Mondays

There were hairy electricians in my office today; hairy, sleepy eyed electricians with large overalls and power tools. I had to go downstairs and use my other office, a.k.a. the front desk, and they disconnected the printer and made lots of noise: Mondays. I went to work early, as I will have to go to work early for the next couple of weeks while my daughter (who is currently undergoing a bad breakup and a new job and is thus less than delightful company) gets her schedule together. When I got home I had to go to the laundromat and the children made rude jokes about yesterdays lasagna. So, okay, strictly speaking it was not lasagna. The lasagna noodles were full of bugs, and anyway there were less than I thought, so it became a sort of spaghetti casserole a la lasagna, which apparently wigged the kids right the hell out. I had no idea they were such purists, such devotees of classic Italian cuisine. I half expected them to call the lasagna police on me. And when I got home from the laundromat the puppy had naturally thrown up in technicolor around the dining room: he's been eating ornaments off the Christmas tree. Now we have to worry about him as well although I cynically think that he can digest a little thing like a glass ball (or two) with no trouble at all.

One week, one day, 20 hours, 59 minutes and 35 seconds. 88 cigarettes not smoked, saving $17.75. Life saved: 7 hours, 20 minutes. So far, so good, or so awful - I still haven't smoked and I even went to the Westville and had one slow miserable beer at the bar this evening. Supposedly it will all get better in another week; just one more, one more week to hold out and I'll be able to go for more than a few minutes without thinking about cigarettes. It's like having a urinary tract infection - when you have one, all you can think about is peeing and your urinary tract, but when you don't have one you simply never think about your urinary tract. You go days, in fact, without thinking about it even once. When I was smoking I didn't spend hours thinking about it all the time: I just did it. Now, I have to relearn how to live without smoking and all I'm hoping is that soon I can do it without my whole head being taken up fighting the urge to smoke.

Starting With Dennys

Oooooh, look. It's the all new revamped Blogger Meets Google interface. The font is suddenly larger. The HTML isn't showing. The little options have changed. And whoa, dude, we have tags! Yay, tags! Tags good.

Meanwhile. Let us move on to the actual post of the day, because today is the day that marks 15 years since my last (and pretty much definitely Last, failing some really strange turn of events that I cannot possibly imagine) foray through Labor & Delivery. 15 years ago today, the midwife told me to have a glass of wine and relax, because I wasn't dilating very fast. It was a Sunday in Baltimore and in an effort to be helpful, my husband tore off to get wine. He came back with all he could find given blue laws: some pink, fizzy stuff. Really pink, really fizzy. I had a glass of it anyway - it tasted like alcoholic fizzy bubblegum - and took a bath. When I stood up, water gushed out. "OMG," I said (well, not literally. OMG hadn't been invented yet.) "My water broke; we need to get to the hospital."
"Are you sure?" said my clueless SO. "I mean, uh, doesn't it do that every time you stand up out of a bath?"
If I hadn't of been in labor I would have fallen over laughing. "I've been a girl all my life," I said, "It doesn't work like a suction pump."

So that was 15 years ago, and the small product of that day, who has grown a bit in the last decade and a half, wanted breakfast at Denny's, which is an unusual but entertaining way to start the day. I got him a top hat and some World of Warcraft gold, which is the other thing he wanted so that he can, and I quote, twink his character up and make other players feel bad about themselves. Then when I came home from work I made a cake and we ordered Thai food delivered from Blue Ridge To Go, which I must say is the most extremely coolest slick thing in Asheville that I had never tried before. Then we watched Barbarella, because we're just weird like that and then he went off with his friends while I stayed home to smoke cinnamon sticks. (no, I don't light them. They're my new, healthy cigarette-like friends. Shut UP. Five days, 22 hours, 26 minutes and 8 seconds. 59 cigarettes not smoked, saving $11.87. Life saved: 4 hours, 55 minutes.)

