OPPORTUNIST

Last night my friend Jane took me out for dinner. It was a b-day dinner, so I decided to wear my tiara. One does not always have a good excuse to wear a tiara to dinner, so I thought I would take full advantage of the opportunity.

THINKING OF YOU ON YOUR SPECIAL DAY

I got a birthday card from my grandparents yesterday. It reads the following: A Granddaughter is God's way of touching your heart with laughter, blessing your life with happiness and filling your world with love.

Awww. Now isn't that nice? Yeah. Part of me thinks that's real nice.

And the other part of me is vigorously shaking the card for my $50 check. Only there isn't a $50 check! Just some clunky little key chain with a dream catcher on it. And a note that says: I hope you like the dream catcher! God Bless!

God bless indeed. God bless me and my fifty-dollar-less-ness. Now I gotta turn tricks this weekend. In the bitter cold. And I was hoping I could stay in.

*sigh!*

LOST FOR WORDS

I bought an electric coffeemaker this weekend. You can program it.






It's amazing.
It's my new alarm clock.

DIRTY TALK

There are many synonyms for the word penis. Personally, I like dick. (That's right, you heard it here first.) Pornography and the junk folder in my hotmail account have rendered the word cock hackneyed and trite. At this point, I think it only fair I give a nod to some of the synonyms for the word vagina. I loath snatch. Is that supposed to be a subject or an object? It doesn't even matter!! Both are equally repulsive. I like muff and muffin and honey pot. But my absolute favorite is Pikachu.

ELECTRIC BILL PART TWO

About eleven months ago I had complained about my electricity bill. For almost a year now, I have been paying about $25 a month for electricity. First, I complained to the electric company and then I complained to the building owners. But they just kept throwing up their hands and pointing at each other.

This inspired me to conduct my own science experiment. I unplugged my fridge (the suspected energy suck) and plugged in a tiny little fridge. For one month I kept all my beer in the window sill and ate canned veggies. A small price to pay for the truth. I just got my electricity bill: $12. As it should be. I brought my raw data to the slum lords -er I mean, building owners and they promptly fitted my tiny kitchen with a brand new fridge.

DREAM NINE

Transcribed from my bedside dictaphone because, really, who wants to sit up in bed and write one's thoughts out when you can simply laminate them on tape.

"...And then the only other part I really remember is being outside and running around this sort of yard of this house, um with, with someone else - I'm not sure who that someone else was BUT we were trying to escape this place and there was a, in the distance, not-not too far away, but kind of in the distance you could see this huge squid in the sky - NO! It wasn't a squid! It was a jelly fish, it was a huge jelly fish in the sky and there was sort of like, a storm going on underneath the jellyfish dome in the tentacles...and then suddenly very very close to us, another one of these things sprouted into the sky and we were really worried about being caught. It was almost like they were space aliens. *Heavy sigh* But they looked like jelly fish. I don't know, you had to have been there because it was really really scary."

STOP MAKING SENSE

Yesterday, my brain was doing an excellent impression of alphabet soup.

HURT

Gone are the days when I could run thirteen miles and not immediately collapse into a coma. But I’m older now. My body is creaky. These days when I get an injury it hangs around and taunts me. Pain literally follows me and heckles me something relentless: Caa'mon gimpy! You call that running? Why don’t you just give up and get one of those walkers with the tennis ball bottoms!

The truth?

I’m THIS CLOSE to a walker with tennis ball bottoms. My foot, or at least a very specific spot on it started hurting two weeks ago. But like a big dummy, I played Ultimate Frisbee on it in lieu of icing it and so, it got bad. Gangrene maybe. The little fucker still hurts and now I cannot run the half marathon I had mentally signed up for this weekend. Pity me.




PS. Try and take a picture of your foot. Go ahead, just try it. There's no way you can make a close-up of your foot look un-weird in a picture.

WHERE IS MY MIND?

Today my head was way up in my ass somewhere. Which made it really hard to get things done.

CHANGE IN PLANS

Okay so that thing I said yesterday about not using my powers for evil? I am going to have to go back on that one. Just for today. I know, lame!!!! But it's just for a little bit of evil. Just a very tiny little bit. You won't even notice.

I swear.

THIS WEEK

I promise to use my powers for good.

Not evil.

'TWAS BRILLING

I mean to memorize The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I have it tacked up on the wall above my sink so I have something to do while I wash the dishes.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

I want to destroy myself.

And simultaneously get a lot of stuff accomplished.

Is that so impossible? Are there enough hours in a day??

