3M

one of the games that my brother directed when we were young was called "spook house" or "haunted house" depending on who the current foreperson was. mike and sean would always go first, constructing a tiny tangled maze barely large enough for our little shoulders to navigate. we would always begin the adventure by crawling under a tv tray draped in the blanket that was on other days reserved as my veil. from there we would follow the path and the brothers would creep around from one strategic location to another to jump out and scare us or throw water on us or sometimes a more offensive material. it was the complete lack of natural light allowed into our basement that provided the most frightening element. that and the very real possibility of encountering a real spider. once this thought entered my mind, there was no escaping it. i would bump into some object that the brothers determined to be made of a creepy fabric or texture and i would jump high enough to nearly knock over the tv trays that were providing the structure for our labyrinth. SPIDER! HUGE SPIDER! my brain would insist. there were two reasons spook houses had any effect on me: i was a child and had an inherent fear of the dark (and a brother who liked to startle me in the dark as frequently as possible) and i was and remain deeply phobic of insects and spiders. once the idea of an encounter in the dark with something that had more legs than i entered my head, i was like a tweeker who has just been informed that the alien FBI had learned about his secret stash of power beads and was coming to collect. i would jump at anything.
the brothers always seemed to allow sara and i an opportunity to set up a spook house after we were done crawling through theirs. i have to reflect on that for a moment, because allowing sara and i to do anything was definitely out of character for the torturers. i now have to ponder their motive...
anyway. one day mike had been particularly mean to me and a few hours later announced that we were going to do spook houses. when it was our turn, sara and i came up with what we thought would surely be the most startling encounter ever experienced by someone passing under a plastic tv tray. the brothers waited upstairs where mike was probably forcing sean to make prank calls to the home of our school principal or something. mike had a lot of power.
sara and i carefully pulled the masking tape from the roll as quietly as we could. we tore off several strips of approximately 15 inches and hung them from the tv tray so the sticky side faced the visitor. i think that we pictured mike crawling into the tape and having it stick to his face and make him feel kind of grossed out. the added bonus would be if it stuck a little bit to his lip or eyebrow. any opportunity to inflict physical pain on the brothers was snatched up immediately, as we almost never found ourselves in such a position. infliction of pain and torture was strictly their calling. mike entered the tv tray first. as he was directed to do and i am sure he would have anyway. he was mike. he did things first. a few seconds into the journey a voice erupts, "SHELLY!!!" suddenly mike's whole body emerges from under the blankets and he is standing in the middle of the rec room, the whole spook house knocked over. sara hits the lights and there is my big brother with a 2-inch wide strip of heavy duty masking tape stuck to him from forehead to the back of his neck. and stuck it was. 3M is not messing around with this stuff. once in place, it really clings. i guess that is why i makes that loud sound of resistence when it is being pulled from the roll. i started laughing, initially interpreting the situation as "better than we had expected" and hoping that it hurt real bad for him to have to pull it off. my laughter was brief as i discovered that i was surely going to die that day. he had tried in the past: "jump off the roof with this plastic bag on your back, you'll fly!" "just see what it tastes like, the Mr. Yuck sticker was just a joke." but today my older larger stronger sibling was going to kill me for real.
after a few hours, when my mom had finally been able to cut the tape out of my brother's hair and return it to something that resembled a normal haricut, i was extremely grateful to learn that i had been grounded for the little prank. injustice. i finally was able to be clever enough to make him suffer just a teeny tiny little bit and he makes a big drama production out of it so i get in trouble. typical. he always struck first and made sure my parents witnessed my retaliation. i was always getting in trouble. but often it was quite a relief. when i was grounded i could not come out of my room. but more significantly, neither could he come in. i would survive another night as the little sister.

justice and affection

when other people begin to tell stories about their own childhood experiences and habits, i begin to realize that there may have been a few things wrong with me. the revelation has been gradual and gentle, but there is something there that has been demanding to be unveiled for years. it is probably a good thing i didn't volunteer for all of those psych studies in college. who knows what could have become of me!
i had hundreds of stuffed animals when i was small. and at any given time dozens , maybe even a hundred or so, would be displayed in my room in neatly ordered arrangements that resembled stadium crowds without the bleachers. really, it was more of a mosh pit, but a very calculated one. everyone had a spot and each tiny creature fit tidily into her or his location with a perfect view of anything that may go on in the room. (this just triggered a memory of a time that i arranged the chorus of fluffy creatures around sara's face. i will have to find that photo and scan it into this post.) i loved each of these faux creatures equally, or at least that is what i would have them believe. i tended to genuinely believe that my little animals could see and hear and understand me and each was capable of the full range of human emotion. this being the case, i had to be very careful to approach the crowd with a spirit and heart of justice. if i picked up the small brown bear dressed as santa claus, for example, then it would become absolutely essential that i pick up each and every one of the other animals with the same level of intimacy. if the bear had gotten a two-handed squeeze, everyone got a two-handed squeeze. if a kiss was offered, it was a kiss for all. i can't even begin to describe the agony of maintaining equality in this ritual. and a ritual it most certainly was. i could be through 3 or 4 dozen animals when i would spot one in my periphery..."did care bunny get a kiss? if so did i pick her up and kiss her or did i cheat her of my full affection and simply lean forward to provide a thoughtless peck. now, who was next...where was i?" by this time i had to start over. now the first round of babies was going to get two kisses for sure and those i was unsure about would require an extra gentle snuggle or an extended holding session just to make sure things were still fair. "now hugging koalas got two kisses and an extra hug by accident!" everyone would now have to receive the gratuitous hug that had been previously withheld from them. by the end, the last group would have to receive 12 short kisses on the cheek, two cheek hugs, eye-contact, a squeeze with one hand then a squeeze with two hands and an extra loving firmness in the act of replacement to the milieu. some days i would subject myself to this affection infection two or three times. the rare occasions when it went smoothly and justly the first time were always reason for relief and celebration. sometimes the celebration would involve doing the whole routine a second time just because the first time was so nice. i was entering into a dangerous game and i knew this. blast the times it did not go well. why didn't i just stop!?!?
in high school, i would recall this (whatever, i was probably still doing it) and i remember consciously making the decision to interpret the behavior as an inherent sense of justice and compassion. i was a person with an empathetic spirit and i just wanted everyone to know my love equally. no one should be left out or their significance minimized. i could lie in bed agonizing over how many butterfly kisses pink pony got and if it was the same number and intensity as dirty dog. i could even get up in the middle of the night and rectify the potential injustice. i could spend the witching hour performing this necessary task and fall asleep in the bathtub the next morning from exhaustion. i could do these things if i wanted to. i was a kind person. that was my temporary interpretation. it lasted through most of college. then i started to tell people about my "adorable quirks" as a youngster. this story coupled with a description of the anxiety that mounted when presented with a bowl of lucky charms or any other marshmallowed or mulit-colored cereal provided a bit of a different picture. rainbow order for the marshmallows and all the gross brown pieces first! this was the rule and it COULD NOT BE BROKEN. if ever a green clover slipped onto the spoon while i was on orange stars, panic was imminent. now i had to work a single green clover into the pattern while limiting the unrest caused to the rest of the colors. "three oranges, one green, two oranges, one green. i got through all of the pink hearts without incident, so i should go back to that pattern with yellow moons. all the yellow moons. now green clover, purple horseshoe, two greens, one purple. three greens, one purple. all of the blues uninterrupted. life was so difficult. and i remember the shadow of failure that loomed over my shoulders throughout the school day on the mornings that i was unable to complete breakfast precisely. the biggest problem was that those damn marshmallows always clung to the bottom of the spoon as if 2% milk was able to morph into some kind of mystery adhesive substance solely when presented with the opportunity to fuck up breakfast for me.
you get the point. justice, empathy, perfectionism, attention to detail. i could call it anything i want, but i am grown now. it is time to be real. that shit is diagnosable. and required exercises such as these comprise about a third of my childhood memories. when i picture my bedroom i see me kissing things. i picture the kitchen and i am neurotically checking the bottom of my spoon for parasitic marshmallows of the wrong complexion. it can be fun to strain my memory for further evidence of such tendencies and to tell about it inspires laughter and intrigue, but if i think about it for too long, i get a little sad. that poor little girl. all of the requirements that only she knew about and compelled herself to obey. all alone, demanding rigid adherence to the rules with only the quietest nagging sense of what kind of awful thing might happen to her if she failed to comply. never even one time stopping and recognizing the meaninglessness of it all. the act itself was its own end, nothing good came of doing it right, but god forsake the day that the ritual was ignored or forgotten.
i was screwed from the beginning. my parents could have done anything to protect me from all things bad. my demons were attacking from within.
thankfully adulthood and intellectual rationality have shed a brilliant light upon these lonely parts of my psyche. i am happy to be fully functional and free of the silent suffering. but it does have to be a little bit funny. forever.

