True story #1422

She sleeps seated at her desk, with her feet on the floor in front of her.  When she sighs herself awake, the night-dwelling rodent of her vulnerability scares itself out of the room just as sure as a sun rising over open water.  She wakes up mean and she wakes up hard.  It’s self-preservation at its finest and most basic; I imagine daybreak feels like a shattered skull to these kids.

It is my job to ask how she feels about making the phone call that would land she and her sisters in a group home with their parents’ rights terminated.  She wears clean, pink shorts and a matching shirt, but nobody has done her hair.  The consequence to this simple oversight, of course, is that the child looks unloved.

“It was hard,” she says, no more than ten.  She is thinner than she ought to be, in a way that looks more like disease and less like a phase.  “But I have no egrets.”

“Egrets are birds,” I say, smiling.

“I don’t have any of them either.”

Credit: www.noodlesnacks.com

Perhaps

I loved a man once who drove a car I could feel in my veins.  I was a kid, doing homework, staring at a TV, racing down the street with long legs and long hair and a laugh, and I could feel him.  I could feel that car, making its turns and pausing at lights.  The engine rumbled in my throat, whether I was awake or asleep.

And my brothers would play basketball while I sat on the trunk of his car, pulling leaves apart, my fingers heavy with rings that didn’t mean a thing.  I’d smile at him, and I’d push the hair out of my eyes to look at him tall in front of me.  I can see myself still, putting a hand flat against his side, pushing him in between me and the sun, so I could see him better.  And I’d feel my brothers’ eyes on that man who was too old to be in their driveway with their kid sister on the trunk of his car.

He never touched me.  He cried in front of me once, and I cried in front of him again.  He put an arm around me in the back seat of a car, wincing at the flames dancing there, and it wasn’t my job to know how to control it yet.  There was a night when we drank the sun down with a bottle of tequila passed between us.  I ended up on my back on a sofa, and he ended up with his nose buried deep in my hair.  But he pulled his face away with his eyes closed, and he left the room, shaking his head and muttering that he loved me.

He bit his knuckle once to avoid touching me.  And I loved that.  I loved that best of all.

Surgery: Part 2

I don't know what to do here anymore.  I don't know what to say.

Someone asked me the other day, "In your college writing classes, did you ever. . ."

Truth: I have never once in my entire life taken a writing class.  My major was concentrated on reading.  I learned to craft effective responses to my readings, but I've never taken a writing class.

I don't know how to write outside of the fact that I have always written and enjoy writing.  I have no technical skill.  I just write when I have something to say, and then I try to make the writing as close to how I remember the experience as possible.

Although most of the time I am overflowing with words, I don't have much to say these days.

I don't know how to write, but there's a piece of advice I've always felt was true, and that is that you can't write unless you're living.  You will eventually run out of experiences and memories and you will fall flat on your face searching for new ways to describe old things.  The only way to guarantee new words is to continually seek out new experiences.

And so it is incredibly likely that I won't have anything new to say until the sun comes out again.

Here is the only new experience I've had lately, and here is all I have to say about it:

On Friday I had laparoscopic surgery to determine the cause of chronic pelvic pain.  They sent me home with a DVD of the surgery, and my husband wanted to watch it.  I told him no.  He asked again.  I relented.  The first part was what you would expect--just a mishmash of pink, indistinguishable organs.  Blood vessels and things that pulsate.  And then all of a sudden, the scope was removed from my body and placed on the tray next to my body.  And the room came into view.   

And in that room, my body.   

And in my body, fingers and instruments and things.   

I was restrained and people were cutting holes in me.  I am not squeamish about blood or life or death, but I am hypervigilant about consent and being held down and having things done to me against my will.   

I couldn't get to the remote fast enough to stop it.

And so there it is--the memory that I didn't have to have.  A memory of something I didn't even really experience.  I wasn't there, which was ideal, and now I have been there.

They put a tube down your throat during surgery.  I know, because I've seen it. 

I run out the bedroom

Cause I can’t really breathe

A recurrent fear of being tied down

And I would like to blame it on the artist in me

But there’s no one there, so that's bullshit

"A Million Reasons" by Stellastarr*

PS.  I'm fine.  And relieved.  And grateful.

Friday fluff

This comes from here.


Do you think people are good
I actually think that most people are very good.  I don't know that we all (myself at the top of the list) do the best job showcasing our goodness.

Do you like meeting people
Sometimes I hunger for people like you can't even imagine.  But there are times when I will walk three thousand miles out of my way to avoid saying hello to anyone.  That's because I'm a jerk.  Some days, like today, I'm a bit schizophrenic about it.  The guy sits too close to me on the steps and my first reaction is that I want to punch him in the throat because who the fuck does he think he is?  Then he opens up his mouth and truly interesting things come out of it, and I realize that there is only one jerk sitting on the steps and it's not the guy with the fist in his throat.

Do you shake hands
This is difficult.  I've lived in so many different places, and the rules are different everywhere.  Caracas, you had to kiss everyone.  Just once on the cheek.  Get to Kenya and now folks are holding hands for the duration of a conversation.  Abu Dhabi, now we're kissing sometimes on one cheek, somethings on both.  I once got into a kissing-thing with a group of people who all did three kisses.  Left, right, left.  Times five.  The whole thing is a clusterfuck.  I wish we could all get together and just decide.  So I stop looking like an asshat.  My favorite though would be the one kiss on a cheek.  Especially if it's coming from a guy who smells good and who I really probably shouldn't be kissing at all.  Heh heh.

