this imploding heart

Touching you, Touching me

I'm having my wisdom teeth extracted next week by Doctor Sexy Dentist, MD.
(a dude in a wheelchair just wheelied all the way down Olive, really fast.)
Dr. S. Dentist MD's magic teeth camera whirred from one side of my head to the other, and took a giant wide picture of my choppers. My wisdom teeth are my only back teeth that are currently filling-free. That's most of the reason I've put off having them pulled for so long. They were the only good ones I had.

Dr. Sexy sat down and very seriously and calmly explained that they were going to laughing gas me before putting me all the way out with an IV drip. "This is your first surgery, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm not really all that nervous about it. You're just going to knock me out and pry my teeth out, right? I think everything will be fine."

"Well...That's great. I'm glad to hear you feel that way."

"Don't prove me wrong, okay?"

and the headstones climbed up the hills

The most interesting part was the coffins. Blocks upon blocks of very solemn protesters carrying flag-draped faux-coffins in front of Madison Square Garden while the camera framed the readerboard message from the GOP convention, "Thank You, New York!"

I've been reading Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaids Tale' and reading the news a lot more often. I'm having a hard time distinguishing one from the other, and the combination gives me TERRIBLE nightmares.

Mom, I met a girl. Is that your only pair of shoes?

Derby Girls may not throw too many strikes, but they will throw several impromptu dance parties in your parking lot.

I rearrange the furniture

Now that we sleep under different numbers, you come in in the middle of the night and tell me that a man, higher than a kite, has been hanging around the courtyard and climbing the gates. Behaving in an undesireable manner. And while I'm sleeping you call the police several times, go to the grocery store, play a game of chess, watch as they bring ladder trucks and the detox van to pull him down from the old Gay City rooftop and take him to Harborview.

When I wake up and there you are -in the middle of your night- I half remember the events, but think that I dreamed them. I must have dreamed them, right?

FYI

Hey Seatown! Wanna get sloshed, spell things aloud and support my theater company? (This was a really fun event last year.)

ANNEX THEATRE'S GRAMMAR RODEO
Saturday, August 28th
Lower Level of the Capitol Hills Art Center
1621 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122
Doors open at 7:30pm
Competition begins at 8pm
$10 door
(includes entry into the games)

Back to school, Annex Style!

Put on your thinking cap and hitch up those smarty pants, because
Annex Theatre is taking you to school!

Got a high I.Q.? Look good in a school uniform? Cringing at these
fragment sentences? The Annex Grammar Rodeo has you written all over
it. Embrace your inner geek as you compete in mind-bending challenges. For
prizes!

Ten dollars gets you in the door with entry into the games. Extra cash
(or credit) will help you tip the balance of power in this contest of
wits. Did we mention prizes?

The games:

Preparing for the PSAT: Grammar, Grandma!

3D Geography
Identify countries and capitals other than our own!

Presidential Fitness Awards: now with more thigh burn!

LUNCH

Everyday Math (sponsored by the Home Ec Department)

District Spelling Bee

Hall monitors will be on hand, and naughty students may end up in detention.

School attire encouraged, but not required.

We hope to see you there!

####

the ghosts that haunt your building are prepared to take on substance

Cake thinks it's one of my most annoying traits, what he refers to as overzealous do-gooding. I can't help it, it came with the optimism.

I left the house this morning 5 minutes too late to walk but 5 minutes too early to leave on the scooter. I took the creamsicle anyway because I'm nervous about my new boss staking out my desk to see when I come and go.
I was sailing down Harrison when I saw a woman with a blind cane standing at the corner of the intersection. I stopped and called out to her that there were no cars. She stepped to the curb, put her hands to her face, turned around backward, walked a little, stopped, turned again and started whipping her head around as though there were things coming at her from the sides.

I pulled the scoot over and put it up on it's stand, motor running.

"Hi, do you need someone to walk you across?"

I think she heard the scooter pulling up, because she didn't look at me, but she tapped the scooter with her cane and felt the handlebars with her hands before I touched her on the arm and she noticed me. She was frantic. Touching her fingers to her face and trying to sign to me. Five fingers, one finger, two fingers.

"512? Is that your house?"

She ignored me (which is about when I should have figured out that she couldn't really hear me, either.) and indicated that she needed something to write with and on. I got a bit of paper and a pen out. The pen was cold and didn't leave any ink, but she pushed hard enough and wrote clearly enough that I could read:

'I are lost. Where is home. 512 **th Ave E'

The skeptic in me sang out 'She's going to trick you into coming to her house and there will be people there to rob and murder you!' but the optimist replied 'you know why she didn't take the pen that worked when you offered it? because she COULDN'T SEE YOU OFFERING IT, NOR THAT HER OWN PEN DIDN'T WORK, DUMBSHIT. Take the lady home.'

