UGH! Sweltering. No writing tonight. Children are fighting. Cannot type in complete sentences. Have you seen my Calgary set? Sounds dirty. UGH! Sweltering!
Author Archives: iasshole
On the Way Home I Was Thinking
About all the ways to be sad. Right now I am about 26 kinds, and I am too embarrassed to tell you what they all are. When I get to about 21 I start to feel like I am on my back and someone is shoveling my mouth full of sand. Do you ever feel like that? I was thinking about undertaking a project to make a list of all the ways, but I don’t know WHAT that will serve really.
1. Death, in total
2. Dropped food
3. Dead pets from childhood
4. What you should have said
5. What you actually did say
6. Too many nachos, AGAIN
7. Misinterpreted text messages
8. Feeling sorry for yourself (sad that you are)
9. Not being able to protect your children every second
10. Saying unpleasant things in front of your children TO protect them
11. Scars that you don’t remember how you got them
12. Lying about who you are
13. Lying about who you aren’t
14. The feeling of listening to the same song over and over for a crappy reason
15. Being told to “snap out of it”
16. Empty bottle of champagne
17. Trying to have feelings to match someone else’s
18. Pulling out your favorite sweater after summer and discovering it is really ratty and you had built it up in your memory as this Ideal Sweater and then being repulsed by it
19. Half-starts to what could have probably been a really good story that you find two a.m. drunkenly and your brain starts howling JESUS FUCK I AM A CRAP WRITER
20. Memory perfume
21. Crying on the bus
22. Trying to figure out what actually matters
23. Calculating when you will die
24. Waking up and realizing that you don’t care about the thing you used to care about the most
25. Same thing, only it is a person
26. Realizing that you can fall out of love in one day
27. OR realizing it will take much longer than you thought and could this hurry up at all?
28. Seriously? Some people do get eaten by their nine cats.
I guess I am still obsessing on this “when do you stop noticing you are bleeding” business. I had a nice time in Calgary and I will tell you all about it tomorrow, when my head is more traveloguey and less stratospherey.
Let’s Blow This Fire-trap, Eh?
Franny was tired and in a snit after her summer camp today and looking how I feel pretty much every day after work. Sometimes I lose it and lay on the couch and eat Chinese food, but most nights I have to smile while I hear that I paid so my kid could have a bad day and that she did not bring enough money to go on the outing, which meant that she had to put it back in her bag, which was rifled, and the money was stolen. Some days she gets shoved, or someone says something mean to her and she cries.
It made me think of a story an old friend told me once about how he got cut and was bleeding everywhere and did not notice, but his sister saw the wound a little later and the dried blood. They were both amazed: how could he not notice? I used to feel like Franny did, every day. When do you stop noticing the bleeding?
Strudel was in better shape but seems to have forgotten how to eat. Seriously. I presented her with a slice of pizza tonight and she turned it on its end and tried to shove it into her mouth toppings-side up. I thought children were supposed to have the whole spacial/3-D understanding of how the world works by the time they are at least a year old, but it’s like she regressed. She also smacks loudly with her mouth open and wipes her fingers in her hair, leaving her napkin untouched. Who are you and what planet do you come from that you do not know what to do with pizza?
This all led up to World War 3 here, in which Franny decided to smack her sister and I caught her. I got the full watery-eye treatment, the sad, imploring, “You NEVER believe me!” Yes, because I SEE you hitting her. She was cranking up into a little pre-teen tanty when I told her that she needed to get in the shower. “I HATE THE SHOWER!” she wailed. “MY LIFE IS HORRIBLE.” Oh, cry me a RIVER. Your life is summer camp and time with me and her sister on the evenings and weekends, and horse camp FFS when she goes back to her dad’s house next month. The only thing horrible about her life is that I caught her in the act.
Tomorrow we are flying out of the country, which I am slightly nervous about because of a recent chain of events. We can let the viewer decide…well, whatever they want.
I have passports and birth certificate, of course. What I do not have is signed permission letter from her father. Of course there is a history and a backstory here, and, holy cow, it makes me realize that SeaFed has been married for like three whole years already. BOY was I histrionic in that episode. You can practically feel the heat coming off the screen. But you know what? I would call the cops all over again. That shit is not any less illegal today. So we have that under our belts.
We also have me saying “no” to him three times in the past week or so about stupid shit, like a tax law that he didn’t look up and yet demanded some unowed moneys from me anyway. I can sense from afar that he is in a temper, or at least less of a stupor, than usual.
So me trying two weeks out to get a signed travel permission letter? Not going to happen. Emails go ignored. Dates go conveniently forgotten. Half-assed attempts are made to schedule a notary meeting several miles and a ferry ride from my house in the middle of a workday. “Thanks for your efforts anyway,” I finally texted him sarcasmically.
