I am wrapped in khaki. My sink shines.
The
FLY emails come throughout the day. Boogie your car! Boogie your purse!
I have a pink calendar, colored pens for writing in it, star stickers for rewards, purple and pink paper clips for those wedding invitations, those Netflix envelopes, all those flyaway things!
I have my load of laundry done before ten a.m. After it's done, I go to the FLY site and enter my email in the laundry ticker. Reward!
Tuesday mornings on the calendar, I write in "Mommy Meeting." We give the babies "belly time"; we nurse, breasts everywhere; we go out for club sandwiches and meatless burgers and tuna salads and diet pops.
Last year, my idea of a social gathering was sushi on a Friday night. Sake shots, shrimp boat, designated drivers, debate, loud laughing, edamame. Now it's Tuesday afternoons at the cafe discussing Bumbos, age-appropriateness, the evil Huggies versus the angelic Pampers, coupon exchange, front carriers.
As early as three months ago, I'd get a lazy jag and spend the day surfing porn, or levelling.
What has happened to me? Who am I?
I'd ask, but I have to go enter my finished laundry load into the FLY counter.
You get so you don't turn on the soft pink light. Fuck that. You change the diaper in the dark. You ignore the whining cat. When you're in the Crossroads, and the flagged dwarf comes riding up, you just tell him he's a sexy devil. Then he cheers at you and rides off. Because after awhile, you're just too tired to do things that, before, you didn't even know were tiring. And that woman you saw at Target, the one carrying the four-year old on her hip, sucking on the kid's pacifier, you sort of understand that.
***
I'd start calling Mister Aran "Primate" instead, since that's part of the name he seems to have given himself, but I don't want it misconstrued. I don't want people thinking I look down the evolutionary ladder at him, even if apes are really fucking cool. Truth is, were he any more evolved, he probably wouldn't be visible on this plane.
At any rate, I could get used to his style of writing.
I should've called him Bill Rizer, after that guy in Contra, because I always figured he would settle down with Samus one day. The name sucks, though. I mean, come on, Konami. Bill Rizer?
What I Learned Today
So many things to discuss in this screenshot. Firstly, that sword is about twelve kinds of badass. I love being a priest, but it's times like these that I have warrior envy. What can I say? I love a big... weapon.
Secondly, there's a
DRESSING ROOM in WoW. Jen spends all her time in the AH trying stuff on, now. I'm going to have a hard time levelling with this new funness. I've tried on all kinds of equipment I will probably never be the right class - or level - to actually wear. Bad. Ass.
Thirdly, the chat proves that I'm kind of a dumbass, and the people who laugh at my jokes in my PvP guild are limited to exactly Jen. Period. Which is fine.
Update: Jen is crazy
Red-assed bonedoggie is now belonging to Sumas thanks to Jen, who hands over money like I'm her pimp.
I'd be a good pimp, Jen. If it weren't for Meergo, I'd so have you making the big bucks. And I'd be wearing gators.
Sumas dinged forty yesterday, though she doesn't look a day over dead. Hot!
So now she runs around with her farty purple shadowform, which is helpful since she has zero new skills. All else must go by the wayside while I gather gold for what Jen calls the bone doggy: my blue-assed mount.
The TV Post
If I were planning on having any other babies, I'd have them for Sarah Silverman. I have been looking forward to watching
Jesus Is Magic forever. When in hell are they going to release this?
I loved watching the Pamela Anderson comedy roast. Everyone was sufficiently mean, sometimes over-the-top mean; Tommy Lee's penis was mentioned some eight hundred times; Sarah Silverman compared Jimmy Kimmel's balls to her grandma's house; Andy Dick grabbed Pamela's tits and made pew! pew! shooting noises with them. Most of all, I watched the couch where Sarah, Jimmy & Adam Corolla sat, and I wished I could be sitting there, too. I need some depraved, hilarious friends.
***
Mister Aran hates celebrities. He always did, I think, but then they started starring in their own reality shows on Bravo and VH1 and solidified his hatred. He turned away in disgust during one part of that Being Bobby Brown piece of shit show where Whitney starts talking about the poo she needs to take. I think she describes it as a "boatload." Mister Aran is under the impression that, at one time, she was graceful and classy, a real diva. I tend to think she was always sort of crack-ish, as (I think) Chris Rock put it. I asked Mister Aran whether he thinks the drugs or Bobby Brown came first, and he thinks Bobby Brown came along
because of the drugs. And now there's kids, right, so I figure in their case, drugs are keeping the family together.
