the maxipad as a Post-it and other urban musings...

the GITB is endlessly fascinated by the intense bonding that often takes place in a short space of time when people are removed from their natural habitats, families, jobs, etc., and supplanted in strange environs. Such lift-outs occur in my masters program which allows distance work but requires grad students to live on campus one glorious, alcohol and neurosis/ego-soaked week per semester, requiring me to trek from hearth and home 700 miles to the north to commune with my classmates. We are all "serious" writers in pursuit of MFAs. Yes, I know.

This most recent residency, which ended Saturday (and from which I am still recovering) was especially raucous and emotional. One of my buddies from North Carolina told me that the moon phase may have contributed somewhat to the nonstop mayhem that ensued for eight days. SZ said in an e-mail to me that "there must have been something to the whole two moons blue moon thing in May." I think she's so right.

And as nuts as it was, it was difficult to part this time and the specter of re-entry made us all a little uncomfortable. Colin headed to the Smokies to "just sit in the woods and think for a day or two..." before heading home to his wife and three adorable girls in Myrtle Beach. Amber picked up a rental car and headed up I-85 and from there to Virginia to nestle in the bosom of her mom and do laundry and ruminate about bald boys and boys who do yoga and write poetry about vaginas before she flies home to Destin. Em headed back to the hated Buckeye state to confront Alex and his hysteria over the move to Germany. "He's waiting for me to come back and make it all okay," she said. And she will. Because she is Emily.

I drove home in a haze of cigarette smoke (I only smoke on the road to and from school and at school--it's stupid, I know, but fuck it) and channel-surfed the FM waves for 10 hours (the perfect block of time--enough for me to wrap my head around most of what went down the previous week and prepare for re-entry and the max my ass can stand sitting in the car). The bountiful pukiness on the radio at 1 a.m. ranges from: "Stop! The love you save may be your own, darling look ways before you cross me, you're headed for a danger zone..." to "Sorry, I never told you all I wanted to say..." Luckily, after driving through the black hole in the universe that only allowed me to receive stations that played the Jacksons and/or Mariah Carey, I landed on a classic hard rock station somewhere in the bowels of Georgia and reveled in Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep and the Rolling Stones. Thank you, Jeebus.

retreat

I am developing an affinity for blue moons with orange slices
getting up early and meaning it
bald men who wear Ramones t-shirts and baggy pants
dining outdoors with freeloading grad students who are about to go to Sweden for the summer
and plan to not spend a dime
liver mush and pig's feet in the grocery store
and aisles that stock cans of Our Lady of Guadalupe room spray, stagnant sweet roses
having no dishes to wash or carpools to manage, no dog to walk
stretching out on a twin bed (alone!), my shades pulled up so I can watch the tree branches shimmy as music drfts through from
the room next door

Good Boy

My co-worker, Mike, and his wife, Molly, lost their beloved dog, Hank yesterday. Hank was no spring chicken and has had health challenges lately but Mike and Molly have been the type of parents who did anything and everything to ease his pain. Molly took him to a doggie acupuncturist and labored over Hank's meals, feeding him a whole food-only diet. But still, Hank's passing was unexpected, sudden and we are all bereaved, but most especially Mike and Molly. Hank was one of the coolest dogs who's ever lived and my little corner of the world is dimmer because he's gone.

Here is a blog entry that Hank dictated and Mike wrote back in October, 2005:


Of Dogs, Blogs, and Automobiles

Freedom is the taste of speed on the tongue, of eyes half closed against wind that flaps and flutters your ears around your neck. Head out the car window, a succession of scents overwhelms you. The fried chicken restaurant, diesel fumes, rotting seaweed on the beach, the sweaty men in the road selling newspapers, gas station pumps, and dumpsters...it's endless and blending, a fast flowing, fluid landscape of smells that can be just too much for your average Labrador.

Sometimes it's best just to sit panting and waiting, getting the occasional whiff, biding your time till you sense you're nearly there, wherever it is. So, so often, you just know you're almost there. Maybe it's the bank, where dog biscuits mysteriously appear out of plastic projectiles zinging through noisy, popping tubes. Maybe it's the shore or the lake or the park (hurrah!). Maybe it's the dreaded vet, where you try to disappear behind your human. Or maybe it's Petsmart, just jam-packed with shelves of mouth-watering wonders.