But I am going, and I think we have a fine shot. We have all the documents and the same last name. The letter would have been icing on the cake. And we are going to have a fantastic weekend in a hotel that is more like an apartment with a pool and fine friends. I will throw pics up and travelogue all about it when I return. MONKEYCHOW OUT.
Do You Hear Me, Seans?
I was cross on the second bus and regretting declining a ride I’d been offered. The other riders were too close and it was too hot. The girl next to me was wearing too much perfume and kept elbowing me. More people piled on. One guy I see almost every day on the commute with his laptop sat in his usual spot, catty corner from me as I perched up in my corner and we exchanged glances. We never say hello.
A man and a woman got on the bus. She sat next to the laptop guy, and her companion sat across from her. She was probably in her late 30s and had a cowboy hat and was missing a tooth. A strong smell of cheap booze wafted over from both of them, not an uncommon thing on a Friday afternoon on the 44. I looked up from my book and saw that her face was twisted. She was in a deeply drunken state of grief.
She began talking about her father to her companion.
“He’s gone!” she said, her face crumpling. She started low at first, speaking seldomly, then raised her voice and spoke more as if she wanted to hold the whole bus captive to her grief. She began telling laptop guy about her father, who had recently died.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Sean,” he replied.
“Sean! That’s my brother’s name,” she said, pointing at her companion across the way. “Two Seans!”
She had moments where she would sit quietly, or even smile. She sincerely thanked the Sean next to her for listening.
“My brother and I are going to a powwow,” she said. “You ever been to one of them?” Laptop Sean shook his head. “Last time we went to a powwow it was in Olympia, and THAT Sean got LAID!”
Her brother turned his head to the side and reddened. “Shhh,” he said, futilely.
“Well you did,” she said.
The topic moved to a horse her father had given her as a gift.
“I ain’t never put a bridle in my horse’s mouth. You can’t control an animal like that.” She looked around the back of the bus. “She’s wearing a nice dress,” she said, nodding to a woman standing next to her wearing a wild print.
“That horse was a stallion! When I had to get on him, he would get down like this,” she dipped her head low and put an arm out, indicating a horse that was bowing. “My daddy hated that horse. His name was Mr. Motherfucker!”
I laughed out loud at this and she smiled at me, the gap in her teeth winking at me. She soon turned serious again.
“MABEL! I will never leave you,’ he said!” Mabel said, crying softly for a minute. Then she laughed. “Sean, this is Sean. We are going to a powwow.”
I pulled the bell for my stop.
“MY DAD IS GONE, DO YOU HEAR ME, SEANS?”
“We hear you, yes,” they said.
“I’m the baby,” Mabel said, and closed her eyes.
OOH Bitch That Ain’t Fair Give That Horsie Back His Hair
Hey. Heeeeey. Sexy man on my vending machine. Baby, I like the way you eat that potato chip. I can see all the way back there. Kind of wish I had a dick to cram in there, but I could probably find something else in a pinch. Man, do you still have your tonsils? That’s pretty hot. I have mine in a jar at MAH CRIB. Yes, for reals. Do I look like the type of person who would just say I have my tonsils in a jar at MAH CRIB if that was untrue? That hurts, baby.
Yes, I know snacking is an important personal decision, or at least that’s that the sign next to your sexy head says. I still don’t want to pay two bone for a bag of peanuts with a weird sweet coating. You know, when I squint my eyes, you look kind of like my geometry teacher. Sort of like that, or one of my aunts. I really like your ethnic ambiguity. Feeling included is making me want to eat potato chips. Also not feeling like anyone else is excluded. That is making me want salty snacks as well. You sort of look like the dude version of a Bratz doll. What kind of accent would you have? HEY, you’re not a digital composite, are you? I think you might be.
That’s okay, I’m open-minded.
IN OTHER NEWS: Could I Please Have a Look at the Lyrics?
On Saturday I went to the Symphony. I had heard the Seattle Symphony was like totes casual, like we just need to keep it real and hear some damn music, there’s no time for peacocking. FALSE. Seattleites are lazy as hell with disgusting personal habits. I dressed up, but MY BADS it was Final Fantasy, so there were people there in costumes. Can people not contain their appalling personal problems for one night? No, they cannot. Bonus: I discovered that not only are they still manufacturing tuxedo-print shirts, a wall of unholy neckbeards wearing them can sashay toward you as you are innocently on your way to the bathroom. The composer was there with a giant fish and there was a huge screen behind the musicians. It was still pretty cool though, when you closed your eyes.
