So I don’t go completely, utterly, crazy donkeyshit blackeyed insane, I like to pretend that the forces in my house are working with me, instead of against me.

I have this game I play. My house is the Underworld and I am a modern Don Corleone.

If I need something broken, I give it to Little Frannie.

“Eh, Frannie, take care of this, whydontcha? I need this really ugly vase I got for Christmas taken care of.”

“Yes, Don Asshole,” she says, and throws it down the stairs.

If I need something eaten, I give it to the Chicken Mob. Whenever I open the kitchen window to toss out the extra rice or tomato butts, I say, “Eh, Chicken Mob, take care of these whydontcha. These apple peels are sleeping with the fishes tonight.” I like to imagine I have put little cement shoes on the bread heels before I hand them over.

“Yes, Don Asshole,” the Chicken Mob bocks.

The cats are my whack squad.

“Eh, Hank, I need a favor, whydontcha whack that moth for me, it’s interfering with my business.”

“Yes, Don Asshole,” Hank says, and springs to action.

If I need to pass on some secret information, I tell Mr. Husband.

“Eh, c’mere kid,” I say to him. I lean in and kiss each cheek. I whisper: “You have a dentist appointment on Monday.” He walks away and I am confident our secret converstation will go no further, since he has already forgotten what I said.

“Doo dum dum doo-doo,” sings Mr. Husband.

In Other News

The beginning of the take-over: scroll down halfway to “The results of the officer elections.” Bwahahaha. Fools!

Them: “He’s going back to cab driving? How awful!”

Me: “No, it’s not, really. It’s more money. The schedule is flexible. He hated having a desk job.”

Them: “I hope he doesn’t get hurt!”

Me: “Yes, those alcoholic little old ladies on beer runs can get pretty fiesty.”

Them: “You just need to learn to work with a budget.”

Me: “According to the labor board, a living wage in Washington state is $16 an hour. For one person. And he wasn’t even making that! We were starving! You can’t budget what you don’t have.”

Them: “Too bad he couldn’t stick with a real job.”

Me: “Bend over. I will try to be gentle as I insert my foot into your rectum. I have to warn you though: I will not stop until I reach the base of your skull.”

In Other News

Miss Frannie’s Greatest Hits:

1. “You a poo poo man!”

2. “Don’t look at me, Mom!”

3. “You have poop!”

4. “I hate this (soup, chicken, eggs, etc.)! I need some bread!” The girl would live. On. Bread.

5. “You are eating poop!”

6. “Don’t talk to me, Mom!”

7. “I take my droopy off and I poop on you!”

8. “Satan is my motor! Satan is my motor! Satan is my motor!” (x100) I made the mistake of playing a Cake record the other day. I am such a foolish mortal.

9. “I NOT take a nap! I NOT TAKE A NAP! I-NOT-TAKE-THE-NAP!”” Repeat incessantly from noon until naptime.

10. “Poop! POOP! POOOOOP!” Followed by hysterical laughter.

sigh…

Okay, it’s LAAAATE for V-Day shite, but I am tired of wallowing in my patheticness, and also of making drunken entries that I don’t remember the next day. So I am cutting into my study time to present a Very Special I, Asshole heart. I think this sums it all up.

Also, on the fourteenth I got the very best V-Day present ever…Scabies!

Just kidding. What really happened is Mr. Husband stopped on the way home from work and gaffled a couple of azalea branches off of some random person’s tree, and wrapped them in a box with newspaper. They are so pretty, on the kitchen table.

“They are the only thing blooming right now,” he said.

“I quit smoking like that, cold turkey,” said my grandpa. “I was working at the A&P, polishing the floors at night and sometimes we’d have some beers. I used to smoke cigarettes but I switched to cigars because the smoke wouldn’t get in my eyes. They were longer, you know. One night I bought a box of cigars and I was sick, I had a touch of the flu. I lit one and it made me sick.”

“I can’t stand that, what, rust, blood, in a can. What’s that?” said my grandma. She had a stroke last year and her words are screwy.

“Blood?” I said.

“Beer?” says my sister.

“Yeah,” my grandma says.

“I gave out all my cigars to all the guys I worked with,” my grandpa said. “Those guys, they said I was foolish. That I would just buy a box of cigars the next day. But they were wrong. I never smoked again.”

“I can’t abide by that stuff,” my grandma said. “You know, I know what I’m saying but I just can’t say it right. The rust, the blood in a can.”

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying , Grandma,” I said.

“We’re sorry we gave you back to your mom,” they said. They raised me until I was five.

