Category Archives: Franny

Franny Out and About

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My schedule it is still scrambled and I have had a cold for about two weeks now. I think I’m out of that middle-of-the-night hack hack barf stage, so that’s good. Work is slow, so hours are short, which I’m glad about in a way because it’s giving me time to recover. If you haven’t heard from me, don’t take it personally, please!

Since I have been fairly out of commission lately, I rallied yesterday and dragged my tired old body to Franny’s school at three. I had told her about the wonder that is Sephora and she was very interested in seeing it for herself. We jumped on the downtown bus, had a snack, and hit the counters. She ended up with bright red lips and teal glitter eyeliner, which is funny on an eight-year-old. She got compliments wherever she went–“Ooh, she’s going to be a model!”

Her mood started to slide in the store and completely crashed once we left.

“I don’t want to be a model,” Franny said, as we crossed the street in the rain.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Make yourself happy.”

We walked for a while in silence. She had her head down and her hood was getting all covered in mist.

“Hey,” I said. “We’re right by your grandpa’s house. Want to give him a ring and see if he’s home? We can say ‘hi.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. Franny sort of followed me around the market after that, as I bought halibut and a demi-baguette and some little Chinese buns with red bean paste in them for dessert.

Later, as I was making dinner, Strudel picked up Franny’s elaborate Lego house and smashed it on the ground, where it shattered into a bunch of pieces. Franny wailed and ran to her room, slamming the door. “This has been the WORST day EVER!”

She went to bed shortly after that, since she was obviously so tired and at loose ends. The next morning she was in much better spirits.

“Feeling better?” I said.

“Yes, I am.” she said. “When I said I was having a bad day, I didn’t mean the part downtown. I just had a really bad day at school.”

“Well, life is hard sometimes,” I said. “The important thing is to try to keep the hard parts seperate from the sweet parts. I try not to let my bad days ruin the good things.”

“Okay,” she said.

I really hope she gets it.

Dudes

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I have two things to tell you. One, after months of jonesing, I am finally listening to my very own Blossom Dearie CD. It’s really the little things. She makes my brane melt a little.

TWO my boss called me a bad swear today. My boss is the IRL version of Steve Carrell. I am quite sinsur. Also my coworker told me today she’s packing a heater. I don’t want to know these things. No I do not.

Three. (Bonus Round) I also got a Diana Krall CD of standards that I somehow missed in the last couple of years. There is something about her now. Something disconcertingly Sinatralike. I love Sinatra, but I don’t know if I need another one in my life.

Four. Mr. Klassy is coming back! He is laying eggs! MR. KLASSY COME HOME. ALL IS FORGIVEN. I am going to drive to his farmhome on Saturday and get her. Apparently she was a bit of a pariah. Polishes are really mellow birds, so I am not too surprised in hindsight. I offered my friends my dudlike Buttercups, but shockingly they declined. The Buttercups are laying now and they make smallish white eggs. Anyone want some fucking buttercups?

FIVE I had to work up to Franny’s bedtime, so I said hi to her when I came home. She went all babymush on me and stuck her arms out and said MAMA. I said, “Come on kid,” and she climbed into my bed, where she is snoring right now. She was at her dad’s for a week after Xmas and that makes her all weird.

Six. Speaking of weird, the threads continue to unravel. Have you ever put on an outfit that you are pretty sure is a bad idea, but you really want to wear it so you do it anyway? Dig if you will the picture, of pants too large and a top slightly too small and socks that keep falling down. You are fidgeting at your pants to keep them up and OH the socks are itchy and what’s this? The bastardy shirt flips up over your muffintop. This is bad. Did your bra strap just break? What the fuck?

I am feeling a little bit like that about life lately. I get one goo ball up and five more fall down. All this preamble is to tell you that I lost it a little in a sad fashion in the store I work in. I have this history with dogs. We’ve never gotten along too well. I realized recently, now that I have been running, that the feeling of unease I get when a dog is coming is fear. Problem: there are approximately 4.9 dogs to every human in Seattle. People in Seattle deem it appropriate to bring dogs into GROCERY STORES here. So of course people bring dogs into the store where I work.

