a fresh hell If there is a Hell, it is the Picture People location at Lakeline Mall. Never, never, ever go there.

There are details but I think they're going into the book.

Never, ever go any place where people are wearing propeller beanies. God, I wanted to wrestle the photographer to the floor and stick her rainbow-colored feather duster up her ass.

stupid Stupid TWAIN driver. Why aren't you on the disk? Why can't ScanGear find you when I install you? How many evenings have I wasted?

B. woke up from his nap with a full-blown cold. Frickin frackin forkin fork fork. We are always sick for the holidays.

Resolution: I *will* beat my wayward scanner into submission in 2004. I don't care if I have to throw it off the 183 flyover on my way to get another one. I will triumph one way or another.

stop me before I sew Somebody get over here and take the mouse out of my hand so I will stop shopping on Rusty Zipper.
Here's what I thought: What if, instead of waiting to chance across garments which fit my exacting standards (i.e., I can't wear polyester now that I'm a sweaty over-30 mom who's resistant to at least one antiperspirant), I could just make them myself?

The palazzo pantsuit is gone. C'est la vie.

But I did obtain another pantsuit pattern that also makes shirtwaist dresses. It's a Simplicity pattern. No zippers are involved. It is vintage, so if I destroy it I'll be destroying a piece of fashion history, but it's not in perfect condition so I don't feel so bad about that.

And then I got a pattern for cafe curtains for my kitchen window.

And then I was feeling wacky so I got an absurdly overpriced iron-on.

And then I figured I needed something I could enjoy immediately and I just happened to find a macrame owl. Do you know how long I've been looking for a macrame owl? A long time. Most people don't seek macrame owls--they tend to avoid them, in fact--but I've wanted one for my home longer than there've been stars up in the heavens, higher than any tree ever grew.

I couldn't sew a life jacket if I were drowning, but I feel, inexplicably, the need to challenge myself with something kinesthetic and practical. Maybe I need to learn something new, build some new neural pathways, keep my brain from atrophying.

Wish me luck, people. I can't even thread my machine.

thrift shop...oh, the thrift shop A morning of thrift at the appropriately named Thrift Land. I am happy to report that I found the Most Hilarious Plaid Baby Pants Ever. We will attire Baldo in them and have portraits made on Wednesday.

I was reluctant for a long time to have a portrait taken because (1) it's dorky to do so and (2) he's usually got a rash, today being no exception. But then I said fuck it and here we go. And I will fix the scanner, Mom, I promise.

I also got a number of high-end sweaters for $2.99 apiece and chanced across a fantastic vintage pantsuit. I think pantsuits are going to have to be my new thing. I used to clomp around in boots and housedresses--seriously, I was Twiggy Ramirez before Twiggy Ramirez was, except not in a dramatic or interesting way--and then I just got old and square and I sat down on the floor a lot and started nursing a baby and housedresses just weren't practical anymore, which strikes me as ironic because they're supposed to be practical garments. Anyhow. The pantsuit is promising because it really is dorky, but it's also slightly fabulous, but not at the expense of its dorkiness, and I'm comfortable with that.

I found a pattern for a palazzo jumpsuit at Rusty Zipper, but I can't sew. How cool would a palazzo jumpsuit be? Very Jacqueline Susann-meets-Undercover Brother. Memo to self: Must learn practical skills, such as sewing.

holy flatulence! J. brought home a no-sugar-added pumpkin pie yesterday. We were banking on the absence of corn syrup. Turns out it's got some kind of hydrogenated wack shit that actually comes with a footnoted warning on the label: "Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect." No wonder I was cuttin' muffins.

Horrors: Moreover I fed the pie to the pregnant Grannymede, who was visiting.

weekend update Yes, I have pictures from Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas to post, but my scanner driver is fakakta since the crash. They're all fantastic, except my mouth is fully of Jelly Dots in all the Halloween pictures and I look like I've just had a shot of novocaine. Otherwise brilliant.

