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Ah, Thursday!

My day off of both jobs, and most social obligatons save those I choose for myself, as most people work on Thursdays.  But not I, no,not I!  Therefore, I return to you now, sated from a leisurely blunkfast (like brunch, but more lunchy) at Comet, good fellowship, and a trip to Bullseye Records, which is my favorite used record shop, where they always seem to magically have the exact album I am looking for.  (Okay, so it’s true that I only go there when I’m looking for venerable old classics, but still…)  What with the iTunesification of the music industry, it is one of those increasingly rare music shops that’s run by one hip middle-aged pop wonk who knows everything there is to know about French psychedelia or the collected works of Can.

Though I appreciate that iTunes allows me to buy one Nelly tracks rather than submit to buying a whole mostly-worthless album of Nelly tracks , I’m still an old-schooler when it comes to purchasing music.  I like the thrill of the hunt.  And I like holding an actual object in my hands that is the culmination of someone’s labor.  As I get older, I get more and more sure that this need for the objectness of objects is at least partically a symptom of my age.  All these bits of information floating around in the ether somewhere make me nervous.  It makes me go all Horton Hears a Who in my head:  Is information real?  How can something be real that takes up no actual space?  Is the soul real?  I just cannot handle the philosophical implications of purchasing things that I cannot touch.

All of this is really just a spiraling digressive way of saying that I bought a copy of XTC- Skylarking.   I’m really into the song “Dear God”.  Which is weird, cuz when that song first came out I kinda hated it.  This is similar to the way I resisted liking the Smiths for years because I hated Morrisey’s hair.  Now, I realize that Morrisey’s hair is an oblique reference to the film I Am A Camera.  At least, I hope it is.

 Anyhoo.  Now that I finally have my computer back:  How ’bout that Barack Obama, huh?!  Talk about a missed chance for some primo historic blogging.  What’s left to be said?  A lot, probably, though I’m not going to be the one to say it.  I’m just really fucking relieved.  I will say that we watched the debates with friends, which I’m glad of, because I needed the support.  I’ll admit now that I felt pretty confident about Obama’s chances, almost cockily so, right up until about 10 minutes after the election results started coming in, at which moment I was suddenly siezed with a suffocating panic…a post-traumatic flashback to the Kerry disappointment, I guess.

It does my heart good to see how jazzed people still are, even weeks after the election.  “Euphoric” might be the word.  The other day I was eating lunch with Theo at Outpost.  This older black woman who is known amongst the Outpost staff as a notorious grouch came in, only instead of scowling, per usual, she was beaming and looking beatific.  She had a HUGE Obama button pinned to her sweater.  She came right up to Theo and said, “Oh, my goodness, what a precious baby!  Bless you, little man!  And bless Mr. Obama, because he is going to need all our help!”  Then she floated away and blessed another baby.   Of course, she is also a teensy bit crazy…this is a woman who refuses to let her groceries be scanned because of the “beams”.  But still, that day, she was happy crazy.

“So, whazzap in Laurylville?”, I hear you querry.   Oh, many things.  For starts, this past weekend was my birthday.  (Ha!  That trumps some boring old historic power shift any day!)  My original, vague birthday plan, way back in December, (which is usually when I start thinking about my next birthday) was to throw a Huge Dance Party.  It may surprise no one to learn that my plan every year is to throw a Huge Dance Party.  This usually only works out about once every 7 years or so, namely because I am a really lazy party planner.

Instead, EZ and I and the Nugget took a fambly trip to Chicago (See how we’re still working the Obama magic there?).  Theo loves fishies, and I love sharks and maritime disasters, so we figured it would be rad to take Theo to the Shedd Aquarium.  It turned out to be mostly rad…I’d say 85% rad, 15% annoying as fuck…because they are currently doing major renovations on the marine mammals exhibit.  Thus, the dolphins and belugas are snowbirding it in Florida, the huge food court/cafeteria is closed, and the entire grand lobby of the building, which is where you normally wait in line to purchase tickets, has been filled with makeshift tables and chairs and one lone, overburdened hot dog stand.  The ticket line has been moved out of doors.  Which is fine in the summertime, but a little daunting on the wintry November shores of Lake Michigan.

After the aquarium, we regrouped at a warm & cuddly boho cafe in the Madison Style (slightly crunchy-granola vibes, mismatched sofas, used books, small stage in corner for poetry slams, lots of bad hippie art on the walls, including a mother/maiden/crone and the ubiquitous swirling vortex of fire.) and randomly called all of our Chicago friends to see what they were doing for dinner.  We were also hoping one of them might hook us up with a place to crash.

Y’know, it’s funny.  You’d think that having offspring would force one to be less cavalier with their travel/sleeping arrangements.  In our case, I’ve found that not to be so.  Instead, we employed some tour skillz and hit up our friend Jeremy for a place to stay the night.  We did smooth the way by buying him dinner, though.  Dinner was at a funny little middle-of-the-road pan-Asian place called Hot Wok, Cold Sushi, which proved to be a quintessentially Chi-town experience.  We got lost for 20 minutes trying to park our car.

Only in Chicago can something this absurd happen, the streets are so notoriously fucked.  So if you see a parking spot and miss it, do not attempt to “go around the block”, because you will not end up back where you started.  If you don’t run into a one-way street, you will curve mysteriously to the left without realizing it.  If you don’t curve mysteriously to the left, you will find yourself cut off by El tracks.  If the El doesn’t intersect with you, you will find yourself on a secret expressway, unable to exit.   This happened to us more than once over our two day trip.  My advice, to borrow a phrase from my sister, is to “whip a shitty”*.

*(It means “make a u-turn”.  I don’t know where she got it from, either.)

After dinner, we got lost once more, and then somehow found Jeremy’s apartment without directions or an address.  Again, I’m chalking this up to latent tendrils of tour magic that have worked themselves through my tissues like mycelia.   Jeremy’s place was a perfect crash zone…one of those skinny but deep old 3rd floor walk-ups that seem to just keep going and going.  It had two living rooms, a front one and a back one, and off the back living room was a small spare bedroom that was just the size of a full bed, walled almost entirely with windows.  All of us slept soundly through the night, even Theo, and we woke up around 7:30 the next morning with the sun peeking over the buildings, making even the shoddy ones look invitingly shoddy.  Theo lay between me and EZ, playing peek-a-boo…pulling the blankets over his face until one of says, “Where’s Theo?”  and then pulling them down with a flourish, which is our cue to cry, “There he is!”, at which he laughs uproariously.

