Family Trait: Bop Bag Clownism

In my family, there's a definite tendency to roll with the punches. Life smacks you a good one? You go down and then come back up and knock the current obstacle on its ass with your forward momentum. That is a true fact about just about everyone in my family, on both sides. We are hardy, like weeds. We will come up swinging. We will bounce back up, a "fuck you" smile on our faces, and dare you to try that shit again.

like this scary bastard.

But sometimes? It can be tempting, after the latest in hundreds of smackdowns, to just... stay down. To stop bouncing back up. To lay down and give up and just quit. Fighting. Every. Single. Thing. Every. Single. Day.

Luckily, I'm just not wired that way. Luckily, there's a part of me that just flat-out refuses, refuses to stay down. It's an involuntary response, like blinking or the beat of my heart. It's beyond my control. With or without my input, the Standard Operating Procedure after any new life-punch is that upward spring, that teeth-clenched smile of sheer you're-not-bigger-than-me, that stupid-stubborn refusal to quit, that inability to admit when I'm beaten.

So I'm never beaten. I'm never down for long.

I will keep on practicing that upward bound. I will refuse to admit defeat. After all, I'm wired that way. I'm preset for refusal to give in. There's no quit in me.

There is, however, a healthy dislike of both clowns and dolls. Why the hell did I find that photo? Thanks for the nightmares, self.

SUNUVABEE!

Aw, HELL YES.

Tomorrow (well, really today, damn my cursed habit of staying up waaaay too late) I will take my newly-acquired tax refund dollars and I will go to the auto finance company and I will PAY OFF MAH LOAN, SUCKAS! OH, YES I WILL. Thank you, sir, I do not want another!

Then I will call the insurance company and instead of full coverage I will purchase a LIABILITY ONLY POLICY, thus dropping my rates by, oh, a billionty-thousand percent. UH-HUH, THAT'S WHAT I SAID.

Then I will go to the cell phone store and I will buy several months of service for our phone and reopen my older kid's phone account. The happy face I will be seeing when she gets out of school is going to be a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Then I will go out to my dad's house and pay him back, since he came to our rescue during the holidays, ensuring the kids had a Christmas and we had a roof over our heads (Giftmas 2010 was a real kick in the taint, friends. Oh, yes, it was).

After I get done paying off some other things? CLEAN SLATE, MAN. CLEAN. SLATE.

I can't tell you how glad I am this day has arrived. I can't tell you how hard it has been not to talk about the money and what we'd do with it - one of the truest things in life is that when you spend your money before it arrives, sixty other expenses will burst out of nowhere and mug you, thus making your financial planning a giant joke.

So yeah. I AM THRILLED. Joy is mine. The money won't be mine for more than a few days, but hey. It will have bought me happiness, for reals, and you know? I am more than okay with that.

HELL YES.

Old Wallpaper: Pants On Fire

I'm not interfering with this post at all except to urge you to note the date of publication and that I was at that time still The World's Most Dissatisfied And Underpaid Office Manager Of All Time Ever Amen. Enjoy - I even cracked myself up when rereading this one.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Pants On Fire

I just want all of you to know that my office is very cold. Very, very cold, all the time. No, really. My office is colder than your office. Full stop, the end. I win forever.

In the summer, the air conditioning is on, and it never gets above 65 degrees in here. In the winter, the heat is set at 69 - such a concession! - and so of course it never gets above 65 degrees in here.

Others in the office don't seem to mind the cold, but I am weak, and wimpy, and thin-blooded, and a smoker, so that when I get up from my chair to do something, there are numerous popping, crackling, and snapping noises. Those noises are my bones, shattering from the icy frozen tundra conditions in this office. I am my own little old-lady percussion system, right in one wimpy, cold body.

