Deep Fried Lard with Ranch on the Side

Dear Diaretic Blog,

I don't want to feel bad for going and changing on you, but you are on the verge of calling me neglectful and that I won't have. I made you. I can delete you, but even scarier still is the fact that I can drag out an infinitude of simple variations on the same post time and time again. And, you know I will, because I have been doing it when you didn't even realize it.

Gimme some Hooters chicks who think they're punk rock. Gimme some Heathers with cursive writing on their asses. Gimme your tired old ass with 3 hours of sleep (stupid), and let me deep fry it with powdered sugar, and call it delicious. Delicious!

I am only 5000 words into the NanoWriMo thing and I can easily see why I write a couple chapters and then start over. It's shit. I'll keep going, hoping to catch up and move ahead this weekend, but it's bullshit. I started feebly and slid down a slippery slope into mediocrity about 10 words in. Short pieces of fiction maybe. Long, involved dynamics amongst non- mutes is painful. All I know how to write is this diarrhetic pseudo-pensivity which is merely complaining in sheep's fur.

The week in review: Monday- clean clean porn clean class kids water paycheck give it away cook clean; Tuesday- write walk kids group cry coffeeshop talk; Wednesday- return laptop in mad dash office hours class kids homework; Thursday- return another laptop in mad dash give away all our money grocery store read to children garden garden garden home dinner coffeeshop tutor homework period (for those keeping track) ; Friday- sleep write grant stuff errand pay more money class Snaggletooth's presentation water plants home children go I stay cry register friend movie talk cake ice cream cat scratch (no fever) up way too late; Saturday- shower fog work grits fall asleep drive write work get this one mixed up it's now. Note: There was no kissing. This week it's break up.

I gave the semi-silent ultimatum which was heeded, even though I discourage heeding ultimatums unless cinnamon rolls are involved, but there was insistence on mutuality that was later retracted. Disappointment ensues, and so shall my moving into my own place in January, she says today, but each time she is less and less willing to be unappreciated, though she is still annoyed at the third person references to herself. Hey, I mean you!

Who knew that the trifecta of self-sustaining 50 hits a day word blog things are "Look up my Corduroy skirt?" I bet you knew and never told me.

Just had to complain
Or it wouldn't be a day
Like any other
Best day ever:
fucking sleeping fucking
cleaning was fun that time
lay and eat and walk and skip beats,
but not beets with bulls eyes.

You mash me up
And swallow me whole;
I'm salty, sour, dour.
Formerly pickled
Recently filtered
Only necessary
Due to tragic the lack
Of adequate Rocky Mountain springage.

A complaint a day keeps the
Novel away;
Keep up keep up, slut.
Wrap your mouth around my nut
Suck and slide,
Then hide.
Hit the snoozer;
Ditch the boozer.

I miss the Position of the Day videos.

Smells Like Halloween Spirit

I went to the my children's school Halloween festival yesterday and had a great time. My children have been moving up through this same school for 10 or so years and I've probably been to seven of these deals, but this was the best one yet. It was too early, one of my children chose to not even wear the Halloween costume Mr. Bee and I stood 45 minutes in line to get the night before, and as far as wearing vampire teeth goes, I'm a failure, but, even though someone stole Snugglecat's shoes and attempted to donate them to Uganda as a result, the idea to have one of those bouncy houses, so children can do what they do best, bounce off the walls, was brilliant. A great time seemed to be had by most.

Yesterday was a first quarter of the growing season's unofficial and self-declared harvest day at the school and there was definitely some homegrown consumption going done. That was my contribution to the event, helping students to gather it up, washing it and getting it on the cafeteria line alongside the hot dogs, nachos and whatever else you can put nacho cheese on top of. There was a fresh salad that was quite lovely, and there were some delicious collard greens that no one even complained about being to gritty, if the last serving of the batch was an accurate sample.

The best part of all, though, was the haunted house. Granted, I didn't go in it. I was on a fixed income and gave my tickets to my children, but I saw at least five students emerge from said haunted science lab traumatized for life. It was awesome. The teacher who stood at the door wins the Halloween 2009 Oscar for appearing simultaneously mad, manic and scared in an elementary school festival. She rocked. All around it was a great time. Now, it's over, as is my Halloween spirit.

Yes, I should probably reminisce happily about my Halloween wedding in 1993. My brides witches were the bomb and having my grandmother ask me if I belonged to a religious cult (with a minister called Armadillo Tao?) was about as flattered as I've ever been, but still.... Meh. The Lip Model attempted suicide two years ago Nov. 1 and for the past couple years I've mostly gone with Mr. Bee to town to take the kids trick or treating in hopes the lights out up our driveway would dissuade our whole neighborhood's hayride posse from wandering up our driveway for the first time, not only to find our house perpetually unlocked, but ridiculously surrounded with clutter. Yea. Not so much.

