I made a dress today. From a pattern. Which is twice as hard for me as laying out a slab of fabric, laying down on it, taking a short nap, waking up and starting to cut it into dress shape and seeing what turns out.
This dress, however, is not my new years dress. My new years dress is a slab of fabric, 3 saftey pins, and 24 inches of green ribbon. Please put your name on my dance card.
(happy new year, lovely birds of dazzling noise)
1: I ran into the love of your life on the plane ride back to seattle. Her layover was short so she was just going to call you from the airport. i didn't recognize her as her at first, I just saw a girl strolling up to the terminal and I thought to myself "Damn, that lady's got style". We BS'ed about theater and clothing design and how much meat we'd consumed in the last few days. MEAT
2: Okay now, I'm really really really sorry I forgot to be home to let you in. I feel terrible. I will let you kick my ass at scrabble and buy you cigarettes from Oregon to make up for it. The mittens and CD's will not be repentant, they will be because I like you.
3: You're cute. You should really come to that party. It's gonna be fun.
4: When I called you the second time this morning, I actually thought I was calling someone else. Redial has been the culprit of many necessary conversations of my past. I will let you hide with me whenever you want. We can go to Europe and I will keep my mouth shut. I will help with the wallpaper.
5: I miss you. It didn't help that you pulled the "you know sweetheart, you can always come live here. I know you hate this town, but we won't ask questions and you can watch all the cartoons you want if you decide you want to come back."
6: You rock for picking me up from the Airport. You rock for doing the non drunk driving after we all smelled like wood smoke. You and You rock for arranging the bonfire. You rock for being my favorite bar.
My father took us out to Chinese Food at a restaurant my family has patronized as long as I can remember. Tonight is the first time that I realize that the words written in that chinese style lettering on the front window are bible verses. Bible verses that have nothing to do with chinese food.
On the way home we pass Paul Bunyan's Hamburgers. They're celebrating 50 years of drive thru service, and just recently tore out the old drive up menu stands where you push the button to order and a girl in short shorts brings your food out to your car. My dad started laughing and said that when his dad first came into town Paul Bunyans had just opened. His father parked the car in a nearby lot, went over to one of the order boxes, bent over and started talking. The girls had to explain that you could just drive your car right up.
We get home and dad pummels me with dirty snowballs from the snow that fell this morning. Gets a mushy one right in my ear before he takes one in the chest.
Mom gets out the cutting mats and starts laying out the pattern pieces we got for a jumper today. Johnny Mathis comes on the radio and she gasps. I think for sure she's cut herself.
sonya: "What's wrong?"
Mom"Johnny Mathis!"
sonya "What's wrong with Johnny Mathis?"
mom "He just makes me melt, thats all."
Mom's top five recording artists
1: Johnny Mathis
2: Barbra Streisand
3: Karen Carpenter
4: Patsy Cline
5: Vince Gill "He sings like an angel, Sonya. An Angel|!"
1: If you kill a grouse with a rock, you still have to have a hunting permit. However, it is not called a killing permit because you have to have one in order to pack a gun in any forest service regulated areas.
2: My father spent several months at a job called "Riding Poison" which consisted of him keeping cattle out of Larkspur patches in the winter*. Apparently, larkspur coagulates cows blood. If you find a cow swaying from side to side in a sandy patch, make a small cut below it's tail. If it bleeds, the cow is saved. If the tail cut doesnt work, make a similar cut along its rib. If the rib cut doesnt work, make a delicate and light cut in the neck. If that doesnt work, you've lost the cow.
3: Someone may or may not have been drunk while attempting to help my father re-tar my sister's roof. Dad was not impressed.
4: (this was a huge weird coincidence) My dads cousin's neighbor (who was at the dinner) knows my first boyfriend. My leather jacket-bmx riding-fourteen years old-dungeons and dragons playing-kissed me on the fire escape-first boyfriend. My first boyfriend is getting married. The part of my heart that will forever remain fourteen is breaking just a bit. (Hey! Ex-boyfriends! Knock all that off!)
*Hey Josh Norton and John Galt and all the rest of you who've been in on this conversation. You know all that stuff that only happens to me? Turns out thats totally genetic. Happens to my dad too, but in a woodsy-er way. (ask me later about the gun and sleeping bag hiding incident and the knife in the tree that tripped the trigger and shot off a bit of bark that hit my dad's cousin in the head, convincing him he'd been shot. )
1.