I have a little space heater that sits under my desk. In all weathers, in all seasons, my little space heater is on full blast, warming my legs and hips and stomach. Unfortunately, it does not warm my whole person; my back is left out in the howling winds and numbing chill that is this office, as are my upper torso, my arms, and my fingers. So of course to make up for this, I sit as close to on top of the little space heater as I possibly can. I go home at night with legs baked lobster-pink. You can almost smell the frying bacon.

But today I think I went too far.

I am wearing a pair of my brother's Navy uniform pants. (Don't talk to me about it. I know. But he really was very young and skinny when he wore these.) They are comfortable, but they are also some kind of poly blend, which means they retain heat.

So today, straddling my little space heater, as I got more and more absorbed in what I was doing, I didn't notice how warm my legs and stomach were getting. Until the zipper on the pants finally became superheated enough to leave a tattoo of itself on my stomach, and the pants leg tried to heat-seal itself to my shin.

And then I got up, walked outside very quickly, and did a spectacular little dance for the neighborhood, thumbs inside the waistband of muh britches (to keep the zipper away from my belly), legs kicking out (to keep the molten fabric away from my shins).

I realized at that moment that I probably looked just like a leprechaun. A tall blonde leprechaun. On crack. Doing a kicky little dance on the front porch of my office.

I wonder exactly how many people think I'm a big nutbar now?

Oh, well.

You're welcome for the visual.

Old Wallpaper (With Hindsight Commentary Added)

Okay, kids, here's a selection of excerpts from one of the old posts I was talking about. I'll make some remarks in italics.

Monday, March 13, 2006
The Saddest Joy Of Motherhood

[My older child]'s going to be twelve in a few weeks, and man, is my mighty heart breaking.

I remember when I found out that yes, I was indeed with child. I thought my life was not only ruined, but just plain over; little did I know that I was about to meet the coolest human being ever born. Not to mention THE most beautiful, THE smartest, THE one person in the wide world who not only has my exact same sense of humor, but who also has not yet heard all my material, and so thinks I am the funniest woman alive. Is there anything better? Is there? No, I didn't think so.

(Ed. Note: these days, she actually does know all my material - and steals it at will. Can't decide whether to be flattered or sue her for copyright infringement. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, MAN! FREEEEDOMMMM!)

So the only downer to having the single most awesome baby on the face of the green earth is that somehow, the time slips away from you, and then that baby walks into the room one day and you realize that oh, nonono, she's as tall as you. And wears the same size shoes. And has zits and a tendency to burst into tears at the slightest change in the emotional temperature of the room, which you thought was your exclusive domain, dammit.

(Ed. Note: You will have seen this coming, since I wrote this five years ago, but shit, you guys, she's actually got inches on me these days - in the height and foot department. The kid is 17 now, after all.)

And when this happened to me, I asked myself: did I pay attention? Was I awake through all these years when she was growing tall and straight and strong? Because, see, I don't remember this coming on so quickly. It was just the other day that she was two or three or four months old, sitting in her high chair, and when I did 'peek-a-boo' she laughed for the first time. And stole my breath away.

It was such a beautiful, delicious, gurgly laugh, right up out of her round little baby belly, that it knocked me quite literally onto my ass. And I sat there and laughed, and she laughed some more, and we laughed together for that first time, and that was when I finally understood for really real that I have a kid, and thank you whoever's in charge, she likes me. And every time since then that I have been able to make her crack up, I think it again: praise be, my kid likes me. I mean, hey, most kids love their mom; but to have your kid like you - well, there isn't a good way to describe how grateful I am, still, to this day.

And I have a confession to make. Whenever somebody says to me, "Wow, she is so much like you," I am delighted. Not only is that a massive ego stroke that my kid is modeling herself after me, but the fact is, I know this girl, and she is so way cooler than me, way cooler than I was at her age, and so beautiful in ways that I never was and never will be. She is that one girl, the pretty girl that you think is going to be a total snot, who walks right up to you, looks you straight in the eye with an expression that says, "I know something good about you," grabs you by the hand, and says just the right thing to make you her friend for life. I know this. I have seen her do it a thousand times on a hundred playgrounds, and that right there is a gift I would have killed for in school. And that's just her natural self, and I marvel that an anti-social with reclusive tendencies like myself was able to bring this openhearted person into the realm.