I know I'm just asking for a visit from the great Pumpkin de-scrooger, but sugar highs leave me cranky, and today my in-laws are here, presently cleaning our dishes watching our Baby Bees, so Mr. Bee and I can simultaneously work on a Saturday. Mr. Bee and I laughed last night at the idea of washing our children's dishes when we visit them in the future. Don't think so. We were all busy this week bombing tests, going to counseling appts, shopping for scary Halloween hands, and writing up bids for our landlord so he can pay us to do the move out work he was going to pay someone else to do, in our desperate hopes that he would be encouraged to let us extend our lease until the end of January when he saw what cheap labor sluts we are, so dishes got bumped down the list to the same priority as, say, ironing clothes. Our rent would be raised by $350/ month were we to stay in our current house, but that's not bad in the end, because it makes the decision easy. Big trash day and curbside recycling, here I come.

I could have claimed clairvoyance, but really it's just knowing this co-dependent cycle like I know my masturbatory routine to say that Mr. Bee has decided to quit drinking and step up. Not to act like an asshole scrooge, but I'm skeptical. Sure, I have been going around saying that I am unhappy in my marriage for one or both of two reasons, alcoholism and my sexuality, and that without isolating one or the other of the causes, it's been nary impossible for me to decipher. For years, my bi-operator's license was sufficient, but whether I've wisened up to my own needs, or I've just been moving further and further away from their being met remains to be seen. Not splitting up my family is ideal, of course, and sure I want to be supportive, but the line between being forgiving and being a sucker is a vague one at this point in my life. I just hope some sort of intervention reality show doesn't show up at my front door, unless it's that one where they throw away all your clothes after they mock them and then take you shopping. I can take ridicule in the name of fashion if I can get some quality wool, denim and corduroy and a great haircut out of the deal. Until then, my staple men's pseudo-western, poly-blend snap-downs and being a lesbian with a husband will have suffice. I've been thinking about getting experimental and cutting one of my shirts into a short sleeve and then wearing a long-sleeve under it, though, so don't ever say I'm stuck in a rut.

Tomorrow starts NaNoWriMo, and I'm going to write a book damn-it, and fiction to boot. Maybe I can be even more lurid and revealing if I call it acting (as Jon Lovitz used to say), er, fiction. I've been so rigidly honest, except in those special self-denial sorts of ways with myself, that making shit up might be just the breath of fresh air my pseudo-memoir needs to keep my interest. Either that, or I'm just not going to think about it and am just going to push right on past the feeling I'm writing drivel and just keep going. The only thing is, writing 2000 words a day without a laptop might be tricky. Our computer is booked for 3 hours solid .003542 seconds after my children are picked up from school. In fact, a system had to get devised whereby the "good seat" in back seat of the car and first turn on the computer are alternating privileges these days. Insanity knoweth no bounds when one must heareth tenish and sevenish year-old lads bicker large over yonder seat with no apparent superior virtue unless you consider driving. mommy. insane. a. virtue. (Surely, it is, huh?)

Mostly, I'm just jealous, though, I think. I'm jealous of my own future that's not here, that I'm not really running toward faster than at a snail's pace, even while I froo froo all out and try to embrace the Power of Now (spoken by a booming voice which resonates in the ears). Though I'm not religious, I am a sucker for self-help books. I need all the skillz I can get. Breathe into my feelings. When my mind is racing, pay particularly close attention to my environment and shift my focus from the future or the past back to this moment. Is that why I like writing? I think it might just be a busywork thing. Same with gardening, same with the zen of dish washing (which I actually enjoy), same with any number of activities that keeps my mind off my problems. If I have managed to use a lot of words to say very little, then my work here is done. If you're doing NanoButtMo, let me know your username so I can "writing buddy" you. I'm not sure if content is ever available to be read or exactly just how helpful knowing others is over there, but we don't have to think to hard about that, do we?

I'm cultivating the punk rockery of eating baby carrots dipped in that hippy peanut butter with the oil on top while reading about celebrities' histories. Did you know that Willem Defoe changed his name from "William" so that people wouldn't call him "Billy." Don't believe everything you read, especially here. I implore you. I'm ruing not bringing aluminum foil to work, so I can cut out pieces of cardboard and fashion them together on my body to be dressed as a disco ball. That would be just the thing to repair my Halloween/ Thanksgiving/ Christmas spirit. Now, wouldn't it?