what do you mean "not even a mouse?"

i was a memorizer as a child. i don't know if it was just a natural ability for recollection or the incessant repetition with which i listened to everything i loved in my younger years. it was probably a combination of the two. i had one christmas album in particular that i loved until it warped. i remember lying on my stomach on the green shag carpet of my bedroom, listening intently and studying the texture pattern on the walls, looking for regularities which, if they existed always eluded me. i would run my fingers over the sharp edges of the "entertainment center" that held my turntable and speakers. at the age of 8, i felt like such a grown-up for having this impressive piece of furniture in my own personal space. i spent hours wiping every speck of dust off of it and arranging and re-arranging the speakers so that they were perfectly centered on the platform extensions specifically designed to hold perfectly centered speakers. perfectly centered. a favorite phrase of mine throughout my life. i loved that stereo stand. it was, of course, purchased in a large cardboard box, and fabricated of particle board dressed in a wood-grain appearance that was apparently one giant sticker. but i did not care. it was mine and it was not a milk crate or a plastic table with removable legs. i would lie there for hours caressing my stereo stand and listening to the soft voice of the narrator: "'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse..." at this point, the high-pitched whiny squeaky voice of the man-mouse interrupts. it was the kind of voice that for no clearly discernable reason would be universally recognized as the voice of a cartoon mouse. even on a record. there was something just so believable about that voice actor! "what do you mean, not even a mouse?"
soft lady-voice: "well, that is what is says in the poem, 'not even a mouse'."
"well, i am a mouse."
"i can see that!"
"and i was there on that night before it happened!"
"you were there?"
"mm-hmm."
"didn't you fall asleep and wait for Santa?"
"fall asleep!? how could i!? it was so exciting! everybody scurrying around the house."
"would you like to tell me all about it?"
"oh, i don't know, i'm pretty shy..."
"very well, then, i'll continue... twas the night before..."
"no! wait! i'll tell you"
and on it goes. the little mouse tells a fantastic christmas story to a nice soft-spoken lady who, contrary to common misperception, is NOT afraid of the mouse. i don't know how many times i had listened to it before i had memorized it in it's entirety, but at some point i could have recited the entire two-sided record, had the opportunity ever presented itself. i did not know this was weird until one day i was sitting at the dining room table, likely far off in the world i so often enjoyed during those fortunate moments when my brother was not there to intimidate me or punch me in the ribs. i randomly started to recite my christmas record and i don't think i even knew that i was doing this aloud until i was well into the mouse's story and i felt my mother staring at me, perplexed. "what are you saying? is that that christmas record you listen to all the time?" "yes." "do you know all of it?" rather than answering this question i just continued my recital, consciously this time, in order to demonstrate an answer rather than actually provide an answer. i continued again until i started to worry that now my mother was looking at me like she was a bit afraid. it may have been the mimicking of the mouse voices (both the man mouse and the woman mouse) and the lady voice and her young son's voice, puncuated with my re-enactment of the soft narrator lady voice, all distinctive and, i think, fairly accurate. or it could have been the fact that all of these words just kept pouring out of her daughter's mouth. it even could have been the simple reality that my mother is not a memorizer. whatever it was, my mother stared at me like she was afraid to take another step closer to the rambling freak-show. "how do you do that!?" i had no idea what she meant. i didn't DO it, it just happened to me. my mother sat back in her chair, pensively, still glancing cautiously in my direction as if to be sure that she maintains tabs on the location of the freakish thing so as not to be suddenly surprised by it later. then she said. "yeah, you've always been like that." i didn't know what she meant. one does not remember much of "always" when one is 7 or 8. my mother then explained to me that once when i was about 3 or 4, i had performed one of my memorization recitals for her and she had been shocked into the belief that her tiny daughter was an intellectual phenom. (my words, not hers...and incidentally, this may still be true, it just wasn't evidenced on this particular day.) i had books on record as a toddler. casper the friendly ghost and hansel and gretel were my two favorites. i listened to them over and over and over and over again. place the 33 on my little plastic turntable in a briefcase, open the book, listen for the ding and learn the story. those books were very short, so i could listen hundreds of times a day if i wanted to. and i did. the record would read to me and all i had to do was listen for the elevator ding to know when to turn the page. if i was off by a ding or two for any reason (which, by my nature i would not usually be) all i had to do was look at the picture and i would know if it was the right picture for the current dialogue. one day i took my little book out to the kitchen where my mother was likely preparing lunch for us. a peanut butter and honey sandwich for me and a salad with carrots and french dressing for her. i sat at the table and opened my book. i was nearly half-way through my "reading" before my mother was able to observe that i wasn't quite looking at the page while i spoke, but all the words were correct. as my mother recalled the incident i had no independent recollection of it, but we both agreed that i was probably trying to play a trick on her to make her think that i could read. incidentally, i did eventually begin to read, and at a reasonably young age. i think it probably had something to do with my books on record. and later, my impressive stereo stand. when i was about 23, i went to my parent's house for christmas and i was telling my then girlfriend about childhood christmas memories. i began to recite the record again as i looked through the hall closet for the record itself. at which time, my mother re-told both of the above stories as i had expected her to. she always has and i strongly anticipate she always will. this year when i go to spend christmas in the sand with my parents, i think i will begin a recital of the mouse story just to trigger the reading stories one more time. she's so predictable. and i love to hear stories about myself.

