full-grown cabbage and kitten angst

so i'm driving down the road today with my eight-year-old (almost nine! she's quick to point out) and all of sudden she makes some exclamation of wonder, something like "whoa, look at that!"

i look around expecting to see a princess riding by on a pony or perhaps one of those horrid little robot-like disney "actors" she likes so much, but all i see is the traffic light, the cheapo gas station and the dinky little produce stand. it was the sign on the produce stand that caught her attention. "they have a FULL-GROWN CABBAGE for twenty-five cents! can you BELIEVE that? now THAT is a good deal!"

a full-grown cabbage. for twenty-five cents. that really is something you don't see often. i was appropriately impressed.

a few minutes later she was sitting in the waiting room at the vet's office (my left arm now looks like i was possessed by the spirit of a dead emo kid, thanks to psycho kitty's love of being in a place that smells like a gazillion other animals, and my obstinate refusal to let him explore the place on his own) looking at the newspaper. she ends up on an ad for some grocery store, and starts pondering the selection. after a minute she asks if she can play with my phone. i hand it over without thinking-she's always writing silly things in the notepad on there. then i notice she keeps looking at the newspaper, then typing on the phone, then looking back at the paper... i peek over her shoulder and she has the calculator up.

"zoey... are you adding up the cost of the things you want to buy from that ad?"

"well... yes. is $2.99 a good price for a whole watermelon? it's seedless, so you're not paying for the seeds."

ok, one: the next time her dad accuses me of blowing too much money, remind me to tell him about this encounter. she learned this behavior from somewhere. it wasn't him.

and two: if your toddler is obsessed with those little coupon dispensers in the store, be afraid. this is what's coming. i fully expect that by the time she's twenty she'll own a five bedroom house, and four of them will be filled with paper towels and ear wax removal kits she got on sale for half price.

i wish my grandma was still here. she was always griping about grandpa getting everything he saw that was buy one, get one free. "now what do i need forty-eight rolls of toilet tissue for? i'm old, i won't live long enough to use them." she'd get a kick out of this.

trapped in beauty, or, what happens when you laugh at others' misfortune.

so the other day, my dear friend c shared a story with me. it was a first-person account of a woman's struggle to extricate herself from a girdle-type garment. i actually laughed until i cried, both because the writing was so hysterical and because i knew that there was no way my scrawny, boobie-deprived self could ever find myself in such a predicament.

fast forward to today, when i think, hey, i'm going to embrace my adorable petiteness, lay off the padded bras, and buy some cute little tops for summer. i'm tired of having more sweat than boobs in my bras for half the year. so i found three very adorable things at Evil Store Which Shall Not Be Named-actually, i found more than that, but the riches i make telling you people stories limited me to three.

i tried the first one on. ooooh... cute! ruffles and stripes and heart-shaped buttons. lovely. on to the second, over the new strapless bra (to fill things out a bit, and which was marketed under the brand name "sweet nothings"; my teenage daughter pointed out that "sweet nothings" was much better than "cow titties") and by golly, i looked positively... what's the word... gamine. not macaulay culkin in drag at all. not much, anyway. on to the third, an sweet little babydoll number with thin straps and a lovely floral pattern. it was a little tough to get on, but hell, life isn't supposed to be easy. it's on and is approved by miss "be glad you don't have udders" and then i'm ready to take it off, throw on the ancient nirvana t-shirt and get to bed.

um.

it won't come off. i have tugged, pulled, bent over and tried to pull it up from the bottom while jumping up and down... nothing. i have groped the hell out of this poor innocent shirt, trying to find the magic exit door... is there a zipper i missed? a hook and eye, perhaps? nope, just a bit of smocking across the back that makes you think the top isn't going to try and become part of your molecular structure.

i took a break from trying, thinking perhaps the difficult top was like a toddler, somehow... you know, you ignore them for a minute and then they forget about being a pain in the ass and cooperate. i forgot that kids are only like that on television, and in real life they kick and scream and grab on to you and will. not. let. go. which, of course, is exactly what this stupid shirt did.

i posted a facebook status about it, because come on, when you're in crisis, you go to facebook. scissors were suggested, but i just spent seven dollars on this thing. i haven't even had a chance to wear it downtown and have that crazy guy in the overalls tell me how pretty it looks, at least through his one half-good eye. and dammit, it looks cute. do you have any idea how hard it is for me to find a cute summery top that doesn't make me look like a giant finger with a brightly-colored band-aid wrapped just below the first knuckle? about as hard as that sparkly vampire guy gets when the werewolf takes off his shirt, and folks, that's hard. i can't just kill it.

so maybe if i turn it around backward it will come off. really. some law of physics says that if you're stuck in your clothing, turning it around backward will change the molecular structure and it will slide right off.

