Better

It's funny; I normally hate Valentine's Day with a passion and my life hasn't changed that much, but this year I just really don't care about it. It is not bothering me. I do not wish to take to the tower with a 12 gauge. Somehow, miraculously, I woke up in a far, far better mood than I was in yesterday. I feel calmer and mellower and more in control. Naturally, this transformation required alcohol: first, a two decanter sake lunch at Doc Cheys with my wonderful friend J who calmed me down, and then, after I got home last night, a vodka and cigarette on my front porch by myself. During which I realized that yesterday -

I wrote a poem AND

I took a pretty good picture AND

I made a broccoli quiche (a really good broccoli quiche.)

Thus, my life is not, after all, a waste. It's the little things. Also, then A & I went to Target to wander dazedly around in the fluorescent lights and somehow we had a really great time, laughing hysterically at all the hideous tacky valentines stuff and inspecting the housewares and just in general getting along. It was nice. It was good. And I bought a dark chocolate bar with crushed espresso beans AND a really cute little black dress really cheap. And A gave me a valentine that she had put together with her clients (she works with DD and autistic people) which was also completely hilarious. Maybe Valentine's Day will be bearable after all.

I'm Done

My Christmas shopping is OVER. That's it; I'm done; one hairy, dizzy, awe inspiring (and by awe, I don't necessarily mean anything good, here, but more along the shock & awe lines) visit to the Evil Empire and it is all complete, thank you bebby jeebus. Well. Except for possibly one accoutrement to a friend's gift. And unless I get a wild hair. I even sent out almost all of my Christmas cards, which is truly miraculous, since usually what happens is I spend hours slaving over the damn things and then I never mail them, so I have shoeboxes of old cards that never got mailed laying around. This year I got smart & was creative on the computer and let winkflash print them for me and they were cheap and fast and hell, DONE. This years card is pictured here; if you want one email me and I will mail you one. Maybe.

So I woke up really early this morning for no apparent reason except that the dogs woke up too early and made scratchy jingly noises and then, after I had gotten over being pissed off about that and also given up on getting back to sleep I started thinking about self fulfilling prophecies and the power of positive thinking and I had this way inspirational blog post all ready for you but then, as one will, I did manage to fall back to sleep precisely 12 minutes before the alarm went off and thus, alas, it was lost. The short version is this, though: if you are a teacher bringing kids on a field trip to the museum and you accuse them of stealing before they even get in the door by saying, "Don't you dare steal anything! Don't take anything! Don't put anything in your pocket and sidle out the door!" then the kids will steal stuff like crazy. If you do not say anything at all about stealing and act like you never ever even heard of anyone ever stealing anything, anywhere, then the rate of petty pilferage will drop to almost nothing. So extrapolate from that and run with it.

Holiday Spirit

I finally got it together today and got the holiday decorations up. First I threw a hissy fit though, because my mother very nicely gave me a Christmas tree. She lives in a retirement community where they're not supposed to have trees or lights so they won't set the place on fire (my feeling on this is that if they can't be trusted with Christmas lights they probably shouldn't be trusted with objects of real danger, like toasters and coffee machines, but whatever) but in previous years my mother had calmly flouted this rule. This year, however, she got the tree, had the tree guys set it up in a stand and suddenly had a guilt attack. So I got the tree. Which is a nice tree. But it blew my fantasy of going off to a tree farm with the children in the snow, tra la, and singing carols, tra la, as our happy family cut down a defenseless piny forest denizen. Tra la. Of course this is just a fantasy, since in reality neither of my horrid children gives a good goddamn about Christmas except for the parts that involve presents. But I had my heart set on it, like I do every year, hope over experience and all that, and I'd even printed out the list of tree farms. I was leaning towards the one that proudly advertised that it had a restroom - it harkens back to simpler times, when indoor plumbing was a marvel that should be exclaimed over - when my mother called to tell me that instead I had just won a free tree, come and get it. A was vocally relieved, but I got all upset: I mean, how dare they give me a free gorgeous tree that's much nicer than any tree I could afford? Tobacco deprivation can do some strange things to your brain. My mother and brother had some pointed comments to make about the poor little match girl, waiting all year to go to a tree farm, so very few good things ever happen to her, boo hoo. Yeah, okay. I did take the tree.

