Author Archives: iasshole

How’s the Fifth of Never?

Posted on by

There’s a lot of levels of self-delusion. I think it’s pretty much necessary for life. One that I am utterly, completely entirely over is other parents. Recently I had someone email me whose child went to school with Franny at her old school, who also works ten-hour days and lives two cities away. Invariably the exchange goes like this.

Other Parent: HI! REMEMBER US?

Me: Uhh…yeah. sigh

Other Parent: Brunhilde really misses Franny! We’d love to set up a PLAYDATE really, really soon!

Me: Okay, I guess so. How about Saturday?

Other Parent: Brunhilde has spelunking that day!

Me: Okay, Sunday, then?

Other Parent: Krav maga!

Me: All day?

Other Parent: Well, it is a special camp, and…

Me: Okay, shut up.

Other Parent: How about next weekend??

Me: Yeah, she’s at her dad’s.

Other Parent: Oh, what’s that schedule again?

Me: First and third weekend, except when he ditches her at my mother’s house, and oh, summer, let me email you the PDF diagram…

Other Parent: Err…

Me: How about November 16th?

Other Parent: We’re in Malaysia then.

Me: WELL? WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU THEN?

Other Parent: We’ll get back to you.

Me: Mmmhmm.

This time I am going to cut it off at the pass. I am tired of these email exchanges. If it was convenient to hang out, we would do it. You are experiencing some kind of weird nostalgia through your child. This time I will say, Thanks, but no.

Swanning Alert Level Yellow

Posted on by

Franny swanned around on the chair in my room. I was trying to write by stealing time that is increasingly hard to come by. She sighed, a big one. I snuck a look over my shoulder as I typed and saw her starting out the window at our street. Then she sighed again, louder. Sometimes I feel guilty that my children are not overscheduled to the teeth so they have time to sit around and think, and then I come to my senses.

“Moooom,” she said in that dreamy-yet-whiny voice that preteens often adopt. “Do you ever feel like life is disappointing? Like you are waiting for something to happen and it never does?”

I thought about it. I thought that this was probably the part where I was supposed to give her a little pep talk and tell her, “Chin up, lil Tiger, tomorrow is a new day.” And I often do remind her that tomorrow is a new day when she is teary-eyed at bedtime over the day’s frustrations. I remind her that sleep can reset a lot of what ails us. She sees it happen. She wakes up smiling, and says she feels better, and I know she means it.

I thought about disappointment. I thought about how “just two years” in Seattle has turned into ten, and about how I was not wild about coming back here in the first place. I thought about how I was supposed to be publishing papers about seeing vaginas in Rococo clouds by now, or some other hootsy-frootsy hardcore art historian business. Where was my custom leather catsuit? Where was my Oompa-Loompa? Last night I had a dream that I was having sex with all seven of the dwarves. Wait, I think this is an aside.

P. says you should grow where you are planted, which is something that I think I realized when I was at that tipping point that you get to sometimes when you are about 26 or so. I have victories. I feel victorious when I get eight hours of sleep, and I feel victorious when I stay up until three for no really good reason. Sometimes I get a little closer to where I want to be, and sometimes I stagnate. I wallow around gloriously in the filth of my complete lack of progress, and sometimes I flee from it. New things happen, like I am slightly less petty than I was a few years ago, and this is mitigated by the fact that now my gums bleed sometimes. You should probably assume this is all cryptography, it is probably better that way.

Some people say that life is a search for meaning. I don’t believe in anything. I don’t believe in signs, karma, religion, faith. Sometimes when the bus pulls right up to me and I step right on in one fluid motion I say, “This is a good sign,” but even that sounds hollow as it comes out of my mouth. I believe in the finality of death. And the finality of Darth. And Jarts.

Do I ever find life disappointing?

“Well,” I said, after thinking. “I think when you become an adult you develop coping techniques to deal with the horrifying chasm of despair you feel you are dangling over.” I went back to writing.

JAILBREAK

Posted on by

On Sunday I worked all day. Someone at work basically died and I got a battlefield promotion. I am sitting on the couch tickity tap tick click DING and I looked up and saw a wee brown chicken in my front yard, loose and easy. Shit. I don’t have time for this shit.

I set down my laptop and slid into my shoes and mentally prepared myself for what was probably some degree of public humiliation. Is there anything more ridiculous than a grown-ass person chasing a little fucking chicken? Not really, my friends. Not really.

I emerged onto my front lawn.

“Death Ray. I see you, Death Ray.” Suddenly I am Martin Landau in Ed Wood. “Come to me, Vampira.”