Bee out.

Can't Stay Gone

Ok, thank goodness this hiatus is probably not going to stick. When do I miss my blog the most? When I'm last-minute studying for a test the next day. What I am looking at is hopefully my last test before my last final in my college career. I've nailed down the solidest C you ever did see and need to put on a good show to keep myself there, so it figures this is the time when I feel the greatest need to write.

I was getting into getting away from being overly personal here, but this has gone a little too far. I need blogging to be for fun and for free and was making it into some weirdness in my head, but I took a break and that's gone away for now, whether anyone reads my blatherings or not. The good thing is my slutty blog always takes me back no matter how flaky I am. That's why I love her.

My familial unit will either be moving at the end of November or the end of January (which is what I am hoping for). Our friend/ landlord made it an easy decision since he is raising the rent by $350 in the next lease term (after Mr. Bee put in the wood floors, thanks). That makes our house comparably priced to sites in "the city," which is fair, indeed, but not for me. I want to move near where I can take buses around and hopefully not be faking it with my ex's address to keep my kids at their school, where I am millimeters away from student teaching in the fall. This is a good development.

I am keeping my eyes open for a cheap two-bedroom place where I can live with my children there half the time, the boys in the weekdays and 14 year-old every two weeks. The Lip Model is staying with her dad full time these days and it's actually been pretty good all around. I'd rather she want to stay with me, but I think I have to wait for her to want that if it is ever going to happen at this point. I've been sleeping in the girls' room for the two weeks when it's empty and that loft in the other and I feel far more centered. My marriage is dead. It's sad, but true, but also good to just accept. I could go into more gory details, and you know if I keep this up, I will, but for now suffice it to say damage continues to be done when we put things in those terms, so I've stopped doing that. Pretty much. If the people coming to look at our place today want it though, I'm pretty much ascrewed. I've gotten my financial aid restored for the spring, so late January works like a gem, but... I may need my androgynous Yeti to keep me warm come camping time, otherwise.

One would think I'd come back with more than just this, but I'm not. I'm going to do NaNoWritMo starting next week and figure my blog can be a place where I can post links or updates or something. I'm sick of writing the same two chapters over and over again, and actually wrote out this whole Flo-Joe book outline with her cousin, DaLisa (here)/ more likely Deena for the book thing idea. Flo Joe's either good in short spurts or I'm thinking as a side character in something more lengthy. The point of Nano, of course, being that there is less thinking than writing. I've got an outline and I'm just going to make a go of it. My goal is to have some material to submit to the ginormous literary contest UT does in the springs. If I fail in a novel sort of way this year (again), I will submit poetry, at least.

When I stopped blogging, I also got off the coffee sauce. I know. I know. What else fun in the world there. I don't drink, don't smoke. Now no coffee. Let's just say my social life isn't humpin' or anything, but since I make a mean herbal tea, I have been feeling better physically since. Last week The Future President had the swine flu for reals, but we couldn't get it confirmed. I took her to the doc on Monday and the doc said she for sure had the flu, and two other friends told me that h1n1 is the only flu going around Austin right now, but that the CDC is not recommending testing except in severe cases or cases in which a test result would determine course of action because the test is crummy. It's pretty crappy just to give up on documenting such things, and I sure would have rather known for sure, but her best friend's mom had a confirmed case the week before and she had spent the night over there right before her mom came down with it. I'd rather just know that we are or aren't immune. I'll assume she is, but I suspect more of us have had it or been exposed to it. It was like a regular flu, but a little more lung oriented. I highly recommend this product. Seriously. Plus I made lung teas.

In fact, I just made my first geek herb move ever and asked our local healthy grocer to order me a pound of an invaluable lung herb just for me since they never carry it anymore. I actually fear it will cease to be available, since it is one of those ones that's very effective and they seem to be swallowed up by big Pharma- lobelia. It's purported to be sold only for aromatic use, yeah right, but that's because it's very potent, and it only takes a tad. You can buy it otc in this, a fine product, which I highly recommend. It works very well to expel phlegm, even very stagnant phlegm. MMMM. Phlegm. Next thing you know I'll be talking about eating placentas. Yum. Sorry, it's too late to get your money back.

Did I mention I saved my place of employment from being burned down yesterday. It doesn't take more than a warm body to detect a the smell of an electrical fire in the making, but it was my warm body that did just that. Just trying to keep up a place to go every weekend, so I can keep bloggin', ya know. Also, since Randal and I are like incestuous Siamese blog twins, I figure I'd better stick around since I'm growing a faint mustache and I can't claim to be a guy without some of his finer physical features. Plus, I like the way he gropes our boobies.