Oh poppa poppa
mom hates your constant teasing
but you laugh so hard
2.
cream of mushroom soup
is in every freaking thing
I've eaten so far
3.
dad and I purchased
some black explosive powder
and a mesh back hat
She really did: some employees walked in and she tried to hide in a little nook while wearing the Morton Salt Girl coat. (It's very yellow.)
I, Faux Sonya, will be taking her to the airport tomorrow at 6am. I would wear a Santa hat if I had one; since I don't, it's likely I'll be wearing a robe. Ian's flight comes in an hour after Sonya's leaves, so here is a little question:
Should I:
a)be the lone Wretched Dickensian Caroler of Baggage Claim?
or
b) go eat pancakes at a diner?
It's taken me a long time to learn to love suprises. I was a methodical little kid who liked playing in very small groups or with imaginary friends because then everyone already knows the intricate rules to: Bury All The Dishes or Build a Space Station And Fill It With Fish. and all the other totally ingenious games I invented. My mom threw me a suprise birthday party when I was 5 years old.
I came up the stairs.
Everyone yelled 'Suprise!'.
I had my first panic attack.
This -however- is not the point. The Point Is that hotmail is dumb and when I walked into my apartment last night, Chloe was brushing her teeth in my bathroom and her mom was flipping through photo albums in the wingback.
Perhaps you are thinking that I must have just forgotten she was coming (it's been known to happnen) and that maybe she has a key (there was a time when she did) and that I love her, so who cares? (Smallest Bird of Awkward Flight!). But I didn't forget because I didn't know, and she doesnt have a key because she told me she borrowed the secret spare and returned it to the carton of eggs as opposed to it's traditional hiding place, and I do love her but that doesnt change the fact that when He Who Was Walking Me Home and I came through the door it was like a pleasant, if unexpected, redo of my 5th birthday.
Walk down the hall.
Open the door.
"Hi Sonabear! (she takes a moment to realize that I'm not by myself. laughter) Oh shit!"
So we all three girls lay in my bed and talk about books and color schemes and wild revolutions all night long. Like a birthday, but no cake.
I go to one all-girl-snowflake-cutting party every year, and every year it's the dirtiest party I attend.
Dirty how? Dirty like this, you sicko:
1: It's attempted every year, but this year was the big success story: Cutting a snowflake to be cock 'n balls pronged. Congratulations, Hotpants, your new title is "Master of the Cock 'N Balls Cutouts". It was also decided that when boys have snowflake parties, they're probably going to attempt anatomy snowflakes in the following order: 1: boobs 2: Penises 3: YaYa's. ('Cause Ya Ya's are hard, we tried. )
2: Last years big topic of conversation: Decapitation and Dismemberment. This years big topic of conversation: naughty sex scenes in High School Theatre, Repressed memory therapy, Peppered Jelly and something else that's just too stinkin' dirty to mention. You'll have to pry it from my decaying hands.
3: Things missed at this years celebration: The traditional "My underwear have fish on them! My underwear have ninjas! My underwear could kick your underwear's ass!"
Lets all have a good stretch now......mmmmmmyyeaaahhh, arms behind the head and back all arched....that feels good.
Here's a list:
1: Last night, I cleaned all the miscellany of my apartment. If you've ever been to my apartment, you will know that it's almost entirely miscellany because strangers love to give me things and I rarely know what to do with them later and people keep insisting that I write things on paper instead of my highly convenient forearm and kneecap and then I can't remember what the papers are for but I'm too afraid to throw them away.
2: I also made 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies.
3: and wrapped all my presents without purchasing any piece of wrapping material. Half are wrapped in file folders and pages from the New Yorker, some are in tins yoinked from work,and there was a mysterious bag of ribbons sitting in the outer hall last week that I pilfered through.
4: and sold another dress (anybody need a last minute holiday gift for the special and fashionable lady in your life? Aprons? Hairclips? Skirts? Handbags? Write me.. They'll love it, it'll be hand made, and boy do I need the money. )
5: bought a Noise Pop comp from Fallout yesterday and we can now consider my ass thoroughly rocked.
6: I'm anxious about something I don't want to be anxious about, but hopefully that will all be remedied by cutting out a million snowflakes and taping them to the cieling at The Gilded with the prettiest girls in town and Munya at Gand E's snowflake cutting party tonight. I hope there's talk of decapitation this year. That was the fucking best.
