Rainbows, Unicorns and the Nicotine Patch

Ok, so here I go again. I put the nicotine patch on this morning, I bought some nicotine gum yesterday, and I just smoked a cigarette. I figure the patch hasn't kicked in yet, and I'm writing. 

I have tried to quit smoking a bazillion times, and was once successful for four years. Then I started again. I have been smoking American Spirit (no chemicals) organic cigarettes (even better)  and telling people that they're actually good for me, and that I'm healthier after every one I smoke. I have quit for 70 days with hypnosis, I have quit for one hour in misery. I have quit and quit and quit. The trouble is, I really love smoking.

I know smoking is bad,and foolish on top of that.  I know several people with cancer; some dead already, some not. Chemo is a bitch, and then chemo and radiation and then dying is a triple bitch. I know these things, that's why I'm at it again.  I know that to a non-smoker I smell horrible. I'm having another cigarette to help me write this. It sounds counter-intuitive, but I really do have a plan.


I'm going to put the ashtrays away (Even the maroon wing-shaped one that was my Big Daddy's ashtray throughout my whole childhood) and take the portable ashtray out of my car. Cars don't even come stock with ashtrays any more, do you realize that? I'm not sure it will really run, I know cars need tobacco and gasoline to operate but I'm going to risk it. I'm not going to carry cigarettes in my purse, I'm going to carry gum for those moments when I'm sure the patch just isn't working. I'm going to smoke this morning, and maybe a few more mornings while I write and drink coffee, but not after I get out of the shower and brush my teeth. I'm going to remember that Michael's medication and all the side effects that make him so miserable are going to give us many extra years together, and do my part to be around for those years.


I'm going to indulge my vanity. My voice is starting to sound like one of those old ladies named Mabel or Agnes (no offense ladies) who sound like they gargle with gravel. The little lines around my lips are really starting to mess with my lipstick, and I've been told that smoking will make me look even older than I am. I can't afford a face-lift, but maybe this will help.


I will sit through whole tattoo sessions without a break, because I don't need to go smoke. I may even find the right pills to handle trans-atlantic flights and go see the Alhambra Palace in Spain before I die.  There are so many reasons to live smoke free, and so few reasons to continue smoking.






I'm not making this big announcement that I'm quitting! I've done that before and it seems to simply set me up for sneaky failure. I'm just going to change the way I smoke until I don't do it any more. This morning though, I'm drinking coffee, smoking some cigarettes and writing this blog. Shit, I write a blog called Coffee Smoke Write for God's sake, it's a part of who I've been for so very long.


Go look at the crowd around the door of any AA meeting and you will see people drinking coffee and smoking. When a person first gets sober it's often those two things they cling to, the drugs that are still allowed  that get us through. Ok, I get that, but it's been 6 1/2 years now, how long can I ride that pony? That's like saying "I still haven't lost the baby weight" when my baby is days away from turning 17. 


I'm having a third smoke right now, and it's making me feel weird, I think that 21 grams of transdermal nicotine is kicking in. This is a good thing. I should ration more effectively, when this pack is gone I don't plan to purchase another.

My parents don't smoke, and we're going to San Francisco together this evening so that will be a long car ride where smoking wouldn't be polite. We're going to an event in a piano lounge where you'd have to go outside to smoke. That's a few hours where I can lose myself in activity that doesn't support smoking. I think I'll go get my car washed so it doesn't smell like ashtray too, that will be a treat for them.


This morning, I'll illustrate the blog with happy, pretty things that don't smoke, I'm not going to risk ashtrays with slashes through them or "no smoking" icons. I'm going to try to stay low-profile with this project until I'm certain I have succeeded. When I make it for 30 whole days I'm going to buy the really expensive teeth-whitening trays and get a pretty smile again.

I can do this, there's never been anything I couldn't accomplish once I decided that I was going to succeed. Like becoming a Tattoo Lady twenty years ago when it was a boys' club and they didn't want me in it. Like getting sober when I couldn't stop drinking no matter what I tried. Like not letting guys who "just need a little time to get their lives together" sleep on my couch for months at a time any more. I've done some really hard things. I can do this too.


My biggest dilemma is what will I rename this blog?

