All the Horrible Girliness

2010-04-05T12:52:00.001-07:00

Bad mommy, bad.

I just threw that damned red Corvette into the trash outside. And when he didn't seem upset enough about it, I told him it was going to be taken away in the garbage truck, and he was never going to see it again.

The words going through my head were: cruel and unusual. But I'd threatened to do it, and I couldn't go back on it. That's the thing about teaching a kid; if you let them think they can get away with it, they will every time.

It doesn't make sense to me though. I must've done a lot of bad stuff growing up because what I remember most is the spankings, the preceding dread and the proceeding hatred. But I also remember thinking my parents' word was law. It never occurred to me that they weren't in charge. The Bug never went there. And until late last year, I admired it. I admit it: when he'd rebel against me, do things his own way, I got after him but I also dug it. I always wanted the kid to have his own mind. Until I found out that it would make him impossible to have out in public.

I'm not some tattooed hipster talking about my kid's freedom or whatever either. I'm hard on him (see above). I threw out that Corvette because I knew it would break his heart. Spankings and time outs don't phase him, but he'll remember that Corvette hitting the trash bin for awhile. And the next time I threaten it, I hope he'll turn his attitude around.

But god. It sucks.

2010-03-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

I am writing this from an iPhone at 12:01 AM. I am grateful for the autocorrect.

I get to this place, seems like every year at this time, when the anxiety can't be quelled with fantasy any longer and I am compelled to blog in the dark to soothe myself into sleep. Usually I tell myself stories so I won't think while I fall asleep but now, I am annoyed with all of my stories. It's a low place. Perhaps it's best to admit it's a low place instead of covering it up. Telling myself lies.

The Bug. My life, will it always be this stressful? Filled with worry for him? For myself? When I first had him I was surprised by how much patience I had. Now, I'm surprised by my lack of it. I have had to apologize so much lately. And he forgives me.

2009-05-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

I didn't sleep, but I might be on my way. Anne Lamott helped. I told my trainer (no matter how many trainers I hire, she will always be my trainer, the first, the one) on chat that I'd probably eaten 7000 calories today and she said she didn't feel so bad for having cheesecake, then. I like that in a friend.

Vampires, man. I don't know. Shit. So many rules to follow, but even worse, so many you have to make up. You have to figure lots of stuff out. Spiritual or scientific? What's the metaphor? Because monsters are never just monsters. Or maybe I could just leave it all up to the unconscious mind and type; this would be preferable, but I hate it because my unconscious mind will suddenly hit the brick wall of my knowledge. Like in a story I was writing the other day, this guy BLAMMO! was on steroids. And I was like, REALLY? Really, Samus Mind? Does he have to be? Can't I take that out, pretend that never happened? Because now I have to stop writing to research steroids. And Samus Mind was all like, nope, right, and she sounded cheerful about it. Nope, he's on 'roids, and I'm not giving you another word of the story until you figure out 'roids, and the gateway performance enhancers.

That's been going on all through this novel. I've typed out about 100 usable pages, 1.5 spaced, and it's been all because of hard work because shit keeps happening that I have to research. Rodrigo was a conquistador? Brilliant, okay, wait what? He proved himself to the natives with some kind of Amazonian insect? But I don't know anything about insects. Shit. And so I go researching, and after a lot of false starts I discover the correct insect and I'm like wooopaaaah! and I go writing writing writing until I discover that the main character is into punk. So I email a friend who knows about this stuff and I say I'll save the punk for the rewrite and I plow forward. It all feels like plowing, man. I'm so proud of those 100 pages because usually I'd give up a lot quicker.

Which reminds me, I was thinking about that today. I mentioned in another entry about piano, how I faked it a lot, how I didn't try very hard to succeed when I was growing up, and now I'm quite different. I wanted to give up at the range today about midway through. I was embarrassing myself around all the experts with their compound bows and their targets with holes only in the yellow. I made some self-deprecating jokes, like when my arrows went to the left of the target I'd say, "Okay so if the animal I'm aiming at just skitters THIS way, I'll have dinner..." Luckily, they laughed. But it was tough on me, my ego sucks. But then things started to click, one at a time. One guy told me where to put the string, how to aim it, and once I did that, my shoulder locked back and I went, oh! I did it again the next time, I felt it, and then again, and again. And pretty soon I was shooting so damn well that the other people were watching, and saying encouraging things, and making impressed noises, not so much because of my skill but because my arrows had been landing on the wrong targets for an hour and suddenly I was hitting my own, and mostly keeping it within the circles too, and sometimes getting it into the yellow, and often grouping them, which I learned means that they're all hitting in the same place, almost the same hole in the wall.

I felt good about myself when I left because I'd wanted to go home before the things clicked. One guy said that it takes him sixty arrows to start hitting where he wants to hit, and he was mega experienced. I thought about how embarrassing kickboxing used to be when I sucked at it, and I had that same experience when I first *got* the round kick. One of the teachers said, once you get it, you got it, and it's true. You feel it, and then you got it, and you just have to throw a million more round kicks to perfect and maintain it.

I read a study about weight loss; they'd put a bunch of people on different diets and they found that none of the diets were particularly better than the others, that what counted was sticking to it. Same thing with quitting smoking, apparently; the goal is not to Not Fail but to Not Stop Trying. Isn't this a lesson we learned from a little train when we were kids? Add this to the list of stuff I think the Bug really needs to know while growing up.

2009-05-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

I am forcing myself not to do unhealthy things tonight.

I started drinking this dong quai tea. I have PMS like... I become a monster, you wouldn't believe. I hate feeling that way. I start wondering what "real" and "normal" is. I don't know which of my problems are relevant or just hormones. I blimp out, sometimes gaining up to ten pounds (!) of water, I'm irritable, angry, I want to fight constantly. So I picked up the menstrual health tea.

I had some weird moments at first. I felt my uterus cramping. I hardly ever have cramps, and I wasn't on my period, so this was super odd. But then I looked it up, and apparently it does make your uterus contract a bit in order to strengthen it. Or something. It wasn't horrible, but it did concern me, that and the tender nipples. But also - joy! - I felt wonderful. I was happy and horny, even in the car, and the cramping uterus sometimes made me feel yummers. I thought I looked good, too, and I didn't care what dong quai did to my hormones if I could just go an entire cycle without once clenching my fists because of how Mister Aran was breathing.

But this morning I woke up and knew it wasn't a cure-all. Ah, crap. I snapped immediately, had the same ugly yucky body stuff that always happens around this time. And because I'm all action action action, control control control, I decided to fight. I took a shower, I treated myself a bit, and I reminded myself: Attitude. Gratefulness.

I shouldn't have eaten so much and I should've worked out. But I did go shooting.

About a month ago I bought a simple but good bow, some arrows, and some leather stuff and started learning to shoot. I put a TV box out in the gully between my group of houses and the next group of houses over, lined with trees, with lots of eyeline; I stuffed it with an old cushion and some styrofoam and started twanging arrows at it. And oh, it does me so good. I don't know how to meditate. I don't like to be still. I know there's purpose in meditation and in napping but I just don't wanna. I want to punch holes in things. I want evidence. And archery does this for me. There's eighty things to think of, so that your mind has to be right there, and then there's a moment when you're in position, the string drawn back, your body locked in that T. You breathe, or you don't breathe. You count: one, two, release. That moment, I call it California Zen. You know, zen without all the decades of training and shit. We get our zen down here in hour-long increments. My friends go to Bikram Yoga or whatever and get all zenned. We're too busy to actually zen. I'm verbing zen on purpose, by the way, I like it.

So archery for me is all about that One. Moment. Where I'm still. I took up archery and realized that's why I liked kickboxing so much, because there's nowhere else to be but now when someone's about to hit you. But there's less getting hit in the face, in archery. Hell, I might quit the kickboxing gym and just go to the range every weekend for the same price, just have running and spinning and circuits be my workout.

I'm going tomorrow to the park to hang out with the SCA dudes who do archery. I'm nervous, man. Geeks are tough. I haven't been doing this very long. I don't know what I'm doing. Plus, after I'm done with them, I'm going straight to the Faire, and I'm going to shoot there, too, but after I've drank some cold port from my horn. I will feel better after some drinks.

I'm jittery now. I want to play video games, I want to argue on forums. That's what PMS makes me do. I'm refusing. I don't know how to make this better. I think if I just turn out my little lap desk's light and try to sleep, I'll lay here and stress, and write forum arguments in my head. I get the evil eye from that shit, though. When I've been particularly combative on the internet, I can feel all those people's energies stabbity stabbing at me. So today I promised I wouldn't log in, I wouldn't do it. I worked on my vampire story instead.

I just went into my dark office and pulled some books from the shelf (I lit my way with an open DS, I refused even to turn on the light in there, lest I get tempted to turn on the big machine). I have Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott on my bedside table now. I've put off reading it because the beginning is all such liberal doom and gloom and no matter how true it might be, I just don't WANNA. Mmk. Maybe I'll skim over that, because she does always put me in the right mindframe, and she makes me want to laugh at myself. Then I got Danse Macabre by Stephen King because I am, after all, writing a horror novel. Mister Aran got it for me forever ago and I knew there'd be a correct time to read it. This must be it, because I'm done with all the Sookie Stackhouse novels, dammit! I want Charlaine Harris to write a novel a day, because by god that's how long it takes me to read them, and I am all itchy now that I have to wait for another one. I did order the HBO DVDs of the first season of True Blood, so that's something to look forward to early next week. I've never seen it. I'm nervous, like anyone is about seeing the adaptation of books they love, but I've heard it's pwn.

My writing tonight was (ugh) expository, I think is the right word, where style just falls flat because I'm trying to get something out. Can't look back; style is for the rewrite. Just gotta pound it into the keys. Here's a paragraph from tonight which made me smile. And after that, I'm going to read. I think.

"You were nothing, you are nothing," says Sebastian calmly as he circles the pile of maimed, dead flesh, staring at it with blank eyes. Bryce's gaze follows him. "I swear upon her ashes that you will always be nothing. Yes." He looks up at One with half a smile, almost cheerful. "She is dead. I have never been so strong. You are out from under her spell. Rodrigo did this, and he stole her – interesting that he took the time to create this sculpture, an act of war, really – and her body is gone, and her blood's power has flowed to the rest of us, likely strongest to Rodrigo himself." He does not look up to see One crumple onto the floor. "Which means she is not the first." He steps gingerly to the mirror he'd punched into shards and bends over, peers into the largest of the pieces and combs his fingers through his hair.

2009-01-12T20:15:00.000-08:00

About potty training: alcohol helps.

I have heard the following words 285y9869472065720707052734 times: "It's dancey-dance time! Go! Go! Go Brobie! Go! Go! Go Brobie! I like to dance! Hahahahaha!"

He sits backward on the toilet. He's too big for potty chairs. At one point today he was bent over the lid, sobbing and singing at the same time: "No, no, no, don't take the toy away... say you're sorry..."

I have developed a twitch in my right eye.

I wasn't forcing him to sit there while he sobbed, by the way. He was tantruming about a cookie. I watched him and thought, if this were caught on video, it would be on the news. Headline: world's worst mother forces her innocent child to sit on the toilet while he sobs and strains. I could hear the anchor's deep voice saying, "Our more sensitive viewers may want to change the channel while we play this video."

That's alcohol for the parent, not the kid, by the way, but what an idea.

2009-01-12T13:12:00.000-08:00

I may have ever-so-slightly overshot things in the potty training arena. I bought these little 100-calorie packs of cookies at Trader Joe's and told him he could have one if he went potty in the toilet. I underestimated his - I don't think "desire" is enough word - for cookies. He ran immediately to the toilet and climbed on and pushed, straining, his little face turning red. Then he got manic, yelling about not being able to make it come out, could I push it out? And I'm like, oh shit, this isn't right. So I tell him it's not good to try so hard, and we could try again later, and he screamed and wept and said "Don't pick me up!" in a total panic. He was freaking out so I tried to force him off the toilet and he did his limp noodle routine and finally I just walked out, sat on the carpet outside the bathroom and looked down at my DS until he decided to climb off.