Is a good handshake important
No.  But a good handjob is paramount.

Do you get along with the oposite sex
I do.  Rather well.  My husband says it's either my most endearing quality or else my most worrying.

Do you like being around small children
I love my children, of course, but I've found they have sated my desire to be around children.  (Psssst.  Shhhh.  Parenting is pretty much bullshit.)

Do you like yourself
Like any good mood-disordered person, I go through phases.  Most days I honestly think I'm okay.  For approximately 40 hours a month, I am convinced that I can do anything and that I am truly amazing.  Hide the credit cards and keep me indoors during this time, because otherwise I am likely to enroll myself in some kind of doctorate program for which I am underprepared or else volunteer with Greenpeace or get spontaneous, regrettable tattoos.  When the depression hits an all-time low, I will be unable to tell you a single redeeming quality of mine.

Do you have a best friend
I do.

Do you think your a good friend
There aren't a ton of things I try to be good at.  This is one of them, though.  My friends are balls-out awesome, and knowing that they choose me to hang out with often gets me through to the next day.  I don't fuck with stuff like that.

Do you listen to gossip
I still don't really understand why it's not okay to gossip.  I know it's not nice, and I know it's not too productive, but it just doesn't rile me up the way it does some people.  Don't make it all you do; and don't be a complete shithead about it, but you know, whatever.  I promise that if you want to share some gossip with me, I will talk about it for the appropriate length of time and then I'll drop it without going Full Mean Girl on you.

Do you think midgets are funny
OH MY SHIT.  I'll tell you what's funny.  What's funny is the little guy in Bad Santa, when Billy Bob Thornton makes fun of him for not being able to hold his liquor and the little dude says, "I weigh ninety pounds, you dick."  Whenever my husband tries to convince me to have another beer with him even though it's pretty clear that I shouldn't, I tell him this.

Do you feel sorry for fat people
Oh my god.  JOULES PICKED THIS QUIZ.  Don't get mad at me.

With the caveat that I have never known what it's like to struggle with being overweight, or even, really, to be held accountable for my diet, I will say that I do not feel sorry for fat people.  I feel sorry for very, very, very thin people.  I can empathize with the struggles of being overweight, but "feel sorry for" is not the terminology most fitting to how I feel.  Plus?  There's this whole body acceptance movement that's gaining momentum.  There is a very good chance that the "fat people" are just fine with their weight.

(I'm running for office next month.)

Is it funny when someone falls
I think it's hilarious.  Whenever we're watching something on the tube that involves some kind of physical comedy, my husband stops watching the TV and starts watching me for my reaction.  Apparently, I do some kind of laugh that involves no sound and a lot of hand waving.  Whatever.

Do you like animals
I do.  I just adopted a cat.  Estelah wanted to name her Rhino.  Dylan wanted to name her Fire Hydrant.  In the end, Estelah's second choice, Sally, won.  Sally the cat.

Do you help people alot
I do.  But I'll tell you what--it's not ingrained.  I see some people, and their bodies just seem to kind of move in the direction of helping others.  Mine does not.  I have to make the conscious decision to do so.  I blame my parents.  Obvs.

Do you do random nice things for people
Yep.  I do.  I've been known to drop off some groceries if I know your brat is sick.  I used to make sandwiches to bring to homeless people.  I'll pay your parking meter if it's low.  I get off on random acts of kindness.  Not just not-being-a-douche acts but actually going-out-of-your-way-to-do-something-nice acts.

See?  I'm not such a bitch after all.

Kind of.

Next week, we're doing this one: http://www.quizopolis.com/survey/7278/Controversial-Issues-Survey/

Link up!

What I want

When I was first pregnant with my son, I craved egg noodles with salt and butter.  I wanted to feel full and heavy.  I needed some kind of gravitational draw from my belly to the earth, as I hoped away the weeks it took for that baby to take root and grow.  Like a forest, I was dark and dank and full of the quietness of life.

This is like that.

I gather my friends around me and they lift me up, like bridesmaids fussing over the details.  I ask them, “Will you make me laugh?”  And I do it not because I need to laugh, but because I need to know that there are people in my life with the ability to change the lens of my own perception.  It’s the Velveteen Rabbit all over again, as I try to sort out what is real.

I want to surround myself with warmth and softness.  I want it handmade and homemade and with a cup of tea.  I want it slow, and I want it long.  I want candlelight and to hold you by the back of the neck and look into your eyes when you make me come.  I want for this, for you, to anchor me here.

Five things that are true

1. I applied for a job.
2. The resulting interview was the first I've had since 2004.
3. I was told that the job had opportunity for advancement.
4. I was told that the aforementioned opportunity was that I could be trained to do face painting at children's birthday parties.
5. I have a master's degree.

Career objective: To apply paint uniformly in order to create
a realistic interpretation of the living dead.

Surgery

It's cold and clear.  The sun is bright and it doesn't do a goddamn thing against the cutting wind.  But it's a fight I can live with, if you know what I mean.