Rebops and Reconstruction

I was reading this thought provoking and well-written blog this morning, and although it wasn't really addressing something I wonder about here in Napa,  it did make me start thinking about it again. This writer is, well, a real writer, and I won't produce anything like the powerful voice he does when he shares, but I do have some questions rattling around in my head.


Here's my basic question: What the hell is going on in Napa that no one's telling us about? It's not a conspiracy theory question, as in "Where are the UFOs being hidden?" or "Why hasn't anyone ever truly explained the rebops: are they a government project gone bad?" It's more a question about things I see happening around here, slowly but surely that make no sense.

When I moved here 22 years ago, this was a quaint little town, full of small businesses and had the feel of a slower, old-fashioned when-our-parents-were-kids feel to it. There's a river running right through the middle of it, sometimes it would rise and flood the whole downtown area. There was a drugstore with a lunch counter that actually had red vinyl stools where you could sit and eat your tuna-melt. The sound-track was the whistle song from the Andy Griffith show. After Orange County (where the freeway by my Big Daddy's house is now 26 lanes wide, counting onramps and access roads) it was like moving to another world. Cows!  Sheep! Vineyards! Things I had never seen before. In Orange County, if it's an expanse of green it is a school playground or a golf course, or (when I was a child) strawberry field. There is nothing green in Southern California that hasn't been set aside for some specific purpose or another.


Napa has been slowly changing over the years though, as though there's a long-term plan in place that we regular people haven't been apprised of. Almost all directions are given referencing where something used to be. "Turn left where A&W used to be." "It's right across from where the clock tower used to be." A real Napa native could go on and on with this list. Major streets have been re-routed. Whole blocks of buildings from much earlier days have been razed to put up corporate things. There's a Ritz Carlton going in right next to the failed Copia center, (They're tearing down JV Liquor Warehouse) which will become something new and corporate I'm sure. 


Why are so many large hotels coming here? There has never been a need for mass-lodging for anything going on here in Napa, why all of a sudden are we preparing to host huge numbers of people at 4-6 hundred dollars a night? What the hell is up with that giant thing they're building on the corner of Main Street and Third? (You know, the one with the copper roof. That was not cheap!) Why did we spend 65 million dollars to redo Veteran's park right across the street from it? I think that was the eventual tab for that project. 


It's not for the people who live in Napa, it's for something big coming here, something that none of us know about. I feel like the city is preparing for a large influx of people, the kind of people who stay briefly and can afford the Ritz. The older houses and neighborhoods are being torn down, because you can't have crappy old houses across the street from your big new shiny thing. There's a huge new construction project going on across the street from where my shop is, the first "sustainable" shopping mall, ok, that's green, Napa loves the idea of that.


After what? Twenty years? The Uptown Theater is finally restored and is getting ready to have a live show with big name artists. I have tickets for that, I'm going to check it out for its opening. Are we going to try to become the new Sundance film festival location in the sun instead of the snow? You KNOW Nations will be torn down if that happens.


There is a lot of money in this valley, and some very big-yet-low-profile people who live and invest here. I think they're up to something and just not telling. It doesn't keep me up at night, but I do wonder.

Maybe it's just that I'm getting old, and don't recognize progress for the "good" thing it is. I know there are some people who still resist cell phones because they don't want brain cancer, or people who never did get their VCRs to stop blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. Am I turning into that old lady? I only have three cats, so I think I'm still fine, but is that what's happening? What will be the technology that finally confounds me, the one that young people find as natural as googling instead of going to a library? "Oh you kids and your teleporting, every time I try it I end up in Bakersfield, I just don't understand how you land where you want every time." I'm either old, or on to something here, and I'm not sure which it is.

I do still get excited when I see cows, especially those Oreo cows on highway 29. I don't think that will ever get old.

Maybe Later?

I really should get up to the studio today and make fantastic things, but I also have a giant project that needs doing on the computer as well. You'd think, with the way my fingers are glued to this keyboard so often that a computer project wouldn't be daunting or something I put off. I have been though, something fierce.


