Author Archives: iasshole

The giblets were hiding in the neck. WHOOPS.

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Dear goddam diary, today Strudel, through a series of questions about her health, revealed that she was coughing up blood. Off to the doctor first thing in the a.m. for her. I would have gone to the doctor myself but New Years came and places were closed. I put my ear to her back tonight and I feel like I heard a rattle. I think I am having sympathy lung pains tonight.

Also, what’s a housebound psycho to do? Umm…make Thanksgiving dinner, I guess? Why not? I got a turkey on the HELLA CHEAP now that the holidays are over. And everyone’s sick but me, so there is LOTS of turkey left for turkey noodle soup tomorrow, and quesadillas, and pot pie…YUM.

I made sweet potato casserole for the first time ever. I mashed the yams with a little nutmeg, butter, salt, and pepper, drizzled on some maple syrup, sprinkled pecans, and of course, added marshmallows. I cannot believe I shunned this for years. It was never really part of my Italian Thanksgiving experiences growing up, though. If there were extra “odd” sides it would be rutabaga for my grandpa and some spaghetti.

So today was fixing people meals and fetching them drugs and drinks and in between that trying to get some work done. I don’t know how to tell you this…for the first time ever I went out in pajama pants to the bus stop. I have been like uncontrollably bleeding and have been all “Hold up dog let me find my jeans before we ho ho hospital.” School started on a two-hour delay so it’s not like I went out under the cover of sin-hiding darkness even.

AH JANUARY. I am starting to remember why I don’t write much in January.

Moth Nomming

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Dreamt I was covered in white and robin’s egg blue moths and the cats were climbing all over my clothes eating them off. My nostril got bitten by accident. I also dreamt I was in a zombie situation, but we don’t need to go into that, ugh.

Back in Plato’s Bullshit Cave Again

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It was a cabin fever kind of day. I don’t really know what to say about this winter. So far, it’s been a death by a thousand nibbles and those nibbles have been assorted vomiting and a string of colds. I thought I was finally blissfully alone and then someone else walks in with a battery of questions about how my day was and what’s new?

Today I sent Franny off at the front door as I was home with her ailing sister, who announced at bedtime tonight “I WILL BE RETURNING TO SCHOOL TOMORROW,” thank god, and Franny agreed to let the chickens out before she headed off to the bus.

“Can you manage the gate?” I said.

“Oh yes, no problem, I’ve done it.”

“Okay, bye,” I said, closing the door. “Thanks so much for taking care of the chickens for me.” What a score. I would not have to go out in the frosty cold.

Nine o’clock came and I started wondering about how they were doing out there. It had snowed, perhaps their water was icing over? I went out to check. They were shut up tight…maybe the door had just blown shut, which happens very occasionally if it is storming. No, latched tight. Somehow my kid had left the house as I was thanking her for and reminding her of the task she was immediately to do…and she forgot it, instantly. I spent the rest of the day slightly dumbfounded and made a point to ask her when she got home.

“So…let’s talk about chickens,” I said. She was at the table beginning her homework and her shoulders tensed up. “What happened?”

“I just forgot,” she said, and began crying. “I don’t know what’s WRONG with me,” she wailed. “I’m so forgetful.”

I’ve got her back on supper dish duty with the idea that she contributes to the household and learns how to clean things, which is something that takes years to be good at, I think. Some nights the table does not get cleared, some nights pots are left on the stove. For a week now she has burned my cast iron skillet because she walks off while giving it a quick dry on a burner to avoid rust. The smell has been ghastly.

Long story short, we’re deep in the domestic trenches right now. This is the daily grind of family life that is tedious to write about, much less hear about. And yet I have to tell myself as people cough and sneeze on me and forget things and spill red nail polish on my labyrinth rug I have to remember that these are all building blocks and some day there will be that perfect day where everyone will remember everything and no one will eat my birthday ice cream and no one will vomit on anyone. And on that day I am guessing we will all be DEAD.

I’m pretty sure this breeches the terms of my ASBO

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“My New Years’ Resolutions are starting to sound like New Years’ Suggestions.” –KQ

I took the kittens to the vet last week to get JABBED again, and they did very well. Nietzsche always growled non-stop at the vet so it was kind of fun to have new kittens there, whose hearts could actually be listened to due to the lack of rrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRR! The assistant snapped pics of them and there was lots of googoo AWWWing about them.

My vet gave me a long list of things I could do to wean them, and he described what the weaning process would be like, about how her little cat boobs would get all hard and she would get grumpy and I thought, boy, this sounds familiar. I listened patiently but ultimately I’ve decided not to interfere. They’re eating cat food (and stealing bites of cha siu bao when I get hungry at midnight after watching the Top Cheffers fuck up dim sum), and Mere is not wasting away, so, it’s okay. If she wants to be the cat version of those appalling hippie moms who nurse their children into their twenties, who am I to interfere?

