My father, as usual, answers the phone by screaming "Hello?!?" as if he's never heard a telephone ring before. I spent yesterday afternoon looking up ferries that travel from Bellingham, Wa to Junea, AK. If you don't bring a bike, you can take a boat up there for 234 dollars, each way.
"Hi Dad, so you're really moving to Alaska?"
"Looks like it. I'm going to grow a beard!"
It was really his destiny all along, I guess.
I feel better! and I want a hamburger.
In other news, I saw the best workshop play ever last night performed by my very own theater company (otherwise I never would have gone in my sickly and cry-ey state.) It's rare that a playwright can write a scene in such a way that even when read aloud from the script it gets my heart beating fast. Also, it'a a play about american history. In general. Which should be a *terrible* idea, but ends up being Great!
I'm just so freaking happy to be feeling not like vomiting, you know?
Where's my hamburger!?!
I AM A GIANT CRACKER-EATING LIZARD!!!! ROAR! ROAR A PLENTY!
(no i'm not. I'm a sickey pants who came into work at 2 because the temp had an interview.)
I AM AN EXPLODING RODEO CLOWN OF DEATH AND PEANUTS!
(which, if you'd seen that episode of 3rd rock from the sun featuring the sister from Roseanne, you'd know were legumes.)
I AM FULLY CAPABLE OF WALKING UP MANY FLIGHTS OF STAIRS WITHOUT SITTING DOWN TO CRY LIKE A DEFORMED EWOK!
(this is a lie. I tried to do the laundry today like a good little sick girl, and I had to sit down in the hallway on the smelly floor and bury my head in the clean-but-not-totally-dry towells for brief weeping.)
It goes like this: Sick = Annoyed = Sick & Annoyed = Crying = Annoyed = Crying.
So we're walking back from the Pho place and all he wants to do is Go Back To Sleep and all I want is for him to slow down to my infuriating snails pace so that I can also Go Back To Sleep. He's still pissed at the guy in front of us at the self-checkout who insisted on looking at all sides of every item to be sure the barcode he was about to scan was the right one, and I'm pissed that I can't seem to coax my body into moving any faster than this. I feel like I'm going to throw up.
He catches me with my face all squished up in an accidental pre-bawling look and asks me what's up.
"It's super dumb."
"Spill it."
"When i get sick it makes me want to cry. In a really dumb way. I'm not actually sad, and I'm not even fake hormonally sad, I'm just really really annoyed with my body. and somehow it makes me want to cry like you cried when you were 5 and throwing a tantrum at the injustices of the world. Cry and hug my mom."
"Awwww."
"Don't tease me, hotpants. You'll push me over the edge and I'll have to kill you and eat your body in this soup."
We make it home with little incident, save a discussion about whether or not I really secretly want to be a superhero, followed by a discussion about why I don't feel like talking about whether or not I really secretly want to be a superhero. Close Call Upchuck when the dorks on Fear Factor have to eat earthworms. Close Call Bawling Like an Idiot when I can't stop shaking long enough to eat my fucking soup. Thought I was okay this morning but I've got the shakes again. I'm going home.
Highlights of My Weekend Include:
A guy playing a casiotone-type keyboard, ripping away his shirt and pants, and swinging nunchuks around on stage in a tassled man-thong and a painting of a lions face on his chest.
All Girl Devo Cover Band: Erin looking sullen in gigantimundo sunglasses while playing marimba. Paul's glances up from his crazy drum box coinciding with the music. Richard attacking everyone with his robot dance.
Taking a very short walk with 'my friendster, Evan.' before the premier of
Girls Gone Wild! a film by richard lefebvre, in which there is
1: shoplifting from Ross Dress For Less
2: A Catfight
3: Fake Puking outside Hatties Hat
4: An Avid Theatre Supporter in his bathrobe at Ida's house.
Breakfast with many including Josh where Josh and I fought about whether or not you could support a placenta as an independent life source, and I volunteered a future one of mine. Trixie nixed this idea almost immediately.
I don't know why I let it get to me, but the combination of math, diet coke and lack of magic beans probably has something to do with it. And lets not forget the prescriptions.
The math final. When she said 21 questions? Yeah, that actually means that it looks like this:
#20a
#20b
#20c
#20d
#20.5a
#21a
#21b
#21c
#21d
it was 8 chicken-crap-snatch-scratching pages long.