Then we had mac & cheese and pears and iced tea. These things help a lot.

At this age you have a few things down. You can, with absolutism, tell people about certain things that work for your kid, and things that don't under any circumstances, and stuff that he likes and dislikes, and what you do in your family, and where in his development he's ahead and where he might be the wee-est bit behind. But there are still these times where I just feel like such a parent, in the most frightening sense of the word, where you not only are concerned but you know beyond any doubt that you're doing it wrong.

Spongebob helps also. I'm glad he's into Spongebob because it's so weird, random, and horrifying. I feel in one very embarrassing small spot in my stomach that the popular kids would like Spongebob. My childhood social life was so terrifying; I was always at least one step behind everybody. It was like how you know a band is so over when your mom says she's into it. I would get into the vest and jeans thing a year after it was in, and I'd have only one outfit like it, and only on that day would I feel great about myself. I wasn't athletic; I sucked at soccer and the rest of the team hated me. I couldn't watch horror movies or MTV. So now there's this oblong little nut sitting heavily in my gut that tells me to be one of those horrible permissive parents who lets their kids watch whatever and picks up porn for her boys and installs a jacuzzi so he can have naked hot tub parties and serves everyone beers... and that's just the fourth grade. Because god, wouldn't it be nice to wake up looking forward to that day at school, and having a closet full of clothes that are all fashion forward, and one of the newest bikes or motorized scooters or Ferraris or whatever, so that you don't have to walk around with your head down day after day and plot against the plots and separate the kids who hate you from the kids who hate you but pretend not to...

2009-01-12T11:50:00.000-08:00

The Bug knows he's not allowed to say no to me, so he says other things. First, he tried "I can't." Smart little booger. I 86'd that and he went to "I'm scared." Brilliant. Now when he says "I'm scared" but I know it really means "No" and he's not scared in the slightest, I have to look like cold bitch mom in public.

It's toilet training time. Now that I've decided on it, I have to push forward. The worst thing about this process is having to be so fake all the time. I turned red and asploded rather than laugh at the video of the little boy bending over to show us the little hole where poopoo comes out, and I had to retreat entirely when The Bug bent over in front of the mirror to see for himself. When it doesn't work out and there's pee on the couch and poo in his underwear I cannot show how frustrated I am; I have to be all supportive and move forward and plop the poo into the toilet and say "bye bye poo poo" and drop one little dollop I missed on the way to the washing machine.

And of course, he's "scared" constantly. I know when the kid is really scared for godsake, and when he is, he does not say he's scared. He has all other vocabulary for that.

He's in the bath now and you should see my hurricane of a house and the laundry and the CD I'm supposed to burn for my ma and the grime he's coating the shower with and the toilet targets he's supposed to pee on and the milk solidified in his cups and what workout? What writing? I'm doing lunges through the house. I'll use his naptime to clean because I get two things unloaded from the dishwasher and he's got some other whammy to throw at me. I should be washing his dirty ass right now but I felt myself losing it just a tad and knew if I didn't take ten minutes to type this that I'd bark at him.

2009-01-05T01:46:00.001-08:00

Learning how to love my husband is one of my life's great journeys. I cannot say I have always been up to the task. I'm human; I can't go back. But I can be aware, I can have faith, I can believe in magic. Those are pretty big things.

2009-01-04T12:18:00.001-08:00

Omgah, I'm okay now.

Still not working, but okay. I'm reading. I'm annoyed that I have to go back and fix shit I've already done. No bueno. But I'm okay.

2009-01-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

O hai. As of this writing I am doing my half-laying thing in bed. I don't know if that's "laying" or "lying." I've decided not to care. It's one of those mysteries, the laying/lying thing, that I can't be bothered with. There are other things to obsess over, like how I'm going to die eventually, and what a waste of space and oxygen I'll be until then.

So funny, 'cause I wouldn't say I'm one of those neurotic writerly people who think they're really frauds and all that cuteness. I'd bang the gavel and say no, I've got it together, dear Lord; I have a voice and a style and I don't expect to ever publish or make money off of whatever I write and I just do it for the pleasure, the joy! of seeing the gooberous characters in my head come out onto the page, fleeing my fingers like -

- I can't write. It's just like I've mentioned before, about piano lessons. I took piano lessons for eight years. Eight! I can't play a note. I can kind of remember what it's like to feel the keys under my fingers. I had to practice every morning. I liked doing the rote stuff, the scales. That is, I liked doing the stuff I had down pat over and over again. Piano practice also taught me how to lie. My mother would ask if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and I'd be all like, "Oh yes, he told me I needed to do scales for one hour and to ignore the songs for now. Don't ask me; that's his method." I'd usually have my teachers play me the piece I was supposed to figure out that week first. Once was usually enough for me to pick it out by ear. After a lot of him-haw and lying I would make the piece happen eventually, badly. Do not go presuming I was one of those geniuses who just didn't like the reading of music, who could play beautifully by ear. Like Yanni or something? Nuu. I'm not even as good as Yanni.

I'm like that with writing, too. I flirt along the edges of talent but mostly I cheat and lie and steal. I write like whoever I'm reading at the time. For instance, you can always tell when I'm re-reading the old Anne Lamotts. She's super easy to steal from. I do it constantly. And my actual stories, I can usually track them back to another story I read, sometimes years earlier, that I'm practically re-writing on a near-parallel. I wrote a story for class a couple years ago, whenever that was, about this woman whose kid hurts himself while she's doing some bad things in another room, and it was only after four edits and publication that I remembered that story's near COPY in my writing class' textbook. The original? Much better.

Who could forget my Palahniuk time? Oh god, my testosterone fiction was adorable.

Nothing reminds me of what a goddamn fake I am more than being around real artists and writers. What sucks is, I have never learned not to hang around these loathesome people. I married one. I am in love with and fascinated by the creative life because I do not fucking have one. I do love watching it, though, and doing its laundry, and driving it places. That is where I belong.

I wish I could take pride in that, because it always sucks so bad to find out that everyone's cute accolades have been just those who love you patting you on the head.

O holy shiz

2009-01-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

Outside people were banging pots together and stuff, just like six minutes ago. It's 12:12 AM now. There were fireworks. I thought The Bug would stay up this year. I was training him the last few days, keeping him up on the couch watching DVDs, zombielike, until after 11:00 PM. It didn't work, though. He was hell on wheels after 10:00 PM so Mister Aran put him to bed.

I thought I'd abandoned this page a lot longer ago but it was only last February. Goodness. Almost a year, I guess. I did shred off ten pounds, which was the last thing I was talking about, if you're at all interested in that kind of thing. Jillian Michaels is my god. I could go on and on about that. Maybe I will eventually.

It was the Year of Celeste, the Year of Organics, the Year of Living In A Cave. I tend to dip into long periods of darkness where I stay up all night hanging out in online communities, listening to music and typing. Places where I can be profound and gorgeous because people only know me by my typing, which is better than my speaking by far. By faaaaar. I reserve the right to use compound vowels in words for emphasis these days.

Anyway, so after the darkness times, I clean myself out, and I mean I stick the metaphorical tube up my metaphorical ass and flush out all the stuff, the bad stuff and the good stuff. And I spend a lot of money replacing things that have worn out, and I start taking care of people better (I think?) and I write. I am writing, but I won't talk about it, don't worry. Not right now, anyway.

I have been buying things because I am a patriotic American and I think this means filling up the Matrix with gas and buying stuff made in China so our economy and the economy of the world will get back up to fighting speed. I don't know what I'm talking about, but at least I know I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not proud of that, but I know.

I bought a teensy laptop, and I mean teensy, like my hands take up the entire thing. The shift key on the right is in an odd place so I find myself avoiding starting sentences with words that begin with letters that require that key.

I bought a bunch of shirts and skinny jeans and suede boots. I stood in a dressing room and had a child, I mean a girl born in the nineties, bring me clothing and show me how to wear it. At the end, she said she was having a belt epiphany and I had one, too, because I got it. I said, "Oh, it's the eighties again." She was all like what?

Aside: I went to Twilight on Christmas and there was this girl sitting next to me who entertained me the entire time with this commentary: "She's like, what?" "She's all like, okaaaaay." "She's all, huh?" Brilliant, and I'm not being snarky. That pretty much sums things up nicely. I won't get into Twilight here, though. That, along with the whole writing thing and the shredding weight thing, needs more blog posting time than I'm allotting now.

Again I reiterate: there are people born in the nineties who are adults now. Working in stores, selling me things.

I feel like such a nonconformist on holidays when I go to Trader Joe's and park far away and walk with purpose and smile at everyone and leisurely surf the web on my Blackberry in line and cheerfully help sack my eighteen different kinds of desserts.

Can you believe I've been posting on this page for like four years? Why?

2008-02-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

One thing I learned while having psychological problems a decade ago is, I don't have to think about the bad shit until it becomes a waking nightmare. My psychologist said, "Just don't think about it." And I was like, "I can do that?" She said, "Think about something else." That poor woman. I'd laid a book's worth of terrible angsty poetry on her and expected her to weep into her palms over my poignant misery, or at least to tell me I had tapped into the human experience like no one else ever had, and I needed to turn that writing into someone so they could give me millions of dollars... but I digress. Anyway, this is how I learned to self-medicate with comedy.

For a couple of years, I didn't watch one drama on TV or in the theaters. I listened only to upbeat music, and I worked out every single day, even if it was just a walk around the house or two trips up and down the stairs. That's how I got well, or at least well enough to get back in step with my life. She'd been waiting patiently on the front porch swing of my psyche, popping gum and checking her watch, but when I finally peeked my head out the front door, she didn't give me any shit. She just cocked her head to one side, took my arm, and said, "Let's go. I left the engine running."

I wasn't cured. These bad feelings still tackle me. The difference now is, I believe I have to fight them. So today I popped in "Superbad," because I've been hella whiny lately. And I got the message I needed, though it wasn't what I expected. The message was: "I am McLovin."

There's this pivotal point where the guy asks him, who're you going to be? And he answers, "I am McLovin." From that point on, he is McLovin. He buys the alcohol, he fraternizes with the cops, he parties with the popular kids, he gets the hottest girl into bed, and he shoots a flaming police cruiser. At the end, the cops tell him they knew all along he wasn't really McLovin, but it doesn't matter.

So I'm thinking, if I can get up in the morning and say, "I am McLovin," and go forth, the rest will fall into place. And even though people might know I'm really not, they'll still prefer McLovin.

I think.

I haven't worked it all out yet.

2008-02-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

I always wanted to be able to do this. There's something about bellies.

One of my mini goals is to be able to go through class without a shirt. It's cumbersome to adjust a tank top every few minutes.

Whenever I start cutting some weight, the first thing I look at is my belly. In the morning, the light is just right in my bedroom to shadow correctly and make my belly look nice. I lift my arms up, stretch back, twist, and it almost looks good.

*

I've been running sprints at the gym once or twice a week to mimic the kind of cardio I need for sparring. Last time, I really pushed it. Knocked out a better time than I have in years. It required Static X and Slipknot, and I had to talk to myself the entire time. People start sliding away from me when I do it: "C'mon girl, you got this, push, thirty seconds, c'mon!" But it works. I also mouth the lyrics to those songs, so if anyone cared to watch me, it would look pretty scary. Beet-red face, tendrils of hair flying, ass bouncing, talking to myself and occasionally lip syncing, "You can't kill me cause I'm already inside you." And those are the nice lyrics.

I reward myself mid-workout with things. Sips of water, the fan on the cardio machine. So last time, I told myself I'd take off my tee-shirt on the last sprint. I did, ripping it off fast during my minute of fast walking, readjusting the headphones just in time to catch (sic) by Slipknot, and I ran my butt off, making better time than I did on the first sprint. I felt utterly ridiculous, but free and cool, and very thirty years old, giving nary one shit about whether people thought I should be shirtless. But it was so contrived and silly. In that picture up there, Brandi just let it fly. I planned it out for ten minutes.

