The ladies are good for the dirty dirty conversation, the bottles of booze stashed in bras to be consumed through bendy straws at the pretty dang bad show we got comped into. The ladies are good for letting you run down the street by yourself when you werent even running drunk yet, and referreeing your slapfight match with josh in front of the bar. They're good for meeting up downtown and talking on the phone in the studio while I realize that no girl should have THIS many orange cardigans, or pink cardigans...this many cardigans at all, really. (anybody need a cardigan or nine?) They're good for wine out of jam jars on the porch, and the sexiest languages ever whispered to you was?....
the ladies are good.
Man! Back in the day when it was all Metallica Metal Up Your Ass and we were just old enough to figure out that anyone can buy a lighter and almost everything lights on fire I was pretty sure that by now I'd be living in a loft with a slivery hardwood floor like that one Lisa Loeb music video they played all the time while she was going out with brad pitt. I had shoeboxes full of cassette singles. Horrible cassette singles like big bopper, I think that one rasta guys name was. 'I am the big bopper duhduhduhduh duh du, something something." What was I thinking? I was thinking like freshman in high school, that's what. I was thinking drinking dirty water coffee with loads and loads of cream and sugar until 10pm at Perkins because I had to be home by 10:30. I was riding in the back of Jareds toyota, I can't remember what they're called, but the 2 seat toyotas that were supposed to look like sports cars. I couldnt drive yet. so Jared and Ryan would be up front and tara and erica and I would be smush headed against that slanted window on the way to the mall, duck down low on highway 45 because you know they watch that part by the new jiffy lube.
I don't want to wear them but I want all my bellbottoms back. I want to put on that one particularly sturdy pair I wore all the way through high school with that blue drawstring top that was the first thing I ever made from a pattern. I want to sit on the basement floor of somebody's parents house and burn incense until we smell ridiculous and draw things on the backs of my notebooks and talk about who got in a fight with who and whether or not mister billers is going to suspend who for how long for that whole thing with the snowball.
I don't miss it. I wouldn't go through it all again, but I want to go there for 10 minutes to remember that everything I think is cool is probably going to be really really dumb later, so enjoy it right now.
The only upper hand now is that I already know it's dumb. I still like it.
Something kind of amazing happened last night. Lets recap the wallet situation.
2: Sonya spends a day looking for said wallet.
3: Sonya decides to cut her losses and make arrangements for all new ID and bank information. Buys a saucy new wallet. White with a big red star.
4: New ID arrives without a hitch. New Debit card is supposed to be here by the 20th. The 20th comes and goes, no card. Sonya calls the bank. The bank says they'll deactivate the one that was in the mail and send a new one to her branch. It'll be there "Wednesday, at the latest." Sonya calls on Wednesday. Nothing.
5: Sonya hauls her ravaged by horrible menstrual demons ass up the hill to pay for her summer classes with a cheque instead of phoning in her card number. Gets a new student ID. Checks in with an advisor concerning future classes. Cries for no reason at a fire hydrant. Suspects that lack of refined sugar in new eating habits is fucking with hormonal balance.
6: Upon arriving home, Sonya picks up her mail. Contents include:
1 White envelope from Sonyas Bank Worldwide.
1 Radio Shack Flyer
2 Letters from Lesbian Organizations who think Sonya's a lesbian because she gave some money to a lesbian bike ride once.
1 Letter from the phone company she no longer uses, thanking her for being a loyal customer
1 Loose In The Mails envelope.
7: What actually arrived that was important.
The debit card that was supposed to arrive on the 20th. Now deactivated forever.
Sonyas ID and original lost debit card.
Now it should be noted that there were plenty of other cards in the wallet that had my name on them, and the only thing that had my address was my License, obviously.
This brings me once again to the theory that if you do nice things for people when you can and assume that people will do them back, they will.
Dear Whole Entire World,
Thank you for not stealing my identity. Thank you for whoever found the discarded contents of my wallet on the ground and took 30 seconds to drop the important stuff in a mailbox. I don't mind that I didn't really need them anymore, because it made me feel really good.
Thanks,
Sonya
I can't say we hadn't been warned.
