Badger bag - messy, surly, full of books

moving to typepad

2004-03-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Okay --- let's try this for a while. I won't update here... I'll be over here in the new palacio de badgerbag

testing typepad migration

2004-03-02T01:46:00.000-08:00

testing! come take a look. the categories of post options and seeing comments fly by are quite tempting.

a deep need

2004-03-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

I have discovered a hitherto unknown deep, deep longing deep in my heart.

Drive Friendly: the game

2004-03-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

I invented this a while ago but forgot to post it. It would be an online massively multiplayer game based on driving safely. Stopsigns and stoplights and speedlimit signs all over would have little sensors of some kind and your car would have GPS and a data link of some kind.

Instead of cops tracking you and punishing you, your car would be transmitting your behavior stats to the game server where you would earn high scores by stopping all the way at stop signs, slowing down at yellow lights instead of running them, and going the speed limit. At the end of of the day, or after each trip, you might get an automated email with your stats. Or it could just go into some enormous log file and you could check it.

This would motivate people amazingly -- way more than the threat of getting a ticket or fine. Improving your score and competing with other people would make it interesting.

It might also track your driving times to common destinations, i.e., home to work, so you could try different routes at different times and see which ones are best and which ones you tend to drive more or less safely. You would see your own pattern of rule infractions based on the time of day and your tiredness level.

Also it could be set up to attach to your social network. So you could look at someone's driving record on Orkut. Social pressure would make people behave better.

And you would know never to get into Becky's car, ever. But I already knew that, after the first time I did it.

churn

2004-03-01T20:51:00.000-08:00

I kind of like this long fucked up poem... I think I just channelled some unholy mixture of allen ginsberg and Nicanor Parra...

because I had to leave my country

i had to leave my country
to find the other countries in my country

if you would like to speak to a customer service representative
dig here
between my legs

for a good time call
GOD
and listen to fire engines answer someone else's emergency
because here
it is predicted to be sunny and clear

I had to check to make sure it was still thursday
and what time was low tide
so that i could hop into my individual rocket powered jet pack helicopter
unimpeded by garbage picking seagulls and teenagers in bondage pants
and fly to work
where all day I feed red legged newts out of eyedroppers and wash oil slicked otters
and practice my spanish on winged serpents

those guys, they've got scales under their eyes
nictating membranes
that flick down to keep out racism
I heard on the radio they can even sleep that way
just like I'm asleep right now

so when I tried to TUNE IN
the radio kept flicking around on perpetual "seek" mode
since I was driving with one hand while with the other hand I sucked down a quadruple blood 70/30 latte made with motor oil and decaffeinated union grapes
I couldn't fix the radio because with my other, I mean my third, hand, I was adjusting the mirror
to see that my nose had developed a bloom of carbuncles like angry flowers or like the la brea tarpits full of bones bubbling in slow motion
and I kept hearing the individual bubbles of radio sound staticking past, whop, whop, zzzt, beep, then seeking again past voices and howly guitars announcing things importantly,

and when I tried to TURN ON
the rearview mirror just laughed and shot me the finger and said that yeah, I was the fairest, blanca, whitey, the queen, the princess of all the realms, and the fucking red legged newts and otters and oily ducks wanted to suck me off, blanca nieva, wishing and wishing in the streetlight forest with my princess dress, sucking my latte and singing I'm wishing with my 2 hands clasped and the third hand on the wheel,

and when I tried to DROP OUT
i kept remembering that the ERA amendment had never passed
and that because of my questionable sexual history
it's easy to get a chokehold on the moon,
throw that loony chick on the ground and stick a dirty finger in there
she's famous
flaunting her ass in that shiny miniskirt up there where everyone can see
and then she wants us all to use the same bathrooms in airports and join the draft doing one armed pushups and cleaning out her fucking rifle with tampax
so that as i drove down el camino and the moon kept following me in the rearview mirror no matter how far I kept driving because I was looking for the good target, not the ghetto-ass target where they never have anything, I kept driving but the moon kept looking at me through her piratical eyepatch and because of this I could NOT become an astronaut, not the first astronaut, not the first girl astronaut, not the first visibly menstruating asronaut smearing blood all over red mars to get revenge for the moon's existence,

and then I remembered it was 1984 and I wasn't in hippielandia
but in somekinda reaganomic planet of the apes AND IT WAS REALLY EARTH ALL ALONG
that's why I was not in my personal jetback rocketboot spacesuit tootling through the air waving at reconstituted archeopteryxes
but just in a beatup pickup truck sporting some faded bumper stickers blasting my air conditioning that smells like mold
I was just doing some errands and going to work like always and wondering if the bridges would blow up today
driving down El CarMeano on an important mission to save the world with my high caliber revolutionary credit card at the Safe Way

I took a swig of my double triple blood latte,
at a light I stopped and the guy next to me had a thumping thumpa bass thing going on and he revved and I revved

I didn't look at him but i knew it was a guy and what he would look like from the music he was pumping
but I was just going to TARget and then to WASH some fucking diSEASED tranked up ANimals
i didn't want to look at the dude
who was making fun of my crap ass rusty old pickup truck
so I ran the light, and a van, the ghost of a WebVan delivery van, plowed into this guy.
I could not believe it!
because of the real estate boom and dot com crash
that guy was running a whole server farm out of that car
and the computer guts spilled out in the road
and stock options laser printed on fancy letterhead flew up like doves, like shards of candy plate glass, and the IRS sent an emergency jetpack helicopter to clean up the mess
meanwhile the guy laying there in the street while the IRS leafblowers got busy with the confederate money blowing around and obscuring the intersection like thick fog
that guy had his whole family in there too
I heard them screaming zhou-laaaaaaaaaaa!
and it was terrible because his HB-1 Visa was smeared all over the road with blood and its feathers
I could see it all in my rearview mirror
so I got off El Camino and tried to circle around to help him out
I never should have run that red light to win the race with him
but i got lost
I think my mapquest was running off the server farm in his car because it went down and I somehow took that left turn and ended up in albuquerque in the middle of a bullfighting ring with bugs bunny
I didn't have on the right kind of pants
I didn't want to disappoint anyone
So I went home

As I left the arena
the crowd pelted me with roses and diamond necklaces to give to the guy in the street if I ever found him again
some other guy played me seis por derecho
he played so good I cried with joy at that golden moment
and wished I could always be leaving places regretfully

But I couldn't find that guy
the radio kept seeking
my mom was worried about me getting drafted into the Maoist army and missing dinner
so I figured it was about time to blast off into inner space
I got out of my car and opened up a manhole
and went down there into the steaming rectum of El CaMano
(figuring that anal health was at least as important as washing ducks for money)
I got my rotorooter out
and made my hand look like a duck and stuck it in there ready to fist the whole fucking world

because I wasn't sure what was going to happen,
whether the sewers and steam tunnels and imaginary railroads and pneumatic tube systems under my everyday life
would suck in my fist, my arm, my whole body, and the rest of me right up to my zillionth kundalini chakra
with all those roses and diamonds I got at the bullfight getting covered in shit,

I was scared
that my head might fall off my body
as it rolled away I'd still be talking with the head part, blah blah blah, bababa, looking, looking, looking,
and writing with the hand part, down below
but the head would have nothing to do with the hand anymore
the hand that wasn't scribbling would be waving "hey!" and "help!" to the head
and the other hand, like a witch tit, would be saying in sign language,

"I had to leave my country
so that I could see that my country was invisible"

not to bore anyone

2004-03-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Heinousness abounds. I have some sort of horrid nostril infection. I can't even go into it. But it's like there are about 10 hideous boils really close together in one nostril that go all the way from the inside to the outside, like a nostril piercing would, except instead of jewelry in there, it's some kind of pustulent, nasty, slime from a horror movie. I think it is carbuncles otherwise known as a staph infection. In my nose. which I have to blow all the time.

Or it could be flesh eating bacteria and soon I will not have half my nose as it will have just fallen right off. It will go great with the motorized glass eye and the hacking cough.

boxes

2004-03-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

One cool thing about having boxes everywhere is that I don't have to guiltily hide my new Amazon book boxes from clandestine online book purchasing.

The telltale boxes just blend right in to the general decor. Rook will never notice.

niceness stupidly wasted

2004-03-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

If I had not wasted my (rare) health and energy hauling all that crap for the previous owners of this house, I would have gotten more done before getting sick.

I am kinda thinking at this point that I am having just awful asthma type of bronchitis, not really "being sick" bronchitis. i am on the inhaled powder steroid.... and the squirting up the nose steroid... though i have been forgetting the up the nose one. and increasing albuterol. and whatever free samples of Singulair that I have found lying around. I think it is time to go and beg the allergist for more singulair...

I don't want to confess to the allergist that last week while doing the actual moving and when my mom in law was here I took a bunch of oral steroids. a) not supposed to have prednisone just laying around, but i do. b) not supposed to self medicate esp. not fuck around with bad, bad, dangerous steroids, even if they are like magic candy that makes you able to work hard and feel great even when sick as a dog. c) I am a fucking moron and my bones will start breaking and I have high blood pressure when I am 50 and you can all remind me of why, it is because I secretly pop these steroids somtimes. goddamn it. I can't bring myself to throw them away. some doctor gave me a giant overdose of them last year and I had more sense than to take them all. I favor the way where you do the giant burst of them one day, then taper off over 3-5 days. that works great and is supposed to be the correct way to do it. But dumb dr. gave me like, 10 days of a giant high dose of it, with no tapering off (bad! bad! bad!) and I self-adjusted the dose to be right. That is why I have this huge bottle of powerful prednisone left over.

In Greece 5 years ago I was so allergic to olive trees that I took steroids for 3 weeks straight and my face swelled up. So much for being a sturdy peasant.

Anyway. I was just looking at the paltry check for $100 from the previous owners, which I only got because I wrote them an email explaining that it was more work than I had bargained for. I feel like ripping up their 100 bucks into tiny pieces and mailing it back to them. It is my fault for being stupid, having no boundaries, not correctly knowing my own physical limits, and just wanting to be agreeable to anyone who asks me to do something.

I hope I have learned some sort of lesson from this. Lesson one being no helping anyone move, ever again, ever. For example even when I told McCoot I would haul off his dusty old books and computer equipment. That was dumb!

I will lend the truck though.

Plus I was an idiot for not paying movers to pack and move everything. It would have been expensive but duh, we could have written it off our taxes and why am I pinching pennies when we have insane wads of cash right now and it would have maybe helped me not be sick? I know why I did not - it is because the words "I have an insane amount of cash" and "write it off my taxes" are VERY NEW AND STRANGE.

fatness

2004-03-01T10:41:00.000-08:00

Scary. I wonder if just taking this survey made all these little kids go home and barf up their oreos and juice boxes.

42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner
45% of boys and girls in grades 3-6 want to be thinner
37% have already dieted
6.9% score in the ED range
51% of 9-10 year old girls feel better about selves when dieting
9% of 9 year old have vomited to lose weight
81% of 10 year old are afraid of being fat
53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies
78% of 18 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies
The #1 wish of girls 11-17 years old is to lose weight

from http://www.eatingdisorderscoalition.org/reports/statistics.html

oh give me a break!

2004-03-01T00:14:00.000-08:00

Wow... this is... I have no words for it. Awful! "how to avoid becoming a terror victim". Ooo. how about that. This makes me so angry. Far worse than the "how to avoid being raped" advice I got so mad about a couple of weeks ago (the advice pretty much was "stay home" in niced-up language). Oh so very much worse.

I can't believe I wasn't reading this on "The Onion".

I feel very tempted to rewrite it just a tad scarier and forward it on to the moms club mailing list as if innocently protective of our homeland...

big pictures

2004-02-29T19:05:00.000-08:00

I was thinking it would be nice to frame some pictures. And I would dearly love to have one of Minnie's paintings. And more dearly I would love to have something by Sandow Birk. Ideally the LA and SF women from Smog and Thunder. LA; chicana, pregnant, with belly hanging out, baseball cap, and skateboard; SF, boy toy dyke in black leather jacket (rollerblading? at protest march? with queer flag, something like that). I can't find images of them anywhere but to give you an idea of the painting style here is The Romance of Commerce and Portrait of General Juan Gomez. I saw the portrait of the general (from the fictional war between San Francisco and Los Angeles over water rights) a few years ago in an enormous show.

I wish i had a huge coffee table book of Sandow Birk who is probably my favorite artist ever.... instead I have a tiny little book from "Smog and Thunder".

Maybe I can buy a painting from dastardly dan if he has got some in storage somewhere?

home with cookies

2004-02-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

Whoever isn't watching the oscars, come over and eat the cookies I am about to make. 8-P Everyone seems to be at the geekhouse oscar party, but I'm too sick to go out.

Otherwise I shall spend the evening playing nethack and reading. A good fate either way.

glad rags

2004-02-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

the keeper
luna pads, glad rags, etc.

Pretty neat. I might try it... here is another example of orkut being useful. "The Menstrual Cup" - sounds like soccer doesn't it?

First love

2004-02-28T21:58:00.000-08:00

By the way, I think Moomin is in love for the first time. With Her.

prime directive

2004-02-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

While I was hurting today my one thought was that I didn't want Moomin to see me helplessly suffering. My other one thought was "Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, OW."

I began having all these heroic fantasies about how I would have some accident and be bleeding to death and would calmly explain to Moomin how to dial 911 without him becoming panicked by my situation. Because I would show no fear! No pain! I had an astonishingly strong feeling that I would, or should, go to any lengths in order to avoid my child seeing me suffer.

My real life strategy: being surly, ignoring him, extra ice cream, and putting on videos.

Aside from an awkward 2 hours, Rook was here doing everything. I slept most of the afternoon with earplugs in, as a true hero would.

dumb luck?

2004-02-28T15:48:00.000-08:00

this morning I went to the old house and dealt with police and made a list of things missing. Police sort of shruggy and explaining that fingerprints unlikely. I called all the credit card companies and everything seems okay there too. Why did the "thieves" leave a perfectly good credit card of mine, but take the 25 buck gift certificate to the "wherehouse"? teenagers...? and they took the pink change purse, but left the credit cards and other gift cards there on the floor. Hmmm.

Home. Rook stayed there to move the last of the stuff. He ended up in a giant argument with the landlord who wants to go in there now and in fact is in there now, yet still charge us rent till march 8th.

Meanwhile I was back at the new house. Suddenly I coughed and my back went into a giant spasm that made me cry. Moomin: "Mommy, I will pat you and kiss your back and maybe gently rub it and it will make better. Maybe that will make better your back." Nice kid, bad grammar. Ibuprofen, codeine, albuterol, heat on back, video for Moomin.

I was unable to take a deep breath. In fact I still can't. But at some point about an hour ago I coughed violently and painfully and some stuff came up from somewhere around my navel and the pain all disappeared instantly like magic. Then I realized I still couldn't take a deep breath even without the pain. On my peak flow thing I usually can blow 550+ cubic whatevers. 450 is asthma that is bothersome. Well I was just blowing 350 on the thing and steaming myself in the bathroom boringly. Is this pneumonia? I don't think I have any sort of fever. So I don't think so... just oddly painful bronchitis... My chest does hurt and it has a sort of yucky slurping noise in there. Now back up to 400 which means I feel human. It can be really comforting to measure these things.

I am back to the steam room now with some very garlicky broth in a mug. No more unpacking... I have to take this seriously... and really rest. Nethack, and Hakluyt, you shall be my nurses.

I'm fucked up, yo...

the real luck

2004-02-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

But the real luck was the fabulous rest of the evening. Doxie's party had me slightly unnerved because I knew a lot of people from bl@ck le@ther w1ngs would be there and I have not seen them for almost 10 years and now from being Doxie's girltoy hot young thang femmy top lesbo (though at the time I ended up having a boyfriend and living with him too), I show up with husband in tow, smelling of the suburbs. Admittedly, cute, somewhat ambiguously gendered, coolest in the universe husband, but ... just a couple of awkward moments as I get enthusiastic hug and pat on my leather-clad ass from some girlie and then pop! at my elbow looms a large smiling man looking like my outfit accessory and wanting introductions. heh heh heh.

But that was not my main problem. the main problem was that goof-ass article i wrote about being branded that freaked out Fecker and Calla. Now. Yes I said some mean spirited things but the article was playful, funny, and made fun of myself way more than anyone else. I made fun of Calla's accent and how she took a zillion yearrs to prepare herself to appear topless for the camera but I also talked about how I liked her and how she was nice. I made fun of Fecker and his 2 friends for taking even longer to fuss with their sarongs so they could look appropriately tribal for the camera but I also talked about how I saw him as an interesting role model and the odd tensions between the cool stuff and the suburban reality of his life. Then I made fun of myself quite a lot. And made fun of all the smudging with sage fake indianness. And I think I said some separate things that were my doubts about the body mod scene and dis-privileging oneself and making a subculture but where some things were reversible or hidable so that you could go get a good job, but what was considered much cooler was to do something non-hideable in the style of teardrop prison tattoos so that you were guaranteed to remain in the underground economy or work in record stores forever.