We took Jeremy out for breakfast to thank him yet again for the excellent last-minute accomodations, and met up with our friends Brett and Katie, who have a little boy name Quinn who is about 6 months older that Theo.  One of the primary reasons EZ had wanted to go to Chicago in the first place was for breakfast.   We were going to eat at his new Favorite Breakfast Place Ever(!), a sunny little corner restaurant called Victory’s Banner.  Victory’s Banner is run by a spiritual sect (Buddhist? Hindu?) that follows the teachings of Sri Chinmoy.  All the women wear saris, all the food is vegetarian.  Our coffee guy was wearing a tee-shirt dipicting a quote from Thomas Jefferson, of whom they are also fans.  The French toast was killer.  EZ had some kind of curry omelette that blew my mind.  Also, their awning has these little squiggles on it that, upon closer inspection, are drawings of birds.  This awning delights me beyond all proportion:

After breakfast, we wandered around the neighborhood a bit.  Victory’s Banner is located in a little cute Northern neigborhood called Roscoe Village, which, according to Jeremy, is made up of hip urban families.  We went to a ridiculously pricey baby boutique, where I bought a present for Christina, who had text messaged me at 9 that morning to say that she was in labor (yay!)  Theo and Quinn ran around (but gently, as only children under 2 years old can) pulling things out of baskets that were no doubt put there purposefully as baby distractors.  They had found a basketful of rubber playground balls (you know, like the ones you used to play dodgeball with in gym class?) that were stylishly printed on one side with the word “catch” and on the other with the word “throw”. Quinn, who, being older, has a lot more verbal skills than Theo has, handed Theo a ball, and said, clearly and cheerily, “Ball, ball, ball!”  Theo solemnly took the gift and responded thus: “BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL!”  Like a caveman discovering fire.  His first non “mama, dada” word!  An 18 second rendition of the word “ball.”  Needless to say, we bought it for him.

(Since then, he has really taken to “ball” -which, given his limited means, comes out sounding like “bow”, as in, “take a bow.”  Beyond being his current fave toy, it’s also his new catchphrase, and he will use it to describe anything, be it ball or no.  He wakes up in the morning: “Ball!”  He is bored: “Ball!”  He has pooped his diaper: “Ball!” )

We also stopped at a thrift shop with the word “value” in it’s name somewhere, which always bodes well for a thrift shop.  Value Mart?  Val-U-Rama? Value Valley?  I don’t recall.  What I do recall is that they had a cavernously large basement filled with kids’ clothes, all of it, like, 90 cents each.  This may not seem that thrilling to you, even if I explain my big hang-up about gendered clothing for children and about how Theo is now getting old enough that finding him non-hypermasculine clothes is becomign preposterously difficult.  But to me, it was like the gates of Hip, Vintage Non-Gendered Children’s Clothes Heaven had opened and I was admitted.  (I was like Supermario when he gets to the coinland in the clouds!  Only with kid’s clothes, in a basement!  Also, I can’t throw fireballs.  Yet.)  I got Theo a huge bag of rad stuff.  Gender Warriors, 1, Patriarchy, 0!

Walking along the frosty streets of the neighborhood, belly full of warm chai and brown rice tofu scramble, laden with thriftstore booty, I found myself thinking, not for the first time that weekend, that I just might be able to live happily in Chicago, even if I can never find my way to the same restaurant twice.  The more I think about it, the more I think that this is a plus for Chicago, rather than a minus.   Later, when we took the long way home to Milwaukee (more on that later), I was thinking how nice it is that the city is so vast and crenellated, made up of thousands of tiny bits of awesome; secret eateries, shops, funny apartments that go on forever, alleys and fancy hotels bumping up against each other.  If half the thrill of a new city is the thrill of exploration, it seems, at least, that you could move here and never run out of city to uncover.

Our original plan had been to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art that afternoon, but time had gotten away from us.  (This should surprise exactly zero people who have spent any time with us at all.)  It was already 1:30 and Theo was needing a nap.   We high-tailed it back home.

Or, more accurately, we low-tailed it…opting to drive the meandering North-going leg of the Lake Michigan Circle Tour, which takes one through the posh Northern suburbs of Chicagoland, right past some of the biggest, fanciest, most secluded-in-the-woods houses you ever did see, which eventually give way to small upscale main streets, which eventually give way to crummy, one-horse main streets and then sad industrial complexes, and so forth, until you hit the Milwaukee burbs and things again regain their spiffiness.  It was pleasant and strange to remember that the last time EZ and I had driven this route, I had been pregnant with Theo.  Now he was a year old, zonked out in his car seat as we drove past the bowling alleys and motels and faded supperclubs.  It’s a cliche, but some cliches are true.  Tempus fugit.

Instead of driving directly home, we went to EZ’s folks house, where we had spaetzel and squash for dinner.  Mrs. Z made devil’s food cake for birthday dessert, which I thought was mighty sweet of her, given her [bizarre, incomprehensible] distaste for chocolate. I blew out the candle and made a wish.  I can’t tell you what for, you know the drill.

Anyway, I’m already thinking about next year’s dance party.  It’s gonna be HUGE…

On Sunday, I did  a walk for Alzheimer’s.  Ordinarily, in the fall, I participate in AIDSWalk, Wisconsin, which, if you want my opinion, is the most glamorous of the Incurable Disease Walks.  But this year, I gave myself a year off.  I’m trying to go a bit easy on myself; still getting used to life with The Nugget.  If there’s anything that having a baby has taught me about myself, it is that taking it easy is not something I’m terribly skilled at.

The Alzheimer’s walk ( aka, Memory Walk) was a last minute thing…EZ was invited to walk along with a team from work, and I, in turn, was invited along with him.  The Walk started at Mount Mary College, and was along the Menomenee River Parkway, which was really lovely in the fall weather, though there weren’t nearly enough drag queens, and no honorary minor celebrity chairperson, not even Kimberly Locke.  (Who was all they could come up with for this year’s AIDSWalk celeb?  The first year I did AIDSWalk, it was Danny Glover.  Am I to assume that this means that the caché of AIDS as a cause celebre is on the wane? It was bad enough that two years ago it was B.D. Wong, who, btw, was a total diva.  Sorry, Miss Wong, but you are no Danny Glover.)    Instead the Memory Walk featured an earnest but quavering rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, sung by a nervous college student who passed out, yes passed out!, when she hit the high note.  That Star Spangled Banner was just yet waving o’er the la-and of the freeeeeeeeee, when BOOM!  She hit the floor like a prom dress at a Holiday Inn.

She turned out to be fine…not enough breakfast, too much sun, a little nervous, knees locked at the podium (Any choir nerd can tell you about the dangers of singing with locked knees.)  Ouch!  How’s that for embarrassing?  Luckily, there were a bunch of doctors at the ready, who had been moments ago speechifying about the disease of the day.  But it did put a little bit of the damper on our would-be rallying cry.

I blame the event organizers.   Really, who schedules The Star Spangled Banner to be sung before an Incurable Disease Walk, anyway?  If this were the AIDSWalk, it would have been Candle In the Wind all the way.  Or In The Navy.

Speaking of The Village People, how’s the new job, Laur?

To which I casually reply, “Eh, not bad!”  You know, jobby.

As jobs go, this one’s not too bad, though.  Mostly, I just hang out with kids all morning.  This can sometimes get annoying if there is a particularly weepy baby or a particularly bratty three-year-old, but mostly, it’s a cakewalk.

Supposedly, The Organization That Employs Me has a rep as a really great company to work for, and that seems mostly to be true.  But I will admit to occasionally feeling a bit put off by a weird corporate vibe that sometimes drifts through the ether of the place.  There is mild but palpable tension betwixt the managerial types and the regular staff.  The old bougies versus proles thing.  Suits versus Boots.