It was all over the place, too. I felt totally trapped. Non-swearing boss asked me if I was okay, because apparently I turned white and started shaking. I had to step outside. The best part was that the dog was one of those floor sweepers that weighed about five pounds. I am now afraid of things that weigh less than my own head. I am officially crackers.

There, I said it. I just became a Larry David character. I predict that Kleenex box hands are about a year out. Spazzychow out.

OIC

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“I can’t wait until Christmas Steve comes, Mom,” Franny said. “When does he come again?”

“Christmas Eve eve, remember? And only if you’ve been naughty enough.”

“Oh yeah,” she said.

“CHRISTMAS STEVE! YAY! I GOT A LAUNDRY SCOOP!” Strudel said.

“I hope I get road-marking tape again,” Franny said.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get some crap that breaks in the first day, from whatever place Steve hits before he gets here. Maybe you will luck out and he will break into a construction site again,” I said.

“That wasn’t CRAP! And it didn’t break in the first day. Remember, mom, we made tapey lines all over the house.”

Uh-huh, I remember.

“So, Franny, what else did you get for Christmas last year? Like from me and Strudel’s dad?”

“Umm….”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” she admitted.

“Strudel, what did you get for Christmas last year?”

“A LAUNDRY SCOOP!!”

Monkey Hips and Peanut Sauce

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A moment of silence, friends. Your SJ has discovered something that peanut sauce does NOT taste good on: Nilla Wafers. I have been buying rather than making cookies lately, because sometimes you just want that fix, and tonight my eyes strayed to ye olde Nillas. The peanut sauce did not taste bad on them, per se, it just kind of obliterated the Nilla-ness of them and left them tasting kind of sweet. I scamper back to the standby, toast, as a vehicle for peanut saucey goodness.

More Nilla Wafer hilarity ensues as the box they come in assures me I can make something called a “tiramisu bowl” with Wafers, Jell-O, coffee, and cream cheese. GOOD CHRIST. No rum? This is not tiramisu, nor is it trifle, which is what it resembles all stacked up in the bowl like that. FAIL. I am going to give this trifle a shot for Xmas, which WL says is orsum. But probably I will cut it in half, since I am not entertaining in anyway for xmas, except in a schadenlulz one.

Today I am thinking about death. I was thinking about my kid and her recently-deceased grandmother, and how we are talking about her lately. I think I never told you about The Death of Monkeyhip, because I was on, ahem, my court-ordered “hiatus” then. We were living in that tragic apartment on Aurora Avenue where the dude got pasted while crossing the street, and Monkeyhip got all hamster ancient and expired. Franny happened to be with us and I found him cacked in his cage. I had to sit her down and tell her and she WAILED, and then got over it about four seconds later.

That afternoon we went out to lunch and happily ran into Kaijsa at Jai Thai, before it went all downhill.

“Hi Franny,” kaijsa said. “What’s new?”

Much to our surprise, Franny burst into song.

“Monkeyhip died and we PUUUT him INNN the DUMPSTER!” She did a jolly dance while singing dramatically. Kaijsa and her friends did not know what to say to that. I was silently shaking with laughter, but also embarrassment about being exposed about what we’d done. But it was winter and we lived in an apartment–what else could we do? I still felt pretty bad, though.

Tonight before dinner we were having a living room dance party to shake of the Mondayness of it all, and I put on Monkey hips and Rice and she flopped on the couch and started weeping. “This song reminds me of MONKEYHIP!” She had named him, after all.