As we were shaking out our just-got-out-of-the-city locks and putting up our borrowed-from-Ida's-old-beau tent in the campground where if they're not open, you pay yourself when we heard what can best be described as Hootin' and Hollerin'.
Mister Baseball Hat who is Walking Like an Egyptian with 2 sixers of smirnoff ice watches us watch the pickup trucks roll in and says "It's gonna be a loud one. Softball game's gettin out! Whoooooooo!"
Ida and I finish establishing our place in the tent village on the roadside and get back in the car. We go to Chico's Pizza for dinner.
I'm going to take a moment here to compare and contrast. In the city, while people may be checking you out, and you may be checking out people, it's rarely meant to be obvious. I may look like I'm casting my eyes over the floor, but I'm checking to be sure you're not wearing socks with sandals. He looks like he's looking over his shoulder to see if the waiter is coming with his whiskey neat, but he's making a quick assessment of the twins. It's a given.
In small towns, people honk their horns at you as you walk down the street. Men with gold capped teeth and big white cowboy hats swivel in their chairs and lean on the bar to watch you order your pizza. When the lady behind the beer counter asks the busboy in the ropers to help you get your dollar out of the juke box, an entire table of what you have to assume are his friends shout "OH YEAH! He'd LOVE to help her out!". And when you get quarters for your dollar and start dropping them in, the drunken older gentleman in the giant belt buckle who seems to be having dinner with his daughter says "Play some GOOD music now. None of this new age crap. Then you and I can dance."
The theme is this: Dear Men of Moses Lake,
We can see you.
Best Regards,
Sjet and Ida.
Back to the tent story.
So after we talk about stealing all the 79 cent mustard from out in front of the Wal-o-saurus and have a terribly sweet light beer at The Ripple "We'll light up your night.", we headed back to our lovely campground.
While Ida visited the pay showers and washed her face, I changed into my Pillow Fight and Ghost Story pajamas and set up the flashlights-in-mesh-pockets overhead lighting system. Our next door neighbors were having the following conversation.
Girl 1: (speaking as though she is holding her breath) "Dude....here"
Boy 1: "That's not my lighter"
Girl 2: "Who cares, just hit it."
Boy 1: "But that's not my lighter."
Boy 2: "It's my lighter, you wanna give it here? What's the big deal?"
Girl 1: (still holding her breath) "he's got this thing about his lighter."
and so on.
2 tents and an RV over, the matronly woman is screaming at the top of her lungs: "I know how to take care of my grand babies! I love my grandbabies" and alternately "Get your pussy ass out here and have a drink! You sucha pussy, goin to bed! Get your pussy ass out here." and then back to "I love my grandbabies!"
Okay. This all went on for quite some time, but I managed to fall asleep. The sun rose. There were noises. At first I thought it was the wind, but then I realized that the protective cover had been removed from our tent. I looked at Ida. We both half sat up and listened. Someone was moving around the tent.
Ida: "They just took the cover off the tent."
Sjet: "What are they doing?"
Ida: "Shh."
The continued to move around the tent, slightly pulling at this and that. When i heard them move to where the window was, I unzipped it and sat up.
"Hi. Do you think you could knock that shit off?"
Two baseball capped men stared at me, and didnt say anything. Obviously still drunk and trying to sabotage the wrong tent, they didn't apologize,they just wandered away.
I put my shoes on and walked around the tent to find that all the stakes had been removed and the top had been detatched and thrown on the ground. I re-assembled things and got back inside.
Sjet: "did they say anything?"
Ida: "Yeah. 'this is a good tent.'"
In the morning, the tent next to ours had been collapsed, but the people inside remained asleep. Ida and I went to Dennys.
the end.
Back from Moses Lake, where we were attacked by a softball team and the american dream. Photo documentary to follow soon.
Games Made Up in the Car include:
"Build me a perfect man from:"
How to Play: Player A selects 3 men that both players know. Player B picks one good quality of each and one bad quality from each to make the most perfect man available within the combination. May be altered to Build Me the Perfect Woman. Men and women may be used in combination as well.
"Which one of our friends is most likely:"
this is pretty easy. Player A says something like "Which one of our friends is most likely to go to prison for a federal offense?" and Player B has to pick someone and justify it. Sometimes the justifications can be things like "because that would just be funny."