They put a tube down your throat during surgery.  Your body is just a thing then, and their job is to cut out the black bits.  You cannot be trusted to do even simple things like breathe correctly, because you are not there.

But when you wake up, there will be evidence of them having done what they did, and you will be left to wonder what they thought about or, worse, what they said to each other in your presence, when you were gone.  You cannot avoid thinking of slabs of meat having been cut away from the bone and offered up for sale.  And I am certain, without being certain at all, that this is what we're all afraid of: the flesh being separated from whatever else there is.

There are stages of anesthetic sleep.  Stage two is characterized by uninhibited excitement.  Eyes roll, bodies jerk, sometimes the patient must be restrained.  How many people are in the room?  What do they say when they hold me?  Do they know that I would almost rather live with the black bits than with the thought of them holding me and my waking to not remember?  Do they know that I am not the girl who gets held?

"You can't just hug whoever you want, you know," my mother-in-law chastised her husband.  "She doesn't like that."  I don't know if I did or if I didn't.  All I know is that the weight of his arm slung around my shoulders was something that would never become background noise.

There is absolutely nothing casual about my decision to touch you.

I can't reconcile the image of the meat on the table, being picked up and tossed about by butchers' hands.  It is, for me, the most shocking part about it all.

Friday fluff

This comes from here.


What's your sexual orientation?
I'm probably a 4.27.  How 'bout you?

americantransman.com

Do you share your bedroom with someone? If yes, with who??
My husband is invited nightly.  He gets kicked out at the first snore though.  Sorry, Partner, you knew that shit before you married me.  Also: Estelah.  She's like a freaking virus.  She goes wherever the hell she wants.  I've woken up many times with an impossibly small elbow in my gut.  People who say I should cherish these days can eat it.  I'm tired.

Do you resemble a famous celebrity?
Unfortunately.  Jaime Lee Curtis.  I've been told that since I was 11.

2flashgames.com  
The prettiest JLC picture that exists anywhere.
My breasts don't look like this.  I'm not sad about that.

I'm surprised any of us ever got laid.  Ever.
I'm the inordinately tall one to the right, with the jutting clavicle and the stripper leg.
The one who most resembles, even at the age of 14, an old, androgynous, two-bit actress.
I'm tall.  See the little ones on the left?  One of them became my best friend.  I ate the other one.

What brand is your mobile?
Do people really talk like that?  My mobile is Apple brand.

What keychains do you have with your house keys?
I don't.  I have a single car key and a single house key on a ring.  Stuff is bullshit.

Do you drive? If yes, what cars do you own?
I love to drive.  Driving is one of my top two favorite things to do.  I own a Ferrari, a Bentley and two Audis.  Next, I'm saving up my money to buy a 2000 Mazda Premacy.  Bitch is gonna be suh-weet.

Do you read the newspaper?
No.  I don't.  If I'm walking past and there's an interesting headline, I'll buy it.  But everything's online now.  Feels decadent to kill a tree just for news that's going to be old by the time it's printed anyway.  The NYT digital edition serves my needs.

Is the TV on right now?
No.  The TV is not on.  The computer is.  I've never been a tv-in-the-background kind of girl.

What song are you hearing right now?
I'm listening to the dehumidifier dehumidifying.  It makes me feel sleepy.  I feel on the verge of slipping into a coma, actually.

Any favorite books you wanna mention here?
I got in trouble for reading VC Andrews' Flowers in the Attic when I was ten.  My mom found the book on my bed and returned it to her bookshelf.  I returned it to my bed.  She put it on a higher shelf.  I returned it to my bed.  She put it in her drawer.  I returned it to my bed.  Then she yelled at me for going through her drawers.  This is pretty much how we communicated as a family--just sub out the book for various things like tampons, condoms, college applications, etc.  I am tempted to say Flowers in the Attic was my favorite childhood book.  So there's that.

Are you up-to-date with the latest news on celebrities?
Nope.  I used to be, a few years ago.  And then I realized how much time I was wasting by giving a shit.  Also, I realized I was desensitizing myself to the fact that these celebrities are real people.  Real, living, breathing people who are just as stupid as I am.  Who gives a shit.  It's all Photoshop anyway.

That being said, I apparently care enough about them to have four separate people email me the news of David Beckham's underwear line for H&M.  Four.  I'm making them all the godparents of my children.  Obvi.  The one who sent me the video, though, kind of wins.  If you're going to watch this, make sure you have time to take a shower afterwards.




Have you ever lied to a best friend?
I lie all the time to my BFF.  The bad thing is, she knows it.  She'll be like, "You're being ridiculously inappropriate, aren't you?"  And I'll be like, "NO!  Oh my god, no.  It's so not like that.  You have no idea how appropriate I am being."  And then she'll be like, "You need to shut that shit down, you freak."  Sigh.

Do you consider yourself intelligent?
Yes.  Though sometimes I wonder.

Are you a morning person or a night person?
I'd be a night person if my children actually SLEPT.  But as it is now, the only chance of my getting any real sleep is before two--when my daughter wakes up, like clockwork, every fucking night, to punish me for my desire to have a family.

She's holding a dinosaur.  She is ALWAYS holding a dinosaur.
That's how you know something's off with her.

Do you enjoy doing stuff on your own?

Heh heh.  Yes.