A girl sits down at a math test and realizes that taking numbery classes during summer session is a terrible idea, so she stands on top of the space heater and launches her shoe at the blackboard. The equation< y=23xsquared * 15x * 15048> models the shoe's course of flight. How many seconds does it take for the girl to realize that the antibiotics she's taking prohibit her from drinking alcohol?
The answer is 2.
2 seconds.
2 terrible seconds.
So I sat at the bar drinking diet coke with the kids talking about why the 2 person dingaling should be designed by lesbians "Because it's too fucking long, and the fasteners irritate the skin, you know?". I didn't, but I do now.
I split up with the kids to say hello to cake, but not until Johnny proclaimed himself the Gayest Man Ever™ by inviting all the ladies over to watch Chicago while eating Chicago style pizza and encouraging us to wear our feather boas and fancy underwear. I'm pretty sure this is the real reason I've gone back to school.
SURVEY: If I'm annoyed, does that mean I care? Is my degree of annoyance in cahoots with my level of investment?
I don't like it when irritation creeps up in my shoulders and makes me into crossed arms, tucked ankles, head turned 95 degrees away from you, chin out. I don't want to be kissed. I don't want to be explained to. I don't want apologies or declarations. What do I want? I want to grab on to that skull and put a magic bean up it's nose. A magic green bean of good ideas. A magic black-eyed pea of badness-bleaching-agent and Vitamin C. Instead, I shrug out of the apartment and walk home with the Thursday night bar crowd. I wish I had a smoking buddy in the building so we could sit on the 4th floor porch and talk about how freaking ridiculous the EMP is going to look in 20 years. How freaking ridiculous it looks now. I fall asleep to and subsequently, wake up to infomercials. I roll out of bed at six and cant go back to sleep. Long shower. Coffee shop. Cranky.
Imagining stampedeing Llamas taking over the freeways. Wondering why Josh got to see a fire but I can't smell it this morning. Thankful for the first grey day we've had in a while.
Have you seen this Blogstakes action? I do what Tim does in an effort to be more like Tim. Click that action, kids, we could be winners!
General Updates:
My math final is today, and I havent found it in my heart to start studying for the damn thing. I'm a little nervous about the whole fractions-with-negative-exponents situation, and I was totally unavailable for the entire second half of chapter eight. But really? There are only 21 questions on the exam. How many of them can be about chapter eight, right?
In other total slacker news,
my evenings have been sopped up in buying or making new cotton dresses and then proceeding to put them on with every accessory imaginable. I do this to some extent to prevent the new items from being placed in the 'Really darn cute but what goes with it?' category of death. If something doesn't have something ready to match it and looking great when I've just woken up at 7:54, it's just not going to get pulled out of the closet for that six-minute dash.
In other words, I've spent the last few days playing dress-up. Standing on the ottoman so I can see my shoes in the mirror that's currently residing on the vanity chair until we can find a stud finder.* (Or a stud finder finder, I guess.)
My father has decided to move to Juno, Alaska to become a very cold electrician. The town is inaccessible by car, and dad is looking into renting a fishermans room for $190 a month until he and mom can decide whether or not she'll be able to stand living up there. Even when you're old, life is still weird.
Josh had a dream that I ran across a street in my underpants and another dream that I was hypnotized. Please friends, if we're in public together, keep an eye out for me.
*jokes about stud finders are -SO- 1986.
We here at t.i.h. are feeling a bit better today, what with the ability to put our arms over our heads restored.
In celebration, here is a short list of things that we find unbearably hot.
1: Boys with nice arm tattoos and very slight bellies.
2: Girls in cotton skirts that sit low on their hips.
3: Riding your bike to the coffee shop in what are obviously your pajamas and still winking at me as I'm walking by in my work clothes and you're locking your bike to the phone pole. You saucy man, you.
4: Going after what you want.
5: Being the messenger who came in with hair all standing up on one side and saying "I'm here to pick up your envelope? I was sleeping in the grass next door, that's why I'm so fast!"
1: I am the bravest girl
2: There is major, major bruising, and it hurts when I laugh or cough.
(today: 4 laughs that could not be supressed, 2 coughs tcnbs)
3: boys who take an hour out of their day to come over and tell you you're pretty even if you have terrible bruises you got in a kind of dumb way are tops.
You just said it. I heard you say it. I think you...
I'm just standing here. Holding these oranges. One in each hand, elbows bent against my sides as though I'm about to juggle.
I'm not about to juggle.