Didya see the new Noematic Mainpage?
Josh did that all by himself. Who knew the guy could draw? And weld? I also just found out that Ida kind of speaks Spanish. What the fuck, guys?
What can you do that you haven't told me about? Here, I'll start.
I can gut and skin large mammals. Weird, huh?
10:30pm. the rollerskate shakes.
"Got to get got to get got to get go to go to go got to go get to got to get going..."
and I haul out the White Pages.
"G R A, Grain gravel granite...no. G R E. Greenhouse Grenly Greywood Greyhound."
for washington to California, Oregon or Canada, press one. for in state, press two. for all other states, press three."
3
for Idaho, press one. for Monta
1
for Seattle to Coeur D Alene, press one
1
Bus departs at....TWO TWENTY SEVEN....in the morning. Fare is 28 dollars one way and 43 dollars round trip.
the thing about Greyhound that saves me every time is that the busses I want are never leaving RIGHT NOW. Had the bus been departing at 11, I'd be writing a different story right now. It would go like this:
"got the rollerskate shakes last night and got on a greyhound. Sat next to a man with cauliflower ears reading the illiad. Tried to read my own book but couldnt stop thinking to myself 'what is there anywhere else?'. Tried to sleep but the seats hurt my back. Watched the Mountains to Sound greenbelt drop by at 75 miles an hour over the pass and wondered how much longer I'm going to be like this. Will my children wake to find their mother has abandoned them for the weekend because she couldnt get her shoes tied right and tore the dress her grandmother made her when she fell off that ladder? Will the hundred thousand right times I'm waiting for to do a hundred thousand things ever come? What if I don't wait for them and then it turns out I should have?
I found it was hissing these words between my teeth with my jaw clenched shut. Cauliflower Illiad pretended not to notice, but he shifted his weight away from me."
but the bus didn't leave until two. I'd either be too tired by then and that would make me annoyed with myself, or I'd be completely manic and they wouldn't let me on the bus.
so I called Josh.
"Hey, I borrowed a bike from
Molly in the middle of the night earlier in the week and I can't get the seat to budge. What do I do?"
"Didja try twisting it?"
"no."
"Try it."
Bicycles are kind of terrifying because of their lack of headlights. I havent been on a bike since I was 14, and while you never forget, you certainly get rusty. My shins ached from the scooping pedal motion, but it felt good to be moving. To be going fast. To be so close to hitting the pavement and scraping all the skin off one side of my body, but having that not happen.
I rode with no hands for the first time in my life.
Not to make myself look like any more of a dork than I already am, but I fucking love nature programs.
Last night PBS had a nature program about ancient species who were mentioned in the bible and still living in the holy land. I now want a Hyrax to live at my house. Look at these fucking things! They used to be as big as fucking Oxen!
New Debit Card = already on the way.
New Washington State Drivers License = Temporary in hand, permanent on the way.
so once I get a new wallet, student ID and grocery store card, I might be back to almost normal. HOWEVER, it would make my day if I could find another wallet that had little red skull and crossbones on it, because that sucker was cute.
Dear Whole Entire World,
Please make my wallet magically re-appear in my satchel. This kind of thing makes me cry with nerves, and we really prefer to avoid that kind of situation.
with best regards,
sonya
Now is the time on this imploding heart where we all do math and compare answers. Ready?
Ahem:
"Your instructor walks around greenlake in 50 minutes at a rate of 3m.p.h. Assume that this path and the lake are perfect circles. Also assume that the path is 30 feet from the water's edge. Use this information to estimate the area of the lake in ACRES.
A: What is the circumference of the path in Feet?
B: What is the radius of the lake?
C: What is the area of the lake when converted to acres?
Okay now. I think I've got all the measurements in feet, but how the fuck many square feet are in an acre?
Come on kids, did I have that parsley in my teeth the whole time?
You know I don't know what I'm doing. If there's a re-design and when you visit everything's all fucked up, Say Something. I can't ask questions if I don't know something's wrong.
So I think it's PC users only, and Josh is helping me work on it. If you can look in my source code and see the problem:
1: You're smart.
