Thanksgiving Special

Junk that makes life more tolerable:

1. My red St. Giles sweatshirt – God, it feels so good. If I had a tiny beaded necklace and Gap Dream body spray, I’d swear I was in 11^th grade.
2. The Husband – When I call him to bitch, he pretends to listen and that’s enough for me. He also dances, and its glorious. And he smells good.
3. The Kaiser – Did I mention he said “motherfucker” yesterday? No? Well he did.* I’d rather be talking to him about bugs than doing, oh, anything.
4. Chips and salsa – Truth: This should be number 1.
5. Little Murray Sparkles** – She is beautiful and kind and her breath smells like sunshine.
6. Eleanor Frito Fraser – My little hot-water bottle, the Frito keeps me warm and is the best snuggler I know. She features her own stink cloud, a Kermit-the-Frog face and a positive attitude.
7. Marlboro Light Menthols – We may say goodbye, but you’ll always be my best friend.
8. Diet Coke – Have no fear, DC, I shall never abandon you.
9. Insanely creative friends, old and new – Memes, Tommy, Kevin (dude, get a website), Simon, Dan, Carla (duuuude)… I’m inspired.
10. Writing – And everything*** that comes with it. I appreciate those that read, that comment, that send me luuuuvz when I need it. I’m thankful.
11. Sobriety – It’s been a while now. And yeah, recovery is sexy.

*Alrightalright, I said it first. Trying to get the motherfucking car seat strapped down. And I apologized.

**Honorable mention: St. Jimmy no Balls (On days he doesn’t take a human-sized dump and on the rare occasions he doesn’t bite me, look generally disgusting or plot my demise)

***Third rejection today. It’s still OK.

I love it, OK? I do. I'm eating it right now.

It’s About a Drug Dealer

Writing Prompt:

I'm incapable of writing something pleasant?

Every day, June wakes at 7 and hits the snooze button twice. Every day. She never falls back asleep, but she hits the button and lets the minutes pass slowly, her eyes staring at the brightening wall. Snooze ‘til 7:09. Snooze ‘til 7:18. When she was young, she’d asked her mother why the clock makers set the snooze time to nine minutes. Who decides that? Her mother thought that nine was the hardest number to add so in the time you spent thinking what time you’ll hear the alarm again, you wake up. June disagrees. Nines are easy. Sevens are the hardest. Sixes are miserable too.

The third beep blares. She turns over and stares at the red light. She listens to the scratchy, whining buzz. Her arm extends and clicks the button. The room is silent but she hears her roommate in the kitchen.

June gets out of bed and turns on the shower. She steps on the scale and wishes she hadn’t. She brushes her teeth and puts on moisturizer. June pulls her hair into a ponytail, puts on deodorant and considers makeup. She shoves her feet into still-tied sneakers and pulls a white sweater on over her t-shirt.

Johnny has the scale on the kitchen table. He’s stacked up the clear baggies beside the scale, but they sag and tilt onto the table. June pulls a plastic cup from the cabinet and fills it. Half orange juice, half Dr. Pepper.

“That’s disgusting.” Johnny smiles. June shrugs and takes a sip. She watches him measure the powder into the tiny bags.

“How many?” She leans back in her chair.

“Four, but one on 59^th.”

Johnny knows she hates going over there, hates that part of town. She hates the museums and the smiling tourists. Hates the nannies and the gurgling babies.

June grabs the four bags and he hands her the addresses. She needs to be at the restaurant in two hours. Four stops, two hours.

“Make me one?” June shoves the bags and paper in her back pocket and picks up the trimmed-down straw. Johnny pulls a line of powder from the pile, straightening it up with his Visa. June leans down, sticks the straw at the edge of the line and inhales. Hard, sharp. Instant clarity. She feels better. She feels alive. Running her hand over his shoulder, she heads toward the door.

This is my first visual prompt. Also, why am I so fucking depressing? Sorry. I considered writing about the two women ’bout to embrace in a sweet, friendly hug. I totally did. And then I realized that A) Hugs kinda gross me out and B) I don’t give a shit about happy people.

On Rejection

Give it to me.