We had a chase through the bushes. Death Ray looked at me, one beady black eye at a time. She zigged and I zagged. I held my arms wide, which works for cornering them, but there was no corner. She was free, and nuts to me.

Then the crows came! They swooped, attacking this strange specimen that was on their turf. Death Ray ran further and further away, bolting down the sidewalk. This is a chicken who has never been out of the backyard. I can only imagine how terrifying that must have been.

Death Ray came to an intersection and crossed. Ploop! She was out in traffic. Cars stopped. I felt my face burn as I waved people on as Death Ray stood dazed in the middle of the busy street. People drove around her slowly and gingerly. She crossed over. Why does the chicken cross the road? Deep stupidity, that’s why. Two pounds of chicken, beak, and feather was now holding up traffic.

She came to rest under a low-slung compact car. Her eyelids drooped and she looked like she was about to doze off. I tried to grab her and she dashed off into the bushes on the other side of the road. Finally, I managed to grab a little leg and she screamed, feathers exploding everywhere. The fact that chickens explode feathers when they are really distressed is something I enjoy, though I try not to exploit it.

I carried her back to the backyard with her muttering and burbling all the way. My knees were muddy and that was about all the exercise I got all day. How was your Easter?

In Which I Attend the Auction for the Last Time

Posted on by

There I was at the auction again, with not much to report on the matter. I hardly see those people at all anymore, which in most cases is heartening. Of course I had to go with Ruby as her date, and that was fun. My nemesis recycled a dress that was not good the first time around, and I conspired to find out her auction number so I could write it on anything in the silent that vaguely resembled a turnip twaddler.

I have a funny exchange I have to tell you about. When I was taking a break from blogging last spring while I was considering a meatspace career change, I attended the auction and won a place at a book club dinner party, hosted by Ruby. The picture in the corner is of me during clean up. SJ: Bottle Snuggler. The topic was Julie & Julia, which, zzzz for the most part. I confess I skimmed it.

There was a good deal of time allotted to slagging blogging during the party, and who do those people think they are that they feel they must put their know it all trite trite-isms on the internet, those attention whores. After about forty-five minutes of this I made some point by starting with “Well, I have been writing a blog for eight years, and…” GASP. Dropped fork. Awkward. I live for moments like that.

Jump to last night, when I saw a mom there whom I have not seen since the book club.

“Oh are you still writing that mysterious blog of yours,” she said, by way of drunken conversation.

“Yes,” I said, “and I started a new one at the beginning of the new year on Victorian culture.”

“Are you…like…really bored?” she said, perplexed.

“No, I’m a writer,” I said.

“Ohhh.”

Oh well.


http://i42.tinypic.com/espab9.gif

I, Asshole and Her Pathetic Little Life

Posted on by

Saturday and Saturday means DONCE CLASS. Hear the chup chup chup of the helicopter blades as they swoop over the group of five-year-olds, most of whom are there to have a good time if given half a chance. I hung out for the first class, and now I help her undress, pop her things into her cubby, and watch her run down the stairs and into the studio where she prances and thumps to her heart’s content, something she is not allowed to do at home, because SHUSH the neighbors.

Other parents stay there all the time, every time, hovering, watching, hanging on, coaching, making self-effacing remarks about their daughters’ abilities, and they make me want to vomit.

The pre-ballets come out before Strudel goes into pre-modern. The pre-ballets are strawberry pinkies compared to the pre-modern black leotards, which are more jaunty beret in a smoky club.

“Hurry up,” one mother urged her pinkie. “You have art class to go to next!”

The pre-modern parents are not any better. Don’t let the black leotards fool you.

“OH,” one mother cooed at her daughter as she came out of the studio in front of Strudel at the end. “I saw how you were moving your arms. You looked SO PRETTY OUT THERE. You look SO PRETTY sweetheart.”

My child is the only one with a pixie cut and no bun without five million clippies and headbands and DONCE sweaters and DONCE leg warmers even though it is 60 degrees. My child has a hole in her tights. Oops.

“Well,” I say, as she comes out of the studio at the end. “Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Strudel says. High fives all around.

I walk to the library and get coffee and run other errands, and when there is about 15 minutes left I come out in front of the studio and watch her caper around through the large window, watching her hold a noodle or a scarf, pretending she is a dog or a flower. She loves her teacher with eccentric hair and a funny accent, which is a prerequisite for DONCE teachers. Strudel looks happy and at the end she gets a gluten-free scone from the coffee shop across the street.

I think we will stick with it.