I don't know anything about juggling.
You looked up from the piles of onions directly across from me and said it like you're asking if we need milk, you then return to squeezing bits of dried onion peel off onions you don't intend on buying.
I stand there, an orange in each hand like a new, orange-holding, 2 armed semi-goddess of 2003. Mouth slightly open, staring at you as if you'd just asked me to take a bite out of my own hand. I don't know very much about biting my own hands.
There's this certain asthetic to the produce section. It's as if the fruits and vegetables are a part of a really pleasant funeral, displaying their bodies as-is for the last time. They breathe out in submission when I grasp and squeeze and smell and drop into my basket. I was just enjoying this funeral. I was enjoying the corn being in the husk and you shoving your hands in the pockets of your hoodie with only the bottom being zipped up. I like it when you stand by the bunches of spinach and shake the moisture off. I like to smell the back of your neck in conjunction with that wet fertilized dirt smell that comes when you shake the water off spinach. I like carrying watermelons like they're my melon babies. This is just not the time and place.
You look back up from the onions at me, expectantly. I have since set the oranges in our basket with no plastic bag and I want to put kumquats in my ears like little citrus earplugs.
You arch your eyebrows. I furrow mine.
I shake a cucumber at you like an old man with an umbrella. "Don't you say things like that to me. You go say that to some other girl."
"How about I say it to the apples?"
"Don't you talk to my produce."
You circle around the sweet potatoes with an ear of corn in one hand. You put the other hand flat on my stomach, well away from my bellybutton, and pull me toward you.
"Not going to work, trogdor." I say.
but it gets me every time.
"peaches sliced in a bowl. Mixed color corn dropped in boiling water for just one minute and served without butter or salt. Spinach steamed and served with lentils. Pearl onions minced into goulash. Braeburn apples waiting in your backpack. "
"Damn you."
"organic red plums."
"piss off."
"bananas with a tiny tiny bit of green at the top."
I turn and put my mouth up against the underside of your chin, so that when I say it, it rattles around in your brain. "........so maybe I might love you too. so there."
1: Squirrells are Terrifying: True or False? (One almost jumped in my window! I yelled and it peed and ran away!)
2: Your new boy/girlfriend is utterly perfect for you in every way(really, offers to do the dishes, is nice to your parents but always sides with you, everything) EXCEPT for one, teensy, itty bitty flaw. He or She sings Amazing Grace under her breath while you're trying to get your action on. Learn to live with it, or Dump Mister Almost Perfect?
3: Are the french fries at Six Arms totally gross, or is it just me?
4: Josh Norton: Secretly Pink and Fuzzy, or Secretly Knows Your Darkest Secret and where you keep that piece of paper?
5A: Ladies in Thong Bikinis: So Good, or No Good?
5B: Gentlemen in Sports Cars: So Good or No Good?
6: (so, this is actually a real check in question. be honest. please don't think less of me, I can't help these urges, I can only resist acting on them.) The 5th date went really well and she's invited you up to her apartment to watch a movie in her room. You walk in and it's remarkably.....pink and white. and fluffy. No stuffed animals, but definately poofy pink curtains and pastel paintings of kids with crab claws for hands. Do you run away screaming? Is that just way, way too freak-out barbie?
7: Freddy vs Jason: Best Idea Ever or Worst Idea Ever?
8: Go Go Dancing squatters with baseball bats in your house, or an infestation of pregnant ferrets?
9: It's Everyone Switch Nationalities Day! Who's your new people?
10:(Whoa. I just put down a this or that that was so repulsive I almost made myself sick. Ew. Okay then. Istead, this:)
It's just you and your buddy out in the snow. Somebody is going to get eaten. Sacrifice yourself, or fight for your life?
GO GO GO! NOW NOW NOW!
On Saturday afternoons, my father likes to read the local all-classifieds paper. He'll prop his feet up and relinquish control of the television remote and get nice and comfortable with the nickles worth.
The best part comes in the next few hours, when he will announce, totally at random, "Good Healthy Mule for Sale or Trade. Willing to trade for Massage Table or Collapsible Canoe. 555-5555." or "Free to Good Home: China Hutch and rotweiller puppy. Must take set." or "Swimming Pool Filtration Kit. Some parts missing. 200 dollars."
"We don't have a swimming pool, dad."
He shrugs off comments like this as pessimisim in the face of what may be a great opportunity.
