Friday, March 19, 2010

Oh, Snap!

I suspect people think I'm kidding when I tell you that I see things like a fat lady at a bus stop wearing nothing but a bed sheet, or the time I saw a guy walking a rooster on a leash, or that time the mariachi band rear ended the nuns. But I'm not!


This time, I have photographic proof! Proof that I almost DIED getting for you guys! Because that's how dedicated I am to this blog. You're welcome.

It's a Red Neck Strip Club. Seriously.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Innocents

It's summertime and we have completed our chores. The sky is the sort of blue that breaks your heart and the neighborhood smells of fresh cut grass as lazy bumble bees buzz the tea roses that climb the trellis.

We are in the backyard, licking melted red rivers of Kool-aide Popsicles from the sides of our hands in the shade of the pear tree. Gram would say we've joined the Blackfoot tribe, with braided pig tails and freckled shoulders, the soles of our feet filthy from games of Freeze Tag and Statuary and Mother May I played barefoot across all the lawns on our side of the street.

There is Heather, sprawled out across the bench and there is Gennie perched on the railing, Stefanie beneath her feet in danger of getting kicked. And here are we; three peas of sisters, side by side on the steps. In the fall the Big Girls will go to Junior High and trade in Sardines and Red Rover for Maybelline and Loves me not. But today, we are children. Today we are innocents.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Okay

This is the morning that it could all come apart and I know it. I have a rope and it has an end and I am there. The buzz of the refrigerator competes with the hum of the light and the tick, tick, tick of the infernally loud clock to drive me mad and I tap, tap, tap the purple pen with the chewed up edge on the strip of wood at the edge of my desk to drown it out. To drown out the screaming.

In the background the phone rings over the blaring beat of a song that I hate as my email chirps and there is someone talking, but all I can hear is the tick, tick, tick of that damn clock. I know that if it ticks again I will smash it into a million little pieces and then pick them up and eat them so the jagged edge of broken time scratches it's way down my throat to settle in a brittle ball of desolation in the pit of my belly.

I have thrown the clock away in the big green dumpster so the tell tale heart will not cause my end. Instead I have decided that too many pills and a glass of whiskey will taste far better. I begin to clear things into the trash with grim glee.

Click, click, click, Delete and then there you were. Not looking at the camera with your hand resting on my sleeping shoulder, caught quietly off guard in the light of a rain swept day. I put my head down on my desk and wept.

When there was nothing left to fill the cracked jar that holds my resolve, I went to you. You held me in the palm of your hand, eyes closed until wisps of okay swirled through me and I could breathe.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Report

Officer Mustache is tapping his pen on the edge of his notebook, already bored and thinking about breakfast, or doe season, or his truck payment. The red and blue lights flash disco ball glitter on my tears stained face. Officer Tightpants is writing down what I say, disinterested as her partner, but deceitfully engaged.

Dispatch crackles in the background confirming that I am in fact who I say, and for a moment I am taken with the urge to laugh. As though I would lie. As though I would claim this mess I call my life if I didn't have to. But instead I choke it back as a hiccoughed sob and Officer Mustache looks for a minute as though he is present.

Well, Tightpants says We have everything we need. She hands me the carboned report and the card for Domestic Disturbance at the Gallatin County Court House before they climb into the cruiser and leave me alone to watch the bushes for the eye shine that means you were serious when you said you would never leave me alone

Monday, March 15, 2010

Navel Gazing Again

Hi kittens.

After a Very Bad Day, I went off my Very Bad Medication and am currently on none at all. Which is...weird. I am jangled and spikey and from time to time weepy and nonsensical. But I'm present. So, there's that. I saw a new (not terribly sympathetic, but at least handy with a prescription pad) doctor today and I should (fingers crossed) be normal-ish in a week or so. In theory. We'll see.

In the interest of clogging the Internet with more of my scintillating self absolution, I'm going to post things that fit into the Navel Gazing genre and have either been posted on prior incarnations of this blog, or have just been hanging about in the drafts waiting to air their dirty laundry.

