How many crablegs can she eat?

How many crablegs can she eat?
Exactly 10. With help. that's king crablegs. Yep, so there is one less king crab in the universe/sea now. One down...

I have to give a shoutout to The Highlander for giving me something to dream about for almost a full month, then coming through with the promise. I called ahead to make sure they hadn't cancelled the event and the barman was casual as you please telling me "oh yeah, every tuesday is all you can eat crablegs all day."

I'm sure they know most people really can't put down that much crab. For $20.00 they are winning the battle and getting people to drink.

Wow. Cee-lo is singing "Who's gonna save my soul now?" in the most wonderful, plaintive and soulful manner. I'm digging this song. Heavily.

I think it's about time for me to start allowing myself to be observed and monitored by my cadre of surgeons again. I've had just about plenty of pretending to be normal - or fancying that I have the ability to keep the charade going. I wonder if I fool anyone? It would be amazing if someone believed me. But I suppose most people don't look all that closely.

I was talking with my godmother earlier today and related something someone said to someone else about me and she shrieked "jesus, people can be so self-absorbed." and I agreed, yes, we can all be pretty self-absorbed. I tend to hope that I get the majority of my self-absorption out in my writing, the absorption increases when I'm not writing and turns very quickly into something dangerous - all that energy goes destructive and I start hurting myself rather quickly. Better to get it out, talk it out, write it out, stare-at-horses it out.

I watched an interesting movie today with Renee Zellweger. I respect her body of work. I can say that now, before I always thought "she must be fucking for roles" but it's actually that she transcends her rather odd looks and radiates beauty, talent, strength and vulnerability. That one mines her self, then empties the vessel to see what new can be poured in. Happy for her. The movie was Price of Rubies or something like that. Renee was a wife in an orthodox Jewish sect. She went through it. I loved the movie, it was slow and engrossing.

Cee-lo is telling the little children to run this way. On that note, I head into the moonlight for more adventures.

A Good Year

It's four am and I had to wake up to make myself little munchies of baguet with ham and cream cheese to satisfy a craving created by reading descriptions of Provencal food in "A Good Year."

Speaking of A Good Year, I would count last year as one of the best years ever. Oddly enough, I've been getting a lot of "oh, well, i'm sorry for your last year" hooha from people lately. Mostly colleagues. I've endeavored to explain that I'm not sorry for last year at all, but they get uncomfortable and i realize I'm out of my depth or they are - or we don't have proper scuba equipment or something.

Last year was, for the record, one of the best years of my life. The Best. I know the bad years, 2006 was a miserable year (actually 04 - 06 lumped together sucked bat balls). Then, the year I turned 22 was pretty awful, 21 wasn't much fun either, come to think of it. I was married both of those years and very, very ill and undiagnosed. Sucked for me on all fronts. I was also living in a dark corner of the midwest during blizzard season. A Trifecta of horror.

23 wasn't bad, I danced a lot, drank a vineyard worth of wine and champagne, made new friends, got divorced (first), gave my bosses hell and flew to lots of interesting, new places. 24 was also pleasant (at least the first bit) I was in love - that passionate crazy stuff, had plenty of money, walked to the beach daily, met a fair cache of truly weird people, I went to the Exotic Erotic Ball and met a tall, strapping irishman named Gerry who burred to me in Gaelic seductively after i figured out he had a thick accent and wasn't drunk or high to the moon.

Yeah, so I'm clear on the good and bad years. Really, people, surgery isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. Illness is pretty bad. Chronic illness is pretty bad to the nth power. Try living in a body that doesn't want you there - that's a bad year. One of the most valuable commodities in the world is time and I was fortunate enough for time to move at a wonderful pace for the past year. Now, I'm back in the thick of things and i feel like a kid again, with my head stuck out of the window of a moving car and the wind whipping my head back over and over again. I just want to enjoy myself and instead I have half the free world telling me their problems and seriously expecting me to facilitate a solution.

As if I give a rat's ass. Really. But then, I find myself skipping meals and getting dehydrated and suddenly i do care. Mainly because I'm sleep, food and water deprived. All that deprivation leads to heightened focus on minutae and I am such a victim. A total patsy. I wonder if it's intentional. For instance, 2008 thus far has not been the hottest year of my life. I'm just putting it out there, I'm not enjoying this year. I rang in the new year in the hospital, after deciding I was really, really tired of being in the hospital, but going back because I was more tired of the parts of me that still didn't work and were essential. I was alone and I sang a song to myself, turned out the light and went to sleep.

Also this year I've taken a number of hits. If I were litiginous I would be slapping people left, right and center with libel and slander suits. Alas, i'm not, thusly I pretend to ignore all the offal being slung, then rant and rave on my blog and to my parents about how unfair and cruel the digs - and diggers - are. We won't even go into the parts of me that still don't work, possibly will never work again, and my slowly dawning realization that the disease won some concessions I never could have anticipated. There is no morphine to make all of this irrelevant either. I'm wide-ass awake and, quite frankly, not a little pissed.