Confidential to Bobbie: I will begin duplicating videos here on my Flickr page, which is public. If I embed something I did not make, I will try to remember to put the URL.

I Would Touch His Weird Head

Posted on by

Obviously I am obsessed with Trololololo man right now, so I made my girls watch it this morning. UN. IM. PRESSED.

Me: What do you think, girls?
Franny: Huh.
Strudel: Why is he doing this?
Franny: Look at his weird head.
Strudel: I would not want to touch his weird head.
Me: Is this not AWESOME?
Strudel: Uhhhh….
Franny: I feel like I wish this was funny.

PLEBES.

I made them lovely yogurt parfaits this morning with layers of banana, maple syrup, a sprinkle of oats, cinnamon, and almonds. I put it LOVINGLY in a large wineglass so you could see the layers. That’s right, Tim, I even serve my children BREAKFAST out of booze vessels. Get the beer bong, children, it is time for your afternoon smoothies.

Anyway, Franny took one look at her breakfast and immediately stirred it all up until it was a gluey uniform mess.

“Uh…” I said. “Parfait. Missing the point.”

Feral Dwarf smugly took dainty bites out of her otherwise-undisturbed parfait.

“DOH!” Franny said.

WhatEVERRRR I will still take Franny to LC in May. And it looks like I am going to Norwescon at the end of the month. HOW TERRIBLY EXCITING! See you there, I will be dressed as Sexy Pikachu. Too late for the writing workshop signups though, dratters.

Such Things I Do Just To Make Myself More Attractive to You

Posted on by

How are you? Yeah? Mmm hmm. See how I am acting interested, but I am just waiting for the follow up story on your rash? No? I can’t help you. Go down the hall and make a sharp left.

Franny is learning about the Holocaust. She is reading a book about some little child who fled Germany, and on Thursday she is hearing a Holocaust survivor speak. She didn’t really get the whole thing, why people were running here and there. Over their oatmeal I told them about LAMPS MADE FROM HUMAN SKIN and sewing pregnant women shut and whatnot. We talked about tattoos and armbands.There’s your context.

“…then they all formed together to make one super-robot, and the Jews flew to the moon. And that’s why your sister has a hairy butt,” I finished.

“Hum,” Franny said. “Ugh.”

“So be nice to this lady on Thursday, because she has probably seen some crazy shit and if you are quiet she might tell you,” I said.

In other news, apparently Ruby and I are going to the school auction this year! She was supposed to go out of town, and she is my only date I will go with, but her plans changed, so voila. Now I can wear my ridiculous-assed silver zebra shoes I got when I was in Canadia last month. Things are a lot better than when I was still running it. Now I can just show up and eat. Ruby is a former chair and makes a good date. Snark powers activate! Shape of: Bree Van de Camp.

As an “interesting” side note, I can trace that 2008 auction post I linked as The Last Time I Was Sane in 2008. I think I was still faking it for a while, though. Can you see the cracks? Or just a sailboat? I am glad 2008 is over. You know something? I hardly remember it. 2008, I mean. I know some stuff happened because there are pictures. It’s a good thing I have a goddam diary. Do you have faith in me, since I have proven I can endure? I am on the QT and not making weeping vagina noises here.

Last night I dreamt that some bad dudes were out to get me and Strudel. They developed a plane that was completely agile and almost soundless. There was a demonstration in the town square, which was the town square from Back to the Future, complete with broken clock tower.

The plane was bobbing around and it destroyed a tree. This was the demo. I hid Strudel in a house nearby, and one of the guys found me and was like “BRING THE PLANE HERE.” Really, a plane? You are in front of me, could you not just kill me, like, manually?

All I could think in the dream was “This is why we cannot have nice things!”

I have a portrait of the Lusitania on my back and when I flex it CRASHES.

This Weekend: Howard Hughes Level Hermiting with a Chance of FOAD

Posted on by

1. Things, I have things to tell you. Strudel, who is on the couch with a fever, has a different sticker on her belly button than when she left for school this morning, pre-fever. “The sticky wore off,” she explained. She can do a trick where she can suck her belly button in and the sticker disappears, or she pooches her stomach waaaaaay out and then the sticker is there for all and sundry to see, or in this case, me and Taibas Jones. This is the four-year-old equivalent of being in the Navy and having a naked lady tattoo on your arm and making her dance.