2: I'd be delighted if you told me how to fix it.
"That's why I asked! That's how you learn, by asking! you dumbass." -Carl
"Did you send your grandmother a sympathy card?"
"Mom, I don't..........no...............not yet."
"...she'd really appreciate that, Sonya."
"I called."
"Send it, please."
So Mols and I dropped by the drugstore after I watched her pay someone to spread wax over the lower half of her body. The tabs over the cards read things like "Loss of Father" "Loss of Spouse" "Unexpected Loss" "General Grief". I picked up the one under Unexpected and looked inside. In curlique cursive, it dripped some message that was so cheesy, every cheesy thing I come up with to emulate it is no where near cheesy enough. It made me think of overpowering rotten old lady perfume. I put it back in the rack and unconciously wiped my hands on my socks.
I shifted around on my heels to look at molly. "Finding anything?"
"Nope."
"I just think it's weird to send a 'Sorry your son is dead' card. All of these are so fake and over-done, they make me feel horrible and I'm not even the one mourning. A prayer-y one might be okay."
I found a small card with a pleasant flower and a verse on the front "Blessed are the mourners, for they shall be comforted." Leave it to the Jesus to be non-sappy and direct about death. Not a 'holy cow your life must be over and you'll barely survive' sentiment, but not a 'buck up, young camper' sentiment either. I assumed it would be blank inside. Nope, when I flipped it open, cheese practically exploded over the aisle. Stupid Hallmark.
I know. I'm losing my mind.
Lost my shit again today and screamed at a driver in the crosswalk who missed a pedestrian businessman by less than 6 inches. Waves as he does it, and drives through. He had a baby in a carseat in the back, and his window was open. No obscenities this time, but as always the thought "How can you drive like that when you have a child? Someone is going to kill your baby one day and you won't even remember this."
conversely, I stopped and thanked a woman in a land cruiser yesterday who missed the end of the light, noticed that her bumper was about a foot into the crosswalk, and backed the car up. This is the first time I've seen someone in a Big New Car aknowledge a crosswalk at all. Responsible, alert drivers, I appreciate you. (Even if your car is way way too big to be practical.)
The file will read as follows:
"Five foot Seven, Blonde Hair, Green Eyes. Writing in marker down left arm and both knees. Likely to be a string of numbers or times with corrosponding codes. Loves Parents. Secretly likes babies way more than is letting on. Consistently checking for lightening and rainbows. Hates a new word every day."
When they find my leg at the bottom of the river, they'll inspect the swelling and deterioration mutter under their breaths, "Loved to run fast after drinking." as their cigarette smoke drifts in to the chill of october.
When they find a finger near an empty wasps nest, the technician will pick it up between a pair of thongs and say "huh. Terribly nervous at parties with new people, but would never admit it." before dropping it into a ziploc bag.
When I'm barely 4 days gone, you'll find a strand of my hair on your pillow. As you're throwing it away you'll remember "Talks in her sleep. grinds teeth. Said she wanted a sandwich, but didn't. Not really."
The box of remainders is kept in a file cabinet under the stairs. The actual parts burned or buried, with only these remaining. Poorly healed broken rib. Can't remember names but can remember almost anything set to music. Will insist was not crying.
And, right. Didn't really want the sandwich.
Hey Paul,
Happy Birthday!
Lets always ride in the car together.
It's new superpowers week:
I'm giving up the ability to make crowds of people spontaneously burst into choreographed song and dance in exchange for the ability to enter any room I know of by sliding in on a firepole that just magically appears when I give the signal. The signal will be, obviously, jazz hands.
What's your new superpower?
I'm just adding this down here so that I get the most out of my new tag.
Dear Boys and Girls,
Dear Boys,
If you were doing something really dumb.
Something really dumb that may be preventing you from getting laid.
Something that you may not know is the really dumb thing that is preventing the attractive young ladies who expressed interest in you from sleeping with you because you listened to some GQ bullshit magazine when you were 16...
Would you want the ladies who now do not want to sleep with you to tell you about it?
discuss,
sonya
Dear Girls,
When boys do dumb, dumb things and you've already erased their names from your dance card, is it worth your time to explain what the dumb dumb thing is?
you're pretty,
sonya
Molly calls my cell phone and after I've said hello, immediately asks me if I'm drunk. It's 11am.
