retrospective memory

i don't know why i called it that.

remembering fire ants and child-thieving arachnids

here.

pause.

i have to learn to accept the good things in my life as readily as i accept the bad, or i'm going to lose everything.

i'm terrified of the damage i've already done. changes are in order; i refuse to let insecurity and fear and lack of sleeping take away this perfect thing.

to be afraid of being loved is asinine.

black hole.

read it here.

you want me to cook your what?

i love grocery shopping with beau.

him: i don't know anything about picking out a squash.

me: i dunno, just get one.

him: well, this one looks the most phallic...

murder.

beau wants to get a bugzapper.

i'm less than thrilled with the idea of electrocuting thousands of poor innocent insects just because they get on our nerves.

i just took a drink of my hot cocoa, and when i set the mug down, there were two flies floating in it.

we're going to lowe's.

i don't know what to call this.

the past few days have been more stressful than i've seen in a while. i like my quiet little life, and when things come in and invade my space, disrupt my thoughts and remind me of how things used to be, it throws everything off.

i'm excited for new opportunities for the people i love, even though-coming on the heels of the stress i mentioned, especially-the thought of it sent me back into the dark for a little bit. once i settled into the idea, though, i realized something that i hadn't quite been ready to accept, and a conversation we had earlier-a silly thing, a joke, something i'll get teased about forever-has me rethinking just about everything today. not the path i'm on, or where i am now-i've never been happier. but i'm seeing further than i ever have, and the view is making my head spin a little bit.

i need a break, i think, from extraneous conversation and background noise. i need to wrap myself in silence and let myself figure out what i really think.

i never believed in anything, but i didn't believe in a lot of things. think about how i put that and you'll understand. things are changing and i need some time to acclimate to this.

overheard from the kitchen...

...where baby girl is on the phone with her friend:

my mom just ordered justin beiber party stuff for my birthday... no, no, he cut his hair... i KNOW. he can't do the flip anymore... have you seen him? he can't do the FLIP... no, she didn't get the pinata... she said she would have loved to get it for me but but she couldn't, then i told her it was a pull string and she couldn't bash him in the face anyway... yeah... i KNOW, i can't believe he cut his HAIR. i'll have to wear my purple justin beiber shirt... maybe my pink one... i can't decide.

jumping jesus on a pogo stick.

in sillier news...

a few weeks ago, beau and i were at a show at a local bar, and a stranger came up to us and declared us the "weirdest, quietest, hottest couple ever."

last night we were at a show at a different, much larger venue, and the same woman approached us and said we won the award for best costumes ever. (um, we weren't really in costume, much.)

it made me giggle.

we are awfully damn cute.

it's simple, really.

don't be a manipulative, obsessive fucktard. if you insist on being a manipulative, obsessive fucktard, don't act all hurt and offended when i call you on it. it takes a lot to get me really pissed off and i hate confrontation. if i'm calling you a manipulative, obsessive fucktard, i promise you it's because you've been a manipulative, obsessive fucktard for quite some time now.

also: i don't use analogies and multi-syllabic words to make you feel stupid. if those things make you feel stupid, chances are, you're stupid.

also: i don't respond logically and rationally because i'm uncaring or unfeeling. i respond thus because i am, most of the time, logical and rational. related: not basing every decision i make on your possible hurt feelings as a result thereof isn't called being uncaring or unfeeling. it's called i have my own life, you manipulative, obsessive fucktard.

/end rant.

this is so cool...

i'm making eyeball cookies with the kids in a few minutes. my mother gave the kids this kit to make them a long time ago, and we never got around to it. hopefully it's still good. and then i'm going to take my little girl and her friend and try on clothes and see what i should wear to the show tonight.

eyeball cookies, happy kids and bootsy collins live.

seriously, this is why i can't believe in karma. there's no way i deserve all this.

flies in the... no.

ah, the joys of domestic life.

i live in a dilapidated little farmhouse, almost a hundred years old. it's summertime and there are no screens on the windows, just panes of glass wrapped in crooked old slabs of wood. there's no air conditioning, so the windows are open from the time we get up until we go to bed.

you know what that means. flies.

beau hates flies. he hates bugs of any sort indoors, but flies seem to be the bane of his existence.

i don't like them, but i really hate those sticky gross flypaper strips you hang up to catch them so that you can proudly display their rotting corpses until there's no room left and you have to try and pull it down without touching any rotting insect bodies.

but. i also hate trying to have a conversation with my boy and trying not to crack up every two minutes when he has an OMIGOD FLY BY MY EAR seizure. so ok fine, we can hang up the stupid fly strips.

since he's nearly six feet tall and i'm a runt, he got to hang them up. cool, except that the flies must have had an orgy recently and all the girly flies were fertile. there's been a population explosion around here. and since beau is dead to the world till mid-afternoon, i got to try to hang one of the corpse strips in the mudroom if i wanted to be able to walk through there without being accosted by a horde of insects. they come with thumbtacks on the end, so it should be a simple matter of sticking it in the ceiling and going back to not being an evil fly-trapping killer.