THIS IS ALL FODDER

For a B movie.

THE CURE

FROM: Sisterfriend@sisterfriend’semail.com

SENT: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 8:52 PM

TO: Winterwren@winterwren’semail.com

SUBJECT: do you want to take a trip with me sometime this year?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FROM: Winterwren@winterwren’semail.com

SENT: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 9:59 PM

TO: Sisterfriend@sisterfriend’semail.com

SUBJECT: Wanderlust

Yes. Wherever you want to go. Truly.

I’m in.

Winter W.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING

From about 7th to 12th grade, I babysat two little girls in my hometown. They were pretty f-in' awesome kids too; precocious and silly and easy to engage. I remember long afternoons spent inventing games under the dining room table, building forts, cutting little bug shapes out of felt and reading Shel Silverstein poems.

I just found out that the older one has been accepted to Harvard...

And she's only fifteen.

MELTING POT

TUESDAY NIGHT TRIVIA

1. Ten Inches Soft
2. Hand Jobs for Algernon

Those are the most recent names for our Tuesday night trivia team. I think it's fun to watch the cutie nerd-boy announcer visibly squirm in his little stripped sweater and blush when he reads the placements at the end of the night.

NO MORE BETS WITH SMARTY PANTS

I recently made a bet with This Boy. I insisted ostriches have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, but he was adamant about the giant squid. Turns out he was right. The ostrich eye, which is actually the largest land animal eye, is only 5 cm in diameter where the giant squid eye is 25 cm in diameter. I can't believe I lost by 20 cm.

And this from a guy who got his B.A. in history.

GOOD TIMES

Last night I met some old friends at a bad university bar and drank three pints of Blue Moon and snort-laughed as my friend Jane told this hilarious story about how her youngest son took her vibrator to school for show and tell.

Y'ALL COME BACK NOW

Missouri. What a curious state, that one. There are too many strip malls and mega churches for my tastes. And the Dolly Parton hairstyles make me feel so clausterphobic. But some love it, you know? Like that Yakov Smirnoff guy. And my grandfather.

Anyway, while in the state we (mother/grandmother and I) drove into Springfield from Forsyth. As we wove ourselves around pickup trucks with visible gun racks, we encountered a car with the following statement scrawled across the rear window: Muslims want to cut your head off! I leaned into the horn and waved my index finger while my grandmother cluched her pink rosary beads and started chanting.

YOU KNOW WHAT MISTER? FUCK YOU.

Yesterday afternoon I was walking downtown. I was headed to a store so's I could buy a nail clipper since I had accidentally flushed mine down the toilet last week. Don't ask. Anyway, I was plugged into my ipod but I wasn't completely oblivious to the world. I did notice the man in a purple jacket right before he checked me with the full weight of his body and knock me to the ground.

I was confounded. His actions were completely unprovoked. I remember sitting on the concrete sidewalk for a couple seconds trying to figure out how I got there. He glanced back at me like I was a fire hydrant he had unintentionally kicked. And then he stumbled around the corner.

CORRECTIONS

Lately I have been reading Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. And let me tell you, it's been a long time, I mean a really long time since I read a book and enjoyed it like this. Part of me wants to grind the pages into fine powder and snort it.

UNTIL NOW

I have never dated anyone born before 1970. And it is a little premature to say anthing more about This Boy, except that he has tiny bits of white hair above his ears. And seeing that makes me lick my chops.

WEEKENDERS: ACT THREE

WEEKENDERS: ACT TWO

WEEKENDERS: ACT ONE

STEAK N’ SHAKE

This Boy has a way of talking like he's a character from some Steinbeck novel.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE

I always get sugar cones. Always, always, always! Unless it’s peppermint bon-bon (a.k.a. mint chocolate chip). Then I get one of those pasty white cake cones.

ON HAVING TO CORRECT MY MOTHER

I'm forever correcting my mother's accent. She emigrated from Hong Kong when she was 18 and has been studying English since grade one, but she still doesn't quite get all the colloquialisms. Just the other day, the following conversation took place:

MOM: “I wish he will fuck until her brains falls out!”

ME: “I thing what you mean to say, mom, is ‘I wish he'd fuck her brains out.’ I think that’s what you mean to say.”

She's usually pretty amenable to corrections, although sometimes she’ll get indignant and say in this exaggerated way, “I solly! I canna speake English!” And my response to this is always a simple, “Whatever mom.”

GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT I'D BE

How to ring in the New Year:

1. drink PBR (from cans)
2. fold/launch paper airplanes
3. laugh your silly ass off