It all turned out for the best, I said.

In Other News

A wonderfully written, and long essay about why public schools suck my ass.

So Mr. Husband’s parents drive me absolutely crazy sometimes, like crazy fuckity batshit caddywampus. They brought little Frannie chicken soup while she was sick…except it was that soup in a cup shit that has no relation to chicken, really, except for the fact that the word “chicken” is printed on the cup. Really, it should be called “chiken” or some such just like that ol Krab With A “K” business.

They also saw fit to bring some of that random pudding in a cup. (Mr. Husband’s parents generation are very fond of ____ in a cup, methinks.) This is the same pudding in a cup that proudly touts itself as “never needing refrigeration, ever!” I can see stacks and stacks of this stuff lining the walls of bomb shelters everywhere. Everyone’s crapping dead, but at least you’ve got your pudding that never needs refrigeration ever, and your porn.

Anyhow, the real reason I get so honked off about this random food is because I always end up eating all the fuckity stuff, so as to spare Frannie the chemical distress on her little body. Heh.

I had already eaten three of the four BOCK BOCK fuckity pudding in a cups in two days, and last night I was settling down to eat the very last one with my favorite small spoon.

“Hey,” said Mr. Husband, “is that the very last pudding? Cause I didn’t have any.”

“Are you telling me that you are going to take this crapping jive-ass pudding out of my very hands? That I was about to enjoy immensely?”

“Yoink!” said Mr. Husband, and liberated me from my pudding. Bastard!

I stared at him like an evil dog and he stared at the TV and ate the goddam tiny cup of pudding, every last bite of it. I “ahermed.” I clicked my nails on the coffee table. I gave him meaningful looks. I was ignored.

When he finished, he set the spoon down very carefully and looked at me.

“I can’t believe you are making me feel guilty for eating this pudding,” he said.

I win.

Did I mention that every goddam fuckity year I forget I get all manic in January, because the sun is only a tiny goddam dot hidden behind many layers of pukey, wooly clouds? Did I mention that I didn’t sleep at all last night? But it’s actually okay because though I will be insufferable, my grades will be really good?

C’mon, March.

So the Weekend That Will Never End continues on to today, much to my delight.

It all started Wednesday night, with Frannie and some late-night vomiting. No big deal, I thought. I can handle that. All little kids get sick once and a while, and I heard something is going around.

It has gone on every night since Wednesday, and sometimes in the day, too. It’s always the little whimper followed by the sound a toilet makes when you flush three toothbrushes and a Barbie head down it. Then the torrent of puke. Things that are not nice the second time around: “Craisins,” blueberries, noodles, and cottage cheese. I thought I had completed this list from my binge drinking days, but that was mostly Doritos, Chinese food, and martini olives anyhow.

Frannie was always an A+ puker when she was wee. You could always count on her for some good ralphing after nursing, being picked up, being set down, or being looked at cross-eyed. But that was just breast milk, which usually came up fast enough to be fairly innocuous. Now it’s the real deal.

On Friday night I was trying to gently rock her on the couch, to soothe her after a vigorous round of grocery-blowing. After a few minutes she started whimpering and squirming, and let it all go all over my chest. It is hard to clean up after someone else when you feel your gag reflex kicking in.

And it’s not enough to wipe her mouth and change her clothes, like you can with an older, more talented puker…Frannie barely wakes up, she just lays on her side and lets it rip into her hair. It is almost as hard to get vomit chunks out of hair at three in the morning as it is to get peanut butter out on a good day. I have had to put her in the shower and hose her off every night until she smells okay enough to come to bed with us.

And if she’s taking a break from vomiting, it’s the sound of distant thunder…and then whatever I just fed her is blasting out the other side. I no longer laugh when people use the phrase “diaper gravy.” It’s just the right consistency to adhere all over her bum and up her legs, but liquidy enough to roll out of the diaper and onto my beautiful goddam rug.

As you may have guessed, my house doesn’t smell very good right now. I’ve been eating basically the same flu diet she has, cause nothing smells appetizing at all. It either smells like ass in here, or like buckets of stomach acid. How can a small thirty-pound person make such bad smells?

I was supposed to write a paper this weekend (due tomorrow) and have had no energy to do anything. I should be doing it right now, but I just had to vent and warm-up for graded writing next.

Oh christ if I would’ve known what days of vomiting was all about I would have put my crapping ovaries out of commission with an ice pick and adopted children who were old enough to clean up their own bodily fluids. There has to be nice fourteen-year-olds out there who need a loving home.