*

I almost don't want to give the P.S. to my last blog entry because it was so ridiculous, but I believe in writing it down, I put something out into the universe that created a solution. But it wasn't the solution I was looking for. It reminded me of Bedazzled, when the guy finally was witty, charming, successful and gorgeous, with a huge penis. The girl was interested in him, but he was gay.

I told Mister Aran about how I am in class. Shy, my head down, not talking to people, always the last kid picked for dodgeball. He straight up told me I should quit. I figured that might not be a bad idea, that I'd wait a month.

So I got to class, head down, there's one of the big instructors against the wall chatting some guy. I jumprope and we pair off and I'm last. Instructor barks out, "Everyone get down and do pushups," which means we've done something wrong. I start getting down and he amends: "Everyone except her."

I looked around in horror. My tactic was to be as small as possible in that class, humble but harder working than anyone. Invisible would have been better. But the guy goes on, "Every time she's here, she's the last one without a partner. She's here to train just like the rest of you, and she's better than fricking ninety percent of you. So every time she's the last one without a partner, you all do pushups. And I'm sending [Mister Aran] in to kick all your asses."

I held my glove up against my face and hid. I could feel the tears in my throat.

Yes, it worked, and the guys were very chill about it. I always had a partner. It wasn't brought up again. Some people have asked me what I would have done in his position instead to fix the problem and I don't know. Just not that.

2008-02-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

I put on my jeans a couple weeks ago and said, "Oh, shit."

It's time again.

*

This happened during the worst PMS I've had in years. It was like a monster had moved into my gut and was sitting around watching LA Law, eating everything I swallowed and screaming for a fight in between bites. I couldn't get enough food. I couldn't choke down a Dixie cup of water. I sloshed when I walked, literally. And I couldn't get my jeans on.

Finally, I let go. The period happened, and I went back to Weight Watchers expecting the worst. But I was only two pounds over goal, eleven pounds over my personal goal. Totally doable, I decided. I left triumphant and had a kickass week. Trained almost every day. Tracked all my food like a good little Weight Watcher. All week I practiced a speech in my head I was sure they'd ask me to give once they discovered I'd taken the entire eleven pounds off in one week. "Gosh, you know," I'd say softly, shrugging, "I'm a little different than most of you. I'm an athlete. A kickboxer, actually." Pausing, I'd let the audience ooh and ahh while I cocked out my right knee - I'd be wearing a miniskirt to show off the lean muscle in my toned legs - and then say, "Obviously not a very good one, though, see?" A little self-deprecating humor; my right knee and shin are littered with spreading purple bruises.

From there I'd go on to flippantly say something like, "Well, I'm 'Lifetime' so I've done this all before, and I know what works for me. First of all, I drank lots of water - Crystal Light works beautifully - and I have Lean Cuisines for lunch. I track every single bite and if I want a little dessert, I make sure to get my activity points in so I can indulge in one of those Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches. Say, did you hear they have cookies and cream now? Oh, and don't forget those zero point Progresso soups."

I went to the meeting yesterday and remembered why the Lifetimers do not give speeches, do not get bookmarks and keychains and bravos. Because we are a bitter bunch, and our speeches would most likely be, "I miss cupcakes. I miss them so fucking much. Yeah, sure, you can have anything, but if you decide on that cupcake, you give up lunch and dinner. Seriously, fuck my life." We're supposed to be there in our workout capris and streaked hair, giving hope and uplifting stories to the new kids, but really we're sitting in the back, feeding off fresh blood like lonely old vampires, rolling our eyes when they say, "At parties, I keep all of my little toothpicks so I know how many h'ors d'oeuvres I had, so I can track them!"

"One point eight?" I yelled to the lady behind the counter. "That's it?"

"It's so good that you came back before it got out of hand," she said, her voice practiced and calm, soothing. "This is nothing. It's going to come right off. You'll be free next week."

*

It doesn't help that my kickboxing classes are such ego dumps. I never look forward to class. I downright dread it in the car on the way and by the time I'm there, holding my gloves and watching the jiu jitsu class finishing up, I'm sick. I'm the only female in the class, and I make the boys uncomfortable. They do not want to partner with me, so I get the leftovers. The frightened looking sixteen year old, 5'4 with the reach of a man a foot taller. The huge, overweight guy who slams punches into my face until I see stars. Jogging or jumproping in the beginning, I feel my ass and thighs jiggling and I know they're watching, disgusted. Celeste puts my hair into beautiful braids that keep my hair from flying all over the place, but I know they make me look a bit butch, and my wide shoulders don't help that either. The instructors generally avoid me, sometimes stepping in with a helpful hint, but most of the time I'm left with the oldest lesson in the book: "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that." I go into class with a couple of things I want to fix: turning my hip over on kicks, keeping my elbows tight so I won't eat uppercuts, for example. If I manage to fix those things, and I don't come out injured, I feel like it was a good class. Of course, then I got nailed with rapidfire punches that seemed to leave no holes, so I tell myself next time I'm going to circle off, and snap my front kicks back.

And maybe that's why I still go. It certainly isn't because I'm a badass. I don't even think I want to fight. When I'm feeling very honest, I know I just want to be respected. I don't get it in that class. There's little more ego draining than being punched in the face. But when Mr. Aran's cousins came over I pulled up my pant leg, casually, showed them my spattering of bruises. "It's nothing," I said while they flipped out.

2008-02-04T09:37:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking on Brendan lately, cause he spawned. I got the pictures in email and the kid looks a little like her, a little like him. Mister Aran noted that Mrs. Brendan probably has phenomenal knockers now - the one time we met her, on accident, outside the Gypsy Den, we were both taken back by her beautiful glittery breasts, and she wasn't even pregnant then - and the baby herself looks pretty much like most new babies. Like a... like something that just cracked out of a shell. Like a pea, or a weird little fruit. Like a shriveled miracle.

They're probably doing the tiptoe dance around this new chick in their lives now. Like trying to walk after going blind, every step going out into black space. I hope one or the other of them have been around babies before, like a sibling, so they're not so terrified. I know Brendan mostly has older siblings, though, and younger siblings seem to come together. I don't know why. Being an older or younger sibling must be a profoundly different experience. I know Mister Aran and I are oldest siblings, and there's something about it. A tendency to get out of the way, to not be the center of attention, to share, if begrudgingly, to know that this is life.

Anyway, congratulations, my adopted little brother.

2007-09-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

Number one rule of buying a house: believe the inspector. Especially in matters of plumbing.

2007-09-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

I had weird dreams last night. I can't remember what. Something involving a pink Lamborghini. And a girl named Brenda I haven't seen or thought about in twelve years. She wanted to do me.

Back to business. We went to the Birthday Massacre show last night. It made me happy in pants. I mean skirt. Cheap pleather skirt. It was so good, seriously, people. The opening band was The Start, and they ruled just as much with their Siouxie-meets-Blondie vibe. Singers were both total stars.

Celeste colored my hair. We ran an hour late but it didn't matter. The place wasn't that packed. In line she put it up into four pigtail things, and did my makeup. But here we are at Justin's, pre-makeup . Mister Aran's making me uncomfortable trying to take a picture. He makes me nuts with the annoyed picture taking. I don't pose, okay?

I can't drive in those boots. Not very well, anyway. So I put 'em on when I get there. Yeah, those are Hello Kitty laces, thank you.

This is after we got home. I look a little ragged. Hair's a little messier, shirt's a little stretchier and wrinklier. Whatever. You get the idea. Gym socks, fishnets, pleather skirt, and AWESOME HAIR. Holy crap, Celeste, it rules.

Better view of the hairstyle. And the scientific, engineered, I mean guys-in-lab-coats making my life better bra from Fredrick's of Hollywood. Thank you, Fred. I can call you Fred, right?

Mister Aran was the hottest of us. Got the most elevators. I met two girls named Season and Rachel. Said they were sisters. Used to be monsters at Knott's Scary. They were standoffish about us but warmed right up when they saw the hotness of Mister Aran in platform boots. Works every time.

The secret to my power is lots and lots of rubber bracelets.

And that's all for the Samus picture fest, boys and girls. Catch the B-Day Massacre whenever you can. You won't regret.

2007-09-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

I wish there were a way to show, in one tattoo design, the wonderful time of life I'm going through. I'd get it. I'm thirty, and there's all this wonderfulness and terribleness that goes along with that; there's my husband, with whom I've never felt more secure and comfortable and happy; my son, who is this fun little Curious George guy with bare feet that slap slap slap over my wood floors and gives me sloppy wet kisses; Celeste, the best girlfriend I've ever had, who has taught me more about love than she'll ever know; and my new house. There's also the things I've been doing, like training at Joker's (getting hit in the face is always a learning experience) and going to shows regularly, which has become like church. Or a cleansing. I always feel pleasantly empty after a good concert.

I wish there was a way to record feelings, so I could revisit the day my Bug was born, how it felt to see him for the first time. And how it used to feel to nurse him. How he smiled on accident in his sleep. Pictures and video just don't do it. I guess this is why people have more kids. This longing is biological, and it's why we're still here.

Right now, in the bath, my son is putting spongey numbers and letters in succession on the bath walls. He says each letter: "R... Four... Q... O..." then says, "Car! Car! It's a car, yay!" I don't know if someone spelled "car" for him in sponge letters once and that's what he thinks he's doing, or if it looks like a car to him. Either way, this is my amazing life now, and I love it.

Oh yeah, it's business time.

2007-09-10T12:48:00.001-07:00

Yes!

2007-08-31T02:30:00.000-07:00

2007-08-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

I stand out in the backyard. I feel little stings on my feet and look down. Black ants are biting me.

I hook up the spinning Elmo sprinkler. It does not spin. The Bug is uncertain. However, he is also very into washing cars. He sits on his big wheel. His legs are only long enough for his toes to reach the pedals, so he pushes his feet along the ground, steering toward the cascade of water. Water dots up his legs and belly. The big front wheel gets soaked. The Bug is naked, and tentative. He observes it a long time. He seems to be deciding upon a plan of attack.

A fly lights on my foot and I shriek. It didn't look like a fly at first. Feeling foolish, I mess with Elmo, wrestle with him until he spins like he's supposed to. It's a flimsy, cheap spin, but it means The Bug has to consider all new things.

On Saturdays, men come to my house and take care of my yard. Every four weeks I give the main guy a check. They are thorough and kind. My yard is small and beautifully kept. There is a small white peach tree in the corner. Many of the peaches fell and were worked over slowly by snails and other disgusting creeping things. After three days or so, the rotting things would be only brown seeds. I tried to clean them all up once, but Mister Aran said that was just the way of things. The fruit falls. The bugs eat it. The seeds bust open and grow new trees. I didn't want to think about it.

*

Last night in the car I had a moment. I was feeling fine. A little roughed up from sparring, but fine. I had a vague notion of getting into Mister Aran's pants as we drove home. He was coming home late from work and I knew he was tired.

Halfway there, I thought of abandoned babies. You never know, until you watch from the outside, how much work it is just to grow. Kids are hard workers. Babies have just spent nine months coming from nothing but two microscopic cells. They do it all themselves. Us women are just their house and food. We're not creating their little hearts and things; they are.

I went to Colorado and The Bug got sick. Fevers worse than ever before. He laid on my lap lengthwise, his head on my knees, and fitfully napped. His skin was red and it burned my fingers to touch him. I fed him droppers full of Pedialyte while he slept. His mouth was open, his lips cracked, and he breathed fast. His chest was tiny. His lungs underneath working hard. His whole body fighting. I wept.

In the car last night I thought of the babies. We tend to think of the mothers of the babies, in these instances. How could she do that? we wonder. But last night I thought of what it is, to be enclosed and growing, in the dark, to finally come out into the cold and open your eyes to the fuzzy world, then to be left in a dumpster to die. Your last breaths full of garbage smell. Your body fighting to breathe. Your tiny stomach cramping. Starving to death. Crying at first, then stopping.