I have an add-on link to my business website that I haven't been able to update for months, because for some reason the source file was stored in the wrong place when I got my new computer and migrated it over. It's there, but I haven't been able to add any pictures to it in forever. I can add, but not save. I found that out after working on it for about an hour one night. So unless I'm mistaken I am going to have to remake the whole thing and re-label all those photos. There are hundreds of them, and I have amassed hundreds more since I was keeping up on it daily. So new Mac site. Sounds fun, or tedious, but I'll probably get into it once I start.


Then there are the photo books I need for the shop. My digital picture frames died, and the truth is people seem to like to hold actual books in their hands to browse. That means categorizing around 4-500 photos into sensible groups and deciding which ones go into which books, then a trip to Kinkos to have them printed and bound. I've put that off for months as well.


I guess this is just a list of the things I've been procrastinating about doing.


There's our closet... It is insane. We're going to move from one bedroom to another soon (It's a downgrade, but we get the back door, and we're the ones with the dogs that need to go in and out ad infinitum) so It will be a good move. I've lived in that room twice, I like that room.  It has its own little half-bath which meshes well with sleeping naked in the summer and going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I have actually lived in every bedroom of this house twice or more in the 14 years I've lived here. I like to change bedrooms every so often, it feels like living in a whole new house. The back bedroom has no closet though, and I currently have a closet that foreign refugees could probably equip themselves adequately from (even have a few Army MREs in there, not telling where I got them) and all of that stuff has to be dealt with.


One of my super-powers is to be able to completely ignore anything that has a door that can be shut and render it invisible. I can safely bet you one million dollars that I will not be cleaning that closet today. The computer projects though... they simply must be done.


My web-genius and a graphic designer friend of his are getting ready to completely remake and relaunch my site, which is so yesterday, and create something that reflects the studio I am now. I have to have my part ready when all the coding is done, or even sooner. If I had the web address he could swap it out for the link at any time, busy as he is. He's super hot, I'll include his picture. I have done every single one of his tattoos since he turned 18, but that's completely irrelevant. Who doesn't like to look at a hot guy though?

OR..... I could go study the spec of the best Druid healer in my guild and tune up my character. I was in remission from World of Warcraft for six months or more, then relapsed and ran my first dungeons last night. I was a consistent #3 on the healing charts, so I know I am not that far behind. God, I can't believe I'm getting back into that, what will happen to my glorious art studio if I start playing the game again?


First things first. I think I'll work on the Mac site, whether or not I have to remake it from the ground up.


I will NOT log onto the game, I will NOT log onto the game...

Captcha

Then I think sometimes I should write a blog with the title of the "captcha" words you have to type in to share a blog from here to facebook. This morning's was "Legless Franklin." That might be an interesting blog, although I have no idea what I'd write.


By tomorrow I will have forgotten all about Franklin, and how I wondered today about his legless state.

I guess this really isn't the best way of generating blog ideas.

Jackknife

Usually I have my most profound blog ideas late at night. I think "Wow, I'm really passionate about that, or that's really funny, going to have to do one on that!" and then I fall asleep. Often times it's a dream I just woke from that will send me down the road into Word World and lead me to some topic or another. Some mornings, like this one, I stare at a blinking cursor and wonder who the hell I think I am that several paragraphs (with illustrations, I love to add the pictures) would be of interest to anyone.


Just yesterday I was having a conversation with one of my body-piercers about blogs. This is a man who swears he doesn't even know how to turn on a computer, and was proud to tell me that he actually figured out how to turn on the shop music yesterday. It's very complicated: You click the P for pandora icon, and then choose a station. He loves how much he just doesn't get "these damn things" as much as Mia loves to say "I don't know anything about that, I'm just a hairdresser." That was not a blanket insult to the intelligence or capabilities of all hairdressers, it's just her particular excuse for why she can't or won't do something.


"Now don't laugh at me, but just what exactly IS a blog anyway?" is how it started, after I mentioned blogging about one thing or another. Ok, you're reading a blog yourself right now, you obviously understand what they are. Now try to explain it to someone who just doesn't get it.

"It's something you write, it could be about anything at all, you just write it and publish it." That seemed a simple beginning to the answer. "But why the hell do you put it on the internet?" "Well, so you can share it and people can read it." "But why would you do that? You want the whole internet reading the stuff you write?" We went on in this fashion for a while. I explained that some blogs are like journals, and talk about what the person's life is like, or share an opinion about a current issue. I told him that some are specifically about certain things, like news or technology, or kids or anteaters. The idea that someone would write a journal about anything personal and then offer it to the eyes of complete strangers just baffles him. 