Why is it, when I can't even seem to fix my scanner driver or clean my toilet, I have these bizarre irrepressible urges to do silly things like sew and embroider kitchen curtains? Is it because somewhere inside I'm actually a mom!! Nooooo! I really want to make this banner. I took a Home Ec class in middle school, and embroidery was the only thing I was sorta okay at. That and napkin folding.

I think it's good to be in your thirties because then you're in a safe place to look back at your origins and pick and choose which components of your culture remain with you as an adult. For example: If somebody had told me I'd get off on the idea of embroidered kitchen curtains when I was in college, I would have laughed and thrown Foucault or a heavy boot at them. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with kitchen curtains, and they can have vegetables with arms and legs embroidered on them. Everyone should have at least one caricaturish homonid vegetable somewhere in the home.

Also: When we were in and around The Farm for Christmas, we made a habit of listening to the Corporate Cock-Rock Radio Station, which has devolved since 1987, if you can believe that. It's now a Clear Channel Bitch, and the on-air personalities recently exhorted listeners to throw bottles and shit at bicyclists. Now 1987 was bad, but it wasn't *that* bad. Was it? So we were driving around listening to AC/DC, and I realized we were all kind of head-banging just ever so perceptibly, even Baldo in the car seat. And I reached back into the deepest recesses of my psyche and found the small part of me that really wants to wear cut-offs and hang out at the lake drinking cans of Bud in a whimsical novelty insulated sleeve, and I embraced her. I said, "Hey, it's okay. You don't have to pretend you like Big Black. You can have a hot dog--just get a chicken one because of that horrible BSE that's in the US now." And she smiled at me and we made peace. Then she skipped off to watch Road House and then Creed or some shit came on the radio, and the moment was gone.

the Kenney tree How I love the Kenney tree.

It's got a big-ass nude spot on it. It's weird and misshapen. An awful lot of the ornaments are compact discs upon closer inspection. But that tree kicks so much Yuletide ass I can hardly stand it. Damn.

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with my parents' adopted community, but I'm thrilled that everyone in town decorates a living tree across the road from the general store and post office. It's positively Rockwellian--if Rockwell had dwelt in a podunk Texas farm town whose citified neighbor has 3800 people in it. Downtown Kenney has porch dogs so lazy they don't even "booger bark" when a car pulls up. The most popular person is the Budweiser distributor, with the postmistress running a close second.

Yet at night you can see the violet glow of greater Houston, two hours away, on the horizon. It made us both sad.

Baldo is in little-boy heaven. Being a good feminist I used to not believe in little-boy heaven. Children will play with nongendered Waldorf dolls if that is their standard for playthings; surely it is we, with our flashing lights and toy cars and steamrollers, who teach them that masculinity is loud and rude and busy. So naturally the Cosmos smacked my ass with a child who goes totally apeshit over the Little People Construction Set from Aunt Harriet and Uncle Roger. J. and I tell him that the tower of blocks is an evil "big box" retailer built over the aquifer recharge zone and it must be demolished to make way for a community center built with green, sustainable materials.

Then again my kid also goes apeshit for mops, rubber bands (in part because they're allergenic and forbidden), apples, sticks, brooms, vacuum cleaners, telephones, and just about anything else. Who knows?

Am I the last person to discover that Miffy's book about her magnifying glass has a picture of a dog taking a big curly yellow grumper at the end? We snuggled up in the Poang chair this morning to digest a new board book from Nana and Papa, and I did a spit take with my Postum when Miffy detected a crapping dog on the last page.

Memo to Lloyd Doggett (I'm sure he's reading): You need to get your ass in gear, man. This Republican chump--whatshisname, Dave Something?--has plastered the rural Texas working-class countryside with billboards. I know the Republican thugs jackbooted your district, but that doesn't mean you have to roll over and take it in the butt. Can we at least put on a show?

glee Happy Festivus to you!
Happy Festivus to you!
Happy Festivus, whoever is reading...
Happy Festivus to you!

quick. dirty. We are back in town for two shakes and then we're taking off again.

I couldn't get all my shit together before Saturday morning, especially after Aunt K. turned up for Trashy with a carton of vanilla soy milk and a bottle of Rumple Minze--the ingredients for the infamous Sabu. It didn't make us argue this time, but I'm afraid it made me Very, Very Chatty. I embarrass myself so much.