Today, a managerial type whom I’ve seen around but never met, (whom we’ll call J.R., though that is not his real name) came in to the daycare and told me I couldn’t wear my Obama for President hat at work, something to do with our being a non-profit, which I do understand, and I really didn’t mind taking off the hat.  But J.R. struck me instantly as a Company Man…the type who runs around enforcing arbitrary rules arbitrarily.  Some people believe that rules are like little tests of loyalty, there to be enforced to the letter, and some people believe that rules are just suggested guidelines to help things run smoothly.  I myself am more of a democratic anarchist, when it comes to rules in the workplace.  I believe that rules, like government, should exist by mandate from the people that work under them.  Besides, I’ll bet if someone were to wear a cross to work, they wouldn’t make them take it off.

Okay, so religious faith and political preferences aren’t the same thing, even if my love for Barack Obama does border on zealotry, a state of being which almost got me into a fight with my mom the other day, as I know that she is planning on voting for McCain and his she-beast of running mate.  (My mom is pro-choice, and when I pointed out to her that both McCain and Palin are virulently anti-abortion, she again asserted her absurd position that she isn’t worried because “Roe v. Wade will never be overturned!”   Turns out she thought that congress has to vote on it, and then I had to explain to her that it’s not a law, it’s a supreme court decision, etc.  She still doesn’t believe me, which makes me fear for the future.  Are there more similarly disinformed women out there?  But I’m digressing.)

Speaking of the religious right, this is something that gives me pause:

Technically, I am now working for a Christian organization, which, naturally, goes against my fairly anti-Christian grain.  EZ has pointed out to me (and I agree with him) that it would be more fruitful to focus on the fact that the organization I work for is a good one, community oriented and non-profit, with goals that are really more humanitarian than they are specifically Christian.   And anyway, isn’t it nice to think that at least something good has come out of Christianity?   (To be fair, I’m aware that I am being a tad melodramatic.   I can think of other good things that Christianity has wrought.  Here’s something:  fish fry!  See how I can be positive about the C-word?)

Nonetheless, I can’t decide how I should feel about working for a company that even has the word “Christian” in their name, not to mention the word “Men’s”.  On the one hand, they hired me, despite the fact that I am neither a Christian nor a man.   And I know for a fact that they have a very welcoming philosophy for people of all spiritual paths, races, and gender identities, which does hold up a standard for a new brand of Christianity that doesn’t hate, hate, hate all the time.  On the other hand, why does it even have to be religiously affiliated at all?  Why can’t they just call it (as I would) the Free People’s Humanitarian Association?

Maybe it’s because it would be harder to make the letters with your arms while disco dancing.

Ooh, I almost forgot!  Happy Birthday to Nathan “Nat” Hall, the best entymologist I know.

Okay, the only entymologist I know.

(This is a picture of a fly eating birthday cake.  You maybe can’t tell, on account of there’s not much cake left. xo-L)

SO, yesterday was my first day at my new job.  No, I didn’t quit working at the sushi bar.  This is second job, as in, in addition to my sushi job.  I would tell you all about it, but I signed a contract saying that I wouldn’t blog about the organization for which I now work.  Actually, I’m pretty sure what the contract said was that I agree not to write anything negative about them in my blog or any other public e-forum.  I don’t particularly predict that I would say anything negative about them, or even that my piddly little blog would draw attention if I did have something negative to say.  Nonetheless, I will set a precedent of not mentioning The Organization for Which I Work by name.  That way, if I wanna talk shit about them later on sometime, I’m in the clear.

I will tell you this:  it is a non-profit community organization that has been popularized in song by the Village People.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it:  It’s the NSA.

Kidding!  Ah, fuck, too late. Even typing “NSA” probably set off some sensor deep in the bowels of the Pentagon.  Even as I write, my library records are being flagged, and they’ll see that I’ve been reading Christopher Hitchens and they’ll mark me as a subversive because I don’t believe that the dinosaurs are extinct because they forgot to get on the ark.

Speaking of the religion I love to Not Love:

I went to a political rally yesterday.  No, it  wasn’t hosted by Focus on the Family.  It was an Obama rally…I went out to West Allis yesterday after work to hear Michelle Obama speak on behalf of her other half.  (I actually hate the phrase “other half” -it’s like saying that without a romantic partner a person is only half a person- but it just doesn’t sound as spiffy, lyrically, to say “other whole”.)

Out in front of the rally, there were two protesters.  That’s it!  Two measly little Christians holding signs, one of which said, “THIS IS BARACK OBAMA’S IDEA OF FAMILY VALUES!!!!”  Underneath this sentence was a big picture of two attractive, clean-cut, All-American gayboys kissing.  “Grrr-ow!“, I thought, “that’s my idea of family values too!”  If the radical right wants to put people off of either Obama or gayness, they’re going to have to do better than that.  Maybe if they could convince everyone that when you became gay, you had to sign a contract swearing that you would give Bill O’Reilly a rimjob.  Or that if you vote for Barack Obama, he’s going to create a law requiring all male citizens to wear dumpy boxer shorts.

Kris Barret spoke, followed by Gwen Moore, followed by Mz. Obama, If You’re Nasty.  The speechifying was good, and there were many volleys of spontaneous applause and wild hoots of approval. U-rah-rah and all that.  Of course, the point of such rallies is not really to win approval, as everyone who attends them is pretty much on board with the cause already, but to make a big show for the opposing side to see on the teevee later that night.   We Americans do love our team sports, don’t we?  I felt a little bit like I was back in 4th grade riding the bus home from school, and the two aisles of the bus would get into a huge shouting match, yelling, alternately: “TASTES GREAT!”  “LESS FILLING!”  “TASTES GREAT!” “LESS FILLING!”

On the whole, howevs, I’m only mildly a cynic, and I did find myself veklemt a few times over the sight of so many women and people of color finding themselves in a state of actual hope.  I am aware that “hope” is one of the Obama buzzwords, so I want to make clear that I’m using that word self-consciously.  Still, it was a palpable feeling that was surging through the big sweaty gymnasium that this time we really are on the verge of an historic moment.

I was disappointed, though not surprised, by the lack of attention given in all this stumping to reproductive rights.  It got only a passing mention as “family planning” by both Kris Barret and Michelle Obama (who, to her credit, did slip in a good jab about the hypocrisy of so-called “family values”).  Only Gwen Moore called it out by name.  The fact that the crowd went positively apeshit when she did should tell the Obama camp that they can afford to campaign harder on a women’s rights platform, especially now that the odious Sarah “Gunslinger” Palin is on the scene, trotting her poor preggo 17-year-old around as proof of her commitment to the lunatic Christian fringe.

On Sarah Palin, I must say, I’m simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by her.  Is it the fact that she looks just like someone took a gene sample from Lisa Loeb and spliced it with  gene from Jane Pratt and then grew it in a petrie dish on the Michigan Militia compound?  Is it the blue chambray workshirts with her name embroidered on the pocket?   I’ve seen so many pictures of her in some variant of these: If I’m not mistaken, I believe they must be the official uniform of the governor’s office in Alaska.  I wouldn’t be surprised if these were accompanied by nametags:

Hi, my name is:
SARAH P.
Governor
Maybe it’s the cavalier way she hoists that moose huntin’ rifle over her shoulder, but goddamn it, she has got charisma.  I have to give credit to our opponents in the GOP, they made a smart play, going out and finding an attractive young female Zaphod Beeblebrox to replace in our affections the smug male middle aged one who’s soon to be ousted.