Last night I sent out about six queries. I don’t know that the query letter was ready to go out, but it was damn time to suck it up and send it into the world. A friend is making final edits, so the query I send later in the week may not be the same I sent yesterday.

Today, I got my first rejection email. It was glorious. I was excited. Ecstatic to be…rejected? Yeah. Mostly I was thrilled because it wasn’t a form rejection. Obviously, the editor read the query, which means an intern or email reader or whoever the hell screens queries sent it along. I’m OK with this.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know that the chances of even representation are slim. It’s competitive. The book may not be good enough. It may not be what they’re looking for right now. All these things work against me, work against every hopeful writer nervously clicking “send.”

If it doesn’t happen, a real possibility, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Cry, probably. And then? I don’t know. I may try fiction. I may rework the premise. I may just blog for a while. I may stop writing and start knitting or making soap (I really want to try making soap. Reals.). I may crawl under a rock for a few years. I don’t know.

For now I’ll just wait. Hope. See how long it takes before rejection starts to really hurt.

Remember My Tire Iron

I have a sick kid, a shitty query and a dirty house. No blog. I have, however, discovered THIS and you should too.

It Comes Out They Nose

I pick up the boys from school. I load them both into the car and we set off toward home.

You see Hayden givin' me the stink eye? Yeah.

They ignore me. I’m OK with that.

The Kaiser: You like dragons, Hayden?
Hayden: Yeah, I like dragons. You like dragons?
The Kaiser: Yeah, I like the dragons. Dragons have fire that comes out they nose.
Hayden: Hahahaha. Fire comes out they nose.
The Kaiser: Mahahaha. Yeah. Fire comes out they nose!

Out they nose!

I turn up the music.

The Kaiser: Mama, turn it down!
Me: Whaaa?
The Kaiser: We needs quiet.

I turn down the music. I actually turn down the fucking music. And again, whaaaaa?

Hayden: What else they do?
The Kaiser: They put the fire on your face. They put the fire in your ears.
Hayden: Hahahaha. They put the fire in your eyebrow.
The Kaiser: Hayeah. They do.

Turn down the music, wench. We're conversing.

Writing Prompt: Murder

Yeah, murder. Prompt: Write about a man who has succeeded in killing his best friend. (I wrote this a week ago. Three people told me not to post on my blog. I considered.)

I killed him on a Saturday, one of those fall days that makes no sense, a day that confuses my body and baffles the thermostat. It was hot in the afternoon, but the chill approached long before the sun had set. The sun shone but the leaves jerked with the wind. It was one of those days.

The cold came and I killed him then. I waited until my t-shirt wasn’t enough and I pulled on my old Harvard sweatshirt. I think it belonged to my older brother, but I’ve had it so long it feels like mine. The sleeves are frayed; the edges hang down over my hands. The collar is worn, loose. Holes have appeared and grown. The burgundy lettering peels around the edges. A weekend sweatshirt, one I had only worn to lie on the couch and read or work in the back garden.

The shirt soaks in the bathtub. I stand at the sink and study my body in the mirror. I wipe my chest, my arms. Wring out the washcloth and wipe again. I scrub my fingernails. The cuticles are red. The nails shine white. Try to look in the mirror. I see my lips. Black and gray stubble. My nose. I move up, up. I wipe a speck of blood from my chin and put my hands back under the running water. Up, up. I get as far as my cheek bones and look away.

I wipe my hands on the soft gray hand towel and look in the bathtub. The water is still clear. The brown seeps out from the shirt, feathery fingers of color, dissipating and diluting. The shirt lies on the bottom but the sleeves float up through the water, reaching toward the surface. They reach like he reached. His arms grasped for me, pleading when his mouth couldn’t make the words.

He reaches and I close my eyes. I remove the knife. I close my eyes. I stab again. The lack of resistance shocks me. The body gives way. The metal slides in. No noise. No fight. I turn away, focus on the white of the wall and push it deeper. The blood seeps from the white sleeves toward the block lettering. It smears across my stomach. Splotches on my chest. The burgundy spreads.

Even murder?

More…On Being Nice

Cows. Entirely unrelated.