except that what really happens is that you'll be sitting on the bed in a backward camisole, making sounds like "oooh-god-dam-ugh-stretch, damn you, gah-ugh-dammit, get off me!" and anthropomorphizing the hell out of this poor scrap of cotton who you're convinced wants nothing more than to become you and steal your identity. why? who knows... no one can really see inside the head of a homicidal babydoll tank.

eventually i resigned myself to the fact that i'd have to wear this forever. however, i was too exhausted to right myself after the struggle, so here i sit, in a backward tank top with the straps hanging down around my waist, freaking blogging about it, and wishing i'd never laughed at that poor woman and her spandex anaconda.

this is all her fault.



update: i have been freed, thanks to lots of tugging and pulling by my wonderful daughter jess.

in silence, but not, obviously.

there is a reason i lived in silence for so long.

words have a way of traveling to places they don't need to go, getting beaten up and turned around along the way, so that by the time they reach the end of the path they're falling into the ears of people who don't understand, who want to manipulate and change them so they sound like things they think they need to hear.

when i say i'd rather deal alone, it isn't out of a sense of martyrdom or a feeling that i don't deserve company along the way. it's simply easier, and being the slacker that i am, i prefer the easy way most of the time, in almost everything. dealing with one thing alone allows you to focus on that... sharing it, most of the time, simply means you're adding shit to the pile, and complicates things unnecessarily.

and of course, by saying this, i am screaming into the silence, fucking for virginity, fighting for peace, right?

yes... but then, some things fester and rot if they sit in your head for too long, and abstract vague statements like this can get them out and still leave room for me to lie and say i didn't mean these words for you.

cranial ablation

today is one of those days: the kind that make you wonder about just about everything.

i have gary jules' cover of "mad world" on repeat and i feel like a cliche, looking out the window at the sun that stays out there and paints everything in light but me.

[cue the violins; somebody call morrissey and hand me a rusty razorblade. grungy girl's gone gloomy. hooray for accidental alliteration, right?]

seriously, it just makes you wonder, it's like something in your brain has woken up and you see things, you know things and god, these are things you don't want to know... everything you were and did and became is Right There In Your Face, all self-important and pompous saying see? you weren't who you thought after all.

it's not a fun place to be.

and the bills threaten to pile up, and the bacon sits untouched, and the cats are hiding under the couch and all you can do is close out the window, bring up the one that makes the cash and disconnect.

and if you thought i was there, you were wrong.

what happens when april changes her facebook status...

or, how to become a menagerie in a few simple steps.

so last week, i posted a status update to the effect of wanting a kitten to sleep by my feet. i wasn't entirely serious, i mean i was, because kittens are darling little fluffballs, but then they grow up and get knocked up when they slip out the door on the way to the appointment to get them fixed, and the next thing you know you have all kinds of darling little fluffballs climbing on the table and stealing your pepperoni and that just sucks.

but. i know a guy who knows a guy who has what i need... ok, they were women, but whatever. pretty soon i'm getting pictures of darling fluffballs sent to my phone by a lovely hairdresser who i've never met but knows one of my dearest friends in the world, and do i even need to tell you the next part? of course not, but i will. it went something like "omigoooooodness, wookit the wittle fwuffballs!" and then, because my smallest baby is no longer a baby and i'm feeling decidedly unloved these days, my ovaries migrated up to my brain and whispered "youuuuu neeeeeeed a kittehhhhhh", and of course you can't argue with ovaries, so i agreed. it was the only thing to do.

so then, seriously, it gets better, i find out that said lovely hairdresser has, at her disposal, a pair of very sweet and very homeless rats, complete with cage. now those of you who know me know that i am a sucker for rats. they're beautiful, smart, friendly, and i kind of look like one, so i'm like really really into them. so of course (yup, you know it) i go "oooooooh, RATS! of course i want them!"

and so i'm supposed to go meet with rat cat lady next week, but today i posted a status update that said something like "grmph", and she posts a comment asking do i want a kitty today. and OF COURSE i do, if you're having a grmph day, then a kitty is almost certainly a good way to turn that around.

so off i go to meet her, and the kids are all excited and we get there and there are omigod SEVEN kitties. now, i knew this, but actually seeing them is a whole something else altogether. SEVEN darling little fluffballs, wee little things, and so i immediately decide that sun is my kitty, he's wee and darling and a bit spastic, and then somehow we get on the topic of how we'll have two dogs and two rats and only one kitty. the children, of course, think this is a travesty. (i was, naturally, dead set against the idea of two kitties. really, how irresponsible can you get?)

we left with two kitties. will be returning next week to retrieve the rats.

