Author Archives: iasshole
PNW’ed 31 Insomnia Edition
Oh Hay New Summer Jam
FWAH
I just got into the mushroom class. I am inordinately excited about this. I <3 mushroom nerdiness. I was feeling sick the other night--you know, like acid stomach. It's that thing where you get over it and BAM you're ravenous. My fella took some of the chanterelles and sauteed them with red sauce and pasta. He thought they should go with white sauce but I disagree, because chanterelles have gravitas. Bawls. In other news, I thought I was going to have an obligation-free FANGSGIVING (tee em) and was even fantasizing about nicking off somewheres like, I don't know...Bisbee...but I will stay and happily make turkey, as now bonafide family (not mine) is coming. My name may even be Delores or Doris. I'm not sure. (We may delightedly be someone's Fangsgivng cover story.) I will get to Bisbee someday for xmas. I have been fantasizing about it for ten years now. No lies. NO LIES.
In related news, except probably not at all, I am going into Franny’s class and speaking about Dia de los Muertos*, which I will likely pronounce like Peggy Hill. Franny and I are making sugar skulls which all the kids will decorate. Should be fun. Or at least skull like.
Paisley Mongoose, if you are still lurking about I am now getting caught up on ANTM, gotdamn you. I was doing so well with my recovery plan, too.
* Corrected!
A Story About Taibas Jones
My cat Taibas Jones, AKA Nietzsche, AKA for a dark period in 2006 “Mittens,” is Notorious Sock Stealer. When I was in college, it was all about the sweet sock lovin’. Whenever SeaFed would annoy me (usually) I would tie his tube socks together and let her have her way with them.
Taibas J. fell off that habit eventually, but now she has resumed it with great gusto. It’s to the point now where she will pop into a hamper to retrieve dirty socks, so that even if the house is sparkly-clean I can bring home some guests, say some hot Mormon boys who are on their Excellent Adventure, and the living room floor will be absolutely littered with exhausted and ravaged sock-maidens.
At some point near the end of the summer, my living room floor started being littered with other people’s socks. They were nasty little man-booties, and filthy.
“Oh Jesus God,” is the appropriate response to returning home to this. Accept no substitutes.
I started putting them on the porch because I thought it was my old duplex neighbor, leaving them out on his porch lazily. But then the socks started appearing on the front lawn, closer to the guy next door’s apartment. They came in daily, and I began chucking them out the front window for lulz, as if they had nothing to do with me. “AGGGH!” Fling! I enjoy sport of this nature.
Of course this had to reach a crisis point. An unholy climax. One day I was in my house and I saw Taibas totally loving up this long soccer-looking sock. My neighbor came home, and his reaction on the sidewalk was, predictably, “OH JESUS GOD.” I peeped out the window and saw him holding the sock as if it was diseased and animatedly telling his apartment neighbors, who like my cat very much, about what he’d witnessed, and I saw them trying not to laugh.
And bam, no more dirty man booties on my living room carpet.
Oh Saint Dymphna Pray For Jerks; Plus-Two Stench Damage
You know what’s good for a case of the “mlehs?” Finishing some shit you’ve been putting off. I saw a recipe for making a vintage medicine cabinet into a jewelry cabinet with velvet lining and painted whichever way you want, which is fine, but everyone knows the best color to paint something is gold, like chicken planters, my bed, and my old living room with the red walls and gold trim.
I put it aside at the end of the summer because I borked some of the lining process and got all grumpity. But my friend was here yesterday with her knitting, and it inspired me to get it out. After hours of searching, my tired unorganized ass found my glue gun, and I fixed the lining and glued some Catholic religious medals that I scored at the Fremont Market to the front, around the mirror. Today we went down to Pike Place and I got about 50 milagros, and I glued those in the places where the religious medals weren’t. It is viva la Mexico ftw.
I even got a boobies milagro. I have never seen one of those.
“They are for warding off breast cancer, or for breast health,” the woman at the store said.
“Or maybe for fighting gravity,” I said.
I took pictures of the cabinet in progress all summer, and they are scattered through my photo folders. I want to take a picture of my finished cabinet, and make a gallery out of it. BUT, I have somehow lost my battery charger, so I am saving my last bit of juice for like when the aliens come. I will pick up a new charger soon.
You know what’s even better than hot glue gun burns? Do you? Freaking out and waving your hand around and having the glue dry on your burn. Now I have a blister under a glue glob. It’s like Science under Glass. Is my finger going to fall off? I hope not. It’s my special finger I reserve for choad poking.
Friday Bloop
Today on Blogher: Britney: Unfitney? Or Misunderstoodney?
OH YES I DID just do that to the English language. I am shameless.
Tonight we are nicking off for drinks with fun people, and then finally out to dinner at this Spanish restaurant I have been wanting to peep forever. Maybe…if I can get reservations.