Next week, we're doing this one: http://www.quizopolis.com/survey/7478/Interesting--Survey/  And just to clarify: you absolutely do not need an invitation to join up.  If you read this and want to play, please do.  Everyone is welcome.

A mouth full of spiders

Seems lately I can't write unless someone's given me a prompt.  Thus, my submission for Lance's 100 Word Song.  This week's song was Hotel Illness by Black Crowes.  To explain to you how I got from that song to this response would take many hundreds of words, so I'll spare you.  But Lance says it's okay.  He says there aren't any rules.  So here goes:

Crystal grew up swaddled in the stories her mother told about her.  “This one, she’s trouble,” she said with a glint in her eye and a shake of her head.  “Independent and fierce.  Wild.” 

Every cup spilled and every tantrum thrown were carefully catalogued as evidence of the girl’s propensity towards rebellion.  And, somehow, of her inherent strength. 

When she turned eighteen, I bought her a dog, one of those angry, sturdy-looking ones that comes with papers you pay a thousand bucks for.  Her mother told me she needed it for protection.  Looks to me, she needed it for company.

See a little light

My submission for Lance's 100 Word Song, where the song this week was Bob Mould's See A Little Light.  This is decidedly not the type of music I'd prefer to be listening to, but I'm sure lots of people said the same when I went with Radiohead's vastly unpopular Idioteque two weeks ago.  So I played along anyway.  Wikipedia tells me that this Bob Mould character raised a ton of money to support the legalization of same-sex marriage.  And that is something I can get behind.  So that's where I went with it.

********

“You’ve never been ashamed a minute in your life.”  It was a statement, not a question, as she traced the curve of my shoulder with a single finger.  I smiled, taking the last draw off my cigarette before dropping it into the glass of scotch beside the bed.

“There’s no time for it,” I said.  “There’s hardly time for this,” I said, kissing the spot just beneath her ear.  “And I’d much rather do this.”

In the shower later, I would attack my skin with soap, bruising my breasts red with the effort of becoming clean enough to go home.

(Sorry for the whole don't-publish-jack-for-days-and-then-publish-twice-in-two-hours thing.  I stick to a schedule on Trifecta.  I can't be expected to keep it up over here, too.)

Gynecology around the world

As you know, I move around a lot.  When I move, a lot of my stuff gets left behind, because it's usually cheaper to just buy a new one when I get to my new destination.  That's true for a lot of things, but not everything.  Not things like, say, my uterus.  I bring my uterus everywhere with me.  I'm also pretty good about bringing my uterus to a doctor once a year for the full workup.  I missed a year once (it was that time I had two babies in 18 months) and felt so freaking guilty about it that when I did see a doctor, it was more like seeing a priest for confession.

All of this means that I have seen gynecologists in the following locations: Florida, Massachusetts, New Orleans, Venezuela, Kenya, Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong.  I want to tell you about all of them, but I'm going to focus on the Kenyan gyno because he was the funniest.  (One of the Florida ones was the hottest.  But THAT is fodder for a different post.  A much different post.)  Dr. P had the exact same laugh as Dr. Nick Riviera from the Simpsons.  He basically WAS Dr. Nick Riviera.

netbrawl.com

I was pregnant when I came to Dr. P. and pregnant again, though with a different baby, when I left Dr. P.  I was young(er), a bit freaked out to have already miscarried half of my attempts at procreation, and ridiculously enthusiastic/involved/psycho about all things pregnancy.  The doctor needed to be perfect, you know?  He was not.

Dr. P was famous for withholding information he thought the mother-to-be would find unpleasant.  Here's a typical conversation with Dr. P:

Me:  I'm a little concerned because everyone keeps telling me that I look about four months pregnant.  But I'm actually eight months pregnant.

Dr. P:  Don't worry.  The baby has started growing again.

Me:  What the fuck are you talking about?

Dr. P: Well, you remember how for two months the baby didn't show any signs of growth or weight gain at all and we were very concerned?  No?  Oh, wait.  I see here.  I wrote "Do not worry mother" in your chart.  Well, the baby is fine now.

Dr. P. would ask me to get undressed and hop up on the table (normal procedure) while he was standing there watching (abnormal procedure).  He also had a second floor office and left the window open.  I could see into the parking lot and, true story, the construction workers could see into his office. It was there that I perfected the "act like this is just a porno" view of gynecological procedure.  It has served me well over the years.

When I said, laughingly (but with sweat rolling down my shaking limbs) that I was kind of missing my daily alcohol fix, Dr. P assured me that two glasses of wine a day wouldn't hurt the baby.  My pre-pregnancy weight was about a buck five.  Two glasses of wine on a 100-lb girl is not a casual event.  The effect on my teeny tiny baby?  I don't even want to think about it.

Dr. P told me that childbirth would be very easy for me because I had a very "roomy" pelvis.  This despite the fact that I weighed about 120 lbs when I delivered an 8 lb baby.  After the baby had to go to the NICU because he was caught in my not-so-roomy pelvis for hours and hours of unproductive labor which ended in a vacuum extraction, Dr. P laughed his Dr. Nick Riviera laugh and said, "I guess it wasn't so roomy!"  Well, wipe the blood off the wall and paint me red.