***
We used to not watch any TV. Now we watch bad TV. It's not a good thing. It's just tough to type while I'm feeding The Bug, and often I'm trying desperately to not fall asleep at 3:00 a.m., so we watch TV.
***
We prefer reality shows like
Project Runway and even
America's Next Top Model; they deliver just enough Heidi and Tyra for glamour, characters to hate and root for and a big payoff. Damn those long-ass marathons. I've lost whole weekends to that shit.
And of course, there is always
Kyan.
God bless Kyan.
My good friend from school gave me a look when I said I had a crush on The Kyan. Hey, it's not like he (the good friend) is going to get any of The Kyan either. I can crush all I want.
***
Mister Aran has a hell of a time rating things in order. So we tried to rate sitcoms, and he was just no fun. I'm doing the hard work, trying to compare
Ab Fab to
Scrubs, figuring out whether
Family Guy counts, bemoaning the unfunniness of
The Simpsons, quoting hell out of
The Tick (the live action one, dammit).
I'm just not into
Seinfeld; sorry. I downright hate
Curb Your Enthusiasm, though I guess I can respect what it's trying to be. I can't stand shows where every fucking character is both detestable and boring. Kramer makes
Seinfeld just barely eek by.
Enthusiasm seems determined to make the viewer uncomfortable. I'd have a better time eating two bean burritos and then going for a run.
***
The Sopranos is excellent, though sometimes I have to turn away. For opposite reasons, I love
The OC; it's like
Beverly Hills 90210 with balls. Maybe you could say I have the slightest Peter Gallagher fetish. I love that Play-Doh mouth. Alternatively,
Laguna Beach is pure shit, if you ask Mister Aran, and scary, if you ask me. Rich kids lacking any wisdom making choices and decisions that should be made by adults - not to mention the "Like Factor." Living in Los Angeles, I may not have even noticed the "Like Factor," except I've been watching all my TV with the Closed Captioning on. You never know when The Bug's going to shriek, plus I don't want to disturb him and the entire house with my TV noise at night. Try that sometime. Watch
Laguna Beach with the Closed Captioning on, and you'll see the "Like Factor." It's maddening. And it's proof positive that TV needs writers. Real people are boring.
***
Today, I'm putting
The OC season two, plus
Six Feet Under, on my Netflix queue, the latter so
Jen will stop bugging me about it. Plus, then she'll have to watch
Carnivale, which needs a second season even more than America needs a new president.
***
Why oh why aren't Sarah Silverman and Patrick Warburton huge, huge stars? Because I'm not in charge of Hollywood, that's why. Someone needs to start a letter writing campaign. Me, I need a nap.
My belly is so nice and soft, still with the four red lines. To touch it in the dark is heaven. It reminds one of that scene in
Pulp Fiction when Butch's French girlfriend is talking about wanting a pot belly, how what feels good is not the same as what looks good. And that is why I press through the ab work after kickboxing class, and by press, I mean grunt and yelp and cry.
Mister Aran and I make noise. It used to make our instructors at the old old place laugh, how we yelled during class to make it through. Most people just slowed down. At Bodies In Motion, people stop altogether. They sit down sometimes.
Oh,
Mister Thorne(1), the best guy was in my class last night. I've seen all manner of badly trained kickboxers before, but this is the first time I've seen someone get beat up by their own heavy bag. He was insane, tall with spindly, hairy legs and this determined, angry expression that made me sad. He'd hop on one foot, flailing his arms with all his might, grunting with the stress of it. You could see, in every weak hit, his cubicle, his overbearing girlfriend/mother, his Internet porn addiction, his absent father. And then the bag would swing back and smack him square in the face, and he'd look surprised, like it had come out of nowhere.
***
I used to use porn to get to sleep. Not real porn, but I'd make it up in my head. It was something to think about that didn't have anything to do with my life. I'd make these ideal porns, run them through my head, create the stars and the situations. And they usually ended with penetration, my sleeptime stories. I was never all that interested in the old in-n-out as much as the events leading up to it, which is why I was such a bum one night stand back in the day.