But here is the deal. It went into a zine that what, had maybe 100 or 200 copies at most and I figured no one involved would ever see it. (And I don't know if they did see it.) And my dear friend who is a genius writer but sometimes irritating framed the article in a different tone than I meant it so that from the headline and the things in sidebars it seemed like a direct attack on Fecker. More virulently than I had intended at all. And then right afterwards there was this giant horrible incident in S@nta Barbara where some people in our community got arrested and Dregon went to jail and it was pretty terrible. So I think Fecker and Calla were freaking that if Minnie and I hated them we could mess up their lives very severely just by calling the cops on them.

well that was a complicated explanation. But When I say that Fecker and Calla were pissed at me and I didn't feel welcome in the community anymore, that's why! And I think that anyone associated strongly with them heard something about it, from their point of view, and probably without reading the article, so that gossip was likely "Badger wrote a horrible hateful thing and published it and she is totally insincere." Ugh. As if then I would go off and write an exposé of the summer gatherings in the woods. I do really respect so many of the people and had very nice relations with them. I called Feckerr and Calla some years ago and made long detailed apologies which were accepted but they didn't want me coming to their house or anything and I can understand that...

And indeed I did feel some awkwardness last night.

BUT on the whole, my teflon soul was able to shed that awkwardness very quickly.

And I had a great time! And everyone was lovely and sleazy and wearing antique rabbit fur coats and beaded dresses and leather and hats with veils and the old-school butches in their chaps were rather darling showing off their new hormone muscles as many of them seem to be in some stage of FTM transition or intersexualness. And Doxie was lovely. And Rook was my cute boy toy. And I felt that I missed everyone and was welcome back. And my outfit was admired and I was not the youngest one and there was much flirting and grabbing and sleazing. The birthday cake had a giant very artistic picture in icing of Doxie with cane marks on her bare ass. I had fun talking with some of the 70s s3x radicals who work on a history project and archive. Dr. Bother, fellow sullier of lesbian purity, mom of toddler and SF nerd, showed up and so Rook had someone to talk with and did not shadow me uncomfortably the whole party. She and I then got a box of gloves and shyly plotted our assault on the helpless tied up and beaten Doxie but then it was time for cake and time to untie her so, alas, we did.

I especially admired the amazing scientific and technical skillz of Saro. Her glasses slip down and she looks like a mad scientist as she taps away with her evil homemade tools and oddly she also looks like a small shy brown shorebird. anyway she is cool on all levels and never boring. I believe she plays a mean game of scrabble, as does Doxie.

I do get mildly uncomfortable or uptight at these things when I realize that while people are good hearted and competent, they are less competent or responsible than you would expect sometimes because half of them are stoned out of their minds or something. I am okay with being stoned out of one's mind but someone has to be a sort of designated driver and be aware that for example, the front door out onto mission street is locked, which almost every time I looked, it was not. dorks. And if I were bottomming, (rare anyway, top on the streets, bottom between the sheets as they say) I would not trust someone stoned or on X to top me and know what they are doing and be aware of what's going on with me, much less to do anything really extreme. Anyway! A minor quibble compared to all the excellent wonderfulness of all those people and the party and Doxie herself.

And how did I get so lucky as to have a fabulous husband, live here where I wanted to live, have a nice kid, and he does not mind when I am all up in the coochie of my 60 year old ex girlfriend or making out with random half naked women in tallulah bankhead hats and fur coats? not only does not mind but beams upon it benevolently? what a fairy tale.

luck

2004-02-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

First of all with great hoo-ha we got ready to go out and realized that all our shoes and fancy high boots are still at the old house.

I drank a bunch of Robitussin and coffee and took extra asthma med to deal with my cough.

And at the old house I had cleverly turned off the electricity a few days early... Rook had a flashlight in his car, clever! And I realized that all these things were missing! Boots - missing! Tubs - overturned! Wait, the old computer is scattered across the hallway in several pieces! Where is my huge framed painting of the chinese emperor on the pinto pony, and the crappy 25 cent huge framed poster of picasso's don quixote, and in fact all our other huge framed pictures that I left in a stack in the living room?

Now keep in mind our crappy landlord calledl me a few days ago and wanted to bring his uncle's painting crew in to move our few remaining things into the garage so they could paint. But I said no because I would rather do it myself, because of the COMPUTER AND MY LARGE FRAMED PAINTINGS that I am especially fond of, but I can't do it for the next couple of days. And he was pissed.

Did my landlord go in there and vandalize the computer and do god knows what with the giant paintings as vengeance? What about the knee high leather boots, and the wooden cd racks with the change bowl and gift cards in it?

A sucky thing. There were credit cards in there I think. A credit card was on the floor next to the computer, and a couple of gift cards from xmas. (Why would our Thieves take the things they took? Why? And leave the things they left?) And I think in the wooden cd racks (empty of cds) there was a small box with my ENTIRE last four years' collection of other people's business cards in there. That I had meticulously collected from EVERYWHERE over the last two months and put in this box so that I could make a list of everyone's contact info. Including all my contact info for people from the translation conference. goddamn it!!!!!!!

I think this morning I will have to call the police and file a report. maybe they can fingerprint the computer as I didn't touch it.

The giant framed poster of Xena from the library was hidden behind a cruddy looking whiteboard. So it is still there.

Why? why? Why? If it were just the change bowl, the cd racks and the boots I would think it was teenagers. But why would teenagers take heavy glass fronted paintings almost as tall as me? and obviously not valuable?

a brilliant invention

2004-02-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

Based on my blinding insight of yesterday about wiping one's hands on one's socks, I have come up with a new invention. I woke up from my nap this afternoon laughing so hard I choked.

Yes, it's the SOCKERCHIEF. For all those times when you are caught without a handkerchief. The Sockerchief! Made of special soft to the nose fabric, yet still sock-like! There you are camping and your nose starts running. Wait! Don't wipe your nose on your sleeve! Just stop and take off your hiking boots and VOILA. Whisk off your Sockerchief and blow!

I am going to make one million dollars with this invention!

Swarm no. 1

2004-02-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

Idea no. 1 was "Screw it with whole publishing thing." Either branch out T0llbooth Press or start new press with new name and publish through Xlibris squid's tr0ll story and Jo's book about moving and also Tr@ce and the Clocks. Squid to illustrate more. I will ask my friend N0ra who translates to translate them into Spanish and we could publish them facing-pages bilingual. And my little "what little birds do" book which is tiny but amusing with my illustrations. Ep possibly to make nice web site, help figure out intricacies of Xlibris, how to make actual small biz or else a non profit, and kick all our asses.

The twin goals being AUTHORS and LEGITIMACY and NOT GOING BEGGING and also making cool books that will be affordable and available that are bilingual span/eng. VECINAS, MAMACITAS, COMPAñERAS, HIVEMIND, COMADRES GRINGAñOLICAS UNIDAS.

Goddamn it! Yeah! Build it and they will come. My office will be clear of boxes soon and with a white board on the wall and we will have a MEETING.

This, I think from being charged up with feminist glory from my meeting on wittig with Professor Steed.

swarm!

2004-02-26T14:02:00.000-08:00

I am swarming with ideas! Meetings with advisors good. I have many many, many, hrair, ideas about many things.

I forgot how many ideas I get and how excited I get by not just the school but the driving on 280 alone in my truck. SWARMS ARE COMING.

just what I needed!

2004-02-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

A bit of a cough last night and t his morning I woke up with the fastest bronchitis in the west. The allergist will kill me. I am coughing up orange, bloody stuff -- too much, really to wipe on my socks.

But after pissing off both my advisors by not having my forms signed correctly on time, I can't miss my big day of meetings with them... when we are a month into the semester and I haven't met with either one... I must haul myself and my giant backpack full of project binders up to campus.

I will skip the night class and the reading group - I had planned a marathon day of school 10am - 9:30pm. Nope. just the 2 meetings and then home to bed, soup, steam.

Moomin woke up saying that his legs hurt and demanding to be carried. Has he noticed that I am always whining about some health problem? What is up? I can't tell but he is walking really funny. 2 days ago he scraped his arm a little falling down on the sidewalk and demanded ice, holding it awkwardly as if in an imaginary sling. I administered kisses and gave him a little ice pack and then ignored it as it did not seem broken. But he carried around like a baby bird for around 4 hours. At times I tried to play with him figuring I'd distract him from this entertaining new game but he didn't use the arm at all, doing puzzles with his left hand and occasionally turning a pathetic, wan gaze up to me as if in reproach for my cruelty. Around dinnertime he finally did start using it and forgot. But it was an amazingly long time. Now this with the legs? World's youngest hypochondriac? I would not carry him around the house this morning and suggested that he is not a baby. He double-leg limped over to the table where he is now reading the Froot Loops box. "This says, 'Froot Loops'. and here it says 'Froot Loops' again."

Later, when we realize he has some rare form of bone cancer or something I will regret doubting his hurting legs.

thunder!

2004-02-25T22:54:00.000-08:00

That was just the loudest and longest thundering ever!

It's california and I haven't seen lightning here but... oh.. maybe twice in 5 years.

Yay, that was cool. I'm going to look for matches and candles now.

time's a wastin'!

2004-02-25T22:41:00.000-08:00

I must be the last person on the planet to see this but just in case I'm not -
Zefrank I just watched 2 of them, "How To Dance Properly" and "How to Impress Your Date" and I laughed so hard that I am having an asthma attack and must go find my inhaler.

facial

2004-02-25T21:38:00.000-08:00

After I did my homework I went and cashed in on that day spa gift certificate.

- giant fuzzy bathrobe (keep boxers on? I opted for yes)
- bubble wrap looking sandals
- locker with weird phone-cord bracelet for its key
- poncy music, dim lights, candles, forced to sit alone in room with fluffy chair
- feet plunged into basin (don't ask me why, but it was for sure a basin) of what seemed like hot mulled wine with cloves and fresh rose petals
- hot pillow yoke thing draped over neck and shoulders
-> Ahhhh. How strange. Now what? 10 minutes later...
- arranged face up on bendy table with feet up in strangely perfectly comfortable position, never achieved at home under any circumstances (why?)
- hot pillows placed under feet, in armpits and under elbows (strangely good)
- warmed up cross between sheet and towel draped over me

- elderly day spa lady put so many kinds of lotion on my face and neck, I lost count. No really. I had a facial a couple of other times and it was ... maybe a 3 or 4 step process. This one, I could not keep track. Once we got past the cooling cucumber seaweed whatchamacallit yadda yadda I just shut up and stopped asking what it was. There was much brutal face massaging. Oh lord, day spa ladies, I just want the massage, quit trying to pop my zits with that diabolical blackhead remover thing and quit lecturing me about skin care and rosacea and do that thing to the back of my neck again.

- feet encased in hot paraffin and wrapped in some sort of booties and re-hot-pillowed and gently covered with sheet

- day spa lady suddenly began to spaz and call me honey about 20 million times and tell me I'm so pretty. Mildly creepy? Periodically she erupts into the speech while staring at me meaningfully and holding my feet or lightly caressing my collarbones. Is the the "full service" day spa? Am glad I opted to keep boxers on. "Oh honey! Oh honey! Oh HONEY! You have so pretty skin! do you know how pretty you are!" (I totally don't have nice skin, at least not on my face. Possibly she was looking elsewhere? It seems smart for day spa lady to give compliments to get return customers but... Oh HONEY! (semi-groaned) )

- I drift off into fantasy of my ideal day spa which would be called "The Bong Hit". It would be all retro hippie stuff and they would get you high as a kite and THEN give you the facial, foot massage, and etc. and along with poncy velvet bathrobe you would get a "tasteful" nitrous inhaling mask made of like, beaded velvet macrame.

- This whole day spa thing is like whorehouses for women, except without the sex part. what's up witih that? Are there good whorehouses where it's all nice and you get a cucumber face massage with wine and cloves AND a blow job? or in my case a vibrator? It being just as freaky to desire some total stranger to pleasure me "non-sexually" yet decadently for an hour and a half in dim light alone in a little pseudo-medical exam table in a tiny room full of mysterious implements. I go with that thought for a while, imagining that I am that chinese empress listed in the book of lists who had a specially constructed bed so that 30 people could all comb her hair at once or something like that.

- I struggle with wondering if it could ever really be justified to pay people for one's own decadent pleasure. Like when I make a zillion dollars and have a personal servant who will do everything boring and will massage my feet everyday with hot towels. Perhaps wth really good benefits and pay and only working 5 hours a day so they could have time for self-actualization? No, still not. I concluded that one would need a decadence co-op. Then I shut up my mind for a bit and tried to drift off to sleep during the mint seaweed mask.

My skin feels the same as ever - for about 3 hours it was all smooth and perfect and then it got simultaneously itchy, dry, and oily all at the same time. Who cares about that part... it was possibly the best massage I have ever had since I was not face-down... next massage I get I will just tell them "skip the back and just do the rest of me" .

It was so nice to have an interlude of perfect freedom from pain, cold feet, vague uncomfortable itchiness that always seems to haunt me...

Wisdom of the Ages, passed on

2004-02-25T21:33:00.000-08:00

Here is a crucial bit of wisdom I feel should be preserved for all the world forevermore.

When you have to wipe your hands somewhere because they are all garlicky or you just hawked up something or have been picking your nose, don't wipe your hands on your pants. Instead, use your socks. That way you can wear the pants again without telltale slime trails and stale garlic scent. Wear new socks everyday. Whoop! Problem solved!

Okay. Or, go wash your hands, you nasty beast.

look, i'm a pirate!

2004-02-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

hey!

2004-02-25T20:31:00.000-08:00

Hey Melanie from ~~Bermuda~~ the Bahamas - are you still reading ? Because I lost your blog address but I wanted to link to you....

how it happens

2004-02-25T11:18:00.000-08:00

Just now I was thinking so hard about this Wittig project that I microwaved my toast instead of toasting it.

I had been thinking "hmm, must eat breakfast" for the last couple of hours. Got up finally just now - got bread - checked for mold - good to go. Put it in to cook and turned on the oven. Stood there for a few seconds, feeling a vague sense of unease, and not sure why.

Doh! 2 slices of limp, soggy, weirdly warm bread later, I realize what was wrong. the toaster. Put. The. Bread. In. The. Toaster. Stop. Thinking. About. Whether in French the name "Orphée" is masculine or feminine or just oddly neither and how exactly to arrange the database tables.

It's great to be back to normal!

new poet loves

2004-02-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

I have some new crushes too, on Alurista and on Viviana Aparicio Chamberlain - only a couple of poems of hers that I have found but they were great and I was cheering for her. But anyway Alurista - what to say. Flor Y Canto, if only I hadn't been still sucking my thumb and learning to tie my shoes, but it's the best poetry mag I've ever seen for general coolness. I like things like BLAST full of Vorticist manifestos and I love cid corman and the way bly made all those little mags and of course my mythologizing soul-homie Wittig but wow, the floricanto poets! And the non-pretentious introductions by alurista! Who is obviously a god of organizing and creating events and magazines suitable for putting up on my imaginary shrine. Yes! I will be talking about this stuff in my usual waffly way on the bilingual poetry project blog. I just want to propagate some of this stuff on wikipedia and elsewhere on the net - my main rationale for doing the project other than just liking poetry with multiple languages - it's far over my head but I think I could write at least one interesting theory paper that no one else has written. I mean. I hate the thought of just tooling about "applying so and so's theory to such and such" or "doing a close reading of such and such". Give me crazed theories, diagrams, wild assertions, irritating generalities, multiple ways of looking at the same thing. Or don't give them to me. I will generate them spastically and with great joy.

I am all energized for my projects again - can you tell? It helped to take the books out of the boxes marked "very important" that were buried 4 deep in the center of the new living room. I put them on the shelf visible from my bed so that they will beam thoughts into my head as I sleep.

meanwhile in the world

2004-02-24T21:57:00.000-08:00

I do love Riverbend and haven't mentioned that lately. Today's post has a great snarky bit where she teaches the dumb amerikans who Voltaire is. Hilarious. If you keep reading of course there are many not so hilarious moments. Read her, read her!

she is also part of a new project called The Iraqi Agora - a group blog though really at this point mainly the ranting of Liminal.