If y'all need me, I'll be sitting in the bathroom drinking wine.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Eh

Turns out I'm not dead. I know, right? Had you worried, I bet. It's not like me to disappear from the interwebs for such an extended period of time and I'm very sorry and ready to receive my spankings.

I'd like to say that I was doing something fun, but the truth is that I wasn't. Well, sort of was. But not really. Nothing new or interesting anyway. Faire is still going strong, despite the drowning rain (Hi? We live in Arizona? What. The. Fuck. Mother Nature?) and while many amusing things have occurred (and some UNAMUSING like being asked if the baby I was holding was my FUCKING GRANDCHILD!) you sort of have to be there. Or be a giant nerd. Possibly both.

Also, (and I fully accept that this particular line of whining is growing redundant and also isn't amusing) they've changed my medications AGAIN. As a result, I'm sleeping like hell and that makes me wicked cranky. Literally. When I'm not being unpleasant I am indifferent. Thereby leaving me with out stories to tell you about my hilarious hijinks. Or, you know, whatever the hell else it is that I'm meant to be doing.

It's possible that you'll not hear much from me for a time while they sort out my meds so that I will 1) not kill anyone and 2) care if someone attempts to kill me. Honestly, right now I struggle to give a shit about ANYTHING, so I'm sort of focusing on that whole breathing thing. Turns out if you don't you turn all blue. Then I'd clash with my lipstick and that wouldn't do. So. Yeah. Breathing. I'm going to be working on that.

On one hand, not caring is a bit awesome. People screaming at me? Eh. Spill coffee on brand new white shirt? Eh. Favorite CD scratched? Eh. On the other hand though? Sucks. Balls. Nothing is funny. Nothing is not funny. Nothing....is. I guess. You'd think considering the number of years that I've enjoyed a relationship with drugs designed to alter my mental state (recreational and otherwise, obviously) I'd be used to this whole cycle of new drugs making things go all wonky. But I'm not. I'd be upset, but I don't care. I know I SHOULD be upset. I understand that the proper reaction is to be upset, but I can't bring myself to actually BE upset. Does that make any sense? It's like I'm standing here with a set of stage directions Kiki watched a sad movie that made her cry, sniffling, she clutched the damp tissue to her chest in distress. While I can understand, intellectually, that this is the way a normal person would react, I am not reacting that way. It's a bit scary. Or, you know, should be.

Anyhoodle, this is a super long post about nothing (you're welcome) when I could have said in two sentences, I'm not dead; I'm just boring. Come back later.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Thinking about Things

Did everyone enjoy "Let's Gaze At Our Navel and Repost Mopey Entries Week"? Super fun, am I right? L.G.A.O.N.A.R.M.E.W (pronouced lah gone are mew) may make a reappearance later thanks to a sadistic doctor who not only is switching my Crazy Pills but also took away my Ambien because blah blah addictive blah blah and the new stuff gives me nightmares about things like people in trench coats driving yellow cabs right at me while I find myself rooted to the ground thanks to a million octopuses (octopusi? octopi? Octomom? Whatever.) swarming around my feet and biting me with their vampire fangs as I try to scream but can't because instead of sound only blue light comes out of my mouth and then I'm wide awake and wondering WHY THE FUCK I care if Ambien is fucking addicting, it's WAY FUCKING BETTER than either 1) not sleeping or 2) sleeping extremely poorly and waking up sleep hung-over to the point that I am basically useless the following day.

In light of this, you're probably thinking that I am just going to phone it in again this week and guess what? You are SO RIGHT. Because, you know, that's how I roll. Because I'm all gangsta and shit, fo shizzle. (speaking of phoning it in, a big Monday morning Fuck You to Verizon for misdirecting my post Hope so that instead of posting on Saturday and finishing up LGAONARMEW in a reasonable time frame, instead I find it hanging around as a draft this morning and now it's LGAONARMEW part 2 only it's NOT part 2, because I lack four more mopey postings that fit that format. And also my bill? From Verizon? FUCKING UN-REAL. So, Fuck you Verizon! And fuck you Bank of America for other reasons. And also, a big Fuck You to City of Phoenix police department with a special shout out to the officer who ran the red light on Indian School and 63rd because he was TALKING ON HIS FUCKING CELL PHONE.) Has anyone seen my Xanax? Because I haven't had any breakfast and a Grilled Cheese and Xanax sandwich sounds delicious.