The sleeptime porn thing started because I can have problems with insomnia. When I was a kid I'd spend all night listening to the normal creaks and groans of my house, certain,
certain, that someone had broken in, sometimes getting out of bed and standing at my bedroom door, ready to bolt to my parents' room. Laying there, hearing the settling house, hearing my parents having sex, which made me press my fingers into my ears until they ached, which always started with the swishswishswish of their waterbed - gross gross gross - staring into the dark, making patterns on my ceiling. Even after I moved out and no longer heard the sex, after logic took over and I knew the house settling wasn't a burglar, I still couldn't sleep. And in some ways, I think it was better when I worried about burglars, because after that, I started worrying about my life. Money, boyfriends, car accidents, career... shit. It was at nighttime, in the years just after moving out of my parents' home, that I became a champion worrier.(2)
For guys, porn is kind of perfuctory. It's almost biological. For chicks, or at least for me, porn is a nice addition to sex, like whipped cream on strawberries. Strawberries are the main attraction, and whipped cream can be fun, in small doses, on its own, but together, they make a great kind of sense. I know girls who love their porn, who have collections, and hell, I'm one of them, but the hardest-core girl comes nowhere near the least horny guy, where porn is concerned. Like strip clubs. You just don't see girls sitting in a male review at 1:00 pm, alone, smoking and drinking too much, trying to pick up on the talent.
So lately, since the sexing has been minimal, I haven't been into porn. I don't even dig thinking about it, really. I get partway into a scene and just shrug it off. So I've been stressing at night.
You'd think, with all this sleep deprivation, that I'd fall asleep on my way into the covers, but my brain just doesn't work that way.
So, I've been thinking of lists. I go through my endless to-do lists, and I mentally do the things on the list. I actually fantasize about cleaning the inside windows of my car, making the bed, returning library books, picking up water from the grocery store. Maybe because of its dullness, this puts me right to sleep.
It worries me, too. Is this how cool chicks turn into short-haired, overweight mothers who speak babytalk and ignore their husbands?
***
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte is turning out to be one hell of a book. Chuck P. has recommended his work before. I don't always trust Palahniuk's abilities, but his taste is spot on. Mister Thorne, you would dig this book. Trust Samus. This isn't one of those reading assignments I give you, which you should really get going on, like
this. Home Land is one of those you're going to read in two days and then emulate on your goddamn
blog which, I might add, hasn't been updated since the Truman administration.
***
(1) I've wondered a lot lately why the name Thorne reminds me of my earliest childhood memories of educational discipline, which in my private elementary school involved a paddle and a big man in a three-piece gray suit, and today while putting away folded laundry I remembered that my Vice Principal was named Mr. Thorne. So there you go.
(2) How weird to find out, some ten years later, that I got this from my dad, that he spends all night playing video games and reading the Bible and doing whatever he can to numb the stress. Maybe I should tell him about the porn thing.
Weight gain and the hope of Plundered Poonani
I have to be weighed this morning, in an hour and a half. I'm having my requisite three egg whites, oatmeal, fruit and water, which is how I start most of my mornings. Tasty, low on points, feeling good about the new day, hoo rah.
Something goes wrong after noon. Being another human's sole food source is hungry work - and pretty creepy in a cannibalistic way - not to mention I'm dealing with my sugar addiction again. I was managing it before I got pregnant, but now I have to start all over again with the internal violence.
I just couldn't bring myself to write down the food this week. It used to be so fun, the writing down, the simple math, the Night Before Weigh-In Tension, the jubilee when I'd lost. Now it just seems like work.
That's what's good about being accountable every weekend, though. You get a fresh start on Monday.
I'd continue with this boring shit, but I have updating to do on TheBugStuff.
***
Continued:
So I got weighed, and I gained a pound and a half. The people at this Weight Watchers location are so dry and boring that I couldn't even have a proper meltdown. So I went to the store and bought some peaches, then when I got home, I ate an ice cream sammich. That's how I deal with things.
