project 365 #51: asheville high school

project 365 #51: asheville high school
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

M is sick; N is getting sick; I am sick and tired, but otherwise just fine. A had it last week; the dogs are sickening and the state of my kitchen would make anyone sicker than hell. So I had to go pick up M from school around noon, since, as he martyredly noted in the car, I had yelled at him this morning and forced him to the halls of academe, pictured here. I am evil that way and he didn't have a fever. But then when the nurse calls I always get consumed by guilt and so, on the way there, I stopped at Kerr Drug and picked up $30 worth of cold medicine, cough drops and kleenex - the last of which I left on the kitchen table and then discovered this evening, opened from the side. From the side. I love my son but good lord, the boy does not know how to open a kleenex box. No wonder he's doing so miserably in school. Maybe I should be kinder to him and use words of one syllable in a soothing voice instead of screaming about jesus, His crutch and sacred pogostick at 7:45 every morning.

I also had to sign my soul away to receive sudafed, now that it's become a controlled substance. This is ridiculous. Nyquil doesn't work anymore and sudafed, which is so harmless that even I, notoriously afraid of pills, will take it without qualms, gets me more evil looks and signing of forms than the damn percodans and morphine I picked up for my mom last summer. Which is utterly stupid, since, among other things, you'd think the clerk would have realized that if I was planning to come on home to the trailer and cook up some nice meth for dinner I wouldn't have bothered spending all the rest of my money on new, unimproved Nyquil, cough syrup, echinacea lozenges and, of course, the aforementioned giant boxes of kleenex.

In other news I reread my blog myself and yeah, okay, I guess I have been a bit insane lately. I felt like Homer Simpson - I wanted to beat the monitor and yell "Be more funny!" So I will try. Not that I'm not secretly grieving all sad like and adolescent and pathetic, okay, because I am, like, so fucking emo that it would blow your head off and make Morrissey (the old, interesting Morrissey) look like the teen leader of Up for America but still. I will attempt a return to making more funny. And I have a call into my guru therapist so that he can take up the angst slack, so everyone can breathe a big old sigh of relief.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate February?

project 365 #18: aston park and hilliard ave

project 365 #18: aston park and hilliard ave
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

1. My knee hurts like a . . . I don't know what the hell it hurts like. It's rapidly working its way up to the childbirth & broken rib territory.

2. On top of that, I have cramps.

So I'm going to bed now with some vodka (fuck beer; it's time for the heavy artillery) and ibuprofen and an ice pack and some arnica salve and some comfrey salve and a large novel that I know nothing about yet which I really, really hope is good. Maybe if I just don't move for 12 hours I'll feel better in the morning. Bah. Shitfire. And other appopriate exclamations.

Disconnected Rants N' Rambles

I haven't been able to think of anything consistent to post about - I think it's part of the quitting smoking thing: my mind doesn't seem to be connecting things very well. I have a theory about this, actually, which even contains within it an explanation for why my stomach has hurt pretty much solidly since I quit; it's pretty gross, so you may wish to skip to the next paragraph. Still here? You're the one with the gross out wish. (Like my kids, who, when they pull some milk out of the fridge and smell it and find that it's totally disgusting, immediately say, "Smell this!") Anyhow, smoking produces mucus, right? It makes all the million creepy little cilia things that your whole insides are lined with (ewwwwwwwwwww!) work overtime creating mucus to coat all the surfaces in your body so that the smoke won't irritate them too much. Over time, your body gets addicted to mucus. The mucus feels good, like jello wrestling:(I have this twisted lifetime ambition to dive into a swimming pool of raspberry jello, yes, yes I do) it's all slick and smooth and slippery. Albeit disgustingly mucusy, also brown, right, from the tobacco. (Braaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!) So your brain uses all that mucus to conduct thoughts from one synapse to another, because it's electrically conductive. Yeah, it is, and so are your thoughts, which bop about all electrically like little yellow zig zags. I think vaseline is too; or something like that; I have a vague memory of a filmstrip about making something electrical in the manner of the Young Scientist. Billy was in black and white and said "Keen!" as he applied vaseline to a potato. No, that's not dirty - get your mind out of the gutter, you perv. Meanwhile, your stomach is also all coated with mucus which means that nothing really hurts it because it can't get through the thick globby layer. Isn't this horrible? Did you like my barfing sound effect? Then, when you quit smoking, your brain hasn't got any electrical mucus tobacco jelly for the synapses to fire through and your stomach doesn't have any mucusy defensive shield against evil shit like fried things or black coffee and so you just sort of fall apart. Hopefully you get better eventually though. Hopefully.

That is, unless it isn't the quitting smoking that has fried my stomach but instead the deep fried little debbie snack cake I ate directly before becoming deathly ill for three days which is, as we know, what led to the smoking cessation. Do you think it's possible that a deep fried ho ho can destroy your intestines forever? The Brits apparently eat them regularly and they're mostly still alive. Hmmmmm.