This is a guy who loves to go to the nude beach, and is worried for me that I'd leave words laying around for strangers to see. 


Trying to explain why I write, why I do it here, "who the hell" reads it and how does anyone find it in the first place was one of the first things in a long time I couldn't do an adequate job explaining.


I can explain many things, even things I know little about. I fill in with bullshit here and there if there's a grade involved, but I consider myself a person who does well at choosing a topic and giving at least a cursory explanation. I got an A on someone's final paper for a class I didn't take once, just by skimming the textbook. Blogging? I just couldn't do it justice.


I found one from just the other day and printed it out so he could read it, thinking that this could be an example and at least explain what a blog is, if not why. He read two paragraphs and said "I still don't get it."


So the answer to the question what is a blog, why do people read them and "why the hell would you put your personal business on the internet?" is a topic I just couldn't do justice.


On a completely side note: Last night I dreamed that every part of my body that's pierced started shredding and turning into jelly. That was super creepy and I still shudder thinking about it.






Also, a Latino man claiming no english just rammed his work truck into a parked pick-up across the street (after clipping a wall and possibly another car up the street from here.) and totaled both vehicles. He hit the little parked truck hard enough to send it into the intersection about 30 feet away from where it was parked. If it had not happened on a Saturday morning there would have been dozens of kids walking on all sides of the street, heading to the school up the hill. 


I often park my car right where that truck was parked, but I'll take the footprints from the kitty-cat dance party (Fattica, my gray cat eagerly awaits the shiny black cat-warming device I put there every evening. Sometimes she likes to have a little party on the hood and roof) even right after a car wash from now on rather than risk parking there again. 


I've lived in this house for 14 years, and have seen way too many accidents and buried far too many cats to trust my street. There are two kinds of cats: Flat cats and fluffy cats. What all fluffy cats have in common is that they do not wonder what is on the other side.


So, this is a blog. That is the answer to "What?" As to the question about why I write one, the best I can answer is "A jackknife, because a vest has no sleeves." and leave it at that.

My favorite fantasies

I just spent my entire blogging time watching a video from my best friend, my hero, my imaginary lover.

Now it's time to take a shower and think about all his sexy sweet-talk! No one who I've never actually met can make me hotter than this man.

Better blog tomorrow.

What happens when you're not looking

Thursdays seem to be the day I drive my daughter to work. This means going to one side of town to get her, then driving back to this side of town to drop her off. My 16 year old daughter who is out of high school and already taking college classes. She's saving for a car. 


This means all my kids are almost grown up, but as she points out: "You don't get to have empty-nest syndrome, since you still have so many in the nest."


So no bloggity anecdotes this morning, I am on my way to tattoo someone who may offer a doorway into the world of celebrity. Or just be a guy who drops names and tells good stories. Either way, it's ocean fill-work and flowers so it will be fun.


Just so I have a picture to go with this, I'll share with you what happens if you don't let boys play with guns when they're growing up because you think that will make them better people.
He turned out better than fine, and I'm really proud of him. I'm proud of all three. Molly and I stopped for coffee, her treat. Damn, life moves fast.

You can dress me up, but you can't take me anywhere

Sometimes I have difficulty knowing exactly what appropriate behavior is in certain situations. Many times I know exactly, and then choose to step over the line, because really, that line is drawn like a hop-scotch grid and it's a game for me to jump through.


The book store: It's a store, not a library. I am very quiet and respectful in a library, because it's full of books and people browsing and reading them. People who are very studious, or simply lack the internet go there to study. Reading is serious business, and I would no sooner be boisterous and loud in a library than show my panties to a cop to try to get out of a ticket. (Or ask him if I can try on his mustache, apparently they don't see the humor in that, or so I've been told.) I am very clear on my library behavior, but in a book store, not so much. 