We walked through the overgrown sidewalks to her apartment, 4 blocks away. She invited me upstairs, and I think she thought I was following her in the doorway, because she couldn't see or hear me decline in order to go to work.
I hope there's someone waiting for her up there.

Tim once told me that someone philosopher said that all good deeds are done for selfish reasons. Damn right. I walk you home when you're blind and deaf so that you'll come to the ER and hold my hand after my car accident. I help you push your car when it stalls in the intersection so that you'll help me pick up the papers I dropped all over the overpass before class. I get the eggs off the shelf for the old man riding a Rascal so that someone will walk my mother down the stairs when she gets tired. If you don't deposit into the bank, you can't expect to withdraw.

You're gonna say you miss me

Sometimes it's hard for me to tell exactly how I'm feeling.

This has been coming up a lot lately as a general subject at home. When you're in the heat of uncertainty, the only place you want to be is SOMEWHERE. So you write notes that declare your love or hatred and deliver them, hesitantly, in the rain. Because then the ball is out of your hands. Done. Signed, Sealed, Delivered.

So sometimes, when I'm walking home by myself in the middle of the night, everything in me wants to scratch nasty words into front doors with my keys. Or to break in and turn all the furniture upside down and microwave all the dairy products and leave them rotting on the kitchen floor.

The walking home by myself in the middle of the night me thinks that sort of thing is a great solution to feeling bad. That particular version of me also wishes she could spit flesh-rotting acid from her incisors, and has a hard time not grabbing people and shaking them until their noses bleed. That particular version of me is not a good long-term decision maker.

The biggest problem with making big emotional decisions is that once the act is done, you kind of have to commit to the emotion. You can't get less angry later, because by then you've already carved a few holes in kitchen tables and hung a few pieces of roadkill in a few livingrooms, and while your anger may have diminished, the effects of those actions have not. You can't get back the note that declares your unyeilding stalkeresque devotion, even if you've lost interest in the recipient.

Trial and error in these situations has established a necessary action-censor. The action censor is the voice in my head that says "Yes, gettting shitfaced and making a screaming public spectacle would feel pretty good right now. However, anything you say in your shitfaced spectacle has to be justified and discussed *tomorrow* in an actual sober discussion, and you're probably going to cry and want to take some things back simply because talking about them doesn't do any good. Additionally, are you sure you're going to be mad enough tomorrow to want to talk about them at all?"

And generally, talking about it tomorrow always sounds really exhausting. Especially since I just put all that effort into the sawing and screaming and microwaving.

It seems so easy

Like the changing of the leaves. Kneesocks=Cold Weather

Our End of Summer party marked just that. Goodbye summer, hello lovely deadly rainfall.

An absolutely fabulous cross section of guests attended, from our kickass upstairs neighbors to Purple Mark and his homemade sherry to internet superstar and party must-have, Stace Dayment

Stace actually took much better pictures than I did, so please see her page for a nice representation of who's who and what's what, or click 'More' to see totally inappropriate and kind of blurry shots taken with my camera. By who? Who knows.

Remember the mention of Guacamole Body Shots? I worry that The Derby is already building itself a bad reputation: (but I'm obviously not *too* worried)

The dancing was generally unstoppable.




Kickass Neighbors!








Shorts!




At some point, Roxy and I decided we really needed to put on our terrycloth tracksuits. Then it rained so hard the party was forced to continue for several more hours. Thus Tracksuit = Party Magic

Clap your hands if you wanna be a little princess

Roxy got a little over zealous about funnelling the vodka into the vodkamelon as Souxie entertained the gaggle of beautiful and well educated boys who now live less than a block away from us. I felt impeded by the shortness of my skirt.

hey, now I can see him comin'

I have a nasty lump on the back of my leg where the Old Dirty Bastard (which is what I've named the cb-125) bit me last night. I've got the choke situation figured out (cold motor='on'. warm motor = upward area where there is no inscription) and I'm going to start practicing for the motorcycle endorsement test. However, I also got thwaped on my little ankle bone by the kickstart so many times that I'm rather black and blue in that area as well. This can only mean one thing.

I get to shop for Motorcycle Boots. Big Shit-Kicking Motorcycle Boots.

I know her love is not worth it.