Like Bush, her political views/religious beliefs are repellent, but you just can’t beat her for a ludicrously silly soundbite, such as when, asked for examples of her knowledge of Russian politics, she said, “They’re our next-door neighbors.  And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska!”

Duh, Charles Gibson!  She only rows across the sea with batches of lemon bars for Dmitry Medvedev like every single day.  And also, she watched The Hunt for Red October one time, and Sean Connery defected to Alaska?!  Hello?!

The republican machine has done a good job turning expertise into a bad thing in the public eye.  “What?  Barack Obama knows a lot about US foreign policy?  What a snob!”    It’s like nobody wants anyone in the White House who could potentially beat them at Scrabble.

What disturbs me is that this circus might actually work on a lot of people. People who will say to themselves “Hey, I like that Sarah Palin!  She’s just a regular girl, like me!  She likes to drink pop and watch hockey and shoot things, just like me!  She has no idea what the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite is, just like me!”

“And just like me, she believes that the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t get on the ark in time.  That’s who I want as second-in-command of our vast armies and potential leader of the free world.”

So, hey, it’s been awhile.

Honest, I’ve been writing blogs!  I just haven’t been finishing or posting them.  Which, I realize, doesn’t help you out so very much, though it’s certainly been edifying and cathartic for me.

I’m suffering from a bit of ennui today.  I’ve got a terrible case of the Sundays, which is probably why I’m blogging, honestly.  I think I’ve mentioned before that my level of psychic distress tends to parallel my level of blogginess.  Is it because misery loves company?  Or is it a leftover habit from my years of teenaged gotherie?

…Hm, come to think of it, I haven’t listened to the Cure in a long time….wait, I’m gonna go put it on…

Ah, there.  That sounds good.  So true, so true!  Whenever I’m alone with you, you really do make me feel like I am home again.  Perhaps after this, I will listen to some Joy Division and lament how love has torn us apart.  …Is it embarrassing to admit that this music makes me want to have sex?

It is? Okay, then.  Forget I mentioned it. 

I think my unenthusiastic aspect today may be a comedown from a weekend that was a full-on Blitz of movement and excitement.  I went out on Friday night, all night.  I really went out, like in the way that people do when they do have money and don’t have babies that wake them periodically through the night and then at 7:30am.  EZ took Theo and stayed home (To me this always seems like a sacrifice, even though I know that this is one of the ways in which EZ and I are wired differently.  He sees it as a special treat to stay home on a Friday night with the baby.)  I went out for dinner, and a show, and drinks, and more dinner.  The show was rad, the drinks were on fire, and the dinner was incredibly greasy.  Both times!  

I went to bed at 3:00 am, and then got back up at 7:30 to go to an orientation at the YMCA, where I am newly employed. (Go, me.)  Then I went out for lunch.  Then I went out for lunch again, though not mine. My luncheon companion ate lunch.  I mostly just lay on the grass getting bit by tiny bugs.  (You’d think from that sentence that I did not enjoy this experience, but you’d be wrong.  Sometimes lying on the grass getting bit by tiny bugs is just what you want to be doing.) 

Then I went to work, and I crrrraaaasssshed.

Despite having been woken up most nights at three to five hour intervals for the past ten months, it has been a long time since I have exhausted myself  so completely.  I was like a cell phone that keeps bleating at you to recharge it.  I stood there waiting for customers to give me something, anything to do that would keep me conscious, while co-workers commented on my droopy demeanor: 

-”That’s unusual.  You’re not singing Werwolves of London at the kitchen staff tonight.         …Are you okay?”  

-“Booooop!“  

Somehow, I muddled through the night without fucking anything up, which I think might mean that I’ve reached some sort of altered state of waitressing.  The Tao of Waitressing.  Zen and the Art of Waitressing.  I am as one with the plate.  Be the teacup.* 

*An aside, which I find interesting, though you may not, but it’s my blog, so suck it: George Orwell once wrote a book about his experiences working as a plongeur in Paris. His conclusion was that dining at restaurants is a kind of elitist sin…a luxury that further entrenches the capitalist class structure.  I  can dig where he’s coming from.  When I’m waitressing, it is sometimes hard to ignore the social privilege that makes my job even possible, not to mention the uncomfortable amount of waste involved in dining out, which probably bothers me more than anything else.  Still, I think that there is a certain noble theatricality in the server’s trade.  A well-run night at the sushi bar is like a well-produced play.  Orwell may have missed this aspect of the restaurant trade, being behind the scenes all the time as he was.  Still, to you, George Orwell, I say: act well your part.  Therein all honor lies.  And also free food, domo arigato.)

Today, I’m in major recoup mode, sitting around in my kitchen blogging halfheartedly while a chilly fall breeze sneaks in through the open window.  It is the first day of Autumn, after all, so a little melancholy is not so inappropriate.  It’s always fun to be a little goth this close to Halloween.  

Theo’s first birthday is on October 28th, which seems incredible to me.  Was it not only yesterday that I was bouncing about the Cactus Club with his little prenatal bum rolling around in my gut? (That said, I think that such fetal experiences have marked him for life.  He’s going to grow up to be the drummer in a punk band, I can feel it…you should see the way he goes mental on the toy bongos Katie S. bought him.  I can only hope that he will practice restraint in his party lifestyle.  Keith Moon, John Bonham, That Guy from Def Leppard: the drummer is always the one who dies of an overdose.  Or loses an arm.)

As you might have guessed, I am pretty fucking thrilled that I now have an excuse to throw kids’ Halloween parties for either the next thirteen years or until my embarrassed son begs me to stop, whichever comes first.  The other day I decimated a Halloween party display at Target.  I got cupcake liners with little spiderwebs all over them, and a bowl with creepy skulls, and party napkins, and birthday candles with orange and purple stripes, and an incredible brocade table cloth that is modeled on those terrible baroque fabrics that were so popular in the 60’s that usually come in gold or vomit green.  This one is orange, and is covered in all sorts of fleur-de-lis-ish things that upon closer inspection are skulls and flames and cats and bats.        

Right now, Theo is in the teevee room, playing with the slot on the VCR, flip-flap, flip, flap! This is an act I should discourage, except that it gives me peace of mind because I know exactly what he’s up to while I blog in the kitchen.  Flip, flip, flip!   He’s wearing an orange onesie with a jack o’ lantern face on it.  Tomorrow, I have a black tee shirt for him that says “Boo!”   The day after that I have a ghost tee shirt.

Mi Niño has gone on a crazy developmental rampage of late.  Here are the things that he is doing now that he could not do as of three weeks ago:  clapping his hands, shaking his head “no” when you say “no” to him, bouncing along when he hears music, walking!, and saying his first word, which is “mama”.  Well, actually, it’s “ma, ma, ma, ma, mama, ma, ma, maaaam!…” etc.  He only says it when he’s distressed, which is touching, but maybe not as fun as the way he babbles, “dad, dad, dad, dad!” when he’s in a good mood.