This is like the non-deep thought of the century, but I was at the grocery store wheeling the cart past the giant line of perfect condiments, you know, and I was thinking what a shock the hamster’s death was to her, followed by her Nana a year ago, and her grandma last month. And how someday death becomes acceptable, expected, and even routine. How many hundreds of famous dead people have you heard about in your life? How many dead in wars and natural disasters? I hear over and over again about people who are very ill or old being ready to let go and die and it just made me think–does it get to the point where you know more dead people than actual living people? Do you feel like you grow accustomed to it until you are ready to cross over too? I feel less scared than I used to when I was younger, even of losing people I love. It’s amazing what we can recover from.

Mal Mots avec Frannie 12/08 Edition

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My kid came back from her dad’s today, and whoa was that enlightening. As I mentioned in my post before this one, he pretty much called bullshit on me and the stomachache thing. Franny remembers it differently.

“So, I want to talk to you about something serious, and any answer is okay. I just want you to say what’s in your mind and what’s the truth,” I said.

“Okay,” Franny said.

“I talked to your dad on Friday and he said you don’t have stomachaches at his house.”

Franny looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.

“I get them ALL THE TIME, Mom.”

“Oh, okay. Well, I was kind of upset after I talked to him, because he pretty much said the stomachaches only happen at my house, and that they’re my fault, because of stuff that’s going on here with Strudel’s dad and stuff.” Franny gawped at this.

“That’s DUMB,” she said. She thought for a minute. “He makes it sound like a lot of things are your fault, Mom.”

We talked about gluten and what we’re trying to do and so forth, and I asked her if she felt like her dad could do it. “Probably not,” she said.

My point is not, surprisingly, to dog on SeaFed, but to just say, see what happens when you mate with someone 180 degrees different than you? My advice is to get a dog or hatch a child from an egg. Good luck.

FURTHER

We were coming back from the grocery store and she was talking about various shenanigans. I have conflicts with the devilry she gets up to, because from first grade on, from the time of the pants-wetting incident, I was an angry child who was not buying into the system.

“So they wanted to take me to get Santa pictures this weekend,” she said.

“Oh really?” I said.

“Yes, I waited until I had my dress on to tell them that I would not be doing Santa pictures.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, and my stepmom got really mad. She yelled and told me to put my dress away. But later I saw Santa and he told me to sit on his lap.”

“And did you?”

“Yeaah, I felt like I had to. So I sat on his lap.”

“What did you ask for?” I said.

“Welll, I always ask for an American Girl doll. But you know what, Mom? I knew it was not Santa, because last year he asked me ‘which one’ and I said ‘Kaya,’ and this year he didn’t. So I knew it was just a creepy old man.”

“Oh my.”

“My stepmom was soooo mad. She made me talk to my dad on the phone.”

My child is angry, too. And I have a dent on my lower lip where I was biting it. Not because I was enjoying the fact that she is tormenting her weekend hosts, but because she is kicking and fighting. She’s alive.

Dear MF Diary: Fangsgiving 2008. No spirit animal…YET.

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1. Yesterday I took Franny to get her ears pierced, one of those little lady rites of passage I suppose we all go through at some time or other. I got mine done at six and when I was eight they closed up due to me wearing some crap Claire’s earrings for several days in a row. I think I was swimming a lot that summer and they were corroding or something gross like that. Then I was re-mallgunned at ten. Currently I have six holes in my ear; three were mallgunned and three were piercing shopped. I am very proud that Franny’s first unnatural holes in her body were done by a PRO. FESSIONAL. PIERCER. (*is smug*)

She kind of jibblied around a little bit and I brought her back to Earth with a gentle “Hey, this is a big girl thing, so you gotta sack up and act like a big girl for this.” She held very still and listened to directions and, unsurprisingly, thought it was going to hurt worse than it did. Now she has sweet little hoops with captive beads and they look so cute. I feel relieved to finally have fulfilled my birthday promise, despite the fact that spending any money is making me cry right now.