is this really necessary

when bathroom readers first began to show up on the bookshelves of my beloved bookstores and soon after in the water closets of a few acquaintances, i winced and a bit of a shudder ran through me. should people really draw this much attention to the fact that it takes them so long to defecate that a 300-page book becomes a good idea? am i the only one who gets a little bit of throw up in the back of the throat when i gaze upon a book whose sole purpose for existence is to sit on the lap of a person who is excreting objects and odors? granted the throw up is only partly due to the book and largely due to the unholy sight of the spray-painted wicker basket with a white cartoon goose, crafted with a bitter husband's jig saw and wearing a blue ribbon around its pathetic neck, wired to it. there may be some decorative towels or colorful raffia propping the literature up, displaying it as though it is literary royalty in this household. in other homes, the book may be lying casually on the tank of the stool, proudly proclaiming its presence to guests, begging to be picked up and perused. herein lies one of the most disturbing issues regarding the bathroom reader. this may be my (undiagnosed, still) OCD or it may be the fact that i am not a person who reads while i poo, but there is something fundamentally wrong with sharing this material. when you are a guest in someone else's home, there are rules. first rule: don't poop in someone else's house. it's weird. second rule: don't act like their house is your house. third rule: remember that a bathroom that is not your own and you have not cleaned with your own hands, should be assumed to have fecal matter and spit all over it. even and perhaps especially on any and all reading materials. if you are going to read someone else's pooping book, you may as well reach down beside you into the trash receptacle and re-use their damp tissue. share and share alike! now home owners, you are not innocent in this situation either. under no circumstances should visitors have access to anything you hold while you poop. put that nonsense away when you are expecting company! and never ever under any fathomable condition should a bathroom reader be spotted in a room other than your bathroom. if you have a bathroom reader on your coffee table and guests witness this, you may as well display a sign that reads: beware of poop on table. or better yet: feel free to poop on the table. let's just have a big bathroom book burning and be done with this once and for all. i know what some of you are thinking because people have informed me, "but shelly! it's some innerestin' stuff they put in them potty books! you cain't git fax like them innywhere else!" (i don't know anyone who talks like this, but i just couldn't help myself) if it is absolutely necessary to keep these blasted things around, fine. but yesterday i went to barnes & noble and witnessed one of the truest UN-necessities of life. a whole line of books in the shape of toilet lids. who creates the demand for that? and WHO are the AD wizards who CAME up with THIS one? i demand an IQ test. i should re-test myself, in fact, because i think i felt a few million brain cells commit suicide as a result of learning that toilet lid books exist.

too much too fast

i have taken to keeping a small card in my purse to periodically jot down a key word or phrase reflecting something i discover throughout the day which simply must be "blogged" about. the list grows rapidly and my visits to the computer are far too infrequent to keep up. i worry that by the time i get to the keyboard, i will have forgotten what was so important about the topic in the first place. i also "write" a lot in my head. word order and sentence structure seem to come so freely and naturally when i am driving and reflecting... there is a part of me that always feels a little sad about the story or comment that was lost because i couldn't remember exactly what i had wanted to say about it when the thought first occurred. i actually do miss those words. i feel as though i once knew them and loved them but i will never know them again. the truth, i am well aware, is that i obviously imagine myself to be a much better writer than i actually am. i groan and lament the loss of words that i choose to remember fondly, but probably sucked. but the current topic list is at 8 and the initial list from last year (the stories about my father) is at approximately 14, and so i shall blog on. because i want to and it's up to me to decide if i want to try to present myself as more interesting than i really am. you don't know!

love, janis

this morning i woke up late. like 1045 or so. i can do that on my days off and i almost always do. i generally hate myself for missing so much of the day when i do this. i think i am permanently plagued by my mother's voice exclaiming, "half the day is gone, now!" every time i overslept as a child/teen. of course she is right and so i quietly grieve the passing of the first half of my day as i muster up the energy to tackle the coffee pot. i also spend most of my days off in my house alone. i don't know if this is standard or just me and my unique social circle, but when i spend too much time alone i start to feel a little bit crazy. the mental illness is compounded by over-sleeping. i find myself doing strange things when i don't have to go to work. and i generally recognize them as weird, yet i believe that i am truly incapable of not doing them. ~ this morning i channeled janis joplin. i got out of the shower and as i was putting together clothing that could be summated as something universally acknowledged as an "outfit", i suddenly found myself belting out "busted flat in baton rouge...waitin' for a train...when i's feelin' near as faded as my jeans..." i couldn't stop! even when i somehow lost the lyrics of the next verse, i would just continue at the same confident volume and sing the first verse on a loop. (second verse! same as the first!) i was unstoppable! the concert continued as i jumped into my stretch jeans (which janis would TOTALLY wear if she were still alive even though she would be like 60) as i rounded the corner to my bathroom, i must have hit a bump because the disc skipped and i suddenly was blathering on about wanting a mercedes benz. every person in the universe thinks that they do a perfect rendition of janis's live performance of this song. i, solely, am right about that. i was singing so hard i couldn't really breathe. which naturally makes a joplin performance even more believable. she was always trying to catch her breath. ~ a fact that only a select few know about me: i have always fancied myself born for broadway. i know that i am a natural performer, but for that severe anxiety and social phobia... god damned DSM-IV screws up all my plans! anyway. if one could be a master live theatre performer on desire and energy alone... i am your girl. since it seems to require also talent and social self-assuredness, my mind-blowing revues shall continue to be confined to my days off. but for the record..."with what i got in me! i coulda been better than any of 'em!"