Four score minus a year or so ago, Liberality gave me an award and I'm lame, so I'm going ahead and adding it to the prestigious showcase, undeservedly so. Here is all the fine print:

I am to forthwith give this award to four other bloggers that I see as creative. But first I must post a list of seven things that I like, not including people:

1. Esiak Tea
2. planting seeds
3. kissing women
4. writing poetry
5. joking around and snuggling with The Genius and Snaggletooth
6. the way my cat Applesauce knows I'm going to bed and runs and pushes the door open, like clockwork, to come lay up by my head when I sleep.
7. dreaming

I have no idea who has this already, plus I'm like a well-oiled prodigal son here, but here goes. I'm still gonna break the rules and go with two of my favorite writers of late:

• Doc (Go wish him and Flannery a happy anniversary and a buttload of prosperity!) and
• Übermilfy (Who I am living mere minutes away from and have yet to make her highly anticipatory acquaintance. I look forward to it.)

Fell free to accept this award publicly or privately. If there is any way in hell it can make you feel a little smug for a day then my work here is done. You are both deserving and since that's coming from me... uhhh.

Crap, if I had let the building burn down and I were at a different location, I might be able to beef up this fat post even more with a YouTube video of an advertisement of sorts. As it stands, I have no excuse now, but to go study.

Wish me luck and nudity.

-Love F.

Just leave your "I told you so's" in comments next to the fruitcake. Thanks.

Well, I decided, after the last time I said I was leaving here only to change my mind and had to come groveling back, that I won't do that again. Remember when I shut things off and went "private," which was a big ol' pain in the ass? So, if you googled some nasty variation of housewives bonking their washing machines or other vibrating devices and/ or I know and love you here, you may have noticed I've not been posting, but neither have I said I wouldn't be.

I don't want to say I never will again. Here I am doing it. But, I haven't been feeling it lately. I've got a lot going on in the 3-D world, and have lost my taste for broadcasting the play by play here. Of course, it may well return, but in the event it doesn't, I wanted to tell you that the other night I attended a poetry reading here in Austin. Maybe I'll do it more. Maybe I won't, but I sure appreciated a few things about the experience. For one, I was able to search through my own tags and find material that, in the course of writing frequently over the past two and a half years, was here and I was happy to read aloud to a lovely bunch of supportive and varied sorts of writers amongst whom it made me feel a little like I've felt here with you. You are my friends, fellow writers. I value that.

It may be the case that I start some new blog eventually, one I own in the meat world, or create another pseudonym for. I don't know yet, and like I said, I could come back here next week like a prodigal bastard son insisting I deserve an allowance. I don't want to quench the slight urge I have to be dogmatic or committal, either way. If a blog isn't for fun and for free, then it's not for me. Plus, I always love to hear Tengrain admonish that "I'll be back, because they always come back."

I had just started up with Flash Fiction Friday and may resume there, too, but I am hoping to write a grant for some things for my kids' school. I really should try to pass this last class this third time, so I can just graduate already. I'm more prone to writing the more personal things, like when I start my period (it was yesterday, for those keeping track), in a little journal where I'm writing by hand again these days. I haven't yet realized the unrealisticality of my intending to participate in NaNoWriMo and I've become too lazy to even want to provide the few links I should have already provided thus farly.

If I start a new blog, I may come here and say so and link to it in comments, or it may well be the case that I post here tomorrow and pretend this never happened, like that Seinfeld episode in which George quits his job, then regrets it, and tries to show up the next day like nothing happened-- which does eventually go his way, he realizes-- just after he's slipped his boss a "mickey." I'm sure this will work out here, in any event, along lines like those.

I bid you adieu, my loves.

Thank You Ma'am, May I Have Another Health Care Video?

Sure!

I love this!

Operation Hey Mackey! - Whole Foods, Oakland from Jamie LeJeune on Vimeo.

Giving New Meaning to "Funny or Die"...

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Flash Fiction Friday #2: It's a Long Way to the Top (of The Stage)

Nicole’s cataracts had worsened, so I knew she was going to be running late; she's had to relearn her way around. She surprised me at the restaurant when she showed up beside our usual table and asked me, "Wow, what just happened?"