Happy Festivus tomorrow, everyone! And many happy returns.

Warning: Self-Pimpery Ahead.

Cross-post with marrit.info and elsewhere:

Check out my short piece "Holiday Drinking Game" in the current version of AustinMama.com It's an altered version of "The Playgroup Drinking Game," which is a chapter from Inconsolable.

Also, be sure to behold the essay "Kid Rock" in the Spring 2004 issue of Brain, Child.

fear of a vibrating planet (TMI) Okay, now I'm pissed on behalf of Joanne Webb, and I'm going to ramble on about it now that it's naptime.

What kind of a dipshit government criminalizes sex toys? That's not a rhetorical question: the kind that is fearful of female pleasure. I went to a "shtupperware" party not too too long ago, and it was fantastically brilliant. One of the guests had no idea what the urethral sponge or Bartholin's glands were, and when another attendee explained it to her (in a most frank and informative fashion), I wish I'd taken a picture of her face: You mean I can do that? Yes, you can. Yes, it's your right. Your body belongs to you and you can use it to feel good. It doesn't just exist for the benefit of men, or to have children. It's yours.

When women don't talk to other women about our bodies, we don't learn from each other, and we don't understand ourselves. Once we understand ourselves we do what pleases us most, and that's scary to some people because then we're down that slippery slope into witchcraft and lesbianism and killing our children, right? We'll become dissatisfied with our partners and leave our marriages and move out of Cleburne and get labial piercings and drive hybrid vehicles and eat a bunch of non-GMO lentils. Female pleasure is obscene. Once we learn to ask for it there's no telling what we'll ask for next.

All this is funny to me because the catalog I saw was full of things for guys and straight couples. Any man who wants his marriage to last should learn how to use a vibrator, not sit on his woman so she can't escape.

peepoo You know how toddlers like to run around in circles naked going, "Uhhhuhuhuhuhuhhhuhhh!!"? And even when you're tired from writing and you haven't showered in three days, it's kind of funny?

It's not so funny when they shit everywhere in mid-run. And while you're stumbling around after them with a rag and a spray bottle, then they yell, "Peepoo again! Peepoo again!"

The human body no longer holds any mystery for me. I've seen it all. I am so jaded. Bring on the sideshow freaks.

farting-around five Let's procrastinate, shall we?

1. List your five favorite beverages.
   Postum(tm). Deeee-licious!
   buttery shiraz
   the "Sabu"
   lemonade
   grapefruit juice
2. List your five favorite Web sites.
   Wow, these questions are pushy today! Okay, smarty.
   salon.com
   quizilla.com (I'm a quiz slut)
   stonefishspine.com
   happyrobot.net
   my mama site
3. List your five favorite snack foods.
   choco Leibniz (verboten)
   pecan pie (verboten)
   Pocky (verboten)
   barbecued corn (verboten)
   any other kind of pie, come to think of it
4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.
   Scattergories, except it makes everyone argue
   Mille Bornes (Coup forre!)
   Boggle--and I'll bust yo ass, too
   Tribond
   Mystery Date
5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.
   I can't come up with five because I strictly forbid myself a game addiction. However:
   I solved Mortal Kombat IV the first time I sat down to play it.
   I used to play The Sims before I had a kid and started living it.
   I used to kick all the other kids' Jordached butts at Centipede.
   J. and I used to play Rampage to let off steam.
   We used to have Doom deathmatches in The Old Office, and I'd go plowing through a door like Audie Murphy in a hail of bullets, and everyone else would have to step over my body.

baldo scissorhands Is there anything sadder than a 22-month-old kid stuck in a shirt with oversized gloves sewn onto the sleeves so he can't touch anything made of metal?

If there is, it'd be a person drinking Postum made with distilled water. Can't even put any soy milk in it. Gotta stir it with a plastic spoon.

Even the Hoodoo Doctor laughed at my sewing. But I did sew socks onto a pair of sweatpants, and that looks cool--zero itching, and when the kid is shirtless and in Robeez he looks kind of like Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, except for the obvious phenotypical distinctions.