david sedaris

david sedaris is the funniest person who has ever existed. i have no hard evidence that this is the case, but by all indications, and based solely on my own life experience, it is most certainly true. i love him. i have read all of his books and i truly wait eagerly for the next to arrive on the shelves of my local B&N. before "dress your family" came out, there was a significant time period during which i had no new sedaris to experience. i first read his "holidays on ice" while in grad school and as soon as i finished it, i walked to the barnes and noble at lincoln center and bought two more of his books. i got another for christmas that year and devoured it as rapidly as the others. soon i found myself desperately pleading with the cosmos for another taste of sedaris! his wit and humor are so brilliant and precise that for a very long time i stopped writing entirely. everything i wrote down read like a 7th grade english class non-fiction exercise to me after i discovered what happens when a talented person writes. eventually, as is evidenced on this page, my need to purge irritations and memories overwhelmed my internal shame and i decided that since i am not a sedaris and have never thought myself to be anything like a real writer, i am once again free to jot.
i recently aquired the entire david sedaris library on cd. now i take the long way to work (with these gas prices!? YES!) just so i can hear a few more segments from the mouth of the master. i don't even feel self-conscious about laughing hysterically at a red light while i am clearly in the car alone. even stranger to outsiders, i am sure, is when i am in the car with just david and my little dog. people look at me and i know they have just assessed that i am a complete lunatic. this is ok with me. first, it is probably close to the truth. second, if they only knew...my spectacular display of eruptious laughter would be forgiven for sure. one time my lovely love "surprised" me with tickets to david at the Fitzgerald Theatre in st. paul. it couldn't have been better timing. it was november 3, 2004. the world was a dark and dismal place and ultimate destruction was imminent. rather than being forced to mope around my house lamenting every word coming from Paula Zahn's lips, i got to get into a car with my lover and two of our very best friends and drive to minneapolis. along the way we averted our eyes from every element of the news media and the car contained the numbing silence of a group of knowing mutual mourners. then we went to ikea. ikea rocks when you want the world to end. it is, in fact, one shining example of the earth's impending doom anyway, so why not roll up your sleeves and participate!? i bought some shit that i still haven't used to this day. don't care. we felt better for a few moments. then we went to a fantastic italian place downtown. the food was so good that i vowed to never again eat anything that was only sustenance, void of enjoyment and delight. for the most part i have maintained this vow. a couple of times i have gone to subway, but i was desperate. it was the best food ever. no hunger strike in my future. regardless of the gravity of the situation. our final act of the evening was to take in a live reading from the master himself. we were all in so much pain from having laughed ourselves insane. david sedaris is my god. is that wrong?

more games children play

some of the games my brother invented required a lot of dressing up. "Liquid Silver" was one of them. yes, liquid silver. we cranked the turntable in sara's basement, dressed in sara's jazz-dance clothes and jumped around like maniacs to our newest and hottest and favoritest 80's hits. my brother hosted of course. i don't even remember what the host of a dance show does, but i am certain my brother was a natural. he was a natural at everything weird. as i write this, i am picturing sara's face as she reads the words"liquid silver". it is one of those memories that always escapes one of us, and when the other says it, uproarious laughter ensues. sometimes sara laughs until she turns red and shiny. and her eyes are little moon slits. sara also used to laugh until no noise came out but tears did. i hope she still does that.

wedding. that was another game invented by my senior sib. he would marry sara and i would marry sean. essentially, the game was not much different from "house" which all children played. but in "wedding", the marriage ceremony takes up most of the game and is generally quite spectacular. especially sara and mike's wedding. that was the part that sucked the most about wedding. i naturally was not going to marry my brother, so sara always got to. since he was the director for every game and in fact, our entire childhood, he got to decide on the life circumstances and socio-economic status of both couples. he and sara, of course, were exremely wealthy. they took all the props from around the house that indicated economic comfort. for example, sara's wedding dress/veil was actually white, like a pretty soft sheet or something. i had a heavy quilt draped over my head that was blue on one side and the other side looked like something that really wanted to be 70's kitchen linoleum. it was the kind of quilt that was held together but little tiny tassels that were apparently latch-hooked into place. sara would walk slowly down the stairs into the "church" (also the site of human burrito) looking so dainty and elegant. of course she did. they were the rich ones. my neck would ache from trying to maintain a relatively natural position while balancing a quilt on my forehead. sara would move into the big house (the larger room of the basement...we were neighbors in this game.) "you guys are poor." my loving brother would say to me and his best friend. neither sean or i ever challenged this successfully. "why can only one couple be rich?" "Why do you always get to be rich?" there was always an explanation that could not be countered. something random like: "one of us has to have more money." or, my personal favorite: " i have more money in real life." we were like 7. but he did have more money. he always did and he always will. one day while we were playing wedding, the song "Sarah" came on the pop radio station. my bro stopped the game dead in its tracks and said: "LET'S SAY THAT I HAD THIS SONG WRITTEN FOR MY WIFE AND THE MOST FAMOUS SINGER SINGS IT BECAUSE I AM REALLY RICH!" no songs were ever about me.

wedding seems like the kind of game that is, by nature, quite benign. how could wedding go wrong? what could that boy possibly do to make "wedding" stressful or painful? here's how: my one faithful blog reader will ber that i had some anxiety as a child. once during wedding, my brother held a bible open while sean and his blue-veiled bride stood before him. he repeated the words that i am sure he had memorized from watching roman and marlena get married over and over again on days of our lives. or whatever it was that happened on that f-ed up show. he said the marriage words that all young television junkies have memorized by age 6. then he said, "i now pronounce you man and wife." later, because he loved me so much, my brother said to me: "you know, since i said all the right words and i was holding the bible, you two are really married now and you will never be able to marry anyone else in your whole life." "that's not true!!!" was my protest. "yes it is, i held the BIBLE! and i don't have the power to divorce you. i'm telling mom you got married!" i worried about this for months if not years. everything that child said was so damn beleivable. and so damn mean! i truly thought that i had married my best friend's brother and now i was stuck FOREVER! i can't even tell you how many nights i lay awake worrying about how to get out of this situation. i learned about 20 years later, at sean's real wedding, that he had suffered the same anxiety for much of his childhood. he thought he was married to me. we were all under my brother's control. how sick is he?!

the games children play

when we were little, sara and i and our older brothers (not good people by any stretch of the imagination) played a lot of strange games together. most of them were invented by my brother and the ultimate goal in all of the games was to inflict massive amounts of pain and suffering on sara and me. somehow, we always agreed to play with them, never realizing that the end result would always be tears. granted, they had a powerful control over us (and most of the kids on the street) so we likely had no choice but to play their evil games. this post was initially going to be about a specific time that i got in big trouble for retaliating during a round of "spook house", but as i ponder it, i should just describe the many different games we had to participate in. maybe one day my bro will read this and feel very very bad about himself. i won't hold my breath.

one game was called "Human Burrito". my job was to lie down on a blanket, which was lovingly spread on the floor of the basement. my brother would then roll me around and around and around in the blanket, wrapping me as tightly as possible with my arms at my sides. the stated goal was that i was supposed to try to get up from this position...moving from a supine wrap to a fully erect standing position. being the athletic, wiry little thing that i was, i could always do it. seems like the game should be over....nope. somehow, every time i would reach the desired achievement, the older larger sibling would manage to "accidentally" knock me over. seems funny, i know. but the game always occured in the "rec room" as my father called it, where there was a fireplace. so the final act of human burrito was me bouncing around with my arms strapped to my sides trying to keep my balance but inevitably falling and bashing my head into the brick fireplace. do not try this at home. sadly, even as i recall the intense headache that followed and the devastated dignity that was my life, as i re-read this post and remember myself bouncing and trying to "win", it makes me laugh out loud. some things are just funny. and some things are funny and bloody.