Dr. P once sent me home on a Wednesday telling me he was 100% sure I would have the baby by Saturday.  Naturally, as a first-timer, I packed the bag, called the grandparents, etc etc.  The baby came two and a half weeks later.  When I called him out on his prediction, Dr. P said, "Who can tell with these things?"

At 24 weeks, I rolled off my husband one morning to find us both adrift in a sea of blood.  The baby and I were both fine, and nobody at the hospital could tell why the hell I was bleeding so profusely.  When I saw Dr. P the following week, he reaffirmed that I was fine.  I said, "Well, how 'bout that sex thing?  Is it, like, a no-go til the baby comes?"  He said, "You're fine.  Just take it a bit easier on your husband from here on out."  Wink wink.  Seriously.  I think any other doctor would've put me on bed rest.  He just advised that we stick to more traditional positions.  Needless to say, the threat of maternal hemorrhage made the last half of that pregnancy decidedly longer than the first half.

I had the baby, despite it all.  But nine months later, when I found myself pregnant again?  I took my business elsewhere.

What about you?  Any good gyno gab?  (alliteration for the win)

Chibi Memie

CHIBI HAS A MEME!  And she totes wants us all to play along.  She gave us 11 questions and tagged 11 people, plus all Fluffers.  We're supposed to come up with 11 more questions and tag 11 more people.  So here are my answers:

What colour are your underwear right now?

I seriously just checked.  It's always funny to look down your own pants while in the kitchen.  They're army green.

What’s your least favourite food?

Oh god, I could go on and on.  I hate: butterscotch-flavored anything, banana-flavored anything (except real bananas, which are okay), peach-flavored anything (see banana caveat), spaghetti, crab, scallops, mango chutney, those really thick french fries, waffle fries, the puffy kind of Cheetos, anything in the pork/beef family. . .

Does it bother you when I put extra letters in my word? Well, too bad: I’m Canadian, eh?

I think it's hot.

How do you like your eggs?

I can't get my husband's joke of "fertilized" out of my head.  I go through phases with eggs.  I'll swear them off altogether for months and then suddenly I can't get enough of them.  I also go through phases with how I like to cook them.  I did a hardcore omelet stint for awhile and became so adept at making them that I contemplated opening a B&B just so I could make them for the masses.  For right now, I like them scrambled up over a ton of veggies.  And cheese.  God, you have got to have cheese.

What book are you currently reading? Should I read it?

I'm reading Larry's Party by Carol Shields.  One of the chapters is called Larry's Penis.  After I've read that chapter, I'll let you know whether or not the book is worth reading.

Did you have an imaginary friend? What was his/her name?

I have a hard time keeping up with real people.  Oh wait, DID I?  I tried.  I remember trying very hard to invent an imaginary friend, but it didn't really take.  I think I kept forgetting her name or something.

What is your guiltiest pleasure, keeping in mind I’m Prudy McPruderson, Mayor of Prudeville?

Well, you probably asked the wrong girl then.  Seriously?  Okay, once you take all the sins of the flesh out of the equation, you're left with dark chocolate, cold beer, and sleeping pills.  Not to be taken together.  Too often.  That makes me sound like a hardcore addict, and I'm not.  What I am is a hardcore insomniac who goes off the deep end after too many consecutive nights of being awake.  One Tylenol PM restarts the whole cycle back at its glorious beginnings again.  It has the added bonus of meaning my husband gets to wake up with the Asthmatic One when she starts coughing at 2 am.  Thus, a guilty pleasure.

If you could have any job in the whole wide world, what would it be?

I'd be a midwife in a country that actually uses midwives.

Do you watch Toddlers & Tiaras?

I watched it once.  You know what pisses me off about that show?  That the intention of the show is to piss us off.  I hate emotional manipulation.

What CD is in your CD player? (Do you still have one of those? If not, what was the last song played on your MP3 player? Should I be listening to them/her/him/it?)

I have a DVD player that plays CDs.  In it is one of my kids' Mandarin CDs.  The last song to grace my iPod was Thunder and Lightning by We Were Promised Jetpacks.  And yes, you should absolutely be listening to him/her/it.  If you have Dropbox, hit me up and I'll drop it to you.

Shoes: off at the door, or wear ‘em through the house?

For the first time ever in my life, I've instituted a take-em-off policy.  My kids are so effing dirty.  That being said, I'm sitting at my kitchen table wearing a pair of Nikes as we speak.  Nikes and army green underwear.  That's all you need to know.

And here are my questions:

1. What's the last movie you saw that was worth recommending?
2. If you had to suddenly choose another spouse, and you had your pick of anyone in the world, living or dead, who would you pick?
3. Boxers or briefs?  Or commando?
4. Hand sanitizer: the gel that's going to save you from a flesh-eating virus or the menace that is creating flesh-eating viruses?
5. If you got to pick one celebrity to be your mom, who would it be?
6. How come you don't want your mom to be your mom?
7. Lights on or lights off?
8. When I finally find the right dog to adopt, what should I name it?
9. Who would you rather have sex with: Richard Simmons or Nancy Grace?  Yes, you have to choose, and no, suicide is not an acceptable answer.
10. Okay, give us your favorite rant.  We'll listen to you.
11. How often do you eat food that you know is fucking terrible for you?

And I'm tagging y'all: Amelia, Rachel, David, Dana, Lindsey, Andrea, Amanda, and omg I can't hyperlink all of these.  And whoever else wants to play.