I had other things to say but shit if I can remember what they are.

When this is over I'm never eating cauliflower again. Never!

obscenity I'm becoming increasingly irritated that some poor lady in Cleburne--a teacher making extra money, of all people--got busted by the cops for selling sex toys to self-motivated buyers in the privacy of her own home. It's not as if she ran up to some church matron with a heart condition and started waving a dong in her face.

I don't know how to go about protesting the state law (for me, that is) that makes sex toys illegal except for educational and novelty purposes, but I really worry about my legislators. Concealed handguns? Not dangerous if licensed. A dildo? Dangerous? What if it's licensed and I go to a class to learn how to use it properly?

If I lived on 37th Street, I'd make a holiday display with sex toys in it. And my ass would be *so* in jail. "Look, Grandma--Mrs. Claus is wearing a cock in a harness!"

Can we please be reasonable adults and not imprison people for sex stuff? Don't we have a war on terror to wage or something? Can we please focus on something that is legitimately worrisome to the public interest?

ho. ho. ho. It's official: B. has started saying "Ho, ho, ho." He says it in this deadpan, staccato fashion, I guess because he picked it up from when we read our storybook of "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" (a.k.a. the Simpsons' Xmas Book). There's that scene of Homer in Santa school, you know.

We saw the lights on 37th Street the other day. Some of the neighbors got all wacky and art-yard on it. One house had a 1950s oven plunked in the middle of the yard with blue lights on it and a fake pie inside. I think that one was my favorite. I love Austin. And of course one house incorporated a shrine to Howard Dean into their design.

It's been a Day of Many Tantrums.

I tried to wash the massive strata of bird shit off the Mamamobile, but my mojo (which usually causes computers to crash and stoplights to malfunction) caused the Laserwash 3000(tm) to crap out in the middle of the undercarriage wash. We sat there for a few minutes, then drove out. What else can you do? I must be ovulating.

Percolator 3000 Strange and freaky: The Other B. was telling me about a "birthday party for Jesus" hosted by a family at the church where she works. It struck me as odd, yes, but perhaps not particularly surprising, until I really thought about it and that shit is wack. Although making children wear funny hats and sing "Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus" seems like a surefire way to turn them into adult atheists. I hope.

Being a Unitarian, I have a Whatever-Blows-Your-Hair-Back attitude about other people's spiritual practices and beliefs, as long as they don't involve oppressing me/others or the eradication of pie, but I'll say it again: That shit is wack.

Wack.

Overnight Baldo has become able to pronounce the names of his friends and associates with clarion accuracy. The Baby Moz used to be Muh-Huh-Huh; no longer.

Wait a minute--it just occurred to me that we kind of celebrate Elvis's birthday. We sing "Happy Birthday, Dear Elvis" don't we? Is that as wack? We don't really believe that Elvis arose from the dead. I mean, the man had colitis. A colon the size of a human leg. He was not getting off that toilet.

Maybe its the absence of religious dogma from my life that engenders the creation of these secular semi-holidays: Festivus, Elvis Day. Maybe we need shared belief and ritual. A social functionalist kind of thing.

Students of sociology take note: I am handing you a paper topic.

Also: If you don't try to pretend it's coffee, Postum is Not That Bad. According to every postapocalyptic action movie we've watched for Trashy Movie Night, there is no coffee in the future, just what we as viewers call "Postapocalyptic Postum." The lack of coffee is not as bad as you might think, though I did have a sip of the Real Thing during the Festivus party and it about knocked me on my ass, it was so freakin good.

kinky boots I got up in a really good this morning and regaled Baldo over Postum and Rice Chex with a rousing rendition of "Kinky Boots," which is one of my favorite holiday ditties. So now he sings it, too. And he made a pile of boots in the living room. He really seems to like boots. I'm almost crazy enough to get him a pair of toddler jackboots or something, if I could find them; then he'd outgrow them on the way home.

Would you believe Postum has maltodextrin in it--derived from corn?