As far as the dancing goes, he really likes anything with a thumpy beat, which only goes to further cement my drummer theory.  Right now, he’s really spazzing out to the Joy Division CD I just put in.  Is there anything more heartening than watching one’s offspring bounce appreciatively to She’s Lost Control?  

If there is, I have yet to find it. 

 This week, I’d like to dig into the annals of schmaltzy life-lessons to talk about Conquering Fears.

If I may quote from the movie Dune, which is where all rational people glean their life-lessons from: “Fear is the Mindkiller.” 

You might be inclined to think that a person who has no fear whatsoever of getting on stage in her underwear has  fears of any kind.  But you would be wrong.  Fears, I have.  (It’s just that, for whatever reason, probably my intense psychological need to be Loved, stage fright is not among them.  I’ll do virtually anything if there is an audience involved whom I believe will applaud wildly for it.)    

A lot of my fears are related to Dying of a Horrible Disease, but I don’t limit myself.  I also have a lot of social anxieties.  For instance, I hate calling people on the phone.  I mean, not all people…not like, my mom, or anything.  But strangers?  I have an intense fear of talking to strangers on the phone, a fact of which EZ is aware, and tries to combat by calling random people and them handing me the phone, saying only, “Here.  Talk to this person.”  It’s sort of a constant Trial by Fire of phone anxiety, which is both helpful and not.  If only I could call my insurance company from the stage of the Cactus Club .  That’d be something. 

Last Thursday, Theo and I both did something we’ve never done before.   Well, correctly, Theo did lots of things he’s never done before.  Every day he does things he’s never done before.  Just by virtue of being a baby, his daily life is full of firsts though, admittedly, some if those firsts are not terribly thrilling.  Like on Tuesday, he ate half of an edamame bean for the first time.  Woo-hoo.But today, we did something that, if not truly remarkable, is at least bloggable.

We went to the Wisconsin State Fair.

No, I’ve never been to the Fair.

I mean, I’ve been to the fair, y’know…I haven’t been living in a gulag for the first 30 years of my life or anything.  But, generally speaking, my fair-going experience has been limited to small scale fair affairs, such as the Middleton Good Neighbor Festival, which takes place every Labor Day weekend, in beautiful Middleton, WI., in the high school parking lot and adjacent park.  Hey, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.  Nothing beats a game of bingo and half a chicken for the full-on Small Town Americana experience.  You have not lived until you’ve watched a gaggle of World War II vets in fezzes drive tiny cars down the main street of your home town.   

I’ve always loved the fair, actually.  In the case of the Middleton Good Neighbor Festival, not least because it was at the end of summer, and though it meant that soon we’d be back in our desks, sweltering in a freakish September heat wave that caused the floors to sweat, it also meant that Autumn was in the offing, with all of its attendant awesomeness:  Halloween!  Leaves!  Apple Cider!  NBA Basketball! My Birthday!

(Okay, so those last few, maybe only I’m excited about.)

The other reason to love fairs should be clear to all.  In a word (okay, two): Fair food.

 In general, I arrive at any given fair prepared to complete a gastronomical scavenger hunt of positively embarrassing proportions.  The list, as it has stood for me for over 15 years, goes something like this:

• corn on the cob

• mini doughnuts

• overpriced, over iced Coke in a waxy paper cup

• caramel apple

• cotton candy

• cheese curds

• corn dog

• funnel cake

• “half a chicken” dinner  (This one has left the list since 1996, when I went vegetarian.  I will admit to enjoying the occasional corn dog, though.)

• sno cone

That about covers it, I think.

Now that you know about my deep and abiding love of fairs and their many deep fried components, you may be wondering why it’s taken me so long to get my snack-enhanced rump to the WSF.  I have no answer for you, save that I, not being from Milwaukee, just never thought of the State Fair as a Thing To Do. 

Also, my life-mate, who is from Milwaukee (more precisely, from West Allis, which is where the grounds are located) grew up with the State Fair practically in his back yard.  When he was in high school, he had a summer job there, at the Superstar Recording Studio, one of those places where you’d do karaoke and then they’d give you a cassette tape of it afterwards.  This means that my beloved spent the better part of every summer of his adolescence listening to pre-teens mangling “Love Shack”.*  Knowing this, it is understandable that he avoids the WSF like the plague. 

(*An aside: Has the advent of easy home-recording made such places obsolete, or do they still exist, only now maybe you get a cd, or a link to a website where you can download your own MP3?  Personally, I’ve always love those things, and I have a modest but lovely collection of thrifted vanity recordings.  Is it not a bit ironic that I ended up hitched to a guy who used to make them?  FYI: his demo song was “Rapper’s Delight”, and he still knows all the words.)

Anyhoo.

As of Thursday last, I (and my offspring) am a Wisconsin State Fair initiate at last.  I have seen the light, and it blinks in and off and spells out “FUDGE!  LEMONADE!  POPCORN!

I mention this in relation to today’s topic (Fear!) not because I have a great fear of State Fair.  (Though I do have an irrational fear of roller coasters.  No, not irrational!  People die on those things, dammit…like that girl last year who got both her feet cut off while riding the Superman ride at Six Flags?  Okay, so she didn’t die.  But, in my book, Both Feet Cut Off still equals No Thank You Very Much.  Call me neurotic.  At least I am neurotic with feet.)

You see, the reason I ended up going to State Fair in the first place is that I and my papoose were invited to tag along with my friends Katie and Scott, who were planning on taking the bus to get there.  Here is where the irrational social anxiety comes in:  I sometimes have an irrational fear of annoying people with my baby.  

I know, it sounds terrible, but I suspect that this is a fear that a lot of new moms have.  I mean, how many tines have you been out at a restaurant that some dummy brought their wailing infant to, causing you to roll your eyes and say, “Gawd, why didn’t they just stay home?”  Likewise, I have a fear of irritating people with my giant, deluxe, knobby-tired jogging stroller.  I actually have big love for my stroller.  It’s great for going to the grocery store or cruising the  bike path.  But riding the city bus?

It is something I have avoided.

Having a baby that you actually plan to leave the house with demands lots of mental fortitude, flexibility, humility, planning, and bravery.  You think I’m exaggerating, but sadly, I am not.  Take this journey to the Fair that I am about to embark on:  In my pre-baby days, I might have grabbed a hat and my ironic hipster fanny pack and run right out the door.  Total planning time: 2 minutes.  -”Do you wanna go?”  -”Hellz, yeah!”  Done.  

Now, I must make sure that I feed baby (10 minutes), slather him with baby sunblock, diaper & dress him (10 more minutes, as he has recently taken to crawling away as fast as his little knees will scootch whenever I try to diaper him.  That’s fun.), pack diaper bag (diapers, wipes, change of clothes, at least two toys, pacifier…), maneuver baby into car seat (another gesture he has lately learned to resist), decide whether or not I want to take the stroller or the baby sling (if I take the stroller, it will be big and hulking, but if I take the sling, it will be hot and hard on my back.  We are doing a lot of walking.  Plus, what if he wants to sleep?…)  And, oh shit…do I need to go to a cash machine?  What if he has an allergic reaction to all the farm animals?  Should I buy baby Benadryl?  I wish I had an umbrella stroller.  Maybe I have time to run to Target?  …Uh, no, definitetly not.

