clickmom

strategizing

I went to the city on Friday to look at camera equipment for our trip to teach photography on the reservation.

After a couple of store visits I'm walking down the street with my friend when a baby bird comes falling diagonally across the sky and lands with thud on the hot pavement by my feet. It struggled there for a minute and I didn't want to move fearing someone would step on it and crush it. I was hoping very hard that it would fly away. I was bent over the poor thing when a man noticed and he bent over and picked it up and cradled it in his hand. He tried to give the poor baby bird some water from a water bottle he had and it took one gulp in it's mouth and died in the guy's hand. The guy put it on the ground tucked under a nearby bush. The only thing I could think to say to the guy was "I think you should wash your hands now"

It totally felt like a bad omen but so far nothing and it's been over 48 hours since. I did wonder if it was somehow a mixed up good omen, so I bought a single lottery ticket for the drawing that night. I better go check the numbers. How fabulous that would be! 

My friend and I sat down to discuss lesson plans and I decided to get a drink. They generously poured me a double which I drank up despite the fact that I had only had a rice cake and a stuffed grape leaf for breakfast 6 hours earlier. I was pretty drunk for a lovely 20 minutes. I wish I liked drinking because I sure like being dunk. My friend had to take off and I stumbled to a gallery and wow, I gotta admit it is so much easier to appreciate photography when you've just downed a double potato vodka on the rocks on an empty stomach. When I go to the portfolio review next fall I think I'll give out little book dummies with little airplane booze bottles. I know. Good thinking, right??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

51,776

It was a good weekend for writing. A nor'easter blew through on Saturday so I took sweet pea out early, swung the store for sustenance and then settled in for a long day of writing. I think I got about five thousand words down on Saturday alone!! 

Then on Monday I met up with a friend to walk the dogs. The only thing was that I had been walking sweet pea for an hour when she showed up and I had been deep in thought over the book, so when my friend joined me I could not stop talking about the book. This friend is the type who doesn't let you get way with anything when you're talking. She makes you justify everything you say and I love her for it. I told her how I didn't want this book to be a porn novel only, how I wanted it to have it's own literary merit and be a well thought out book. I think at first my friend doubted the whole legit book line  She asked good probing questions and in the end said she thought I had certainly thought it all out. She gave me her stamp of approval. It was like defending my thesis work in grad school all over again and I loved it! One thing she asked me was to sum up the experience of the main character, or maybe it was a question about how she evolved as a character, or something along those lines. I said the lesson she leaves with at the end is that you don't have to leave home to find what you're looking for, it is right in front of you if you just know how to find it. Then I thought that kind of sounded a lot like the lesson in Wizard of Oz, a clickmom family favorite, and as I thought and thought about my story I realized there were a whole bunch of things in my story that could be direct references/symbolism taken from the Wizard Of Oz. I hadn't even planned on it, but now I am totally going in that direction with my edits! 

I'm pretty stoked about it. I think this added another layer to the whole odd story. 

crush

I'm pretty sure I never shared this story from way way back with you.

In high school I got my schedule junior year and was quite surprised to find myself in honors biology. I most definitely had not requested honors anything, I preferred to take the easy way out. I dragged my despairing (extra work!) self into class the very first day and much to my surprise I spot my friends Agatha and Tina sitting together by the window. I go over, and think this might not be such a bad class to be in after all! I am so happy that no one comes and sits besides me at my double desk (the entire room was full of double desks) until the teacher takes her command post at the front of the room and surveys her new crop of fresh faced students. She looks from left to right and then back to the left again and says "Oh no! Vat a shame! Ve have a gurl seeeeeeting all alone on von side of da room and a boy alone on da udder! You can go seeeet vit heem." And then she points to me and gestures over to this guy named Dan who was the kind of kid who as a junior in high school had a beard so full and luscious he looked as if he had lived the last decade in a lean to in the forest eating only things he could scrape out of the ground with an old spoon or kill with his bare hands. But not in a unibomber kind of way, because we were all just plain old nerds to some degree in my high school (and for this I am forever grateful. Loved just about every second of my high school experience) and not (at least not yet) psycho misfits. Dan was bearded in a nerdy short guy with a premature hormone explosion but not in the crazy way. 

The goal here is to get to two points.