It's been a long strange 15 years and the whole birthday thing has made me muse rather philosophically on the meaning of life and what a good thing it is that we can't foretell the future. It's also reminded me that we really can't foretell the future: no matter how bleak and dreary and neverending today may seem, almost anything could happen tomorrow. Yes. Yes it could. A large anvil marked Acme might fall on your head or you could end up living in Asheville with no husband and a house full of teenagers. So have hope. Suicide is pointless. Things change. And kids grow up surprisingly fast.

Lameness on the Holiday Decor Front

snow one
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Look! It is snowing in Asheville! Yay! Or, well, boo. I was supposed to go out tonight, to test my new tobacco free self against the strength of a work related holiday party AND a big DL anniversary bash, but the snow and the traffic (if rain brings out the weirdos, snow brings out the psychotics and the serial killers) and the 19 degree cold scared me so I chickened out and stayed home where I lay around and did nothing. Doing nothing is a common theme lately, I notice, and I am ashamed that the first snow of the season caught me with my lights not up. For the first time ever, I am like the last person on the block to get their lights up. This sucks. I need to get with it. I need to brave the scary shed and put up tons and tons of tacky lights!

Meanwhile, young M turns 15 tomorrow which has brought on a spate of self examination, as it always does. 15 years - wow, dude, like, 15 years and can you believe it and I wonder what we'll all be doing in another 15 years? It's kind of hopeful, really - you never do have the faintest clue what's coming next. Which is why people go on having babies: they have no idea whatsoever that 15 years will go by so fast and those cute adorable babies will be large unruly things hovering behind their chairs going "Get UP Mom I want to use the computer!" And that's not even all they want - because of this 15 year old, I will be buying breakfast for the family at (gag, blek, wince) Denny's tomorrow. Yes. Denny's. Because that is the dearest wish of said 15 year old's heart: the grand slam breakfast. We may not make it another 15 years.

Fun Homework

So my son had to do this epic tale thing for English homework in the form of . . a comic book. This is a fun assignment, right? Except for M, who became overcome with gloom and sorrow until we bethought ourselves of the Historic Tale Construction Kit. Remember them? They are fantastic and as a result, M & I just did the most totally kickass epic ever tapestried. It had better wow the 9th grade English teacher.

I'm always terribly disappointed when a project of mine my kid's doesn't get a good grade. I've never forgiven A's 8th grade teacher for only giving a C on my her Slake's Limbo diorama. I mean, a whole bunch of actual certified artists worked on that thing, and we made wee figures out of Sculpey, and even a cardboard escalator. It was a rockin' diorama, as diorama's of slightly uneasy children's books go, and it should have gotten an A. So, come to think of it, should the several papers I my children have written on Harriet Tubman. Not to mention M's "auto"biography, which took days and was quite epic itself. But this kind of homework is fun, unlike math homework, at which I am frankly hopeless. The math homework he's bringing home now has those weird quasi medieval swooping fs in it. I admire the typography, but the formula escapes me.

On a more serious note, this project was also, well, noteworthy in how difficult it was for young M to grasp the concept of the classically epic hero. He's so post modern, so steeped in contemporary culture, that every single hero he came up with at first was fatally flawed. Sure, that's what makes heroes interesting and human to us, but you don't find Beowulf emoting over his Oedipal issues, or Hercules having much of a crisis of existential dread. Okay, Hercules does go mad for a while, but that was probably manure fumes. Every single story M came up with (and there were some extremely awesome plots in there) featured a doubting, flawed hero who has to overcome personal shortcomings. It's damn hard to escape your culture, even for long enough to write a comic book.

Conan Movies Are Way Underappreciated

Here at Hangover Headquarters, we have special ways to recover from post Thanksgiving stress disorder. It's a multi part process that involves first laying around in bed most of the day, reading magazines. By the way, Bark magazine? Really strange. Who knew there were so many expensive dog thingies out there? Or so many dog obsessed yuppies to buy them? My brother brought it over as part of his latest quixotic campaign, which is to turn my daughter into a dog whisperer and I read it cover to cover yesterday. Sorry, Bark people - I really hate to break this to you - but dogs aren't kids. They're dogs. I have two dogs and I love them dearly, but they're dogs. They're fine with plain dog food and a backyard and sleeping on cheap dog beds on the floor. They don't need clothes, designer bowls, handmade treats and special environmentally conscious toys that have been hand made by disadvantaged handicapped blind children in Nepal. They like empty water bottles to chew on and tennis balls. Their collars came from K-mart. Their rabies tags came from the clinic. And their ID tags came out of a machine at the Petsmart.