“Let’s go to Minnie’s. We’re close and I’m really starving.” We had been so busy that morning trying to hustle little Frannie out of the house to go with her grandparents, I had forgotten to eat breakfast.

“Maybe not Minnie’s. Let’s go to the Hurricane,” Mr. Husband said. The way he was turning and circling around the blocks made me think he wasn’t trying very hard to find Minnie’s.

“What? We are so close to Minnie’s, and I’ve never been to this one!” I was turning into the low blood sugar drama queen. Then I thought for a minute about the circuitous route he was taking. “Wait. Is this the Minnie’s that you were drunk at and turned all the restaurant’s lights off and they all hated you?”

“Yes,” he groaned. “There are too many bad memories there.”

“I don’t think they’ll remember you,” I said.

“Well, I also shot the window out of this one.”

“I don’t think you told me that before,” I said, trying to close my gaping mouth.

“Oh,” he said casually, “It was the night I got arrested for shooting my gun off in the alley nearby.”

He had told me about his arrest a long time ago. It was one of those true confessions you have to make before you get married. But I didn’t know he blasted a restaurant window as well, and I told him so.

“The bullet had to go somewhere,” he said mildly. Mr. Husband is Super-Casual, and since I am not I really admire that about him. I run around going BOCK BOCK BOCK every time I break a nail, and he would quietly tell you your house was on fire. You know, so you wouldn’t get too upset. Very genteel.

“I was lucky,” he continued. “I was pretty drunk. I could’ve killed the guy.” He thought for a minute. “Aah, no I couldn’t. I was too incompetent.” This made me laugh. “At least I had the sense to point the gun away from him, since we were just trying to scare the guy.”

“We can go to the Hurricane, then,” I said, but we were almost there anyway.

In Other News

True confessions you must make before you get married: that you have one or more A.K.A.s attached to your name, that you have secret (or not-so-secret) children, and that you

Running off to “historic” Olympia, Washington today for the annual Thanksgiving famjam; this will be my first year in attendance. Bitsy Olympia used to have the third-highest dome in the country, and that was the old Capital Building, way back in the amazing year 1913 or something. At one time, I think people thought that Washington was “going places” what with all the fur tading and pine trees and such.

Now no one’s going places. If I almost get rear-ended by another SUV on the freeway while going twenty-seven miles an hour, I’m going to jump out of my car and take a shit on their hood. They won’t be able to drive away, because they’ll be just as stuck in traffic as I am. And don’t say they they will beat me up, for my teeth will already be filed into points. (That is PHASE ONE.) I will sit in Jerome and gloat as a steaming pile of girl-mess hardens on their hood.

Err…Olympia! Today we are off to make nice with Mr. Husband’s multitudinous cousins, who are so similar in appearance and names that it always strikes me that they must be part of some kind of Top-Secret Yuppie Cloning Project.

They will say, “Wow, Seth, you finally got a real job. Perhaps now you can aspire to own an ugly giant generic house in Bellevue like we do. Perhaps it is time for the giant SUV to store your adorable army of Yuppie children in. Perhaps your wife should quit school and dedicate herself full time to starving herself down to nothing like our wives.”

“Eeep!” says Yuppie wife #1. The wind blows and she snaps in half at her waspy waist.

(Okay, I stop myself here to concede that I am being unfair, because Mr. Husband’s family is pre-disposed to thinness. Which makes them more annoying, actually. Never mind.)

ANYWAY, it should be A Day. I don’t know what the Jim Bob I’m complaining about, because the reason I’m going to Oly is that this is the first year I don’t have to be subjected to my mother’s awful cooking.

One year, when my mother moved in with me, I decided to cook Fangsgiving dinner for her. You know, show Ye Olde Bat how it’s done. Instead of going through the trouble of a giant turkey for only four people, I decided that Cornish hens would be more fun. I glazed them with a honey apricot sauce, and stuffed them with walnuts, apricots, and I think pears. I made all these awesome side dishes, including my wine-marinated grapes.

“Where’s the stuffing?” she said. “This is just wrong.”

My parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a house from the ground up when I was eight years old. The mortgage payment alone must’ve been killer, not to mention the utility bills in that tiny mansion. They were my age, twenty-five. I live in a cracker box and Mr. Husband gets bent about our buck-thirty-a month car payment. Priorities, man.

I digress. As a result, we were property rich and cash poor. My mom did things with rice and hamburger that would have made a Depression-era mother weep with envy. We sat in our deluxe new house every night, eating gloopy, cafeteria-looking food that had a soup base, with the heat turned down to about fifty. Mom and Dad used to bring home a WHOLE SIDE OF COW that had been butchered, and they would spend hours wrapping it up for the freezer. We would eat off it for months, like cavemen with a freezer chest and central air. “It’s cheaper that way!”

