are good–Mr. Husband is working for the next three days so we will be able to cover Frannie tuition and food. Sometimes things just work out.

N.B.: You can use money to hire a hot tub full of jiggly bikini girls, or it can get you killed or sent to jail. How can money be so evil, yet so delightful?

I am victorious because I cut my hair without being under the influence of PMS, so I did not end up with a faux-hawk or a bad weave or something. I almost cut my bangs short again, because I had thirty seconds of, “oh wouldn’t it be cute to have widdle bangs with the widdle choppy bob?” but I refrained, thank god. I have always meant to write up a list of about twenty reasons why I shouldn’t have bangs, and then to put it in an envelope marked “Self: open when you have that look in your eye and you are sharpening the hair scissors.”

It is an Okay haircut. I took this picture using my father-in-law’s sexy new Pentax Optio, which indeed fits in an Altoid tin, as the ads promise. You could probably swallow the thing and not realize it.

Now I will begin the wrestling match with the university’s Human Subjects Division. You have to fill out a book-sized application stating your research methodology, partners, purpose, etc. They are notoriously bureaucratic and difficult, but fortunately I have people who have defeated them before. I will be victorious.

This is the part where we cue the theme from Brazil, and I get everything signed in triplicate.

Part One: Epiphany

The meeting was fine, but the important part is the bike part.

Ah, I was so happy yesterday, flying down the Burke-Gilman trail on the way to school. The very end of the street I live on is the beginning of the trail, so all I have to do is coast down about fifty blocks and I’m there. I never knew how close the trail goes to the water, and that it goes right under the freeway. It even passes the “Wall of Death,” a big sculpture that was put up ten years ago. I read it has to do with those motorcyclists that ride inside of cages in a big circle…but that sounds more like a Ball of Death.

The way back was trickier. I was tired from riding down, and Eighth Avenue only goes up on the way back. Hooray for the bus! I was always afraid of those bike racks on the front of the bus, like I would not be able to figure them out and the bus driver would have to climb down and grumble at me, but it was really fine. You put your bike into a slot for the wheels and put a hook over the front, and that is that. I did hit myself in the face with my handlebars, though, because my face always gets in the way. It is always poking out or looking at something.

Something else happened on the way back yesterday: I got really hot. I was wearing a tee shirt and shorts and I was cranking along on the trail, and thought, “what if I just roll my sleeves up, to my shoulders?” What if? I hadn’t done that in ten years.

I hide my arms most of the time because I am pretty scarred from all the self-mutilation that went on in high school. I was slashing myself up pretty regularly when I was sixteen or so. If I was out at a party then I was burning myself with cigarettes, because I was too punk to be alive, even. So I hid my arms for a long time, because regular people thought I crashed through a plate-glass window or something and would say so.

Lately when I talk to people about it, and they see my arms, they say they can hardly tell what happened. I am a sucky healer, so it took them a long time to fade. I kind of don’t believe those people, like they are just being nice. I usually see the scars with big neon-red outlines, just like Lady MacBeth.

I went along yesterday, being all anonymous on my bike and I glanced down at my arms occasionally. They looked sad and white, and a little jiggly from too much Internetting lately. But not really scarred. It’s nice to get older, and see things more how they really are.

But I’m not going to run out and buy some toob tops or anything.

Part Two: Ass Pain and Nostalgia

I was thinking about when I was a little kid and I used to get my bike out as soon as the snow turned into slush and didn’t come back. I would ride all around in my winter coat and see what had changed since I was confined to my own neighborhood all winter. You could find a raccoon carcass in a melting pile of snow, or some snowdrops poking up.

My butt was always sore for the first few days, and then it wasn’t anymore. I guess my question for today is: what happens to your butt that makes it not sore anymore? I guess you get Internal Ass Calluses.

Holy shit! I think I just hit on a name for Mr. Husband’s band! (They have all ready rejected my previous extremely awesome suggestions: “The Atonal Fuckheads” and “Bitchiro.”)

So, after five years of on-and-off, up-and-down, through sickness and health, I am breaking up with Jogging. I just can’t do it anymore. I was looking pretty good this winter, when I was eating stress and drinking paranoia, and also pre-baby in Phoenix where everyone weighs five pounds, so you have to keep up…but I just have to stop before my knees do.

The problem is, of course, that after a month off, I look down and I see saddlebags that have nothing to do with no horse.

This morning I got out my old ’56 bernana-yellow Raleigh and pumped up the tires. I forgot the thing weighs about 800 pounds what with the steel frame and all, but it has this seat…a seat to die for. The bike was built for the mens, but someone added the seat later and it is wide as the Giant Head of Steve Martin. And probably just as comfortable.

It brings back so many memories…me getting a flat on the University Bridge, me hauling it up the very skinny stairs to the backroom of my record store job. It still has the Rocket from the Crypt sticker on it that my eighteen-year-old self thought was totally badass. I’d replace it, but it’s really hard to find Lee Morgan stickers. I am so lame now. But I accept my lameness, because when I don’t I usually just fall down and look stupid.

In Other News

While I was writing this, damn Nietzsche was eating the crapping butter that I set out to cook my eggs with. She was licking it and following it around the table and I heard the butter dish rattle. Perhaps I will tie her to the handlebars and peddle to my meeting with the United Way today.

I thought about throwing it out…but you know, Mr. Husband will never be the wiser. Her little toothie nibble marks look a lot like butter knife marks. Hmm….

Surprise, surprise, two nights of drinking in a row has left me CROSS. Well, the voddy’s gone now, so I’m over it. Much to my barely-containing-my-own-vomit surprise, my thesis proposal got accepted. So it looks like data collection starts in October…which is soon. I said in my proposal that I would “dress appropriately” in order to fit in with the study’s participants, who are homeless people, and I think that will also involve donning a cheap wig. I really don’t want to go brown for a couple of weeks of data collection, but I will if I have to.

I am doing research for the United Way, and they want a report of of my findings, which I will of course produce. My advisor wants me to spin the report off into a journal article, instead of a formal thesis. I have to admit I got a little misty at the thought of not being a poopy-pants academic and having a big published thesis I could brain cows with. *sniff*

In Other News

Yard sale this weekend. I am getting rid of some old crap….

Mr. Husband: Now 29% more worthless. I was gone at a meeting for most of the morning and afternoon, and I came home to a giant stack of dirty dishes. Fine, whatever. But he is off to work this morning and they are still there! I hate! Yes, I know, he’s at work and that’s a good thing, but he better RECOGNIZE that we are still 50-50 on the housework tip, since I have had equivalent work hours this summer.

Mr Husband: $100. That will get me a quality vibrator and a sock puppet to have adult conversations with.

Chickens: Now 93% more worthless. Two are on the brood. One is hiding her eggs in the garden. The new ones follow Heckle and Jeckle into the house the minute they lay eggs and eat them. I think they are also eating The Dutchess’s eggs, but I’m not sure. I am feeding animals that crap up my patio and eat their own by-products. Who’s the birdbrain now?

Chickens: $5 for Marzipan and Penny, $3 for Heckle, Jeckle, Phoebe, and The Dutchess.

Monkeyhip the Crappity-Fucking Hamster: Now 86% more likely to escape. He has been roaming around the house loose for two days. The bad news is that he’s hoarding catfood under the sink. The good news is that the floors have been cleaner than they have been in weeks.

Maybe I want to keep Phoebe. She’s sweet.

Everything else will go! I am excited. I will take the money, all $200 of it, and start over as a bail bondsman in Cleveland with a small yellow chicken.