I think the latter half of 2008 is going to get tougher, but so will I, so hopefully it won't feel as uncomfortable (wool-sweater in summer uncomfy) as the first bit has. Spring is here and that always brings change.

He had gone into the place of things that are...

He had gone into the place of things that are...
The full quote is:

"He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him." - Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere)

Guess who read a book? Yes, snitches, yours truly. I'm still reeling from the Quaddafi revelation of my second-to-last blog, but I needs my realities adjusted occasionally. My new class has started and everyone is middle-aged and chasing their dreams. I've decided I, too, am middle-aged and chasing my dreams, I just *look* like a teenager. Heh heh heh.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a wonderful day in the neighborhood...can you believe my little sisters never watched Mr. Roger's Neighborhood? That was quality television, better than almost everything that is on now. Between Mr. Roger's and Sesame Street I had manners reinforced, my imagination validated, developed a simulataneous fear and affection for wooly mammoths and big yellow birds, learned to embrace my cantankerous side and learned the merits of Super Grover and handpuppets!

Barney was second rate in comparison.

My man-friend is back in town and we're learning to live together again. We do this every so often, have to get reacquainted. We have different rhythms, I'm a night person, he's a day person - we get along well between 5pm and 1 am. After or before is kind of sketchy.

I've had a gnat of worry in the back of my head about THINGS TO GET DONE. None of them are that important. I think my real worry is *asshole coworker returning to the office whom I do not want to deal with at all, ever again and i wish he would just go away like his homegirl did*.

Yeah, that's what is bothering me cause writing it made me feel better. Re-reading the sentence I have to chuckle, that's exactly what I'm feeling. There is a litany of things for me to get worked up about: what if he talks to me? what if I'm expected to talk back? what if he asks me a question? I know he's not going ot like my answers, but professional protocol requires i reply and - oh holey jesus' drawers - put up with whatever cutting remarks he makes about inconvenience to him, his lifestyle - who gives a fuck about him? I mean, other than him. He's in no way endeared himself to me or anyone else. I just imagine him with saggey pants and poop running down his leg - that's how much I do not like dealing with this....creature.

I know that's not nice or evolved or any of the other things I achieved while under anesthesia and hopped up on morphine and contemplating life, the universe and the wonders of having my intestines hang outside my body. Well...there's perspective. There is nothing he can say that even come close to my intestines hanging outside of my body or buckets of my blood washing over the floor as I stare in horror and go into shock.

here's to Sunday afternoons and Monday mornings! Monday, monday....

Sunrise

Sunrise
Sunovabiith!

Tonight i taxi’ed over to midtown art cinema to grab some late dinner with my sister and found out the highlander was having all you can eat crablegs for 19.95. People around us had tables piled high with king crab legs, the air was crisp with cracking bottom-dweller limbs. So we pull up to a table, the waittress comes over and asks if we’re ready to order. I say, "yeah, we’ll have the all you can eat crablegs" and she says "I need to see some i.d."

And i’m confused. What does age have to do with crablegs? Ordinarily I’d hand her my ID and let her feel stupid cause I might look 15 but I’m twice that and people just have to hate on me on their own time. But the sister is 17...so I ask how old you have to be and the waittress (who incidentally had a bad perm, bad skin and funky bone structure) says "21."

Obviously I will be obtaining a fake ID for this sister of mine cause we can not get turned away from all-you-can eat crablegs just because of some fascist smoking law (that’s what the waittress cited, a smoking law). We settled for kids portions of chinese food and gossipping about teenage pregnancy.

My sister has a friend who has missed her period two months in a row, has LOTS of unprotected sex and is *still* convinced that she can’t possibly be pregnant. She also refuses to take a pregnancy test. This is going to be one of those "why is my stomach cramping" pregnancies where the baby is born to a girl who honestly cannot fathom how it happened (hint: you let him stick the tip in. that’s the dangerous part, incidentally, the tip! that’s where the baby-making stuff comes out...)

One of the horses at the ranch is so pregnant she’s waddling. Ever see a 15 hand high black horse with delicate legs waddle? It’s memorable. That foal is coming soon and she looks like everything is hellish right now and she’s just so damn tired of being fat and heavy and having her organs squeezed together. But her attitude has improved, I imagine she’s too tired to go kicking folks at the moment.

I flipped out the other day because Santogold’s song Creator was featured on some corporate commercial. Then my homie was telling me that Quaddaffi camped out on the White House lawn in his white tent (he will only sleep in white tents attended by beautiful virgin maidens) and exited with his entourage blasting Creator recently. Almost makes me wanna move to Libya. Good taste in music matters to me.

Alright, I have Neverwhere to read..

You were the one who said forever from the start

I just woke up. Not a damn thing to write. I’m still quasi-stuck on this whole "your body is phukked" thing, but that’s a vast overstatement. i just have some permanent nerve damage. No biggie.