I thought, all that work! Last night The Bug took out all our shoes, counting. "One shoe. Two shoes. Three shoes. Four shoes." He lined them all up. He can name Thomas and all his thousand or so friends. For what? It takes so much work just to get to two. So much must be learned. Bones growing whole inches in a few weeks. Brains and relationships developing. So much. For what? For what? It is too easy to die.

*

In my backyard today, The Bug is loved. The kids on my block are loved, as far as I can tell. While I wash my car in the driveway, boys gather to discuss rules to a game that seems to be like tag, but with a ball that has a handle. I think you become "It" when you get bopped with it. But that's where the simplicity ends. The "It" guy can only see his opponents when they move. They can only be still for ten seconds. They count out loud. The game stops often for foul calls and more in-depth discussions of the rules, rule amendments. Then it's game on again.

2007-08-15T14:55:00.001-07:00

I woke this morning feeling feverish and achey. Mister Aran said I might have had an "adrenaline dump" during sparring last night. Or maybe he said I took an adrenaline dump. It could have been either.

2007-08-13T20:20:00.001-07:00

My dad is wrong about things a lot of the time. He freaks out and stresses for months, years at a time. I used to live like that. I thought that was all there was. I thought everything had to be stewed over, simmer, boil, then burn all up, then start over again. I found out today my grandmother, his mother, has been harboring a grudge against me for years. My transgression? Not once, but twice, I forgot to cash a check she sent for Christmas. Utterly fixable. If, years ago, she'd given me a call and said, "This hurts my feelings," it would have been fixed. But she and my father are exactly alike, and they love a grudge. It's the only way they know how to relate with people. They chew on them like cows.

It was very, very bad for my dad to be wrong when I was growing up. Even if he was wrong, absolutely red-handedly wrong, it was death to point it out. Rarely would he admit being wrong, and it was always a very sad thing, like the twin towers falling down. It was easier to just agree with him, to assume you had seen it wrong, or didn't have all the information, somehow.

Now, I see that he's often wrong. Not on purpose. He's misinformed and stubborn, that's all. For the most part, he is a good, strong person. He was a good father. He still is. He struggles, always, to know what that should mean.

When I was about to move my in-laws in, though, he flipped. I have made very few decisions in the last fifteen years that he's agreed with, but usually he stews about it where I can't hear, with my mother or his mother. That time, though, he called me. He told me it might be fine for awhile, but mark his words, it was going to fall apart. Mister Aran's mother was not going to let me be the lady of the house. She was not going to be able to stop parenting her son, and she would want to parent mine. He didn't have anything specific to say about my father-in-law, which sounds odd until you realize what he was doing: transferring.

He wasn't talking about Mister Aran's mother. He was talking about his mother. He was talking about my mother's mother. My family life is like nothing he's ever seen or known.

"It's a completely different culture," he said. He does not, as a rule, trust other cultures.

He was right about that, though. It is. It's a culture that comes from a place where it's too hot to argue. People generally let things pass.

It's a culture rooted in Catholocism, and people are likely to forgive one another if only because not doing so hurts you, not the other person.

It's a culture where people work hard and have babies and take care of their aging family members and adopt more babies; it's a culture where people know and take care of their neighbors.

It's a culture where people don't stress about what to get people for Christmas. No matter what they get, they're grateful and they laugh, and most importantly, they're together.

In my opinion, it's a culture that has too many babies, I admit. It is a culture with problems. But it is also a culture of artists, singers, musicians and dancers.

I sit at my dining room table and read Esquire. In the kitchen, my mother-in-law cooks something involving pork and, probably, masses of oil. I hear dry rice hit the bottom of the rice cooker pot. She and her husband converse quietly in Tagalog. When I lived in my dad's mindset, I would have been insulted. Now I know, what they're talking about might have nothing to do with me, and they're just more comfy in Tagalog. Maybe it has everything to do with me; maybe they're saying I should wear a bra with this shirt and my hair is a mess and I made lasagne again even though they never eat it. I doubt it. But even if so, they keep the house peaceful.

In two years we have never had an argument, even through the tough house-buying time, when everyone was stressed and tired. Besides that wicked ninth month of pregnant hormones, I have been grateful for their place in my home every single day. They are my family. It feels completely natural to have them here.

2007-08-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

I hate to be repetitive, but what can I do? This is what I'm obsessed with at the moment. I can't stop listening to Static X (pictured below, best concert I've ever been to, including the two empowering and uplifting and wonderful in every day Parliament concerts, sorry George, I love you second). The following song is the best one currently in existence (just knocked out "The Boxer," if you can believe that. Well, maybe not. If I had to really sit and talk about it, "The Boxer" is still the best song in existence, but I ain't listening to "The Boxer" on a loop lately, you know?).

I started sending my daily food intake and exercise... out-take? to my previous trainer, Keren, owner of the finest ass in the world (sorry Jessica) via email. I hope she is sending them all to the trash because 1) I feel obnoxious and 2) I'm embarrassed for her to read about the time I spent $5000.00 in bills and went immediately to the fridge for several biscuits with honey butter and pumpkin pie, then watched that thing on TV about the kids in the cancer ward and had to go back for more pie.

For Michelle, who lurks here kind of creepily, and who didn't know what Jessica Biel looked like:

2007-08-07T13:14:00.001-07:00

She's the one on the right.

I'm on the left.

2007-08-05T13:15:00.001-07:00

I was at brunch today when I thought, there will come a time when I won't have sex anymore. There will be a last orgasm.

This is worse than the regular old gonna-die-someday panic.

It smells like gay in here

2007-08-04T14:20:00.001-07:00

So here are some boys I like! Please to deliver Japanese boy to me COD, thanks!

2007-08-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

I dunno why I keep adding sex to the equation when I talk about hot girls. I don't want to have sex with them, as evidenced by my vagina post, and yet if you page down a little in this blog you don't see me fawning over boys much. And I'm linking videos of girls slapping each other while kissing. I should elaborate.

I don't want to do those girls. I want to be them. I want to be cute and Eastern European with a gap in my teeth and huge tits with all that bendy gymnastics ability. I want to be fierce and blonde with a growly voice and get to lay in studio meadows and be petted by Dani Filth (even though yes, he is four feet tall, this is why he's sitting in the video). I want to look good with tons of black eye makeup (I don't, I can't figure it out) and be able to make the faces that one porn star makes while the camera flashes. I want to have a good orgasm face (I haven't looked, but I bet I look like I'm choking) like she does. And I want Jessica Biel's basic body and life. I want to meld with Jessica Biel. Osmosis Jessica.

2007-08-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a horror story about guys, their testosterone, little packets of powder that make them into what they think a man should be.

I don't know anything about it, really. But I have a friend online who bodybuilds. Who builds his body. And he started doing something with little packets that he promised weren't really hormones or anything. I don't remember what it was. He told me several times. I'll call it XYZ. I think it has an X in it, or a Z, one of the extreme letters of the alphabet that makes you feel like you've made a very strong consumer choice. Every once in awhile he'll drop the name and I won't know what he's talking about. "I just took the XYZ so I have to go to the gym in twenty minutes." And I'll go, "What?" I just don't care all that much.

By "friend," I really mean casual acquaintance who talks about himself a lot to me, because I am the only one who doesn't make him stop.

This guy has no imagination. I don't necessarily mean that in a derogatory way. He's one of those scary six-fives who are conspiracy theorists with a whole coldly logical but unreal fantasy life about who they are and where they fit in the world. So I guess he does have an imagination, in that way, but he can't reach out beyond it in any way. If he is prodded to do so, he gets extremely angry about it.

I attract these people. I think it's because I tend to like to compliment people. Once, Mister Aran told me that I had to cut down on My Side Of The Conversation, and that was why I had no friends. So I started really getting interested in what people were saying. And I am not pretending, either. If you say you belong to a society of people who climb city lampposts, I will go to the website, I will google, I will make sure I know all the names of the equipment the lamppost climbers use, the sticky... harnesses... with rubber spurs... I am making this up, but it holds. And that habit of mine has backfired majorly. It does not attract people who are then happy to ask me about my interests. In fact, most of my online acquaintances know nothing about me and don't care to. They do not ask. Oddly, I have started to like it that way.

So anyway, suddenly he says out of nowhere that he's getting hardons again. I do not need to hear this, and I tell him so. "No no," he protests. It's not like he's coming on to me or anything, it's just revolutionary. Usually he doesn't get hardons. It's not that he can't, it's just that he never got excited by stuff before. Now he'll look at something and get a hardon for it, where he didn't before.

He'll tell me his weight every couple of days. I remember sort of being that way, but in the opposite direction. Nobody wanted to hear it from me, either. But once, my hairdresser picked up my Weight Watchers card thing for me, and she looked through it and showed her co-workers, and I was really pleased, because it showed where I'd started, and how much I'd lost each week, and all the little silver star stickers that say Bravo!

*

Today I sat in the car reading while Mister Aran went to the gym. I am not in a gym space today. I went back to my fighting class. This is why, over all else, consistency is important. If you keep taking weeks off between classes, or dieting, you are constantly starting from zero. Or maybe one, actually, because you know the moves, but your body can't do it anymore. It's a weird experience. Your brain is sending the same signals, but the muscle doesn't respond. At one point I looked at the heavy bag with confusion. It's there, I thought. And I am here. Why is it not working?

So I have the sore. My forearms are particularly fucked, so that the rest of my body which is also sore doesn't feel as bad as it would otherwise, but I'm still not working out this morning.

So I was sitting in the car and in the side mirror I saw this guy come to his car after a workout. He was tall and he had the beginnings of that certain physique that guys get from non-functional bodybuilding. To me, it's almost like surgery, this unnatural bodily change.

(Random aside: The Bug is wandering through my room reciting this monologue: Open, it's open, door's open, there you go, what happened, it's the cat, it's the cat...)

The guy was slick on his arms with sweat and at one point he lifted the neckline of his tee-shirt to wipe sweat from above his lip. The whole time, he had his mouth open. Not because he was still breathing heavily, but in an idle, nobody's-watching sort of way. It made him look dumber than he probably was.

He set out on the roof of the car an elaborate setup that emerged from a reflective zip-up cooler. Two bottles of Dasani water, a small baggie of powder, and a cup with two complicated-seeming lids. He pulled and twisted and popped the lids off the cup and then poured a little water into it, then the powder, then the rest of that bottle of water and half the next. He downed the rest of the water, then pushed and twisted and popped the lids back down, then shook and shook and shook the cup. He put the cooler back into the car, and put on wire glasses, which was a little endearing to me somehow. Then he got into the car - at first I thought it was the passenger seat, but later when he drove off I realized my mind was just mixed up from looking at him through the mirror - and continued the shaking. From where I sat, all I could see was the top half of his head, bobbing fast with the shaking. It looked like he was jerking off. I wondered if he were shaking the cup and jerking off, and thought of that online acquaintance. But then the head bobbing stopped and he took a pull from his drink, and left.

I wondered about him, cleaned up, meeting girls at the bar. If he told them about his regimen and rituals. I wondered if the girls found it sexy. I thought it would be better if he didn't tell them, if he were like one of those quiet men who you wouldn't know was a Buddhist until he made you dinner at his house, and you found the little prayer-type altar space. I wondered why I immediately figured he was single. Then Mister Aran came back, and we went to buy some kettlebells.

Warning, near X-ratedness

2007-08-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

Don't watch at work.

Because I like to take dramatic pictures of myself and edit them in Irfanview

2007-08-03T21:47:00.003-07:00

Fuck off if you don't like it.

2007-08-03T21:45:00.001-07:00

Here's another horror story: eating almonds and cherries will make you poo in little, explosive spurts.