To cheer myself up I went off and bought more lights with the money I saved, though, so that worked out very nicely, and it is a really pretty tree. After I did the outdoor lights (good thing I got new lights, since a bunch were dead as roadkill, including my favorite stars, damn it) I started on the tree. Tree decorating involves, of course, putting on a Santa hat and listening to Christmas music. It's supposed to involve the children albeit preferably smaller than they actually are, and cleaner than they ever actually were, and wearing clothes that they have never actually even owned. In my personal holiday fantasy I should be sipping sherry while my handsome husband puts up the lights and the kids, in velvet, say adorable Christmasy things and compete (politely. With no shoving.) to hang their favorite ornaments and we all reminisce a lot about Christmases past. Ah, it's a lovely evening. Or it's supposed to be. What actually happens is I drink a couple of PBRs (sherry is gross) and decorate the tree alone; A drives off in my car saying "Have fun with the tree!" and M plays World of Warcraft loudly in the other room, every so often running in to hang up an ornament and make gagging noises in reference to the Christmas music.

It's okay, though, because we have a new holiday tradition now. I found a copy of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians at Target for, get this, ONE DOLLAR. Yes. As M said with truth and feeling, "A dollar is a great price for this movie! I might even pay 2 dollars for this movie!" No kidding. It's quite a movie; it's kind of hard to know even where to begin or how to describe Santa Claus Conquers the Martians although it must be noted that the Martians have some serious outfits; the world was rather different in 1964 and, mental note, it's probably a good idea to omit the air ducts from the air lock when designing Space Ship Number One. It's hilariously funny for the first half and then starts to drag a bit (it would probably be enhanced by some serious drugs) and then gets completely surreal at the end when the evil, moustached Martian fights a very young Pia Zadora in green face and a hallucinatory toy Indian chief with a drum kit. Seriously. So, we have a new and wonderful source of Christmas joy and we can watch it every year. In velvet. Sipping sherry. Or maybe absinthe would be more appropriate.

Shopping

Pink Feather Xmas Tree via phone
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Yesterday, as is so often the case, I was somewhat hungover. The shot of Jamesons with hot tea and lemon and honey, kindly made up by the nice server at the New French bar, would have been okay on its own but then, you know, I just had to have a bunch of beers too. Ah well. It was one of those slight disconnect from reality drowsy hangovers and so, I went shopping.

I went to the library to return my woefully overdue books and I went to Downtown Books and News & traded in a big bag of paperbacks for a slightly smaller bag of paperbacks (including a new copy of The Magus, a book that somehow forever changed my life or at least my brain when I first read it and which I have to always be getting new copies of since I keep giving mine away.) Then I went on to Ross Dress for Less, where I happily tried on many, many pieces of clothing, including a bright and multistriped snowflake sweater (bad), a pair of green jeans (worse) and a pair of plaid slacks (truly hideous.) Christmas has begun at Ross Dress for Less and there were lots of people there opining about the beauty of faux blown glass santas and plates with reindeer, including one lady who was explaining it on her cel phone "It's just the cutest thing. It has a picture on it of a dog, see, and it says, "Don't forget the dog!" What? No, honey, it has a picture of a DAWG, see, and it says, DON'T FORGET THE DOG! Uh huh."

I went from there briefly to Office Max for printer toner and then to Michael's Crafts, which is fully and completely decked out for the holidays. I love Michael's. It has that unique Michael's smell, that weird mixture of potpourri and evergreen and faint disinfectant, and all those weird Michael's things like knitting machines and large sponges cut in the shape of snowflakes, and it's always crowded and cramped full with just plain strange shit. Okay, I confess: I went to Michael's to buy some highly respectable art supplies but what I secretly wanted was a flag with a turkey on it. I'm turning into one of those middle aged women who has seasonal flags hanging outside her house and who trots out a holiday themed vest or sweater at every occasion. It is true. My lack of taste has lost its ironic, hipster edge and become just straightforward lack of taste, yet somehow this bothers me not at all. However, if you do ever see me in a Halloween vest, you can shoot me, it's okay. Alas, turkey time is past; there is no room for turkeys and pilgrims and corn at Michael's now - it's all Santa and snowmen.

And artificial Christmas trees of startling hideosity, such as this one, which I totally covet, but it was like $40 which is a little more than I could quite wrap my head around. Is it not lovely? Does it not sum up the true spirit of Christmas? This tree ROCKS.

Oooooh, Shiny!