It would be enough to keep a poor girl home, (and I’m sure it is enough for a lot of women) if I didn’t love deep fried cheese curds so much. 

When all was said and done, the bus was blessedly free of passengers, which made my entree into the world of babies on public transportation.  It wasn’t so bad.  We arrived at the fair without incident, and Theo seemed really taken with the whole “bus ride” thing.  

Also, the fair was really fun.  Dopey, American, touristy fun, but fun all the same.  I didn’t consume everything on my checklist, but I certainly made up for it with countless other items of oily, breaded persuasion, including deep friend Oreos, which were like hot, mushy Oreos stuffed inside mini doughnuts.  They were actually tasty, but in a way that left no doubt that eating them has shortened your life span by at least two days.

It was a big fair, after all, and I have never seen so many items of food offered fried, or on a stick (or both) in all my life, including but not limited to cheese, cheesecake, fried, breaded mac-n-cheese, several varieties of meat (including the obligatory corn dog), and giant pickles.  The pickle-on-a-stick proved to be a big hit with the bambino, who, after an initial gumming, pulled a nasty face, then decided he liked it, and wouldn’t let the pickle go.  Add that to the list of firsts: First Usurpation of Giant Pickle.  I am proud to say that he attacked the pickle with not an iota of fear, unlike his mama, who sat in the wings expecting that any minute he’d have an allergic reaction, his face would swell up, and he would die of anaphylaxis.  I don’t know whether such a thing as deadly pickle allergies really exists, but in the world of mommy-paranoia, it seems dishearteningly possible.

But, lo, he did not die.  Instead,  he spent a blissed-out half an hour toothlessly sucking the juices out of it, like some kind of Pickle Lestat.  

As if his day wasn’t already the Most Exciting Day Ever, we also bought cups of flavored milk for a quarter and wandered in barn after barn, amongst sundry farm animals, none of which he’d ever seen before.  

We adults were also pretty thrilled.  This is the kind of thing that really distinguishes city folks from country folks, I think.  People who grew up around cows are probably like, “Cows.  Big whoop.”  Or perhaps they survey the cows with a conoisseur’s eye.  (This is more likely.)  They still probably think that city folks are dorks, though.

I, on the other hand, petted a sheep and went positively mental.  ”Eeee!  He’s so FLUFFY!”, I spazzed.  I also totally lost my cool over the baby duckies, managing no further analysis than, “DUCKIEEEEES!”   Theo was particularly taken with a brown colt who seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep where it stood.  I held him up to the pen and he wrapped his fists in a death-grip around the bars and hooted joyfully. 

After that, I won him a lanky pink monkey by letting a carnie try to guess my age.  He seemed genuinely surprised when I told him I was thirty.  I’d like to think it was because of my youthful appearance, but it may just as easily have been the way I was running around going, “Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny!!!!“

We were on our way to the Expo Center, to check out whatever mysterious things go on at the Expo Center (I still have no clue), when I developed the tell-tale blob of sparkly colors in my vision that meant I was getting a migraine. 

Migraines, as you know, are very bad headaches, but you may not know that many migraine sufferers also have weird non-headache symptoms as well, which are called “migraine aura”.  In my case, it starts with a splotch in my vision that looks a bit like the splotch you get after a camera flash goes off in your face, or a drip of water on an old-fashioned cathode ray tv tube; red, blue, green, as though all of the rods and cones in my eyes were doing a little roll call.  The splotch gradually expands until everything looks like a solarized photograph.  Then I get dizzy and (Oh, how do I explain this?) kinda “zoomy”…like I’m about to black out.  Then my lips and my right arm go numb and tingly, as though I sat on them wrong.   Then, I am overwhelmed with a paralyzing fear of death.   Surprise.

By contrast, the blinding, eye-searing headache often feels like a relief compared to those initial 15 minutes, when the world feels like it is zooming away from me and all of my sensors go on the fritz.

In normal life, I would take a very strong pill right about now, but I am still breastfeeding, and the strong pills are verboten.  So I rely on the next best thing:  Sudafed and a Coke.  There is nothing to do but wait it out, concentrate on not freaking out.  So I send Katie and Scott (and Katie’s dad, who also came along, and with whom Theo is getting along famously) off with Theo to look at the Expo stuff while I sit on the floor with my hat pulled down over my eyes, next to a bench full of old people in various states of immobility.  

One of them, a woman of about 80, kindly offers me her seat.  Dude.  I must look bad.

 ”No, thanks.  Floor’s fine.”I mumble greenly.  

True to form, after about 15 minutes, during which I have tried to distract myself by calling just about every person I know until someone answers, (”Hi, I’m having a migraine-induced panic attack, what are you up to?”)  the aura subsides, and I am left only with a nasty yet manageable headache.  I’ve had worse.

When Katie and Scott and Katie’s dad came back to retrieve my sorry ass, we all headed back towards the bus stop.  We would have had to leave then anyway, since Scott had to work.  It felt good to know I wasn’t inconveniencing anybody.  I was weirdly proud of myself for handling the headache without totally freaking out.

This bus was also blessedly empty, or nearly so, except for a few older couples who seemed to think that Theo was quite charming.  Probably because he was.  He and I were both pretty tired, and he was fed up with being in his stroller.  So I held him on my lap while he played a rousing game with Katie’s dad, in which Theo would hold my empty Coke bottle high above his head, and then drop it, wait for Katie’s dad to pick it up, repeat.  He squealed delightedly every time.  For him, an empty Coke bottle is just as exciting as petting sheep.  That’s one of the benefits of being an infant, I guess.  

It’s also one of the benefits of having an infant, as opposed to a six-year-old.  He’s a cheap date, and not yet old enough to whine until I buy him a plastic inflatable hammer or fuss when I insist that he can’t wear that roach clip with the feathers on it that he won at the bean bag toss.  (Do they still give those things away at fairs?  I think I had like five of them!  My poor mom: -”But mo-om!  Whyeeeeeeee?” -”I’ll tell you when you’re older.”  Of course, thy also used to give away mirrors with pictures of hair metal bands on them.  Wonder what those were for.*)

*(Side note: If anyone knows where there is a secret cache of metal band mirrors still lurking around, let me know. I’ve got this idea for a Guns-n-Roses themed bathroom that I’ve been dying to put into action for years now.  In my fantasy, one of its features would be a wall of said mirrors.  Seriously, would that not look wicked awesome?  

Also: Hey, does anyone want a Guns-n-Roses themed bathroom?)

Anyhoo.

We arrived back at the park-n-ride, and I snapped my waning papoose into his car seat.  This time, he did not struggle; merely gazed at me with pink-rimmed eyes.  When I got home, I opened up the door to the backseat to find my little bean totally asleep, mouth open, reeking of pickle juice.  One hand was clutching the arm of his new obnoxious pink monkey.  

We took a long, peaceable nap together, neither of us feeling afraid of anything at all, each of us dreaming of food on sticks. 