1. Dan freaking hated me!! HATED. As an adult I realize that there is a type of person who hates me on first sight and that is the desperately unhappy type. I think I give off this not-discontent vibe that drives the desperately unhappy type insane when in my presence. Another person who I had this dynamic was my second year advisor at school.  He was very much a Dan. Anyway, I could feel the animosity oozing off of young hairy Dan every single day when we sat down for class. Also, he totally felt superior to me, it was obvious in 100 ways, and every time we got a test back and we both got a 98 he'd be furious that I got the same grade as he did. Then he'd insist on seeing my test to verify that I had not cheated off of him and sure enough we would each get a single multiple choice question wrong and it was always a different question. I just prayed every single test that I would outscore Dan but we both were entirely consistent with the 98s. I'm sure he beat me on the NYS regents exam, but by the time those scores came out I was long gone and never looked back long enough to give a single F about Dan. I never think about Dan and am wondering why I am thinking about him today. Did I see a little man with a werewolf beard? I don't think so. Anyway, one might assume that being separated from by buddies and sitting beside an openly hostile bewhiskered gnome might turn me off to honors biology, but it didn't. I kind of loved the nutty little teacher, and ended up looking forward to the class. Besides, it was easy, I was getting 98s on the tests.
2. That happiness in honors biology may have also been because sitting directly in front of Dan was my one and only high school crush. Typically, I was not the crush type but this guy had that thing I have since come to recognize as my type. He was the warm and friendly (as opposed to Dan) nerd.  My high school crush also happened to be deaf, which turned out to be a big bonus for me because when the guy he sat next to was absent the teacher told me to move up and sit next to him so my crush could read my notes. If the teacher said anything important while facing the blackboard and he couldn't read her lips. Normally I took the world's shittiest notes, but on days when my crush might need me to help him out? I took notes like a machine! Oh sigh. Sometimes I would man spread my arms out so my elbow could touch him or even lean in close to him pretending it was so he could see my notes but really it was just to be closer to him. It gets even more crushable. My crush walked around with his camera taking photos for the yearbook. Seriously!!  Swoon. I didn't even know I was a photographer yet but my crush with a camera was almost unbearable to my teeny bopper heart. Sad ending. My crush never reciprocated, however, he did take a fabulous picture of me on Halloween that ended up as a half page photo in our high school year book, so that will forever be there to remind me of my one and only high school crush. 

Also, I am Facebook friends with my high school crush, though we never write directly to each other. I see he appears to be happily married to some chick who gave him daughters. I guess it just wasn't in the cards for us.

vapors

I was driving down the road and a chipmunk ran out in front of my car. I slowed down but couldn't see if it had run back into the woods because I had stopped too close. I rolled forward and heard my tire run it over. Then I saw it's squished body in the rear view mirror. I am guilt ridden.

The next day sweet pea caught a chipmunk. I commanded her to drop it and leave it. She looked at me like I was nuts, but she did put it down and it ran away. My friend was shocked. Then she said she had never heard me raise my voice before. I told her it's important to save a raised voice for when you really mean it. 

I cut the dyed blue band out of my hair today. What a relief. I totally felt like a clown. It made me more uncomfortable than I thought it would, and I was having anxiety attacks before I even did it!  I'm glad I did dye the hair though, and hopefully, my niece will remember my gesture always.

I went to stepford to see the chiro today. I tell that man everything, and even though he sometimes looks at me as if I may have finally lost my marbles, he always takes me seriously. Here are very close to direct quotes of some things I said today:

I don't know what it would taste like to swallow perfume capsules, but imagine you did swallow a perfume capsule and then the fumes of the perfume were radiating up your throat. That's what I feel like.

I tried to drown the perfume thing out with drinks and then food, but nothing worked until I ate sauerkraut, because I bought the good kind of sauerkraut, the real kind because for some reason I've been craving it for days and within a couple of hours the perfume vapors faded away. Maybe it's bacterial. I feel normal, no perfume, right now.

Remember how I had those two migraines that weren't really migraines in the way I am used to having migraines? I think it might be that new tick disease, powassan or something, that causes migraines. It makes sense to me. Can you test for that? Seriously? You haven't heard of it?

Is there like a reset button for creativity? I've been a zero since my brother in law died. Nothing. I just can't summon the energy. (at this point he looked at me like I am kind of nuts, because he knows all the insane things that are happening in this family right now. He said my lack of creative inspiration wasn't at all surprising and looked at me like I might not realize what a shit show I'm living in. I realize, I realize! Then he talked about stress) 

I totally feel like a hypochondriac every time I leave there.