more later in the seond installment of "games", gotta run

nano nano

i own an ipod nano. this is one of the stranger realities of my life. i have tended toward technological avoidance for my EN-tire life. didn't even own a real game system. (also didn't have to, sara had an atari). i refused to learn what the internet was or how to use it until a college class absolutely required it. that was in 1997. i have no idea how to make a computer do anything except take me to my blog and make written documents into hard copies. i don't even understand what a scientific calculator is or why the hell anyone would desire such information. and i still don't know how napster works. jan got us cell phones and i have learned just enough about it to make it ring and to text message (because i am very bitchy and i like to be as rude as possible as soon as possible. see earlier "news" post.) once i got my phone to work as an alarm. i don't know how stuff happens. like the pictures that i post on by blog...pixie dust and tiny photo-fairies. that's how they get there. but i have the newest of the new technologies in the mp3 world. (i don't know what mp3 means. does it mean something?) i have this hot sleek little device that, when i plug a cord into it and push the middle of it, all of my very favorite songs in the world play through the speakers of my car. i even ordered the arm band so i can listen while i work out at the Y. this could send a very wrong message. someone may spot me with my little magicmusicmaker and leap to the assumption that i am a "techie" of some kind. they will ask me questions and i will have no idea what is going on. they will talk about things that give me a headache. they will show me their own personal techie toys. they will ask me about gigs and other words that i don't understand. perhaps i will wear long sleeves. i hate it when my eyes glaze over while someone is trying to have a conversation with me. i don't like to have no idea what is going on. i am afraid i am misrepresenting myself. maybe i had better not bring the little toy to the gym. but i really love how cute the armbands are. if anyone approaches me and looks at it, i will just pretend to pass out before they start to talk. that should work.

"it's really coffee-ey"

i work part time at a coffee shop. a real one. a good one. i really do this for two primary reasons: one: socialization--groovy people come here and i like to talk to them. two: discount-- my budget would never allow for my daily coffee habit without at least a 50% discount on every beverage. my other job keeps my metabolism up and spacial awareness intact. this job gives me a ticket to the fuel necessary for the former. that's not what this post is about, however... tonight i would like to tell a story of a tall thin college-ey type thing who will from this moment forward define the concept of "that girl". there are a lot of ways to be "that girl", we all know that. here is one way to do it at a coffee house.

here is a dramatic written re-enactment of the copnversation that i hope contains my entire relationship with this darling. (speaking of re-enactments...i have to digress as i always do, to note something that can only be described as fucking dumb. i was watching A&E or TLC or Discovery or some channel that fits a similar genre this afternoon. there was a story about a pediatrician who became committed to learning about a mummified Egyptian woman who had been in a Canadian museum for several decades. she was still in the sarcophagus and this doc was running her through a CT scan. there was a segment of the show that discussed the assumed manner of preparation for mummyhood and it showed a woman's body being buried i sand, annointed with oils and wrapped in cloth strips. presumably the ceremony on display is thousands of years old. in the upper left hand corner of my viewing screen appears the word "re-enactment". Really? this isn't original, one-of-a-kind, rare footage of a 5th century mummification? is this notice really all that necessary? i don't know why this kind of shit pisses me off so much but i think it has something to do with being a part of an audience for which life is "dummed-down" to a point of utter disbelief. is there a genuine concern that this note on the screen is necessary so some fuck-flake out there doesn't sue the channel for emotional distress resulting from a misleading segment depicting what he thought to be the actual dressing of a rEEAl mummy? is it even possible that there is even one person out there who upon witnessing the depiction would not make the immediate leap to "re-enactment". and by the way... that person is not watching the learning channel.

end of digression. now for the conversation with sweetums.
that girl: (entering the coffee shop, she approaches the counter):do you have vanilla bean?
hot witty barista (that's me): we...have...vanilla flavored syrup, if that is what you are looking for.
TG: ummm...yeah i guess i am. i want that.
HWB: do you mean that you want a vanilla latte? (i am already sure i don't like her, and i am thinking of how much fun it would be to just sell her a cup of vanilla (bean) syrup. but i contain my desires.)
TG: Yea-uh. (sound like "du-uh")
HWB: what size would you like?
TG: (appears puzzled at the suggestion...) what? um...what is that one, (pointing)
HWB: (increasingly irritated for no precise reason) that is a 20 ounce cup.
TG: what else is there?
HWB: we have 12,16 or 20 ounce cups. (lifting and displaying each as their identities are revealed.)
TG: what is the difference between those two? (pointing with her index and middle fingers at the 16 ounce cup and the 20 ounce cup.)
HWB: (are you fucking kidding me right now? internal dialogue): 4 ounces. this one is bigger. (indicating the cup that is in fact, larger)
TG: YEAH! i want that one. (mumbles to friend) i need to stay up late tonight (suggests interest in a lot of caffeine)
HWB: (exits stage left, makes 20 oz. vanilla (bean) latte) (returns with said latte)
That Girl's Friend: i want that too. 16 oz.
*Special note: HWB can make this drink very quickly because HWB recognized this duo as the kind who order the same thing but don't bother to tell the barista that until after the first one is made. HWB has steamed extra milk for this occasion.*
TG: (while second drink is being poured, to friend): oh you are NOT going to like this. are you sure you want to get it? it's really coffee-ey.
(sale of second drink is finalized, HWB moves on with her life and serves more desirable customer)
MOMENTS LATER
TG: (back at counter, eyebrows arching highly, looks confused): hi. um. is there any way that i could get a different drink? i don't like this one at all. like at all. like i can't even drink it, it's really coffee-ey.
HWB: (visibly annoyed and enjoying the visiblity): you ordered a 20oz. latte.
TG: (still confused): i know, and i order a LOT of vanilla lattes! like a LOT.
HWB: (thoroughly perplexed and beginning to wonder if TG is buying her flavored "lattes" from a push button machine at MiniMart.) you drink large lattes and you don't like coffee?
TG: yeah but they're usually like (facial contortions indicating further discomfort)...*TG never finishes this sentence*
HWB: (enjoying TG's discomfort more than a good person should) where do you get these lattes?
TG: Starbucks.
HWB: (sprouts horns)oh. yeah. that explains it.
TG: and they are like ...
HWB: sugar-water?
TG: sweet, not so coffee-ey.
HWB:what would you like instead?
TG: ummmm....chai tea? like chai latte? (actually asking)
HWB: sure
TG: (turning back to friend): i have been trying to get out of the habit of ordering only chai tea when i go places that aren't Starbucks. but...
HWB: but everywhere else you go lattes taste like coffee?
TG: yeah!
HWB: they are actually supposed to. here's your chai. (now get the fuck out of here (internal dialogue))

i am certain that only those of us who viscerally despise starbucks and any comparison of starbucks coffee to real coffee can relate to the importance of this exchange. to all others it is stupid and meaningless. i don't care. this blog is defined as my opportunity to write about the shit that pisses me off. so i do.

