Protected: Lonely on the beach

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Dream inside a dream.

When I woke up this morning my grandmother was sitting in bed next to me. She was wearing a party dress and her strawberry-blonde hair, that only ever grayed at the temples, was tied back in a deep red bow with gold edging. A jubilant, “Hello Grandma!” and we were hugging.

One of my co-workers, Dan, was curled up at the foot of the bed tapping away on his laptop. We poked him with our toes for a good-natured, “Quit it!”

Behind my grandmother was a pile of gifts wrapped in gold and green shiny paper. “What are all these?” I asked. She smiled at me complacently and settled down in the bed. “Grandma, why are some of these gifts for Easter and some for Christmas?” Again, the peaceful smile, but now with a tinge of expectancy. I thought about it for a bit, then laid my hand on her frail, speckled wrist. “Are some of these for Christmas because you don’t expect to still be here at Christmas?” Her smile grew into itself, she seemed proud that I had figured it out. I didn’t bother to placate her because she didn’t need it, and because I also felt that she would pass on before then. I agreed with her, but it was ok.

We poked Daniel with our toes some more.

“I have to go to work now, Grandma. I’m going to be late.” She gazed at me, utterly serene. “How am I going to get all the way to Boston from D.C. in time for work?” Still she was silent, comfortable in her fancy dress in bed, surrounded by gifts.

I woke up and turned to Steven. “I just had a dream about my grandmother,” I said. “I wonder how she is. I should call.”

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

“Wait…..is my grandmother alive?”

Beat.

Beat.

“No, she’s not,” I said aloud in a rush of sorrow and tender missing.

Our co-worker Daniel was sitting at the foot of the bed watching a YouTube clip of a puppy yawning. We poked him with our toes.

It was time to get up but so many people had moved in over the Labor Day weekend that everything was in chaos. The bathroom was filthy with mildewy towels and a gritty sink. I knocked across the hall and two men answered the door. “May I borrow your bathroom?” I asked. They seemed truly sorry when they replied, “Oh, no. Oh dear. We’ve already promised it to seventeen Argentinians.” Turning around I noticed seventeen impatient Argentinians standing right behind me.

Back in bed, I woke for real. The dead never speak in my dreams. But they always seem content. For a few minutes there, I really thought she was still alive.

Protected: Thursday Confessional

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Kayak Attack

Phoo…

Phoooooooo……

PHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO………….

Eesh. Dus-TEE in here. Should have put some drop-cloths down.

……………………..where the fuck did that come from?
Sowhatsupyall? I laughed out loud reading the last comments section this morning. I don’t know why everybody be raggin’ on Huey Lewis. I know he’s popular to pity but the dude’s got more money than all of you combined AND you know the words to most of his songs even if you don’t want to. He’s the Steve Guttenberg of music. The tour was fun!

Peace, baby.

So…………I’m not pregnant, although I did have a scare and actually went so far as to spend $18 on a test which could have been saved if I had only waited one. more. day. I did not elope with Warrior Steve although the idea appeals to me magnificently. I’m sorry that I don’t have more to report. I just…….didn’t feel like talking to the internets for a while.

So, anyway, I’ve tied the curtains back, mowed the lawn, dusted and polished the furniture, and aired the place out (just kidding, I pay someone to do that stuff for me). Slothville is back and open for business and to start off, today you get the story of how I almost died at sea over the weekend.

I went up to Maine to visit my parents as I often do. It was my stepfather’s birthday and we decided to rent a kayak for me so all three of us could paddle around the islands off the coast of Portland. We zipped around from island to island, looking at the cormorants and pterodactyl-sized herons, smelling the the salty ocean on the perfect breeze. We stopped for lunch on a white-sand beach on Long Island (no, not that Long Island) and ate the prosciutto sandwiches we brought with us.

But the paddle there had taken almost two hours and I had a bus to catch back to Boston that afternoon, so we had to boogie back. Off we went, a different route this time, one that we thought would be quicker. First off, a tiny pass between two islands that turned out to be not so much a shallow pass as a GIGANTIC MOUNTAIN OF BOULDERS. We turned around and resigned ourselves to a longer and more treacherous way that involved much wave-induced panic. The night before, my mother and I had gone to see “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” (NAWT recommended) and when the waves were at their worst, really knocking us around, I hollered, “The cougar is in your boat, mom! It’s IN your boat!!” If you haven’t seen the movie you have no idea what I’m talking about and your life is better for it.