So the point is, if you cry less than 10 times, you get prizes!

My father "sold" (see: put 170 dollars into repairing and then signed over the title) me the little 1970 Honda CB-125 I've wanted forever. Like this one, but blue and quite a bit less awesome. I'll be able to ride a passenger now, assuming I can figure out how the choke works. I tend to flood the engine.

My mother gave me a pink shawl with little red-dye roses that I've decided is the most damn glamorous thing ever, and a yellow watering can that will hold enough to water all the plants without refilling.

Cake is taking me to the p. door prom tonight, so I get to make corsages and wear lavender blue dresses with matching shoes. Getting slivers in your eye is not so bad when you get to dress up and ride a motorcycle afterward.

Come on, Come over, I've overcome my fear of rollercoasters

Hey, Seatown-ers, wanna come to a party this Saturday night? Send me an email.

had we never come across the vastness of pavement

Awful, awful weekend.

I can't go into how the painter painted 3 rooms the wrong color and then quit in the middle of the job, how I almost broke my finger trying to re-caulk the kitchen, how I got a sliver in my eye while mowing the lawn, how I cried at Wal-Mart, Krispy Kreme, Steve's Sports Dugout and the Circle K, how I spent an hour in one of the triangles between the freeway and an offramp clutching a tarp and trying to stay out of the way of my father and the logging trucks, how I got flipped off 5 times in less than 3 hours, or how I can't take a joke after a certain point in my patience.

I will, however, say that at 10:00 last night, I was still 30 minutes from Seattle, standing in a parking lot, covered in power steering fluid and sobbing into my fathers shoulder. That, and my family is wonderful, and I wouldn't trade them for the world.

I see terror in your eyes, as we go up, we go down

Just as I was hanging up the phone with my father on the work phone, (can I still borrow your car to go swimming tomorrow, dad? 'Yes, but I'm not sure what's going on as far as my ride to Idaho goes, so I'll call you later'), my cell phone starts ringing from an unidentified number. It's my mother, calling from a mechanics shop in Rathdrum, ID. As soon as she speaks, I can feel the blood draining from my face and hands and my breath quickens. Her voice, usually big and bright and a half step away from a song, is shaking like she's been sobbing, or standing in the snow for days, or both.

"Momma! What's wrong!? Where are you?!"

(and still, after all these years, everything in me expects her to say "I'm at Kootenai Medical, waiting to get checked out of ER and into a room." Especially with this voice. That's what this voice usually means.)

"Oh, honey. I'm...." she breaks and I can see her leaning forward, resting her forehead against her delicate fingertips. "I can't do it. I'm too tired. I'm at the auto shop in Rathdrum, trying to get.... I need.... I'm so tired. I need you to come with your dad tomorrow and drive me over. I can't do it. I'm sorry."

"Oh, momsa. Don't be sorry. I'll be happy to come and get you. Are you crying? Please don't cry, mom."

"I'm not, I'm not crying. I'm just exhausted, Sonya. I'm....I'm too exhausted. There's a painter at the house now and there are still twenty things to do and I just.... ."

"Don't lift a finger. I'll be there before you know it. I'm serious, mom. Don't kill yourself over this. Not worth it."

"I...thank you, honey."

Moving. Sucks.

The house on my street

It's settled. We have a house and the house has a name. Souxie, Roxy and Sonya are proud to present **The Derby**. (as in: Roller, Kentucky)

The Derby House Loves:

Yogurt, Salad, Guacamole
Spontaneous Dancing
Drop-by Friends
The Muppets
Making Out
Foxiness

The Derby House is not so into:

Mosquito Bites
Safeway
Furniture Assembly
Bovine Growth Hormone

how it is

1.

"What's in your pocket? Is it a present!? CAN I HAVE IT!?"

"Sure! Lets see...Nicorette?"

"......."

"Okay...green lighter, you can't have that...Uh, paperclip?"

"........"

"Tiny yellow envelope?"

"Yay! Tiny Yellow Envelope!"

2.

"Guess what I did!"

"What?"

"I passed the eighth level, and I can FLY now! So if something is in my way, I can just levitate over it. Isn't that great?"

"Yep."

"And then! If I work hard, I can get to the 16th level and I'll be able to amp up my powers and fly FAST. It's gonna be so great!"

"I'm really happy for you honey. It's nice to see you setting goals for the future."

"I can fly!"