But wait. Back to Thanksgiving recovery. After you're done marveling at the weird world revealed by niche magazines and napping (many naps. Naps are mandatory.) you must eat Thanksgiving dinner all over again and then settle in for an evening watching both Conan movies, back to back! Yes! Conan movies are AWESOME! Conan movies RULE! Conan movies require NO HIGHER THOUGHT PROCESSES! Although you can mentally note that the director was smart in keeping Arnold's lines to a minimum - mostly he just says "CROM!" with a look of surprise. He's very good at saying "CROM!" Then his muscles ripple or something else amazing happens or they have a big old clanking sword fight and it's all good. You can relax into a leftover turkey haze and just lay back and enjoy. Seriously, though, they're not bad movies at all. Trust me on this - I watch bad movies for fun, and neither of the Conan movies qualifies - although the second one comes perilously close in parts, particularly the parts where Olivia D'Abo is required to do something besides look cute. They're well paced; they're nicely shot; the dialogue is mercifully minimal and the actors don't go insanely overboard.

Besides, my favorite movie line of all time is in Conan the Barbarian: "A couple years ago it was just another snake cult. Now, they're everywhere!" Truer words were never spoken - a subtle political observation that's more valid today than it was even then and makes the recent elections even more heartwarming, since we got to crush our enemies, see them driven before us and hear the lamentations of their women.

Goddamnit, Get Off My Lawn 'Cause I Can't See You Anyway

It's utterly hopeless for me to pretend to be a young hipster anymore. No, it's all over, I am that pathetic thing: an aging, graying hipster with youth pretensions. Tonight I went after work to meet a friend at a nearby (had to be nearby; it's horrible out) dimly lit hipster bar and, since she was late (it's horrible out, which is the international signal for Hey, Assholes! Drive Around In Circles! Day) I tried to read the paper whilst nonchalantly sipping my beer and smoking. It's tough to look hip when you're holding a newspaper as far away from you as humanly possible and angling it in a sort of hopeless, doomed attempt to catch some ray of nonexistent light. I mean, I will never know what my horoscope said, people.

Fortunately, the good people at the daily Asheville paper have addressed this issue with their recent redesign of Take Five, their weekend section. They've designed it either for the very old or the very young: it's unclear which, but the shrieking 16 point type, lots of (bad) pictures, multiple exclamation points, words of one syllable and random locals spouting paragraphs about subjects they know nothing about will clearly be a big draw to both the preschool and the senile demographics. I kid because I love, y'all - but really, what were you thinking? I grant you that the old Take Five was not going to win any prizes, but, uh, baby? Bathwater? This new thing is heinous. Actually, while I have the soapbox: please, please stop trying to be hip, oh Citizen-Times. It becomes you not. You are a daily newspaper, the very definition of an eminence grise; a paper of record, a (okay, I'm exaggerating here) journalistic source. Attempting to become a really horrible free weekly is beneath you. And if you must be a free weekly, could you at least include some comics and some Ann Landers? I miss me some Mary Worth.

It even uses outdated slang terms, and you know it's outdated when I think it's outdated, because I am the Woman Who is Officially Too Old To Keep It Gangsta, as conveyed by my children. Hell, I'm forbidden under pain of death or at least long drawn out sighs to even utter the words "True Dat" or, god forbid, "What up, mah peeps?" which has, you know, put a serious crimp in my conversational style. You've never seen anything in this world until you've seen 14 year olds in a carpool react to a mother saying "YO! Whuzzup, ma peeps? The shizznit iz in the hizzouse now, true dat!" I recommend it highly.

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.