2. I got turned down for yet another job where I made it to the multiple interview stage and got another “We thought you were a really strong candidate, etc.” This is starting to affect my self of steam. In a way I am relieved, because I thought the job sounded dull, and would be tough as a resume stepping stone (it had a weird job title and was kind of nichey writing) but I see another yellow bill come into the mailslot today and I think it certainly would have been better than a poke in the eye. I should have an interview next week for a position that has “editor” in the title, which excites me. I am ready to give blood to get one of these increasingly rare positions.

3. Retail job is going well…except for the fact that my lazy typety type ass is not used to being on my feet for 6-8 hours. When I come home from retail job, I disappear into a pit after barely being able to get the kids done for the night and sleep for 11 hours. I am not kidding. I wake up refreshed and wonder where my day went.

I got hazed on my first day on the floor. A regular employee came in with the foulest mood I had ever seen, and this is someone who spent 5+ years in record stores surrounded by aspiring Jack Blacks-in-High-Fidelity of all stripes. I introduced myself to her and she pointedly ignored me and picked up the phone. Then she told me that if I “put anyone off” with my nose ring I should direct them to her. I told her I wasn’t worried because I’ve had it for half my life now and when I smile people know I am friendly. I mean, it’s Seattle, FFS. People don’t really bat an eye at me. Then the adorable gay boy who took me under his wing was singing and she said, pretty loudly, “Could you be any more flaming?” I forgot how different retail environments are. Sexual harassment, non-PC statements, and just plain-old nastiness just run rampant. I know this happens in offices, too (I have seen it, for sure) but it seems like everything boils down to the lowest common denominator when you slap someone behind a register.

By the next shift she decided I was non-useless, and now I seem to be in the clubhouse somewhat. She has been shoving the ESL/tourists off onto me because I have always had a knack for understanding the Japanese and a lot of patience. Now I hear her call across the store: “SJ! Translate!” I have to say this is the most fun retail job I’ve ever had. Yesterday I was talking to someone about this knifemaster I was reading about in Oly and the difference between Japanese and American knives. The company ethos dictates that you just pretty much stand around talking to people all day. It’s much less dismal than, say, the time I put in at Tower or even the indie stores.

4. Yesterday on the way back from work I was listening to the Nippers, and they were interviewing this lady who wrote Things That Makes Us [Sic] (GET IT??), about grammar. Additionally, she is a founding member of SPOGG, which, you know, right on for grammar analness but yesterday on the radio she was actually espousing correcting our friends and loved ones when they stray off the grammar trail. I was a little saddened by this, because she seemed whip-smart otherwise. She likened correcting people’s grammar to pointing out the fact your friend has spinach in their teeth. I say no to this. She claims that your friends will thank you, I claim that they will not call your pompous presumptuous ass back. Unless this is a form of public trolling, in which case I say WELL PLAYED. IRL lulz are hard to come by, and should be seized when possible.

5. Fangsgiving. I am thinking about my mom today, thanks to an email exchange I was having with my friend and neighbor, who is helping me with my Hester Prynne problems, thank you babby jesus. I was telling him about adventures in cooking for my mother, the ingrate.

1999. I am living in a rambler in Phoenix with SeaFed. We also have a roommate who thinks that we’re crazy and who is chased out by my mother and sister’s presence eventually. My mother was with us after fleeing the East Coast and her third marriage. I had discovered that I liked to cook after becoming the gothic trophy wife of my drug-dealing husband and finding that I had both too much money and too much time on my hands. I was really starting to get my chefery on at this point. Since we were a small gathering of four for Thanksgiving that year, I decided to get schmancy and make cornish game hens with a honey-apricot-herb glaze of my own devising.

They turned out beautifully. Golden, fruity, crispy around the edges. Stuffed with nuts and scallions and crap.

My mom’s response: “I can’t believe you didn’t make a turkey.”