brain damage

i think i have brain damage. i am almost certain of it. i have made some fairly poor choices in my life and i am sure that a few of them, if they had labels, would have read: Caution, may cause brain damage. the term "brain damage" is so inappropriately overused that most people would probably laugh at my concern. but think about how shitty it is if it's true and i don't even know (for sure). i look back at my life and i definitely used to be much more intelligent than i am now. my concentration and focus was better too. and no one can say that it has anything to do with my last birthday, because i had this concern in my mid-20's. i have actually considered asking my doctor if there is a test that i could have performed on my brain to see if it has experienced any unreported trauma. but who wants to have that conversation? and who wants to take the chance that the doc might think: hmmmm, clearly a nutcase, lock her up. (one of my two deepest and most persistent fears is being locked up against my will and having to try to prove that i shouldn't be. watching the movie "nuts" screwed me up forever. SHE WAS NOT CRAZY!) the other obvious reason to avoid any clear confirmation of my worry is the very real possibility that it is true. then i will spend the rest of my life knowing that i have damaged my very own brain! yuck. and every day i will wonder: "how much smarter was i supposed to be?" on the brighter side, it could provide a solid excuse for EVERYTHING I DO for the rest of my life! "sorry, officer. i didn't mean to break any laws...(innocent shrug and facial contortion) brain damage." i'll have to marinate on that for a while... (name the movie)

4 more TOYS

for many people, a conversation about toys that continues for days or weeks might exhaust itself eventually. not this girl. floods of memories (almost all of them wonderful) rush through my mind with every 80s product name. it takes me back. and sometimes one just wants to go back, am i lying?

what child on south 22nd street didn't have a Big Wheel? i can't remember if there was a hand brake or if it was one of those brilliant "backpedal" braking systems, but anyone who rode a big wheel as a child could never forget that sound. the hard black molded plastic tires scraping against the pavement, sometimes leaving tiny black shards of evidence that a cool kid has been here. buildings should be constructed out of this stuff, it was so hard and durable. withstanding even the older brothers on the block and all of the deviant things they did to our toys. the seams of the tires weren't that impressive though. inevitably after summers of three-wheeling, street-scraping joy, the seams that ran down the center of the otherwise kryptonic tires would split and the unsuspecting child would be left with 2 halves of a tire--this considerably compromised the integrity of the tire. it also dramatically changed the ride. no more spinning out, no more brake-slamming, just wobble wobble wobble down the sidewalk-the orange plastic underbody scraping pathetically every few yards. time to beg mom and dad for a green machine! this beast rocked! it had levers. i don't remember if the levers provided forward motion or brakes or if they were totally futile and we were too young to care. but there were levers! functional, cosmetic, whatever...levers!

now i want to talk about Spirograph. even dumb kids who couldn't write their names came out looking like artists with this little contraption. colors patterns sizes... spirograph had it all! it was a self-esteem boost for untalented children unseen since the introduction of light brite. follow the pattern, do as the instructions tell you and you too can make something beautiful! and our poor parents! MOMMY MOMMY! LOOK WHAT I DREW! bullshit. i put a pen in a hole and a primitive gear-like system did the rest. but every damn time my parents had to look delighted and tell me how pretty it was. how many parents had this shit on their fridge for years? do you think that when parents visited each other's homes and saw spirograph "drawings" on the fridge it sent an immediate message: "this woman's child has no talent." especially if it was one of the "drawings" that didn't even include two colors. (on the box there were pictures of very elaborate spiros with two, even three different colors making a beautiful pattern. i can't remember if i was ever able to do that. let's just say that i could.) one must think that if a child ever drew a real picture or painted something pretty or even interesting, THAT masterpiece would have replaced the spirograph crap on the fridge. other parents know this. but honestly...who ever had the dexterity to make the triangle thing work? not here.


pogo balls. my body reacts to the very name. i loved this thing...mine was a bright green ball with a purple platform. i bounced for days on the pogo ball. but ouch. the whole concept was that you had to hold onto the ball between your feet in order to "take flight" on the upward thrust. this looks easier than it is. there is a muscle system in the inner thigh that anyone who has never owned a pogo ball does not even know about. i didn't know what kind of muscle retraction was required to hold something between one's feet until i first started jumping. i think i might still walk funny as a result of this toy. but what a workout. if i could find one now, i would totally buy it. it found muscles to abuse that even the thighmaster didn't recognize. the other significant memory i have attached to the pogo ball is this: i had some anxiety as a child. i worried about a lot of things. some rational, some not so rational. i am not sure which category this fear falls into. when i would jump around on my ball, i could not get the image out of my head that on one of my landings the bottom half of the ball (under the platform) would explode from the pressure and my legs would shatter from the impact. so jump jump jump, worry worry worry. i never could stop thinking about that. in fact, when i first remembered the pogo ball the other day, my heart rate quickened a bit and the shattering legs image was right there. lingering.

for a child with anxiety, this most random toy memory creates all kinds of body-response. the water wizard. one of the strangest toys ever. i truly thought that my house was the only place these things existed, but my colleagues confirmed for me last week that they were everywhere. a tiny aquarium like apparatus with little colorful balls or rings and a white rubber button. push the button, it creates a water current to propel the rings/balls through the water. the goal was to try to make the little toys land on some specific part of the aquarium. on a stick, in a little hole... whatever. there were two very significant problems witht this thing, as i see it. first of all. they were floating through water. water that is locked inside the plastic aquarium. the player had virtually NO power to affect the outcome of their travels. and more significantly for this girl. they moved soooooooooo slooowwwwwwwwwlllllyyyyyyyy...it was like 10 minutes before you knew if you were successful. and even if you were, which almost never happened..as i said, how successful could you really feel? you couldn't control this damn thing. also. it didn't matter how hard you pushed that fucking button. they were not moving any faster. it was identical to the feeling that i get now when i am forced to work on a computer without high-speed access. ggggggggggrrrrrrrrrr. we had a bunch of these water toys. i am quite sure that i pushed the little white button right through all of them. i hate that toy. but i really want to buy one. is that weird?

more TOYS!

my intense love, as a child, for "doing hair" on inanimate objects must be the most stereotypically girly thing about me. the 1980's provided ample opportunities for us to comb and brush and braid and "rat" long plastic hair strands. i think i even had a curling "iron" that was plastic and did NOT heat up, but somehow still did manage to curl the fake hair. it remains a mystery to me. anyway, i think that every girl i knew, without exception, had an oversized barbie head with a tray that closely resembled an emesis basin where the breasts should have been. the tray held all kinds of fun barrettes and ponytails and tiny brushes. i recall also that the barbie came complete with eyeshadow and blush sets and some very realistic lipstick. what the hell is that about? i was like 5 when i had this thing. but there i was, learning the tricks of "correction" for those facial abnormalities that nature provides us all. could it be possible that we were supposed to believe that even BARBIE HERSELF was not pretty without cosmetic assistance? how did any of us EVER develop feminist ideologies? freakin miracle. i recall too, the My Pretty Pony. i think that's what i am thinking of. there was a pretty pony and a little pony... one was a hard plastic brown horse too large for a barbie doll to sit on and it had a long blond tail and mane for braiding, brushing and general merriment. the other ponies were smaller horses that came in a wide variety of colors with stars and rainbows on their butts and they all smelled a little like fruit cocktail mixed with baby powder. i didn't really like those. they had no movable limbs and it was just not believable to bounce them around and pretend they were talking to each other. they sucked.

continuing with the theme, sara and i could not get enough Fashion Plates. who the hell thinks of this stuff? the procedure is a bit like copper tooling, but for children with much shorter attention spans. you just had to run a black crayon across a piece of paper that was locked into place with textured plates behind it, and VOILA! you had a pretty young lady with a fantastic outfit. we could mix and match shirts, skirts and pants. sometimes add a hat if i recall correctly. i remember absolutely loving this thing, but i have to wonder if it really was as boring as it seems to me when i imagine it now. sara was always more into it than i was, but she always told me i was a good designer. she also used to tell me that i was the best at making up barbie drama plots so i had to come over to her house sometimes even when she and another friend were playing barbies. just for story ideas. sara is a couple of years younger than i am AND sara played barbies FOREVER, so she had me doing this until i was at least 13 or 14. i made her promise to never tell, but i feel comfortable enough in my sexuality to admit it now.