The Festivus party was great fun, if a bit smaller than in previous years. Buddies of various ages and sizes came over to play. There was rejoicing and pie. One feat of strength was performed successfully, and I believe the airing of grievances was confined mainly to the teachers in attendance. I will say that our Aunt K. was missed. I finished the champers while we washed up last night.

Baldo and I completed our Festimas shopping this morning. The Zany Brainy by us was having an out-of-business sale. Ordinarily I like to shop local, but I'm an out-of-business-sale slut. I didn't find much, but Baldo found a toddler he wanted to play with. He's becoming much more social. He was quite taken with L., the groovy daughter of T and M, whom we met yesterday, and he hugged her repeatedly despite her seeming indifference to his overtures of fellowship.

I'm eager for this week to be over and for semester break to begin.

Marrit's Law When you have something to do in the afternoon, the baby will nap endlessly.

When you have no plans the baby will nap for twenty minutes and waking up screaming at you.

We need to go get the big haul of party supplies--as well as yogurt, bread, and other highly important provisions. And Baldo has napped for three hours and counting.

J. talked me into watching the new (new?) Norm MacDonald sitcom last night. Apparently he's an acerbic guy named Norm (who knew?) who lives in a Mayberry town, and he's obsessed with pie. That had better not be some pie-loving schtick. It needs to be real, or I'm going to kick Norm's ass because you don't play around with pie.

It perplexes me that Norm MacDonald and Ted Danson seem to have neverending television careers, while Margaret Cho got dumped by her network.

it's a push and shove world, but there's always a chance I just downloaded "Maniac" for Baldo.

Then I had to have the version of Groundskeeper Willie singing it on "The Simpsons."

Then I'm reminded of an employment classified we saw right after we moved back, at the height of the "Silicon Gulch" insanity. It said, "ARE YOU A SOFTWARE MANIAC?" J. and I thought it would be funny for a prospective programmer to march in with a ghetto blaster, proclaim, "I'm a software maniac!" and start dancing furiously, kind of the way Jennifer Beals does to get into ballet school.

kerplunk After an hour of winding down and taking stuff in and out of bed and going to the potty and futzing around, the nap is going kerplunk. I'm waiting for silence. Please don't go kerpluk.

In fifteen minute intervals I note my tiredness and scratchy throat and become convinced that I am coming down with that Panama flu. Then I check myself for being paranoid. Then I'm convinced again.

Please don't go kerplunk. Please don't go kerplunk. I really want to be able to rest today.

hold you B. asks to be held now. "Hold you," he says. It's not a question.

I know ours has been a rocky path (whose isn't?) but sometimes I look up from the road and realize I am holding the hand of a human being who grows and changes every day. And he's incredibly bizarre. He sings "Upside Down" by Diana Ross. He can play peep-eye for, seriously, twenty minutes while I look for him in the microwave, under the tables, in the refrigerator. It was cute at first, and it's still cute I guess, but we do this several times a day, and I have mastered the ability to be animated and inquisitive while I go off on a mental journey to my Happy Place.

Current Happy Place: thrift shopping with Sandra Bernhard, like in that Dan Zanes song. Inexplicably squished inside a rack of used nursing scrubs is that powder blue faux-fur car coat I saw at Filene's Basement in 1996 and did not obtain even though it was reasonably priced, in my size, and quite well-suited to my unmet winter coat needs. Now I have a closet full of sensational winter coats, as if in atonement, and I don't like in New England anymore. This to me is proof that life is all about timing. Anyhow, the blue coat is gorgeous and perfect and Sandra Bernhard is flipping her shit about how cool it is and making me turn around. And she's a little handsy, if you get my meaning, but not too handsy, because of that whole Madonna thing.

Meanwhile Baldo is hiding behind his hands, but with one eye uncovered so he can watch me look for him.

We went into Sears yesterday, and I took him upstairs to visit the vacuum cleaners. He went absolutely apeshit and has talked about it almost nonstop ever since.

highway to hell Yesterday I gave my fussy child a cocktail strainer to play with while I was cooking. I think it kind of looks like a bear's face.