ok, except that i can just barely reach the ceiling in there, and it's made out of old wooden beadboard, not the smooshy paper stuff that's in the rest of the house, so it's really hard to poke the thing in with my scrawny little fingers.

i'm a wimp. what can i say.

so i finally get it stuck in there and am feeling quite proud of myself. i'm about to walk away when it falls. it's a slow-motion thing, spiraling down toward the litter box, and in the millisecond that i have to react, i'm trying to decide which is worse: litter-covered flypaper strip, or trying to catch the dumb thing. of course, i'm a little slow, so before i can decide it lands on the edge of the box.

[insert string of bad words]

ok, but the litter is clean and it's just on the edge, so i pick it up and try again. i stick it in the same hole the tack made before and of course it falls again.

genius that i am, i try to catch it this time.

those bitches are STICKY. good god. and somehow, this thing transformed itself from simple sticky paper strip into some kind of homicidal paper boa constrictor.

it wrapped itself around my arm and would. not. let. go. i wrestled with it for a few seconds, cussed a little bit, and it finally let go of me.

and went right after my other arm.

by now, i'm pissed. i'm not going to be like steve irwin and get taken out by a lame-ass nemesis like a sting ray or a flypaper anaconda. i grab it by its stupid little thumbtack head and yank.

ha. i am the victor. i carry its still-alive but defeated body into the kitchen and grab a bar stool. wrestle them both back into the mudroom and somehow manage to get one knee up on the stool while keeping the flypaper at bay.

and the stool goes ka-thunk.

and the pissed off writer goes goddammit stupid crooked uneven floors, what the fuck. and gets down and moves the thing an inch to the left and an inch to the right until it's semi stable.

and then i haul my pissed-off, cranky, afraid-of-heights self up onto the stool and pound the last bit of life out of the head of that maniacal strip of trying to eat my arm.

bitch ain't going ANYWHERE now.

to the sink, to wash the sticky off.

and wash. and wash. and wash.

what the hell is that MADE of? i need to find out and when my kids are acting up, i can just brush a little onto their toes and hang them from the ceiling. they'll be able to get down sometime about the time i'm ready to retire. [i'm KIDDING, ok? i'll never be able to retire.]

if i can't get this sticky shit off in the shower, i'm going to have to send beau to the hardware store for turpentine or something.

he just got up. if i hear one. single. word. about the flies in here, i'm turning the flypaper snakes loose on him.

yearlong.

so life has changed considerably since the last time i posted here. other than this morning, i mean, but that doesn't count.

i moved to a different house. i dyed my hair purple. i went full-time with the writing. i started work on my second book. the last time i really posted anything here, i had just become friends with the cute, scruffy, kind of weird friend-of-some-friends. as i write this, he's sound asleep in my bed, cuter and weirder than i thought back then, but a little less scruffy. it evens out.

i'm happier now.

our little house is nestled in the elbow crook of two roads, on the edge of the same small town i've lived in for years. it has a huge wraparound porch that hugs three sides of the place. when we sit out back we have to pause our conversation while the budweiser trucks lumber past; on the opposite side, the kids draw with chalk and race their bikes up the dead-end street under the watchful eye of two gnarly tim burton trees. the kitchen cabinets are covered in old photographs of the kids and us and other family members; the bathroom looks like it belongs tucked in the back of a dive bar vibrating to the sounds of a dead kennedys cover band; a fat orange cat rests on top of the record player in the library, watching me through one sleepy eye while i work.

did i mention that i'm happier now? happier, i think, than i've ever been.

this is a life made of stretching dollars and extension cords; of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at two in the morning, laughing and making plans while the kids sleep soundly two rooms away; of music and light and too much cat hair on the floor. it's a life where promises are unnecessary; to make them would be ridiculous, like asking your arm to promise to be attached when you wake in the morning. we simply are, without expectations, and still every expectation is met.

so that's life in the past year, since i posted about something silly my little girl did. she's still doing silly things, i'm still doing crazy shit like getting stuck in my clothes, and life is still a manic ride full of rants and rage and incredible adrenaline rushes that hit out of nowhere.

i'm glad you're here. stick around.

defector.

i have a confession.

i went over to the dark side. i started using tumblr. maybe i'm just an old fart and don't understand the new technology, or maybe i'm simply set in my ways and like what i'm used to. (see: old fart, above.) i started getting complaints about not being able to comment on my blogs and stuff like that, so ok ok ok, i'm coming back.

i'll be posting links to the old tumblr stuff here, and i'll post links to the new stuff here on tumblr, so that my meager following there can still keep up.

that's all for now. stay tuned.