But the true thing that makes my little girl the most beautiful and amazing girl ever the world did see? She's mine. My sweet baby that slept exclusively on my chest for the first six months of her life; my little punkin who made friends with the monsters under her bed rather than live in fear; my own sweet girl that I cuddled after shots while she sobbed and snuffled into my neck; my young lady who I sometimes don't recognize in a room full of family and friends, and when I realize that the strange woman I've been wondering about is my girl, my bright and shining girl, I get smacked in the heart by the weirdest combination of pride and sorrow. I know I did good, folks, the proof is there before me. But someday way too soon, some guy will trump me in the cool and funny department (too late - he's here and she's suffering from first love pangs constantly - fuck, this is hard to watch), she'll go off to college and get smarter than me (we're one year out and it isn't any easier to think about now), and all those ties, all this time that I've been living a happy dream with her, will be over. And I hate that I see it coming, but I am eager to find out who she will be.

(She is a delight. She is kind of an asshole, too, but that's because she's my kid and I raised her to not be afraid of being an asshole. Fearless and wonderful and gifted and kind and growing away from me by the minute.

This post, when I wrote it, was so direfully prophetic, and yet under all of the lamentation there is a wellspring of joy. She is so much of everything I hoped she would be, and so little of what I hoped she wouldn't. She is a gift, as is her sister, and I am so glad that these two were dealt to me in the shuffle. I am a fortunate being indeed.)

Re-reborning

I am really struggling with the impulse to blog. I can't decide whether I want to give it up or not.

I think I wanted the rebirth of a blogging space in the first place as a kind of screaming, wild-eyed, coming-at-you-with-me-broadsword-swinging act of defiance against the human excrescence that worked their very Phelpsiest black magic to ruin my original blog. However, I didn't realize that by yielding that space, by fleeing the scene, I was losing all the joy in the act along with the venue.

I occasionally stop by if I have something I want to say, but Jesus, could I be more of a Debbie Downer lately? Depression, to me, should be written about with a scalpel-like finesse, not used to bludgeon the reader to death. My writings about my feeeeelings are like the lead pipe of blogging. I step right up, clonk you repeatedly about the head and shoulders, then run away for months at a time.

Fuck, I'm the Emotional Mugger of the blog world.

I have a plan, though. I think I may just go through the years of posts I managed to save from the original blog and sort of kind of paste one in from time to time. I think in that way I might be able to steal the comforting wallpaper from the old apartment and paste it on, in jigsaw patches, in my newer, draftier quarters. Maybe rediscovering some of the old words, the old happiness, will restart my engine in a more wholesome, happy context.

If I haven't scared you away forever, what do you think of that idea?

Hey, Whoa.

I guess I suck more than a very sucky thing, because holy Bob, I haven't posted in... five months?

WAT.

Okay, it's not like I didn't look over in this direction from time to time and go, "Oh. Yeah. Blog. Right. That," but somehow the words were never there and life was just too... too life, and I was positive that all that would emerge would be one long primal whine.

You know what? I firmly believe that if there can be a primal scream then there can totally be a primal whine. So I'm leaving it. Nyah. And also neener.

And then I got another e-mail from someone I'd thought had forgotten me altogether, which sent me over here to Blawger, which led me to discover that I could fiddle-fuck with my template (always, if I'm honest, a MAJOR reason I liked blogging to start with) even more than I could before, and then I thought, "Hey! How long has it been since I posted... HOLY SHIT."

So here I am. I promise you nothing in the way of posts, because I am a busy bitch these days and come home most afternoons and fall into the sweet, sweet arms of nappytime. Or I knit. But mostly, I nap.