Friday fluff

This comes from here.


What would you do if:

Stranded in a forest alone
Oh god, that sounds amazing right now.  When I was a kid, I'd often go wandering off into wooded areas by myself.  I was the great getaway kid--get me the fuck outta here.  If I were stranded in a forest alone, I would only hope that I'd brought a pen, some paper, maybe a book and definitely the fixings for martinis.

Sensed someone stalking you
Ummm.  Yeah.  What you do is shut. it. down. yo.  If that requires a restraining order, then that is what you do.

You suddenly developed superhuman strength
My daughter asked me today if I can pick up trucks.  I told her that I could if I had to, envisioning those moms all hopped up on adrenaline, saving their babies from being crushed under heavy vehicles.  Truth is, I can hardly pick up a sandwich these days.  If you have children, a spouse who works, and no babysitter, please explain to me how the hell you find time to exercise, ok?

You saw a dead cat
Feel sorry for it if it's intact.  Feel grossed out if it's not.

You saw a dead human
I did a rotation through the hospital pathology labs as a high school nursing assistant.  It's an odd thing to pull a drawer out of a bureau and see a dead human in it.  My favorite experience though, and one I have yet to write about, was when I worked in the lab and had to sort through miscellaneous things removed from people.  I swear on a stack of bibles that I saw a complete breast floating in a bucket.  The fact that I wanted to sit down right then and there and write a haiku tribute to the experience alerted me to the fact that the study of literature, more so than that of medicine, was probably in my future.

Someone anonymously send a love note
I'd be flattered.  If you respond to this in any other way, you're a jerk.

You become blind.
There's a little tiny boy in my kid's Mandarin class who is blind in one eye.  My father is blind in one eye.  That seems to suck enough.  When I think about how that's only half as much as it could suck, I don't even know what to think.  Good excuse to get a very well-trained dog, I suppose.

Your car breaks down beside a graveyard
Probably the same thing I'd do no matter where I broke down--call my husband and complain.  Loudly.  My friend's car broke down the other day, and she told me all about how she called a tow truck and took a taxi and yaddi yah and how wasn't her husband going to be upset about the bill.  My jaw was on the floor, yo.  I cannot imagine not calling my husband first.  Not because he's more capable than I am to fix it, but because it's his legal obligation to listen to me bitch when I break down.  We wrote our own vows, just so I could make sure to include shit like this.

Your bestfriend calls you at 4am
Assume it's either really bad news or really good news.  Or she's shit hammered.

You could bring back anyone from 6 feet under
I haven't lost anyone close to me.  Everyone can stay put.  I loved a dog once that I'd bring back, if I hadn't seen Pet Sematary ten thousand times.  (Yes, it is spelled that way.)

Someone kept staring at you
I'm often a foreigner in places where I don't look much like most of the people around me.  You get used to it.  Smile.  Or else bare your teeth, ala Ed Norton in Fight Club.

weheartit.com

Someone ate your lunch
Jack the bitch up.  Obvs.  I am insane about food.  Don't mess with my food.

You're at a stranger's funeral
Been there.  It's still sad.

You got 100 free spray cans
Do I get to choose what kind of can? I'd probably do a ton of Whip-Its.  Like Demi Moore.  Oh my god, go read this.  http://gawker.com/5879695/  It's funnier than anything I've said in years.

A horse came chasing after you
I fucking hate horses.  I'm sorry if you're a horse person.  I just think horses are bullshit.  I don't understand why folks have to dress up to ride them, why you have to learn how to ride?  I mean, isn't the big lesson: Don't Fall Off?  I don't get why you have to brush them, why they have to wear fucking shoes, why they're so willing to do whatever bullshit someone who is riding them says to do.  I immediately dislike any animal that thinks so little of itself as to let a dirty human use it as a mode of transport.  I don't get the trailer, the stable, the saddle, all the getup.  Horses just seem like hacks to me.

Now you've got me all riled up.

Next week, we're doing this one: http://www.quizopolis.com/survey/5756/Useless-Survey/

Happy Anniversary

I've had my blog now for two years.  I'm grateful for it, you know.  I really am.  It got me writing again.  It started me down the road of dreaming up Trifecta.  I've met lots of amazing people.  I've learned how to think analytically about writing.  I've gotten heaps of rejection letters.  :-)  I keep sending stuff out.  It's good fun, really.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Circles again

Cassandra has but does not act upon the knowledge that her husband is fucking someone else.  Like two stray dogs in a parking lot.

He guesses that she knows and is emboldened her refusal to act. His infidelity, which was at first attractive because of its secrecy, is now something he wears freely.  It sits on him like a ridiculous hat.  He thinks himself clever for it, trendy.  When she stumbles over it on the floor of the den, Cassandra picks it up between two pinched fingers.  She is embarrassed for him, for this emphasis he’s placed, somehow, on fading youth. His sense of entitlement is the most embarrassing of all, being somehow inextricably linked to the plumpness of his face.  He brings to mind the image of children who have stolen into the biscuit tin.  Or else of pigs raiding the larder.

She cannot leave him.  To do so would be to admit to a wider audience that she had been foolish enough to choose such an absurd partner.  All she can do now is publicly hate him in small ways, in case they know, and stay with him in the event they don’t.