I am going to a wedding this weekend (not mine FTW) and Hazel is coming and sleeping at my house. I am her date. I didn’t see her for months and now twice in a summer. It’s amazing what a difference having a little extra money and not working constantly and odd hours makes. Also I am getting close to fleeing the country with my shiny new passport for a weekend with Franny. How happy I am to be traveling with her again so soon. She is back from her dad’s now after a two-week sojourn so I will probably be writing more now. I was sort of at loose ends without the routine she makes for me.
The conversation recap from breakfast was Franny recounting sacking up and asking her stepmother why she is not allowed to say “butt” when she’s there. Of course the butt-deprivation resulted in an acapella duet to butts and vulvas, and how awesome they are. It would be an overstatement to say I enjoy this. Let’s say I feel benignly toward this. Strudel is struggling with this as well. She wants to use the proper names for her body parts, and in her summer program these words are known as “bathroom words.” On one hand, I don’t like to hear the proper names for things referred to this way, on the other hand, Feral Dwarf, do you have to talk about your VULVA constantly? Do we need to hear that it likes the quesadillas? Does it need 27 sonnets and an epic? Why can’t my children rebel by aspiring to get an MBA?
So what we are working on now is APPROPRIATENESS. Yes, yes, my very existence is ironical now. I think Strudel is probably going to grow up to be one of those menstrual blood artists or something. I will come to her openings.
Things I cannot stop with today: 1. Shakira’s new single, She-Wolf, GOD HELP ME. LOOK at this PREVIEW. She is a Hooters girl up to her NECK and is in a cage. SO MUCH AWESOME. 2. The last Girl Talk album. 3. Seattle has awesome hiphop, even if people are slobs. 4. Also Tony’s Bitch Track.
I See My Reputation Precedes Me
11:13 AM Ruby: Whats up?
 me: Helloo
 Ruby: good day to you!
 me: I met a hot guy!
Ruby: what is his disability?
 me: OH LOL
 Ruby: :-)
 me: WOW ice burn
 Awesome
This is basically the problem with opening up to people.
So it seems I am remiss in my comment approving duties. No Offenses! I just wandered off. I have been wanged by hormones.
Also it is important for you to know that I got my Hot Tip published in my local gay rag!! Lookit July 1! Hooray I finally saw something gross at a bus stop.
A Weekend of Domestical Bimboness
I think I decided to turn my brain off this weekend. No challenging books were devoured, no useful writing was done, and shoes were lusted over. Some weekends are like that.
Because of the aforementioned Betty Crocker “bio” reading I decided to make an orange chiffon cake. [Thoughts on “Finding Betty Crocker”: the author could have spent more than 45 seconds thinking up a title.]
Out of season, but still delicious. Chiffon cakes were entirely “new” cakes when invented, meaning not butter or sponge-type. The secret was vegetable oil and an unholy shitton of eggs.
The drawback is that though it stays moist for quite a while, the cakes don’t taste of much. This one has orange juice, zest, and candied orange peel on the top to gussy it up.
You mix the flour and other dry stuff with the zest and oil and juice, and then you get to my favorite part, which is gently folding the stiff egg whites into the batter.
Then it bakes for an hour and LO! it can be friends with Halo’s cake.
Other than that, I was like teeny tiny crafty. I glued fat blunt plate back together (it exploded apart tragically at some point), after getting some proper glue and mooching a cocktail glass off P. who bought it at Goodwill this weekend. Goodwill was fricking groovy and yielded clothes for littleley and biggie people and a tablecloth and this hilarious plate.
Does this make you want to start a niche blog about hilarious plates with poor grammar? I can smell the book deal already. I almost replaced my elegant top plate with this one, but I snapped out of it and hung it on the wall above my stove instead.
I have been saying this over and over all weekend as it is written. P. says, “I KNOW. sigh.”
So, the tiered plate will go in my LBJ room in my future bed and breakfast, next to the photo of The J swinging his dogs around by their ears.
And while wandering around the fabric store waiting for my seamstress (who fixed part of my robe before snapping a needle, and sewed up a loose seam on the dress I was wearing on F-Off England day), I found tassels. Tassels class everything up, IT ARE A FACT. I guess I have grown out of Hello Kitty cell phone charms. :'(
Today I gave up any pretense of trying to do anything and went to the Fremont Market with Srcsmgirl.
I think I needed the weekend off like whoa. Happy weekend! Was it good for you?
YEAH It Are a Weekend
Strudel boogies AND ets peas.
OH YES it is time for girl drink drunk. Cheers, Zmobie.