This has been a public service message brought to you by my years of medical training, which consist mostly of a) ancient magazines from waiting rooms and b) a slightly overactive imagination.

This is the next paragraph, which isn't gross, but is also going to be way short, because I can't think of much to say. I'm having one of those hormonal evenings where I get terribly sad over really stupid shit but then I almost immediately am able to realize how utterly idiotic that is so I laugh a little, which makes the incipient tears come out and causes people in Ingles to look at me uneasily and steer their shopping carts away. This guy tried to sell me mistletoe in the parking lot: I didn't buy any because I thought, "Well, hell, of all the pointless things for me to get - mistletoe? Who am I going to kiss, the dog? Ewww, he gives too much tongue anyway." Which of course made me all sad but then I realized what a total drip I was to get teary eyed over mistletoe being sold in a parking lot by a suspicious looking guy from a brown paper bag - contraband mistletoe, probably.

And this paragraph isn't gross either, and it's really just a short lament on the fact that other people appear to be able to put up Christmas lights that look like Christmas lights instead of some kind of demented blinking floor show put on by developmentally delayed Martians. Honestly, I do try, but somehow I just can never hang things up straight or hide the wires or make it all look, I don't know, grown up. I think I'm just eternally halfassed, but, oh well, what the hell, that's okay. At least I don't smoke anymore.

Death, I Say

So I’m not smoking. I’m not smoking because I had this fucking two day and three night long near death experience that was either the worst hangover of my life or food poisoning or a virus or a vicious attack from outer space or possibly a virulent combination of all four of those possibilities. I have rarely been more miserable. I am still miserable. I still haven’t really eaten – I had half a bowl of chicken soup and a piece of toast on Sunday night, a bowl of rice, a banana and some toast on Monday and so far today I have had water – and I haven’t smoked. I can’t smoke when I’m that sick. Now I’m feeling better and I want to smoke, but I can’t because I was already going to quit at the end of the month anyway and now that I’ve been handed this head start of two days, I need to take advantage of it.

Which means that right now, at this very moment, I truly, madly, deeply want to kill you. Yup. I hate you. Don’t take it personally; I also hate and want to kill everyone else on the planet. And all puppies and kittens, and blue skies and big rock candy mountains and all that fuzzy shit. Unicorns. Fuckin’ rainbows. Stupid crap like that. It all must die. I want to live somewhere that looks like Mordor and I want to live there RIGHT NOW. I want to lie in the black rocks and sludge and groan occasionally. I want to be ALONE so I can sulk in perfect solitude and miss my goddamn cigarettes. Also I have a headache and I’m dizzy and I woke up at 3:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep for two hours because I thought I was probably dying. Yet I did not die; no, I came back to life so I could want a cigarette. Shitfire.

Wigging Out

On Wednesday night, I wigged out. I was sick and running a fever and generally orbiting the third ring of Saturn and thus: wigout. I started getting sick on Tuesday - actually, at 2:00 on Tuesday, when I went from feeling fine to feeling like death on a popsicle stick with the suddenness of a snapped finger. Tuesday night, feeling bizarre, I went to the Drinking Liberally election night party and knocked back a bunch of beers which affected me not at all: I felt gruesome and peculiar, like my head was the size of a particularly tacky mylar helium birthday balloon that was 4 feet above my body, and the beer was utterly nonconsequential. So I went to work on Wednesday, still with my head floating horribly above me, and people started saying, "You look awful. You should go home, and please don't breathe near us."

I went home. I went home at 3:00 and planned to sleep a bit, get up at 6:30 and make dinner. When I woke up at 8:30 to find the house empty, dark and messy, and my daughter calling on the phone to tell me she had fed my son fast food and cautiously enquiring if she could have the car for the rest of the evening, I lost it. I started screaming at both my children. I mean I hollered. I mean I yelled like there was no tomorrow and I said all kind of things, including that I was taking the car and leaving them both forever and they should consider themselves divorced: this was it, Mom was gone.

After they had hung up a bit startled, I started weeping, which I never do, and suddenly I realized that noone loved me and the smartest thing I could do was to take my pillow and blanket and go sleep on the floor of my office. This is the flu: when you think that if you just take your pillow and blanket to work everything will be fine. This is not coherent thought. My children came carefully home when I was in the throes of this and my son walked gently into my room.

"Mom?" he said, "Are you okay?"
"No!" I sobbed, "No, I'm not okay! I'm sick and alone and hungry and noone loves me! Noone will ever love me! I am alone!"
"Shut UP YOU EMO FREAK!" said my son (the joy of my life, this kid) and damned if it didn't work like a charm.
"Don't you DARE call me EMO!" I shrieked. "I was EMO before there was a NAME for EMO!" Which comment woke even me up into laughter.
"You," said my son, "Are acting like a total emo freak."
"Shut UP." I said, but happily now, "I can't help being emo if noone loves me and I'm sick and alone."
"Oh Mom," he said, "Cut that shit OUT."
And I felt better, got up and had some soup, and I've been getting better, bit by bit, ever since.