"Are you sure about that medical marijuana, Nicole?" I asked her as I helped her push in her seat. I've heard it's stronger than the regular stuff. "No, it's not that," she informed, "I haven't started taking it yet. I just got off the phone with my agent, and she's got an audition for me. I haven't talked to her in about five years, I think. She just called me out of the blue this morning. "

We went through the formalities of ordering. I wondered just how much money I'd spend monthly purchasing items just so I could sit in public places pretending they were my office. Thank goodness for the resurgence of the European-style sidewalk cafés in the form of Starbucks and its plentiful and improved offspring. I love the audacity with which the States emulates French traditions, blowing them up to absurd proportions. It's as though I am being asked, "Now that you can find Brie at Wal-Mart, why would you ever have need to return to Europe?" It didn't take long for Nicole to tell me why she'd wanted to meet me at our old restaurant, where I was going to have to actually tip for a change.

I'd been stuck in LA for twenty-five years, and at one time, had thought Nicole might be my ticket out, to New York. It's funny, she actually was, though I had no idea sitting there with her in the restaurant that day. As her agent for seven years, all I could ever get her were commercials and that one bit part on Friends, and there I was stymied by her gall, listening to her ask me to accompany her to a shoe-in audition for the next Diablo Cody film I'd just heard about. It was going to be big, her directorial debut. I could admit that Nicole was perfect for the part, in a perverted way. She is beautiful, or maybe striking, but definitely past her prime-- a funny, but apt choice to play the stripper lead role. She also told me about her upcoming cataract surgery. I was trying hard to be happy for her, as our coffee was delivered... cold.


At the audition, I gritted my teeth as I watched Nicole laughing with Dustin Hoffman, from afar. She was going to get the part; it was obvious. It was hard for me not to be jealous, but I wasn't sure which part was worse. Nicole was fifteen years my senior, and, yet, she had stolen my husband, kinda; she really did me a favor, I later saw-- plus, she didn't have a dime to show for it. I was a little jealous of her agent, who was going to make a pretty penny off her set-up without doing a lick of work. I'd heard Cody is generous and contract negotiations would be a cinch.

I made calls and texted clients while I watched Nicole do a very good job. Her years of stage acting had served her well. She definitely had a poise that might be hard to come by in the casting of an aged slut. I had to admit I was actually happy for her as she rubbed elbows with Susan Sarandon, who would be playing her best friend, also a stripper. It was hearing that Tim Robbins would play her husband that was hardest for me to swallow. He and I had dated for a time, albeit long ago. What a good kisser.

I saw Nicole trip on the old stage a few times from what I surmised was her poor eyesight, but was completely take off-guard when she suddenly fell off the stage altogether. In a flash, she was surrounded by her very own star-studded death scene, and without a second thought, I slipped my card into Diablo Cody's hand before heading out the door. It's funny how life works out, sometimes. Funny.

A Flimsy Glimpse into My Finely-Tuned Literary Mind

What books am I reading, you ask? Actually, nobody asks me that, but my son has to report which books he reads all the time, and incidentally, our list is identical.

Yesterday was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I'll spare them the embarrassing link, but suffice it to say, the author's books are the best among the best.

Certain words have entered mainstream lexicon undeservedly. Republican rhetoric alone offers many richenesses:

also too,
thousand points of light,
evildoers,
I can see _______ from my house,
straight talk express,
you betcha,
Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-kurtzman/mccain-and-palin-in-their_b_134730.html

,
misunderestimated.

You know who said them, maybe even when and where.

Even unintentionally apolitical ones, ones that beg the question, "Is our children (like such as, US Americans and the Iraq) learning?" are gems. Sometimes you have to string these words together for longer durations to get the desired dumbing effect:

"We’ve got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need ?" –Lee Iacocca
"It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago" –Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President
"More and more of our imports are coming from overseas." –George W. Bush

Of course, some are to be lauded and emulated:

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law." –Mayor David Dinkins
"I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers." ―Tina Fey (impersonating Sarah Palin in the VP debate.)

And then, there is the master of all masters...

"I invented the internet(s)." –Al Gore (Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize winner.)

While If You Give a Moose a Muffin and If You Give a Pig a Pancake have not enjoyed the same sub-culture frenzy, there is not doubt Ms. Numeroff has given us seven simple words that carry with them meaning apropos to one of life's quirkiest clusterfucks.

While we're on the subject of clusterfucks, did you ever think, "Freida, you should really be sharing all your knowledge with young people?" Well, my young Snaggletooth Grasshopper is the benefactor of such wealths. Why do I write? Because I can't act, I can't improvise, and I can't hardly (not, at times) communicate in verbal words things. Though children's books are along the lines of my attention span (if you exclude the fancy drawings), I just don't think I can hack it. The nighttime joke is, "If you ask Mommy to tell you a story...." "You get the sound of one hand clapping in the woods with no one around," is the answer to this non-question.