In my haste to fetch it from our Very Crowded Miscellaneous Cabinet, an avalanche of jars and bottles cascaded to the floor. One bounced into B's hand.

"Take Paxil!" he cried. "Take Paxil!"

God help us all.

Actually, now that the iron treatment is over, we're much better now. The clock struck 10:00 and we both ran into the kitchen and stuffed our faces with goldfish crackers. I poured a giant bowl of wheat chex. Hemoglobin, you're so wonderful. We were both looking ashen and saggy. Now I could use a slab of liver. Run out into the yard and eat some dirt.

At last my shared files are coming together in the giant hard drive. All my Richard Cheese and Nelson Ned mp3s and pictures of naked clowns. I have so much questionable stuff. If anyone can recommend a reputable source for pictures of naked and/or scary clowns, I'd be all ears.

the other eyeball We're worked.

The nap went kerplunk, and there was much tantruming this afternoon. After one particularly incisive biting episode, I sat Baldo down and explained that the next time he bit me we would have to sit down together and talk about it. In other words, our first time-out. I said, "Do you understand me?"

"Yes," he said.

"Look into my eyes," I said.

He walked over and put his face right against mine. Wisenheimer.

The frustration of this afternoon and evening was exacerbated by the song stuck inexplicably in my head: "Abacab" by Genesis. What am I, Job?

hairy eyeball Wow, did I ever get the hairy eyeball today.

I'm not an especially strange-looking person. I don't wear astroturf and clown wigs; I don't drive an art car. I'm not six feet tall. I don't stick out a lot.

But sometimes I do get the hairy eyeball from people in public.

Today I was at HEB with Baldito after our Hoodoo appointment. (We're cutting out iron for the next twenty-four hours, which means I feed everyone plain cooked chicken and cauliflower, and I eat two pieces of pumpkin cheesecake from Quack's during naptime.) I needed to get a head of caulflower, and I wanted to start stockpiling spirits for our Festivus party this weekend.

It was cold this morning so I wore a coat that I got from a swap online. It's faux fur and leather and it looks pretty pimpy. We were running late, so my hair, which I dyed yesterday, was sticking up. And I was pushing a grocery cart full of cauliflower and alcohol with a toddler in it. And the toddler is yelling, 'Beer! Beer!" Evidently this is distasteful to people because they kept looking at us and muttering. Not as bad as that time I took Baldo into a head shop (I had my reasons), and people with crack pipes and anal porn were frowning at me and giving me that Bad Mother vibe.

It makes me appreciate how really freaky people must feel, anyhow.

I also colored my eyebrows yesterday. It made them...visible. Usually they don't show up. They're very small and blond. I scare myself whenever I walk past the mirror, like there's a Japanese Kabuki man looking back at me--except it's just me, with eyebrows.

my name is marrit, and i'm an addict I think I have a problem. K, you're right.

No, it's not the pie.

I am a compulsive file-sharer. I could literally forego food and sleep in order to root out some nutty little musical acorns. I'm not particularly concerned that this is illegal, and the artists I'm ripping off could probably stand to get $.13 or whatever in royalties. It'd be like, "Oh, thank God, another $.13! I can almost buy milk!"

But I'm doing it anyway. I'd really like to go legit but iTunes doesn't work with my Incredibly Shitty OS and I am very skeptical of the resurrected Napster.

For some reason I feel better. I'm still downloading "Choo Choo Cha-Cha" by the Rinky Dinks, but I feel better having confessed. Oh what a worm am I.

better now It's not unusual to have a fit of pique in the morning after a crappy night. It happens every day. No matter what they say.

I used to clip when B. was sleeping but now that he's down to one nap in his crib it just seems so cloak-and-dagger: Sneak in, reach through slats, try not to awaken baby. And though he "never" falls asleep in my lap anymore, he did today--while the clippers were in the living room. Argybargy.

What rankles me as much as anything is the biting. Every tantrum seems to involve biting me. Or head-butting me in the nose. My nose is already bumpy and fakakta. I don't need the full Owen Wilson. We had a mother-biting nose-bashing tantrum in Wheatsville yesterday, amidst all the Gentle People with Flowers in Their Hair.