I went on a field trip today at work - a very dangerous field trip, as it turned out, a field trip into the dark valley of temptation: a field trip to the wholesale gem and jewelry show at the Civic Center. Yes. Wholesale gems and jewelry, scattered across a bazillion tables in a huge room full of bright lights that made all the multitude of strings of beads extra, extra shiny. They were so shiny. And all of them were so incredibly cheap that my self control just snapped and my magpie instincts took over. The good news is that approximately 1/6 of my Christmas shopping is now done. The bad news is that I spent 1/3 of my saved Christmas money for a ratio that is really, in the cold light of home, rather distressing.

I spent money on ridiculous things. I bought a jade alligator. And three Halloween charm bracelets, and two hair clips with skull & crossbones on them - the skulls have rhinestone eyes! Is that too cute or what? - and, uh, a couple of pairs of earrings and some pendants and a bracelet and, um, another stone creature that looks kind of like a cross between an alligator and an aardvark and possibly some other stuff that I don't remember too clearly, like a boar tusk and a couple of aliens carved out of bone. It was the shininess of it all, and all the signs saying 50% off marked price and. . . and. . . there's no excuse. I've just been spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave lately and it is true that I have the instincts of a drunken, sailing magpie at the best of times, eccentric taste and no self control.

I even bought some beads in a sort of hopeless, doomed, last ditch attempt to redeem myself by pretending that I would make jewelry with them and sell it, thus recouping my losses! Yes! And pigs will sprout those proverbial wings, etc. I came home and made two bracelets while I was having my brain sucked dry by M's science and math homework. "No offense, Mom," said M, peering over my shoulder, "But your crafts suck." Alas, he is right. They are shiny, my bracelets. . shiny. And if I was five, they would be excellent but somehow, they are, uh, lacking that subtle je ne sais quoi, that certain something that marks objects as having been created by a mentally competent artistic adult. Which is partly because they keep falling apart, since I'm not very good at tiny knots, and partly because, well, stringing shiny beads on a piece of elastic string, while brilliantly good for recovering brain tumor patients and the criminally insane, just is not a technique that really cuts it in the world of serious jewelry.

Ah well. I'm way broker now than I was this morning, and I was not flush this morning. But I am bedecked. I have jewelry all over me. And a jade alligator to admire (he is a handsome fellow indeed) and a whole bunch of shiny beads all over the dining room table, safely dragged back to my nest where I can stare at the shiny for a nice long time.

Neuroticon 6

Tomorrow, gentle readers, tomorrow I'm going to drive for 8 hours to make a goddamn fool of myself. At least that's how it seems right now. I have been going through all sorts of interesting stress symptoms since this morning, ranging from a hot red face that will not fade to going to Belks. My friend S called this evening and said, "How are you doing?" "Fine!" I babbled, "I've just been to Belks and bought some shoes! They're super cute!" "I'll come over," she said, because random Belkian shoe buying is, as we all know, a major distress signal.

Everyone at my work wished me luck and told me if I won any money I would have to give it to the museum. This made my craven plan of just staying home tomorrow under the bed and then lying and saying I had been to Atlanta and failed the test look bad, so I had to give that one up. Okay, I'm not THAT neurotic and I wasn't really going to do that, no matter how comforting it seems right now. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to be wearing new shoes, so how bad could it be? Pretty goddamn bad, I know.

Which leads me to the title of this post. Neuroticon 6 is a planet I occasionally visit, an unpleasant planet, but a familiar one. It's a planet where all kind of bad things happen, like you show up to try out for a quiz show and they laugh and jeer at you and then save your audition tape to put up on Youtube with the title Moron! At one point I thought I would write a cogent and funny book of essays entitled Neurotica, and I may yet. If I do it will probably be on Lulu.com and you, given sufficient masochism, might even be one of the four people who buys it. It will have an essay about waiting to drive to Atlanta to fail a quiz show test - possibly this essay, even. Only a bit more obsessively proofed.

So I am hanging tonight on Neuroticon 6, where the bars are glossy and elegant and full of mean strangers and perfectly turned out smart blonde women who look far, far better than I ever will; the beers cost $11 and, worst of all, noone will listen to me babble. My friend S gave me some beers and told me how smart I was, and how it was all going to be okay, which should have made me feel better, and it did for a bit, but now I'm back on Neuroticon 6, revisiting all the various ports of call, continents and capital cities and, hey, major waterfalls. At least I have cute shoes.