If you’ve been looking at my pictures lately, you’ve probably gleaned that I enjoy these sheets. Yes, I swear I am washing them sometimes. And then putting them right back on.

I just wanted to capture how happy they get while nursing. The purring an the closed eyes. Mere is tolerating it better as well–for a while there she was passive-aggressively licking them until I thought their little heads would snap back like Pez dispensers. A different vet told me they usually lose their milk after they are spayed, so maybe she was teetering on the edge of that for a bit.

I did not make any real resolutions this year, but I do have some food goals. One is to continue my work with puff pastry, which I started due to Beeton and general wanting-to-do-itness. The second thing is gnocchi, which I think I need to eat more of out, too. I know bad gnocchi, and I know decent gnocchi, but I am not sure I can really appreciate how far apart decent, serviceable gnocchi is from great gnocchi.

Tomorrow I am querying an agent for the first time. I think I have some good leads, and I think I have a good idea. Hello, would you like to try to sell my strange cookbook, lucky lucky agent? I am perversely excited about getting rejection letters and will share them with you here, with names changed to protect the guilty.

THE TONGUE

Hovy came over yesterday after our failed attempt at getting Elvis doughnuts and brought the girls lovely Xmas presents. (Late, because of how sick I was.) The girls spent all day in their robes in part because they could, and in part because they are sick, AGAIN. It’s one of those years. I guess I blame the new school’s germs. Strudel is feverish at night and in good spirits during the day.

For my part I walked Greenlake today at not a totally slacker pace and I did not have a tired or crunchy-lung feeling at all. People who are smarter than me tell me I can get a pneumonia shot and they are good for ten years, holy SHIT. At the very end of this month I am going back to yoga immersion, if I can even fit through the door. Seriously, my ass is kind of amazing me right now.

My pants still fit but I ripped my favorite pair. Pants have become more of a sausage casing effect and less of a flattering drapery effect. I’m going with it. I like squeezing parts of myself, though. It’s a good thing someone does, I guess. I cannot be the only one, right? Sometimes I think maybe I could take my squishy parts and put them into jars like those vegetables that get grown into weird shapes. No run-of-the-mill getting fused to the couch for me.

No Elvis Doughnuts

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Today was absolutely the most ordinary day possible! I leapt out of bed and mounted my Pegasus, Horatio. WAIT THAT DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL, NOT EVEN A LITTLE.

BLUE STEEL

I somehow slept ten hours, but it was the absolute WORST. I was dreaming that I was on a soggy mattress, and no, I did not vagina-wet myself, it was just like two inches thick and all discolored from body oils and no sheet on, but I had the most coolest headboard that I want to build now that was like someone punched a metal shark in the mouth with a hockey stick.

I think I can make it happen, I’m up on my shots. Seriously, how hard can it be to build a headboard out of scrap metal and some crap I found?

I kept thinking to myself, I should go get the nice mattress from the other room, which was the mattress I was actually sleeping on while I was having the dream. I woke up and my headboard was gone! I noticed the other day that the wall next to my bed is turning slightly pink, as walls do. Birds and walls long to be near me. I thought, if I had a headboard it would cockblock my pillow from making the fuck with my walls, which is causing the pink creepage (PAAHGE, that’s French ok).

What can it mean? Why was I sleeping on a circus hobo mattress? I lay in bed a long time thinking about this, reading Mrs. Woolf and the Servants.

Oh hello, I did not see you there. I felt like writing every day for a week, so I did. I am thinking about continuing. Is this okay? Would you like to see inside my messy head EVERY DAY? I’m not going to get better or anything, either, you have my guaranDAMNtee. You don’t have to read everything. I will continue to write longer entries too, no doubt. I feel like I need to keep track of things more closely right now. THANK YOU COME AGAIN.

Fingernails That Shine Like Juiceboxes

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Today Strudel came home early with a high fever. She said she was cold all day and her teacher said “Well, I guess you are going to have to live with it,” which sounds exactly like something I would say to Strudel if she was bitching about whatever (she is an expert complainer) but is also exactly the kind of thing that offends me when someone says that to my child. WHY did you not immediately get her a space heater and a nest made entirely of sterilized dove feathers and angel farts? And then I say, oh yes, she complains all the time. LOUDLY. In conferences her teacher said “We always know how Strudel is feeling at any given moment” which is code for “Your child is always bitching about fucking something.”

This is my fault, because when I was a kid and frustrated by something my mother would say “Oh” and when Strudel says, “They run out of apples by the time I get through the lunchline,” I say, “You know, you could politely ask if they have more apples and explain that you would really like one and they are out. Or you could bring a fruit from home.” And then her father says, “OR you could make your own lunch.”