Dear Customers,

Hey, it’s me, your waitress.  

I know, this is a little forward.  We’ve talked before, but how often do we, y’know, really talk?  It makes me wonder, “How well do we even know each other anyway?”  I mean, I know that you like water with lemon, no ice.  And you know that my name is Lauryl, and that our special tonight is the katsuo, which is available as either sushi or sashimi.  But what do we know about each other’s hopes and dreams?  Our secret desires?  The size of our respective paychecks?  Not a lot. 

Well, I think that’s gotta change.  If we’re gonna take this thing forward, then we need to open up and let our feelings go.    I know it’s a little awkward.  If it makes it easier, I’ll go first.  Tell you something that I’ve been keeping bottled up inside.  Okay? 

Okay.  Gosh, I don’t quite know how to put this…  Alright, I’m just gonna say it.  Here goes..

It’s about my tip. I’m looking at it now, and I’m thinking to myself, y’know, “That’s IT?”  Maybe that seems selfish to you.  It’s just how I feel.

I mean, wasn’t I everything you wanted in a waitress?  Didn’t I keep your water glass full? (Lemon, no ice!  See how I care?)  It never even got below three quarters, did it?  No, it did not.  

Was I not friendly and efficient?  Didn’t I bring out that stupid birthday cake, the one that you brought yourself, with exactly 10 candles on it, just like you wanted?  (A cake that wasn’t doing me any favors, I might add.  How am I supposed to sell you food when you just bring it with you to the restaurant?  Why bother with sushi at all?  Why not just bring yourself some weenies and a grill, too?)  

What’s worse:  You didn’t even offer me a slice.  I’m a person too, you know!  I love cake!  People love cake.  That’s what separates us from the beasts. 

I even sang.  And you know what?  Now that we’re really sharing, I should tell you that I don’t even like singing “Happy Birthday.”  It’s a dumb song.  Maudlin, even.  Dirge-like.  And why would I want to sing a dirge on someone’s birthday?  I don’t, that’s why.

You asked me to split the check.  I did that.  It’s a big pain in the ass, but I did it.  I know, I know, I said it was “no problem”, but what am I going to say when you ask me like that?  You’re asking, but, let’s face it, you’re not really asking.  What would you say if i said “no”?  You’d probably go ahead and freak out.  Wouldn’t you?  Don’t deny what you know is the truth.

So I lied.   Big whoop. 

It’s actually really, really annoying to split checks.  Ask any server and they’ll tell you.  Unless they are waiting on you at the time, in which case, they will lie, just like I did.  We only want you to feel good about yourself.  

And when you sat there for hours and hours with the check in your idle hand, having one more drink (One more, one more!  It’s always like that with you.  When are you going to admit that you have a problem?), while I waited for you to leave so that I could leave, did I complain?  No.  Of course, you couldn’t have known that my shift was over at 7:30, because I wasn’t allowed to tell you.  But you didn’t bother to ask, did you?  DAMMIT!  I HAVE FEELINGS, TOO!

And now it’s 10 o’ clock, and you’re finally gone.  I was going to be out of here by 8:30 at the latest.  I was gonna go down to the South side to see that show that started at 9:oo.  You know, the one I’ll never get to never see again?   But now it’s too late.  (No, no. Don’t feel guilty.  It is what it is.  I’m fine.  I wanted to come home and eat half of a leftover Jimmy John’s sub all by myself.)

It’s not like you’re doing me any favors by just sitting there.  I only make 2 bucks an hour.  I could be like one of those dudes that digs through trash bins looking for Coke cans and I’d make more than that.  And let’s face it, you didn’t order that much anyway.  $150 bucks for 5 people?  What are you, all on South Beach or something?  Maybe you just can’t handle the real stuff. 

And now this.  This tip.  This so-called “tip”, if you can even call it that. 

13 percent?  You do know that modern tipping standards are 15 to 20 percent, right?  You do know that.  You haven’t been living in a cave.  Or on the Tom Cruise compound.  (Or maybe you have.  That hat you were wearing smacked of Scientology to me.)  Did you think I wouldn’t notice how when you calculated your percentages, you rounded down to $70.00, even though the actual bill was $78.00, which is really closer to $80.oo?  

And you!  Was it really so important that your receipt total be a whole number?  So, instead of tipping me $10.00, you tipped me $9.99!  What that crap is that about?  Am I a used car?  Just be a man and GIVE ME THE GODDAMNED PENNY!

And you, you’re the worst one of them all, for you have no excuse.  You have tipped me 8 dollars on a $75.oo check.  

Clearly, you hate me. 

You want my child to die of scurvy because his mama can’t afford common citrus fruit.  You would have us live on Fruity Pebbles and clothe ourselves with old issues of the New Yorker.  (Don’t get all high and mighty. I only have a subscription because it was a Christmas gift.)  You want me to prostitute myself on the streets, is that it?  You want me to be a phone solicitor!  

You have no heart.  

I’m sorry, that’s attacking language.  What I mean to say is, “When you don’t tip well, it makes me feel like you have no heart.”  

 You know what this tip is?  It’s an insult.   I mean, I should throw it back in your face is what I should do.  Yes.  That’s definitely what I should do, except that I am too mature of a person for that, so instead I will keep.  I will keep it all.

 That’ll teach you a lesson.  

Before I get to the scanty meat of today’s blog, I want to start with a note of congratulations to Thomas Beattie and family.  Thomas, who is a transsexual man, gave birth to a baby girl this week.  I don’t know if he is the first trans man to have a baby, but he is for shizz the first trans man to have a baby and also have the surgically-enhanced cojones to talk about it on Oprah. I think he is wicked brave and awesome.

I would like to post a picture here, but for some reason, Wordpress is being a douchebag, and everytime I post a picture, it erases all my paragraph breaks.  That won’t do, so here’s a link.  You ready?  Okay, LINK!  (This link is to the People magazine article about him.  I also recommend the one in the Advocate, but you can find that yourself if you’re interested.  Hey, I’m not gonna do everything for you.)

Okay, onto the blog. 

I read somewhere once that in certain Buddhist traditions, it is believed that when you die, you have to cross a bridge to get into Nirvana, and that on the other side of the bridge, everything you’ve ever killed is waiting for you; blocking your path to enlightenment, as it were.   I don’t know if this is pure bullshit, but it’s an interesting concept.  If it is true, then when I cross that bridge, there will be nothing waiting for me but an ominous living cloud of mosquitoes and tiny black ants.  Oh yeah, and two mice (Mouse poison.  Forgive me, mice.  You would not stop eating holes in my food boxes.  And you carry the Plague.  It was kill or be killed.)  

Ever since I heard this possibly erroneous tidbit, it has stuck with me, and whenever I smash a bug, I imagine him standing on the bridge at the end of my life with one set of legs on his little bug hips and a pissed off expression on his little bug face.

 The reason I mention it is that there is an invasion of ants on my kitchen counter top.  I got up this morning and walked into my kitchen, only to find a swarm of them wallowing in a sticky blob of honey  that had leaked onto the counter, the thieving gluttons.  Needless to say, Hulk smash.  See you on the other side, assholes.