TOYS!

the other day, some co-workers and i got into a lengthy conversation about all of the crazy toys we had when we were little. of course, i decided that i must blog about it. in part because all of my childhood toy memories are very much connected to sara the blogger and i just know that she will remind me of even more toys that i have forgotten about.

first off, raise your hand if you had a SitNSpin. now raise your hand if you have found one of these vomit-makers as an adult and thought it a good idea to try it out for old time's sake. i actually didn't have to own one of these things, i think sara had one. and i know that our neighbor jason had one, because on the days that all of our moms went to weight watchers and it was jason's mom's day to have all the children at her house, sara and i spun to our hearts' content. jason's sitnspin was blue. as a child i was really good at sitnspin. i was little and strong, so i could crank on that friggin thing until i was just a blue blur with a blond mushroom top hairdo. why didn't we ever throw up? i don't know if i can even watch other people do it now without some abdominal discomfort. but i am certain that given the opportunity, i will try it again some day.

now let's talk about the speak'n'spell. (did the word "and" not fit on packaging in the early 80's? so many of our toys are truly a grammatical nightmare.) my friends kristy n' heather (sisters) had ALL of the speak'n's... speak'n'read, speak'n'math, whatever they were called. some unfortunate souls had to go to the public library to enjoy the educational gems with the monotone speech capacity. but i had all the speak'n any child could ever ask for! "now spell: house." now spell: freakin' annoying! no wonder i never remember any parents around us while we played. i would lose my damn mind if that voice droned on throughout my day. the grown-ups who worked at the library were well aware of this issue...they made us use headphones. now spell: brilliant!

i have time for one more memory before i must go to work. how about the "chinese jumprope". am i the only child who actually imagined little girls in China playing with this thing every day? cause i did. but i think that was at the time that sara and randy and robby and i were in the habit of trying to dig to china as well. something i am sure our brothers put us up to. those bastards could convince us of anything. anyway, every morning in randy's driveway (that's where the bus stop was) my friends and i would hop around this over-priced elasticized string. this was another of those toys that one could be really GOOD AT! i was pretty springy then and i was incredibly devoted to success. there are times i remember going to school with a "fat lip" (as we called it then) or bleeding tooth because that was just part of the sacrifice if you wanted to win. that damn rope would be stretched around sara and kristy's flippin thighs and i was supposed to jump into the center of it without touching it. sometimes, i kicked myself in the mouth. whuddyagunnado? again, of course, i would love to get my hands on one of these things again. i just know i could still be good at it! well, now i have to go to work, but i will return asap to discuss little ponies'n'giganto barbie heads'n'spirograph'n'stufflikethat.

incidentals

incidentally,
i got an email from sara today. sara being the only person who reads this and the person who told me to do it in the first place. she tried to give me some helpful hints on making my blog more interesting (i initiated this by telling her that my blog is boring and hers is way better; i don't want anyone thinking that sara just emailed me to say "hey, shel, you have a boring-ass blog!" although if she thought so, the sara i remember is definitely the kind of person who would do this. exhibit A:amanda and the trapper keeper. but i digress.) as i was saying, sara is trying to help me. and this is very nice of her. but she wrote the email in an indecipherable mathematical language that made my eyeballs itch and i think i had an aneurysm when i tried to understand it. my friend robby (a computer geek) tells me that i have a lot of
"I-D-10-T" computer problems. duh. anyway, if miracles abound in the near future, my sidebar extras should be operational right after gay marriage is recognized in Tennessee and the baby jesus comes back to save us from bird flu.

incidentally,
of all the toys and grown-up playthings in all of the world, my very favorite contraption of all time and the thing that i want more than anything else EVER is the LeapFrog talking globe. this thing freakin rocks! it has so many different features and games and challenges. i can sit for hours with the little stylus-type pen and tap tap tap away, trying eversodiligently to beat my last score or current record. "FIND NEPAL" says the magical voice coming from inside the globe. "NOW FIND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC" tap tap tap. i am so fast! it's so damn fun! but sadly i do not own the leapfrog talking globe. i just have to find friends who are children and try to play it at their house. i discovered this thing while babysitting a 9-year-old and his baby sister. at the time i worked at a montessori school and it did not take me long to learn that the three year olds in that school had a better grasp of world geography than most adults i know. for real. ever been to a montessori school? the kids who didn't have the ability to pronounce the names of the countries could still recognize them by their shape and the sound when adults pronounce them. it's amazing. and a little freakish. anyway, i have always thought myself to have some understanding of world geography. at least slightly more than the average u.s. american. (of course, the fact that i know that the middle east is not a continent pretty much sets me ahead of the game.) anyway again, i saw this fantastic contraption at the miller home and i just had to give it a whirl. i had to know just how little i do know of geography. i was hooked immediately. it is way more fun than any other child's toy i have found myself drawn to. i MUST have one. but they cost like 120 dollars. i can't justify buying that for myself. how would i explain that? and i thought of asking for it for christmas, but my parents have never been the types to buy things for me that are not age-appropriate. they would think that my desire for a talking globe designed for grade-schoolers makes me even weirder than they already knew. they really hate discovering further evidence of my strangeness. they just want to buy me things like bed sheets, clothing and gift certificates...like normal people want. but they love me. and i have not exactly made that the easiest thing to do. and i love them. and now that they have abandoned me, they buy me things like plane tickets. good people, my parents. good fun, the leap frog talking globe.

further news

i believe i left off with acquiring Peanut in june... so now i will try to remember what has happened in my life since june.

apparently nothing happened to me in july, because i do not seem to remember july. it must have sucked.

in august i celebrated my 5th anniversary. well, "celebrated" is a bit of an amplification. for the fourth year in a row, we both forgot it was our anniversary until about 3 days later. i think this is a good sign. i have no reason to think that. i just want to. anyway, 5 years with the same person and i strongly anticipate many more years of anniversaries to forget.