Stepping Outside the Comfort Zone

I went and volunteered at MoveOn this evening; they have an office in Asheville since our congressional race is so important - we're trying to replace an old, evil, corrupt Republican with a young, fresh, soon-to-be-corrupted Democrat. I was reluctant to go volunteer - I'm terrified of things like that and I was afraid they would ask me to make phone calls, which I loathe. Naturally, that's exactly what I had to do. I had to call and try to convince people to volunteer to make calls themselves - GOTV calls, which I learned tonight stands for Get Out the Vote - that's a good thing, because everyone at Drinking Liberally (DL) was talking about doing GoTV this weekend and I thought it was yet another TV station that I would never encounter. Anyhow, our upbeat MoveOn staffer told us we would be calling only other Move On members and it would all be fun. Naturally, though, the third person on my list listened to me say, "Hi! I'm Felicity, calling for MoveOn about our Call for Change campaign to get the Republicans out of Congress" and then snarled, "I'm a Republican! Goodbye!" This sort of thing takes the heart out of one, particularly when one doesn't have much heart to begin with and besides one has never been very good at recruiting volunteers even when it is one's actual by god job which it in fact is.

Still, it is a good thing to do and I felt virtuous - and I even told them I would call people to GOTV myself. I snuck out a bit early, because I felt duty bound to stop in at DL (Drinking Liberally) and knock back a pint or two and a couple of slices of pizza. Then I took the 8:30 bus home (another virtuous choice. I am just steeped in goodness at the moment.) so that I could reach a new low in the homework wars. We have this homework plan now, see, where I sit at the computer and type M's papers while he lies on the kitchen floor behind me, moaning occasionally. It's very productive: I ask him questions about important choices he's made in his life (god love the 9th grade teachers. Can you imagine anything worse than 90 papers on important choices written by 14 year olds?) and he grunts in agony.

For more of me on politics, by the way, check out CNN next Tuesday, October 24, from 8 - 9 pm, because sometime after 8:30 is my national TV debut. I was interviewed about the Taylor/Shuler race and that's when my little segment is going to air, I hope, and if the October surprise doesn't preempt me. I'm psyched: I'm going over to my Mom's to watch it with the whole family so we can all be impressed with my television star self. You must watch it too, so that I can soak up the adoration, or, failing that, the laughter.

Comments That Make Me Oddly Happy

Yesterday, M called from his sister's car (my car, actually. Argh. Argh argh argh.) on their way home and all he had to say was "Uh, Mom?" and I said, "FINE! Just fine! It's okay with me, but then I'm not making the garlic bread!" and he started laughing and said "Okay." That left me home alone with a big pot of spaghetti while my children went out and ate burgers without me but hell, you know you grab your solitude where you can, and it was, actually, in more than even a passive aggressive way, okay with me. It's a little tight around here since A's boyfriend formally moved in. Argh. Argh argh argh argh.

Then this evening he called me at work and said, "Do you know where I can get a stuffed penguin?" "There's one in the back yard," I said practically, knowing that this was true. Not everyone can say that and it's the little things that mean so much, eventually, in one's childrens' memories. Ah yes, they will say eventually, Mom always had a stuffed penguin or two lying around in the back yard. Possibly they will use this sort of thing to make their future spouses feel inadequate which would actually, in an evil sort of way, be just fine with me.

Unfortunately, though, that wasn't the sort of stuffed penguin he had in mind, since our back yard penguin is a little the worse for wear. He wanted a clean fresh one to, hold on to your hats, give to a Girl. Being the good parent that I am, I said I would go and find one. Well. Hell. You know things have come to a terrible, gentrified pretty pass when a citizen of Asheville, a tax paying citizen and downtown worker such as myself, cannot buy a stuffed penguin in downtown! But alas, it is true. The stupid toy store was closed; TJ Morrison's has gone the way of the dodo, and there was not another stuffed penguin to be found, lo, not even in the whole of the terrifying upscale ghost mall that is the Grove Arcade. "I'll make you one!" I said feverishly on the cel phone and he shrieked, "Noooo!"