Now I sit in my speck of a house, and whip up some phad thai, sear some lamb, experiment with French sauces. Everyone’s getting homemade truffles for Christmas. Priorities, man.

Whatever. The point is: today I am thankful, because any turkey prepared by one of Mr. Husband’s aunts will be moister than any prepared by my mother, whose cooking mantra for everything is, “Let’s just leave it in a FEW MORE MINUTES.”

I will bring my wine-marinated grapes:

Pluck two bunches of grapes (for a large crowd) off stems. Wash. Put in a large ziplock and pour in the cheapest bottle of rot-gutty red wine you can find. I like Gato Negro. Let the grapes suck up the fermented blood of their distant cousins for twelve hours or so. Drain well, then toss grapes in granulated sugar til coated right before serving. Excellent with turkey or chicken.

Seven a.m.: off to redye hair, because its current shade of pink isn’t quite retina-searing enough for Mr. Husband’s grandma. Have a good day, you fucks.

“Poopool, yeyo, poopool, yeyo, poopool, yeyo….”

“I like your song. Are you singing about purple and yellow?”

“Yep. Feeway, Mama? Feeway?”

“Yes, we’re going on the freeway now. Are you hungry? We can have lunch when we get there.”

“Holy toww! Holy toww! Holy toww!”

“Why are you saying ‘holy cow?”

“I have a matato, and a penay butter, and a wodurt.”

“You had yogurt for for breakfast. We can have tomatoes and peanut butter.”

“Poopool, yeyo, poopool, yeyo.”

As I am typing, right now:

“I hate that, Mama.” She points to the computer. I hardly ever use it when she’s awake–I usually just check my email and get off. But it takes attention away from her for a few minutes.

“I know you do. I’ll just be fifteen, then we’ll take a shower.”

“Meow! Meow! Meow!”

Living in non-sequitur land is better than the “a-dah” phase, I think.

I relish this entry…for it is one of my very last non-NaNoWriMo entries. I am currently well-rested and mostly sane. I’ll keep you posted on how my mental state is as things progress.

Today I realized I’ve turned into a 17th-century tavern wench. I’ve got these adorable little banties, you see, and they spend all day milling around in my backyard, and they spend all night snoozing in the hut I built for them in April. I go out once a day, to check their water and feed, and to make sure they’re doing all right.

The cool thing about having chookies is that you almost never throw away food scraps–slightly wilted lettuce, tomato butts, stale cookies–everything can go into the backyard and I have their undying loyalty, for I am Food. They also eat Girlie leftovers, because she eats about forty-eight mini-meals a day, and always leaves bread crusts of a few raisins or apple rinds. I used to pile all her scraps into a bowl and put them out in the backyard, sending the chooks into a frenzy of ecstatic squawking and pecking and general freak-outs.

Unfortunately, my backyard is much lower than the front yard. When you come into the house, you can enter on the first floor, walk to the back of the house, and peer down into the backyard which is a storey below (so my backyard access is through the basement). Oftentimes when I am at home and ready to feed the chickens some scraps, I am not wearing shoes or pants or am feeling very lazy, or all three at once. So I devised a new method. I open the kitchen window, and rocket the jammy toast scraps, cheese bits, or banana butts into the backyard. They immediately come running, flapping their sad little wings to get more velocity. I don’t think this really speeds them up any, since they just end up traveling in zig-zaggy arcs, instead of running it a straight line. But it sure looks funny.

They fight over the scraps until they’re gone, and then go back to pecking at imaginary bugs and rolling in the dirt.

I think this is the perfect method, but Mr. Husband disagrees with me. Very surprising, since he is a Boy, and I thought boys liked it when things were rocketed around. Doesn’t he know about Jackass? So I stopped doing it…in front of him. (I am trainable like a cat.) But I think he suspects I still do it.

“Hey,” he said on Sunday morning, “Did you notice the chickens freak out and run over whenever you open the kitchen window?” He thinks for a minute, looking into the backyard and begins filling the sink to wash the dishes. “Are you throwing food out the window again?” I give him a non-committal shrug. “That is so trashy!” he says.

Hey, you can take the girl out of the trailer park…

“That’s how the plague started in London, you know,” he says.

“But they eat the little toast bits right away,” I say. “We’re not drawing rats. I think it’s very clever.”

That’s me, the Queen of Efficiency.