Whoa, what a build up to tell you the rated-T version of my rated-PG version of If You Give Mouse a Cookie Snaggletooth got before school this morning:

If you give a mouse a cookie...,
He's gonna want another one.
And, if the mouse wants another cookie...,
He's gonna have to make it himself.
If the mouse is gonna have to make his own (damn) cookie...,
He's gonna have to do the dishes.
If he's gonna have to do the (damn) dishes...,
He's probably gonna want to have the water turned back on.
If he's gonna get the (damn) water turned back on...,
He's probably gonna need some money.
If he's gonna need to get some (damn) money...,
He's probably gonna need to sell some drugs.
If he's gonna need to sell some drugs...,
He's probably gonna want a quarter for the payphone.
If he's gonna want a quarter for the (damn) payphone....

It goes on and on from quarters to jobs to beer to showering to a home to freeloaders, and then somehow wraps back around to the trouble with giving away free cookies in the first place.

I've got spin-offs involving health care motifs, environmentalism, and dating on hand for birthday parties and bat mitzvahs!

All's I need at this point is a children's book illustrator.

*(Re the whole post: I just mostly mooched this shit.)

Flash Fiction Friday #1: In the Wannabe Pithy Pit of a Peach

Stop me before I date again. Please. I just can't take the pressure. Say the right thing. Be assertive, but not so much so as to usurp my femininity. Be thin, but curvy. Neither a prude, nor a slut be. I'm not quite sure how it all started, the self-doubting. I'm pretty sure it started after I was first told I was pretty. Actually, I think it was the first time I was told I was pretty after I got breasts. Somehow, somewhere along the way, my own body became something that brought pleasure to other people more than it did to me.

I feel a little sorry for Greg. He was just the last (God, I hope) in a long line of my failed attempts to be loved. There are ways I could blame this on him, ways I might be entitled even, but I don't see the point. The point is that I learn from my mistakes. Not that I have before now, though. I like to think that this time is different. I know more now than I did before. Isn't that always true? Is this why people get married? To end dating?

When Greg picked me up to go out to dinner, I was actually just really tired. I wanted to go out, but I also wanted to stay home. I was conflicted. He was just an innocent bystander in that regard. He may later act as though our running into Todd and Elise was something I'd planned. I couldn't have picked out a better match for Greg and I than Todd and Elise, I must admit, and my feelings for Todd were still present, but ending up eating dinner all together at The Mustang Grill was pure folly, Elise's insistence. The problem now is that Greg and I have to work together. It's not like I've never dated anyone that I've worked with before. What is Happy Hour for, if not that, but things will be awkward between us. There's no denying that.

To recount the flirtations that ensued after we'd begun our collective third bottle of wine, the legs under the table, with the stockinged and socked feet and the boners and, oh God, my soaked panties, would be in poor taste. Things were hot between Todd and I in the past, and my and Greg's flirtation had been building for weeks, but I knew, ten minutes into it, what I've known for years hadn't gone away, despite my neglect.

Elise and I took our to-be-expected bathroom jaunts with restraint, which was hard after the first; the brutal truth staring me in the mirror day in and day out was glaring even more accusatorily with Elise there next to me in that funky green bathroom. When she asked me to retie her top's feature, I stood dutifully behind her. Her long hair smelled very nice and I asked her to lift it, so it wouldn't get caught in the knot I was slowly fashioning. This revealed her neck. I told her I liked her shirt, that it was flattering, and she quite nimbly managed to do a 180 between me and the counter top, self-sacrificially pinning herself there, our breasts now pressed together. I don't know about Elise, but, once again, I felt as though I'd jumped back into my own skin. How is it that I always manage to forget this? My make-up, my hair straightening, and especially my high heels, seemed superfluous in that moment. Her kiss was all that mattered.

I realized as Greg, the last to leave, left at 6AM this morning, that our date had probably gone a little too well in his book, for me. It was possible I'd opened up a can of worms that would be difficult to contain..., again. Is it possible that my sexuality has been 95% a matter of socialization? How were these encounters with women in contexts involving men so readily available while, when left to my own devices, they haven't happened in a thousand years?

Though this is not the million dollar question, it is behind one. "How's" and "why's" just seem to distract me, these days, "why" seeming the more egregious of the two. For me, dating has become a pathology, a compulsion whose aim is to distance me from myself. I'm sure it's not inherently evil, or any such nonsense. It might even be wise in certian instances, but I can't tell you how many times over the years it has brought me to the edge of identity suicide, ie.marriage, the ultimate self-betrayal. When things are going well, the urge to spoil them by changing their name and expecting more out of them seems literally universal.

Today, I feel as though at least that weight has been lifted off my formerly padded shoulders.