My college boyfriend was from upstate New York and he was both baffled and annoyed by the southern tendency to talk to everyone. About anything. All the time. He couldn’t understand why the grocery store cashier asked him how he was dong — and appeared genuinely interested. While he found it odd, even irritating, I’d say it’s one of the best things about living here. People do care. People are interested. And people are polite.

Today I dropped into the gas station across the street from my office. It’s in a questionable part of town and it’s frequented by, well, not the types of people that live, uh, here. It’s quaint, owned by an Indian husband and wife. They got the good stuff — Little Debbie snacks, Fritos, soda, Boone’s Farm. I go for cigarettes and a Diet Coke. There’s a young African American chick behind the bulletproof (Maybe? Or maybe its just glass. I don’t know. Whatever.) glass and I ask her for a pack of Marlboro Light Menthols. She gives them to me through the slot in the window and tells me she likes my car. I laugh, and say that yeah, I like it too, but I don’t like the payments and it’s going back in April.

A conversation began. I was in a hurry to get home, but I stayed and we chatted.

She had gotten her son a Cadillac four wheeler for Christmas last year. Turns out he’s also three. We talk about having only children, their feelings of entitlement, our responsibility to not give in to everything they want. I tell her that until the Kaiser poops in the toilet, he’s getting no new toys. She laughs. She tells me about decorating her son’s room for his birthday, covering the walls with colorful car wallpaper. We laugh.

And maybe it is odd. To have a ten-minute conversation through glass with a complete stranger. But I left feeling better, and I hope she came away from our conversation feeling good-ish too.

It’s the tiny, perhaps inconsequential, every-day interactions that make life meaningful. The little moments between the big events that help shape who we are, what we’re becoming. So yeah. Listen. Be open. Yada.

Peace, Love, and Gas Stations.

Send a Christmas Card to Noah

Noah is five-year-old with neuroblastoma, whose parents sent out a request for people to send cards to Noah for an early Christmas, as he is not expected to survive until December 25th.

A friend of mine posted something about this on her Facebook page. I thought it was another hoax, so went to Snopes. It’s not a hoax. Kid is dying. Kid is five. Kid says he’s going to heaven to be an angel. Send him a card.

Noah

Noah Biorkman
1141 Fountain View Circle
South Lyon, MI 48178

I’m a humorless bitch who can’t take a joke.

Eh, I was reading about Tucker Max, epic douche. One link led to another and I came across this:

I don't even have the words.

Don’t strain your eyes:

Though she was a tiger lady, our hero didn’t have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her. That noble styling sure soothes the savage heart! If you’d like your own doll-to-doll carpeting, hunt up a pair of these he-man Mr. Leggs slacks. Such as our new automatic wash wear blend of 65% “Dacron” and 35% rayon-incomparably wrinkle-resistant. About $12.95 at plush-carpeted stores.

Done vomiting? Cool. From aforementioned colossal asshole (“Fat girls are not real people” — he said that, yeah, and it only gets worse.) to congress requiring an amendment on abortion in the health care bill (Really? REALLY? Somehow I don’t think that women are gonna plan to have an abortion and hence buy the rider)… I think we’re…. regressing?

/rant.

More creepy ads.

Hazelnut Love

It’s Friday. The coffee is on (Don’t you love the tinkling sound of the coffee maker? It tinkles. It also groans. I like it.) and I still have plenty of hazelnut creamer. I hate running out. It’s like waking from a gorgeous dream, thinking it’s Christmas morning and then realizing that no, it’s just a Tuesday in March. Tell me you’ve done this.

On a disconcerting note, I found out that Gordon Dill is a philosophy major. I am rethinking my hate.

On an even more disconcerting note, I’ve been tracking my blog. The search engine terms that get people to my blog. Conclusion: My readers are insane. By far, the biggest pull is “Owen & Mzee,” which is fucking HEElarious because you know it’s some sweet soul just searching for pictures of their favorite hippo and turtle. Or, oh God, it’s a kid. Poor child comes a lookin’ for cute photos and gets a health-care rant peppered with bad words and sarcastic religious commentary. Sorry, kiddies.

I mean, I totally understand why people are searching this.

Peace, Love, and Unexpected Friendships.