So. The final stretch. Off we go. It was a LONG crossing and the landmark we were headed for wasn’t even visible from where we started which made me feel a little desperate to begin with. Plus, we were no longer protected by islands so the wind was making us its bitches. I don’t know what was going on but my boat decided it that it didn’t give a crap where I wanted to go, FUCK me, it was going OVER THERE. Unfortunately, “over there” was in the exact opposite direction I needed to be heading.

About half way through the crossing (which was already a wicked long way) I sort of lost my shit. The landmark I needed to aim for was a barely visible glimmer on the horizon which my stepdad insisted was the sun shining off the roofs of cars in the parking lot next to the beach where we had put in. It was So. Far. Away. To top it off, I was pretty much just paddling on one side of my boat at that point (completely inefficient) to keep it headed in the right direction and prevent an eventual landing of my skeletonized remains at the North Pole.

Now, keep in mind that while I used to love kayaking, I hadn’t been in about 4 years. My parents, on the other hand, have been kayaking all summer, generally take vacations in places where they can kayak (be it Canada with whales or Mexico with turtles), dream about kayaks every night, eat them for breakfast, and are both about a foot taller than me. So, they were tired but doing ok. I was exhausted and starting to have a meltdown. All of the beauty and peacefulness and wonderment of the trip out turned into “Oh my god, I’m going to die, why did I ever agree to this?”

The thing about sea kayaking is that it pretty much limits your options to one. You have to keep going. It doesn’t matter how tired you are, doesn’t matter if you think you’re going to throw up, if you’re going into labor, if you’re on fire, if a dragon is eating your head, doesn’t matter. You have NO OTHER CHOICE but to keep paddling. So even though I felt like I simply could not go on, even though I almost started crying when my mother breezed past and calmly informed me that my paddle was upside-down, even though my hands were so cramped and numb that I couldn’t open the water bottle strapped to the front of my boat and take a drink even if I had the time to stop and do so, I had to keep paddling. So I did. And I have to say, it really sucked, that last bit. Like, sucked to the point where I started talking to myself and then realized I wasn’t making any sense and and where was I headed again? And why were my parents all the way over there where I could hardly see them? And maybe this was what hell was like, just going and going and hurting so much and not making any progress…….

Well, I made it, obviously. And when I got to shore I took a big drink of water and sat down to watch the dogs play in the surf. There were two German shepherds that looked like twins, there was a little Boston terrier that kept jumping into the water to fetch its yellow plastic bone and mistook me for its mommy for a second. There was - well, anyway, so many dogs playing and I just rested and watched them and laughed and felt so good to be back on land where there was all this cuteness and energy and good feeling. And then, because I was safe and sleepy, I was elated that I had done the crossing and been scared and frustrated and a little crazy for a while, because everything around me was all the sweeter for having been so missed while I was out on the water.

I got back to Boston and Warrior Steve cooked me a delicious dinner (which I ate in my pajamas), showed me the stretches I should do before bed, and hugged me to sleep. Life is good, people.

Regular posting shall now resume. You’ve been missed!

And a ‘Splosive New Year!!!

Earlier this evening, after ten hours spent at the hospital followed by a couple glasses of wine, my mother hollered at the top of her wee lungs, “HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS!!! IT’S THE BEST TIME OF THE YEAR!!!”

To which I responded, “YOUR APPENDIX MIGHT ‘SPLODE AND IT WON’T SNOW, BUT AT LEAST YOU’RE NOT A QUEER!!!”

And then we laughed for waaaay too long.

So, as you may have sussed, the Appendichristmas sitch wound up a bit more serious than we thought. Turns out, with the pain my stepdad was enduring, John Wayne himself would have peed his chaps and begged for his mammy. The organ in question was no longer in evidence as it had been torn asunder by its own infection (’sploded). After two and a half hours of surgery he was wheeled out of the OR with an IV, a tube through his nose draining his stomach, a catheter, and a whole lot of, “Get these fucking tubes out of me.”

I have to be honest, it was really gross. (I think I’ll delete this before he gets outta the ‘pital.)