It seems, however, that I'm following directly in daddy's footsteps, as I can not get enough of Craigs list. Please do not let me buy a professional screenprinting machine.
We traded our folding canoe for some carpentry work in the garage in 1985.
Last night I dreamed that Molly, John Galt, and I were sitting in the front room of John's house. (except not johns real house, a house my dream made). The front room had a tall rectangular window, as older houses are prone to have. It was evening and we were all facing the window, talking. 2 men were walking down the sidewalk. We watched as the first man, a lanky white male, reached into a dumpster, pulled out a handful of shredded paper scraps, cursed, and threw them on the ground.
The second man had long greasy blonde hair and wore a dirty baseball cap. He was shortish, under six feet, and wore round, wire rimmed glasses. He was walking about five feet behind the first man. When he got to the large rectangular window, he grabbed on to each side of the frame and put his foot at the base. He was trying to break into the house while we were all sitting there watching him. It took him a few little hops to get in the window. When he came through and landed in the front room with a bounce, I shouted "HEY!" and John seemed to notice him for the first time. John rushed his body at the waist and pushed him out the window kind of by folding him in half, ass first. The man managed to grab on to the bottom of Johns shirt, so that it was all up around his shoulders when the man fell. The man stood back up and jumped back in the window, but John was standing less than a foot away from the sill, so their bodies collided almost immediately. The man pulled out a tiny tiny little pistol, smaller than the average cell phone, and started firing miniature bullets that moved slow enough that you could track them with your eyes. John was holding the man in a kind of one armed bear hug, effective simply due to the fact that John was much bigger than the man. John wrapped his other hand around the gun and crushed it like a wad of paper. The man fell back out the window.
You there! In the shoes! Lets have a wedding.
I'll wear a patchwork wedding dress with pink ballet flats and you can wear your karate uniform. Our friends will check each other out across the aisle. Later, after a few drinks, the boldest ones will disappear into broom closets, and the shyest ones will stand next to each other at the punchbowl. You and I will take advantage of our newly combined and now wildly extensive record collection on the dance floor and in the wading pool. Someone will put on 'I Want You To Want Me' and we'll both swoon a little bit before stepping up our ass-shaking to level ten, particularly during the "didn'I didn'I didn'I see you crying? Oh Oh Didn'I Didn'I Didn'I See You CRYIN?" part. I love that part.
Afterwards, after we run out to the car and everyone throws their motarboards in the air, we'll try to remember how we met. Was it at the laundromat? Was it on the internet? Was it at the tattoo parlor I scraped my knee outside of, and you had all that gauze readily available?
Wait, I remember. It hasn't happened at all. You're still out there trying to get your bearings in woodcarving, and I'm still over here complaining about solving quadratic equations by completing the square. You havent purchased the shoes that tell me you're aware of your surroundings and I still havent been to Mardi Gras. We havent yet hated each other for six months after the first time we broke up over that total misunderstanding, then decided that we can get back together since it was all the fault of that stupid CB radio anyway yet. We haven't realized it was you all along. We haven't fallen in love at first sight. We haven't been set up by a well meaning friend.
but I'm not worried about it. I've got a lot of prepatory ass-shaking, disappearing into the broom closet, and shifting nervously about the punchbowl to do yet.
So, Josh and I were talking today on our way back from lunch at Bills about whether the females we know are females you call Woman or females you call Girl. Like "This woman I know" or "This girl I know".
S: "What about ----?"
J Norton: "Girl."
S: "You think so? I think she thinks Woman. What about ----?"
J No: "Woman with girlish tendencies."
S: "What about me?"
J: "When speaking about you in public, I tend to refer to you as a Chic...or a Dish."
'Dish' is possibly one of the best compliments I've ever received.
Dear Whole Entire Freaking Internet,
So, How's the new place?
Love,
Sonya
I feel like I'm evaporating.
I feel like, a few months ago, I would have been able to explain in an interesting way.
Explain about sitting in empty apartment number one, after the bathroom and kitchen were clean but before the final vaccuuming, about how I felt like I was a ghost because this house is my house, but is not my house, or this body is my body but not my body. I would switch back and forth between 'My house, not my body' and 'Not my house, my body'. I kept going to the kitchen and opening the freezer to look for the certainty I keep there and finding only the ice cube trays, empty. (My body, not my body.)
I'd explain about how the lights went out in every apartment on Summit except ours, where the electricity was very faint but still on. How, when I was walking to Cakes house, someone threw a rock at me outside the Curban hotel but there were no streetlights, so I couldn't really tell.