Companion is 1) re-upped, finally, and 2) he is going for some mushroom pickery this weekend. I predict chanterelle risotto in my future. Also, I am taking a mushroom pickery class in a couple of weeks called Mushroom 101: How Not to Poison everyone You’ve Ever Loved. Can’t wait!
Well, someone’s happy it’s Friday.
“Wot’s Friday?” she says.
How Will I Go On Without My Gaius?
“Adulthood is loneliness, emptiness, and panic. Surprise! Welcome to the party. Make yourself a drink. Sit anywhere.”
–Christopher Frizelle
I have exhausted all of my episodes of Battlestar Agalag. What am I going to do with the rest of my life now? I guess I have to go outside or something now. BOOO!
I am turning thirty this month, did I tell you? I was feeling all excited about that, pretty much since last year’s birthday. Now I kind of wish I could put it off for another month, since I have so much anxiety right now. I sort of feel like I am overreacting to things. Like I just got sucked back into a few years ago when things were much worse. It’s funny how triggers can set you off. What do you do about that? I think the difference between then and now was that I thought things were going to get better, and I could move away from the bullshit for once and all. But of course it resurfaces. I know that now. How did I get this old without knowing that?
So right now I am feeling like a barely-competent friend, fake wife, and person. I think the momming may still be hanging in there. I have only thrown Strudel in the locks three times this week, which is about average.
I got my first paycheck for writing the other day. I was talking to a friend about that and how I thought I would have sold a pile of work by now. But I am happy to have made a start.
Things I am obsessing over lately:
You Are Forty-Fived With Vitamin Phail
A brilliant comment from my first Wyoming entry.
1) The reading mudflap girl has no bobbies to speak of.
2) She’s not, as far as I can tell, naked.
I think all this says more about you than the fine folks at the Wyoming libraries.
PROBLEMS WITH THIS COMMENT:
1. Referring to women’s breasts as bobbies. WTF?
2. “She’s not naked.” Your point?
3. “I personally don’t see what’s wrong with this, so it’s not sexist.” Yes, it’s our problem, isn’t it, that Wyoming is using silhouettes of nekkid chicks on its advertising and some of us find it tired or gross.
I promise I’ll get off this soon. Busy still.
Y So SRS, Asshole? I Dunno. Just Am.
Today I am sad because Britney Spears has lost her children. I will not qualify this with snarky remarks about her or her fashion sense or driving around with her babies in her lap or whatever. This life is hard, dood.
With my ex-husband moving in a couple of months and our schedule with Franny changing, I have been thinking of how hard it can be to buckle down and be a good parent every day. By good parenting, I don’t mean refraining from appearing topless on a reality show, or choosing milk with that McFatty Meal instead of Diet Coke. I mean doing that little bit extra that takes so much fucking energy. Making good dinners. Really listening instead of “mmm-hmming.” Having a discussion instead of saying, “Because god said so” or whatever.
I have been asking myself what I want to do with this situation a lot. I have to. His first attempt at proper required notice of relocation did not include a required proposed parenting plan, the date of the move, or the new address. You could probably see the letters “WTF” over my head about three feet tall (it’s the new question mark, you know). I replied with, “Um…WHUT?” and he has reattempted, but it is pretty fail also.
Twice now, no proper notice, so I am making decisions that I don’t really want to make. I think when I was younger I would have classified this as Like, Totalleh Unfair, but now that I am older it is worth it to do more work in order to have things happen correctly and to cover your own ass properly, right?
For the past two years, we have been a pretty even fifty-fifty. I am used to this; we all are. Franny has been complaining for the past year and a half that she wants more time over here, but I just figured we were locked in unless I wanted to open the terrifying $50,000 can of worms again. I thought maybe we could make a change when she was old enough to speak on her own behalf in court at ten or twelve, and who knows what that change would be? It might not be the same decision as now. It’s okay.
I also had the thought that if she really, really wanted to be with her dad after this move I would roll over and let her go. It would be painful, but it’s better to see a kid occasionally who’s happy to see you, and to know that they are where they are happy to be most of the time, rather than forcing an unhappy kid to humor your selfishness. But she really wants to stay in her school here and with me. I feel compelled to attempt this for her.
In the meantime I will make good dinners and finish this website Companion and I are building for Franny’s school, and I will try not to grind my molars into little bits of toof dust. Like really try, as the hygienist I saw last week told me my teeth are actually loose right now. I will also ask myself 4,000 times if I am doing the right thing, wish wistfully 7,000 times that things didn’t have to change, and wonder if this will be one of those times where later I go, “if I could do that over again, I would basically do the opposite of whatever it was that I thought I was doing.”
So now I get to do a bunch of legwork that is Like, Totalleh Unfair to make up for his shortcomings in dealing with these proceedings. I may fail at this attempt. I’ll pick myself up again. My world won’t end. But I will see a very disappointed little face if I don’t at least try.