So we’re having Christmas in the hospital this year and goddamn if it isn’t all on me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. The parentals had planned on doing their shopping on the exact day that a certain useless, pinky-sized extension of the intestine decided mutiny was on the menu so I guess that last-minute frenzied shopping gag-fest I put myself through last night was actually worth the years of my life that it cost me just so there can be SOME presents to go around. ………..That sounds pretty complainy, doesn’t it? Pay no attention to the Grinch behind the Sloth!

Truly, every time someone you love goes under general anesthesia, the world just stops until they wake up. The world is slowly getting back on its axis tonight, but seeing my stepfather, who anyone should be lucky enough to know, all taped up and puffy and miserable was really scary. It was the first time I had a premonition of what lies ahead for us because it was the first time I had ever seen him look old.

But enough of that. He’s awake and it’s almost Christmas. You know the refrain: “God bless us, every one…” I don’t believe in God, but I sure as hell believe in thin excuses for sneaking booze into a hospital.

Baby Jesus

Merry Appendichristmas!!

Last night I called my parents to wish my mother a happy birthday. She was busy saying goodbye to some guests so I chatted with my stepdad while I waited for her to get on the phone.

“I ate something that disagreed with me,” he said. “I have a really bad pain in my stomach. It won’t go away.”

Our friend Bev, who happens to suffer from chronic colitis, had assured him that it was a rebellious colon but I was unconvinced. It was my stepfather’s demeanor that unsettled me. He has something like two months of sick time accrued. He never calls in sick and even when he is sick, he just powers through it like a warrior.

So when he said, “I hardly ever get sick but when I do I guess don’t handle it very well….” the worry bees started a-buzzing. That statement is patently untrue and the fact that he had convinced himself of it in order to explain how miserable he felt led me to believe that he was experiencing a level of misery that was all new to him.

“Don’t rub it!” I said. “Maybe you should go to the hospital,” I said.

“I think I’ll wait and see how I feel tomorrow,” he replied.

Yeah, so my stepfather is currently in the hospital on a morphine drip, awaiting his emergency appendectomy. Methinks someone mebbe pissed off the Baby Jesus this year, eh? Way to go!

Protected: Short Attention Span Friday

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Momma Sloth

It’s a balmy 17 degrees here today. Rejoice!

Things I learned about my mother over the weekend:

1. When she was a child of an age when you still believe that what you do can affect what is on television, she used to beg and plead with Dorothy at the end of “The Wizard of Oz” to only click her heels twice or, alternately, to not click them at all because who on earth would want to go back to a black and white life in the dustbowl after living for even a brief time in Technicolor?

2. She has a cowgirl crush on this cowboy:

I really can’t imagine why…

3. If she were in an airplane and the guy who was about to take her to jail got hit on the head with a metal suitcase and passed out while the plane was crashing, she would SO NOT PUT AN OXYGEN MASK ON HIS STUPID FACE.

4. If you get her drunk enough she will laugh all the way home.

Holidays are complex emotional events. After feeling melancholy about the family I no longer have, I spent the weekend with my parents and started feeling jolly about the family I do have.

Tuesdays suck less in December.

Friday in the Universe

Good morning, internet. I hope you’ve had a nice couple of days. I am one of only two people in my office today as the sky is sending down a shower of dandruffy delight and everyone else seemingly took one look outside and said to themselves, “Yeah. Right.”

My office window faces out onto a narrow courtyard which also serves as a sort of wind funnel, blowing the snow that just fell right back up into the air again. As a result, my little piece of the world looks like a snowglobe today. A snowglobe featuring a sleepy redhead clickety-clacking on the keyboard, feeling nostalgic, wishing she could get her shit together for the holidays.

I bought lights. And this gold star wire stuff to wrap around things. But I don’t have a wreath yet and I need to do laundry in the most desperate way imaginable and I don’t have a domestic bone in my body and I’m turning 30 in a week or so and sometimes I just wish the world would slow down a little so I could catch up.

On Wednesday night I went to see my second-most-favoritest band in the wholewideworld, Calexico, at Avalon. They’re touring with Iron & Wine and, although I can appreciate a little Iron & Wine now and again, I don’t believe that the distinctly Ent-like appearance of the lead singer is a coincidence. Their songs are long and slow and haunting and luscious and they will put you to sleep as reliably as a codeine overdose. Calexico, on the other hand, is all kick and sass, so I was disappointed that they played first as I was in an Ent-induced coma by the end of the show.