I do want a disability parking pass though. I mean, I have nerve damage, that’s some old Agent Orange shit. It did not help matters at all that I met this guy this weekend who - and I am not lying - fell out of his Hummer (more like missed the last step or something) and broke his ankle. Hell of a fall, right? So, he’s on crutches for a few weeks and gets a parking ticket for parking in a handicapped space. He gets 38 high and sends his assistant to get him a permanent disabled driver’s license. We used that sucker with impunity this weekend. Obviously I am not optimizing my trials and tribulations as a cripple properly. This situation shall be rectified with haste.

My homie Ray is on his way to Canuckistan, then further north into Canuskistan, and then further north to a remote island in Canuckistan to set up a satellite. He’s gonna turn into a hypersmart little choco-popsicle. It was really nice knowing him. Truly. A pleasure. You hear those jokes about people being assigned to a post in the arctic when they fuck up on the job. ummmm. Ray has been assigned to a post in the Arctic and he’s on his way there. I don’t think he fucked up though. It’s assbackwards, but I think this is an advance in his career. Crazy, right?

My grandmother and I got into a political argument the other day. Over the phone. I had to get off the phone when she started yelling. She calls herself an Obama-Gramma and I like Obama plenty and I plan to vote for him. But I was telling her that Hillary is fighting a good fight and I respect her immensely. She’s a devastatingly smart woman, very strong, with good judgement. Everyone has lapses, hell, my lapses had first and last names and social security numbers! But she’s a great candidate and she’s running a fantastic race. Does that alter how I feel about voting - not an iota. I respect McCain as well. He’s a career politician, but he’s centered somehow. Last time he ran (does anyone else remember this) the Bush people and all their CIA contacts dredged up never-before known or released information about his time as a POW. It was so fucked up. They trotted out one of his former camp-mates and played up the fact that the two men never talk now. It was ridiculous. It was dirty and ugly and shameful. There are some things people should not have to talk about: Sex (good, bad, and indifferent), torture, family, and their own personal list of unspeakables.

Everyone has unspeakables. Lots of people wear the unspeakables on their sleeves, but unspeakables are just that for a reason. They aren’t for the world, they are what defines us and our human experience. Unspeakables are shared with those we trust, they are not the means by which others trust us other than how they inform our actions.

Well, Nancy Wilson is singing "Guess who I saw today" it’s a song about a wife catching her husband cheating at a bistro. Gazing with love at another woman "I saw two people across the bar/who were so in love/even i could spot it clear across the room/ Guess who i saw today my dear/ I’ve never been so shocked before/I headed blindly for the door/ Guess who I saw today?/ I saw youuuuuuuuuu."

Peace

Shoutout to Terry the Crackhead

Shoutout to Terry the Crackhead
I have to send a spiritual shoutout to Terry the gas station panhandler. Well, panhandler isn’t accurate because Terry always volunteers to help you out with whatever your task is. pumping gas, putting air in tires, washing your windows. he wants to do a little work, make a little coin, grab some snacks at the package store, talk and laugh and spend some time weaving the fabric of his life.

today Terry put the air in my tires. he’s a big dude, 6 and some change, and gangly and that’s not a little menacing when he rolls on you. But I’m accustomed now, he’s always respectful, "Excuse me pretty lady, can i help you with something in return for whatever change you have available?" Most of the time i say no because there are a lot of people around Terry who aren’t as respectful and i’m not trying to be an easy mark, but today he just took the initiative and filled my car tires with air before the 75cent ran out. He was about his bidness. And I paid him a dollar and he ambled off. All good.

i do miss that. In the small town where i would visit my grandmother there were some indigent guys who floated through town. Sometimes they were off-season migrant workers from the islands, one was my mathematical genius autistic cousin. He swept every street in the town while chewing on the the nastiest cigar I’ve ever seen in my life. His name is David. There isn’t a combination of numbers that you can give David and he not solve, but he has the social skills of a mollusk. He used to scare me as a child because despite his singular obsession for sweeping streets, David has no regard for personal hygiene. you can smell him from a block or two away if the wind is blowing wrong, 5 blocks if it’s blowing right.

But he’s always been kind and he’s always known who I was. He knows his family and at times when I would find myself cornered by a bully or just a boy who wanted to get frisky, David would show up with his broom and get me safe and admonish me in his own special language about being safer and not wanting to tell my grandmother on me.

David’s way of dealing with the world, other than sweeping tirelessly from sunup to sundown, was to drink. He seldom got out of control, only a couple of times that i recall and mainly when someone interrupted his peaceful tradition.

So, yeah, Terry the Crackhead doesn’t bother me. he wants to be a part of society and sometimes i wonder who Terry was in a past life. We all have past lives, and he carries himself in such a way that I always resist the urge to ask, "who are your people? Where do you come from?" and find out how it was that he ended up at the gas station, approaching strangers for small jobs and small change to make his life a little less dull.