So I'm sitting with the girls in a dark bar knitting and talking about the hundred and fifty ways to say "You're making me sad! Stop making me sad!". ( My Lord, did my stomach hurt -due to a two day menu that included a dinner of soybeans, beer, wine, gin gin gin followed by a breakfast/lunch made entirely of spicy canadian sausages with ketchup. This is being remedied by soda with bitters and lime.) When I look out the window, there are 5 clowns pressed up against it, waving and honking noses and riding in shopping carts and falling down in their big shoes and blue dog hats. We wave. They Wave. We wave. They Wave. They come in and start handing out little booklets with the dirtiest christmas carols I've ever seen in my life.
They spend too much time getting ready, so Jaye demands that they Make with the Singing Already and we are invited to join. We sing this:
It's begining to look a lot like syphilis
More and more each day
the rash is startin to grow and it covers from head to toe
I'll never sleep with a whore again
It's begining to look a lot like syphilis
the pain gets worse each day
If you know how to give a shot penicillin would help a lot
to make it all O K (written by Insta Necta and Fuzzy Lumps)
followed by a rousing chorus of "Oh Come on Me Faith Hill"
The waitress picked up our glasses and said 'in the suburbs, people get freaked out by this kind of stuff.' Jaye got them to serenade us as we left.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll regret this when my fingers aren't moving as stumble-fluidly and the swish swash drinking glass of the world turns into the both-my-feet-have-fallen-asleep-and-I-can't bear-to-lift-my-head-from-my-desk-so-how-can-I-help-you-oh-man-I-want-to-die.
Oh honey. Sugar Sugar Loaf of Love. Friday was good sketch in uncomfortable chairs ala Daniel and Dina followed by running into everyone in the world.
One of the guys on stage was a stranger until he came out as the undercover cop in drag with the cop glasses and the moustache. I met him in that costume on the halloween party night where I dressed as the hulk and Alisha was Jackie Onasis and we hit up every party in town old school rocking your house prettiest mutant and ex first lay-day around. Moustaches change everything. D and D went to D's to dye D's hair white and I walked up to the Elysian to go to Emmaz's farewell party. Ran into a common acquaintance who said someone mentioned Buttery Nipples before leaving the brewery, so I immediately assumed they'd gone to Linda's to get schnockered proper.
Damn if I didn't go through every non-gay bar on the Pike/Pine strip and run into everyone except the kids I was looking for. Linda's was Jack and Jessica. Cha Cha was scientists. Capitol Club was ConWorks. That, and every time I came out of a bar the same guy would stumble toward me and say "DAAAAAAMN Girl! You got skin like nothin I ever seeeeeeen! Uh!". Every damn bar! How did he know? I finally lost him when he started serenading a stalled Volvo.
Rolled into Bill's off Broadway last because I just didn't pin Emma as a Bill's kind of girl, but Alisha had thrown in her 2 cents. Bills is a damn fine establishment. Kicked out at last call, some car re-parking and a glorious secret end to the dry streak. Mm Mm.
"Well, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"The most charming girl you know."
Oh Saturday. You are my favorite boyfriend. You are syndicated cartoons in the morning and disney failure cartoons (see: Oliver and Company) all afternoon. You are spent entirely in bed with an ice pack and 3 glasses of EmergenC. You are a much needed phone call from Patrickt to discuss hating everything. You are home made biscuits and gravy. I'm getting really good at baking simple things finally. Christmas Parties.
"Okay. Lets say you went on a date and you both have the other's number."
"I don't have to date anymore. I'm in love."
"I know that, mister face. That's why I said 'lets say'."
"Mister face?"
Sunday, If I didn't know you better I'd think you were trying to kill me.
And she looks at me like I know what's going on."We'll start off with a brief quote by Sonya Walker."
We will? Oh shit. Oh shitty shit shit. Okay, don't panic. Reach in your pocket and.....Presto! Damn good thing you wore the red coat and are pretty good at impromptu speaking.
KPLUstaff holiday party with Jeremy the badass mothershut your mouth. I'm just talking about Jeremy. He's a grand prize winner! I was also a winner! Winning is fun.
Everything after that is a secret.
First off, I went to an event last night where my particularly foul mouth wouldn't have been appreciated at all, and was able to go 4 hours without accidently exclaiming 'motherfucking bitchwhore!' even once. I have got to get this monster under control. I wish I didn't think it was so funny.