also in august, i jumped out of a perfectly good airplane... i got to wear a totally hot jumpsuit (hey, is that where that term comes from?) that was black and shiny with hot pink leopard print on my butt. i know that "hot pink" is a very seventh grade way to describe a color, but that is truly the only accurate description. a more sophisticated "fuschia" or "magenta" would be just too forgiving for this situation. anyway, i was very Van Halen that day. people were jealous, i am sure of it. if anyone who is reading this ever finds themselves in a position to slip into a sexy jumpsuit and jump out of an airplane, i would highly recommend it. it is probably the coolest thing anyone could ever do. it's pretty much my favorite thing. (sorry...napoleon dynamite tangent) i am a little worried now, though, that i have exhausted my fun and excitement capacity. once you have jumped out of the sky and lived to tell about it, what is really left to do? some people say "bungee jump!" those people are stupid. or at the very least, don't understand me. there are specific criteria for fun/adventure that must be met, and if those criteria are not met, it's just risky and dumb. for example: it must be thrilling and slightly dangerous, but if anything goes wrong, death must be guaranteed. i will not be taking any risks which threaten the possibility of severe pain or injury. i don't ever want to be in so much pain that my body loses the ability to recognize pain. this does not strike me as a worthy cause. if i die during some thrilling adventure, i won't even know it, no harm, no foul. hence, the skydiving trip. i jumped out of a plane from 13,000 feet. any failure at all pretty much promises death on impact, if not before. i also enjoy the ripcord rides. again...if i am released from that thing at any point along the way. splat. done. no pain, no worries, no rehabilitation or feeding tubes. on the other hand, there have been bungee malfunctions that have resulted in injury but not death. this does not interest me. so if anyone has any suggestions for new adventures that are either thrilling or fatal, let me know...



^ this is me with my tandem skydive instructor ^

the weekend of the skydive, my parents came to town. when they learned that i was going to jump from a plane for no good reason, their response stunned me. i thought that they would say someting like "oh shelly, don't be stupid!" or "of course, you always have to be doing SOMETHING". but that was not their response at all. they actually said "well, if you are going to do that we are going to be there to watch." so they were. it was so cool. even my brother came. for those who don't know me...it's weird for my brother and i to EVER be in the same place. ESPECIALLY by his choice. but my price for having my family there to watch me plunge through the clouds was that the next day we had to take family photos. never allow yourself to be roped into something like this if you can possibly avoid it. here is one of the approximately 248 photos i had to smile for that day. (this is NOT an exaggeration.)

my first dog

PEANUT!
in other news...
also in june, i got my very first doggy. i don't have a particular fondness for dogs in general. they often smell bad, drool much, and pee in undesirable places. but i found myself at a place in my life where i was just going to have a dog. so i found peanut. he is an 8 pound miniature pinscher who had been in foster care with a rescue organization for over a year. i saw his picture on the internet and it became overwhelmingly clear to me that this was the dog i needed to have in my life. he is so cute it almost makes me cry and he is so funny it does make me cry. he is a little bit blind and the vet describes him as "geriatric" but i love him and i get to be his mommy until forever.

news

apparently i failed my faithful readership (of one) for nearly 10 months, so i will make a sincere attempt to fill sara in on my activities and happenings of late. since last fall, the following things have happened to me...with varying levels of volition.

in february i went to visit my parents at their new home in Mesa AZ. i would share details and rave about the weather as it compares to that in MN, but i am still experiencing some PTSD over the parental abandonment. i can't talk about it. in fact, one of the initial impetuses (god, i want that word to be impeti) for this blog was that it could be my anonymous journal to share stories about my parents and pout about their choice to abandon me in the snow... those stories should all be considered "forthcoming"--as soon as i am able.

in march i learned the value of the text message. how did i ever live without this thing. it is designed especially for deviant and impatient folk (like me) who just have to tell someone RIGHT NOW about the dumb-as thing that someone else just did. i freakin love this thing! how many times before this year did i say to myself, "GOD i wish _______ was here!" or "i can't WAIT to tell _______ that ________ just mispronounced something!" yes i am that petty and pretentious. it's part of my charm. now i don't have to wait. like the time at my coffee shop when some old dude kept asking me about the "kaff-ee macho". i know i am going to hell for how funny that was to me, but that shit needs to be shared NOW. judge me if you will, you try to keep a straight face while the village people are singing in your head and you have to keep "speaking up" for some crusty dude with sandwich on his face. it's not easy. sometimes texting people makes me think of commercials with 14 year-old-girls who still believe the world is a good place and whose skin has not yet betrayed them pushing their little buttons in the food court of the mall telling their friend who is camping with her nuclear family all about the new boy she likes. text messaging keeps me young.

in june i turned 30. i started text messaging a lot more after that.

people are lazy. and by people i mean me. if i have even the slightest interest in reading a post, then i discover that it's pretty long...forget it. i truly believe that the likelihood of readership dramatically increases as the level of commitment to a given piece remains relatively low. it's true. ask around. it's especially easy with christians because of the universal point of reference. ask them if they've read the bible. you will learn that most of them have read job, ruth, esther, james, all the new testament firsts and seconds. they want credit for having read a significant NUMBER of the books, but who has time for things like isaiah? and speaking of numbers...my challenge to you is to find a person who has actually read every word of the book of numbers. members of the clergy and people with OCD don't count. (does anyone else see the hilarity potential of the end of that sentence? people with OCD don't count! oh my god, it's killing me. i need to make a t-shirt!)
i started all of that with the intention of ending this entry so people would read it . now it's long. no one else will ever know how funny it ends.

RRHS

well, i have re-joined the world of the blog and i think that here i have discovered that the class of 1995- RRHS lives on as a single cohesive unit in blogland. i followed some links from sara's blog and i am seeing names of people i haven't thought of or heard from in 12 years! craziness. i don't know where these individuals are geographically, but i remember them. the best part of reading these blogs and comments is that i just cannot imagine most of these girls as grown-folk. i am reading about them getting drunk and having sex and making babies and big weddings and all i can picture are these little-bitty girls with twig-legs and baggy sweatshirts making plans for the big lock-in at the Lutheran church where all the popular kids go. now they say things like "horny" and "Fuck". and somehow i feel like their mother. perhaps because i see me every day... i KNOW i'm old. but they have not aged in my mind. they are just little and precious and sweet, forever.

spam!?!?!

WTF? i know essentially nothing of this blogging world, but here is something that freakin' pisses me off...my blog entries get spammed?! how is this an acceptable idea? i come here to rant and rave about all of the things that piss me off in my life and the world, and some bastard sends me some shit about "work from home" or "new industry, make money!" i would smack these people right in their faces if i could. (and i am a pacifist!) yesterday, on a new blog i started to specifically pout and complain about being so desperately poor it is causing a genuine mental break, i posted my first entry (sad sad sad, it was) and i immediately got spammed by some jack-slap who wanted to suggest that the answer to my financtial freedom lies in working from home as she does. i don't know if anyone is reading this, or if anyone who is reading this is as indebted as i am, but if you are then you know that there is nothing quite so offensive as some random acting as though there is a simple, logical solution to the dilemma that has kept me awake at night for years. god, people piss me off! incidentally, a lot of god-people piss me off as well, but that is a whole different entry, i just had to mention it because the previous sentence suggested it and reminded me of it.
off to look for a utopia...