(This post, FFF #1, has been brought to you by Flash Fiction Friday, proud sponsor of the 2009 World Vaseline Revival Concert Tour. Remember, "You're soaking in it."™)

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giving technoforwhati another blowjob

Save Me From My Hungry Kitty

I know this is going to come as a shock to you both, but sometimes, just sometimes, I piss people off. I know. I know. It's hard to believe. I can scarcely believe it myself sometimes, but there it is. Out. On the table. Pick it up and smell it. Eww, I'm sorry. Don't do that, but do feel it up..., please. Aww. Yep.

I did one tiny thing, not because I planned it, but because it just happened, this week. I bought one of these here moleskine planners. I'm in school supply fetish heaven, and organized to boot. My old planner ran out and I was carrying all these tiny details around in my head, but not with much interest in doing so, and a thing here and there fell through my crack. The point? Besides the daily blocked areas, there is a notebook sheet beside each. I'm lovin' making the lists, etc., but since the darned thing started in June, yesterday I actually wrote a journal entry back on that day. This is important.

My favorite way to write poetry is to focus in on a strong emotion when I am having it, and then listen to music, or whatever. (This especially works when I am driving or walking around in public somewhere.) What I then do is just try and notice words that interest me. Yesterday those words were "chemical, sappy (sweet sticky drag), solitary, never stellar, clenched (jaw and cunt), the hue, and rue." Then, I proceed to make a poem.

Our Biochemical Romance

Like a syrupy, red drug,
A sappy, sweet, sticky drag on my soul,
Your flavor lingers, taints and tints.
Though we were never stellar,
Rather raw and earthy, organic,
Our highs were easy to obtain.

Lest this seem objectionable,
A clenched jaw and cunt can say two things:
"Ours was a hue I both miss and rue."
An utter ambivalence hardly not felt,
I'd put aside just long enough to be discarded, like a placenta,
Six months pregnant... "for painting."

Our child and I were made imaginary enemies of the arts.
Now finding myself again blissfully irresolute, or, perhaps,
Precisely because I am, the growing backlash, coming unleashed,
Is revealing our time as relevant to this.
Despite the fatigue caused by the persistence of my doubts,
Jumps and leaps cry to be made even as I crawl and rest and try to hide.

Though I will leave you and my mission not (complain and complain some more), six sentences (which may well elect me president of my tiny Epsilon neighborhood) led to six-worded memoirs, led to writing an actual true story (that could be made into a comic)! Cormac then invited me to the ever fashionable Friday Flash Friday, as I now invite you, and my moleskine doobob begs to be filled with notes in futile preparation for NaNoWritMo. Maybe, just maybe, I'll quit masturbating and complaining and get on a fucking fast track to Hooterville before my hungry kitty* eats me alive. (Ooh, the incidental reference to intersecting petticoats is just a bonus. That's all it is. A bonus.)

*(pic by one creative girl- hot)

Thank You Whale, May I Have Another?

Pitifully enough, I almost didn't write anything because I didn't find this picture in an expeditious enough fashion, and alls of a sudden I can't write a blog post without the pic in the left, and I have another mannequin pic, but can't put another of those just yet. So formulaic.

Here is a six sentences I am not going to submit:

You say you want to ride on my roller coaster, but I don't believe you. It's hard for me to stop the damn thing while you are yelling, "Giddyup!" It's physics, but simple, the momentum. Don't you hear your own complaints that it's making you sick? Get off. Get out of my way and get on your own!

I am so sick of this being a blog that accounts my obsession with the falling apart and patching back together of my shackin' up marriage. I couldn't give a shit less about politics right now. I feel safe putting things in Obama's hands, but know he will let me down time and time again. My hair is feeling like it is getting long and "they" cleverly put a thrift store in right next to where I cash my paychecks, and this may add up to better shirts, in general, but overall, I'm just crampy and cranky. That one time sex was just an appeasement, not by me, but at my expense, or whatevers. I am most likely just to get the bare minimum of my needs met just enough that I look like a jerk for complaining. It's called survival mode and I'm tired of it.

The thing is, I don't have anything else to write, but I need to write very badly. Crystallizing this ball of emotions into a poem seems like a lot of work and brain power I don't want to muster, and NaNoWriMo is sounding so far away. Because of my crazy tent escapades, and my having taken on the afternoon shift with the kids more than the evening lately, tonight was the first night I helped Snaggletooth with this homework all year (which I guess makes this the second week of homework for him so far), and it was the highlight of my day.