on the way home, we stop for kitty food, catnip (cause it's not a cat if it's not a drugged, psychotic cat, right?) and toys, and on the way out, night time rent-a-cop asks me if the kids are allowed to drink juice. so of course i'm thinking, um, did you rent the uniform from the costume shoppe? cause that sounds kind of creepy... but it turns out that they had this about-to-expire green shit, i mean they call it juice but it's that colored sugar water in those little bottles with the caps that don't really stay on so if you give it to your kid in the car it inevitably winds up all over the place, but only if you're on the way TO somewhere, never if you're on your way home FROM somewhere. anyway, they were giving that stuff away and i rarely buy it for the kids, so now they're jacked up on ice cream from the ice cream truck (or the music truck, as my dear friend ellen's poor hubby grew up believing it was), double kitty lovin', and now omigod GREEN JUICE FOR FREE. they have inherited my love of bargains and free stuff, so they were more excited about that than the actual juice, i think.

anyway, we're almost home when i go over a speed bump and omigod a turtle. slam on the brakes, jerk the car around in the next available spot, and go back to where he is, still cruising along, because you know. he's a turtle. they're slow. so i'm sitting there pondering how to get the turtle, cause there's not really anyplace to pull over, and jess can't hop out and get it because she's holding the spare kitten, and i don't really want to jump out and leave the kids in the car in the middle of the road, so luckily friendly jogger happens along, looks down at pokey turtle and says "oh, did you come back for this?" and i of course say "yes, would you hand him to me please?" and he does and jess says it's a snapping turtle and jogger says it's a box turtle and i think they're both wrong, but then while i'm holding him i realize he's kinda flat (but not like run over flat, just flat flat) and has this neon yellow on his face and these claws that are like, badger claws... so i'm trying to drive up lakeshore one-handed with the mutant turtle in the other hand trying to claw his way up my sleeve, and trying to get to the lake so i can drop him off, which let me tell you was NOT easy. so finally, i get there and there's this nice couple who unfortunately had just got done walking around the lake and couldn't drop the badger turtle off by the water, but they did check him out thoroughly and deem him a baby snapper, and dude says "see, if he bit you that would hurt" and then hands him back to me... so i leave kids and kittens in the car and run down the path-wrong way, turn around and go the other way... reach under a heap o' thorny bushes to get mr. badgerclaws off the path and out of the way and FINALLY, finally i made it home.

and i forgot to make cobbler out of the berries zac picked, and i promised, so now i have to go do that.

the point of all of this is, don't change your facebook status unless you're prepared for an adventure, a major life change, or both.

hours

the days are short in january, if you calculate by hours of light, but the darkness is what makes the days longer, really... summer has long hours of sun, but they pass like christmas when you're five; too short and never enough time for everything. january's hours are longer, endless sometimes, cold rain and grey skies conspiring with the clock to make your blood run slow and your eyelids heavy by four o'clock.

so we fill the hours with things that make them not heavy but simply full, weightless... chocolate cake soaked in bourbon (will i ever eat anywhere besides mother and son bistro? probably not); hula hoop marathons in the living room; long telephone conversations with friends, more laughter than words, and before long the hours are mere minutes and then it's spring.

i am trying hard to fill my hours with things like that, and not with thoughts of things that can't go wrong but that scratch at my brain anyway... my habit is to let everything go until it's slapping me in the face all at once, and i am dialing phones and typing madly and regretting not connecting where i should have, sooner. so today, this january, i am stopping mid-sentence to play a quick game of tic-tac-toe with the baby or paint a moustache on a little cowboy. i'm forcing myself out from under the covers, talking to people and smiling and feeling better for it. rather than hitting the pause button and riding the last months of winter out in a cave, watching the world creep by, i am on fast-forward, making it pass quickly, giving it no choice but to fly.

it can't last forever, right?

year zero

i have a confession.

i am a serial blogger. i create blogs, post a few times, then get distracted, lose the log-in info and eventually they starve to death in some dark corner of the internet, huddled in a quivering heap. one of these days someone will stumble onto this pile of skeletal words i left behind, and then i'm going to be in some serious shit.

i have another one, ok?

i don't get the whole time thing. i have no idea why today is the first day of the new year. i mean, everything is dead (don't think i have this fascination with death; it's just a coincidence today, i swear) and nothing is starting new. but thanks to some guy a gazillion years ago who decided to make a new calendar, here we are, all hung over and reeking of gunpowder, full of resolve and hope and all that good stuff. it's ok, though... i have this bizarre neurosis about odd numbers and i'm just glad that damn 9 is finally gone.

so, in keeping with the spirit of the day, the new year, resolutions and all that, let's see if i can start this thing up and keep it alive. i have no idea what i'm going to say from here on out, but-those who know me are chuckling right now-i do have quite a bit to say, sometimes. and hey, if you read it here, you don't have to put up with my annoying little voice.

sound good?

k then, let's call this thing started.

xoxo-
ape