I'll keep an eye out for ya

2004-02-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

Apparently my eye is sort of, almost, maybe, probably okay. Said the mildly puzzled eye doctor after squirting some anesthetic in there and poking around. He did not know what the lumps were but had a theory about lymph glands or something (on the surface of the eyeball? there are lymph glands?) He said I should come back tomorrow and in one week. No medicine-taking advised. He also asked me if I ever chain-sneezed. (yes, quite a lot lately in the dust) Did you know that chain sneezing can make blood vessels in your eye burst open? Ew.

"You shouldn't be feeling any pain. And you shouldn't feel any sort of sensation that there is a lump under your eyelid."

"But it hurts. And I can not just see the lumps, I have that feeling like something is in my eye, and it is the lumps."

"Well probably the lumps were already there and are perfectly normal. And the blood in there just made them noticable."

"But I didn't feel like there was anything in my eye, before."

"Well come and see me again tomorrow, I won't charge you anything. It should resolve by itself in a week."

This was both reassuring and not reassuring.

course correction

2004-02-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

Things seem better today. Rook will chip in more with the moving. I shall have extra school hours for Moomin this week so I can catch up on school. I need not worry to get us out of the old house and have it clean by Wednesday (near impossibility if I am to do anything else). Rook points out that we have been in the new house 2 days and yet so much is done it's amazing.

True... it's not like I've been idle... just not focused on school and it seems like I can't do enough and so much needs doing.

So I am unpacking just enough to find the books and binders I need for my classes... I will go out and eat an omelette and take notes and then go to K1nko's to have a nice fast net connection and printer and I'll print out everything and make a project binder. I have to do an annotated bibliography really really quick.

Okay everybody I am sorry for freaking out!

floppy hat

2004-02-23T23:55:00.000-08:00

As I think of all the disturbingly wall eyed people I have known in life and the discomfort of not knowing what eye to be looking at, I vow that if I have to have a glass eye, I shall wear dark sunglasses and large hats with floppy brims that droop over the glass eye. Which would be oddly hideous in some funny way so that when you finally got to see it it would be kind of hilarious. If I go totally blind, I am hoping that someone who does not clear his throat all the time will finish reading Proust to me in a soothing monotone without any vile "audio book" flourishes.

stress

2004-02-23T20:57:00.000-08:00

you know the last 2 months have been pretty stressful and i am just breaking. Thank you everybody who has been nice about it.

i dont know if I can handle school. I am very near giving up in despair. I can't take this

arrrrgh

2004-02-23T19:46:00.000-08:00

what is wrong with me? i feel hellishly bad. My eye has more lumps in it. My head hurts. I feel ready to scream at everyone. Unbelievably foul tempered.

Dr. says it is not pinkeye but she doesn't know what it is and I must go to an opthamologist. This morning there were 2 weird lumps on my eyeball. Now there are more. It is disturbing and hurts... They are spreading... Is it ocular herpes and it is going to like eat my brain? Or just my eyeball and I will have to have a horrid glass eye and be half blind?

i keep thinking of my parents yelling at me and making me use a different bathroom because "I probably had VD or something." thanks parents. you were right. I am diseased and filthy and corrupt all that I touch. am afraid to touch moomin. paranoia increasing.

am I PMS-ing? Do I have some sort of eyeball syphillis and am going crazy?
does this have any relation to all the weird vertigo and headaches?

riots????

2004-02-23T17:53:00.000-08:00

What riots? What dead people? What civil unrest? A dozen or so religious wackos with protest signs are now a "riot"? What the hell?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned up the rhetoric against San Francisco's move to allow same-sex marriages, saying on national TV Sunday that he fears outbreaks of serious civil unrest if the ceremonies continue at City Hall.

Schwarzenegger said on NBC's "Meet the Press'' that he fears worsening protests about the divisive issue and worries the situation could get out of hand if courts don't quickly stop the marriages, which are being performed in defiance of existing state law.

"All of a sudden, we see riots, we see protests, we see people clashing. The next thing we know, there is injured or there is dead people. We don't want it to get to that extent,'' the Republican said in his first appearance as governor on a Sunday talk show.

It's like he is suggesting that he wants to see some serious riots and dead people so that he will have an excuse to "crack down" whatever that means.

I hope that other cities will follow suit. Come on, Chicago! Get your head out of your ass! New York, what are you doing?

Thanks Minnie for the link...

wish

2004-02-23T10:05:00.000-08:00

Also the book "W1sh for a Pony" was possibly the most trashily indulgent kids' book ever written. Heh heh heh. Everything very obvious about how it was going to turn out at every second. So strangely enjoyable! Like some story I would have imagined to myself while going to sleep when I was 10 (except there would have been Elves in it too as most of my fantasies were Mary Sue Middle Earth porn). But anyway I loved it and the other one that went with it even as I chuckled meanly to myself and muttered things like "Not Bloody Likely" at the vile children and their vile perfect ponies and the quaint old salt with the earrings who runs the ferry and teaches them how to do everything and how they just get to do everything they want and they're good at everything.

The other one "the Wh1te Riders" was even funnier as the 2 vile pre-teen girls move to the perfect old fashioned farmhouse and run the dairy on their own and cook exotic sounding things and do all the light housework, go to school, take care of about 8 million ponies, stay up all night riding around pretending to be ghosts a-la-Scooby-Doo-episode, and lord knows what-all else. Hanging out with people who talk in some quaint british dialect and refer to "The Quality" and do all the washing. Learn to become crack snipers and drive pony carts. I was kind of surprised that they did not also provide emergency medical assistance to the cow in labor.

My mom must read at least the first book, as she is definitely "pony crazy".

I can't believe you found this book for me, Iris! It seems quite scarce and out of print! I should send you "H0use of 30 cats".

scenes from the last few days

2004-02-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

Moomin tenderly crooning "This is my Bunk Bed. and This is My Room" with beatific smile.

Rook poncing about next to his bed unpacking and alphabetizing his rpg books. Gazing at them smugly.

We all had a nice dinner last night as by some miracle I had grocery shopped and had a bunch of food! yeah!

Like magic I am not horribly sore and my back did not go out and I don't have the cold that everyone else has. But I do have pinkeye. Maybe it is magic pinkeye, protecting me from all other evil. Take that, Tinkerbell!

Moomin in bed this morning half asleep and then yelling at the top of his lungs suddenly, "No baby kangaroo could be THAT big!" and dissolving helplessly into seizures of chortling. Then all cosy and peaceful again. 2 minutes later, "No mouse could be THAT big!" and the cascade of snorting laughter. He watched that cartoon twice yesterday - sylvester the cat and his kid cat and the "giant mouse". And I realized with a flash that here was the source of when I say "Oh, the SHAME of it!" as it's what the little cat says.

Squid brought us a large bag of dirt, and seeds! They await me. First I have to go clean the old nasty house and move about 3 more small truckloads of junk from it. Moomin is at school. Blessed school. Finally! Goddamned fake holidays and "ski weekends". Rassin' frackin' lily livered yellow bellied varmints!

i am so far behind on schoolwork. I thought when my mom was here I would get the free babysitting and I'd hare off to Stanffford library researching and writing with demonic intensity. Nope. My new plan is to do this on Wednesday. Thurs. I must turn somehting in and meet with both advisors. Eeek!

hope springs eternal!

2004-02-21T21:43:00.000-08:00

I am totally hoping for Marcel to get it on with Saint-Loup. Will he? I want to cheat and look at some sort of summary. But I will not!!! No!

health care

2004-02-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

spin in health care report

The original version of the report included these statements, which were dropped from the final version:

¶"We aspire to equality of opportunities for all our citizens. Persistent disparities in health care are inconsistent with our core values."

¶"Disparities come at a personal and societal price."

¶"Compared with whites, blacks experience longer waits in emergency departments and are more likely to leave without being seen."

¶When hospitalized for heart attacks, "Hispanics are less likely to receive optimal care."

The original report included a stark, prominent statement that "black children have much higher hospitalization rates for asthma than white children." The final version included the data, without comment.

just my 2 cents but other than when I get stopped by cops, I have never felt my own white privilege so strongly as when I was trying to get health care in emergency rooms without insurance. Yes the hospital workers were racist as hell and I heard horrible things from them. But not only that, because I grew up with privilege I was obnoxiously assertive and got better care because I dared do it. All the black and hispanic and vietnamese ladies in the ER waiting looking at me with silent loathing - how dare I? But I did and I got the benefit of it.

The wild thing is the bush admin. health official guy actually admitting to a mistake. After I am sure he moved heaven and earth to fuck up the report in the first place.

meanwhile

2004-02-21T19:56:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile in the quiet or exhausted interludes I have forged ahead in the reading of "Tom Purdue" i.e. Proust. I am on book 3 "The Guermantes Way" and feel like a dog rolling around in mud. Reading it feels like the ultimate neurotic self-indulgence. Since all my other books are packed I have no choice.

I am now writing from bed. Miracle - the airport extreme in the Acrobat/Pilot closet reaches through many layers of walls to get to my bedroom and no networkng messabout was needed. We just plugged it in and boom my compu was like "Yo, your usual network isn't here, you want to join this one?" Oh, I love Apple.

overestimation

2004-02-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

In retrospect I should have just hired movers. It would have been maybe $400 more and we would not be so exhausted. On the other hand nearly everything has gone as planned. bookshelves have felt on the bottom and I spent much of the afternoon sliding them around to see how they should go. boxes are piled up in the middle of the living room, piled higher than my head in an enormous impenetrable 6 by 6 foot cube of books.

A few things did not happen as planned -- as I meant to be at the house working hard today but Moomin spent last night screaming with ear problems after a week of coughing and a cold. Rook got the cold yesterday but like a hero spent long hours (I think) holding and comforting Moomin in the night. I was up a few times... I can't even remember what happened but I did have a realization that miraculously I knew where my heating pad was and it might help Moomin's ear. It was in a box of the stuff that used to be next to my old bed. I found this box, tore it open and left it on the couch.... I am sure the guatemalan dudes that moved boxes in this morning were amused by the collection of vibrators and leather paraphrenalia in this box...??? oops! haha.

My spanish is actually not so horrible. The jornaderos we hired actually laughed at my dumb jokes. If I can make a dumb joke in another language I am quite happy... otherwise one has no personality...

Though about 1 hour too late I remembered the words for "turn it over" and "slide it', words that were despserately needed during the Moving of the Couch through the narrow doorway. Alas!

Moomin likes his bunk b3d very much.

Whump and Cyn brought us thai food very sweetly though we were too stunned with exhaustion to be very sociable.

I love the house... more than i realized i would... I did not know that having a fancy washing machine would be so excellent. this morning I teared up as I reached into the washing machine to move the wet clothes and realized it did not hurt my hands. I was inside not in a freezing cold garage. I was not reaching down into a narrow cold bumpy place and I just moved the laundry without it hurting my hands which hurt nastily in the mornings. Anyway it was insanely great. thanks m0m for a washing machine and dryer that cost more than my next car will cost. Yeesh. I was so happy I went and ajaxed the sink, as penace.

ticked off by glurge

2004-02-19T23:16:00.000-08:00

I am all ticked off for about the millionth time by some random m0ms club glurge forward about how to "stay safe" (sic).

for one I gave my standard "oh yeah? well you are more likely to be beat up by your husband than thrown in the trunk of some random serial killer: NOW stats on violence.

As a special bonus I added something I know I have read in reputable places but didn't go looking for again just now as I am tired: Men are more likely to be attacked and victims of violent crime while they are walking around alone at night and in fact, anytime. Yet all this sort of "safety info" is targeted at women. Next time you read one, think about how it is all about limiting women's mobility and making them feel scared or paranoid while doing the most mundane of everyday activities outside or even inside the home. "fear of rape" is a great excuse for oppression of women and internalized oppression and it ticks me off royally.

poor hapless m0ms club forwarder is probably crying and cursing the day she "entered the discourse" of being on Internet. but I did delete about 3 paragraphs of sarcastic cruelty and tried to stick to a friendly "hey, and that makes me think about this issue" tone.

i just couldn't let it pass. o man.

Was there a Tick superhero called "Sarcastro" with a sort of fidel castro outfit on, and unfunny "witty comebacks" as his superpower? Or am I just making that up?

I can't get off this issue

2004-02-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

Well-said and well-quoted, Davee! is now the right time? Yes. Now is the right time.

worthy artist

2004-02-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

If you have empathy for mildly crazed brilliant anarchist artists who messed up stupidly and went to jail then catch me and give me a check and I will pass it on. Because dastardly dan just got out of jail and I am sending him money. I think he has basically nothing and will need help to get back on his feet!

Hooray for him being out and free, I can't even imagine what it must be like, somewhat bewildering and more great of an experience of freedom than (i hope) I will ever really feel myself.

Hooray for the best platypus and pigeon artist ever and the funniest dirty comix!

I sent this to the m0ms club

2004-02-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

This is pretty dorky but i sent it out to the local list of moms. It kind of felt like an echoing silence on the mailing list. And I spent a lot of the weekend crying at odd times over the issue feeling glad and touched and hopeful and a bit afraid of the backlash that might follow on san fran, on politics in general. And if you do nothing else about all this hoo-ha then read the Loving vs. Virginia thing here because it is kind of cool. Frankly I don't buy the "fundamental freedoms of man" part and just think that if you let some people do something contractual then don't limit it.

The civil disobedience of the city of San Francisco has been really
amazing and I feel deeply inspired by it. And I just want to give them
three cheers! A lot of my good friends and actually a couple of ex
girlfriends have gone to get married and stayed to help other people go
through the process.

A quote from the New York Times:

"Mr. Birnbaum married his partner, Ron Elecciri-Hernandez, also from Los
Angeles, on Monday, but decided to stay in San Francisco for a few more
days to help get as many other couples married as possible.

"This is our honeymoon, and there is no way we would rather spend it," Mr.
Birnbaum said. "We will win in the long run. Any setbacks are temporary.
No civil rights movement in this county has ever failed."

I am so happy that maybe another area of prejudice and hatred will be a
little bit better. I am sure it will be a fight, as other civil rights
movements have been. But I feel hopeful that my son will grow up in a
country where homophobia is as unacceptable as (I hope) racism is.

It was only in 1967 that the Supreme Court struck down laws that
prohibited interracial marriages in the Loving vs. Virginia case.

"In 1967, the United States Supreme Court issued the latest in a stream of
landmark civil rights decisions. The unanimous ruling in Loving v.
Virginia struck down as unconstitutional laws that prohibited racial
intermarriages. Nine years before, Mildred Jeter (an African American
woman) had married Richard Loving (a white man) in the District of
Columbia and then settled in a community in Caroline County, Virginia. The
couple was soon indicted for violating the Virginia Racial Integrity Act
banning interracial marriages. Although the couple pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to a year in prison, the presiding judge suspended the sentence
on the condition that the Lovings leave the state and never return as a
couple for twenty-five years. The couple appealed the decision to the U.S.
District court in Eastern Virginia, the Supreme Court of Appeals, and
finally the United States Supreme Court. How did Virginia and fifteen
other U.S. states defend inter-marriage bans into the late 1960s? This
lesson examines the arguments behind segregation and "race-mixing." Having
congealed over centuries, ideas of race and segregation are multi-layered
and complex. Nevertheless, tracing the evolution from Biblical passages to
"scientific" research in the 1930s provides needed insight to understand
the durability and flexibility of racist attitudes."

I hope that in 20 years our children will learn in civics class about this
week's civil rights actions and that they will marvel and wonder how it
could be that in their parents' generation people were so backwards as to
make it illegal for any people who love each other to get married and have
a family. What a difference this would have made to me growing up if it
had been true for my generation.

Three cheers for Gavin Newsom and all the judges and city workers who made
this possible!

I wish that more mainstream news media would draw the connections for people between the black civil rights movement and this action.

So far have gotten only one "anti" response. I know there are more out there, but they are afraid of me after the Great Flame Wars of post-911 and iraq invasion. I suspect they have gone underground.

Personally I am still reeling from the shock to my faith in goodness when ERA didn't pass when I was like 10 years old. (No, wait, I was 12.) I could not believe it. I was horrified and ashamed.
If this legalizing attempt doesn't win, I hope that it will not suffer the fate of ERA but that it will be like the hydra and pop up all over the country.

I am also interested to hear that the vote in Georgia went republicans - no. democrats - mostly yes including all the black state congresspeople. Good because I was pretty pissed about "coalition politics" in which all the lesbians did the office work and organizing and xeroxing and shit work to promote the black student civil rights and then suddenly get told to be less lesbian-like and less visible in the media so that you don't make the black students organization look bad. Coalition supposed to go both ways or all ways.