So. Those of you for whom hope springeth eternal and still check in on this sad and neglected space, how in the blue fuck are yez?

Silence

I really wish I could say things here in interesting ways. I wish that every time I sat down to these keys and confronted this blank space I could write something worthy of your time and attention.

I can't.

It seems like every time I try, even on those days when something noteworthy has happened, I become overwhelmed by this colossal sense of futility, this absolute certainty that my words are nothing more than noises off, that my presence in the ether is just that - ethereal, ephemeral, futile, fleeting.

I tell myself that words have weight, have value, that the words I put out here are a sort of triumph over the entropy of my day-to-day, that writing online at least has the merit of telling the world that, as Celie says in The Color Purple, "I'm here. Dear God, I'm here!"

But I don't believe me.

This whole world of words and web logs and forums and chat rooms and memes and viral videos and all, all, all of it - well, hell. It's so transitory, it's so easy to erase yourself. And when I erased myself, I made myself sick inside. I tried to carry on, but there was a ghost at the feast. I was sick, sick to the heart about all the things I just decimated, let go, eradicated. I thought drastic measures might help.

I killed my MySpace account. I didn't feel better.

I killed my Twitter account. I still didn't feel better.

I think I know what the problem is here, why I can't seem to fall in love with the words like I once could. I am still so furious that my words could be taken from me, taken by my own hand, even, and just removed from the place where I thought they'd live forever, floating eternally on a sea of bits and bytes and swimming on the surface of an ocean of pixels.

I am betrayed by my own hand.

I am a coward and a fool for letting someone drive me off my own ground.

I want my blog back. I want my identity back.

And, now more than ever, I can't have it back. Because now someone I loved so deeply they were like a part of myself, someone I trusted and knew online and off, someone who could and did read that other space, is no longer someone I trust.

So right when it would be the best thing in the world for my well-being to reclaim my space, I can't.

My heart, my heart. I feel like I'm alone in the world and my dearest friend is the one who cut the lifeline. And I can't go to the safest place, the strongest place in me, my words, to heal the gaping wound.

I hate this. I don't even like this template. I want my old cruddy gray one, and my Flickr badge, and my blogroll (and oh my GOD, that's gone forever, FOREVER), my comfy, ratty sofa, my armchair with the stuffing exploding out of the back, my threadbare carpets, my portraits on the wall.

See? Disjointed mess that I am, I can't even be kind of cohesive. This is going nowhere. I'm stopping. I am stopping.

But oh. Oh, how this sorry state of exile is making me sick with silence.

Going Offline

Can't afford the bill right now.

AGAIN.

Plus, in my frantic efforts to ignore the suck, shit and fail that is happening all around me, I am whipping around my favorite sites over and over and over and over, like a manic hamster on cocaine with a quad latte chaser.

This will not do.

Since the Internet can't keep up with me ANYWAY, I am better off paying some other bills first and returning when I'm stable.

In every sense of the word.

In the words of the noble and valiant Jerry Springer, take care of yourselves... and each other.

ETA: HEY! My friend Matt just posted something on Facebook that cheered me ENORMOUSLY. So I'll leave you with this pure goodness right here:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Oh, you are SO WELCOME.

Why The Title "Auspex"?

Because of this poem, by Robert Frost:

Auspex

Once in a California Sierra
I was swooped down upon when I was small,
And measured, but not taken after all,
By a great eagle bird in all its terror.

Such auspices are very hard to read.
My parents when I ran to them averred
I was rejected by the royal bird
As one who would not make a Ganymede.

Not find a barkeep unto Jove in me?
I have remained resentful to this day
When any but myself presumed to say
That there was anything I couldn't be.

Nobody, through word or deed, will be allowed to keep me from doing or being that which I love. So I've moved house and am back in business, with the caveat, of course, that my blogging will be limited unless I have something worthwhile to say.

Talk to you soon!