Hobo & Poodle & Asshole Go to Portland
HEY FUCKERS For a week now I have been trying to think of a way to tell you what happened when I was in Portland in a way that is PG-13 or lower and will not be used against me in court. I cannot. You will have to look at the pictures in my set and try to piece it together yourself. Suffice it to say that THAT happened and Franny’s former teacher and my friend, Hazel, was a fabulous hostess.
I can tell you one thing: Franny was in fine form. I realized recently that I am going through a thing where I am in love with Franny right now. She is becoming so freaking hilarious at times I get disabled with laughter and cannot move. I am not saying I am some kind of comedic genius, but I have decided that I am going to teach her everything I know about being funny. That will be an awkward twenty minutes.
YES YOU DO want to hear something shallow about me and Franny, and that thing is that when she was a wee parasite my biggest fear was that she would turn out to be some fugly stick terror (keep it classy, twenty-one-year-old self), which is ridiculous because SeaFed was handsome and my genes get drunk sometimes but mostly sit quietly and get overwritten. And now that she is so pretty I feel like I need to give her more.
I act like I have one ounce of control over any of this, but I will not allow her to be The Pretty One. Franny and Strudel were playing Nancy Drool the other day (Caroline Keene I will drive a stake through your hateful undead heart) and Franny asked Strudel if she wanted to be “The Pretty One†or “The Funny One,†because you bet your fucksocks Franny was going to be Nancy.
Can girls be the pretty one AND the funny one? Unsurprisingly, I guess, encouraging this is my hobby now, since Franny shows such an aptitude for it. I prefer this to my mother’s program, which was a major in Disordered Eating (Breakout Session: There Is Nothing Worse Than Being Fat: T/T?) with a minor in “Good Luck With That One, Kid.†(Seminar: Walk It Off, Pussy).
So Franny has taken on a new personality all of her own doing, and that personality is Hobo. Hobo refers to (himself?) in the third person and is quite FYCL* vociferous on the subject of Cheetos, Doritos, beer, and public urination. [Sample Dialogue: “HOBO LIKES EATING CHEETOS, DORITOS, DRANKIN BEER AND PEEING INTO BOTTLES.†I dunno man.] When Hobo goes away and Franny is sweet again Poodle comes out. Poodle liek you. YOU LIEK POODLE?
Traveling alone with Franny made me remember how much I like traveling. P. and I and the girls used to all travel together in a clump just like a real family (guilt and fights over stupid inconsequential shit sold separately) and it was HELL. Traveling with P. is like traveling with a Jack Russell on meth. You could practically see his face pressed up against the window by the time we got to Sodo, clawing like an abandoned dog in a hot car. By the time we got to Tacoma? FORGET IT, it is not printable. If he was driving he would swear like Christmas Steve on a malt beverage bender. Who doesn’t like driving, I ask you? Oh. Now I know.
Plans for Fuck Off England Day? Yes, I have some. I bought some books at the OG Powell’s in Portland. I have been reading the “biography†of Betty Crocker, which is a funny thing, since she is a fabricated brand, of course. The book contains a selection of letters of the thousands that were written to “Betty†during wartime and beyond. On one hand it marries stuff I enjoy, American history, domestical history of Ladees, and insanely awesome marketing schemes. On the other, it is sad to read these desperate letters to a corporation: “How can I cook a meal to keep my husband?â€
IN CONCLUSION, it is making me want to make an orange chiffon cake, the recipe for which was apparently kept under lock and key for twenty years until the originator sold it to General Mills. I also found a recipe I copied down for Any Fruit Cobbler from Fanny Farmer last summer when I was on vacation. I am remembering through the vacation haze of sangria and I FOUND THESE PILLS AND I EATED THEM that the cobbler was pretty dope. I’ll tell you what, Ima find some any fruit and bung it in.
I am reading other books right now…women and Islam (The Caged Virgin) and Victorian Era courtesans. I guess I am in new mode right now. I also have new music: new Mos Def, which is SO GROOD, and Kidz in the Hall. Mr. Lif and new K-Os did not rip over to my MP3 correctly, but I am getting there. There seems to be a stampede at Pirate Bay at the moment as it changes hands.
*
Bus Haiku for Jerks
Hot ginger girl
I see your boob hickey
through your shirt gap
Â
Tonight, I go running for the first time in a month. You probably didn’t know I broke my toe, which really put a damper on things. Funny story–I had a migraine and was stumbling around my bathroom looking for Advil when BAM! I hit my toe on the tub. Then it is the ecstatic FML feeling as you lay in bed with a sore head and sore toe.
I think this is all serendipitous timing as I called my friend who I am going with Franny to visit this weekend in Portland. She used to be a chain smoker but has quit, and just today was going out on her first run. This will keep me motivated. Monkey chow out.