He did tell me that through the power of applied kinesiology magic I was testing positive as releasing both pesticides and heavy metals. I cried when he said heavy metals remembering the two times I did have heavy metal poisoning (blood test confirmed) and not wanting to revisit that special kind of hellish illness and recovery. But he reassured me that I was releasing them, so it was a good thing and he said the perfume vapors in my throat were probably due to the release, which I could see. There might be a metallic taste aspect to the perfume vapors, which are back tonight.

 

 

 

hot tub and a gun

Not sure if I ever mentioned it here, but my next door neighbors have two apple trees which are right up against the property line. Conveniently, they have NO WINDOWS on the side of their house which faces my yard (and the trees) so two falls ago I stole a ton of super delicious apples. Last fall I was completely saddened by a zero apple yield (probably due to a late spring frost) and this year I still had my fingers crossed. This evening I took sweet pea into the back yard just as the neighbor was firing up his chain saw. One of the trees fell down. I am somewhat devastated despite my hopes that the other tree will have a fruitful year. Ha! Get it?  Now my dreams for the future include buying an old farm which includes some kind of an orchard. Hopefully, my future farm/orchard will have a variety of trees from which I can pick delicious summer fruits. Okay, so, I reiterate, as of today my future dream property includes: a water feature large enough to kayak in, fruit bearing trees, and a killer view. And a hot tub. I would sell my soul for a hot tub.

Yesterday was my niece's bat mitzvah. I really worry about my nieces. I worry about how fucked up they are going to be physically and emotionally. My SIL gives her 12 year old Benadryl every night because she wants her to sleep. I told her months ago (when I found out) how dangerous that is because Benadryl crosses the blood brain barrier and causes damage. She is still doing it. I feel like that might actually be a criminal offense. Don't get me started on how she talks to her learning disabled older daughter. Text book case of how to break a child's spirit. I can't even ..... I am honestly worried about the kids. It's just so messed up. I don't even know how to describe it. 

My BIL's widow was there and I was really happy to see that she is looking good. She seemed happy, lost some weight, and actually kind of looked a little younger. I'm thinking that not worrying about the BIL had been taking such a toll on her that grief is nothing compared to the worry. She is such a genuinely nice person. I really hope the rest of her life is filled with happiness. She's been through enough for one person. 

So, I showed up at the bat mitzvah with the ends of my hair dyed a color blue that completely matched all the decorations. I matched the blue balloons, napkins, place holders, and even the blue flowers on my nieces party dress. The only people to comment on my hair were people who knew me and wanted to make sure I hadn't had a break with reality and the young kids working at the party venue who said "I like your hair" in that teenage-don't-make-eye-contact-and-please-don't-think-this-means-I-want-to-talk-to-you way. I'm counting the seconds until my hair cut on Thursday. The blue ends of my hair are so dry that they crackle as they brush against each other when I move and every time I get a glance of blue out of the corner of my eye I jump out of my skin wondering what the heck is blue and on my shoulder. It looks like cheap dyed feathers.  My usual M.O. is to be as invisible as possible and clown hair is not part of the uniform! I can barely take myself seriously looking like a blue tipped hair freak. I'm way too grounded for blue hair. 

I met Matt's girlfriend for the first time. Half her head was blue and half was pink and she totally looked like a box of nerds that is half grape and half strawberry. It was kind of distracting from the nice person she seemed to be. I do not understand the unnatural hair color trend. Now do I understand the totally bizarre thick painted eye  brow trend. Can't we all try to look prettier than we are as opposed to like cartoon drag queens? 

The whole world is basically insane. Someone has been dropping white supremacist leaflets in driveways of our town. I think there was one in our driveway and once I saw the news report I went outside to pick it up and it was gone. I suspect the police came through  and removed what ever wasn't taken in by the homeowners. It kind of makes me want to go out and buy a gun.

 

 

wondering

When I lived in Brooklyn I had a neighbor who was the kind of person that stays with me. It's probably because I secretly wanted to be like her in some ways. She had these photos of herself all golden tan in a bikini on the beach while 9 months pregnant on display in her apartment. I wished I could feel feel so free in my own skin. She had this insanely fabulous oil portrait of herself and her husband hanging in their living room. It had a cubist flair and was painted in bold outlines and circus colors. It was spirited and brave, like she was. 

One evening I heard a fooomp...fooomp...fooomp coming from outside and when I looked she was dropping garbage bags of her belongings from her little apartment balcony. Someone (not her husband) was loading the bags into the cargo area of a big pick up truck. She told me to go inside and to say I hadn't seen anything if anyone should ask.  I asked where her husband was, she said it wasn't safe for him to come back to the apartment. 

I went inside, like she asked me, and I never heard from or saw her again.