The good thing about Weight Watchers is, you know what to do. You can look back and pinpoint where you went wrong. I know what I have to do; I just don't want to do it. I need to lay off the ice cream sammiches, for one thing. They may be only two points each, but those two points add up. It's just - UNNNNGGHH. Sometimes I think I'll go stabbity stabbity if I don't get some sammich in me.
Maybe it's the lack of sex, which I do believe will be all bettah starting this week, when the doctor will tell me that the poonani is fresh as a daisy and ready to be plundered. This week, on the space on my Weight Watchers food diary for my weekly goals, I shall write: "Plundered poonani, much nursing, more exercise, less sammich. Oh, and more water."
***
I'm just enjoying the phrase "plundered poonani." So I wrote it again.
***
In other news, I made it so you have to type a word when you comment, because I kept getting automated comments. They weren't even GOOD automated comments. One guy had a candle-making blog, for fuck's sake. Another guy claimed to have a black belt in Arnis. I may be crazy, but I don't believe Arnis does the belt thing. So, no more clicky on ass blogs may be done through Samus. Let me know if the word verification machine springs up any dirty words.
Also, I want a little list on the side that shows what blogs I read, because I think people would be all excited to see their names on my list, or maybe would commit seppuku if theirs wasn't on my list, and that's the kind of power I'd like to wield. I just need to know how to do it. I've been clicky around all morning on blogger and can't figure it out. So leave a word-verified comment explaining it to me.
Some thoughts on Desolace
Desolace was revamped to the nines during beta, and it's pretty kick ass now. The best thing about Desolace has got to be Rexxar. Rexxar is my boyfriend. The most kick-ass humanoid NPC in the game by far. He travels around with his big fucking bear, Misha, looking badass, and no one screws with him. I blow him kisses and stuff, but he doesn't pay me any mind. What an alpha male.
My PvP character, Sumas (damn you alliance freaks who took the name Samus, AND Samoose I might add), has just dinged 38 and, with the help of Mister Aran, also known as Graymane the Bad Ass Hunter Who Plays More Often These Days, has ripped through Desolace. I like how there are quests all over the place, I like gaining troll faction (one of these days, I will own a dinosaur mount again. I must.), I like herding kodos over to goblins for cash, I like killing fruity satyrs and bitchy naga, I like the idea of a Demon Box. However, on the subject of that Demon Box quest, does it sadden anyone else to have to kill undead and orcs? I find myself wanting to reason with them. Why can't we be friends?
Desolace also gives just the right amount of good PvP opportunity. The alliance occupation is fairly sparse; the levels are within reason; and they tend to be pretty stupid.
The best part about a PvP server, besides killing gnomes of course, is hearing the call over general for help. I saw one such call yesterday from a mage: "[General] can ne1 help me im being corpse camped 1 39 mage cant kill with half health."
Hell yes, I can help, sweetie. He invites me and a 35 rogue.
On the way to making mincemeat of this mage, we run into a couple other alliance who want to play. This is where the stupid comes in: they totally ignore me and kill the DPS first.
The mage we went to kill followed suit at first, but on his second try, he wised up - sorta. He tried to kill me, while my rogue beat on him from behind. Having died for the second time, our corpse camper became the campee. He figured it out after that, though, and sheeped me first thing, then ran like a bitch. We still managed to kill him good, even though I forgot Undead Mind. Does Undead Mind work on sheep? I always forget Undead Mind, dammit.
The mage in the party left and the rogue and I killed alliance for fifteen minutes or so. All the while, we have this inane conversation.
[Rogue] U no were swamp of sorrows is
[Sumas] It's in the Eastern Kingdoms, in the Southeastern part of the continent.
[Rogue] so like by camp taurajo over here
[Sumas] No, it's on the other continent, way South.
[Rogue] lolz
[Rogue] can u take me to swamp of sorrows
[Sumas] Sorry no, I don't have time. I have a baby in my lap who needs to eat soon.
[Rogue] lolz
[Rogue] tell me more exactly were swamp of sorrows is
[Sumas] I'm not sure exactly how to get there. I can't remember.
[Rogue] i'll check thottbot then
[Sumas] Good, that'll probably be more accurate than I can be anyway.
[Rogue] lolz
[Rogue] its been 10 mos
[Sumas] Since you played?