2007-08-03T21:09:00.001-07:00

I think my vagina knows I hate it. I am not a fan of vagina. The older I get, the less gay I get. It's not like I wouldn't kiss Jessica Biel, and live with her, and cook her pancakes every morning, and have lunches in places that serve sparkling lime water and salads with almond slivers, and sleep wrapped up in her 5000 thread count sheets with her. I'm not saying that. But I still wouldn't get into her panties. Maybe over the panties. I'd let her ride my leg, is what I'm saying. On her birthday, my hand. So I don't know if that means I'm a little gay or not. I'm thinking probably no?

Chuck Palahniuk said that horror is when you tell the stories people are afraid to tell. So here's the biggest sociological horror story right now: girls? Those little twelve-year old princesses? We grow up. Mostly our minds don't, though. Even if our minds grow up, we still think we need to emulate that fresh twelve-year old experience. Chicks with those stickers on their cars, labeling them Daddy's Girls, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about all the shaving and waxing, the hair coloring, moisturizing. And what's more, we think we're letting people down when we can't keep up anymore.

So let me break it to you ugly: vagina is difficult. It refuses to play along. I guess mine was once pretty and pinkish. I didn't look at it then and I don't look at it now. It's unexplored territory, basically. It's the jungle. I take care of it, or I try to. But when she gets sick, I'm always too embarrassed to talk to the doctor about it. I feel like I'm letting the doctor down. Like he or she will look down his or her nose at me - in this picture, the doctor somehow always has spectacles - and shake his or her head slowly. Or sigh. Ever had your doctor sigh while making the notes on the clipboard? I have. I have a vagina that makes doctors sigh.

This is for all you out there who thought I might be just the kind of twelve-year old vagina you would like to put your penis into. I hope I have dashed that theory once and for all.

You know, if I had a penis, I wouldn't put it in anything. Penis is precious. I'd wrap it in ten inches of cellophane before letting Jessica Biel go at it, even. That's how strongly I am in favor of penis, and anti-vagina.

2007-07-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I gotta look like the worst, most butch lesbian version of myself today. Or why I've been looking like that more often than not lately. The bandana, though pink, is not helping.

I want that feeling of waking early, eating three egg whites with fruit and something fibrous and two liters of water, working out, then showering with full shave job, and after-shower teeth brushing and flossing, then laying out in my bed naked and damp for a one and a half-hour nap.

I would turn gay for this chick.

2007-06-28T01:51:00.001-07:00

2007-04-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

Multiple Choice Time

2007-03-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

Britney was at the height of her powers:

1) In the Mickey Mouse Club (I know you sickos are out there, own up)

2) Hit Me Baby

3) Slave

4) Toxic

5) When she shaved her head, wrote "666" on her forehead and went to rehab

In the coming years, when Britney's kids ask what this whole crazy time was about, she will answer:

1) Toto? The lights! So bright! The voices! Toto, where are you?

2) Mommy had a difficult time following her divorce, sweetlings. That, along with the pressure of success, media attention and chemical addiction, caused Mommy to do some strange things
of which she's ashamed today. However, if not for that terrible time, Mommy would never have moved out of Hollywood, gotten her medical degree and spent these last years curing AIDS in third world countries. So, you see, sometimes beautiful things are borne of horrible things. We should all remember to learn from our mistakes.

3) Shut up and get me a beer.

I still don't like that Talking Heads song but

2007-03-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm sitting in the bathroom with Esquire laid out over my lap and my underwear at my knees, and they're this green that Mister Aran calls "Crate & Barrel green" - either you understand or you don't - and out in the kitchen there's a clean wine glass and a bottle of wine waiting for me and I think, Is this my life?

Later (but not much later) we're kissing the way you lick frosting off the tops of cupcakes and I have the same thought.

This morning the boys let me sleep in. After I showered and blew out my hair and dressed I sat in The Bug's rocky chair with my legs over the side. I had gray socks tipped with pink, and my pink Kitsons, and there was an Esquire over on the changing table and Lumines in my PSP, but I just wanted to stare at the place where the wall met the window. I thought of all the things I need to get done. Most I've forgotten. You know The Bug still doesn't have a birth certificate? Bills, changing insurance. And I had one of those mortality kicks. Going to die. Doing nothing right now.

2007-02-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

My writing teacher emailed me, wanting me to workshop a short story next week. She wants her "strong writers" to go first in the class. No pressure or anything.

The new class is different. Everyone there wants to be a writer, I think. Last semester was full of kids who wanted easy credit. I'm threatened by this class. And I don't have anything to workshop yet.

By next Wednesday I want to have a new short for workshop, the assigned flash fiction, two responses to published works and one extra short story in case someone else doesn't bring theirs. Just one short would be completely overwhelming for me.

I hate writing the first word.

I realized in class last night that my writing is stunted because I don't write about my life. Most of it is happy and boring, and I won't put children into my work. Bad, bad things happen to my characters. I can't do bad things to children, not even in fiction. Too superstitious. Thinking creates things. I need a shower, and less coffee.

2007-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

So, the best music video ever was Janet Jackson's "If," the original one that's nowhere to be found, where there was actual hot Chinese whoring going on, before they edited it down to what you see today. But the second best music video ever might be this one.

Also for your viewing pleasure, I present Anjelah Johnson:

2007-01-25T09:55:00.000-08:00

I'm sick, and tired. We all are. The Bug, Mister Aran, Grandpa Aran, and I. The Bug whines and cries with his fingers in his mouth or ears, so I'm assuming sore throat. I hate his doctor, but it looks like I'll have to call them.

Today at the bagel place I was enjoying my snit, wallowing in it, and I thought of all the people who have it much worse. I went in my head to the women under Taliban rule but I couldn't connect enough, so I just thought about Celeste, because her bright attitude is always such a good example for me. Then I decided to be happier, dammit. But I gave myself a few more minutes of emo while waiting for my tuna sandwich, because it's so fun to feel sorry for myself.

2007-01-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

The Snake River Conspiracy album Sonic Jihad is one of those perfect albums. I can think of a very few others. Every song is distinct and individual and awesome. I highly recommend it. I have been listening to it for three days nonstop.

Just your good old-fashioned rockout.

2007-01-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

Come back, female rock stars!

2007-01-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I read to escape, but it still has to be good. If it isn't better than what I can do, it isn't escaping.

Sometimes I read to connect. That's nonfiction. I had a big blogger period, where I couldn't get through a day without clicking on about twenty blogs. I read a book published by the Salon people about whether or not to have babies, right after I'd had one. That time right after the baby's born is lonesome. And I read a book about Genghis Khan because he's my hero.

Now I'm reading so I don't look like an idiot. I bought a book full of "intellectual devotionals," one-page explanations of all kinds of stuff in tiny type and small words so I can understand it. One thing I hate about myself is how uneducated I am. So I love this book. I try not to think of it as McEducation. I think of it as a jumping-off point.

2007-01-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

I write in a little book with graph paper in it.

My new favorite song

2006-12-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

This is where it's at right fucking now, ladies and gentlemen.

2006-12-13T11:42:00.000-08:00

I don't know if Michelle reads this anymore, but I'm missing her today.

2006-11-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

I'm getting into the dark music again. I won't even tell you what it is, because I know some of you who read this are really into music, good music, better than the stuff I'm listening to, and you'd laugh at the cheesey shit I think is dark.

It's been years since I stayed up all night listening to music in my headphones, moving my head, feeling it well up in my ribcage.

Between the soup course and the entree

2006-11-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

I'm in San Francisco right now, at my friend's apartment, having a lunch that started hours ago. I haven't seen The Bug all day. It was a long trip, stuffed in the back of my inlaws' Matrix with The Bug and my mother-in-law. I've been tired. Staying up all night. Playing with my inner life. Long story.

Anyway, I love it when California stretches out into long blank farmland. I've driven up here several times. It's just enough of a road trip for me. Once on the trip I smoked two cigarettes, as a measure of my independence. I threw the rest out. I've listened to music, loud, and sang.

This time, we're staying at the Ramada on Market & 8th, a seedy, dark block. Everything seemed dark. It's that time of year where you're surprised by the quick night. The Bug was restless and cold. He slammed his fingers in the drawer, poked at exposed outlets. His arguments could be heard from the elevator. The walls are thin there. I felt sorry for our neighbors when he woke in the early morning hours, screaming. He woke happier before dawn and that was that. I was glad when he left with his grandparents to ride the trolley, and I haven't seen him since then.

We were ill-prepared for the weather. It isn't bad for this time of year, but back in The Real O.C., we're still in shorts and tank tops.

I'm coming down from the drunk from the first few courses. There will be more drunk in the next two: still have pinot noir and port to go.

2006-11-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

My favorite aunt died. I can't say that I feel bad at all, or even sad. It just feels like my ribs all turned to stone. It feels like I'm dragging around my chest behind me.

2006-11-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

I read a Flannery O'Connor story. I wrote a reaction to it for class. Then we went through the story in class and now I feel stupid.

A Prayer For Owen Meany brought me to the class in the first place. I knew I'd reached the end of what I could do on my own. I guess I could have spent the rest of my life writing on an even plane but I want to do better each time. I was banging my head on my own ceiling. So I enrolled in the class.

It would have been easy to claim myself a genius when I found out I was the best writer in class, the hardest worker. Or maybe I could have felt fine when the teacher took me to her office and told me she didn't have anything to teach me (though she was talking about poetry, and even there she was wrong).

Instead, I am humbled every week, in every class, by what I have yet to learn. I am so late to the game. I should have learned all this ten years ago, but I couldn't have, then. I wasn't ready. Will I live long enough to write as well as I can? Am I even capable of reaching the heights I aspire to?

*

I was playing on that Jackson Pollock page and I made something pretty. I didn't know why it was so pleasing, so I showed it to Mister Aran. He is an educated artist and a brilliant visual thinker so I asked him why I liked it. He told me it was composed well, that the colors... went together right, or something. Maybe there was something in there about white space. Maybe I'm making that up.

He told me that Pollock made jazz visual. I asked if it was intentional. He explained that it was, but in the same way that jazz is intentional. Dammit, I can't explain it correctly. I don't know how to use words to explain jazz and Pollock and all of that is just me being frustrated at how little writing ability I really have. I mean I feel so wretched about it right now that I could cry, I feel the crying in the back of my nose, and it isn't even hormone time.

Maybe Mr. Aran will come into the comments and explain the jazz and Pollock thing for me.

I'm just afraid I will always be just one of those people in black, looking at it from the outside.

2006-10-31T21:41:00.000-08:00

My favorite aunt is dying now - what my hospice nurse mother calls "actively dying" - in Colorado. I haven't seen her in many years. Maybe ten. My brother was always her favorite, but that's okay. She is wonderful. I miss her.

Maybe it's because I haven't seen her in so long that I can't feel anything.

*

Tonight The Bug was returned to me overwarm from his lobster costume and heavily asleep. I laid him on his changing table and unzipped him, folded him out of the legs and arms of the thing. He snored slightly from the gunk in his nose. His lips are plump and shaped nicely, like mine. I clicked on the little light and laid him on my lap and clipped his nails. It's more difficult if he hasn't just had a bath, but I can't do it while he's awake.

Actually, strike that. Last time, he was awake. I talked him through it. He's growing up.

I thought of Aunt while I did all this. I wish she could have met him. They would have liked one another. After she passes I will ask her to come watch over us. I bet she'd do it. I bet she'd love to.

2006-10-31T09:20:00.000-08:00

I could kick my story. That latest one. I added all this cool stuff and it ended up muddy and convoluted. I will have to start from scratch, maybe ditch that whole collective narrative thing that I've been clinging to.

That's okay. I'm willing. When things get tough for me, that's my cue to plow through.

2006-10-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

The Bug's nose bled last night during a marathon of "The Biggest Loser" on Bravo. Just one nostril, and not heavy. It's the dryness. Mister Aran told me he remembered blood on his pillowcases during season changes. So The Bug has inherited this.

Awhile ago I saw a puffy red patch of skin on The Bug's back. So it could be that he's also inherited Mister Aran's sensitive skin.