That hat sits on his head like the smirk on his stupid, fat, satisfied face, and Cassandra goes on with her life, every day less impressed with the fact that he has missed the point entirely.

You need to write.

I need to write.

You need to write.

The sun needs to shine again.  I didn't know that about this place.  Winter here is a broken record of cloudy days.  Also the cost of four plane tickets back home equals, ironically, the exact number of dollars saved over the course of one year, effectively changing the definition of home.  When the place you live becomes more of a home and less of a holiday, your fine china becomes paper plates.  And then, or so I am told, it turns back again when you find a way to make the old new.

How pathetic.

Thus far, I have outrun time.  I have outrun everything.  That sound you hear?  That's the sound of a foot on the pedal of a car in park.

I need to read.

In order to write, you must read.

You should write.

I steal the time from this and that.  I sneak a book in with lunch, requiring me to ignore the children's bad behavior.  And their good behavior.  And them altogether.

They're only young once.  You will miss these years.

I will miss these years.  She wraps her arm around my neck so tight I can't breathe, and when I gasp for air, I smell her hair and smile through the suffocation.  There's nowhere I'd rather be.  Except this with a book.  Or this with a pen.  Or just some time to think about what it all means.

Lowest fare: $1,574 roundtrip.

You are going to miss these days.  


You should read.  


If I had parenthood to do over again, I'd do more finger painting and less finger pointing.


It's not a matter of how many breaths you took, but of how many moments took your breath away.

These moments--they've all taken my breath away.  I laugh when I remember how I used to say I was busy.  I laugh and laugh.  I was so busy with appointments and book clubs and weekend getaways and a stack of fiction clean up to the ceiling.  I was busy with a thousand things that, if stopped, would not mean the death of anyone.

You should write.

21st century broadcast

What follows is my response to Lance's 100 Word Song, where the challenge was to write 100 words in response to Radiohead's Idioteque.  The links lead to news stories, not straight to the videos I was stupid enough to watch.  

*******

My arms were slung around babies sleeping with open mouths, hair flattened against smooth cheeks.  Those bastards came uninvited, brandishing their whips and sand. 

My husband shook his head, eyes averted, as I clicked again.  One thrown to her death from a second-story walkway in a crowded mall, another flat and still under a slow-moving truck.

I have seen too much.

When my babies sleep, it’s all I can do to not put my mouth over theirs to breathe in their life.  Or else breathe mine into them.  Or whatever it is we all do to keep each other going.

Well, holy shit.

The other day I was making dinner and trying to listen to music over the screaming of my two children (who have recently declared open war on one another) when my iPhone did its familiar little dance on the table next to me.  I looked to see an email from my awesomesauce friend and bloggy buddy Joules.  The subject of the email was: OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.

I assumed, obviously, that, despite never having actually met me before, she was taking me up on my offer to open a private social work practice together, here in Hong Kong.  Before I even clicked on the email, I was picking out office furniture.  Obvs.  I've always wanted to paint an entire wall of my play therapy room with chalkboard paint and let the kids have at it.  I knew she'd sign off on it; that's the kind of gal she is.

Instead of being about chalkboard paint, her email was to inform me that she'd just checked the list of finalists for the Bloggie Awards and that Trifecta had made the cut.  

Holy balls, y'all.  That's big.

I'll tell you the top two reasons why I'm excited.

One:  I'm a stay-at-home mom with little control over anything.  ANYthing.  I have a lot of issues with the fact that I am not working, do not have a career, don't seem to have many marketable skills, will probably go back to work at a crap job for which I'm overqualified just so I can be home at three when my kids get home from school because I have a uterus and somehow those two are linked, etc.  That I somehow managed to come up with an idea, rope in an excellent person to work with me, and help create a space for writers to share their work is freaking ridiculous to me.  I'm kind of, what's the word. . .proud.

Two: These writers who share their work come from all different places.  Some are actively seeking publication of manuscripts.  Some have never considered themselves writers.  All of them have been incredibly brave in posting their words to this blog, and I am not shitting you when I say that I'm honestly grateful to them for doing it.  If they didn't, we'd be a pretty pathetic site, right?  This site is built on their guts.  I want this award, because I want people to click on their words and see how amazing they are.  I want it for our community.

Voting is open until February 19.  Please, if you'd like to see Trifecta take home this year's Best New Blog award, head over and cast your vote.

Thanks, guys.

Friday fluff

This comes from here: http://www.quizopolis.com/survey/5844/Questions-People-Won't-Ask-Survey/


Have you ever flirted with your best friend's bf/gf?
There are two kinds of flirting.  The one kind is where you are suggestive and sexy, where you imagine the person in question trilling a finger down your unclothed spine.  The second is where you acknowledge that the person in question is attractive and smart and not a douche and a male all the while recognizing that you are a female who is neither immune to said charms nor willing to act on them.  I think the second form is acceptable in very small doses.  I think the first is likely to end in getting your ass kicked or at least being demoted from BFF-standing.

Do you think that you're all that and your probably really not?
I have a fairly average self-esteem, I think.  I can't really think of a single area in my life where I think I'm "all that."

Have you gotten beat up before. Tell the truth.
I have never been beaten up.  I have been slapped across the face, but that's about the extent of it.  I'd like to tell you that I took the bitch down afterwards, but the truth is that it was my mom who did it.