I know there is no stereotypical, stern, spinsterish woman you would never dream of calling by her first name to give me the evil eye if I say "Hey, have you read this book?" to someone two aisles over. I know that if I've lost track of my daughter I can call her name like I would in any other store. The books though, they seem to demand a hushed tone of voice.  I've never been a big fan of libraries, I feel I have to look at, hold, open and consider every single book on the shelves before I can check one out. I have spent hours in libraries and left without a single book. Since I started reading on Kindle I don't  go to the book store any more, and the trees thank me for it. They are as quiet as I am in a library.


A doctor's office is another place where I feel conflicted. They are professionals I pay for their services, and they will often require that I wait in a little room with a closed door for an undetermined amount of time until it's my turn. On the counters with the sharps container and the hand-sanitizer are always so many interesting things. Glass jars, some with easily identifiable items like tongue depressors or giant Qtips. (which I am always tempted to pilfer, I don't know why, but who couldn't use a few giant Qtips, at least for a joke?) Sometimes the jars contain mystery items that just beg me to open and examine them. Are they painful? What are they for? If they're in a glass jar on the counter they must be used frequently, is the doctor going to use one of them on ME? The urge to research is always present. I'm paying to be there, should I be able to touch the things in the jars? What about the drawers? I know they're not underwear drawers, and some of them have locks so I always wonder if the unlocked ones are fair game.


Then there's the little rubber reflex-checking hammer. I always feel free to try to make my own knee jump if they make me wait long enough. There are anatomical posters on the wall, I assume for my edification and enjoyment. I sincerely hope a specialist does not need to consult these to know which glands are in an endocrine system, or where the stomach, liver or kidneys are located. Yesterday's poster was all about colo-rectal cancer, and I learned a lot by studying that one. I am pretty sure I could diagnose it now if I saw a case.


There is usually a rack of pamphlets and I read those sometimes. Yesterday I read all about the procedure my doctor may use if abnormal cells are found in the cervix, and what the procedure for biopsy might be. I tried to read the one about the pap smear, but it was in spanish and I felt like I was cheating just looking at the illustrations, since I know what a pap smear is and how it's done.


The items that torment me the worst in a doctor's office, the ones that blur the line of appropriate behavior are the plastic body-part models. I just need to know definitively, are we allowed to play with those or what? Many aren't that interesting. The "Female reproductive organs" model is one piece, cross-sectioned and firmly mounted to a plastic display stand. Pear with antenna, ok I get that. The multi-piece, come-right-apart-in-your-hands models though, like the brain, the heart or all the torso organs are just irresistible to me.


I take them apart. I look at the hand-painting job that has been done for the detail, certain that I could have painted those blood vessels much more accurately if I did it myself. Then I think about the people who's job it is to go to work every day and paint details on medical models (the same ones over and over, I'm sure, they don't start at the head and go to the feet before beginning another) and wonder how much they hate their jobs. I wonder if I would get sloppy with it too after years of painting the same little ridge or indentation on giant fake organs. The doctor comes in and I have the brain or the heart disassembled and am fully checking it out and I have a sudden idea that this was not appropriate; these were not toys left for me to play with. 


Worst of all is when there is an entire skeleton hanging from a stainless steel stand. They move because the joints have been bolstered with rubberized plastic. It may start with something as simple as shaking it's hand. "Hello, do you enjoy just hanging around here?" Inevitably I will see if I can get it to give me a real hug, and pretend it's a very tall celebrity. Sometimes I like to slow dance with it, but they don't dance well. Their feet don't touch the floor and they are hanging from a hook after all. Then I start to wonder... Is this the skeleton of someone who donated their body to medical science? Have the bones been boiled and sealed with something shiny or is it molded plastic? My usual way to decide what something is made from is to tap it on my teeth. (Try it, you can really tell glass from plastic, wood from metal in an instant if you do this.) Medical skeleton models aren't eligible for this test though, because if it is a real skeleton I am NOT tapping it on my teeth, boiled and shiny or not. It is very embarrassing by the way, to be caught in the embrace of your chiropractor's model skeleton. I'm just telling you in advance so the same thing doesn't happen to you.