Most of my christmas presents are made and wrapped and ready to be shipped. I made my mom a pair of polar fleece slippers from scratch. I was so excited when I finished them that I called mom and said "I made you something all by myself and it's for you so I can't tell you what it is or how I did it but damn mom I'm a genius sometimes!" to which she replied, "Well, I wouldn't go that far little lady."
But I am. They're really comfortable. I've been wearing them all week.
The blind guy who waits for a ride across the street every morning is wearing a novelty santa hat this morning. While he looks kind of adorable in it due to his kindly face and roundish structure, everyone else who's been wearing them looks like an idiot. You win, blind guy.
It's raining hard. Water dripping off the end of your nose hard. Everyone's hair is curly. Businesspeople visiting from out of town gape out the window in horror. I'm thinking of putting together a booklet of tips. Do not step on anything that is not sidewalk, you will fall down. Do not walk under the overhangs if you're carrying an umbrella, it's just silly and rude. Hold hands inside pockets to avoid the both of you catching cold.
When I leave here, I'll miss this.
"I kept wanting to call and then not. I didn't want to be that guy who called and was sad."
"You call when you're that guy who called and was happy all the time. And I called you when I was sad, remember? The day when I wouldnt take off the rainhat?"
"and I sent a taxicab for you."
"and the cabdriver sang along to smooth jazz in his arabic accent. Yeah. See? Nothing wrong with calling and being sad. I was so sad yesterday I had to wear a wig and be called Susan."
"Will you call me Susan?"
"Sure, if you want."
"I don't. I was just wondering."
Let me make a suggestion, best beloveds. Let me suggest that when you can't find your tambourine and you start digging the stuff out of your long closet of death, that when you find the tambourine, you stop digging. If you do not stop digging, you may think to yourself "Self, what do you have stored away in this closet?" and yourself might reply "Well, probably neat stuff. Yeah! I remember now! Neat Stuff!" and your two selves might start digging. Your two selves might find lots of bedding and good fabric, a bead curtain you're ashamed to admit you own, your apartment's original curtains, a roll of pink gingham wallpaper and a mysterious box you swear used to be important...
See, best beloved, this box is the one that will get you in trouble. This box has 5 old mix tapes that you know the order of by heart. This box has 200 letters that end in code words 'Cactus' 'Pickle' 'Snowcastle'. This box has photographs of you with long hair wearing gigantic pants you made yourself sitting in apartments that have no furniture -save an asteroid video table from the old godfathers pizza where scott worked- holding hands with the past you've conveniently tucked in a box the closet. And it's almost eerie, isn't it? Most of the time you can't even remember what he looks like and you're not sure you'd spot him in a crowd, but now you remember 3 years of driving out of state and long distance phone calls that you had to take on extra shifts at your crappy after school job to pay for and how he would turn on everything in the car when the ignition was off so that when you turned the key the AC would blast and the wipers would go like crazy and the radio would blare. Damn, that was funny.
And then, best beloved, after you've made the mistake of playing the tapes and reading the letters, and searching the pictures to try to figure out what the hell you were thinking, you will have to fetch that black curly wig you found in the closet and put it on with that blue bowling shirt from the bottom of the box of fabric. You'll have to color in your eyebrows with black eyeliner and give yourself a beauty mark over your lip and put on a pair of mens polyester slacks and tennis shoes and the fake pearls you keep behind your alarm clock. You'll have to buy a 12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon at Safeway and pretend not to notice as the checkout girl eyes the curls bounding out from beneath your helmet. You'll have to ask your friends to call you Susan for the remainder of the evening as you try to avoid the problem by deciding that you are now a 42 year old Phisical Education Teacher who loves Bruce Springstien and Ladies night at the Bowl-O-Rama.
And that will work just fine.
(Uh oh, its one of those dorky dream tellings.)
Last night I dreamed that Paul and I were trying to go to the airport, but instead ended up at a state park. It was decided that we would have to ride the damn donkeys before we could go to the airport, and we were both pretty pissed about that. The donkey was irregularly short and had a saddle that was a lot like the seat of my scooter and Paul agreed to ride in back because he wanted me to steer. I'd been driving things all day.
At one point, I turned around and realized that Paul had a huge lump on his forehead. "Do you have a concussion?" I asked.
"Yes. Yes, I think I do."
I couldnt remember anything we had done that would have given Paul a concussion, but by that time we were both so annoyed that neither of us really cared. Our donkey ran over an old lady and got stuck in a ditch.
Happy day after your 2nd birthday, Weblog. Lets always be friends.