When I arrived home there was a package from my Aunt Suzi that said “Open Now,” the assumption being that any packages I receive around this time I will will stow away until my birthday or Christmas. Yes, I actually do that. So I opened it and there was a card from her saying that they are sorry they won’t see me this year for the holiday and here are some of Grandma’s Christmas ornaments.

Well, I just fell apart. I called The Den sobbing and after an exhaustive cry I passed out dramatically on the couch where my roommate found me the next morning with dried mascara rivulets on my cheeks. It’s the second Christmas without my grandmother and I’m looking out the window at the snow falling on a world that doesn’t have her in it anymore. All of those little things that made her unique - the way she tucked her strawberry blonde hair behind her ears, the way she ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass, the way she loved too much and forgave not enough - are gone. They exist nowhere else in the world.

We went to this latest war with Iraq soon before my grandmother died and when it began, she cried and railed, powerless, at the television because she had lived through so many wars, had served in the foreign service, and knew better than her children or her grandchildren what the real cost of war would be. And now there are thousands of people - American and Iraqi - who no longer exist in the world either. All of the things that made every single one of those people absolutely unique are just…..gone. I mourne my grandmother because I can. I can remember all of the bits of her that are lost - all the tiny, quirky things I miss. But I don’t know how to mourne all of these other people that deserve no less than abject sorrow from each and every one of us at their sacrifice. This holiday is going to be a horrible, wretched time for so many families who remember the way their son or daughter or mother or father crooked a finger when making a point, ate soup in their favorite bowl with that wonky spoon, tugged on a necklace for comfort, sat in the car in the driveway for a few minutes to finish a song on the radio…..loved in their very own special way that will never be replicated anywhere in the world ever again.

It’s snowing on a world where so many people no longer exist. Our contemporaries, our ancestors, and someday, us. My friend Emily is going to give birth sometime next week. Cold and snow and death and life….it’s all so much bigger than one person or one war or one conviction or one sleepy redhead clickety-clacking on the keyboard, feeling nostalgic, wishing she could get her shit together for the holidays.

Happy Thanksfarting

This year’s potluck involved:

1. A frank and enthusiastic discussion of my sex life with people who have known me since I was three.

2. A game of charades with a room full of ex-hippie liberals that was so politically incorrect that we should have all been arrested.

3. A laughing fit that actually made me pee in my pants a little bit. (See above.)

4. The sobering realization that I have gained 10 pounds in the last year. (I only weigh myself once a year - at Thanksgiving. What? It’s a ritual and they’re the only people I know who own a scale.)

5. The development of what my mother fondly refers to as an “air baby.” I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself. (See title.)

6. My best charades clue contribution EVER. “Charade.” One of my favorite movies - who can resist Cary Grant taking a shower in a suit? The woman who had to act it out simply reinacted our entire game in fast forward, it was great.

7. A casual conversation about meth and anal sex over turkey, stuffing, mashed, peas, gravy and cranberry chutney with my friend Marcia who works in an AIDS clinic.

8. The discovery that my parents were really hurt that I didn’t invite them to my thirtieth birthday party. We live in different states!! It didn’t even occur to me!! Still, I feel like an asshole, especially since my folks are actually a little cooler than my friends (sorry, friends). *

9. The sad acceptance that since I once ate garlic mashed potatoes when I was knocked up, I will never be able to eat them again no matter how many years have gone by.

10. Truly giving thanks this year for the simple fact that I could sit in a group of 16 people and say, “I can’t eat garlic mashed potatoes because I ate them once when I was pregnant” without a single one of them judging me. I don’t know what I did to deserve all this love, but I’ll take it.

I adore Thanksgiving. The people I spend it with are my parents friends but they’re my friends too and I’m so lucky to have them. I may not be rich or famous, but there are times (more than you might think) when I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Because I am.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. You are lucky too!! And it’s the beginning of the holiday season - from here on out it’s all pine scents and ribbons and snow on our hats. Don’t you just love this time of year?

Me too.

*Yes, the parents are now invited and will be joining us for brunch. If you are reading this and are coming to the party, don’t worry - they really are cooler than you. (Sorry again.)