He's miserable; his voice is nearly gone and when crying he coughs badly. I may call the pediatrician today, but the thought of an hour in the waiting room along with all the healthy kids (better doctor's offices have separate waiting rooms for sick kids), The Bug impatient and coughing and bleeding from the nose, makes me hope on hope that it just goes away on its own. I want to go to the park and watch him run around. I want to go to the library and check out some Michael Martone. I want to finish my Larry Brown book. This, at least, can be done today whether or not The Bug gets to feeling better.

*

We want to get back into training with Joker (his site's down, or I'd link you). His new gym isn't close and it isn't cheap but we do like to hit things, and one another, so we're going to bypass all those breakfasts out and get back into the swing of things. I was just getting into my sparring when the goddamn gym closed. I still can't think about it. Pisses me off. To some, a gym closing is no big deal. For us, it was like finding a fantastic church. It had everything and we felt at home there.

*

Enough. There's stuff to do, always.

Gee, I'd never have guessed

2006-10-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

I picked up John Irving's latest hardcover, Until I Find You, at the B&N. I read the back, got as far as some text involving a young man and older women... and put it back down like it was on fire.

I'm tired, tired, tired of John Irving's old themes. I've ranted about it before, so I won't again here, but I will say my problem with him is probably compounded by the fact that A Prayer For Owen Meany remains my favorite book of all time. I expect too much from Irving, probably. I don't begrudge Amy Tan her repetitiveness because, though I've enjoyed a couple of her novels, they don't have a permanent spot in my memory and history.

I was looking around for that flap copy so I could show you here but I ran into this article instead.

It was while writing Until I Find You that Irving discovered the identity of his own biological father. In addition, he has gone public about being seduced as a pre-teen by an older woman, a fate that also befalls Jack.

Ahhhh sooooo.

Let's hope to god this means Irving is going to get past this and move on to other subjects for his next book.

But I doubt it.

2006-10-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd have to send old stories through the workshops in class, because I was out of ideas. I panicked, thinking of having to write fiction again. Last week, though, I came up with something. I had a seed of an idea while I was trying to fall asleep. By some miracle, I remembered it in the morning, and an actual character came out of it, with... like... themes and metaphors and stuff attached.

This week, though, I was sure I'd have to print out an old story. For two days I couldn't think of anything. Then, at the park, something big happened. A fire helicopter landed in the baseball diamond. The Bug and I watched, exclaiming, exuberant, my god it was so amazing. It would have been cool if I were alone; imagine that cool times one hundred. That's how it is with a toddler involved.

The story came out of that. No helicopters land in parks in the story, but the seed was there. Great things happen at parks. Big things.

It's jazzy, to create something new. You get high. I've been riding on my two new stories like surfboards for days now. With the first one, I couldn't keep my mouth shut; I sent it to friends before it was formed, like showing off ultrasound pictures. They squint at it and act happy for you, but really they think you're nuts. I'll be better this time. I'll let this story incubate.

Anne Lamott says there's a Dr. Seuss character in her brain, feeding her stories. I don't know where these last two stories came from. I'm not that creative. I'll buy into the Dr. Seuss guy idea, for lack of any better explanation.

2006-10-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

I want to believe there's a way out. If we could just drill in Alaska for a short time, long enough to develop alternative energy. If we could just pull out of the Middle East altogether, take our sticky fingers out of their lives and politics, leave Israel to fend for itself. If we could just secure our borders, stop outsourcing. If we could just, if we could just, if we could just.

Then they'd stop hating us, the great devil America. They'd stop developing the bomb, or at least, they'd use it against one another and not us. They'd dismantle the cells of operations here, go back home. They'd stop stockpiling weapons, sending their young boys into the streets in cars filled with explosives. Free to live under the strict rule of Islam, they'd allow the rest of the world their own religous freedom. They'd stop kidnapping, beheading. They'd have no reason to put live bombs into the hands of children to throw at tanks. They'd retire their AK-47s, rebuild their cities, grow vegetables, vote or not; this isn't our business.

I want to believe what the Democrats say: that it's our fault. That it can be fixed by leaving them alone.

The closest thing to truth that we have, now, is not the politicians or the media. It's the armed forces. The little they're allowed to say. Listen carefully.

2006-10-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Bug had a rough night. His nose was full and he couldn't breathe. He woke a few times and we took turns going in. I tried to hold him but he struggled away, impatient, as if thrashing underwater, like drowning. I put him down and he screamed worse, so I picked him up again and again he pushed away.

*

After two weeks, we put him in his own room.

He wakes angry. Sometimes he refuses to be picked up. He gives us the evil eye. Unless we're already there when he wakes. Then he gives a bleary, devious smile.

Even if we wanted to bring him back to us at night, we couldn't. He is independent now. He demands his space. He's used to his rectangle, his freedom.

*

I put him down for his nap today and after awhile he made a noise so I went to him. But his eyes were still shut and he'd found his empty bottle and was sucking at it, so I waited. Then I backed out, watched from the door. His breathing was labored, but he was determined to rest, so I left. I read my book in my bed.

This morning at the bookstore I saw a book on scientific parenting, something about brain research and us all being mammals. In the sleeping section (the section I always turn to first in such books) there were pictures of koalas, orangutans, sleeping together, mother and child. We're the only mammals who don't co-sleep, the book explained. It is too dangerous, anywhere else, to leave your child alone. On another page, a newborn slept next to his mother, who "slept" only for the camera, with perfect, if natural-looking, makeup.

That's what we give up for what we have now. For society. We put our children in the other room. We have sex. It's good or it's bad; for me it's mostly great. We clean up. The man falls asleep. The woman lays awake, body still tingling with sex, with the biological hope of it, even if our minds don't follow. We fall asleep eventually, but then we wake. Our weakened bladders. Our stuffed-up sons. Our mammalian impulses. The helpless child in the enclosed rectangle.

I don't know if I'll ever sleep well again.

*

In Afghanistan, a woman could have friends. She could go to the University; she could dress mostly as she liked and walk with those friends and laugh. She could be a doctor. She could fall in love, have babies, keep a house, have a say.

In 1995 I graduated high school. In 1995 Afghan women graduated, too. They celebrated, maybe like I did.

In 1997, no women graduated in Afghanistan.

It could happen. To you, to your wife, to your sister, your mother. In a few weeks, a month. In a year, you could be covered from head to heel with cloth. Expelled from school. The windows of your house painted black.

Unable to see a male doctor, you could die of an easily treatable disease. Accused unfairly of almost anything, you could hang. If your ankle showed, you could be beaten with cables until you died.

Perhaps you would sit in your home and watch your son grow, helpless. Maybe you would wish for the black windows of your house to break. For the soldiers to come. For the bombs to drop. Maybe once you were a teacher. Maybe once you were a government worker. September 27, 1996. It took only one day, but it was brewing before then.

*

I took my book into The Bug's room. I sat carefully in the big chair, careful not to squeak. I watched him, and I read. Outside, crows argued, motorcycles roared, music pounded from parking cars, garbage trucks did their business, leaf blowers droned. But he slept. He pressed through the gunk in his nose. A few times, he made a noise, stirred, but fell back into sleep. I watched and I read.

This morning I thought it would be nice for him to be old enough to play alone, so I could do... what? My work, my reading, my cleaning. Already, though, he looks like he will soon outgrow that rectangle. I wanted to get in it with him, but I stayed in my chair. On his back, his breathing grew easy, then faint. His breathing is faster than mine. Little lungs need less air.

He slept and slept. He's still sleeping. He never sleeps this long. He's missed Gymboree. I let him sleep. I left to turn off my phone, and to write this. I'm going back now, because it can all go away. One day, one month, the water boiling so gradually that you don't know you're cooking. I want to see him wake up. I want that wry smile.

Smells good

2006-10-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Smells like a BBQ outside today. Little drops of ash dance and swirl, white and gray.

It's killed four already. Another is on his way.

more audience participation

2006-10-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

Last time didn't work out so well. I'm assuming it got buried. So here we go again. If you're reading this, take a moment to leave a comment answering the following question:

Where'd you get that shirt?

This month's Esquire fiction

2006-10-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

This story gets better with repeated readings. Genius all the way through.

The Death of Derek Jeter

Sweet relief

2006-10-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

I noticed today on the can that I feel pretty fine. No itchy fear. No paralyzing psychic moments.

My brother is home.

Mister Aran's Cintiq makes this godly

2006-10-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to click.

Maybe we'll be lucky enough for him to grace us with a screenshot.

Would you like... a spatula? For your bunghole?

2006-10-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

My caffeine headache grows steady between my temples now. I'm drinking Diet Dr. Pepper to stave off the inevitable until The Bug wakes and we can hit up the Coffee Bean.

Last night something odd happened in class. I always have a latte during my first break so that I'll stay alert for the duration of the four-hour class. Last night, though, I only drank half and I felt a painful squeeze in my belly. Then I turned into Cornholio.

If you don't know who Cornholio is, watch the following short clip:

I couldn't stop shaking. My jaw chattered. I felt like that bug alien in Men In Black who was forever trying to act casual while inside the restrictive body of a man. Worse still, it was my shining moment: I had to read my auto-erotic cannibalistic coming-of-age story aloud to two classmates and (horrors) my teacher.

I always leave class a little too jazzed. I'm cutting out that breaktime latte. I'd rather feel sleepy than nuts.

Confession:

2006-10-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

I used to edit. Sorta. I read my pieces eighty times, making changes in the text as I went. I fixed problems. I chose better words. I considered what other readers said and sometimes made those changes.

But it's only since starting this class that I've really learned to edit. I have a long way to go, I see now. But editing is so great. None of the original rush of creation, which sucks, but it's nihilistic, which just tickles my Tyler Durden pink.

I'll leave you with that image for a second.

...

Anyway.

I love having early drafts, now. I love watching the number of drafts stack up. And I love being able to show people the laughable differences between number one (usually half scratched out on paper) and number nine or ten. The last one isn't as crazy, but it is loved. Deeply loved. It's like marriage vs. one-night-stand.

Where am I?

2006-10-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

I got bored with dots.

2006-10-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

My shoulders are caked with sand; it's made its way into the cups of my collarbones, too. While I read I scoop and scrape. The playground is a marvelous exfoliant.

Sometimes I find out the names of the other children. The opening line, though, is about age. We ask because we're comparing.

Older boys skateboard over the playground equipment. I'd like to bop them over their heads. One cries, "Let's skate down the slide!" Secretly, I hope he does. One less idiot in the world. Then I remember, boys. Mine will one day consider stupid dangerous things like this, too. Already, everything long and grippable is a sword in his hands. He goes about stabbing and slashing in the living room and around the park like it's his job. And it is.

2006-10-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

While walking The Bug I realized the story I wrote is actually Jack and the Beanstalk.

GET OUT OF MY BRAINS!

2006-10-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

My mother printed out this post and sent it to my brother inside a care package. She told him not to tell me. Then she admitted it to me. No matter how annoyed I am with this, she's adamant that it was the right thing to do. She's taking some high ground where my brother needs to know how I feel about him and also he needs to know how talented I am - these are her words, jesus god please believe me - so it was worth getting me angry.

She doesn't know shit about my relationship with my brother. We've been building something over the last year. For him to see that now, after all that's changed between us since, is... it's just stupid.

I don't rant here about my mother anymore because she read some of the other ones and I felt like eight kinds of shit, but I'd like to ask her: Is this about me and my brother, or about you and your shitty siblings?

*

It isn't so much the butting into our business that bothers me, since god knows she was brought up to behave that way. It's the "Don't tell your sister... Don't tell your brother... I don't want him/her to be mad at me." Chrissake, if she doesn't want us to be mad at her, she could try not doing the things that piss us off for a change. She leaves a key under the mat, tells a near stranger, then is surprised to discover that he's been coming in regularly to take showers, dip into her stash of pills, and help himself to her jewelry. She lets drug addicts stay in her house - there are promises of rent money and quick jobs and apartment searches; none of this occurs of course BECAUSE WE ARE DEALING WITH ADDICTS - and then is surprised and annoyed to find that there is drama when she wants them to leave.