My child does not go with the flow readily. He's very regimented. If 11:00 comes and he's not at home awaiting lunch, fuggedaboudit.

ineffectual Shit, I can't even cut my kid's nails. I've been bitten eight or nine times. We tried all over the house: in the rocker chair while I sang, in the highchair while I distracted with a tray full of little toys, on the floor while I pinned him like a wrestler.

He screams so much I'm afraid my neighbors are going to call CPS. I'm exhausted and it's not even 9:00. I finally just left him in his highchair and gave myself a time out--and here I am. Anyone, anyone know what to do? He's breaking the skin on his rash, even with his jammies on, and I'm afraid he's going to get a staph infection.

I can't even trust myself to the basic care and feeding of this kid. Fuck trying to teach him colors and numbers and the alphabet. I'm so fucking sick of this. He wakes up all night crying.

Fuck all this fucking shit.

I don't sound like that Aunt K., you will be sad to know that B. has begun imitating your distinctive gravelly alto in our fashion. Yours is officially his first Funny Voice.

There were puppet antics at the kids' concert this morning, so we skipped out on it. I'm not down with puppets.

I should be watching Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion but I'm not yet. I'm sure it'll be wholesome and good for you, like cream of wheat. But I really would like to be watching Angels in America and for once I'm really sad that we don't have cable. Except for the occasional cable event, I don't miss it. Well, okay--I sometimes miss the lifestyle of a cable TV person. I went to get the Tibet tape from Mon Editrix this afternoon, and I coveted her unbabyproofed house and her mostly-read New York Times (lap desk, reading lamp). Everything in the house is hers. Nobody picks anything up and moves it, whereas I find belts in the kitchen and the floor sweeper in the shower.

But I'm also procrastinating because for the life of me I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do exactly to free Tibet. I hope that Cry of the Snow Lion (Leopard? Lynx?) has some practical solutions. I know that sounds awfully flippant and I should consider myself privileged to have such problems (and I do of course) but I'm just not sure where one starts to solve a problem like invasion and occupation by the PRC. Shit, influencing my own government is like kicking a walrus up a sand dune.

stupid shitty microsoft I swear, Gary Busey is more stable than my stupid shitty OS, which blue-screened in the midst of saving a rollicking genius post about how I went book shopping this morning for Festivus and blundered into an appearance by Hillary Clinton.

What a mess.

Anyone who gets a $5 million book advance while editors are being laid off does not get my seal of approval. Don't fuck with the editors, yo.

bleedthrough (TMI) This seems as appropriate a time as any to share.

I read and enjoy a lot of things during Baldo's naptime. Among them is The Meathead Perspective.

I also happen to be menstruating. Right. Now.

What's the connection, you ask? It's like a Dash Hammett novel--the cases are always related.

According to Meathead the new Nine Inch Nails album is tentatively titled Bleedthrough. I think that's a very, very bad idea. And I'm an editor, so I know from bad ideas before they get committed to print. No woman is going to be able to look at or listen to that word without thinking of Her Worst Menstrual Accident Ever. Everybody has one. Am I right?

It could be the most brilliant musical statement ever articulated, but it's just going to make me think of That Time That Summer I Was in College and Temping in the Registrar's Office as a Phone Clerk. People would call in requesting copies of their transcripts, and I would take down their information and pull their files for the registrar, who would dispense an official sealed copy with the little stampy thing on it.

So I pretty much sat in a chair by the phone all day. And I bet you know where this is heading, don't you?

One afternoon I put my phone on hold for lunch and got up from my desk. As I stood up, I felt something weird and papery stuck to the back of me. Often I get a Post-It(tm) or a piece of tape stuck to my ass. Again, it's that editorial thing. So I reached around and felt the back of my skirt. And you guessed it. Lake Menses. Dried. I hadn't even realized I'd started bleeding because my womanly cycles are as erratic as homicidal drifters--the FBI can only profile them and send out all-points bulletins in case they show up.