[Rogue] this char yah
[Sumas] ah.
[Rogue] ive been in the army.
[Sumas] Okay, I have to go. Thanks for the fun.
[Rogue] take me to swamp of sorrows
[Sumas] I have to go now.
If he'd had a shred of personality, I may have remembered his name.
***
And finally, I took this shot in Desolace yesterday. Either there are some textures missing, or Desolace has some strange plant life going on.
So, my grandpa doesn't want to be a part of my son's life. It's a reality I have to get used to.
Sometimes, during my first trimester, when I was so fucking sick that I was hating the whole idea of parenthood, I would picture my grandpa holding a baby -
my baby - and I would gather strength from that.
To say I was close to my grandpa would be an understatement. Before I met my husband, he was the number one person in my life. Before I was born, my mother was the number one person in his.
I could blame this all on Evil Aunt, and I probably will, for the rest of my life. She's manipulative to a scary, haunting degree, and dangerously narcissistic, and she is the voice in his ear, has been for years now. But I can't blame her one hundred percent. He is a man, an adult, and he had a choice. And he has chosen to leave me behind, and my son with me.
***
He calls on occasion, every other week or so. He asks how I'm doing and tells me about his current ailments.
My grandpa is dying. Not the way you think of dying, in a bed surrounded by hopeless Get Well cards and smiling family members and maybe some hospital machinery. He's dying many slow deaths, deaths that take years: of diabetes, kidney disease, prostate cancer, heart disease.
The same way our relationship is dying. One uncomfortable, lying phone conversation at a time. Where he pretends he cares about my life and my son, and I don't say what I want to say because it would upset him too much, and his life is so fragile. Even now, I am so frightened of his impending death. And of ours.
***
He was a big, beautiful man, a Denver cop for twenty-five years, very charming. He carried everything in the world in his breast pocket, and I bet he still does: pens, notebooks, calculators, Trident gum. I sat on his lap my whole young life; it was my safest place. He taught me to hug. He taught me to love. Or at least, he taught me what love should be: without reservation, passionate to the point of silliness, all-forgiving.
When my mother was falling-down drunk, being an absolute asshole for a couple of years following her divorce, I would call him in a rage. Together we'd mourn her decisions, but if I went too far, he would tell me, "She's making a lot of mistakes right now, but I won't talk bad about her. She is my daughter." And that was that.
No more.
***
When I was little and just starting to grasp the concept of death, he would try to get me used to the idea of him not being around anymore. He said he was writing a letter to me, in case he died, and that it would be in his Bible. He explained wills. He knew it would be a devastation. That's how close we were. We were more frightened for one another than ourselves.
"What would happen if I died?" I used to ask.
"Then I'd just have to crawl into the corner there and die, too," he'd say.
***
He tells me Evil Spawn, the girl that Evil Aunt finally had after years of bitching about wanting one, is not like me. She is mean, selfish. When she does not get her way, she tells him she doesn't love him. Like mother, like daughter.
Everyone worried that I would be jealous of Evil Spawn. I was surprised when I wasn't. Mostly, I hoped her arrival would heal my grandpa, make him happy again, give him something to live a few more years for. But when he talks about her, he sounds tired.
Sometimes, he forgets and calls her by my name. This pisses Evil Aunt off to no end.
***
You all have seen pictures of The Bug, but my grandpa hasn't. He doesn't care to.
***
I won't explain how this all happened. I've written about it before. All the crap with Evil Aunt and Evil Grandma and my cousins and Christmas and my mother and all that. He's over there, and I'm here.
***
When I last held his hand, it was so cold. He has no circulation in his arms and legs anymore, and his eyes are going. I massaged his arms until he could feel his hands again. I told him, "Someone needs to do this for you every day." No one does.
***
I tell my ma that everyone who comes into contact with The Bug is blessed, that he has become the joy in so many people's lives, and so if they don't want to know him, it is their loss and not his. And I know he's not missing anything. When I see him with my father-in-law, I know they'll be just as close as I was with Grandpa.
But for real, inside? I'm sad about it. And I'm still grasping at leaves and twigs on this cliff, hoping maybe I can change it somehow, even though it's impossible. It's like all those years when he was telling me he would die one day. I always told him, "No you won't."