Are you smart or are you dumb?
If those are my options, I'm smart.  There are a ton of things I don't know and a thousand things I can't do very well, but at the end of the day, I'm definitely not dumb.

If you're a girl, do you scratch your boobs when nobody's looking?
The word boob makes me vomit.

Have you ever wanted to have sex with your own gender?
I'm not sure have sex is the best phrasing.  Can we leave it at a good ole-fashioned make out with some heavy petting?

Are you liking this survey so far?
Not really.  The surveys always ask this, and it always makes me like them less.  Y'all, I think I am over the Friday Fluff for awhile. . .

Do you have alot of friends or are you nobody at school?
I'm a nobody at school.  Just kidding.  I have friends.  I just don't go to school.

Are you annoying to most people?
Almost definitely.

Can you take the truth, no matter what it is?
Yes.  Eventually.  But sometimes it takes an awful lot of work to get to that point.

Would you go suicidal if someone in your family died?
"Go suicidal." I forgot about that turn of phrase.  I'm going to bring that one back.  Starting now.  Dude, I teeter on the brink with everyone breathing.

Is there somebody in your life you hate at this point?
I got in trouble last time I answered this, so this time I'll just tell you what I tell my kids: Hate is a very strong word that is very hard to take back.

Are you dreading something right now?
Next week I meet with the dreaded OB/GYN.  I can't tell what I'm looking forward to more--the gloved handjob with industrial grade lube or the lengthy discussion about why I think synthetic hormones are bullshit and why the fuck is it that women's health care is so freaking stalled that my uterus can be growing OUTSIDE of my freaking uterus, causing debilitating pain that I cannot sleep or walk or eat through, and the only real solution is to stop my body from ovulating.  Seriously?  If men suddenly had penises growing in places other than next to their balls, I guaran-fucking-tee you we'd know why the hell it happens and we'd have an effective treatment for it by now.

End rant.

For now.

While taking this, did you start thinking about your true self?
Oh my god, I totally did.

Would you date somebody on Valentine's Day just to get something for Valentine's?
Absofuckinglutely.

Have you ever broke somebody's heart and didn't care?
I don't know that I broke his heart, but I remember dumping a guy and thinking, "For the love of Christ, would you just stop calling me?"  I remember kind of wishing that my brothers or father were a bit more protective at that point and that maybe they'd answer the phone and tell him to screw off.  Or answer the door with a shotgun or something.  God, what a letdown.

Did you go to Pre-K?

Nope.  My brothers did.  I didn't.  I don't know why.  I'm glad I didn't though.  I think pre-k is horseshit. (Both of my kids are in pre-k because I also think that parenting without breaks is horseshit.)

Next week we're doing this one: http://www.quizopolis.com/survey/5659/What-Would-You-Do-If-Survey/

WTF Wednesday: Rose apple

It's Wednesday.  That means it's time for another edition of WTF Food Is This Wednesdays.

This week, I give you the rose apple.  The rose apple is the first of my WTF Wednesday foods that I had honestly never seen before.  There I was, strolling through the grocery store, trying to avoid humanity, when all of a sudden, I saw this pinkish glowing orb of potential.  I picked it up, turned it this way and that, and thought to myself, "What the fuck is this thing?  Imma get me summa dat shit."

Wikipedia tells me that the rose apple is native to much of Asia, that it's the fruit of an evergreen tree, and that the tree it comes from can produce 700 fruit in one go.  Seriously?  That's a lot of fruit.  I'm so tired that when I think about a tree having 700 fruits at one time, all I can see is this tree version of the Octomom.  If I were any kind of artist, I'd sketch it out for you.  Because over here?  Shit's funny.

Here's what the rose apple looks like underneath.

My son.  Dressed as a pirate.  Obvs.

Wikipedia tells me it's also called a bell fruit.  That kind of sounds familiar, and now I'm worried that maybe I actually grew up on a bell farm orchard and just blocked out all of the memories of it.  It's not impossible, you know.  But I think I'm just thinking of the star fruit.  Star.  Bell.  Whatever.

The rose apple can be eaten as a hand fruit, which makes me laugh because remember that one Seinfeld where someone was all, "I wonder why the tomato never took off as a hand fruit?"  Shit's funny.  Anyway, I sliced mine open so I could check it out.  (Also, so I didn't have to take a huge bite out of something potentially disgusting.)  Here's what the inside looks like.

That picture makes it look gross, but it wasn't.  In fact, it was kind of good.  Pretty bland, but not offensively so.  It was watery and crunchy, kind of like a tasteless watermelon and an apple had a baby and the watermelon had stronger genes.  It was alright.  Refreshing.  I can honestly see myself buying these again, which is a first for this experiment.  I think it'd make a decent, local alternative to a regular apple.

My kids ate it, but I didn't photograph it.  They wanted to like it, because I liked it.  They even claimed to like it, through their scrunched up face and pursed lips.  But it was pretty obvious that they weren't dying to eat bushels of them.  (See how I speak in crop lingo now?)

I apologize that this isn't funny.  There's nothing really funny about a rose apple.  Also?  I'm so fucking tired that I wrote almost all of this with my face flat against the table in front of the computer and my arms stretched out in front of me like Frankenstein, banging haphazardly against random keys.  Sorry.