All this is not necessarily my business, either, so I don't really get angry like she thinks. It's getting old, hearing her swear she isn't into all the drugs and shit her circle of friends are into (yeah, that happens), but she's an adult and I leave her to her decisions for the most part. But her lies pissed me the fuck off recently, to the point where I don't care if she's still reading this. Go ahead and read on, Ma, because you crossed a line when you didn't let me know that the people who visited us with you are also addicts. Not just alcoholics, but drug addicts as well. You let me invite them into my home overnight. You led me to believe it was safe to let them watch my Bug for me. ADDICTS.

I know how it is. You hang with people long enough, it doesn't seem like a big deal. You make allowances for them. You try a little. You forgive them. Then you forget that addicts are unpredictable, selfish people.

*

I'm still trying to figure out what my relationship with my mom should be. I thought I could let her in aways but then I found out she was a liar. It's not easy to see reality when you're up close, but I got it now. I got it.

2006-10-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

I am not sleeping well. My brain works overtime lately. I lay there, tired as hell, and don't sleep.

I didn't see The Bug much at all today. When I came home from breakfast, he was out in the grass next to the sidewalk with his Lolo so I went up to see them. As soon as The Bug saw me, he turned around and ran the other direction. I kept telling him, "I'm not going to take you away from Lolo," but he went limp and threw a tantrum when I tried to hold him anyway. So I was almost happy when he woke up a few minutes ago. I was trying to read myself to sleep. When I picked him up, I choked on his smell. It was like he'd bathed in perfume. Maybe his Lola had been wearing it.

I've felt tired and dizzy and a little nauseous and now this. Mister Aran said he didn't smell it. I'm annoyed at the whole potential prospect. Counting days. Wearing myself out.

My brother is safe now, safe as can be anyway, in his home in Oceanside. He got in last night. Was travelling since last Monday, if you can imagine. He says it was hell. I bought him 'No True Glory' for the trip back. He's been wanting to read it.

I will see him tomorrow. He sounded happy on the phone.

2006-10-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

I have been giddy the last two weeks. I chalked it up to it being short fiction time in my class. I'm ready to nail it. I'm ready to get better. I'm ready to work my ass off. And I have been writing. Not the poetry stuff, which I think I do well because I have a great ear (this is why my piano teachers gave up on me - I refused to read the music), but fiction again. Fiction, especially short fiction, taps into seedy little wells of junk in my psyche, pumps it out, spills it everywhere. I wrote a story last week that I meant to be gory gobbletigoo, just fun, just horror. Today, though, while scrubbing the tub, I was startled to realize that the story has solid themes and metaphor, stuff I've been writing about and working through for years. I love it when my brains work without me.

It all came to a climax today - I don't use the C word lightly, here; I was a mess - when I read the first few pages of this month's Esquire.

If you've known me for five minutes, you know I love Esquire. Love isn't quite the word, actually. Esquire is my dream, my goal, often my inspiration. A few months ago, for the first time in many months, they published fiction, a tale about a Katrina survivor. They've decided, since, to start publishing fiction regularly again, and they're pushing the envelope: they're commissioning stories, giving writers assignments and titles and letting them run with it.

Fiction has meant so much to me, since I was a little girl, that the last few years of nonfiction craze has been hard. I have been waiting for a rebirth, for someone to come along and push fiction into a new age, and I believe this is it.

They're asking for their slush pile to grow to the ceiling, and I will be in it. And if my story isn't enough, I will work harder, and it may be the next time. Or the next.

It's all happening!

2006-10-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

If you are at all interested in the war in Iraq, please read No True Glory by Bing West. This book talks mostly about the battles in and for Fallujah up to 2005. West keeps his opinion out of it for the most part, except in the heroic paintings you get of the individual soliders and Marines, but I bought it. He keeps his conclusions separate, at the end. It's some good, solid reporting. You'll be amazed at how important politics and media are in the waging of modern war.

It's also just a thrilling read. It's accessable even for those of us who have no understanding of military terminology.

*

In other news, I was annoyed by the end of The Lovely Bones. Not angry, throwing things angry, like I was at the end of White Oleander (I have come to the conclusion that Janet Fitch is a sadist who hates her readers), but it was enough to make me close the book with a dissatisfied groan.

*

But Larry Brown! How have I missed him all my life? He is a sneaky, sneaky writer. So deceptively simple. You close his book, and for an hour you're narrating your own life in your head in his voice. I've never known a writer who could better paint a scene. Thank you, thank you Miss Snark. I'm enjoying Fathers and Sons now. It is testosterone at its simple, beautiful finest.

2006-10-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere in my Miss Snark travels that finding an agent is a writer's biggest hurdle. (In the comments, not the main body of the blog, of course.)

I wholly disagree. Finding an agent is a hurdle, a horrible, slippery, hurdle with jaws and mean nasty pointy teeth, okay, but the writer's biggest hurdle is WRITING. Getting better all the time.

Sometimes I think I'd love to get to the place where I can read something of mine five years later and not crumble in embarrassment. It's probably a good thing, though. Hopefully I'll be ninety-five, and stumble across something I wrote at ninety, and toss it away with a, "Oh, that was just an experiment. Was I ever that silly?"

2006-10-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

I want to get The Bug into capoeira when he's little and still bendy. It's a fun fighting discipline with music involved. So, at least he'll be a killer dancer one day.

We can begin his kerambit training when he's a little older. Like five.

2006-10-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Mister Aran has been such an inspiration in some odd ways. Because I do all the driving, I sat in on some of the classes he taught on character design. I learned more about writing characters from an art class than anywhere else. Mister Aran's characters must read immediately. They must be defined in three lines or less. They must be able to work - for example, have bones and muscle and mechanics or whatever is required. There are some cool-looking robot designs out there that, if built, would fall on their asses. Mister Aran thinks out every bolt, every joint, center of gravity. His characters can move.

While walking with The Bug at sundown this evening, I saw a girl on the soccer field at halftime, a goalie, practicing with her coach. He kept kicking balls at her and if he made it in, he'd hoot and raise his arms in ecstasy. I thought, "Yay for you, retard. You made a goal on an eight-year old." Her legs were like saplings. Everything looked too big on her. Her hair was escaping from her ponytail. It was a beautiful moment and I wanted to write about it. So I let my mind wander with it. I told myself about the fading orange stripe at the horizon, the blue above it growing darker, the breeze turning from warm to cool to cold fast as walking into an industrial fridge. And there were rabbits and swarms of gnats and The Cranky Bug, sans nap number two, the little lights on his shoes blinking as he thrashed in the stroller.

But I got bored with it immediately because there was no action. I don't need the girl to take off her cleat and charge the coach with it, but I do need it to go somewhere. And maybe someone else could take the same scene and make something of it, but I couldn't. At least not then. (Though, that cleat idea is pretty good. Maybe later.)

I tried, for a few minutes, to do what David Foster Wallace did (yeah, laugh it up you bastards) in that story about the boy jumping off the high-dive on his birthday. It's one of the most perfect stories I've ever read, and it takes place in the matter of maybe two minutes, but you feel, smell, taste, hear and see every tiny little detail on his way up the big ladder. But what's so fucking genius about it is, the details don't stop the action at all. They propel it somehow. I don't know how! But I have the rest of my life to figure it out.

*

It was hilarious to read Chekhov's "Lady with the Pet Dog." It's like my first novel, but good! And short! And true! This is why writers have to read, and read and read and read like madmen, because there is no other way to be original. I sent that shit out to agents and made my notes in my little spreadsheet like a good girl and followed instructions online and in books. I murdered myself doing it. I raced into the house after leaving for ten minutes to check my phone messages. I let the business be the joyful part. Now I just want to get good. I will never be good enough, but I continue to entertain myself. And my shit is so much better now than it was back then, even though I took whole years off.

*

There's another thing I learned from Mister Aran: how to separate myself from my work. He doesn't hold his work close to his bosom. He's a commercial artist. Commercial writers need to think the same way, or they end up drinking three bottles of wine with breakfast.

*

On another note, I am so fucking glad that Jeffrey won Project Runway. Best season ever.

2006-10-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

Tom H. Macker makes me happy in my pants. He's like me, but you know... what's the word? Better. I went googling him and found old stuff. Let's hope he gets shit together and publishes soon so I can read him on the can.

All Like Hella Marin or Something

When They Were Young

Jessica

Dirty World War I Letters

?

2006-10-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

I need some audience participation, here. So, if you are reading this, take the time to leave a comment telling me what you had for breakfast.

That reminds me. I have eggs boiling.

2006-10-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

I've got that damn Clifford song in my head. The Bug is into Clifford. I don't like it that the dogs talk now.

2006-10-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

2006-10-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm putting this up so that I don't forget it:

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she. (Anton Chekhov, in a letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886.)

2006-10-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've been in one of the best guilds in WoW. It is much older and more accomplished than the one this guy talks about in this post I will link. Although I was one of the crappy 12-hour a week guildies at my pinnacle, I observed the 10-hour a day'ers, and what he says is true.

It reminds me of a girl who, back in beta, posted something like, "The server never stays up for twelve hours at a time." My immediate reaction was, How do you know? The people who complained about lack of content and too-fast levelling were the ones who logged on right after pushing the button on the coffee machine in the morning and logged out after the raid at 3:00 AM.

One of the greatest players, who hailed back from EQ and maybe even further back, sent me a text message one day with a picture attached of a pile of game discs, broken and in the trash. He was in his early twenties, with a college education he wasn't really using, living with his parents, and he hadn't yet kissed a girl. I was so proud of him. I still am. Real life is scary and painful for him, but he's doing beautifully.

The only thing that really irks me about this article is how the guy consistently blames Blizzard. There's a reason some of those instances are on timers, sir. They're trying to keep you from pushing across the Middle East every damn day. Rested bonuses were implemented to convince players to log off while levelling. Blizzard has always understood the addictive quality of a mmorpg, and taken responsibility for it to whatever extent they can.

It smacks of blame. Taking responsibility for yourself is key, people. If this guy were really into drinking and he quit because his group of "friends" were breaking up and being destructive and, hey, acting like addicts, he wouldn't be blaming Jose Cuervo.

There are millions (yes, millions) of us who enjoy WoW for exactly what it is: beautiful, exciting fun. It is not a job. It is not a social life. It is a game. Some people can't have just one glass of wine with dinner, and some people can't play just a couple hours at night. It's up to us as adults to know this about ourselves, and it is up to us as parents to know this about our kids and take necessary action.

Okay, that all said, here's the article.

2006-10-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

This morning, a woman walked into the Den and ordered coffee at the counter. On the way there, she dropped something. When she bent, I saw her entire red string thong jut up out of her jeans. This all happened over Mister Aran's shoulder.

"Oh man," I said, "That chick's thong just busted hella out of her jeans." I watched her at the counter. Mister Aran was already moving on, and that couldn't be. I needed her to bend over again so he could see it, and share in the... whatever of it. The whatever is difficult to explain. She was older; maybe that was it. Her clothes were unkempt and ill-fitting. Her hair, pulled back into partial pig-tails, was dyed blonde and red. She had to be at least forty, and her look was far too young. The thong was the crux of it.

"You dropped that," said the server, pointing at a receipt on the ground next to Thong Lady.

"Oh god yes! Watch, watch!" I muscled Mister Aran into a sideways sitting position. The woman took her time tucking change into her wallet, but before she left, she bent for the receipt, and Mister Aran saw it. We shared a celebratory high-five. Carlo now calls it a London Bridge. Thanks, Fergie, for educating my husband on the finer points of multi-person sex. I digress.

I was joyful. Triumphant. I had made a wish, and Jesus had made it so. Then a frightening reality knocked me back: Jesus was listening... then? Right then? What if that was my only chance at an audience with the Almighty, and that's the wish he happened to hear?