She sighed. Too much information. I try to remember to just dole out some pity sometimes as well.

Tomorrow my friend Hovy and I are going off to get Elvis doughnuts! I am taking pics again.

Felted Mushrooms

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Dear Fucking Diary! Today I found out I am out of practice at being a lady! I wore high lady boots to keep out of the very ungenteel puddles that keep getting left around everywhere and now my feet hurt. I have one pair of underwear left that is not in disgraceful whore-tatters and that I would not feel totally embarrassed about wearing in front of a new paramour, so I wore those out tonight just for fun! Was I on a date with myself? I might have been. Perhaps I should write empowering articles for Oprahmedia. The underwears were DIGGING IN and now I have red welts on my hipbones. My fishnets had runs and my coat kept flying open. But I was pretty happy anyway.

Today I like fog cutters, which in this instance is a gimlet with some homemade ginger beer added. I have outrage fatigue and am over snark. I do not like my mother, who was given my address by my stupid ex-husband, and came over to my house, unwanted and unbidden. It is unmannerly to be uninvited and to show up like that after 5+ years. Thinking that that kind of shit is okay is also affirmation of why I don’t speak to her anymore. My father told me he STILL has nightmares about her sometimes. I believe it.

This week I am learning about denial, and how it can lead to castigation of others rather than self-examination. I don’t want to hear about the grieving processes of those who feel I’ve wronged them, when it was right for me to get away from them. I feel like I learn about this over and over again. I am also feeling grateful for people I know who actively grieve about things and move on. VERY grateful.

In other words, universe, behave yourself. I am trying to behave. It’s one skip forward and two smacks back.

Cubist Cows Chewing Cubist Cud

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Today I went downtown and saw Picasso. What a horrendous scene that was! We all jiggled and jostled around like salmons. I love seeing the masterworks when they come through town, but you can hardly get to them. I think there were way too many people let in with each wave. I know, I know, cha-ching.

The worst is the people with the audio guides. They stand in one spot, head tilted, slackjawed. Always at the same distance. Far enough away so they are not hogging it, but close enough so you feel like you are cutting them if you get in front to see the brushstrokes. I don’t get them. I don’t think I could cram an education into hour like that. Is it better than nothing? I just go to look, but I know Picasso already.

There were a lot of children under 10 as well. I have mixed feelings about them. I heard a lot of teachers or docents asking them what they thought the art meant and what they thought Picasso was doing. I know it’s very postmodern to assign personal meaning to objects or art, and I think that’s okay on an individual level. It cannot be helped.

I feel something different when I look at an artwork than when someone else looks at it. I just don’t know how helpful it is to ask children how they feel about a bunch of confusing bloogs and horrible monster women when there is actual historical context for Picasso’s work, as well as his own words and the words of experts about what he was doing. Can children really take anything from an hour’s visit to the art museum if all they are encouraged to do is impose their own limited experiences and knowledge over it?

Then I looked at Hockney titties and got a boner over the Rothko. It was a good day.

Dear Cary Tennis

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Well! Today I came home from the Rack (L.A.M.B. tote covered in pink bats with one buckle only slightly scratched, puce kidskin gloves sold separate so they fit my hands, which are inconveniently a S and a L, but that’s another letter). I set everything down and did what I always do, which is check ALL the nanny cams to see what’s been happening while I was away. You know if you hit that sweet spot you can see exactly what’s happening and not have to watch it in real time? Using the internet and tapes of old episodes of 20/20, I’ve trained myself to see child battering even in fast motion. The way they run around! And the dogs! Hilarious! It’s kind of like the Sims but with fewer fires! I was treated to something I simply did not expect, my husband was in the antechamber to the orgy room (a teddy bear with a video camera embedded in its root cellar is less obtrusive in there than you would think) and had taken down the fuckbutt I keep mounted on the wall in there, as a, you know, ice breaker for when we have “guests.” And he was fucking my mounted fuckbutt, which is professionally mounted on rock maple from DELAWARE. You know how much it costs for unusual mountings? Can you believe they charged us NOT to have glass eyes put in, since all taxodermy comes with glass eyes. I considered the glass eyes, but I thought that would be over the top. The wipeable sofa and a round of Harvy Wallbangers seals the deal, but not if there’s a fuckbutt GAZING upon your gloriousness while you are having a three way with Roy from accounting and some salad tongs. That charge was robbery. But our hands were tied, yes they were. And they did turn the fuckbutt around, including shipping, in three weeks. Now there are blue fibers embedded in it from his fur chaps, how am I supposed to get THAT out of latex. My question is, he snores, so do you think it would damage our relationship to sleep in separate bedrooms?

–Stressed in Seattle