"Nooooooo! Of course not!"
and then after we go over to Ida's front yard to wait for her, where I proceed to get out the push mower and start mowing her lawn, alternately staring complacently ahead while biting my lip and laughing hysterically at the whooshing sound the mower is making.
We pick up The Burninator and drive to the secret location. The secret location is not a firing range, as was my guess, but a math store. They had math-themed t-shirts. One of the customers was wearing one about fractals. I bought some stencils and fake tattoos, and all of your birthday presents will be from that store from now on.
I called everyone and told them about the lawnmowing. I'm still feeling pretty good about it.
When the neighbors across the hall moved out, the call list on the call box was changed as per usual. Except they listed the neighbors who moved out twice and omitted me completely. So last night as we debated whether or not it was proper ettiquette to open the tequila before any of the other guests arrived, I took a small placard, put a line through the first message, wrote my name undeneath with my code and taped it to the callbox. The card read:
Happy May Day, You Slutty Drunk! Sonya Walker #2271
This morning I added the words 'not really a slutty drunk' underneath.
hindsight being as it is.
Here's a Tip:
You know when you've already left Bills and are now enjoying a dolla fitty Olympia at the cha cha, and your fabulous friend is reaching over the bar to get some matches and you get the uncontrollable urge to bite her arm?
Don't actually bite her. I know it's hard, but you've gotta reign in that bad habit.
(Sorry about that Alisha! I think you're tops!)
Since this post is going to be the uber-dork of posts, please read it in the voice of a 14 year old girl who's all a flutter because
1: the boy she likes totally likes her
and
2: she's finally old enough to try out for the JV pep squad!
Okay, here we go:
(insert giddy little squeal here.) He totally turned around in class to borrow my pink pencil sharpener, and when he put it back down the back of his fingers brushed my hand! How obvious is that! So I was all like, "I've got to write Dana a note!" so I opened my math book and wrote on the back of an old assignment: "Dana! Did you see that!" and she's all writing back "Oooh, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!" and I'm like "SHUT UP" but then Mr Miller started talking about ratios in mixtures and I had to pay attention because I still don't get it. Blah. So then after class we walked out together and he totally held my hand on the stairs (insert poor drawing of a face in joyus shock here.) and and AND even when Shannon came down to ask about the assignment and I thought he was going to let go and be all cool about it.....NO! And shannon totally has a crush on him. Whatever to that
Thank you for letting me get that out of my system. Lets never speak of this again.
I know we were a little bit high and all, but last night when you grabbed my phone and threatened to call my dad and instead ended up removing the battery pack because you couldn't figure out how to get to the buttons? That, my friend, was some funny shit.
Dear Cowboy,
Back in the eighties when you were all "Deck Shoes!" and I was all "A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut." I really think we had something figured out. I always wrote down your initials when I played MASH and when you asked me who they stood for I'd stutter, "um...can bear..." and tighten up my side pony tail.
Now that you're all "Linux! Elipses!" and I'm all "On Vinyl! Post-Mortem!" I think it should be noted that I remember when you got the teenage mutant ninja turtles painted on your cheek at the school carnival, and won a cake in the cake walk but wouldn't throw it at the windows like the sixth graders, and you've got photo proof of that jersey knit matching print floral pants and shirt set I wore to the roller rink.
We kissed once, in high school. We were in my sister's pickup in the parking lot of Andi's family dining. I couldn't stop laughing. You're a youth minister now.
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut,
Magician
Hey, I'm slow and not so great at the designing. check back in later.
If you're going to write a beg-out note, it's really best to write it on a paper bag surrounding a tequila bottle. If you really really want to do it right, the note should simply say:
"Dudes, I'm totally fucked. Dag, yo. jet."
I once asked my father why it was a sin to kill yourself, since the only person who was hurt was, well, yourself.
"Well...would you be upset if I died, or your sisters died, or mom?"
"yes."
"So, you're saying it would hurt."
"I see your point."