He's right. Going up to a Girl and saying creepily, "Here's a penguin. My Mom made it for you." is definitely the short road to social suicide. Even I can see the problems with that one. Pity, because I had some truly awful penguin crafts in mind.

My Children Are Demons

It has come to my attention that my kids are demonspawn. I had kind of thought this before but now I think we have empirical proof. I like to think of myself as an easygoing and tolerant person. I think I'm openminded and friendly with all ethnic groups, even those originating in other dimensions, but I have a slight problem with this. That problem would be origins - whence came this demonic tendency? Usually, when my kids demonstrate some failing that might be genetic, I happily blame it on their fathers, and so far in their lives, this has worked admirably, since their failings tend to be dissimilar and thus easily blameable on the defective DNA contributed by dads one and two. This time though. . . this time they're acting alike and even I must see the truth: the cursed apple doesn't fall far from the twisted boughs of Yggdrasil, after all.

How do I know they're demonspawn? Well, first they hatched a plan to take all of M's disciplinary referrals, those dreaded sheets of paper the school sends home wheny your kid does something truly unspeakable, and make a lovely display of them. "I"m going to have a 9th grade wall, a 10th grade wall, an 11th grade wall and a 12th grade wall," said M, falling over himself with his own wit. "And I'm going to highlight the best ones so they really stand out and I can show them to people and reminisce." "Aaaarghhhh." I said, and then the kids cheerfully informed me of their plans for the day.

They're going to the gun show at the Civic Center. Not only are they going to the gun show, they're stopping at McDonalds first, and they made up a little song and dance number about the gun show which they have just performed in the living room to great hilarity. The words go something like this: "The gun show, the gun show! We're going to the gun show! To look at guns because we like them! We want to shoot things! The gun show! We'll eat Big Macs and go to the gun show!"

This is it. This is probably finally the time when I completely lose the last shreds of my hippie mom cred and get ridden out of Asheville on a rail, tarred and feathered by an irate crowd of yoga teaching vegan astral healers and their peaceful Indigo children. I knew it was coming. You just can't fight genetics.

Things Were Great and Then

fogandwires
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

I was in a good mood this morning when I walked Theo in the fog and took a bunch of foggy pictures and even when I went off to work I still felt pretty cheerful despite a bit of a hangover and so on. And then all hell broke loose and he who shall not be blogged about got into some fairly serious trouble and she who loves to be blogged about's car finally gave up the ghost and just died on the edge of Fairview. That's two bad things and so now I'm anxiously waiting for the third shoe to drop which is a rotten, rotten feeling. Argh.

I have been all cheerful for the past couple of weeks and in fact on Monday my Zen therapist and I called it quits because, you see, I am just so sane and stuff and there I was, smugly enjoying my life and feeling gratitude and so on and now, fuck, it's all gone to shit again.

So A says to me that the problem with M is that he needs a very strict and unvarying routine and I said, "That is impossible. We don't live on Camazotz." which is true, and I guess I am glad we don't but sheesh. Sometimes an all knowing brain taking care of all these pesky details would be nice, you know? And when you ground a kid you essentially ground yourself, so if you're wondering where I am, I'm at home, being grounded.

In a complete nonsequitur, I just googled Camazotz, which as you probably know is the evil totalitarian planet of A Wrinkle in Time, which I in my 12 year old wisdom always assumed was a thinly veiled reference to Soviet Russia - in Soviet Russia, brain thinks you! - but it turns out that Camazotz is a Mayan bat god. Cool.

Homework: A Warning to Prospective Parents

I know how it is. There’s childhood, adolescence, college and finally, thank the gods, adulthood. It’s a bit angsty at first, but then you get the hang of it. You go along , enjoying being an adult, having all kind of adult fun (particularly that one particular adult activity that adults, you know, enjoy) and one day you wake up and say: “Hey! This life is awesome, but you know what would make it better? A rug rat or two!” And then you go ahead and propagate. Or possibly you don’t put quite that much thought into it and it kind of happens (our political message for the day: wouldn’t it be a better world if the human default was set on NOT getting pregnant rather than the reverse? Imagine. Discuss.) or maybe you put tons more thought into it and work very hard for a miracle child.