Dude, New Phone!

Occasionally that which starts out rotten can end happily. This morning, I walked both the dogs: Theo, the old responsible one and Django, the tiny bouncing one. This was not as easy as it sounds, because by walk I mean get wrapped up in leashes and fall over not once but several times and by dogs I mean furry agents of Satan and by responsible I mean used to be good on the leash but now is pulling my arm off again and by bouncing I mean, in fact, bouncing like a motherfucker. If a motherfucker usually bounces, with which fact I am not acquainted, but I can totally assure you that a 9 week old Springer Spaniel indeed bounces, vertically, several feet in the air at a time. Which is why I needed a new phone.

You see, I took the dogs out on a walk through scenic foggy West Asheville (see photo) around 7:25 this morning, leaving M with instructions to get his ass out of the shower and onto the school bus in a timely manner. Which, you would think, a 14 year old could manage. Then around 7:40, when I was not particularly far along in the walk (see above, particularly referencing bouncing and getting wrapped in leashes, A called to complain bitterly that her brother had called her to demand a ride to school and it was unfair. I fielded that call okay and was thus not surprised when my phone rang again 5 minutes later, since I knew it was M calling to complain bitterly about how unfair his sister was to refuse to give him a ride to school. I had just gotten past the "You still have time to catch the school bus for chrissakes" part of this conversation when 1) puppy bounced and 2) Theo lunged and 3) phone went about 5 feet up in the air and 4 feet laterally before plunging to the pavement with an unhealthy crunch. Then I shouted JESUS FUCK! and so on, and made my unhappy broken phone way through the rest of the walk (including past that spooky playground - I did have my real camera and I hung it around my neck and hung on like grim death, so it didn't get puppy-ed) and got home where I found that M had indeed amazingly taken the school bus.

I spent the rest of the day metaphorically girding my loins to do battle with Sprint, convinced that I would walk into the Sprint store and if they didn't actually rush me with spears, well, they would certainly do so metaphorically. I told everyone how tough I was going to be and I walked in there with a fierce look on my face, ready to stand up for myself! To listen to them say tough shit and actually get mad back instead of caving meekly, apologizing for my temerity and slinking out. Which is how those encounters usually end. For once, though, I was happily surprised. "Oh yeah," said the guy, "You're way overdue for an upgrade. Here, you can have $150 credit towards any phone we have." Which is why I now am sporting a seriously slick shiny black phone WITH A CAMERA, DUDE, WITH A CAMERA and I am so, so cool now and both my children are overcome with jealousy, which is always just a sweet, sweet feeling.

The Five Hour Haircut, or, Other Tales of Slightly Surreal Weekend

Yesterday, I got my hair cut. Well, let's put that another way: I got my hair FIXED, which involved highlights, lowlights, trimming, consultations, a spell under a rotating space age dryer thingie and FIVE HOURS of work by several dedicated professionals. Also the going price for a small condo in Manhattan, but we won't go into that because, you know, who needs to buy heating oil or food when she is beautiful? The reasoning behind this extravaganza was that it will allow my hair to grow out into it's long neglected natural color (tactfully referred to as "dark blonde with some red" or, more accurately, brown) and let the gray go ahead and do it's thing, thus enabling me to, gulp, "age gracefully" without too much awful trauma in there and meanwhile maintaining a glamourous yet professional appearance. One hopes. Sheesh. The upshot of all this was that I sat for a long long time (do you know how long, boys and girls? Yes, that's right! FIVE hours!) in front of a mirror. I don't think I've ever contemplated my own visage for so long, not even when I was in the throes of adolescent zits and melancholy. It's hard to look at yourself for a protracted period of time when you're as old as I am: you keep hearing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald playing in the background. Either that, or, if you share with me the tragic glory that is the Celtic heritage, you realize that you're starting to look like an early documentary photograph of some fun event like the potato famine or a weeping mother from the Gangs of New York era. I look like I should be clutching my worldly goods on a cart while the British beat my family with sticks and let the cattle graze over my cottage. Yes, my cheekbones are getting more Irish by the moment, as are my giant eyebrows and, thanks Dad, sideburns. Ah the joy that is sideburns. The hairdresser was sympathetic but firm: there's nothing you can do except put pomade on them and hope for the best. Prayer, perhaps. To St. Brigid of the bushy eyebrows and gray sideburns that make us Irish women of a certain age so resemble muppets.