Cars are the portals to other worlds, barely understood by us dogs. We willingly, even eagerly enter these alarming machines because they're our chariots to adventure, chance and companionship. It seems like car makers should have been thinking about dogs for a long time, but it's just not so. Only now has a new kind of car been invented, the "wonderful open-hearted wagon," or WOW. It has a special seat belt for bigger dogs so they can buckle up and it has built-in smaller crates for littler dogs.

As for me, I don't know if I need one or not. Mike and Molly already buckle me up in the backseat, tethering my harness to the seatbelt with some kind of strap. Oh, I know I look pretty geeky and sheltered compared to those daredevil dogs hanging loose in the back of pickup truck beds, eyeballing me in pity and disdain. Those dogs are just too cool for training school. But then Mike stops the car short, jerking me forward, and I'm suddenly glad to be wearing a seatbelt. I worry about those other Labs who could crack their craniums on the cabs of trucks. Truth be told, I wouldn't trade spots with them for a bank vault of dog biscuits.

damn thee

whoever the twit is who invented "heelies," (those damnable sneakers that have little tiny wheels tucked into the soles) ought to be smacked by a smelly sock with a bar of soap in the toe. Because it really hurts. Which is my point.

Dear "Heelie" inventor,

You suck.

That is all.

I spent several hours snowbound in a hotel in Boston with David Halberstam a few years ago and it was one of the most memorable days of my life. The wind whipped 25 inches of snow at us that day but I could not have cared less as I sat mesmerized as David and Ken Burns swapped war stories about writing about baseball and trying to interview ball players like Ted Williams who didn't give a rat's ass about resumes and credentials. He gave you an interview if you would put up with his bullshit and liked fly fishing. But that's another story and you had to be there. David was one of the last of the old school journalists and for me, a hero. I fell in love with him and his ethics and the passion with which he lived and wrote The Best and the Brightest and The Teammates. Do yourself a favor and read some of David's stuff. He was righteous and brave and good and made me proud to be a reporter and I went home afterwards with a renewed resolve to tell the best stories I could, no mattter how small and insignificant. One of my pilot lights blew out today when I heard he died in a car accident in San Francisco.

note to self: you are still as bad at saying what you mean without being remorseful about it later on as you were when you were 25. Only now it's not so cute and he's not speaking to you and there are no more pink peeps in the house to be had. again.

this has not been the greatest of weeks for me but I am always aware that no matter how crappy I may be feeling, other people are having a crappier time of it and I should be glad I have just the regular crap I have to deal rather than crap like:

~Having to make a court appearance and plead guilty of DUI manslaughter.

~Having to grovel and plead for forgiveness (and my job) because I made a colossal asshole of myself on the national stage. I cannot imagine the self-loathing the Don Imus is dealing with. This particular scenario is horror to me--horror--to be hated and vilified (and not unjustifiably) on such a huge scale. What must that feel like? Don't wanna know. Ever. I like my fuck-ups private, thank you very much.

~Not being able to go to Albertsons for some bagels and olives without seeing a really bad photo of my bald self on the cover of every crappy tabloid rag in the rack next to the check out.

So I have that going for me...

Here is what I bought myself for my birthday. I have been working, lately, on feeling more comfortable with spending money on myself. It isn't easy. And I have no idea where the neurosis comes from. Money isn't really an issue at my house. We have enough, we've never paid a bill late, never had an argument in 15 years over money, life is good that way. But I can spend, spend, spend on others, yet I cringe when I buy myself a new tube of mascara for $5. It's weird. So here is my therapeutic birthday purchase and I cannot wait to hold it in my quivering hands. And thanks to the genius of Fed Ex, I can watch its progression as it makes its way around the world to my home in the hot, steamy little beach hamlet in which I dwell. It left Shanghai on Monday, arrived in Alaska, went to Indianapolis, then on to Memphis where it now sits awaiting its connection to Tampa. I picture Tom Hanks' "Chuck" character from Cast Away (pre-plane crash and tropical island marooning) carefully sorting it into the proper pile in Memphis and patting it on its little cardboard ass as it prepares to wing its way to its new mommy. A Mac!! Ooooooooooo, ahhhhhhhhhhh.....