I'd explain my father and uncle hammering little slivers of wood into my bedroom doors to repair where the screws had stripped them. How my father is getting older, kinder. How he likes my yellow dress, and handed me the napkin to match it at dinner. How he mentioned marijuana for the first time in my life completely out of the blue the other day. How he used the internet for the first time, and he keeps sending me one word emails because he types with 2 fingers, and it takes him up to 30 seconds to find each letter. How we may or may not be dangerously psychically connected.
If I weren't evaporating, I'd find a way to tell you that while I'm not in love, I'm still amused. I'm very busy, but I can barely stand to be social. I'm not unhappy, but I can't stop crying. I'm not mad, but I can't keep my shoes on.
But I'm slowly dissolving into the air, and while the spiders are imaginary, their bites are very real. My body is slightly pockmarked with poision. One on the back of each shoulder, one at the base of my spine. I can't stop touching them. Trying to push out the venom, but driving it closer to my heart instead.
Happy Birthday, Molly!
Here are my birthday wishes for your year.
If it feels missing, may it be in the pocket of your other jacket.
If it feels 60 dollars, may it be $40 with an extra 50% off if you have the little card, and you do.
If it's scheduled from noon to nine, may it be run through twice by four and ready to wrap up by happy hour.
May all the good apartments be cheap, chesterpants friendly, and come with free parking.
Love,
sjet
I'm all moved, but I'm also extrememly cranky and verging on tears for no reason all the time.
If I came with a warning sign, it would be 'Do not tap on glass.'
Yesterday: forgotten birthday and much guilt in combination with Where The Fuck is a Single Motherfucking Fork?
Today: failed attempts at solving quadratic equations by completing the square and spackle with father at apartment number one.
1: this morning, when I woke up late, didn't bother to brush my hair, noted the good fortune of taking a shower last night and ran out the door, I found a giant paper-mache Chicken Head sitting on the handlebars of my scooter, waiting to go for a ride. My life is awesome.
2: Molly and I are the strongest girls alive! We moved the giant file cabinet of certain death and destruction down 2 flights of stairs all by ourselves last night!
2.5: I have a confession to make. During all the cabinet moving, I was totally wearing a halter top and overalls with converse, accented with a tiny sign clipped to my pants strap that read: "I've been a little unreasonable today. Please be patient with me."
2.7: Did you hear me? A Fucking Halter Top! Someone should have thrown something at me, but it was just so fucking hot outside and all my other clothes are wrapped in plastic bags. (Please do not ask me why these things were not packed.)
3: Free Carpet Cleaning By Suction Device! (I didn't want to mess with the spelling. everybody thinks they know it, no one actually does.)
4: The Naughty Box has been safely stored in Molly's trunk. She thinks I definately need a bigger naughty box. I don't have that much naughty! I get all my naughty out by swearing like a longshoreman.
5: I'm wearing the fanciest underpants you've ever seen. Or, for that matter, will never see.*
6: Tiny Roomate and the Frenchman Packed the Living Crap out of the kitchen and bathroom. Thank you, frenchman, for wrapping a hundred and twenty thousand glasses in towells and putting them in boxes. Legs to you, love.
7: My daddy and momma are coming from Idaho to help us move stuff 4 blocks. Mom seems to think dad is wrapped around my little finger, but I think he just wants to prove that he can beat me at scrabble and intimidate any fresh young male neighbors.
8:Our new apartment has A:one of those bathroom windows that looks out into an empty cavernous corridor with everyone elses bathroom windows right there too. (We could hide from the nazi's in there.) B: a big fire escape next to a big rooftop. C: Windows Windows Windows D: Closets Closets Closets E: Dumb dark brown countertops in the kitchen. Anybody have an idea that is not painting them?
9: Friends for a long time, a very close friend of mine, love you like you was mine, but respect the thin line.
10: I just remembered this,or it would be at the top. When I went for my all-over checkup yesterday they had to take a blood test for the HIV and the anemia or something. The woman poked and poked and poked in my elbow spot and couldn't get it, so SHE POKED ME IN THE BACK OF THE FUCKING HAND. Blood doesn't bother me, really, but I totally had to sit there and drink juice after that.
*Unless you get me drunk and put me on rollerskates, in which case, theres a 60 percent chance you'll see them. These things can't be helped.