I also used to feel more uncertain about the rightness of fighting to get married. Like "queers in the military". Yeesh. Yes, I will line up behind you anyway. But now I feel very staunchly that the marriage issue is important and what brought that home to me was a) seeing people dying from aids and their partners desperately trying to take care of them as they died and b) actually getting married myself and seeing the privilege it brings c) thinking about the issue of interracial marriage being illegal.

nearly over

2004-02-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

actual moving is NOTHING to the torture just experienced from in-laws.

number of times door left open so cats can get out: HRAIR
number of times gas left running on gas stove: 3, that I personally caught
number of things touched that me or Rook said "don't touch: Hrarir to the hrairth

Mi suegra must have packed over 50 boxes of books. she is no slouch! and she moved many heavy things. Keep in mind she is almost 70. But strong as a horse.

But why does she scream out every word at the top of her lungs? Moomin keeps telling her "stop talking!"

It kills me when he makes friendly advances toward her... he offered to let her wear his chicken hat, and show her a dance, and read her a book. But she did not hear him because she never shuts up. She considers his being good as a strange flaw. But... I think when we left for 2 hours today she took a nap and she said that Moomin cuddled with her and was amazingly sweet. And she talked wistfully of Rook's cousin Pall and how sweet and cuddly he used to be with her. I think she began to appreciate our odd little fish.

Rook is now taking her to the airport.

a great invention!

2004-02-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

Why is there no line of waterproof books for bathtubs and hot tubs?

"The Waterproof Pride and Prejudice." Just think about that for a minute. How many times have you read Pride and Prejudice in the bathtub? If you are like me, you can only count it in terms of "many many" or like the rabbits in watership down, "hrair".

I could think of many other books that could be usefully waterproofed. Gentle readers, give me your suggestions.

We shall make ONE MILLION DOLLARS with this invention.

and yet

2004-02-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

"And yet, whatever the inevitable disappointment that it must bring in its train, this movement towards what we have only half seen, what we have been free to dwell upon and imagine at our leisure, this movement is the only one that is wholesome for the senses, that whets the appetite. How dreary a monotony must pervade those people's lives who, from indolence or timidity, drive in their carriages straight to the doors of friends whom they have got to know without having first dreamed of knowing them, without ever daring, on the way, to stop and examine what arouses their desire. "

(from Within a Budding Grove)

"Moreover, if there had disappeared, provisionally at any rate, from my life, an anguish that found adequate consolation in the memory of polite manners... that memory awakened in me desire of another kind which, for all that it was placid and not at all painful, resembling rather brotherly love, might in the long run become fully as dangerous by making me feel at every moment a compelling need to kiss this new person, whose charming ways, shyness, unlooked-for accessibility, arrested the futile process of my imagination but gave birth to a sentimental gratitude."

good show

2004-02-17T22:36:00.000-08:00

Dinner and presents for inlaws more or less successful. The food at this local restaurant improved beyond all my expectations. It was great! Also, they have perfected the art of kid-friendly super fancy restaurant. It was fancy in all the correct ways and in no snooty unfriendly ways. without any warning that there was a kid, they had us seated with crayons and paper, they asked me quietly and privately if I wanted them to instantly bring fries to the kid and warned me that they were fried in peanut oil. And gave us instant basket of bread. I thought the way they asked me privately about the fries was amazingly ideal and discreet. The idea being that the kid doesn't instantly demand the thing offered, and possibly also that my other people would not jump in with their 2 cents about it.

Sorry to rave but... that is pretty rare. Fries instantly arrived. In fancy vertical fancy-restaurant arrangement in some sort of poncy holder with a little glass bowl of ketchup. And then they brought him (early) ice cream with various other fancy glass bowls with all different kinds of sprinkles and candy. (also offered discreetly so I could have said no.)

Anyway taht part of it kicked ass, as did my perfectly done medium rare tuna steak with onions and some sort of ideal potato thing and sweet potato mousse with arugula. O yeah, thank you california! let us not mention the lemon merengue tart also completely perfect.

If I go to a fancy restaurant it is a big deal and I dont' want some waiter asking me if I am "still working on" my food and then they stick their armpit in my face and lean over me to get plates etc. You know? I just had the rare, rare thing of waiters who i never, never noticed who whisked plates around without my being aware of what was happening. and the music was not annoying. I shall write up rave review of this restaurant for the m0ms club.

Mom in law was way worse behaved than Moomin who sat quietly and only went under the table once to rest and drink his juice and enjoy being in a cave. While Mama Blunderbuss did some shrieking, and some spilling, and some loud discussing of how at the one fancy restaurant near their summer place she would always bring a ziplock bag to steal all the bread. hahaha. I do love her.

As always in the bathroom i thought of the time when the restaurant woudl close and some hapless person would be swabbing the fancy floors with a filthy mop miserably wanting to go home.

Meanwhile.

hey! it's hailing!
********

Back now. Meanwhile, peace in the form of good food and wine had come to us all. But then there was a characteristic interchange between mom and dad in law where they both accused each other rather nastily of becoming senile or having alzhe1mers. I can't even describe this because it started out seeming like a joke but it is actually dead serious and they get very upset with each other.

Oh. I almost forgot an extra weird bit. Abuelito Deathwish has a lot of sisters. And one of them lives in some kind of semi-halfway house in nyc and she is schizo and I think also retarded. But not so badly that she is locked up. She can go walk around. The only other sister who happens to live there was driving around and was a block from some accident and there was an ambulance and as she drove by she found out it was her sister who had been hit by a truck. Since the sister had no ID or anything and I don't think speaks english it was really lucky that she happened to be there. I could not help but think "yeah right, coincidence, this is some kind of murder plot? Or you threw her down the stairs or beat her up and then staged an accident." But at the dinner table it was all talk of god, coincidence, fate, luck, etc. And cell phone calls in k0rean about head injuries and thor@zine and stuff. The Blunderbuss was winking at me from across the table as if she were thinking the same thing: "Not a Coincidence".

(I also have wondered if she is not actually schizo but just retarded and the ps1cotherapist brother put her on various crazy meds. Because I know he is particularly horrified at the idea that anyone in his family might in any way be retarded. He would prefer that they be crazy. I don't know why. And he is the boss of everything in that family and medicates all of them with no oversight, as far as I can tell. But to me she seems retarded and heavily sedated. The Blunderbuss and I talked about this once and she thinks so too.)

Anyway back to our overly complicated and trivial story.

Or maybe not. Moomin just woke up coughing again.

cool!

2004-02-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

That was just really cool. Minnie called me over AIM voice over ip. My cell phone has a bad battery and i have lost the charging cord and the reception sucks. I could not be here in bed talking on the phone but with wireless I can lounge slothfully. With headphones on. having pointless conversation with her in which we make fun of our aunt. okay... I am mildly a technophile... but it was nifty and tell me if you want me to add you to my ichat thingie. and I like typing better anyway. but. Yet another neat thing my beloved ibook can do.

no, no, no and no

2004-02-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

No, mi suegro. You may not ride in the back of the truck perched up on the rim.

No, you may not mow the lawn with the electric mower in the rain. (He is doing it anyway.)

No I will not take your wife in the back of the truck with Moomin in the front of the truck on the highway to 1kea. No, no, no.

How has this man lived to be 71 years old? How?

No, you may not and shall not pile my beloved, beloved books in the wet driveway under a tarp in the rain.

No, mi suegra, you may not make coffee as I have now caught you leaving the gas on the stove running full blast without the burner being lit which i only noticed because from my bedroom on the other side of the house i smelled gas. I shall make the coffee. About the 20th pot. No wonder you never sleep.

Mi suegra keeps saying "Okay now let's go to drive this load of stuff" or "okay now you will take me to the store to buy X," completely forgetting the existence of Moomin. I can't leave him with Mr. Deathwish, who would probably send him up the ladder to clean leaves out of the gutter. We can't bring him as the truck does not have room. But she keeps suggesting that it happen... how?

Moomin patient and sweet with his 102 degree fever and cough. I will not budge from here and he can eat all the popsicles and juice that he wants. Both suegros visibly exasperated with me for "not working hard" and "nothing is getting done".

I have magically from the corner antique store obtained perfectly adequate expenseive presents - cufflinks with sailing ships in antique lacquer and mother of pearl snuffbox for Abuelito Deathwish, and dangly earrings of a color i know she likes in a cloisonne antique elephant music box, for Abuelita Blunderbuss.

I have made birthday reservations and shall bribe Moomin into writing something cute on a card.

Pollyanna shall prevail. She shall do her duty like a Roman and a man. Duty, and reason, above all, etc.

exes

2004-02-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

2 of my ex girlfriends who are already married with ceremonies etc. this weekend went and got marriage certificates from San Francisco. Nadia flew up from lousisiana with her wife and their son - her mom in law stood in line for them and held a place! Mitch and Quilty did it on Fri. the 13th with great glee and then helped in the process for many other people.

Huzzah!

please no more!

2004-02-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

I do not ask WHO left the large, horrifying shit-stain fingerprints on the side of the roll of toilet paper. I merely pray to the gods above that it not happen again. And then I throw away the roll. I also scrub the toilet.

ew!

wheezing

2004-02-17T07:46:00.000-08:00

Moomin up in night definitely having asthma. It has happened before but a little harder to tell what was happening. This time wheezing. hideous coughing and nasty ropy mucus. Him saying it hurts in his chest and being kind of panicked. I fed him antihistamines and explained things to him which seemed to help. ie "I really want to help you and i know you feel so yukky, so miserable, I will pat you (percussive dislodging of mucus) and give you juice and medicine. " also I told him that this happens to me too, and it's really hard. That crying makes it worse. And that it helps to try to distract yourself and think of something else. I actually think he understands this part. Anyway I read him little books until he was calm enough to drink the juice with the medicine.

Well, one thing having asthma is good for, i know it is actually hurting him and I can be properly sympathetic.

I have been making him watch me take my allergy shots so he can see how it hurts but I am brave anyway. poor Moomin. a year and a half of grimly hopeful breastfeeding has not spared him my allergenic fate. I feared it was so.

what i need now is some albuterol syrup. or singulair or whatever they give tiny people with asthma.

slave drivers

2004-02-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

mis suegros are slave drivers. Wow. at least my mom CAN give one a moment's peace while she smokes her forbidden cigs.

I had from 4pm to now with them and it was worse than a whole playgroup full of toddlers. They need something every minute... constantly chivvying me to work or give them work to do or find their watch, glasses, plane tickets, phone, hat, etc.

i have packed boxes. I have washed their sheets. I have done their laundry... i did the hard, hard labor of ordering their takeout food... They both work work work very hard hard hard. Yeesh! I can't keep up with them. Fix the chairs! Do the dishes to relax while you're thinking of what real work to do next! I asked, "do you want to spend tomorrow with me and Moomin, maybe going to the zoo or doing something fun? or, do you want to pack our books? because i am in no rush to be done packing." Of course they want to work. I appreciate the help. Sort of. Even though I would about a million, million times rather pay some random guys $10 an hour to help me. Yes, the capitalist non-villager in me, i just want my peaceful privacy bought by exploiting other people. dammit.

I fielded questions about my parents. Actually that part was funny.

"YOUR MOM is SO AMAZING. She can LEAP into YOGA POSITIONS. because H0R$EBACK R1DING is GREAT for YOGA. Now I know something NEW. "

"Yeah it's great, she is really into r1ding..."

"ANNNNNND... she can LEAP into YOGA POSITIONS in front of the MIRROR and WHISK on her makeup. SOME peopleses would just think we are going to breakfast to the cafe and do NOT NEED MAKEUPSES. OTHER people can LEAP in front of the MIRROR and put on MAKEUP. and with the BLOW DRYERS and only 110 POUNDS but that is considered FAT" (continue in this vein ad infinitum - all said very cheerfully but with increasing freaked out shrieky loudness)

"Yeah I think she looks very nice. Her hair is nice that way." (somewhat defensively.)

"OTHER people might weigh FAR TOO MUCH because they like ICE CREAM and they are NOT GOOD at yoga though they have been doing it for FORTY YEARS. and APPARENTLY other people sweat a lot and have to put on their MAKEUP so many times a DAY that they just get so good at it LIKE YOGA."

Can it be that mi suegra is both deriding my mom and feeling a tad inferior to her mad femmy skillz? I consider her ancient goodwill t-shirts, tattered goodwill stretch pants, hacked off hair. (Mental note to self considering the other morning: get new underwear without giant gaping holes in them for mi suegra for a present. Poss. she is too punk to buy underwear. This visit, at least she has underwear on under her tshirt in the morning. last few times, NOT.)

"SOME PEOPLE don't even own a HAIRDRYER. OR MAKEUP. "

"Well when she was a teenager she had really bad acne and it scarred up her face with pits like smallpox. So she wears makeup so that isn't apparent. And her hair frizzes up and H0uston is damp which makes it frizz more. So she dries it to look like that. Your hair is naturally straight but hers is wavy and frizzy. I don't wear makeup all the time much less every day but I HAVE SOME."

"SOME PEOPLESES stay home with their HUSBANDS even when they want to go out because the husband won't exercise if she is not also exercising. Because they are SWEET. SOME PEOPLE's husbandses would not do it even if one DID. OTHER PEOPLE are LITTLE and CUTE and SWEET. SOME PEOPLE are NOT. Maybe if one WAS little and CUTE and wore MAKEUP one's husband MIGHT."

"Hmm so how is your work going mi suegra? Why don't you tell me about the administrator that ticks you off and won't let you do all the things with your department that you want to do."

(successful diversionary tactic! I listen peacefully to the tales of the department as we unload boxes in the dark, in the rain.)

I felt funny like I was leaping to my mom's defense. Yes she torments me but she is perfectly nice and anyone who criticizes her hapless insecurities and femminess can blow me. I reserve the right to bitch at her to myself. Ugh. I'm a jerk!

migraine, babysitter.

2004-02-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

I dont' know what happened to me last night but while we were playing our rpg I got this weird ominious feeling of doom. And started to sort of hallucinate lights and the light in the kitchen shining at me was hurting my eyes. I kept thinking my head hurt and oh no, I can't be getting one of those headaches? Can I ? I refuse to have one? If I just try hard enough not to be neurotic and think good thoughts.

Suddenly I realized i was lying down on the couch and it hurt to keep my eyes open and I had been rubbing my head for kind of a while in desperation. I realized that pronto I must go lie down in the dark and be away from all noises. And I made it so. The hallucinating feeling came on very strong. I felt worried that I was going crazy and I felt like I was falling. Um. Very weird! Took 1 meclazine and half a vicodin and fell asleep at 10:30 which for me is an incredibly unheard of impossibly early bedtime.

I guess this is migraines. I woke up feeling sort of hollow and fragile and tenative about life. My head is not killing me. The odd ominous feeling persists.

I took Moomin to a new babysitter. He was amazingly chirpy about it and after I did some explaining - "Here is my plan, first, we go to Carid@d's house, she is a new babysitter and I will play with baby Osmar and his daddy and mommy today. Babies are so funny because they poop in their diapers. Ew! Then, Mommy goes to pack and work hard, then, you pick me up and we wait for Gma and Gpa to come visit." Good boy! He is remarkably accepting of change sometimes and I left him happy on the carpet with the baby playing with a wad of new toys.

The mom who recommended Cari to me managed to totally not impress me. "She's CLEAN. I have seen her house and it is CLEAN." Somehow manageing to convey that spanish speaking people might not usually be clean. As if I am clean? I can't imagine what is going through this mom's mind. whisper: "And they are VERY POOR. I saw their house and they are so poor. I gave them TOYS and clothes for their baby. I think she is desperate for work. But don't worry because she's VERY CLEAN." Eastern europeans can be really freaking racist. <--- my own racist observation.

Dude. Cari and husband obviously super nice and her english about 1 million times better than my spanish. She showed me around her house as if to prove it was CLEAN.

What is cool is that she lives right around the corner from Moomin's school. i wonder if she could pick him up some days.

I realize we did not negotiate payment! oops! Bulgarian mom (okay she is not bulgarian but let's just pretend) told me that "she is so cheap, 7 dollars an hour." okay that is fucking sad. I refuse to be chintzy about that and will pay her the going rate. Likely this will screw some other moms out of a dirt cheap babysitter but tough shit. I recall my ex-friend, Wandy, who wanted to pay her faithful nanny and house cleaner a way lower rate once she had her baby "because then it's like less good babysitting because she has an extra kid. and if I were sharing a nanny with someone else it would be only 7 an hour each. So, i shoudl pay her only 7 an hour now instead of 12." Um! good god! now that's feminism for you! This was only one of the things that made me un-friend Wandy, who liked to think of herself as generous patron to the masses.