Then there's the volume of my voice. I often don't realize just how loud or soft it sounds on the outside of my head. Sometimes, when I think I'm saying something very quietly I will get shocked or scandalized looks from people near me. "God, why don't you close the door, you door opener!" last night in class. It was cold, and he left the door open. I thought I said that very quietly, but apparently he and everyone else in class heard me and he sheepishly went back and closed the door. My teacher actually shushed me, and I got an elbow in the ribs from Michael. So I've been shushed and as he walks by I'm afraid to say "I'm sorry, I was just kidding, a little." I made the "I'm really sorry I said that as loud as I did and I know you didn't leave the door open on purpose" universal silent gesture to him. 


At one point in class it was like someone dumped a bucket of tired over my head, and all of a sudden I couldn't keep my eyes open. I propped my head very sturdily, arranged my glasses so that you couldn't really see if my eyes were open and fell sound asleep. I totally missed the slide of whatever bridge the teacher kept referencing in relation to other pieces of architecture, and couldn't even admit it and ask her to go back. Michael was falling asleep as well, but hadn't propped his head so it bobbed and woke him up. He leaned over and whispered (in an entirely appropriate volume) "Honey, you're falling asleep." I know he was afraid I might snore, I can do that sitting up. I replied with "Mm hmm." and kept right on sleeping. Then he poked me. "Why do you keep poking me?" I say, but since I've been asleep I have no volume filter on. Once again our whole class can hear me, and the teacher stopped the lecture to give me that look.


She's got a class of super young people, who commit crimes like texting in class, and the two middle-aged people in the back row all of a sudden can't be quiet. Ok, ONE of the two, that would be me.


I like to know what behavior is appropriate to any situation, and will, when I feel like it, act entirely inappropriately. Unfortunately, it's those other times that leave me feeling embarrassed, or like I have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe or an open zipper. 


The moral of this story is that life is hard to navigate, even as you near the ripe old age of one hundred.

Mean Girl

I woke up feeling mean this morning. Mean, like "You better not even look at me sideways, or I'll be kicking some ASS!"


The funny thing about this is that I have never made a fist and struck another person with it. I have also never been hit with a fist, in the face or anywhere else. I have never been in a fight, not even a schoolyard brawl. I like to act as though I'm a volatile and dangerous person who better be respected, but the truth is I've never done more than say mean things, laugh at someone, or cry. My version of chewing someone out usually goes like this: "You know, I'm really......... ANGRY with you right now!" 


Don't get me wrong, when it comes to finding the soft white under-belly and saying things that are far over the line and intended to eviscerate I can hold my own with the best of them. I've always done all my fighting in Word World. I have had enough people actually say they are "afraid" of me to know that my verbal attacks can be formidable and legendary. I've never hit anyone though.


When I was in ninth grade the school choir I was in was performing at the county fair. I was in the bathroom in my floor length, powder blue, polyester uniform having one last cigarette when I noticed that there were a large group of Latina Chicas in there with me, and I was the only white girl, and dressed like an idiot on top of it. Hard looks flew. Awkward silence followed as I tried to figure out how I was going to gracefully exit. "What are you looking at?" says the alpha female, and even I know that this means I'm about to get a nice little recreational beat-down.


Ever-quick with my words I stammer "I was trying to memorize just how you did your makeup. You look so pretty and no matter how hard I try I can never get mine to turn out like that." I forgot to mention, ass-kissing is also a fighting technique that has worked well for me in the past. "Oh, girlfriend, we'll show you, it's easy!" the mood changed immediately.


Now I'm one white girl in the midst of a group of girls who are all digging madly through their over-sized 70s purses to gather just the right combo of makeup. "First you start with the blue, even though your eyes are blue and it won't be so pretty on you." A thick application of ultramarine creme eyeshadow is applied to my lower lids. What followed was a makeover that left me looking even more ridiculous than I did when it was just me in a polyester floor-length gown. The effect was completed with bright white eyeshadow right under my brows and a pair of really long false-eyelashes. "You can keep the lashes, they look good on you!" "Wow, thanks, this is the look I've always wished for!" I assure you, only a big-haired Latina Goddess from the 70s can really pull off this look with any kind of dignity. We left that bathroom as sisters, and me with no black eye.