"Okay."

additionally

Today is my 5 year anniversary of living in Seattle, renting my first apartment, and starting my first full time job. All those things happened on August 11th, 1999.

out from blown speakers

Apparently, the only functioning reset button was hidden in my fathers voice. Somewhere between being impressed by his new dentist and hiring painters because mom is exhausted, I heard the Whiirrrrruuummmm click of all my muscles letting go and all my glass-breaking tendencies falling back asleep.

you know you make me feel heartless

I realized it before my eyes were even open yet.

"shitshITSHIT!

I threw the covers off and sprang into action. Press and hold the Shut Down button and hope for the high pitched Whir to slow and deaden. I wait, and it seems to sense me there wrapped in unoptimistic hopefullness, so it Whir Whir Whirs on.

"Please shut down. I don't need you now. I know I got you all set up to go last night and then put you away without doing anything, but PLEASE SHUT DOWN.

Whir Whir Whir

"Shit. Shit. Shit. I guess I'd better get dressed."

So I pulled my green flowers dress over my Angry Machine. Lipstick on my clenched mouth. Bracelet barely fits over my fist. Put my shoes by the door to quiet the stomping. I accidently knocked everything on the sink in the sink, everything on the counter to the floor, the shoerack off the door, the skirts off their hangers. (The angry machine makes me clumsy and loud and miserable.)

I tried to force quit by touching both knees to the floor and pressing my palms together, but the fist-making, nostril-flaring, spitting-while-speaking Angry Machine that lives in my chest and throat and takes over all my movement whirs on...with or without my say.

the vastness of pavement

My lovely friend Jack is moving to Berkley to become a Doctor. This will mean that the 2 most important people I used to visit on the east coast will be in one convenient trip to the west coast, which is my personal preference.

Did I tell you that I've been totally gung-ho about Seattle being the most fantastically killer beautiful place ever? I'm gung-ass-ho. See this guy's sweatshirt? I want one just like that, but instead of 'Pacific Beach', it should read 'Pacific Northwest' and have pictures of pine trees where the stars are. I feel the need to represent my lightly populated geographical region!

I'll take you out boys

Epiphanies for Friday:

1: I want Cake to attend certain events with me because they're special to me, and I want to experience them with someone I care about. This does not mean that he has to enjoy them.

2: Sometimes an Ex becomes so much an Ex that he's no longer an Ex at all, he's just some guy.

Epiphany #1 was a result of what Cake calls The Fight Of The Ages, which is apparently when she says 'you never go out with me anymore' and he never goes out. It was a little frusterating, because I couldn't figure out WHY I wanted him to go so bad. I knew there was a chance it'd be terrible and he'd hate it and rip it a new asshole, and he'd be a pain because he didn't attend of his own free will, but I really wanted him to go. Why? That's exactly what he wanted to know.

sonya: "Because...I...I do this thing every month for the 15 to 17 months we've been going out and you haven't come once. I think that's weird."

cake: "It is NOT weird."

(I do still think it's weird, but whatever.) I took some time to think about it.

s: "I want you to go because I see so many things that I really like or really hate and I want to talk to YOU about them. I spend more time talking with you than I do with anyone else, and when you never see any of the things that shape how I see the world....I guess....yeah. I want to share the experiences that matter to me with someone who matters to me."

c: "Valid."

s: "But I don't want you to come now because you're already ready to hate the whole thing."

Epiphany #2 came as PatrickOpie and Alisha and I ran into the T and M Super Duo, fresh from an exhausting show and getting ready to play the late-night.
(sidenote: I can't tell you how happy I am to have shed every last angry cell. It may have taken an awful year and a half of angry-cell exfoliation, but it's all gone. I hope there's some forgiveness out there for me. I was at my most awful.)
When M got up to play, I realized 2 things. First; I really don't like the same kind of art that M likes most of the time. Second; M is back at the shape he was when we were dating, and this was the first time I was able to recognize him in a familiar physical form in several years. But all the angry bloody scrubbing in combination with the regular growing has sealed the hole in my throat and left the kind of scar you can only see if you really look for it for a while. It's a tremendous relief.

a frozen fire

he brought me a gift
a seedless pureheart melon
lopsided his bike

So, the story goes that it was around 3 in the morning in Wallingford and Cake had gone over to a guy-from-work's house to drink beer and play video games after the evening shift at the restaurant. Cake was a tad drunk and getting ready to ride his bike back over the bridge, so he sat down on the bumper of a car to put his bike shoes, gloves and helmet on and roll up his pants.