Last night as I drooled off to sleep I remember saying to Rook, "I will sleep. I will sleep all night and i will wake up completely better." Like magic, this happened.

I am now going to pack boxes with books, load them into the garage, and maybe also pack the kitchen stuff. I could also go buy more sticky felt and felt up the bottoms of the bookshelves.

If it stops raining I will haul kitchen stuff over.

valentines

2004-02-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

I just realized no secret admirers have sent me valentines or whisked me off to a Costa Rican beach for a romantic getaway. Dammit! Not again!

However I did get unexpected chocolate from squid which I will count as a valentine. And Rook made me dinner especially which also counts. I picked him a flower.

And I had asked a certain other person for space on her dance card and then thought 5 minutes later "uh-oh what if that was bad after years of not playing and she has everything arranged for this birthday party and has a million dates? Am I presumptious?" and felt a little silly. But lo and behold she wrote me back in happy anticipation. Good!

shooting my mouth off once again

2004-02-15T11:57:00.000-08:00

Well... another long rant sent off to the Non Profit about using money, gr@nts, meetings, and Mult1culturalism that is so token it makes my stomach turn. If that one didn't manage to offend everyone, I don't know what I did wrong. What will come of this? Why do I do it? I can feel everyone thinking these things so hard like invisible poison. They are all thinking hatey thoughts at each other about mismanagement of money and people not communicating during every meeting. I can't get a grasp on what is going on. But i see the poison. In theory I am sucking out the poison and spitting it out on the ground. However I might die in the process or be blamed when the patient does not recover and my ritual exorcism accidentally calls up demons who blast us all into hell.

Seriously I hope that my shooting my mouth off is useful even if it just gets them all in Stage 1 of defensiveness.

I didn't even go near the "web page that sucks ass so bad I'm embarrassed by it" problem.

But I did blast the head of the Non Profit for calling a sudden emergency unexpected meeting to decide a major issue and spend a giant amount of money and calling this meeting 2 hours in advance of it, and then, when by me moving heaven and earth to get there to the meeting, I realized that me just being there meant that I was co-opted into his project and he was then saying "well Badger was there at the meeting" on the mailing list! Noooo thank you! I said he hijacked procedure and it was wrong.

If this one gets me more "thank you mistress may I have another" replies I will wonder what then to do. I was thinking of xeroxing a few articles and bringing them in to pass out to the next meeting. maybe that would do some good? My prediction is that even the worst offenders are going to beg me for another lecture on what they are doing wrong. I don't want to always be obnoxiously going "and here is what you are doing wrong." I must suggest something to do that is right and persuade them to do it or better yet, do it myself as a demonstration.

never mind that the main thing I tried to do was to research and suggest various possible p0ets from various non-anglo traditions. The fuckers just called meetings to decide which p0ets to invite on the nights that they knew I had class. I have no clue whether this was on purpose, but the on purpose part is that they also aren't cc-ing me on emails. How did I get to be gringa diplomat to the brown universe? I am not any less racist or clueful than these people. just enough to know they are wrong. But not enough know what to do about it. I strongly, strongly suspect that what they did was to think through all the people they already know, and figure out which of them are somehow multiculti, and then invite them. That doesn't fix anything! That to mind is tokenism! It just means a practically 100% guarantee that your non-anglo poets will suck because it's just some random person you met at a p0etry reading who happened to be the 1 non white person who came into El Scene de los Honkys. That just convinces more people that reverse racism is in effect i.e. the obvious non-excitingness of the non white poet "proves" something bad about, I don't know, affirmative action and then everyone makes snarky comments about F. X. A1@rc0n being a candidate for p0et laureate undeservedly which in itself is not fair and they mutter against multiculti-ism. It makes me want to scream! The one board member who quit, I think it might have been partly over this issue because her husband is black and I believe (though this was just before i came into it) that the board was all like "gosh, we need a black person, let's ask X's husband though he has nothing to do with us and isn't a p0et!" Illin'.

I repeat that step one is to actually try to make an effort to be educated in what non snootypants white people writer communities and traditions and books and magazines are out there. Then you have some basis to judge the goodness of the writing. And you might have a clue on who might want to hear it or come to the events.

secret service

2004-02-15T07:51:00.000-08:00

Watched "Her Majesty's Secret Service" last night. The fight scenes were surprisingly good.

I like to think that someday I will be lured by my allergist to a remote mountaintop to spend my days giggling with about 20 women in the most stunningly ridiculous outfits known to huwomkind, and sneaking into their rooms. They don't even have to all be girls. Some long haired nancy boys in go-go boots would go down smooth. And. That was the best james bond ever. He was dorky. He wore skin tight, see through, frilly shirts. He wore a skirt. Oh my. And I hardly need mention that Mrs. P33l is NEEDED. Right now! Here! Wielding a broken bottle and laughing with fey abandon as she speeds her car around the curves! I bet Diana Rigg made them fix the script to make her character kick some ass. She is my secret love slave.

vile cuteness

2004-02-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

hear Moomin sing for his adoring fans (1.7 MB)

packing

2004-02-14T16:03:00.000-08:00

is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

No... the other kind of packing...

All my early zine papers fit into 3 and a half large plastic tubs. Someday I would like to go through it all and organize it and maybe do something with all the letters and fun mail art. The tollbooth papers and extra books not yet assembled are another 3, I think.

St. Val has been working her butt off packing books since noonish... Rook working hard... Both of them in happy agreement about the proper way to pack books with paper wadded up as padding (unheard of in the history of my books!) and labelled alphabetically.

I worked and organized and consolidated and sorted. But lost my stamina a while ago and my feet are all swollen again. What is up with you, feet? Would you like a diuretic? Why must you torment me? Are you trying to tell me something about my general cardiovascular lack of health?

Please, legs, do not varicose up your veins. Then, we will really find out how vain I am, because that would freak my shit to have veiny legs. I would not be able to bear seeing them. That would be it. My line would be crossed.

plan

2004-02-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

sat.

early morning -
coffee
15 min. school, type up bilingual stuff. [did some of this]
15 min. type up report of non profit meeting and send it out
30 min. deal with papers, filing, bills, etc.
Call contractors. - closet making guy and bookshelf guy.
11am (val? helping? packing? moving things? something.) [did this!]
at some point minnie will help paint - today or tomorrow
mom leaves 11:30 [well yes, after the hives]
don't skip lunch [i ate.]
work more. relax too. read proust. [did not read. forgot it was valentines day]

Sat. night. ?? vinland?? or loaf/ do school note taking. [instead watched james bond movie]

Sun. a.m. - pack things. pack books into garage.
Sun. p.m. go to proust group if I dare.
otherwise keep working like a maniac. pack papers correctly into plastic tubs.

Monday.
Are the floors dry? best to let them dry/cure more?
call appliance guys to get washer hookup thingie
call advisor Professor X about class. set up meeting time.
(to sfsu for paperwork hassle?)

move stuff into bathrooms
move plants, dig them up.
move stuff into shed.

THE PLAN (Tues? Wed? Thurs?)
if floors are all dry and ready.

books and boxes all stacked in garage.
kitchen and bathroom pre - moved in my truck.

then hire a uhaul and guys to bring the furniture. we wrassle with placement.

then, maybe even the next day, we have the furniture in place and have slept there and know where things could go. THEN go back with big u-haul and get everything.

a 2-3 day move. with uhaul. Shouldn't be too bad. Truck plus day laborers.

cleaning old house. garage. attic (eep) i would predict there is anothe rrun to the dump at some point.

We could be in there the 19th if I don't get sick in some horrid way. I put in extra time for possible illness when i said the 23rd.

actually

2004-02-13T23:41:00.000-08:00

Actually I am wildly happy about it all being really cohousing and that being good on many levels. with just 2 families it is small for a real co-op. but. I think a really good thing. I bounce with excitement. I am a herd animal. I guess sort of an anarchist herd animal. but it is nice to be familiar with people. And it is just how I hoped and imagined I would live for quite a long time. So it's nice that it is coming true.

I will remind myself of this later in case we get on each others' nerves or anything. but I feel boundlessly optimistic.

so ready

2004-02-13T20:59:00.000-08:00

I'm so ready to stop thinking about all these things and write about something else!

It's amazing what watching the R@quel Welch episode of the Mupppet show can do for my mood. Oh man. The high kicks! the boobs! the giant spider! the scene with fozzzie bear when I just can't stop thinking how really just under the stage there is some guy with his hands up in the air and his face pretty much in R@cquel Felch's crotch.

heh heh heh.

We just played a typical round of bogggle except that T. minnie's boyfriend kicked all our asses. i was afraid that our mom would ask what "fe1ch" meant as every time she visits she learns something else heinous like what a fluffer is or what it means to get a pearl necklace.

I am also very happy reading bits of "new world border" and just grooving on it. i will now go over to here and type up some cool bits and maybe say something floundery and lame.

Pilot all happily ensconced in the new Maze house. I now am trying to picture my happy relief when we are all moved. i won't care that boxes will be everywhere. we will be in there. I will figure out how to fit everything in the house. when we moved in here, I took down the double-stacked milk crates on top of the bookshelves. they could be temporarily reinstated.

Maze? Labyrinth? maybe neither but we will think of something good. I don't like "harr1son fjord" because... well.. he just grosses me out! though I do like a fjord. perhaps something quite silly like The Enterprise. hmmm or something that is a play on 4? or 6 i guess quite soon if you count kids. I'm still up in the air here on the nickname.

if I caught up on my proust reading i could instead of working on school, go to my proust reading group that i have flaked on or been sick for the last 3 meetings or so. i don't want to flake out on it. maybe if i sneak in some school tomorrow, AND catch up on proust right now and tomorrow night i could go to the group. it's just about to get to the fun dirty parts i think. the problem is i am almost at the endof the volume and i don't have the next one. i could go buy it tomorrow? do i have a gift card?

someone slap the shit out of me if i start any new projects. I have plenty of important blog reading to do here. don't need new projects.

A motel room of one's own

2004-02-13T17:34:00.000-08:00

somehow I feel MUCH BETTER and I ran, or rather biked, around like a crazed stoat all over SFS today finding people and making them sign my papers. One class successfully dealt with. The other one not quite but I am assured that they will make an exception for me so i can add it late.

The punchline of this is: I went to my advisor's house (she who boldly dared me to do this project and then even more boldly agreed to supervise my independent study class to do it). she has a 2 year old kid. And a nanny. I have been emailing her for days to no avail about the getting together for her to sign the form. I figured I'd drop one copy off at her house, and one at her office on campus, so if she got either one maybe she'd sign it and I could pick it up later. (I shoudl have done t his in the first place but I had wanted to talk with her too... so kept trying to make an appointment.)

So my prof's nanny answered the door and let me in so I could put the form on her desk... and the nanny told me somewhat in confidence, "Um, I probably shouldn't really be telling you this but actually Professor X has checked herself into a motel room for a few days and nights and is not going anywhere and not telling anyone where she is so that she can really get some work done. Because she keeps getting interrupted."

OMG. This made me feel SO MUCH BETTER. I mean about the brain fever. I mean I just announced to people, "I am now going to get with my email and computer and I have to work, with no interruptions, for just 20 minutes. Then I will deal with dinner." I sat down. My feet went up. I began to read and answer my email and try to straighten out what needs to happen

1: write up last night's notes on Non Profit Meeting. 2: deal with what I said I would do for spanish class. 3: email all profs to let them know what is up with the class and the forms and stuff. 4: email everyone my list of house issues/things to try to charge property management or previous owners with 5: email spanish homework assignment to Ep. 6: write to everyone offering to help with moving thank you thank you thank you you are all incredibly great.

I was interrupted in the middle of this I can't even tell you how many times. everyone is hungry. no one know where anything is. Dinner? Can Moomin watch another video? Do we have parmesan cheese? What about a snack? Who will get the food? Where is the widget frammulator? Isn't it funny how X is always greater than Y? Did you notice how the paint color looks in the evening sunlight? Isn't it great that you have wood floors? Mommy, can I watch another video? Mommy, I want chocolate pudding. I don't want this dinner I want something differnt. No, not that. No, not that either. I want choclate pudding. Mommy can you fix my guy so he stands up? Badger, do you OWN a PAIR of SCISSORS?Oh hello honey I just woke up from my unexpected nap, what will we do about dinner?

The point is not that I do not love my fabulous family. however.

I deeply, oh so deeply, understand my Wonderful Professor X, and her motel room. I feel that I adore her. I am her devoted fan merely for having obviously been at her wits' end and having done this. I bet she does it all the time. Go, Professor X! I adore you and your amazing papers about SF and mytholgy and fem1nism! Huzzah! I am not alone! how does she do it? and teach several classes? and advise poor slobs who forget their forms till the last minute? how?

Thinking is WORK. I havent' even tried to be thinkng about the actual thoughts. I only am just hoping to list the thoughts that need to be thought. but even that is escaping me. Sunday. On Sunday, I would like to think. I desperately need to think.

I will read 20 years of Joda and Flor y canto volume 1 and 2 and I will think about them and write something for my class. or i will fucking die of the feeling that a month will have gone by and I wil not have any thoughts prepared to turn in any sort of assignment. I can't just write some crap. because i am going to post the resulting articles and lord knows i'm going to call up j. montoya and interview him or at least send him the article and I don't want to sound like a jerk as I write about his writing.

thank you wondrous Rook for babysitting all our parents today and Moomin and getting everyone to paint and work and do stuff and moomin was properly read to and attention paid to everyone. and I got my stuff done and am deeply reassured about my fate for the semester.

I just could not continue today to think about everyone else.

tomorrow I am back in the saddle. Sunday? will sunday be mine? 2 hours? 3? 3 hours in the library, writing? surely that is possible.

Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

2004-02-13T10:37:00.000-08:00

Iraqi Rewards Program. Yes, it is the real cia! oh wow. almost as good as the old "TIPS" form which they pulled.

hurty

2004-02-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

okay my body REALLY hurts in the super duper warning you're about to fall completely apart way. maxed out tylenol, ibuprofen, allergy meds intake. and still really hurting and all my old problems starting to come up again.

i have been on phone and writing giant emails and fiilling out forms for about 2 hours and now. will go make nice with eveyrone who is painting the back house. and they also seem to be bustling about in the yard moving things and mowing and stuff.

they are nice. everyone has left me alone more or less this morning as requested.

except for a brief grilling by mi suegra on the religious backgground of my family in detail which, oddly she has asked me about 8 million times if we went to church and which when i was growing up and if my parents now go to church. this stressed me for a bit. however i answered nicely. Then i realized she was only asking out of total random mental diarrhea, and, she has some large ceramic religious artifact with a crucifix or something, and she thinks it will match my walls, but basically she wants to give it to someone either me or my parents. the thought of some blue and orange ceramic crucifix (?!!!!) is actuallly so hilarious to me that i am going to tell her to send it to me posthaste. if i hate it, i will have some sort of ritual celebratory smashing of it and will send it to HELL. iff it turns out to be very odd and funny then hey. great.

heh heh.

everyone nice again. I have had coffee. i shall go chat with them all and then go drive around and run around campus. BRAINWAVE I will take my bicycle so that I can bike all ov er campus without becoming exhausted and footsore as I go from office to office seeking signatures of remote and unavailable assistant deans of the universe, La R@za, Ethn1c Studies, Comp Lit, Hell, Purgatory, Muspelheim, Niflheim, and the 7 other worlds that branch off from Yggdrasil. Hmm Jotunheim, Asgard, midgard, ??svalheim or something where the dwarves are?

saved

2004-02-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

rook woke up to the appalling sight of me having BRAIN FEVER and a nervous breakdown. it actually kind of made me laugh that to help me, he asked me a bunch of times "what shoudl i do." it was funny becuase the answer was, "know what to do without me having to tell you what needs to be done" but. he was right. really, i want to boss him when it comes down to it.

we are now pulled together. he is going to:

heat up my coffee water and make my coffee so i don't have to venture out into the living room and be assaulted by loud, been up for hours, yoga-doing, bathroom-hogging in-laws. i can hear them right now yammering at the top of their lungs about SHEER CRAP to him. my mom in law exudes a force field that makes it impossible for anyone else to think. it's called her voice.

get moomin ready and take him to school. i am hoping maybe also taking them with him to see the school.

come back and take them to brunch (with me, in theory) (and possibly with my mom but he has to call her)

call the landlord and give definite notice for the 23rd as he has a renter for the 1st and get his promise of refunding us that week of rent for feb. 24-29

call the babysitter and plead desperately for any of her time next week

Paint the old house's back house since we swore it would be white again when we left. At least put one coat on it and we can work more on it this weekend. it will be the worst paint job ever, as i think it's not flat paint and it's a dark purple. i am not going to sand it. i doubt he will sand it. it will have primer and 2 coats of white and it will look like crap. arrrgh. i guess in theory we could sand it as Val has left her sander (i think?) at the new house.