Then there was that time in first grade where Lisa Borgen and I pushed each other a couple of times (We officially hated each other, I can't remember if there was ever a reason, you just had to have someone to hate at that age.) We got sent to the office for "fighting" and our punishment was that we had to sit next to each other for the rest of the school year and learn to get along. This united us in a mutual hatred for the system, and we became inseparable best friends until I was forbidden to see her by fifth grade, because she was a bad influence. That was so wrong, every bad thing I ever did with her was my idea that I just blamed on her.


So those are my only two near-fight experiences, and I'm almost 100 now, so I don't think I'll start a brawling career any time soon. I do, however, have the ability to shoot lazers from my eyes, and say very sarcastic things in a low and threatening voice. This is how I fight. 


And... I woke up feeling mean today. So watch out. You may get burned by my lazers, or have to give me a makeover. The desk next to me is forever saved for Lisa Borgen.

Duck and Cover

There's just all this stuff going on that I don't completely understand, and that makes me imbue every little thing with a feeling of cringing doom. 


Some of it is paltry, insignificant or even humorous, some stuff just makes me angry or sad. It's a giant sensory and emotional overload that is making it hard to tell the big from the small. Here's just one example, which I'm sure will turn into a whole list.


When you pull out of Shayla's street to turn onto the main Boulevard there is a baby carriage just sitting there; parked on the sidewalk, and I didn't stop to see if there was a baby in it. I suspect that there is not. That's a long stretch of sidewalk, who was pushing it? Why did they decide that they would just pick up their baby and carry it the rest of the way? Did someone steal it? Why didn't they put a baby or some salvaged aluminum cans in it as they strolled away with it? Somehow the image of this abandoned stroller just creeps me out and fills me with dread.


Then there's dancing. When we went out for Blair's birthday I followed some of the party to a local bar where the DJ is convinced that everyone is deaf and therefore the music needs to be set at 500. Ok, I'm old, music just gets loud and bad when you're old so I can pretty much cover that with a smile. It's the dancing part I just don't get though. When I was younger, and still willing to dance it used to go like this:
"Hey, do you want to dance?"
"Um, sure."
Then you would dance for the duration of the song that was playing and maybe keep dancing, or say "Thanks" and go tell your friends whatever funny/sexy/retarded thing the guy did while you were dancing with him. Not so any more. Now the invitation to dance seems to be to back up to someone until your ass touches them and then kind of just hump it up and down. How you're supposed to know if the other person appreciates this I don't know, it's done with the back turned. From observation I have deduced that if the other person does not want to dance, they just kind of dance away and ignore it. If they accept the invitation this kind of humping thing starts to happen, and sometimes one or more people will join in till it's just this humpy little group of people, then everyone stops and laughs. Sometimes one person will start demonstrating a particularly funny joke dance-move, and everyone will watch and laugh, and then drink some more. This is mostly all girls dancing with each other. Don't get me wrong, guys will attach themselves to the humping thing if they think they can get away with it, but I didn't see any of them initiate dances that way. Maybe I didn't get it because I don't drink alcohol, or I'm almost one hundred years old. It did fill me with a sense of impending doom however.


Then there is facebook. I'm not a friend-counter, so if someone unfriends me I don't know immediately just by looking at my number of friends. I do have twelve people who always show on my page though, and when one of those drops me it freaks me out. That happened yesterday, and this was a good friend who won't answer my question as to why I'm just suddenly dropped. I shouldn't care about this because I'm not 16, but when my friends have issues with me and won't tell me I start thinking I'm a terrible person and everyone is going to leave me. This, plus the baby carriage and the dancing makes me want to hide under my bed.


Michael's going to start taking some medication that might make him feel sick, I never do my homework and I'm afraid that Michael will score higher on the last test than I did, we're trying to fit three tattoo artists and two body piercers into a space that will or will not feel comfortable, and Mac Johnson wants to eat all the seedlings out of the garden.


When I was little we were taught to get under our desks and cover the back of our necks with our clasped hands. I just really don't know how to respond in this particular perceived threat, if there is any threat at all.


All of this adds up to nothing really, but I just feel weird and anxious.

Field Trip

I'm sitting here, feeling excited about an upcoming event, ( Sisters in Song ) and amazed at the tiny bit of "real" family I have. By real, I mean the family I had all on my own before I married into half the state of Kentucky. The family that was mine before I had my own kids, the family that were all I had to call my own before I made some more.