After he gets himself together, he takes off down the ave to hit the U bridge. (BTW, due to the drinking, parts of this story are a bit spotty). He's barely riding for 2 minutes before there are cop cars all around him. He stops his bike and immediately there are spotlights on him and between 6 and 8 cops are around him, some with guns drawn, shouting for him to put his hands on the car and spread his legs. So he puts his hands on the car and spreads his legs. A strobe is placed less than 6 feet from his face. He's scared, (obviously. anytime the cops yell, it's scary), and one of the cops comes up and says "Oh yeah, I can just smell it on you. He's shaking, boys. Must have something to be afraid of. Must have done something wrong. You wanna tell us why we stopped you? You got something to be afriad of?"

Honeypie's sordid past has taught him to be infinitely malleable when it comes to dealing with police officers. Don't speak unless spoken to, give only what they ask for, and don't give them any excuse to do anything.

They keep him there with the spotlight in his face and his hands spread on the car for twenty minutes while they wait for the detective and some EYE WITNESSES. I'm not sure when, but somewhere during this time, someone mentions that he's a suspect in the recent spree of arsons in Seattle. The cop that will be known as Good Cop frisks him and kindly ignores the green in his pocket. They ask to search his bag, and he declines.

The eyewitnesses show up. Cake notices them, VERY slowly and deliberately lifts his hand from the hood, tips his helmet back, slowly puts his hand back on the hood. He turns his face around in the light so they can see clearly, and hopefully see that he's the wrong guy.

The 5ft 300lb cop who shall be known as Dickhead is walking around all this time saying "I know he's got it on him! Why don't you bust him? You can smell it coming off him in waves!" And this is probably true. Cake takes enough of It in that when he gets really sweaty, his sweat smells like it.

The detective arrives, and Cake allows the detective and Good Cop to search his bag.

Dickhead: "What's in there? Lighter fluid?"

Detective: "Shoes, a change of clothes, some food, Nicorette, notebooks. Pretty much exactly what he said was in here."

Dickhead: huff puff puff huff harrump.

After more standing with his hands on the car, the cops converge and decide he can go. Good Cop asks Cake if he has any questions. Why he didn't have any questions before, etc.

Cake: "No questions, but I do have something to say."

At this point, Cake's had 30 minutes to think, and has come up with one of his patented speeches. While most of it was lost, it opens up like so:

Cake: "You cops are kind of like Nazi's." he puts his hand up in a 'wait for it' move.

Dickhead: huff puff "What, is the guy who called 911 a nazi too?"
(at this point, all the other cops do a subtle eye roll, aknowledging that Dickhead is -in fact- a dickhead.)

Cake: "You can all pretty much do whatever you want to whoever you want whenever you want and there's not much anyone can do to stop you. So I think it's generally best to be quiet and malleable, and avoid any potential problems..."

The speech is certain to have gone on for a while because Cakester is a longwinded one with a lot of opinions. They let him go.

Not 4 more minutes into his ride, just as he's crossing over the bridge, he sees a cop car pass him and hears a voice call his name. He curses to himself and pulls over again.

It's Good Cop, come to return Cake's wine info notebook for work (which only solidifies his alibi).

Good Cop: "Hey man, you left your notebook on the hood of the car. Thought you might need it for work, I saw your notes in there. Listen, I wanted to say that I really appreciated you speaking your mind back there. You know, some of us cops are just nice regular guys trying to serve the community, just like you. We're not all bad."

Good Cop gave him his notebook and let him ride the rest of the way home. Cake promptly threw up where broadway crests.

and that, my friends, was that.

I didn't mean to make the third verse the same as the first

Oh man, I want to talk about Cake's 4am run-in with the cops last night, but I think that might steal his thunder. Stay tuned.

Summer has the delightful effect of making every nice day feel just like a movie. I've been riding the creamsicle scooter around in all pastel dresses and little white shoes lately, the scenery seems too beautiful to be real, the warm breeze makes it feel like I might not be outdoors or touching the ground, and people have been beaming at me from all directions. Perhaps because all the flower and water smells make me grin like a fool.

So other than the whole 'If I tip over, I'm going to lose all the skin off one side of my body and probably break a couple bones...maybe get my spine crushed by a logging truck.' thing, it's been great.

My father and uncle came by the Summit on Saturday to pick up any remaining debris. I had spent a few hours cleaning the kitchen on Friday night, so I did a somewhat half-ass job of washing the bathroom sink and toilet, swept and vacuumed, told the ghosts goodbye and left molds-ville forever and ever, amen.

Tonight, our new household will be complete, as Roxy is picking Souxie up from the airport at 6. I suspect that this will be a household of high-volume hijinks.