Just kidding. Maybe.

Right now I have both a lot of time on my hands and none at all, what with the working seven days a week for 10 weeks nonsense going on up in here. So while sort of five hundred years in the past for two of those days and for all of that I'm chasing about errant actors demanding that they play nicely with the paying customers instead of wandering around playing Jack Sparrow Bingo and even though the other five days are spent trying to use my sixth sense to determine if the other end of the ringing phone is an angry customer, an angry creditor or an angry representative of our corporate office while attempting to repair my fucked up desk top since the IT guy hasn't bothered to call and isn't returning my calls and I am completely techno-tarded, I have WAY too much time on my hands to think.* And I think it's safe to say that that? Is a Bad Thing.**

One thing to bear in mind in the Care and Keeping of your Kiki is that we are best suited to occupations that involve our whole brains, otherwise we think about Things. Not anything important or life changing like the cure to cancer or the best way to transport bacon for on the go snacking, but rather things like, Why do some peoples eyelashes grow down and some grow up? You know what I mean? How some people have upper eyelashes like elephants that grow sort of down and slanty so that they always are sort of looking through them at you and you're left to wonder if it looks like they're looking through a picket fence all the time? And Other Important Things, like who decided to grind up meat and encase it in INTESTINES and then eat it? Because, really, let's consider this. Intestines? Are filled with pre-poop. What about fleshy bags of pre-poop says hey! let's grind up all these left over bits and then stuff them in here and cook and eat it! Not that I'm going to stop eating sausage or anything, I'm not CRAZY, but let's be honest, it's a little off putting when you think about it. Same with Haggis. It's safe to say that most food from Northern Europe is probably the result of a dare. Lutefisk? I rest my case.

Actually, that sort of reminds me of the time that my friend Heather dared me to kiss a boy on the playground and I'm all BITCH, HELL NO. Then later, I wished that I had said yes because she ate those Orange Hostess Cupcakes right in front of me and I fucking LOVE those things even though they're made exclusively of sugar and lard and the orange flavoring that they use to make hand soap.

Damnation.*** Now I want bacon and Orange cupcakes. I bet if I sliced the cupcake in half and put the bacon inside it, then sprinkled it with Xanax it would make an excellent sandwich...


*Holy Run On Sentence, Grammar Man!

** Bad Things have less glitter than Good Things, but unlike Good Things, you really CAN make them with things you have lying around the house instead of driving six hours to find dried Star Anise and then feeling inadequate because you only have one color of ribbon in your house instead of 27 and you couldn't tell anyone the difference between turquoise and teal anymore than you could whip up a perfect ginger infused meringue torte for seven to serve (topped with berries from your own garden OF COURSE) with the mint and lavender sprigged rack of lamb and hand mashed turnips that you picked from your own garden and whipped using cream from the cow you milked this morning right before you wove the angora you combed yesterday unto the cloth you used to sew the sweater you whipped up after you delivered handmade cards to legless orphans in the orphanage you single handedly built out of recycled milk jugs and nails made from rolled soda cans.

***Yeah, I said Damnation. Fuck you. I may LOOK like a spritely 33 year old desert dwelling suburban housewife with the office job and abusive relationship with prescription sedatives, but at heart? I'm a sassy 70 year old Southern Belle with a heart of gold and wit of ice to compliment my nerves of steel and my perchance for gaudy jewelry and telling people to Shush.

Hope

We are in the bed room, long past when we should be. Half dressed in the half light, we are close enough to touch, but only our hands do. The air is heavy with thought of the future and effervescent with its promise.

A single finger traces the line of my cheek. You are so beautiful you say and I half laugh, derisive and unbelieving. No, you say, I mean it. You are so beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you are so luminous it almost hurts to look at you.

I am quiet for a moment and then lean in to kiss you. I am luminous because you give me hope.