Mistake. It was a tragic mistake, sorry. There is one thing you haven’t thought about, and that’s true even if you are one of the people who worked for years to have a child. Sure, now you have a baby, and it’s really cute and stuff, and it drools and crawls and you can dress it in utterly adorable little suits or checked dresses with smocking and ducks and, holy shit, there are baby docs! And there is nothing more adorable in this world than baby docs. But it doesn’t matter, because the only trouble you have in those years is sleep deprivation and actually that’s a bonus, because honestly, if you weren’t that sleep depped, would you seriously ever think that the $150 yellow plastic thing that speaks in 100 equally intolerable electronic versions when you smack it is cute, or, gods forbid, necessary for your child to grow up literate?

What hasn’t entered into your fuzzy equation of love and ducks and bunnies and babies is the single, simple horrible and eternal truth: homework. Specifically, algebra homework. Say you have three kids. All three kids are going to have to take algebra and that means that you, yes, you, the person who thought that algebra was gone forever from her life, is going to have to take algebra not just once more, not just twice, but THREE more times. Ha, you say. This is the 21st century! Surely they cannot have algebra anymore. Oh no. They still have it, and it’s gotten worse. It’s gotten harder, meaner, leaner, toned for the new century and far more evil. And you will have to do it every. Single. Night. For. The. Rest. Of. Your. Life. Or until your kids graduate, which, given the evil of algebra, may be more or less the same equation. X=misery; Y=puzzlement; Z=the test is tomorrow Mom!

And this is not even to mention Harriet Tubman and Helen Keller, for although you may have fondly thought that they were phantoms of your past, you were wrong. Every American schoolchild must write at least one paper or make one diorama (you pick which is more traumatic; they’re both pretty goddamn bad) on Harriet Tubman and Helen Keller. It’s unfortunate that they can’t do them simultaneously and get it over with but alas, these are separate assignments. As is the algebra. Every night, the algebra. And then, there’s geography. Tigris and Euphrates rivers, holy shit, do you know where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are? And if so could you call me? Because we have a map due tomorrow.

M Won't Let Me Take His Picture

kids 4
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

M, lately, hates hates hates me taking pictures of him. He refuses to let me take a picture, which is a drag, since he's a cute adorable boy and I would like to put his picture up in my office so I could point to it proudly. When I tried last night to take his picture with his sister thus proving that he is now at least 6' tall, he took off to his room while A, who adores having her picture taken, tried to drag him back out and I snapped away. Serve him right for being a pain about a simple thing like pictures: now his blurry self is on the internets.

Rain and the Fair's Coming Up

It's raining, which is

DAMNIT! I was going to write a nice post about the rain, and the fair, and reminisce a little about the hurricanes of two years ago and then, if you got really fucking lucky, I was going to talk about this cardinal family in the Rhino Courtyard I've been watching. I mean, imagine that shit. Cute Birds, OMG LOLZORS!

BUT INSTEAD, my phone just rang and it looks like young M has missed the school bus AGAIN which AGAIN fouls up my plans for a useful and a leisurely morning. This is getting really old, this driving frantically to Asheville High School every morning and then frantically back home and then frantically getting ready to work where, of course, everything is set on high frantic. And I'm TIRED, DAMN IT, and oh yeah, I have also just discovered the work of John Cheever, which I know is pathetic, but I was supposed to read him in high school or college and somehow took umbrage at the

JEEZUS! Now he says he's taking the city bus and that means he'll be fucking late again and the new draconian attendance policies at Asheville High make that not good.

AAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! Imagine a cogent and delightful essay here, musing on Cheever and nature, the changing tides of 50 years and a little more, illustrated perhaps with a thoughtful metaphor or two. Imagine words like little jewels, prose that twinkles and fizzes with intelligence and wit. Okay, good. I'm going to try to fucking track down my errant son and drive him to school AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG

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.