2000. Franny is a wee little six-week old sprog and we have all caravaned to the PNW’ed (booooo) and are housesharing in Shoreline. I am vaguely and stupidly excited about the prospect of us all Fangsgivinging together in the house, me, my mom, my sister, and now Franny. I wanted to contribute, so I offered to make stuffing. I decided on cornbread and I made an unholy fuckton. I even did it “right” and made it a day or two before so it could dry out a bit beforehand. Verily it was delicious.

My mom’s response: “Mmm, I think I prefer StoveTop.”

2005. I am crammed into the shittiest yet nicest apartment we can afford. Daniel comes over, as well as my sister and mother, who deigns to let me have Thanksgiving at my house. I was very pleased with the company and the group effort.

My mom’s response: “This meal does not contain enough organ meats.”

Conclusion: if you are cooking for someone who is a StoveTop-eating, gibblet-munching, persnickety ass, don’t expect great things. This year I am making it Southern style with bourbon gravy, cornbread stuffing, and beans-n-bacon. NO ONE will be persnickety. Happy Fangsgiving.

P.S. Renee Khan and others, I am working my way through Sepulchre and even taking notes. FOR JOO.

MAAAverick; Or, Witness as I Throw Motes at People’s Glass Houses

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Do you remember at the beginning of the summer when I wrote about letting Franny walk herself to school and the helicoptery flack I was getting as a result?

Well, friends, hell has frozen over. Today I am walking the girls to school when I see childrens A, B, and C walking together but otherwise unaccompanied to school.

Child A has lovely parents but is a manipulative bully. She’s the kind of child who hisses lovely things when the teacher isn’t looking like, “Give me your pencil or I won’t be your friend” and swoops in and takes a kid’s seat when the kid gets up for water, and then acts all innocent upon the first child’s return. I reluctantly allowed a playdate with this child last year because she has a long history of playing with Franny while at her dad’s house.

[As an aside, I told Franny that a tactic for dealing with her was to shame her. When Child A did something sneaky and manipulative, I suggested that Franny should call her out, loudly. “WHY DID YOU TAKE MY CHAIR?” Franny said this was successful and got the child to pick new targets. I should tell you about this year’s bully. She makes Child A look like amateur night.]

There was a friend schism for a while during the divorce after the whole SeaFed getting the mommies at school to sign paperwork attesting to his awesomeness after knowing him casually for three months. I didn’t really trust anyone for a long time, because I know the busybodies and gossips, lo they walk among us. There were mommies who were reporting various things that SeaFed was doing to me, totally unprovoked and unasked for.

So finally I said, well, okay, let bygones be bygones, they have all been in this school together for many years, let’s try it. Child A left the house, picked up by one of her very nice parents, I turn around, and Franny is in tears about some weird psychodrama involving Child A and Strudel, who Franny felt was being treated unfairly. The fact that she couldn’t even really describe what had happened made me think that the mind-fuckery was going deep. I asked Franny if she wanted to keep doing this. She said no, but she kind of dithers on it. This year they are in separate classes and Franny’s teacher has expressed relief about this, because she sees Franny is under a lot less pressure. I think a lot of people want to be friends, but they don’t know how.

The point of this long ass build up is that Child A’s mother offered Franny a ride home last year when she saw that Franny was all by her lonesome for two whole blocks. I do not resent the offer, really, but it was a clearish late spring day and it was more about people meddling, no matter how well-meaning.

Children B and C. That is more complicated, though I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say her children are stunted and neurotic due to some of the most pernicious helicoptering I have ever seen. The mother of children B and C got in Franny’s face last spring and told her that she didn’t think Franny should be walking by herself, which undermined Franny’s confidence, made her angry, and made the teacher decide to hold Franny back for five minutes every day so she could walk on her own, happily independent and unharassed.

This mother’s youngest is two years younger than Franny and a year younger than Franny was last year when she walked alone. You can say, yes, well, at least they’re walking together. With the way they have been helicoptered, I would not trust those children to be able to make it out of a wet paper bag with a map, flashlights, and a trail of breadcrumbs.