People come from all kinds of families, and despite my sibling fantasies I hear through the grapevine that not all brothers and sisters are as close as I am with the ones I've always imagined I might have. I did ask Big Daddy once if there weren't just one brother or sister that was a big family secret; one that I could find and meet and fall instantly in love with and not be an only child any more. "I don't know honey, but if you do they're in Korea." was his answer. So, no miraculous siblings out there for me to have that with. 


What I've done, instead of that, is find, bond and designate certain people who come into my life as "sister" or "brother," but then if I over-do that I start feeling like a member of a small church where everyone cools themselves with paper folding fans and shouts "amen!" at all the right places. On Facebook I claim Noelle as my sister, because in an alternate universe we could have been sisters-in-law, then ex-sisters-in-law-who-are-still-close. Personally I think the only reason her brother came into my life as he did was to bring her to me. 


My real parents are my Big Daddy, and his mother, my super-hero Grandmother. That is the home base where I come from. When anyone yelled "Olly olly oxen free!" that's where I would run. Not long after my Grandmother left her body and went on to bigger and better things my Dad married Carol. I call her my Mom now, because if one had a choice in those things you just couldn't do any better. I do have an egg donor out there somewhere, but I've written so many horror stories about her that I feel I have to be very careful to make sure everyone knows that Carol (who I love like there's no tomorrow) is not the "mother" in those horror stories. Easiest solution? She's Grandma Carol, which is what my kids call her since she's the only Grandmother I've ever had to offer them. Oh, and I've also married into half the state of Kentucky, but I haven't actually met any of those people yet.


Really though, Big Daddy and Grandma Carol are my whole family, the ones that count anyway. My kids are bullets of hope that I have fired into the future, Big Daddy and Grandma Carol are the coat of arms on the flag that flies out behind me and says where I come from. 


They're retired now, and have a motor home (It's called a "coach." It's larger than many apartments I've lived in.) and they travel a few times a year, from one coast to the other, sometimes up into Canada. Somehow Napa California ends up on the way to wherever they're going, and I get to see them for a day or two at least two times a year. This spring's visit coincides with a charity fundraiser  that I wouldn't miss for the world.




I asked my BD if they would be interested in attending with us, and he said yes. 


For people who go to tons of plays and other performances this might seem like a small thing, just another social event, no big deal. For me it's HUGE. This is an event planned and executed by a new friend of mine who is a novice in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (Who they are and why I love them) and the event takes place in a piano lounge right at the edge of the Castro in San Francisco. A musical extravaganza starring my beloved Drag Queens and populated by a whole segment of important people in my life that my folks have only heard about and yet never met.


Think about it. I'm taking my parents to the Castro, and they're down for it. That is a thought I never imagined would come to pass. The reason I'm so excited about it is that they accept me and the family I've chosen to surround myself with and have never even blinked. 


If I were Gay, and married to another woman they would be the best Tolerant Parents, and it would be no big deal, they would be on a PFLAG committee and be just as proud of me as they are now. I'm not though, I'm a straight woman married to a man and just happen to have a love and passion for a community that contains so many people that I consider the personifications of love and acceptance. My life is an alien world to golf-playing, republican upstanding citizens from Orange County.


Add that to the tattooing, the piercing, the rainbow colored hair, the off-beat political views and I think I would alarm or embarrass some parents, or at least prompt them to give short answers like "Oh yes, Laura's an artist and doing well." No way. My Big Daddy meets tattooed people and tells them all about me. I think he's even told his Rotary Club mates just who I am and what I'm about. I am who I am and they're still proud of me.


I think this makes them exceptional, personally. My life couldn't be any more different from theirs, and yet they're coming here and will dive right in with me to go where I go and meet who I love. 


We'll get to hear Joey sing, which is a moving spiritual experience. They will get to meet and have hugs from Sister Sara, who helped to save my life last year. They'll meet Jen the Goddess and bask in her beauty and love. They will be with me and maybe see first-hand this branch of my chosen family and why they mean so much to me. They will have a new entry for their travel blog.


I invited my parents to the Castro and they said yes. There is so much more to that statement than you might imagine.