One day, The Bug will live under a bridge, sad, diseased and alone, and I will know it's because I fucked up my one damn Jesus wish for a half-second shot at a woman's red thong.

2006-10-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

It's weird to read Miss Snark's blog. I ain't even linking it, because there's a sort of 'community' lurking in her comments section and after a year of posting she already seems put upon. Miss Snark is like that side street short cut in Los Angeles that you guard carefully, and only disclose to your closest friends.

Anyway, it's fun to read about publishing. I think about it sometimes. Probably, Jordan thinks about it more than I do. At least twice a day and sometimes on the john. I don't. I trained myself for a few years not to think of it, and that's the only reason why I feel able to tap out a few lines on the old Playboy laptop lately.

That publishing time stripped my soul thin until I hated writers, hated writing, even hated reading. So torturous was the tumor of publishing that I had zero interest in my favorite pastime since I was eighteen months old.

See, what a bad sentence that was? This blog was like my Emancipation of Mimi, except without the bra and panty ensembles. And the singing. Well, maybe there was a little singing. Writing was fun enough, but then I started to have a little, quiet audience too.

In order to get here, I had to tell myself that it was okay to put the crap up here. Yes, sometimes the junk on this page is uninteresting and badly written, but I thank God for every shitty line, like Salieri.

After a few years of that, I started Ask Samus, a place where silly and often gross teenage boys asked me for advice and I gave it, often with visual aids and a touch of humiliation. That was fun. Never did I wonder whether Ask Samus would turn into something else, be discovered by Jenny Bent and be turned into the next Quirky Bad Girl How-To paperback, complete with a cartoon mascot and corresponding calendars, pencils and dog carriers. Then someone asked me in the thread whether I'd try to make it into a book, and all of it came back to me. I said, as flat as the typed word can convey, No.

Then came the letters to my brother, starting last February when he deployed to Iraq. Those are nothing short of nihilism. My little Tyler Durden letters. I don't save a single one of them, and some are great. The only way I'll ever see them again is if he saves them and shows them to me in the future. I used to keep everything I wrote, and read it again and again, hash over the hoped-for reaction of its recipient. No more.

And now, my creative writing class. God, an excuse to write, every week! Imposed discipline, assignments, editing, but most of all, reading. Glorious, good reading. And writing without an inkling about how I'd summarize it for a prospective agent. Just writing!

Miss Snark reminds me of all those query letters, the rejections, the spreadsheets, the jealousy, the half-hearted golf claps, the loneliness, that first time an agent asked for a full ms and I spent a rainy morning listening to Peter Gabriel and printing out my first novel with joy.

She reminds me of something else, too. That I will publish. I have no doubt. It's never been in question that I'm supposed to write. At the right time, the right writing will get me published. I harbor no notions about Oprah and couldn't give a crap about Rowling's good fortune. I have a husband, a son, and a home to care for. But, for the rest of my life, I will read, read, write, and send it out, rinse and repeat. Something will catch. I won't live off it, probably, but I'm lucky enough for that not to be the point anymore. The point is to write as well and learn as much as I possibly can until I die.

Oh, what the hell. Miss Snark

2006-10-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

I have a new cookbook full of slow cooker recipes. I have a glass of Diet Squirt. I have a sleeping kid and a lunch engagement at 12:30. I can think of nothing but curry.

2006-10-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

The other night we bought two cases of pop (Diet Squirt and Diet Berry Dr. Pepper) and a bag of ice that had partially melted and refroze. There's nothing more to this story except that both kinds of pop are exceptionally good, and it's cathartic to jab away at an ice lump with a butter knife.

2006-10-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

I know I should start dueling at level one like everyone else, so that by sixty I have some clue as to how PVP works, but I don't. It's never been my thing, PVP. I like humans. I used to be one. Night elves are okay; it's funny to watch them run with the staves up their butts. Gnomes are downright lovely; we have one in the Undercity with whom I've become quite fond, and they're such nifty engineers. I have been known to sneak a little dwarven ale, though it makes such a puddle when it falls through my ribcage. Alas.

So, as the great anthem once asked, why can't we be friends? Samus has taken up residence on a PVE server, disguised as a mage. Oh, it's grand to throw balls of fire! I digress.

Last night, I ran into a night elf who happened to be a Marine. I knew he was a Marine because his name was Devildogusmc. They aren't known for their creativity, just their badassery, and that's just fine with me. We helped one another through a cave filled with nasty furlbogs, silent except for my occasional emote.

2006-10-11T00:20:00.000-07:00

I think it's nice that Sesame Street wants us all to understand our Spanish-speaking brethren and sistren. I like that Grover goes all over the world, collecting culture, and tries it out himself, with disastrous results. But it would be nice if they did more with science, or maybe mentioned that it's nice to live here, too.

2006-10-07T00:53:00.000-07:00

So I saw a video linked on Fred's page and I was trying to tell Mister Aran about it but I couldn't remember the name of the thing they're tossing out the back of a plane. Sex makes my memory suck. Wait, no. I remembered the name of it during sex. It's not having sex that makes my memory suck. Anyway, during said sex I'm like, "Howitzer! That's the thing they drop out of the plane!" And Mister Aran is like, "But those are like cannons." So I doubted myself. How do you drop a cannon out of a plane? But then I looked at it again and, sure enough! Fucking Howitzers!

2006-10-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

Ugh, my brother emailed, thank god. I will breathe for five minutes. I was losing hope all week. I have the evil eye, actually. I tend to get too enmeshed in online communities. But I have made a promise to myself, that when I start getting upset at what's going on with online people, I will back away and remember what's important. So I'm doing that. Online is for chilling, not stressing. My time is better spent writing to my brother, massaging Mister Aran's shoulder, running around with The Bug, cleaning something, cooking a new recipe, doing my homework, working out. Fuck psychos I don't even know. It isn't worth putting my family in danger.

I know none of that makes sense to any of you, but I'm just jamming here.

Now I'll go rest, and read, and write to my brother if the mood hits, and I hope anyone reading this has a very nice day.

2006-10-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

I can't stop the pressure in my chest.

2006-10-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Ten months ago, my brother sent in his taxes. He visited family in Colorado, even the estranged people, and behaved diplomatically. He told our mother not to pray for him, but to pray for his men.

He disconnected his cell phone. He made arrangements for his bills. He went shopping. He bought more armor than is issued, better armor, and rolls of Copenhagen, and boxes of Mach 3 razors.

His dining room table was neatly littered with stacks of paper. An open laptop with iTunes at the front sat facing the kitchen. His room was the same as it had been on base, in San Diego, except the walls were not stacked concrete blocks.

He met his nephew and we all went to dinner at El Torito. We laughed. Our waitress flirted with him. My brother is horribly handsome.

After dinner, we took rides in his little car. What was it, an Infinity? He played the music very loud, like always.

*

Iraq is a fucking mess. Whether or not there was a reason to go there, it's a fucking mess now. It may have been going okay for awhile, but Fallujah remained the wild card. Then Fallujah got fucked up big time. Four Americans strung up on a bridge, dragged through the streets. How could Bush save face with what the Marines proposed? To quietly take care of the perpetrators, to continue with their previous plan of attack, to slowly and invisibly help the Iraqi Police take Fallujah over a long period of time? The cameras were rolling, and Bush was angry. What could he do? At home, we said, Bomb them back to the stone age! Badgered, how could he make the right decision? And what has the wrong decision cost?

It is 1:56 AM for my brother now. It is getting chilly. One day, he had to wear a sweatshirt against the cold, then he saw the temperature: eighty-five degrees.

2006-10-01T02:09:00.000-07:00

Ha, I'm still awake for no reason! Yay, it's 2:03 fucking AM!

I've been doing this too much lately. I get a sick happy feeling from staying up too late. It makes me feel like I'm ten years old and getting away with something. Same reason I eat sugar, too. Seriously. That's the thought process. Right now Mister Aran is rolling around in bed because I'm an asshole who can't stop keeping him awake with my typing. I swear it's like a disease. I'm not even awake. It doesn't even feel good. And in the morning, it'll feel worse. So what's my problem?

Time to myself! It feels good enough to risk my mood and health for.

2006-09-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

There's so little to post that is true and safe that I haven't already written to my brother.

School is nice. I have only thought about my writing past twice in the last few weeks, and never while actually in class. If the subject came up, I'd have to think about it, jar my head back into my life, to answer truthfully. When I'm in class, I'm utterly focused on the material, on getting better, on finding the nuggets of good stuff inside even the worst of my classmates' poems. I was scared of bad poetry before, but now I feel like an archeologist. I've read some dumbass poems, but they always have some good idea in them, somewhere. Almost like their souls manage to get their message out, even if it's just one line or word, even if the writer has to write all around it and over it and under it to get there. Some of the poems look like gorgeous little girls covered in crazy tattoos.

One guy adopted me, or so he thinks. I adopted him, on the first day. I love it that he's already capable of busting out of cliche, and editing, and I can tell he loves to read. He reads and reads. Now, I'm afraid all he needs to do is sit and work, and fuck up, for a long time. I just hope the substance abuse doesn't get him before the masterpieces come out.

Anyhoo, he picked me to partner up with and rewrite one another's poems. It'll be harder with his stuff than it would be with bad stuff. Bad stuff, I can just go wild and show off. With his stuff, I'll have to think about it.

It's nice to be around all this literature, but it's making my letters to my brother too literary. He seems to like them, though.

2006-09-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was one seventy-two. I have worked out every night for several nights now. Then I have a glass of wine and I feel fine.

Everything else seems to be falling apart in my brains but the working out is holding me together.

2006-09-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm so sick of all the crap piled up in my body. Sugar, grease, all of it sitting around stagnant because I don't drink enough water. I feel like an unflushed toilet.

2006-09-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

One seventy five. I'm back up there. I'm able to admit it now because I've done something about it, the last couple of days. My eating has still been horrible but the last two nights I've gone to the gym after The Bug went to sleep.

So now I'm having some wine. It's a very good wine but I brushed my teeth first. I don't recommend that.

Night.

2006-09-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

I think I like myself better with a drink in me.

2006-09-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

One side hurts today. It was ovulation, but Christ. It's never been that bad. But I had a beer and then Samus So Happy! It was a great night.

2006-09-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

So right when Jordan's writing about needing constant validation and shit, I'm thinking I wish I didn't have so much.

School is good, except for class. I don't know if I'm the best one in class, okay. The idea is subjective. Many of those kids are better educated, better read, know more about form and whatever. Many of them are more talented. But none of them have had the time to work and fail and hate themselves and love themselves again and work harder and find the balance again and fall into a deep depression and publish something and fly around for about point two seconds until they fall into an even deeper chasm. Shit, I don't know if even my teacher has had to do all that.

So my stuff comes out a certain way. Maybe it's not what the teacher is used to seeing from 19-year olds. So she tells me she'd like for me to share a review of a poem I wrote, with the class. Then after I do that, I'm waiting for the other people to do it. And there is no one else.

My classmates are staring at me like it was my idea and KERBOOOOOOM. There goes any rapport I may have worked up with my fellow classmates.

Anyway, I'm drinking a beer now and the caring is just not happening anymore!

2006-09-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

This morning I had a salad from the store with spinach and other good things, and I ate it with a latte at home while reading my homework, and tonight my lower abdomen is cramping like the motherfucker, like half a contraction. So I loaded The Bug into the car and picked up Mister Aran and on the way home the news comes on the radio and says DO NOT EAT BAGGED SPINACH, E COLI POISONING, IF YOU HAVE ABDOMINAL CRAMPS CALL YOUR DOCTOR.

So I went to the bathroom at home. There's that flesh colored silverfish thing, whatever it is, that has lived in that bathroom now for a week. It moves to a different spot each time I go in and we keep our distance. I have only seen him move once. I pictured doctors cutting into my belly and wondered if they'd tie my tubes while they were in there.

It was just a thought.

Of course, now I'm thinking I'm just ovulating. But ow.