The icing on the cake is that they were going in at the same time as my kids, for the earlybird program, which the mother of children B and C had previously referred to as “glorified daycare for parents who just want to ditch their kids,” despite having friends whose children are in the program and claiming to respect the choices of women with careers. And people ACTUALLY ASK ME why we’re not friends anymore.

Death and Technical Writing

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Yesterday was pretty weird. Imagine me saying that like Larry David: “Pretty preeetty weird.” It started off normally enough, considering that I had just scheduled yesterday’s job interview at 5 p.m. the night before. I was hustling to fill out an application, gather writing samples, and defuzzing my favorite interview shirt. I was mentally girding myself to speak with five people in a three-hour gantlet, finishing with the recruiter, which kind of made it six. It was exhausting, but I feel like I made a connection with all five of the people, including the person I would be a direct report to. They may feel differently. And HO SNAPPLE I have another interview tomorrow, which also involves writing. I am not ready to tell you about my retail training yet, but I will soon.

As I was walking out and daydreaming about a nice glass of wine as I dematerialized into a puddle on the floor, I noticed I had a message. Franny’s grandpa called, and I figured he wanted to snag her for the weekend. It was not what I expected: Franny’s grandmother died yesterday morning.

I have never written about her. She was my mother-in-law for eight years. When Franny was one or so, they announced that she had early-onset Alzheimer’s. She was still in her 50s. I did not know the woman who became confused, and then later frequently violent, as she was described to me. I knew only a woman who was quiet and gentle. They say at the end she was refusing food and water, and ripping out her IV. On some level she was done.

I returned the call and got Franny’s dad instead of who I expected. “Want me to bring Franny?” I said. “I’ll be nice.”

I brought a big bottle of scotch and the kid. We talked about politics and drank and talked about old times. We tried to remember where we got the clawfoot tub that lived in our backyard for so many years. It was pretty weird having the new wife there, though in reality I am the odd one out now. Probably in the end she will have more years with them than I did. SeaFed always seems subdued now, older, diminished in his power.

It was nice somehow, though. It felt like an old family gathering. Any annoyance I felt at SeaFed was always put on hold at those times, because I always enjoyed talking to his parents. Franny’s grandfather mentioned that Auntie Jaguar is coming up to see him and that we should all get together. I hugged him before I left and he said, “You can’t get away, you can’t choose your family.” That and his mention of having a big reunion made me realize that the past, when we were all together was some of the best times in a way. I always clicked with him in a really perfect way and I felt like I was his third child, not the feckless one or the bossy do-gooder, but the prickly, funny one.

SeaFed had a couple of moments where he actually said some nice things to me, about how I was with his mom. About how I was the first to cry when they announced she was sick and the first to get up and hug her, and how that meant a lot to her. Stupid starchy WASPs. Of course that’s what you do. You cry and cry until you’re all empty, and then you start over. I think his new wife fits in better than I did–she seems nice and calm. Franny’s other sister sidled over to Franny gently and stroked her hair and face, whereas Strudel jumps on Franny and says “DO YOU WANT TO PLAY FUCK YEAH CAPS LOCK!” Probably Auntie Jaguar likes having complete bossy-control over his family now. Franny tells me stories about being disciplined by Auntie Jaguar that makes her jaw clench as she tells them.

Sometimes I feel a lot of regret in leaving that family, but still not SeaFed. I think about if I would have stuck around so I could have reaped the benefits of all that time and love and history. It was being loved, even at times I was terribly uncooperative and contrary. But having SeaFed around…it’s like living with a donkey in your house so you can hear the bells on its harness tinkle sometimes.

Franny in mourning
stays away from school today
autumn leaves swirl down

Again with the Pumpkins

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There’s been a lot of this sassypants business lately. I kind of jokingly corrected Franny, reminding her to keep the guts over the pot. Then the other one chimes in with “I’m not doing that.” If I correct Strudel, then the other one says, “It wasn’t me.” I KNOOOW. Sheesh, meddlers.