I reeled out into the daylight to discover that I had fabulous hair and a whole bunch of guests from Baltimore waiting impatiently for me at home. There were people here I hadn't seen for many many years; one in particular since she was seven, and now she's thirteen and looks like a particularly stunning twenty two. I commiserated with her mother. All these young teenage children seem to have more self possession, maturity, good looks and fashion sense than I ever have had or ever will, and I include my own son in this daunting category, even if he does spend hours standing in front of the open refrigerator door whining about the lack of food therein. So we all went off to the Brew N' View, which, as I have mentioned I think about a thousand times, is where I always take out of towners. We let the kids pick the table, which meant that we sat next to the Dance Dance Revolution machine, which is why there are approximately a thousand blurry photos of the Dance Dance Revolution machine on my Flickr photostream. Including MOI, since I got up there and, I thought, did not too badly for being a)elderly, b) somewhat intoxicated, c) fat and d) unable to read instructions in Japanese. I got up to Level 2 and the other adults thought that was great but the kids shook their heads pityingly and gently escorted me back to my seat. I'll probably die of some mysterious disease now anyway: I was barefoot at Asheville Pizza. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

It was great to see everyone if somewhat disconcerting to discover that they were not, after all, frozen in time six years ago but have kept right on growing up. A & her boyfriend and I drove up to Bat Cave this morning with muffins for the crew and then slowly made our way home through the apple corridor that is 64, stopping to ooh and ahh over chainsaw bears, a chainsaw wizard and even a remarkably wonderful chainsaw rhinocerous. Yes, a rhinocerous, a beautiful carved thing who was light years better than your usual run of the mill chainsaw bears, raccoons holding signs that say Howdy, and, inexplicably, a life size chainsaw cowboy with two guns drawn. Alas I had forgotten my camera. We bought dusty apples from a creepy old farmstand that had decaying possum and raccoon hides stapled all over it (turns out old WNC hasn't completely disappeared just yet) and somewhat nicer apples from a bright and shiny farmstand that apparently laces their cider with sugar. It's been a nice weekend. And I look fabulous. Right? Right?

HWSNBBA and Space Cars!

M is home. We didn't expect him home for another two weeks, but he saw a ride coming south and hopped it and appeared home yesterday, grungy, tired, starving and full of hair raising stories about sleeping on some motel steps in Ocean City, punching a skinhead who was hassling some black kids in Rehoboth and asking a cop in all honesty for the location of a doughnut shop in Dewey Beach.

He is furious about the travesty of Theo's haircut. And he has clear ideas on his own couture: M, (and don't tell him you read this, because this is He Who Shall Not Be Blogged About) is determined to wear black jeans, white suspenders, a black and white striped shirt, Doc Martens and a top hat to school on the first day. We spent last night surfing Ebay to find a top hat. They're expensive as hell: $60 and up. I personally am reluctant to spend $60 on what I perceive as a passing whim, but what M perceives as a vitally important, indeed epic (a lot of things are epic. Some are even hella epic) part of his personal expression. In fact, he wants to start a gang. A gang who will all be wearing combat boots, black jeans, white suspenders, striped shirts and top hats.
"What should I call them?" he said.
"How about The Suspender People?" I said. But he booed me down.

I don't know. He almost had me buying the damn hat, but I came to my senses. "What if you ask Gramma?" he said desperately, "Tell her I'm taking a manners class, and I need a top hat. It will work! Or I could mow the grass 6 times - I swear I'll do it!"

Alas for M, it will not work. I can mow the grass myself 6 times for free, and Gramma will laugh cynically at this "manners class" no matter how much those manners might need improvement. We are unfeeling and cold, and we say, "Save up $50 and we'll talk spotting you the extra $20 ($10 for shipping). Alas.

So, to make it up, at Ingles I bought a box containing 15 great Movies From Space! The first one we watched was Visit to The Planet of Prehistoric Women, or perhaps it was Visit to the Prehistoric Planet. No matter. They had a Space Car, which this is, and check out those fins. That is MY Space Car, the one I was promised by the Year 2000, and it's six fucking years late, and I want it. Now. It hovers, hon, and it has a machine gun. It is MINE. I need it. Even more, or perhaps equally as much, as my son NEEDS a top hat.