I got one of those family phone calls this week from my sister. "Sonie, call me or trace or mom and dad as soon as you get this message. Everybody's pretty much alright, but call home."
She was at my parents house when I called. I was at a company meeting waiting for the lambcicles to come out of the oven.
"What's up, Val?"
"Um, uncle kurt died."
"What? How? He's younger than dad and half as fat!"
"Um..." I can hear my sister walk away from the sounds of cartoons on my parents television. I can hear my mom helping the youngest child into her high chair and my dad playing with his lop-eared dog. "He committed suicide."
"You're fu..umm. you're kidding me."
"nope. Took a bunch of pills. His girlfriend found him 2 days ago."
"How's grandma? and mom?"
"Here she is." I can hear the sounds of my youngest neice being passed from my moms hip to my sisters and the phone being detangled from my sister's hair and my mom removing her clip on earrings to prop it up against her shoulder.
"momma? Are you okay?"
I can hear my mother take in breath the way she does before she starts to cry, and even though I cant see it, I know she's biting her front lips together and her eyes are cast up and to the right. It's amazing that when I hear my mother cry, I can picture her as though she were sitting in front of me.
"I'm......I'm so hurt, sonya. and I want to kick him right in the butt for this. Stupid."
"I know. It's super stupid."
"I bet our dad is kicking his butt right now. and hugging him. I don't know what I want to do more."
It really did start off as a potted plant. Buying a pot full of mums and ripping them into individual bundles turned out to be cheaper than buying already cut flowers, so Molly and I sat on the floor and twisted blossoms out of the shalllow dirt and tied them up with ribbon.
I'm going to skip a large section of what happened here. Lets just say that it was mostly composed of "GO GO GO GO GO" and then running, and knocking, and "GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR!"
Hurdle #1: Alicia's sitting on the freaking porch of the house her show is in.
"What do I do?"
"Just....be sneaky."
So I took a bundle and crept up the stairs as hunched over as I could get. When I was close enough, I hurled the flowers at Alicia, hit her smack in the grill with them, cleared the steps in a single bound and ran for the car.
"Wait! Come back up here!"
I turned around and threw my hands in the air, "I CAN'T! It's May Day!"
"GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR!"
**Tips for making people answer the door to find the flower you left them at 11:30pm on a Thursday.
1: Knock as hard as you can until you see someone on the stairs, then really run like hell because you've got an entire yard and a stree to cover and they've only got, like, 10 feet.
2: Knock, get in the car, wait a little bit to see if they answer. If they don't answer, lay on the horn full out until they come outside to see what's going on.
3: If they don't answer the buzzer, look in their livingroom window. If they're looking cozy and watching TV, scare the living shit out of them by knocking on the window.**
May Day, it turns out, is better for scariness than any other holiday including halloween. When I jumped out of the car and threw a flower at the woman in the way too short dress standing in front of Ozzies on Queen Anne, she screamed and threw her handbag in the air. When I jumpe out of the car and poked the pointy end of the mum at the guy by the bus stop, he rapidly backed away from me. "It's just a damn flower! Happy May Day!"
I chased a guy in a skirt up his stairs, but he was really trucking, so I missed the whole encounter and had to run back to the car before he came back outside.
The best, however, was pulling up at a stoplight next to a tricked out little honda with a couple of guys in it and the driver side window slightly rolled down.
"GO!"
"I DONT WANNA! I'M SCARED!"
"GOGOGO!"
So I threw open the car door, slammed the flower through the window gap. The Driver screamed, I screamed, he screamed. "Ah shit man! Happy May Day!"
I got back in the car and molly tore through that red light without thinking twice.
Giving people flowers is awesome.
Bonus!
See Molly's take on the whole thing, and see the details I conveniently left out.
Lies! All Lies! (except for all that true part in there.)
I have AIM during the day now. Lets waste time together, the way time should be wasted.
AIM: marcy chance
Hello. It's May Day. I want a May Pole. I want to tie sad little flower bundles up with ribbon, ring your doorbell, run away, and realize I still have the flowers in my hand. I'll run back with the flowers in one hand and the other hand over my eyes shouting, "You Can't See Me! You Can't See Me!"
and I'll probably have a skinned knee by that point. this is why we're friends.