Quite a difference from two years ago, in some ways.

I carved my pumpkin for a contest for an online game with a first prize of ten million meat. I hope I place, because even second and third place is good, and there are two of each place. Bonus points if you know what this is! Where my fellow nerds at?

Well, At Least We Won’t Get the Plague, Probably

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Ugh, what a drag, we have a flea infestation up the ass.

I am fighting the big fight right now, doing pretty much every recommended thing under the sun to be rid of them. The cat is NOT helping at all. We treated her with Frontline on the nape of her neck, and she cleared up in a couple of days, but she is not helping by being a mobile poisoning unit because she figured out where the fleas were and avoids those areas now! Frontline is supposed to work by allowing fleas to jump on your cat and ingest the poison in their blood. Sadly, Nietzsche is now spending all of her time on the kitchen stepstool, a sewing machine that for some reason lives in the kitchen now, and an end table in the living room. She refuses to set foot in the girls’ room, where she dropped her big load of fleas in the first place on their little rug.

I have tried shutting her in the girls’ room for short periods of time, trying to get her to sleep on their beds in the sun, and she cries and paws the door. Useless thing!

So I am vacuuming, putting their blankets through the dryer on hot, washing things, sweeping, and spot-spraying with Knockout ES. One morning we wake up and the girls have no bites, and the next morning they wake up with twelve. Of course they have no self-control, so they scratch and scratch, and end up all scabby. They insist on showing me this repeatedly: “Look, this one burst!” Ugh, lovely.

This morning I was stretching before my run when I stopped to slap some of the bites on my ankles, rather than scratch them. I have tried to teach the girls to do this as well, but when Strudel gets mad at me or tired, she claws herself raw. That will show me who’s boss.

Franny noticed I was itchy and said, “Mom, do you have flea bites too?” All amazed.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“I didn’t know!” she said.

“Well, I don’t complain about them.”

It was like you could see the hourglass turning over. I love these moments where there’s a little glimmer of realization that adults have problems too. Sometimes it takes her a couple of days to discover that I have the same cold she does. She is always amazed. I am not playing momtyr, but I was raised not to complain until I am half dead, so generally I don’t. That’s what this place is for. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

In Other News: The Wall, I Have Hit It

Oh my heartbreak this morning as I was out, dashing happily around the lake, when I was taken out by shin splints. I was so angry I thought the top of my head was going to pop off. I NEED this running right now.

I slowed down and stopped to rub my legs. “FUCKITY FUCK FUCKLOAF ASSBURGER FIDDLESTICKS COCKTOAST…Oh, hello, ma’am, I did not see you and your stroller full of impressionable preschoolers there.”

The lake is kind of a funny place to run, since I kind of fall into myself and pretend I’m invisible when I’m doing it, and it’s full of people. This morning the center of the lake looked dead white, like it was the gateway to the edge of the world or something. I saw herons and falling yellow leaves. I am so happy that I can’t see shit generally, except, er, when I’m driving at night. People’s faces are a blur. I pipe music in through big ass cans instead of ear buds, which always hurt. This makes the world even more muted. Today I was listening to A Night at Birdland, and with Art Blakey’s wet cymbals you can’t even hear the gabbling, latte-swilling stroller moms.

So I hit that wall and walked until they settled down. I think I need to change a few things: more stretching, and new shoes. I think I am resting enough. I also need new jog bras. My currents are from before Strudel, and they are not quite doing it. They fit around, but the cup…it is a little like putting a small egg into a regular egg carton. It just rattles around and looks sad in there.

By the time I got to “Night in Tunisia” my shins felt okay again. That’s gotta be one of my all time favorite songs. I think I have a dead musician crush on Lee Morgan. I have almost all of his albums and a few of Blue Mitchell’s. I think trumpet is my favorite. Rock N Rolla!