I pushed my chair back--it was bloody too--and tied my cardigan around my waist and ran out the door--smack into my academic advisor, who wanted to go have lunch with me.

"Nope! Can't!" I yelled, running backwards.

I made it out to my car. I had a copy of the Chronicle on the passenger seat, and I sat on it all the way home. Which wasn't far. Small college. I drove seven or eight blocks to my house. When I arrived I had bled clear through to News of the Weird. I took off all my clothes and threw them in the bathtub. Then what can you do except sit on the toilet and wait it out?

The phone rang, and it was my friend Portland A. telling me about her boyfriend's motorcycle accident. Which had been somewhat serious; she was pretty shaken and I wanted to comfort her but I didn't do a great job because I was mortified by my Worst Menstrual Accident Ever.

I tried to avoid being assigned to the Registrar's office after that, but I did have to go back and finish the rest of the day. It was obvious to everyone what had happened because I was the only premenopausal woman in the office.

Now that I have a child, I really couldn't give two shits. After you've been in labor and had lochia and afterbirth, you don't care. You can drop your pants on the Congress Street Bridge and throw used tampons at cars. And if your childbirth experience is surgical, like mine was, you know everybody looked at your intestines. Sometimes I pester J about mine: "So what were they really like? Were they curly?" Apparently they're gray and kind of look like bratwurst. Which makes sense I guess.

But that title is probably a bad idea.

Edited to add: Each time I requested a copy of my transcript after graduation, I'm sure the office staff were like, "Oh, great. That person who bled all over our chair." Could that be what kept me out of PhD programs?

blueberry I have a lot to say. I'll have to go in stages today.

Freakin frackin pecan trees can bite my ass in Hell. B. went outside to play today and now he is one giant screamy mama-clutching welt. I'm going to chop those suckas down myself.

I am making a pie. Not from scratch and very half-assedly. It is a blueberry pie. It contains no allergens. (At least not any we're allergic to.) I used a frozen crust and frozen blueberries and I think I screwed the pooch because the outer crust part is almost burnt and the middle is brown but wobbly, like a blueberry waterbed. I was slipshod and didn't totally thaw the blueberries because to have waited would have meant staying up later to make the pie and I'm not about that today. I'll use a straw if I have to.

We are both wiped out.

Today's the kind of day I wish I watched TV because I would love to just be a pie-eating bump on the couch for 45 minutes, then go to bed. I just want to be left alone.

And the fucking phone is ringing AGAIN. I am not answering. I don't want to talk right now. Don't ask me any questions, don't tell me anything I'm going to have to remember later. I'm not accepting any new commitments, I'm not making any plans. Sorry.

We are both sad because our friend Mel died last week. He had been very ill. If heaven is a place with noshes and dietetic soda, Mel will be there, telling Texan jokes.

I know I had more to say. In fact I even remember what it was, but it seems inconsequential now.

It's Top Ten Films List time again. I think I will abstain. My editors hate that, but what can I say? I feel like I've seen ten or twelve movies this year--either crappy crap with Cuba Gooding Jr. in it or esoteric movies from Antartica. And if I have to make a list, apply stars, or do anything outside of the expository format, I think I'm going to put my fist through my monitor. Plus I'm not about scrambling to watch the previews of all the Oscar contenders before Christmas.

I'm really in my negative mind right now. I'm going to be sad if my pie is fucked. I think I have too much invested in pies. (No. Really?) But sometimes pie is the only thing to enjoy about a particular day. Everything else is just a big ass bummer.

miscommunication Whew.

I did an overnight feature box for the Chronicle about online shopping, finished my final draft of my proposal and mailed it, and put handouts together for my class this afternoon. Our Hoodoo Doctor is sick, so we canceled that. Then I canceled a playdate I made when I forgot about my class. Then I dressed myself up like a PTA mother, schlepped Baldo across town, and popped into school just in time to discover that my class meeting had been cancelled and my kids had been moved into another activity.

Now I'm going to fall over.

I kind of thought my activity was cool, too.

J and B are home. Must go prepare supper.

fair enough
find your inner PIE @ stvlive.com

Posted by Marrit at 08:39 PM