Meanwhile, the baby is sitting on the floor next to my desk, systematically pulling all of my notebooks off a low shelf.  He pulls a book, tastes it, shakes it, drops it, repeats.  I plop down on the floor next to him and start reshelving, sysiphean, before he starts phase two of his book operation, which will be tearing all the covers off.  Lest I suggest that he is being naughty, I should explain that I am not annoyed at him for this.  There is nothing impish about his intentions.  In fact, he is the very scientist.  He grabs a pack of fancy Thank You cards off the shelf and waves it haphazardly in the air, his brow knit with concentration.  You can almost imagine a written precis for the experiment:

Thesis: What the fuck is this thing?

Test Group: This thing

.Control Group: All these other thingies.

Dependent Variable: It seems to be inedible.

Conclusion: The nature of this thingie is yet undetermined, except that it is clearly not edible.  More tests will need to be performed before conclusions can be drawn.  Also, I just pooped.

He looks up at me to report his findings: “duhduhduhduhduhduh”.  

 ”Ah, yes”, I say.  ”I see your point, but have you considered Kirkegaard’s thoughts on subjective reality?”

He has no response to that.  I thought so. 

A lot of these notebooks are old, by at least four years.  Yeesh.  Now that I’m leafing through them, they’re a bit embarrassing, and I should probably throw them out.  This is a habit I’ve sort of lost from my teenage years.  I used to do a yearly purge of my notebooks, scanning for maudlin poetry, crappy love songs and lame short stories that I’d written, and tearing out the pages one by one, just in case I got by a bus or something. This, so far, is the only nod I’ve ever given to my own mortality.

Well, that and the image of the bridge with all the angry ants waiting for me on the other side.

 Other than that, I sometimes consider writing a will, but then I think to myself, “NO WAY.  The universe loves irony too much to take such a risk.  The minute the ink is dry, I will get jumped and shot by a mugger right outside my house.  And everyone will comment on how totally ironic it is that not only was I finally done in by muggers, but also how it happened in Shorewood instead of Riverwest, only the day after I finished writing my will.  What a waste, what a waste, they’ll say. And then they’ll eulogize me with a love poem I wrote in 10th grade entitled, “Vampire Heart”.  

She was really a great writ…well, actually this poem is pretty awful. 

But we’ll miss her anyway.      

It is so quiet in here.

It isn’t exactly as though now that I have a papoose, I live with a wall of constant sound or anything.  On the contrary.  My baby is yet too young to be truly loud in that way that people mean when they say that kids are loud.

He doesn’t talk yet, for starts.  Sure, he makes hoots and grunts and odd little proto phonyms like, “dubdubdubdubdub…”.  He even whispers to himself sometimes when he’s concentrating, going “Teh, teh! Pshhhhhh…” under his breath.   (It is just as fucking adorable as you might suspect.)

Nor do I indulge him with toys that make annoying noises.  One of the joys of having a baby instead of a 4-year-old is that he won’t notice if that talking Elmo he got from a well-meaning cousin gets donated to needy children whose parents are hopefully deaf, or if I never put the batteries in his Sights-n-Sounds Play Center.  Likewise the Baby Einstein dvds. He’s content just shredding pieces of our junk mail, anyway, so toys with a lot of bells and whistles are kind of a waste.

But one of the odd things about having a kid is that, while I am often home, and I am sometimes alone, I am almost never home alone.   It is almost always either/or.

Tonight, though, I came home from work to discover the house dark.  Empty.  Silent.  I’m not sure where EZ has taken the kid, but they are not here.  I suspect they’re at our friend K.’s birthday party.  I could join them, but it’s way out in Wauwautosa (a city whose name I love saying, btw.  It makes me feel like Fozzy Bear: “Wah-wah-wah- TOSA! Ahhh-ahhh!”), and frankly, it feels pretty good to be in my house and also utterly, peaceably alone.  Dig it.

Apologies are in order…it has been long and long since last I’ve updated this blog.  There really is only one reason for this, besides the usual “busy” excuse, which in some ways, doesn’t really cut it, since I’m always busy.   The real reason is that I finally have it: my beautiful new MacBook.    It’s so shiny, so white, so fucking fast!  It has a full-sized screen!  It has positively cavernous amounts of hard drive space!  It has Garage Band.  Gawd, it’s gorgeous.  I’ve never been so in love with an inanimate object.

I admit, having a new computer should make e want to blog more.  And it some ways it does…but it also makes me want to spend hours watching season four of Lost on iTunes.  I’ve also become a fan of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, Joss Whedon’s new little online teevee show.  Now that it doesn’t watch like a flip book and the sound actually works, I can finally dig what all the fuss is about.  (At the risk of becoming like those people whose blogs are nothing more than a -pardon the pun- Chain of Links, I shall provide a link to it.  It is that good.  Are you ready?  Okay, go HERE!)

I’m also (using my lovely, lovely new Mac) working on the long awaited revamp of this website.  I’m just using iWeb, but it’s a good start.  Trust me, it will at least be cooler than what you see now before you.  I don’t know if you feel this way, but I think that having an attractive website makes one’s writing seem cleverer.

So there you have it.  I haven’t been blogging because I have been spending so much time on my computer that nothing has happened to me that’s worth writing about.  My journal (the real one that I write for me, not this fake one that I write for you-er, I mean this polished one…) reads like this:

July 14th- Worked on new songs again today.  Something not quite working about the melody line  on “That Ain’t Workin’”.  Cyndi Lauper-esque.  Too perky?

July 16th- Looked up list of edible flowers on internet.  Wonder if I could make a salad out of nothing but flowers.  Would you put dressing on that?  Maybe a dressing also made of flowers.  Or would that be overkill?  Like making a cheese sandwich with cheese instead f bread.   Note to self: look up “flower dressing” on internet. 

Okay, okay.  So this isn’t entirely true.  Some interesting things have happened to me in the past two weeks, I just don’t feel like writing about them.   This is funnier, though, and that’s the important part.

For instance, we played our last Dites Donc! show for goddess knows how long a few weeks back, and Allison is now officially ensconced in Portland.  She probably got there some time today, actually.  She and Murray took the train, only this time they got a sleeper car and vegan meal service.  It beats the shit out of sleeping  balled up in your seat for two nights and eating Luna bars for every meal, comfortwise. Although,  adventurewise, I might still go with the Luna bars.  They make a better anecdote.

Will Dites Donc! ever play another show?  That is the question that people keep asking me, and I do not know the answer.  Truthfully, it makes me a little melancholy to ponder it.

At least I’ve got my Mac to keep me warm.

By at least thirty seconds!

It will also take you to www.altdash.com, where my new article, “Say My Name: Confessions of a Lucy Stoner”, is now posted.  It is long, but it is good, so good.  Please read it, and rate it, and comment on it, and generally, make me look awesome, so that the people who run the Alt- will see me as a valuable resource that cannot be dispensed of, and I will gain popularity, and I will become part of the literary canon, and I will be made an honorary MBE, and also they will build a statue of me right next to the statue of Rocky Balboa so that it looks like our two statues are giving each other a high five, and also the people of the world will sing my praises, forever, as well.

Are you ready for the link?  Okay here it is…

http://www.altdash.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=83