He will prevent ANYONE from touching any of my stuff. no one shall throw anything away, or poke under my bed or in my nighttable in which resdides all my sex toys and porn and stuff. No one will pack my books, or look at my papers in the garage, or use my computer and discover my blog.

He will carry the burdenof having listend to me get very angry and say bitter things which i regret even thinking for 1 second and he shall carry those things with him to the grave.

He will by magic prevent anyone from saying anything even remotely critical of me. He will stop me from doing any sort of heavy labor if I stupidly try to do it.

Meanwhile. I shall take on his usual role, and disappear for most of the day because i must do Important Work Things. I hope that for some of that time I will flake off.

How do i have time to write all this, i hear you cry? Because i have not been sleeping. that's why. and i can't do anything even in my own house becuase its full of other people and it's too early to go anywhere and get anythng done or call anyone.

aside from marcus aurelius and darling seneca, the only thing saving my ass is Rook and the thought of a nice, warm, beach where I put my face in the hot sand and just sort of smell it and lie there like a log. after having surfed.

goddamn it. after this move is over, i am going to go buy a surfboard, and see if my wetsuit fits, and go to where the 10 year olds surf just outside the breakwater at princeton harbor. i will be cleanly exhuasted with my battle with the implacable strong waves. then i will lie in the sand and maybe raise a flipper once in a while.

necklace

2004-02-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

my marcus aurelius necklace saved me more than once yesterday.

it is not helping very much now.

I wish i could sleep. my body hurts all over. i nibbled a prednisone just now. i am not going to do any sort of labor today. None.

I will have a nice brunch, labor in itself as it is part of the in-laws' need to have that "we're all one big happy family" feeling like on some holiday, and since it's their birthdays I guess that is reasonable.

I will make a zillion phone calls and drive up to school and try to deal with the paperwork that, in trying to freaking please and impress everyone else, I have forgotten about my most important thing i have to do which is get the papers for my classes signed and officially add them and tomorro is the LAST DAY TO DO THIS. My emails only vaguely answered by my profs as to "when can i talk to you" and "what is your phone number" etc. etc. It does not bode well for my indep. study classes that I CAN'T FIND THE PROFS.

Yesterday. crying every moment when alone usu. in bathroom. losing it and crying uncontrollably in my car as i drove off by myself to the million-times-damned sudden surprise Arty Non Profit meeting. calling rook and crying all over him as we passed each other going diff. directions on w00dside road. freaking that my classes are not actually registered yet. freaking that i hav e not done my homework for spanish class or studied it at all and must now takeit credit/no credit.

however. i stopped crying and dealtwith dumb non profit meeting. I cried again afterwards. i went to class instead of giving up and going home. i did the homework in the 20 minutes i had before class. I was able to coast along in class from shit I remembered and in fact made people laugh with my goofy story. i stayed for the 2nd part of the class though i was mostly confused.

DOES NO ONE UNDERSTAND THAT EVEN IF I GO TO BOTH SECTIONS OF THE SPANISH CLASS AND MANAGE TO READ EVERYTHIGN AND DO THE HOMEWORK, IT WILL STILL NOT BE ENOUGH. i will not be good enough in the fall for the classes i need to take. it makes my stomach hurt. i will make bad grades in the fall. and i will be exposed for a fraud. and everyone will laugh at me and no one will want to publish my stuff and i will not get any sort of scholarships which i desperately want so that othe poele wont have to pay my tuition aned make me feel like shit.

anyway last night.

i returned home and conversed with in-laws who began telling me what they are going to do to our house and garden and what i should do. i forbade mi suegra to touch any pruning shears becaus i love pruning and dont want her messing with it. I want to do it! LATER.

i wish eveyrone would leave. i wil hire guys off the streeet to help me pack the books, becuase they will not torture me for a week and a half until i am a quivering wreck.

ive been crying since 5am. for gods sake. I CAN'T HELP trying to please everybody an d everyone wants me to do different things and be different ways and they want every second of my time and it's like i have SEVERAL VOICES CONSTANTLY IN MY HEAD criticising every thing i do and everytigg i think and belive in

the arty non profit

2004-02-13T06:15:00.000-08:00

a) i wrote several grants last year and got them
b) i can write more complicated grants and have done so
c) I acually wrote the SVA grant last year for myself and my own reading series but then didn't turn it in because it depended on Witter's bookstore and Witter was being so difficult I could not deal with him.
d) I said I woudl write this grant MULTIPLE TIMES and asked for: where are the files? I need a key to the office so i can get in there and access the files, if the conttrol freak wenches who have them would put them in there.

Now we get to today, when, Director of the arty non profit who i am now loathing with every fiber of my being, let's back up a second but, on Sunday he announced that on monday's meeting he is bringing some professional grant writer in to write this grant. WTF? she misses the meeting by some heinous miscommunication having arrived 2 hours early. everyone blames everyone else. Yesterday at like 3pm he announces his "emergency meeting" with her coincidentally right near my house. So I went. I ask director guy Why? Why pay someone thousands of dollars to write a grant that several of us are capable of writing? he glibs along suddenly realizing i'm pissed off.

She is a slick puppy. "Oh, my friend, M@y@ Ang3lou, and by some fucking magic I am also personal friends with Gw3nd0lyn Br00ks and 0praah and every other possible famous black woman, and I'm a prize winning p0et and I have thrown fundraisers that got 250,000 etc. etc. and as I was saying the other day to the guy who will be reading this grant application, while he was licking my boots, blah de blah." Plus, gorgeous drop dead and a rack like an airport bus shuttle and all dressed up like crazy LA people, slickly beautiful. I'm all thinking, "consultant girl, you dont' have a real job or any health benefits, and you are desperate for this 3000 bucks." instead of feeling truly hostile about it, I am only miffed at being dissed by Non profit guy and then USED ie co-opted into his evil secret plan. Because, clearly, under her slick talk she DOES need the money quite desperately. I ask hard questions about what happens if we get less money and will there be a contract and we must review the grant etc. etc. Non profit guy ineffectual. But really, I am happy if i dont' have to write this grant. But why did all the information needed magically materialize, when i have not been able to get it? why is it not BOGUS to have someone write one grant to pay herself to write us the second grant? why did director guy start nattering on about his fancy wine and cheese party AGAIN? he just wants to feel like he is part of a cultural elite, he doesn't care about the actual p0etry, the p0ets or the events.

also i am barely keeping my sanity at his lame attempts to be all multicultural when i know he hates the whole idea and is full of resentment and bitter racist evil.

I will write one grant. I will organize one giant event for these people in June so that I can go out with a bang. Then I will quit. Good riddance! I would happily flounce out right now after yelling at them for around two hours about their iritating evil incompetence. And they would deserve it. And then they would talk bad about me for months and months and everyone in the extended p0etry community would hear about it and I would have a bad rep as a person to work with and I don't want that. Therefore, I will organize something the way I envision things could be for them, and it will not cost 5000 bucks, and it will use the fabulous physical space that they have w which is the ONLY thing going for them other than their 20 year history and being able to go on about "Oh that time we had cz3slaw miilosz la la la." goddamn it. Anyway, I will do something good, so that I don't feel like my whole thing with them has beena failure, and then I will quit.

work

2004-02-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

oh my god. i have worked and drriven around all day. i am filthy and exhausteda nd on the verge of tears. i fucked up and arrived at preschool early with my mom when she had been on my ass all day long that the bathroom must be clean for the arrival of the mad in-laws becuase the bathroom is disgusting and moldy and the toilet is dirty and the counter is clutterd and how can i bear it and what will they think and how can i bear the thought that somene else would see it that way? she would just kill herslef she hopes that in the new house i have the sense to never use the main bathroom and keep it clean because people will see it when they walk right in the house. i said yes I will clean it, yes i will clean it. okay I will clean it. It was explained to me exactly how I shoudl get out of the shower after haveing laid down a towel over the bath mat first. I did NOT answer as i usually do that, what is the bath mat FOR then? i said, since you won't be here to see me, i can safely say, YES, i will do just as you tell me.

then i fucked up the school pickkup time. so it's not done and all the time we were at the preschool she was freaking out about it. she has been scrubbing things like a maniac all day. and buying me things "because I MUST throw out ALL the old things" the new things are really nice and pretty much what i woudl buy for myself if it happened to be a time that I particularly wanted all new drinking glasses etc. but, is it so wrong it just tweaks me and makes me nuts when she want to throw away my favorite mugs and glasses?

i shopped for in-laws and got them birthday pie and cake and tried to get food dad in law can eat with bad teeth.

i have not got to lay down all day and put my feet up so they are all swollen and hurt like a motherfucker.. at the preschool they gave me shit about the email list for parents and nannies that i tried to start and they had taken down my sign up sheet and don't want it and were all panties in a twist about it. control freaks. I will have my email list if it fucking kils me. screw t hem.

then they made me do my Monthly preschool chores since we were early so I just windexed about 500 ankle and knee high shelves for those penny pinching mother fuckers. home. in-laws here way early so i grimly fucking scrub the bathroom and mess with laundry and put everyitng away and change the sheets and find them batteries and look at their presents and feed them. I have not done my homework for tonight's class. the fucking Non profit Wanker fuckwad head called a surprise "emergency" meeting this afternon at 4pm which only he and the other biggest fuckwad obviously had plotted for but surprise it's right up the road from me so i said I would be there and i must go wash myself right now and then leave. my feet. oh. my feet.

i may skip spanish class but that thought makes me want to cry even more. i already realized that i have to switch to take it credit/no credit and that is fine, i dnt need the credit for anything but i thought it woudl be nice to make an A in it in case i ever needede to show proficiency for some job.

okay.

i shall now cry fr just a few minutes

blueberrry

2004-02-11T23:20:00.000-08:00

Mmmmmm blueberrry pie. Possibly my favorite. Possibly rhub@rb.

Either one, eaten in bed, while I'm reading.

Gluttony and sloth together are the best.

I found the Salt book under my bed and am finishing it off. And yes (to the salt book author) I do know another clerihew... and I shall pompously recite it probably somewhat inaccurately.

Sir Christopher Wren
went to dine with some men.
He said, "if anyone calls,
tell them I'm designing St. Paul's."

Tomorrow before 2pm I shall wash the sheets and blankets. I shall let my mom go through all the sheets and towels and throw most of them away to her heart's content. I shall somehow think of and obtain birthday presents for Rook's parents. I shall call contractors. I should call my school and make sure that I have not missed any deadlines on the forms I have not yet turned in.

I shall also wonder a bit about the word "shall" and whether it is disappearing or has already really disappeared and the only use of it is when people are trying to be slightly oddly formal to the point of being funny. I think this is true for everyone I know. I imagine that in England people still say "shall" without meaning anything funny by it.

I will remember to sedate myself early enough to go to sleep. that means right now. or really half an hour ago. too late!

mildly better

2004-02-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

we all listened to Moomin singing for us tonight and I recorded 10 songs. the funniest was this one which was amazingly long. there was also an extensive stuffed animal throwing war. dinner was eaten.

i told my mom i was sorry that i had ever been a bitch about her constant desire to rem0del everyting in her house or replace her front door or whatever and talking about it and confessed i always thought it was all boring and dumb but now i feel like an asshole because suddenly i want to be installing doors and refin1shing floors and etc. and they are just throwing the money at me to do it which makes me glad yet incredibly guilty etc. and rather than buy me crap at ik3a why not help other people do the things they want to do etc. she patted me and gave me a long lecture on how she actually just likes to keep changing things and if she ever did everything all at once it would be no fun because she just enjoys thinking about all the possibilities and how it could be perfect, but her idea of perfect constantly changes and it gives her about a million times more pleasure to redecorate my h0use and have everything be nice. There was a lot more to this. but i can't even go into it. i apologized for being surly, mean, hostile, and horrible. she counters that it is nothing compared to her own horribleness and i am just stressed. and that i can have my ik3a crap and other people can also have $$ tossed their way because our dad just today got some giant stock bonus thingie and he brought it up on the phone tonight coincidentally that he wants to be fair and spread it around and would never miss it because it is just numbers on paper. etc. she said she denies herself nothing she wants and that she used to be horribly depressed and unhappy but now thanks to r1ding lessons which she has like 3 times a week she is happy as pie and is fulfilling all her childhood dreams of h0rseback riding and bonding with h0rses.

i also note on this subject that yesterday i called my mom-in-law and told her we have way extra $$ and want to give it back to them so they can give it back to Rook's sister and her husband because he didn't get funded for his last semester. she was happy to hear it and said she had wanted to ask but rook's dad thought it appalling to ask for it back. oh for gods sake just take it back and use it. she just totalled her car for like the 3rd time too so I think she will just use it to get a new car.

later mom put me right in my place by accurately quoting giant hunks of poetry at me when I was going "um, something something blah de blah."

also i felt intensely grateful at her appreciation of moomin. she dotes on him properly. she knows how to play his kind of games more than perfectly. as does Minnie. I recall how good Mom was at being involved with all preschools and homeroom mother and was the wild fun playful parent compared to other people's boring staid never-playing parents.

i tried to copy her methods for dinner, setting the table as taught putting out everything properly and with her old trivets and stuff. i forgot the placemats though. she seemed amused by this effort to please.

omg. i had better get with it so i can be magnanimous to moomin when he is 30 and needs a new saxophone or something for his band, The Sp0cktards, and needs to be bailed out of jail or something. or to pay for his veterinarian school....? i shall buy him all the ik3a rugs, space shuttle tickets, and guitar strings he might desire... actually no... i will be magically rich enough to just give him some giant wad of money to do whatever with. rather than doling it out to him. he will blow it on tattoo machines, and miniature horse farms, and whores and cocaine.

oh, my god

2004-02-11T17:05:00.000-08:00

on the other hand it's like when she is saying how much she hates herself, for being ugly or having zits or being fat or her makeup coming off or having ugly hair or not having nice enough clothes...

how much must she then hate me, as I rarely wear makeup, dress like shit, am 40 lbs heavier, and have not only acne but r0sacea? its like she wants me to hate myself. I don't want to hate myself. i do hate myself but for different reasons, for being a hypocrite jerkwad, for being lazy, for being greedy, careless etc.

and i wish she did not hate herself because i don't hate her and no one shoudl hate her and it's wrong to hate yourself. So, when she hates herself I hate her. that makes no sense.

i must now clean everything as i just found her holding a trash bag DIVNG UNDER MY BED looking for dirty kleenexes.

further thought

2004-02-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

some angry t houghts. however. I abandon them. i am too much of a pussy to get mad. i realize that is dumb and fucked up. however.

i was thinkikng about the way all the things that irritate me and make me surly to my mom are also the things i hate in myself. whatever. i'm sure that is true for a lot of people and is not some sort of blinding insightof glorious wisdom. fucking fine. but i thought about it and had this weird picture of the cartoon strip "C@thy" which i have always hated with blinding hatred. its always c@thy trying on a bathing suit and thinking she is fat or worry about whether her boring boyfriend really loves her or hates her hair and how it doesn't do anything, or takes some stupid shit from her boss, or is having a dumb fight where her well meaning mother irritates her or is eating an entire chocolate cake though she hates herself or something.

I was having the image that really deep down, or, no, not even very deepdown, but pretty much all the way through, I am like this or that inside me i have a sort of inner C@thy who is girly and insecure. And practically every minute of the day, I am brutally kicking the shit out of her. when my mom is around i treat her with total contempt and emotionally kick the shit out her too because she is manifesting those things that i wish were not in me.

clearly this is wrong headed, blind, stupid and bad in every possible way. i have no grounds to be all superior about being all feminist when i am full of shit.

i am not saying this to have everybody lick ass and be all like "oh no badger you are so great and we all hate our moms too" so please freaking don't.

bad

2004-02-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

I have been uniformly nice all day long after staying up almost all night feeling horrible and thinking. i slept maybe 4 hours. anyway I have

(yesterday after entire day of hard phys labor: shopped with kid and cooked dinner)

got up at 8
to new house by 8:15 to deal with contractors
to bank at 9
home. load up truck.
new house with mom. unload truck. deal with contractors some more.
to ike@. listened full force to mom as we went over every inch of ike@ and she explained to me exactly what should be in my house, how my kitchen should be, what Moomin will have in his room, where all the furniture will go. I listened and then explained what i had in mind. I felt like both of us were being way more reasonable than usual and like she was listening to me too. and that this was unusual.
home despot expo. other home despot. rugs. doors.
to old house. loaded truck.
listened to long lecture about how i should arrange everyting in the house and how i should behave in my marriage.
Listened to long discussion about yoga and house remodelling and made interested comments. not hard. as long as i am not being totally criticized i can talk about these things all day. god. as long as it's not all about how I'm too fat, which it often IS.
made lunch for her.
unloaded truck.
dealt with 2 sets of contractors.
hauled trash out of shed and yard.
went to appliance store. Listened to immense lecture about how to do laundry. Took it like a lamb. agreed to clean house for imminent visit with inlaws.