I Have A Cold

I am sniffling and miserable and that is why there have been no posts lately. Also, if you didn't hear about it elsewhere, we mostly won the election. Me, I was too involved in the process of getting ill to enjoy the victory party much, but apparently the entire government is going to get better now. And Donald Rumsfeld resigned, which is awesome, and I seriously hope he is off somewhere in outer darkness weeping and gnashing his teeth. So, to sum up: Yay politics - clearly my year of attending Drinking Liberally has had a beneficial effect on the whole country and Boo colds - they're closing schools and churches and stuff all over this area because everyone has the flu, but I'm at work, moaning now and then.

Ah The Joy

The joy of having M living back at home and attending public school is just too great for words, because it only took him three or four weeks of school to bring home a particularly virulent cold and now we're all sniffing about miserably. I went to get the cold medicine out of the bathroom for my darling boy, who rarely gets sick, but tends to go all the way when he does succumb and discovered that it had all expired in 2004 and 2005 - when he went away to school and took his horrible kid germs with him. He is back. So are the germs. They may have had a point, in grade school, when they said boys had cooties and germs. Ah choo!

And then there's the joy of the laundry, and finding the neatly folded jeans from last laundry day underneath the dirty crumpled jeans that have to be washed, like, immediately please Mom because I have nothing to wear to school, is a joy that is hard to communicate. It's one of those joys that involves a lot of cuss words. Ah well. At least the worst things I'm finding in his pockets are world history notes, candy wrappers and the occasional dollar, which I keep as my rightful due.

Dimensional Time Slippage

I feel better, if a bit transparent, as you can see from this lovely self portrait. It took exactly 24 hours and some Chinese food to cure me; the ghost of the chicken salad is forever exorcised, thank the gods. And another simple pleasure is removed from my life: fuck chicken salad. I am never eating chicken salad again. That part of my existence, the I think I'll treat myself to some chicken salad for lunch today part is fini, kaput and ended. Chicken salad turns out to be treacherous stuff, not to be trifled with. Or eaten. God, not eaten.

Meanwhile, there is a ghost ship in Italy and my son has a theory that it's all due to seismic activity. He thinks that tectonic plate collisions under the Bermuda Triangle may occasionally cause interdimensional time slippage, small vortices of time, and that's where the ship came from. It thrills me beyond measure to have someone in the family at last with whom I can carry on these sorts of conversations, I must say. I am very fond of this boy. Last night we went over to get the aforementioned Chinese food at the Golden Dragon, our favorite takeout, and he was lamenting the fact that we don't live in NYC, which he perceives as a mystical wonderland where noone could ever get bored and they have Thai takeout on every corner. He cheered up, though, when we got to the strange little strip mall which houses Golden Dragon (this strip mall was apparently dumped there by a Bermuda Triangle time slip itself, because its location is vastly peculiar, its architecture unlikely, and its tenants ill assorted) and discovered that a shop calling itself the Euro Grocery had opened next door. Euro Grocery apparently caters to displaced Russians and Greeks (in Asheville? Who knew?) and it contains a treasure trove of strange Russian candy, whole smoked herrings, and soda with improbable labels. We promptly bought some mysterious chocolates, a jar of taramosalata and a 2 liter bottle of soda which was billed as pear flavored and turns out to be a little too obscure, not to mention sweet, for our lame American palates.

Then we came home and watched a vintage Dr. Who episode, City of Death, and he actually got into it right along with me. It turns out that my deep love for Tom Baker remains, which may, now that I think about it, be one of the reasons I can never date, because, you know, who can live up to Tom Baker in the 70s? That hair. . that scarf. . . those deadpan jokes. . . god, I love him so. M did not, of course, understand this true love, and to protect his adolescent sensitivities I tried not to mention it more than 50 times or so, but he did get into the whole Dr. Who ethos: that "Oh my god this is SO bad. . no, wait, wait. . this is awesome!" thing that you either understand or you do not, and I am happy to report that in at least this instance the apple has not fallen far from the tree, and he gets it. Gets it totally, just as his sister, who sometimes seems to be not a bit like me, still managed to greet the arrival of the hand chair, seen above, with something approximating my own glee and delight. Yay. It is good when your kids like the same things you do.

Gaaaaaaaaah.

So, finally I have experienced something that I had only ever heard about before: food poisoning. Mild food poisoning, at least I guess it was mild - I certainly don't ever, ever want to try out the severe kind, even for purposes of scientific comparison. The strange thing about it is that I knew, immediately, when the symptoms started, what it was: the chicken salad. The dastardly chicken salad, from a place I used to love to go for lunch but where I will never go again. It hadn't tasted quite the same, but oh well and I scarfed it down and was fine - until six hours later, when I began to feel not so good, and then, of course, about 4 hours after that all my insides decided that they needed to become outsides, right then.

Eeeeurgh. I think perhaps I will creep pitifully back to bed now. I hate being sick.