He tries so hard. He has to. He had a slew of characters as older siblings. One, a fuck up in many ways. We suspect she stole his first Nintendo DS and he had to receive a slightly upgraded version for his birthday this year when he shouldn't have had to use gift credits there to begin with. His other sister is pretty awesome, but she's very busy and a little cruel to him. His brother is always always correcting him. His dad is sterner with him than he is with anyone else and he may not get over the eating issue his dad is creating by getting frustrated with him for not eating his dinner until he's 32 or so. And then, there's me. He is the one person on this earth I feel I have loved from the get go unconditionally and not really fucked up too badly. My pregnancy with him caused my midwife to catch the goiter I had at 3.5 cm and rising fast, I got sober when he was a month old, and despite the fact that my pregnancy with him and then thyroid suppressing medication and surgery have made for my never really losing that pregnancy weight, I can say he no less than saved my life on many levels. But, bless his heart, he has to ask me over and over and over again for the things he needs to wait on me to get/ do for him. Thankfully, he has adapted and he asks. If you have needs, I'm not gonna meet them, plain and simply. I can't even meet my own. Tonight he even thanked me for helping me with his homework. Of course, quizzing him for his spelling words involved a covers cave, but still... to thank me. That boy lives up to his name, Noble-- which, incidentally, was Mr. Bee's grandfather's name.

I slept in a tent last night again. On the one hand I bought myself an air mattress, and was generous in buying a queen-sized one rather than miserly buying a twin-sized on for me and only me from now on and forever amen. On the other cloven hoof, however, I bought it at Wal Mart at 9:30 PM. If I were in a better mood, I would even do a sales pitch for the cute little air pump, but that sounds a little cheery to me right now, so fuck it along with the dishes and that homework. I guess I'm counting on being more in the mood for all these things and much more tomorrow. It's a tall order.

Well, I just found out on the scientific facebook time o' death o' meter that I shall be dying by being crushed by a whale in just over two years, so I have lots o' shit to do, like go mope and sleep on the couch. I'm tired, so it sounds very pleasant. Did I mention I'm crampy? For those of you keeping track, you know what to do.

Mannequin Caught With Pants Down, No Mystery Revealed

Move along people. Oh wait, you just got here. I wasn't ready. Oh, there was this whole Jodie Foster/ Sandra Dee from Grease lesbian erotica piece that centered on Jodie's having an exceptionally good hair day I was working on, but then I was getting stuck on all the little details and, it seems, you've caught me with my pants down... again.

After seeing several lovely bloggers have their six sentences selected for Six Sentences, I stuck my hand in the cookie jar and managed to squeeze out a little of all the fame and glory. I am hoping to at least squeeze today's post out of the adventure.

Writing those six little sentences (seriously, I could probably write a chapter with six sentences, the way I just go on and on-- I wonder if they have to be proper sentences) has given me a lil' tiny drop of insight. I keep starting over and over and over and over again in long writing project whatevers, at least partially, because there is a sentiment, a thought, a slice out of time, sign, sealed, delivered, and now yours. Oh, the commitment. Alas, alack. These six are already passé, so we now call them fiction. See how it works?

You know I didn't take this picture, right? I didn't, but it does go stunningly with the ladies below. I want to set our friend without the mouth and head from yesterday's post up on a blind (sic) date with this here non-committal genital bulge dude. I think they could still have much to offer each other.

I slept at home the last two nights. Friday, Mr. Bee took his imbibing self on over to a friend's house for the overnight, and last night we went and saw Inglorious Basterds. As I heard from several of you, it was superb. I'm taking everything day by day these days, which is just the attitude that, mashed potatoes willing, will take me into tomorrow, Labor Day, my first Monday of September sobriety date. Tomorrow will make seven years (which I've been claiming already for several months now). I don't go to meetings too often, if at all, these days, but I carry a lotta what AA had to offer around in my pocket with me, and I am grateful it was there for me when I needed it.

This is the part where I refer to my failures, my complaints, my innermost, deepest darkest fears and longings. Finally, after being on a three-month sex strike (what a cunt I am), I mauled my lovely husband, and must report that sex without Zoloft is much much better for me. Not only do I now feel like I have a way to deal with feeling unsafe (emotionally) around someone who's been using (I've got my tent and sleeping bag raring to go), I've got a tiny tiny shred of dignity that I can check at the bedroom door and pick back up on the way out. Feeling dually unwanted and unwanting was destroying me. I may well feel different tomorrow, and the important part, whether any one else likes it or not, is that that is allowed.

I'm feeling quite sad and contemplative today, and a little scared. I am most grateful that I've learned I can toss my worries into our big collective pot of mashed potatoes and then they even taste good.