I must now get moomin.
clean the house like a crazed hyperactive stoat, with my mom.
cook dinner again.
Then drive to san jose and write a grant with some guy from the Non profit.

everyone lay off me. yes. i am arrogant. i am neurotic. i am overconfident. i always think people will automatically like me and I can't imagine why they wouldn't. I'm vain. I think I'm fat. I worry about my acne. i suck my stomach in when i look in the mirror. i try on 4 outfits when i'm getting ready to go out to a party. i slack off and ignore my kid. i read trashy books over and over but pretend to be an intellectual. I'm ill tempered and nasty, but delude myself that i'm kind and caring and high minded. i am unreliable. i have delusions of grandeur. i am unemployable at anything other than being a rather incompetent, bitter secretary. these things are bad. they have their positive sides but fine, i suck.

allow me my illusions please.

the red baron goes down!

2004-02-11T00:11:00.000-08:00

the flying ace is in a tailspin. arrrrgh. Why am i mean to my mom? How horrible. I can't stand it!

and remembering this

2004-02-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

in defense of mama hemulen as I whirl about helplessly in the maelstrom... feeling really guilty and bad... she was telling me yesterday the story of how when Minnie was in kindergarten she got the highest test scores of any kid in her grade on some standardized test. But the school wanted to hold her back, solely because she was extremely short. My mom went in to talk with them, or actually, to yell at them. As she told the story she got more and more outraged and in flashback mode. "Look at ME!" she yelped. "Just LOOK AT ME! Do you think I belong in kindergarten too? So she's SHORT. How do you think _I_ feel! How do you think she would feel being left behind when all her friends move up? Are YOU going to explain it to her?" (she is barely 5 feet)

Right on!

All the times she went into our school to yell at them! She was extraordinarily marvellous at this.

She went on to tell more stories about how much she hated that school and how stupid all the teachers were. The story of how 5th grade Minnie was given a spelling word, "v3red". Mama Hemulen insisting it's not a word and little Minnie arguing that the teacher wrote it on the board and our mom making her look it up in the dictionary. Now, it will tell you something good about our mom that rather than shrugging, she went marching into the school in outrage, ascertained that all the other kids had written down the same word, found the teacher. It turned out to be "from a book" and the teacher turned to the page.. it was the end part of the word "qu1vered" that had been hyphenated at a line break... the teacher had just thought it must be an unusual word and had written it down on the board for a spelling word. I ask you. What the fuck! A typical dumb story from middle of nowhere, "good school district", TX.

During this conversation she also said that she had desperately wanted to send me to some hippie ass private school when we lived in D3troit where you got to choose all your own projects and write up contracts with the teachers for what you would do and when you'd turn it in. But they could not afford it. I was sort of glad to hear it and I thought a little harder about the way they kept sending me to different schools. In H0uston there was no choice unless they had not only paid out the ass for private school but also would have had to drive us probably an hour every day to school and then pick us up again. I had brief dreams of going to some private school on a scholarship in downtown and taking some sort of park and ride bus but this was scoffed at so hard. It makes me feel better that at least they thought about it. But I wish they had talked about it with me when it all happened even if I was pretty small.

paintypants

2004-02-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

I think I successfully matched the purple paint to my hair. In the kitchen today, I had this eerie yet comfortable feeling as if I were Gonzo and the spaceship full of my People had just landed and put on a fabulous disco show.

extended bitch session

2004-02-10T19:47:00.000-08:00

Jo came to rescue me but I was too stunned from exhaustion and not-very-well suppressed surliness to do anything. If you have ever read those books about how they design slaughterhouses like a sort of labyrinth so the cattle are going through them and then BANG a hammer hits them in the head? Somehow being around my mom is like that. I am all comforted by the familiar scent and sound of one of my kind, and then the hammer comes down - but instead of falling over like a dead cow, I just get really mad.

We painted together fairly well today but ... I'd start doing something... and she'd come over and start being all passive aggressive about trying to make me do something else and I'd just endure it and then go, "Okay. So, you want me to go over here and do X?" and I'd do it but then 10 minutes later like a crazed squirrel burying and digging up the same acorn she'd come over and start yattering again about how I should be doing something else. (except, all phrased weird so it takes a genius to even figure it out, like "don't you think that really we should be first taping the whatever? and did Rook do the something else? dont' you think it's more important and it just makes sense to do the other thing?")

arrrr!

It was really hitting me today how passive aggressive she is. This is not really news. Maybe I could suggest some sort of book to her on being assertive. If she would just say, "Let's go paint the second coat of the trim in the front room" I would probably just go along with her. But she changes her mind every 2 seconds and flips back and forth between being super bossy and super insecure and asking me what she should do for every little thing like "Should I throw this tape away?" "Where should I put this screwdriver?" I mean... look around and figure it out... and why would I care? I have to stop every time and figure out the code. "Should I throw this tape away" often actually means a) stop what you are doing and pay attention to me b) I want you to go around right now and clean everything up because I'm suddenly having a neurotic panic attack that everything's too messy.

And why must she talk about recipes with me? Hello! I hate it! I find it profoundly boring! And I know that its subtext is, "I am appalled at the way you run your life and you should cook more and be a proper girl!" Because she keeps putting in all these "oh i'm just like you" disclaimers that are so patently false. "Oh I never cook I just have a sandwich every night!" but 5 min later it's back to "c00king light" magazine and some foul super easy no-fuss recipe. "I was just thinking... what will we have for DINNER... " Hmm. I say bitchily. Dunno. "We could have this nice CHICKEN that I read about on the INTERNET...." Hmmm. I say with totally hostile disinterest. "It's sooooo easy! And it's sooo good you will just want to die! and it's really easy and fast! It doesn't take ANY trouble at all. I NEVER cook. But then I made THIS. " Hmmm. I say trying to channel my dad's perfectly neutral "I'm not listening" caveman grunt. "If that's too much trouble... do you know that you can buy a whole chicken? In the supermarket?" I can't even answer this one. "Already cooked, I mean. Did you know that?" I don't answer. Alas, I am in the car, and cannot pretend that I have to go to the bathroom and just never come back. "Baaaadger did you know that you can buy a whole COOKED chicken ? Well. I don't KNOW if they have them HERE! They're usually by the DELI section! " I lose it and go "Ohmygodi'm35yearsoldandhavebeeninaGROCERYSTOREbeforeforfucks'sake!" and nearly pass out hyperventilating.

That is pretty much how my whole day went.

And let me tell you that is only the ONE MILLIONTH time that we have had that identical conversation about the marinated cooked chickens.

It's not like I havne't cooked before for her? Sometimes I have gone nuts and bought every conceivable food that she would ever eat before they visit. Lordy lordy. WTF. It doesn't work. It just makes her talk about it more.

But that is better than the "what everyone weighs" conversation. What she weighs exactly and how much she weighed last week and how much my dad weighs and how much he weighed last year ad nauseum!

Why god why?

"Oh, god, I can't go in there looking like this. I don't have my makeup on, and I'm in these gross sweatpants, and my HAIR!" um. Yo, you are an anonymous 50 year old woman going into a suburban drugstore. No cares anything about you or what you look like. No one will vomit because they can see your pores running free over the parking lot like wild mustangs, unfettered by base and powder. before the playgroup yesterday i was treated to the full hair-drying and styling, washing, makeup, dressing in outfit that seems oddly identical to all her other outfits (size 4, grey-ish) I mean, what is the point? it's not like afterwards she feels beautiful and confident. it's that without doing all those things - and not just once a day, mind you, but repeatedly - she thinks that she will actually strike people blind with her ugliness. Since she often complains of how other people's ugly fatness makes her want to throw up, I think she might actually believe this... Each of the individual pores on her nose have the magic powers of a basilik, or maybe of Medusa.

My house may be cluttered but my mind is free of the whirlwind of completely confused nattering about trivialities that seems to overwhelm her. Even when I don't have to be the target of the whirlwind overflow, it makes me feel sort of hopeless that she is that way. What is going on in there? Is there really an interesting person that I would like, who thinks about stuff? At times it has seemed like it. I guess that is it, that the cool moments of fun Mama Hemulen, sensitive and pensive mama hemulen, funny book reading m.h. etc. are... lost mostly or overwhelmed by the other things...
I actually felt like this when I was home with infant Moomin with no human contact 9 hours a day... I started to care deeply about really weird stuff or cry when Rook left his socks on the floor...

Meanwhile, she helped me buy this house and flew out here to paint it with me on her meager vacation time so I should really shut the fuck up. how sharper than a serpents tooth etc.

I tried so hard not to be a bitch today to her. I tried to talk a little bit about my bilingual poetry project but she was insanely uninterested and just took my attempts at conversation as evidence that I am not thinking about the important things like how to remove the tape from the walls and in which trash bag to put it. after she leaves for several days I am unsettled and in a tizzy of feeling awful about myself and like I should be ajaxing the sink every 5 minutes.

It makes me sad and lonely a little.

Also entirely aside from being my mom, being around her makes me sad and freaks me out because I'm like, Oh, man, and i thought _I_ was damaged. This person is a walking screaming example of the desperate need for feminism. What would make a person like this? How could this be? Where is the strong person that I know is in there that i have occasionally had glimpses of? How can she be helped? Can she possibly be happy? I feel existential despair for her in some weird way. I am sure this is snotty but she seems so very deeply messed up and unhappy. I guess a lot of people are that way but they tend to self-select away from me so I don't have to see the messed-upness quite so bad. This also makes me feel bad when I am snarly at her. Like she needs that? It is very unhelpful and just makes her nervous around me like I'm always jumping all over her case.

I've tried in the past to formulate simple rules.
1) don't talk bad about yourself
2) don't talk bad about me
3) no recipes. no food. no weight. no makeup and clothes.
4) no talking about how fat homeless black people come in the library and surf porn and smell bad and offend you and don't talk correct english.
5) No talking about how fat, stupid, and ugly other people are.

I remember laying this out and she was just like "Tchhh. Then what would I ever say?" And I just looked at her... with a horrible sinking feeling..."Yeah. Um, that's kind of sad, Mom." And she was upset and I think promptly forgot all about it. with her special forgetting magic.

I will endure any amout of talk about yoga or riding lessons if only she'd lay off the other things.

Thank god she just went to Minnie's tr@mpoline class and i have a night to breathe free. I shall read another of her r3gency romances in an attempt to fathom her. And because they are really super candy-junk-food-like and funny.

flirting school

2004-02-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

I will open a school on how to flirt. and I will make ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

wonderchicken

2004-02-09T20:55:00.000-08:00

Ohhhh, this is so good. Parties, publications, punk housewives (thanks!), passionately muscular writing. Yeah, we're squalling our barbaric yawp. Thanks, empty bottle dude!

I always kind of liked the name "Stavros". doesn't it mean "crucified" in greek?

I agree with the basic principle of the more the better. It's how and who decides what's the better. Better for what? tends to be my battle cry.

who is it better for?

war and peace

2004-02-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

All has gone well today. We painted peacefully together. I found guys to refinish the floors. Hurrah. My mom has been trying hard to restrain herself from commenting negatively. We might have had one moment where I snapped "shut up!" in a half-joking way. and another at lunch where she said "I know you dont' want to hear this or think about it but..." and I told her to stop right there. But she went on anyway to mention that I have a lot of stuff and should get rid of it. Is that "little mention" number ... 10? or 100? in the last few days?

I yelled at her for smoking a few more times. I had not realized this but she recently went on w3llbutr1n in an attempt to quit. you know. she is also on high blood pressure meds. WTF. quit smoking you dumb uptight wench! god! every time I see her she has "just quit" or is just about to quit.

Just now I really enjoyed the Worm Show given on the school lawn by Iz. "Next time, we will have a show all about creatures that pollinate."

and also

2004-02-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

My head still hurts from dropping the giant metal heater cover on myself on Friday.

And asthma is not great, I am blowing 425-450 instead of my usual 525-550 cubic whatevers in the little measuring thingie. 500 is okay but I notice it. Under 400 I just sit hunched over and think about breathing calmly and shallowly, not panicking. Or demand that people pound on my back while I cough in the shower. I started on some s1ngulair. lots of albuter0l today. also the weird inhaled steroid powder thing that comes in a round ufo-shaped case. It looks like one of those round kazoos, or an alien pack of birth control pills.

I am thinking that hiring people to refinish the floor or possibly just leaving it as it is would be smart. Rook doesn't really have time... i dont want my mom doing it... It's clear that me doing it would fuck me up for weeks and would be stupid. I will reserve my strength for packing and unpacking. afterwards I will collapse with bronchitis and go on predn1sone. You will see. it happens every time I move.

yet the thought of the new house makes me quite happy as i picture its cheerful paint, its two bathrooms, its possible future piano, moomin's happy picking of lemons from the lemon tree, hanging with fun housemates, hosting playgroups on the patio...

Last summer when i was translating Yehudit's poetry with her... we kept having sandwiches on her tiny patio looking at a little square of green yard and hearing the distant hum of a lawnmower or some kids playing somewhere... and as we ate our bread and cheese we were both having a distinct feeling of awareness of all the places and people in the world where this is not possible, and feeling that, actually, this is what people fight for, a little garden, a sandwich, a moment of peace and being sure no one will burst in and shoot us... aware of the luxury of it.

IN WHICH

2004-02-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

one considers pulling one's shirt up, pointing at boobs, and declaring one's self to be an adult human being, and there is the proof,

one considers many curse words and torrid descriptions of what one's relations can exactly do once they holy mother of god remove the paint sticks from up their own asses,

one mentally and at great length explains to one's mother that, at least when one is not painting something quite unimportant and hidden like the backs of kitchen cabinets that no one will ever see, one's painting technique is quite competent and consists of a) taping carefully b) dabbing the paint on kind of thick and then, afterwards, smoothing it all at once in one long stroke so that it is neither globby nor streaky c) not having a stick up one's ass

Instead, one rather wildly yet maturely declares one has Had It and no further commentary or criticisms are allowed as it would ruin one's joyous bonding with the House and that one is Now Having a Beer and Going Outside to Prune the Bushes Behind the House Where No One Shall Ever See.

Was happily doing so, tying up bushes with rope to the lattice with Jo's daughter in very useful assistance, given gloves and pruning shears she went at it with no instruction necessary. She is good that way. In fact she spontaneously constructed a secret garden leafy bower for Moomin with the prunings woven into a roof with red berry decorations. Thoughtful! But... our paradise was disturbed by Mama "Stick up the Ass" Hemulen who did a sort of exaggerated "taken aghast" double take at the scene. "My GOD! What you NEED TO DOooooooooo.... is TIE UP some of these branches. Don't CUT them! Like THIS ONE HERE... you could TIE IT up to the lattice!" (she plucks the very branch out from under my nose that I was contemplating in zen-like bliss.

"Look. See this rope? In my hands? See how I just tied up all those other branches? I was JUST DOING THAT. Go. Away. Get thee hence. "

"Oh... uh... ummm..." She left. I drank my beer with Eliz. in the bower. I believe she witnessed my carefully non-out-of-control outburst, and took pity on me.

Arrrrrrgh! This drives me so nuts! I am actually an unusually intelligent and competent person. I also a) found the house after 3 years of solo house hunting b) planned all this work c) thought about what I was going to do with the bushes about 5 seconds after first seeing them several months ago d) specially bought work gloves and pruning shears and rope for the project. Why must someone then come in and act like I must have my head right up my ass without a thought in it? This is the way I was treated my whole childhood and it drives me crazy.

I also put in two 10 hour days of demolition and ticky little careful work of pulling up staples from the floor. Carefully. Meticulously. With attention to detail. Without damaging things. Swept everything about 20 times and mopped it all and then washed down all the trim with sponges.

WHICH I might mention, I carefully went and bought all supplies listed for me and then everything else I could think of too. Being the organizational genius that I am. Why must everyone ride my ass? It's just not funny. It was funny to joke about how I'm a slob and exuberantly stepped in the paint can but you know what, give it a rest people, we wiped up the paint in all of 30 seconds.