2. Today I discovered that I do not like olive loaf. What is olive loaf, you may ask, if you are not from the ghetto and were raised by a cup of coffee like I was? It is a formed meat product that has pimento-stuffed green olives in, of course, and then is sliced for ultimate sandwich makery. I loved olive loaf when I was a kid and I bet I have not had it for fifteen years. Now that I think of it, I suspect olive loaf is one of those things that I asked my mom for and was determined to like, because it was different. When you are bored out of your mind and stranded in the middle of fucking almost nowhere, odd lunchmeat items are a form of escapism, especially if you are years off from discovering the stunning, singular headache that is a glue hangover. Your sandwich is fucking staring at you with green eyeballs with red pupils, dude. I bought it this week. It is being donated to the eggbags.

3. Speaking of the eggbags, Now We Are Three. That freaky egg I mentioned last time on our program contained only one yolk, so I am thinking there was some kind of cloacaplasty. Those eggs are squeezed, Louise. I feel badly that there are only three hens now. They stare at me expectantly, looking for answers: Do you have food? Are you bringing more food soon? What is this wet stuff coming from the sky, I don’t think it was like this yesterday? Are we getting carried off at some point like those other feathered ladies we cannot quite remember? Are YOU Food?

4. In completely unrelated news, I am trying to figure how I can transport my own shit up to a second story balcony intact, so it looks like I took a dump there.

5. Speaking of vaginas, I have been one upped. I read about this woman who got herself “vajazzled,” meaning she treated her mons like I treat cell phone cases. At first I was VERY IMPRESSED by the state of her mons, which crazy smooth. I get ingrowns if a waxer even looks at me. Then I realized it is an all-in-one procedure. You get yoinked and then immediately glued. This would look good on me for about fifteen minutes.

I find the writer a little disturbing, honestly. I wondered what turning your baby box into a rasp would do for your sex life. Would you make up for the friction burns on your lover by offering to grate a little parmesan onto your post-coital salad? You know, the traditional salad you always eat after you have sex? FUCKING JUST NOD YOUR HEAD OK.

“Tell me when, sweetie.” Cheese shreds issue from your pussoidal region. Awesome. Beat that, Slap Chop.

But wait! No lovers will be injured, because the author assures us she has been asexual since her child was decanted from her body, ensuring the integrity of her vagina…which she is not using. WHOA DUDE it is like a Zen koan. Also at no point does she refer to any of her business by its proper name. I suppose if you don’t know the proper terms for your anatomy, the safest way to stay unpregnant is to abstain via a series of clever traps.

It is important for you to know that since I have participated in natural childbirth twice, if I don’t remember to clench my v-spot, it fucking FALLS OUT and drags behind me. The bonus of this is that when birds swoop down to peck at it, I can capture them and then arrange their joints artfully in gelatin, just like those lizards that can poop their own guts out, except they don’t have access to jelly molds.

Retweet that, bitches: I am a whore with a vagina that can be worn like a hat.

“You Have Delighted Us Long Enough”

Posted on by

You guys, I don’t even know anymore. Franny had midwinter break and she spent part of it at SeaFed’s house with the new babbeh (another girl, same pumpkin head as the first one and her mother’s, apparently his babbeh gun only makes girls) and the old babbeh, who has turned into a three-and-a-half year old box of frothing howler monkeys or something. Strudel was satanic in a THOU SHALL NOT BREAKETH ME way, but this other sibling of Franny’s sounds rather mollycoddled and do not poke the bear, for it will throw a tanty and scream for sugar. Hard to say from over here, but Franny tells amusing stories anyhow.

The latest is that Franny and her BFF were at her father’s house and were desperately trying to get away from her preschool-aged sister, which caused adult-rousing shrieking. SeaFed allegedly let off an exasperated “What the HELL, girls,” which, frankly, sounds like the SeaFed I know and don’t love. Back in his day he was the king of the f-bomb.

Now SeaFed is not allowed to swear. NOT ALLOWED. He is a grown-assed man of 35 years of age and he has had his swearing rights revoked. I suspect this document resides in his wife’s purse next to his Scrabble bag. Oh yes I did.

Franny’s BFF ratted him out to her father, who presently came over and had words with SeaFed about how his outburst was Not Okay. It is like Full House over there, but no one learns anything and who is playing the part of Methface Tanner? NOT MY KID, TELL YOU WHAT.

Franny is not allowed to say “poop” or “butt,” not to mention the hard swears. When she comes back here she sounds like a parrot in a whorehouse frequented by syphilitic pirates for about 72 hours. My blog is named after a swear, I am 32 years old, I have seen some rough stuff, and she makes ME cringe. I ignore it and it passes.

Furthermore look at this egg, isn’t it WEIRD?