How To Drive a 14 Year Old Boy Nuts

Wonder aloud if dogs have knees. Get up on all fours and try to see if you can walk like a dog. Demonstrate how you would lie down if you were a dog by collapsing onto your stomach. When 14 year old boy runs from room, chase him on all fours, making arf arf noises. 14 year old boy will go nuts.

Say Yup to whatever 14 year old boy says to you. Use tone of voice to indicate questions, surprise and nonchalance. When he says, "Mom is a reeee-tard," say Yup and laugh. 14 year old boy will go nuts.

Wear pink camouflage surfer board shirts and giant 80s T-shirt saying Leave Me Alone in neon pink and green letters to pick up boy. Suggest he go into store with you. 14 year old boy will go nuts.

Who says having teenagers can't be entertaining? Sometimes it's entertaining as hell.

Worries

I woke up in the middle of the night the other night (well, obviously it was at night, since it was, you see, the middle) to worry about the coming pandemic. Bird flu, or ebola, or something we don't know about yet - you know, the 21st century variant on the Black Plague. That thing that's going to kill most of us and bring our dissolute, decadent way of life to a terrible, tragic yet somehow justified (in the eyes of 25th century historians, anyway) end. I'm not particularly worried about it killing me - hell, I've lived enough. All sudden death means to me is that I'll have to be reincarnated sooner in order to get my lazy ass around to writing the Great American Novel and probably I'll have to do a lot of the same things over again, since life lessons have this way of sort of not sticking to me. I have to do all that in my next life anyway, regardless of when I die, since it it's a bit late to fix myself; I haven't written that Great Novel or painted that Great Painting and I kind of doubt that the Great American Blog counts in that Great American Creative This Is Your Life Work So Get It Right This Time On the Karmic Wheel Please For Pity's Sake sweepstakes. So the problem isn't me dying of a horrible sudden pandemic disease, although obviously that's devoutly to be avoided (there's more beer to be drunk, and I need to be here to drink it;) the problem is M. If the Plague comes and we all die except him, he'll be stuck in this house with no earthly idea of how to feed himself or drive a standard shift car - and this is a two standard shift Saturn household. Of course it is. We live in Asheville - we're all about the low gas mileage and the cool points inherent in the clutch.

So after tossing and turning and finally turning on the light, I decided that it was vital that M learn to drive a standard shift car. I'm not sure where the hell he's going to go if 90% of the people in the US are dead, or even if only 75% of them are - in fact, he'd probably be better off staying in Asheville, where at least the weather is nice and the survivors are likely to be no loonier post pandemic than they were pre, but you know, you have to give your kids options. Maybe he wants to go to whatever will be the post apocalyptic hot spot - Thunderdome, or something - but he'll need wheels to get there. And black leather and spikes, but that's his lookout.

I told him this tonight and he said he could already drive a stick and anyway didn't care and jesus, Mom, will you just shut up? He's at that age where he would be overjoyed if everyone under the age of 13 and over the age of 19 died tomorrow: they don't understand, man! I also told him I was getting him a life coach to get his ass organized and he had better not plan on having fun like this once school started and I think that was the point at which he cracked, desperately howled for his sister to toss him her keys and started her car up. His sister is a bit miffed at him at the moment, because he hasn't washed the dishes in three days, despite apparently intense inter-sibling bargaining. We have a dish rota theoretically going on, in which each person is assigned a day, and if they don't do their day, then the dishes pass over and they have to do the next day, and so on. M's day was Friday. It is now Monday. Every plate, and bowl, and piece of mismatched silverware in the house is sitting by the sink, to say nothing of the pots and pans. I know the bargaining was intense, because he told me that he was going to pay his sister $10, which is half of his weekly allowance, to wash the dishes, and then I heard him earnestly explaining, “Dude. You need $10. You’ll be so happy when you see that $10.”
“But there are way more dishes there than you said there were!” said A,
and M, who is rarely at a loss, said, “Fine. You pay me $5 and I’ll wash half of them. No, wait. You give me $15 and I’ll do them all.”
That was probably when she started after him and he started her car up. "Don't worry," I said, "He can't drive a standard shift. You can catch him easy when he starts hopping down the street."

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.