Rook doing it all day to me too. I would go to start doing something and he would come in and loom over me, hmmm-ing and then he'd move in and start to do the thing I was working on. If I left the room then he'd come and horn in on my new project.

Hetman V. can do as she pleases as she is actually competent and has thought about how to do things and has a plan. Plus, she shoots no telepathic "you fuckup!" rays out of her skull like Rook and my mom, who can bite me!

Possibly one snickers a little quietly as the Neat Perfect People pull off their masking tape and big flakes of paint come off with the tape. one does not feel too guilty about this. hahaha. sorry.

I wish Minnie was here, she would be very comforting.

eliz. and Moomin helped me paint the ugly white cabinet that Jo and I dragged outside. We mixed paint colors. we swirled. we spattered. We handprinted. the shelves are all different colors. "Why are you WASTING TIME on .... THAT... " Mama Freaking Irritating Needs a Bitchslapping Don't Care if She Dies of Emphysema Hemulen commented. Fucking fuck!

Hey, wait a minute

2004-02-08T00:54:00.000-08:00

I just realized that no one has massaged me today. What the heck? How could this have happened? Cruel world! I shall now pop a sleeping pill and long for a magic fingers hotel bed.

Reading this week: Wings of M@dness was just great. I am in love with S@ntos-Dumont. In conspiracy theory mode, I decided that he was really his own older sister who supposedly died. Really it was the younger brother who died and the "dead" older sister took his place as she wanted to become a mad inventor and aeronaut. The family co-operated. He was driven to madness by his desire to reveal his biological gender for the honor of womanhood. The relic inside the jar with his heart in it maybe has his ovaries too. Or, maybe he was just short, girly, and liked embroidery.

Rook has finally come home from his new game, looking oddly handsome and very excited over the successful J@mes Bondiness of it. I notice that he is NOT covered in paint and in fact doesn't look at all painty. I came out of the day with yellow, blue, orange, and purple pants, shirt, hair, and skin. My hands and arms have little cuts all over them. I hope Moomin takes after him not me in this.

"How is it that you don't have any paint on you?" I just asked... he's still chortling in a repugnant and superior manner. Hrmph.

romance

2004-02-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

I'm reading one of my mom's r3gency romances - oh so trashy! Oh so enjoyable! and one of the minor characters is named Lady Badgerly. She has an ample bosom and hosts poetry readings. Eyes flash. Pelisses are donned. Curricles nearly overturn. Hurrah!

Why does one always "don" a pelisse?

I am only mildly unsettled by Mama Hemulen's insistence that I do everything completely differently in the house and move and in general in my whole life. "Did you ever think... that maybe your life would be EASIER without all this... STUFF?" Dude! no that never occurred to me....

However it is just fine to have the wonderful loads of attention for Moomin and the dishes all washed and the floor swept and the counter meticulously ajaxed. How does she do it? All I know is, if it's not done exactly right, it bothers her terribly. So she just does it herself. I feel a surge of gratitude towards the universe that I have no such neurosis and can live with dishes in the sink. And how did she do this after bazillion hour plane ride, with a minor cold, and painting all day? how? Is she inhuman? I caught her smoking and coughing outside the garage. I wish she would really, really, for real quit smoking. Poss. I will suggest that did it ever occur to her that she might not see Moomin grow up if she doesn't fucking quit smoking? Well, did it? (of course it has but she needs a cruel taste of her own medicine)

Nothing sucks like a Badgerbag!

2004-02-07T19:09:00.000-08:00

advertising slogan generator - strangely amusing.

Generalissima Val (Pan Val?) has mustered us up and whipped us into a crack sanding and painting crew. Once I had finished sanding and painting my crack I kind of wondered why I had listened to her. ahahaha... The kitchen is a virulent parrot-wing yellow and a corresponding bright blue with purple trim to be added tomorrow. I am feeling uncertain about the "jalapeno red" which looks more like orange terracotta than I had hoped but it might dry much darker.

Following B@rak's advice I did try to match the paint chips to my hair but it was quite difficult and some paint store guys snickered at me.

I painted the insides of the ugly beige melamine cabinets in a manner that I felt perfectly expressed my usual joie de vivre. Rook and Val and my mom, when they turned around and noticed what I had been doing, seemed speechlessly appalled. Their mouths hung open. Rook started going "Whaaaaaa... what... why.. Look! Look? Why? Why? What the!" and Val simultaneously began explaining something in micro managerial expert detail about edge rollers and my mom just went BAAAAAAAaaaaaaadgerrrrrrrrrrrrrr! with a huge sigh as if I had brought home a sick kitten. "What? It's fine! It's cheerful! It's just the back of the cabinets! It doesn't matter if it goes up a little onto the shelves and the inside cabinet tops! No one will notice and there will be, you know, all sorts of crap in there... And it expresses spontaneous, joyous abandon..." and as I said the words "spontaneous joyous abandon" flinging my arms in the air joyously and persuasively, I stepped in a large tray of dark blue paint and flipped it over onto the hardwood floor...

I was booted out of there and Rook darkly and grimly mentioned Mr. Toad a few times. That is how I know that I have gone over the line, way over, and had better behave!

Tomorrow: More painting. I will stick to taping and perhaps will apply some joyous abandon to an ugly white cabinet which I will take outside to torment. Then I will prune some bushes and haul loads of of trash to the dump. The real painting will be done by the crack team! and it will look lovely!

Moomin spent all morning painting a large wooden box. All afternoon he played quietly on the floor with toys. i bet he will remember this day and the rest of the move. A major event and he's old enough to remember things now.

the painter guys doing Pilot and acrobat's house in the back were laughing at us. they are mayan, from the yucatan. i think they are more comfortable in english than in spanish. I wish that I could tell this from people's accents. I'll ask them how to tell tomorrow.

kerry

2004-02-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

Here is a reasonably good article on Kerry. Yes I prefer the leftier lefties. But Kerry seems to be the anointed democrat. Plus he went to school with my dad and my dad says he's intelligent. That's good enough for me. "Not a religious fanatic liar" ie, a talking peanut butter sandwich, or maybe Koko the gorilla, would be good enough for me too.

Oh yeah! Come paint my house!

2004-02-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot the main reason I sat down at the computer... well... laid down with the computer on my belly... was to say:

Come over and help us sand the trim and paint it! And paint the kitchen! Weird colors! All commencing at around 1pm tomorrow afternoon. Pizza and beer. Meet my mom! Bounce a superball! Massage me!

email me if you want to come and put in an hour of work! or just come and say hello and have a piece of pizza and behold the hive-like energy and bestow your blessings upon us, like Old White Joe... can I call him that?

neighborhood

2004-02-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

I forgot to say that when Minnie and I walked in the front gate this morning there was the across the street guy, Joe, standing on the patio poking at the trashcan and looking around in a vaguely thoughtful way. I was minorly weirded out and tried to beam thoughts to him to leave the area... but Minnie was a seething machine of radiant hostility. LEAVE THE BRONX I thought frantically at the hapless drooling old man.

Later I met the previous owners (in town for 2 days) and they were nice as pie. They said that Old Joe is possibly the most lonely person around, yet is not horrible and has an extraordinary back yard garden. Perhaps rather than creepily invading our back patio and peering into the front window and engaging me in rambling conversations about my admirable youth and energy and how the Lord Blesses Me... (and I didn't even sneeze?) he will instead let me tour his garden and see its former glory. I can't imagine that it has present glory. How could he do it? How does he even walk?

The other neighbors are from here and according to pleasantly gossipy previous house owners, sometimes hold enormous parties at which they roast an entire whole dead pig in some kind of pit. Hmm wow!

Other across the street neighbors are the Large Family whose house I used to look at in a friendly way walking about the neighborhood with baby Moomin in a stroller. Their yard is full of fun toys and the older kids are always nicely playing with the toddlers and amusing them lovingly. Old Owners said that the Large Family has been trying to buy the Harrison People's Collective no. 241 for years.

Fascinating only to me, but. there you go.

I sighted the second Old Man in the Hat the other day on the playground collecting cans. There are two (obviously) One polite, bien educado, well spoken I guess is what to say, and always used to sweetly compliment Moomin's infant beauty and (later, when he figured out the gender) manly strength. The second one is his friend and they seem to spend a fair amount of time walking slowly around the block together in their Mexican cowboy hats or one would be walking to visit the other one. Since I was often also walking around the block I saw them a lot. Once the First Abuelito del Sombrero had some roosters in his yard and I was intensely curious but he acted all guilty and would not talk about it but kept changing the subject. Later I realized they must have been fighting cocks. And then I wanted more than ever to accost him on the subject because I had just been translating the bit out of Fl0rentino y el D1@blo where they are using all this cockfighting terminology which I'm sure would be different for mexico and v3nezuela but still I was all hot to try out my newly learned vocabulary about what happens in a cockfight and to show off how i know the different words for the different colors of fighting cock. They have special names like the colors of horses. By the time I worked myself up to do it the roosters were gone and I felt too foolish...

It's cool to be moving back there. I will have to talk to little PaulJohn's irritating though friendly dad, Mr. Blue Collar Chip on Shoulder, and the mom who is Okay and the grandma who is sort of a bitch but strangely fascinating from the slutty things she sells at their garage sales. I believe I own several lacy black lingerie items, see through blouses, and at least one sparkling metal mesh purse with gold chain that I bought from her. Rihat the muslim convert preadolescent whose books I used to borrow is still living there in our old apartment building. Possibly now adolescent. I liked him and his mom and grandma. Also in that building still - our upstairs neighbor who has, oh hell i forget the name of it but some very very uncommon horrible paralyzing syndrome and when I met her she had just gotten a fancy motorized wheelchair after being fucking trapped in bed with a crappy wheelchair she was unable to push herself in, for a long while. She seems to have been a fun loving gang member party girl until she got sick. She has gang tattoos all over her neck. What WERE they doing up there every night that sounded very much like an octopus scootching around in the bathtub, i will never know. Sex in the tub? What? And the 4am vacuuming for fuck's sake. Her mom worked the night shift but why vacuum at 4am? It was her who had L@rz the fantastically sleazy male stripper for her b@achelorette party... I shall write more about that event some other day!

It will be odd to see all these people again regularly as they live half a block away. I am sure that to them I am also a figure of mild interest and easy categorization.

ache!

2004-02-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

What to even say? a more than full day of hard physical labor. I forget to eat. It's a good think I had a good breakfast at the cafe. then I just ate a lot of mexican pastries all day and drank juice.

The tack board is all gone... the nails and staples are all gone. I am a hard worker! I don't stop! My hands ache and I kind of lost my grip strength. My feet are especially achy and oddly my toes too as I kept kicking the crowbar to get it under the boards. Virtue! Work! Work! Work! (I am channelling Rook's mom who likes to talk like that, usually thusly: "Panic! Panic! Panic! Work! Work! Aunt Beezlebub would not approve of WASTE. So we must not WASTE this wine! *drinks the dregs of someone else's wine glass*")

I swept and mopped too. And washed all the trim and baseboards.

Picked up Moomin at 4... he was all happy and perky and had made a picture of a giraffe done by painting your hand and arm... like making a turkey picture... butwith the arm being the neck and the fingers, the feet. Then, brown spotty finger marks for the giraffe spots. o man.. All the kids had made giraffes... all nibbling the treetops...

Moomin's "Plan" generated in the car... We will go home. Eat dinner. Read a book. Watch a video. Go to the new house. This was all done in the proper order. As we left the house I had a sudden brainwave that in an empty house with clean wooden floors, one should bring SUPERBALLS. He bounced superballs all over the empty house as I talked to the previous owners and the contractor dude. Home. Feet up for 1/2 hour. Back to the house with Val and her Equipment to discuss, obsess, power-sand, hand-sand, TSP, rinse, and spackle.

*pant pant pant*

I would like some heavy barbiturates or muscle relaxants now, please!

odd dream this morning

2004-02-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

A dream of being part of a giant co-op again. It had all sorts of people from my past and we were all working together on various web sites and also something to do with the M@rs Rover.

I was watching a movie in a somewhat dark room on the history of the transgender movement and then I realized with a jolt that everyone would think that I was MTF just because I was there. In that way that ideas in dreams turn into dream reality, it became true and I felt very oddly aware of my body and its differences from how it used to be. Then it became true the OTHER way and I had become a man.

Then I was embroiled in this long painful drama with my ex girlfriend Anais. She kept not seeing me, eluding me, disappearing, not being where she said she was going to be, not being where expected... A scene where she explained to me, "I'm pulling away from you because I'm so depressed and suicidal." or something. "But I love you whether you are happy or sad" I said. then she looked at me very strangely and I realized I had never told her I loved her (in real life, not until way later, years after our relationship) It was like a magic movie moment where the audience is all squirmily thinking or for out-loud movie watchers, yelling "Just tell her you love her!" and the actor does and then everything is all la-la and soft focus with violins kicking in. In my dream that happened and Anais tearfully beamed at me from under her ratty dreadlocks, her thin, pale, scarred wrists covered in rotting guatemalan friendship bracelets... "That changes EVERYTHING!" and I swept her up in my arms for a romantic kiss.

A very uncharacteristic dream for me!

wood!

2004-02-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

surprise! under the gross carpets there was wood flooring in pretty reasonable condition!

What could go right next? I kept expecting all day to uncover a cache of spanish doubloons. I mean really.

I was overcome by unexpected sudden wild joyousness. Yes, I wanted a house but.... I didn't know that i wanted it THAT much. Wow. Wood floors! No perg0ing! A thousand or two dollars saved! I can have my splendid non-wool nicest possible deep maroon fake oriental carpet. Yeah baby yeah.

I haven't done an honest day's work in a long time. My back is all bruisey, my hands and shoulders and arms sore. Actually. Legs sore, butt sore, feet sore. check. everything aches but in a good exercisey way. I was in FULL sturdy peasant mode where like magic I feel super capable and confident as if I were channelling some red-cheeked fat mustachioed ancestress from sicily as she scythed the grain or picked olives or something. I need some sort of dress with an apron, and a jolly looking headscarf. Then I need something to harvest that isn't little strips of tack board and giant-ass staples and horrible bits of dusty foam padding. Mangia, mangia! I don't know any italian but I happily sang "caña brava" several times with my crappy radio.

I was accosted and blessed by the old guy across the street. He clearly hasn't had such a good day in years. He even pulled a chair out to his front yard to watch me (and later rook joined me) and at times I'd go out to throw another roll of grody carpet in the back of my truck and Joe (the neighbor) woudl be standing on our sidewalk - on our side of the street - leaning on his cane and staring with his mouth open into the windows. I think he is in for a treat as the 6 of us are going to be like a wild circus act for the next few weeks as we renovate and move in.

I wore my super sturdy expensive dust mask all day.

house

2004-02-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

holy fuck! in one hour I will be getting some house keys!

let the carpet-ripping-up commence. I shall hire guys off the street to do it, and I shall lurk in the kitchen, removing cabinet doors with all my might and main and brooding over paint chips.

go moomin!

2004-02-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

Oh oh oh oh oh oh! Moomin just read me up to p. 29 of Gr33n 3ggs and H@m. Oh wow. It was not just memorized because he kept correcting himself - starting a line and then realizing a mistake on his own - "would you like- oh, EAT- them with a fox?" I had to help him with the word "anywhere" and some others but wow. He perservered! And then on the cover he just again read me the words "I can re@d it all by myself" and giggled gleefully.

Oh wow!

working notes

2004-02-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

Today my coffee card was all full of punched-out holes and so I got to have a fancy double mocha with whipped cream for free. And so I am CRANKED on coffee and read a giant wad of jose montoya ( who I am digging, he is really hilarious, now i know why renato kept pimping him to me with this giant smirk) this morning and scribbled my head off.

Anyone that pleases, please comment on my theory-making stabs in the dark, over here.

circles of hell

2004-02-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

Now that I think about it, I probably have a sort of daypass that lets me go from Circle to Circle. I could hang out under the gates with the Indecisive. I'm in the first circle with the poets and the virtuous pagans. I'm for sure hanging out in 2 and 3 with the lustful carnal sinners and the gluttons. I'm both prodigal and avaricious; I'm certainly Wrathful and Sullen, at least I am quite often in spirit, or late at night when only Rook is here to see my bad side. I forget what 5 is. a city. I'll be chatting iwth my homies Medusa and the Furies in 6 or was it still in 5? I guess I'm not all that violent or a murderer but the Lord might get me on a technicality for some forgotten moment of violence, like when I pinched that baby and made it keep crying that one time. The sodomites welcome me into 7 with open... open arms... as do the pimps and seducers of 8. I'm sure the traitors of level 9 love me as well.