Happy Birthday to me.

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I'm thinking that's not such a bad thing...

argh, the tourists are here...they tumble from their cars and RVs and swarm...like ants from a dark, breached mound...we will hide out on our secret island until the horde and Easter recede, whilst drinking down amber brew and humming "blow us a breeze..."

my daughter's school finally acquiesced to the insistence of some of us parents of girls and for the first time ever, we have a girl's softball team. I am one of two coaches. It's the sweetest thing I've experienced in a long, long time. The girls all have heart, baby, miles and miles and miles of heart. Yesterday we had our first victory against a private school from the next town over--the team was all boys and we gave the girls the option of playing them or not--they had just suffered through an impassioned girl-power pep talk from yours truly and they apparently bought it. We played the boys from the hoity-toity prep school. And we kicked some hoity-toity-prep-school-boy-ass. I wish you could have seen the girls strutting to the bus. God, it was sweet.

Douchebag of the Month: Miss March

"...I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot'".

~Ann Coulter

PS: I was going to wait until the end of the month, but Annie made this month's choice a slam-dunk.

If I live to see the seven wonders...

I'll make a path to the rainbows end...

...and here are the seven wonders per the smooth waxings of dearest eb.

Watch yourself, there is some frankness and what some may consider racy, even pornographic. It's also all true. Every. Damn. Word.

And as you ponder the wisdom of the great and powerful eb, check out these here seven wonders of good ole down-home southern cooking. It was the fare at Kimmie's all-girl St. Paddy's Day chicklit party (except for her husband, Gary, who had to endure being called "Mangina" all night--a small price to pay to bask in our collective loveliness without having a vagina--a condition of admission to our partays).

So here's what we et: (clockwise, let's start with the bowl at the bottom, shall we? Chicken wings, tossed salad sprinkled with bacon and scallions, crackers and home made hummus, collard greens, potato salad, Kimmie's special cheddar creamed corn bread (Oh, YES), and in the center, the requisite ribs. Heaven. We had Key lime pie for dessert. And people, real native Florida Key lime pie is NOT green. It is yellow.

dear god,

I confess that I don't believe in you, at least not in the way that they taught me in Sunday school to...but at this very moment, right when Kip was snapping this picture, I was thinking, "Thank you, God, for my bodacious girlfriends. I love every one of them and would be lost without them." But I guess you already knew that.

some day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter anyhow

A friend of mine is soon hosting his annual Shakespeare's Sonnet Reading, an evening of highbrow wine-ing and cheese-ing and recitation of what I like to refer to as "the Best-O-Bill." John has asked me to recite this year but I must choose my own sonnet, as he is loathe to assign, being a retired professor and all. When he called, I allowed that sure, I have some favorites. I like the one Kate Winselt reads in Sense and Sensibility to the cad who loves her but dumps her anyway because the other girl offers stability and he is, after all, a coward, #116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Yeah, I like that one. But I also like #29:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state (
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

Love kind of sucks and makes us feel like total unabashed retards sometimes, doesn't it?
That was me, not Bill.

fear and loathing in the WC

I am afraid of my toilet. This irrational fear only grips me late at night, when everyone else in the house is slumbering and I am working well into the wee hours, flailing away at the keyboard and alternately staring at the nudie NYFD firefighters calendar my sweet daughter gave me for Christmas. Because she knows I have a thing for the firefighters going on. Anyway. I drink a lot of water and tea and too much Diet Coke and so of course, I must trip to the loo, but it never fails to occur to me as I sit there all naked from the waist down and vulnerable, that something is going to bite me. On my hienie. In my warped mind I see huge fangs coming up from the deep waters of the pottie, poised to sink into my ass. Or worse, Freddie Kruger-like talons sinking into my bare naked bottom. I try to avoid the pottie thing at night whenever possible.