Love,
Sonya
So many praises to be sung today...In list format.
1:Thank you, Tim for the following sub items.
A: Enabling HTML tags in the comments. That was hot.
B: Answering questions about audio equipment that I would have been way too afraid/unaware I should ask the salespeople.
b1: Suggesting Hawthorne Stereo. They were so nice and patient and fair.
2: Thank you, Hawthorne Stereo. You were so nice and patient and fair and I think you're my new secret boyfriend. Your sales staff is attractive and knowledgeable without the terrible seattle epidemic of being so hip they're unable to communicate at all.
3: Thank you,G for driving me all around and eating greek food next to that table of saucy europeans.
4: Erin I'm wearing the big yellow coat right now. I forgot to show you the big yellow hat.
My christmas gift buying strategy this year is as follows:
Family only, Home-made.
If not home-made, Used.
If not used, Socially Responsible.
So both sisters families are getting a years subscription to National Geographic, grandparents are getting used books and home made aprons. The nephew I drew in the family drawing is getting used CD's, a mix tape and cookies.
Know what I want for Christmas? A ride to and from the Airport. I'll make you dinner and choreograph a short dance number for you.
Okay Kids, Here's my question. Lets say you made out with a casual acquaintance twice a few months ago. Lets say nothing more came of it, you see each other every once in a while, things are fine.
Now, if that casual A happened to call you...at 4:57AM....the day before Thanksgiving....and the conversation went like this:
them: "What's up?"
you: "Ummmmmm, not much...is everything okay?"
them: "Yeah. Fine. What're you doin?"
you: "Ummmmmmm. Right. Sleeping?"
them: "Cool."
you: "Listen, man. I gotta go, okay?"
them: "Sure. talk to you later?"
you: "Yeah....bye."
wouldn't you think that was kind of weird?
How long has it been?
I hate being told to smile. I hate Christmas being obligatory. I hate tinsel and dewdrops and fairy being spelled faerie. I hate socks falling down. I hate car accidents. I hate my house smelling weird for no reason sometimes. I hate beets. I hate nickles. I hate the construction on Terry that will STILL never ever end. (does anyone other than me remember when it was open?) I hate the dream I had where I accidently called you my boyfriend again in a big group of people and everybody went silent. I even suprised myself on that one. I hate that patrickt is in brooklyn so there's nobody around to hate everything with.
what about you?
I am reading magazines in spanish and feigning nonchalance as you inspect your fingernails and try to ignore the hobby horse I just stuck in your ear. The bus driver announces bouyantly over the loudspeaker every few blocks, but his words sink in the river of bodies like a buick with the windows rolled down.
"FIRST Avenluau bit fay ern thebolgle Museum."
You glance over at the dress I've made from table cloths and reach in your pocket "Whaddya call that? Calico?"
I fold up the hem on my knees and take your handful of change. I drop pennies between the wide stitches. When I stand up my dress weighs 4 buttons, 2 yards and fifty cents.
and it looks okay. The back is jagged, yet again, but not noticeably so. The hole of installment 2 is growing back nicely, and Little Girls just bought a new hat, so who cares?
Time for reader input. Last good book you read was....?
Do you want to sell me an aplifier/receiver? Of course you do. Cheap.
Here is a thanksgiving synopsis:
My sister: "And I'll never forgive you if you don't!"
Scrabble. I am on a team with my 5 year old nephew. He pulls a B, O, and Q from our rack and whispers in my ear "Use these Sonya! don't blow it!" He was not impressed when I set down Quintet on a triple word score.
Dogs! Dogs! Dogs! Babies! Pre-Teen Angst!
A football game in the Tri-Cities. My oldest nephew's team won and is going to state in Tacoma next week. My sister is driving the bus there. I rode in a van with cheerleaders. They must have applied a half pound of lip gloss. Boy, were their lips glossy.
Pink Peacoat! Yellow Rainhat!
Spokane:
A car accident, a broken rib, a flight to NY leaving in 9 hours. Dad to the rescue in his van. I drove from Post Falls to Seattle and didnt go to sleep once. Boy Delivered and pupils checked for abnormal dialation. Girl delivered at the airport in the nick of time. Dad delivered me back to my house and drove back to Idaho. We love dad.
Rest Stop in Ellensburg. I am wearing a cap. That's the only way I can explain it. Guy buying a lotto ticket stops me at the door "Layday...you look reeeeaaall Coooool."
Thanks.