I'm in love and I don't care who thinks I am a horse's ass because of it. This little green guy is the best damn $139 I have ever spent in my life. In. My. Life, people. Kip turned me on to Woot, a cool little site that offers great deals every day (the deals are good only on that day or until the Woot-o-de-Day sells out) on super groovy cool tech stuff. I have never bought anything remotely techie in my life, save my cell phone and the requisite PC. And I admit, the first time I saw the Roomba advertised on TV, I thought it was as idiotic as the dumbass Popeil Pocket Fisherman. But wait, there's more! I was wrong, so wrong. Please forgive me, my sweet little Roomba. This baby vacuums my entire house in two hours and for the first time since Miss Daisy came to live with us, my house does not smell like dog (thank you, sweet baby jesus!!!!). Plus, it makes cute little R2D2 noises to tell me it's off to go clean, call to me when it runs into trouble (rarely) and when it's done, the cute little bastard even puts itself away. Yup. It returns itself to it's docking station to recharge and await my next command. Why, oh why, didn't God make guys like this? But who the hell needs men when I have my Roomba? Seriously. I'm done.

a poem for March

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night

Youth, large, lusty, loving-youth full of grace, force, fascination,

Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,force, fascination?

Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action,ambition, laughter,

The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

~Walt Whitman

(because March is my birthday month, which means it is Spring, and it is the time of year when I always believe that all things really are possible and I am more hopeful than any of the other 11 months in the calendar...)

The lovely Barb had a setback recently because a lump was discovered in her other breast. I guess I could say in her breast because she has but one now, but anyway, another sharp intake of breath that we have all been holding. Barb has refused to lie down and let the cancer take her because, dammit, she's not done yet. And she has survived past any time frames the doctors have given her. (In spite of the time frames, or in order to spite them. She's that kinda girl :)

Anyway, so here's the latest from my girl:

My biopsy came back and it was nonmalignant, so I am very happy about that. I went to my chemo treatment and asked the nurse if Dr. Diaz could call and find out for me. She came back and said that the report wasn't in yet. However, on the way out we ran into Dr. Diaz and he said he would call the pathologist if we could just wait for a few more minutes. Well, it was more that a few minutes and every time he would walk by his face looked bad. I was freaking out. Then, he finally came in and gave me the report and we all kissed and hugged. He told me to go home and enjoy the weekend. That used to mean a drink, but today it meant a bowl of ice cream. I was at one appointment or the other until 1:30. So, by the time I got home and had lunch, I was totally exhausted. But, it was a good tired. I am just going to sleep and not wake up worrying about things. That is a good feeling. Thank you for all of your prayers and good spirits, my peeps. Hope you all will sleep well tonight also. Love me.

cooking up taffy, teach, not heroin

this is the best tale from middle school by far this year:

Okay, one of my daughter's homies lives next door to the establishment pictured here to the left. Lyle is an enterprising young man. Back in sixth grade (two years ago), Lyle had an idea. He began a covert candy delivery service. Call him a candy concierge, if you will.

This little industry has been humming along undetected by the adults at the school for going on its third year. (Imagine the horror for the sixth graders who have grown accustomed to this service, who will be deprived of it once Lyle graduates middle school this May. Next year will be a desolate, sugar-free wasteland unless Lyle hands off the business to an underling willing to kick some $ up to the Godfather). But I digress.

It seems that Lyle was busted this week. The math teacher caught him in the hallway with a list of names and code words next to the names like "pixies" (as in "stix," not fucking PCP), "red" (as in licorice, not downers) and "black" (as in not black beauties, idiot) and of course, the paper sack stuffed with cash, all small bills, was the icing on the cake. Yes, Lyle was busted for dealing drugs. The teachers were convinced. Until they did a raid on his locker and found a huge stock pile of Lemon Heads, Atomic Fireballs, chocolate covered raisins and peanuts, gummie bears, Whoppers, Hot Tamales, Sweet Tarts, Pop Rocks, Airheads, etc.

The candy train has come to a screeching halt. For now. Schmoopie tells me that Lyle is regrouping, he has a new plan for delivery. He has customers, after all, and they need their fixes. He is, after all, The Man.