our tax dollars at work!

Work has been killing my senses.  Not work itself, just the location.  The city of Bremerton has decided to close down 5th street downtown to install some kind of pipe upgrade to the sewer system or something – I work on 5th street.  In the middle of the road where all the jackhammering & dirt scooping & foul-mouthed (but fucking funny) city employees are you’ll be able to see my office windows…

… Wide open because we’re in the basement of the downtown branch of the library so it’s stuffy and now loud as hell because street level is just about ear level for me.  I cannot adequately express just how bowel-shaking the noise gets at times, seriously, I can’t even talk on the phone, it’s pointless unless I wanna make fun of old people, which I don’t.  Right now.

But today, it was relatively quiet.  I wondered why until one of my co-workers comes up to my desk & goes “Is that bulldozer supposed to look like that?” and I was all “huh?” before I stood up and then I laughed.  Real hard.

Seems our brilliant city employees need some re-training or something ‘cuz this is looking like an epic construction fail to me.

I’m still puzzling over how this happened… and it goes to show just how freakishly loud the jackhammering gets ‘cuz I didn’t hear this happening & really, I should have…

They brought in a fucking enormous crane to heft this tonnage out, it was rather impressive!

Mission accomplished!  And I didn’t see a single hairy city worker asscrack in the process which gave me immense satisfaction.

update – sorry for the edit.

hot hot heat.

I don’t have a lot to say.  It’s too damn hot to do anything but drink beer & keep my clothes wet under the garden hose every half hour.  But since I’m such a generous person who loves to share, I give to you readings from our weather station.

That’s the high we hit at our home here in Bremerton yesterday.  Highest temperature I’ve ever experienced, including Las Vegas.  The number in the upper right hand corner was the temperature inside the house.  Dang.

This is today’s high temp.  Not impressed.

It is simply amazing to me how unused to this kind of weather we are out here in the Pacific NW.  The lack of sleep, dehydration (ok, the extreme amount of beer I’ve been swilling isn’t helping that but that’s not the point), and impressive weight of the heat are utterly draining after about, oh, 5 days of the shit.  Here at home we haven’t dipped below 100 for a daily high since last Friday.

If anyone ever again questions why Summer is my least favorite season I’ll make sure to reference July 2009 with madness in my eyes.

roman candles in the wind.

42… it doesn’t feel a whole lot different than yesterday when I was 41 but is that really a big surprise?

I still don’t have a firm, Webster-worthy grasp on who I am… I perpetually float along through life meeting people and doing things and living – but I have a hard time defining myself.  Is that such a bad thing?  I don’t know.  I can over-think & hyperanalyze myself to exhaustion but when asked to come up with 3 words to encapsulate myself I’m like, uh… hey, can I get an assist?

It’s been a very mellow, low-key day.  I wanted one thing only for my birthday & it surprised the hell out of me when I woke up to it – RAIN.  Lots of rain.  Stormy thundery rain, it was something magical!  We also had our first poppy bloom (I’ll get a picture of it for you when the rain won’t fry out my camera, Jen, I know you love poppies!) and the l-lysine supplement I’m taking to eradicate a monstrous cold sore is working wonders.  It’s a good day to turn 42.

I was thinking, if I had to pick just one thing that sucked the most about aging?  Definitely, hands down, the body breakdown.  I’m still strong but the hell if I don’t feel exertion something fierce the next day – completely unlike it was for me 20 yrs ago…

Which reminds me of the high school here in town (same one Ash goes to) – on their reader board they’re welcoming the high school reunion class of 1999.  OMFG.  It’s their 10yr reunion!  It’s a bit of a mindfuck to realize that in June of 1999 I was 31, Mia was turning 3, and we still lived in Portland, OR.  The remembrance of time has a way of slamming reality in your face, hah…

So anyway, yeah, if I could live off morphine for the rest of my life without having the mental side effects of being trashed on opiates I’d be ok.  I mean, you know what I’m saying!  I feel your bones hurtin’ every day, too!

I found Darrin on Facebook last night, it sort of surprised me to see him there.  I also found his ex-wife Toni… sorta got me self-conscious & I have no fucking idea why.

I think if I make resolutions of any sort from here on out, it’ll be on my birthday.  It makes sense, why make changes at the beginning of the calendar year, make them on your life anniversary, ya know?  hahah, can you tell I’m toying with one right now?

Although it’s probably now physically imprudent for me to take up snowboarding or street luge or the Tour de France, I can still strive to experience every moment in life like it was my last.  I’m not saying live life & be happy even when I’m depressed… that’s lame & impractical.  It’s just time now, I think, to be ok with not being perfect.  Wow, finally!… yeah, I know.

Maybe in time I’ll come up with 3 words to describe ME all on my own without having to phone-a-friend, hah.

The Squirrels ~ A Fiscal Parable

The squirrels lived a happy, placid existence in their little community on the western edge of the park. Foraging and storing food during summer and autumn while sharing the stored harvest during the leaner months. It was a difficult life, full of dangerous predators and harsh times of need, but the squirrels pretty much accepted this as their destiny. They were, for the most part, happy.

One day, some of the better-off squirrels (those that had brought chipmunks across the border as slave labor) got together to talk about the state-of-things. Before long these get-togethers became regular. They called their conferences “recurring meetings”. Meetings begat agendas and minutes and subcommittees and study groups. Before long the well-to-do squirrels had invented bureaucracy.

One day, after a particularly long and boring meeting, the wealthy squirrels (who now called themselves “The Board”) posted an “Annual Report”. The non-board squirrels were advised that resources were being underutilized and that a more efficient process was necessary. The Report also advised of dire consequences if their recommendations were not followed.

The Board additionally announced that they had named the community The Ubiquitous Squirrels Amalgamated, or USA for short.

In tiny print at the bottom of The Report it was announced that “hearings” would be held to discuss details of a plan to “jump-start” nut production. Those squirrels that even saw the fine print were unable to attend as the meetings were scheduled during prime nut gathering times.

The Board decreed (following these poorly attended hearings) that nut storage needed to be centralized. A field was chosen and all squirrels were required to pay 50 nuts to buy the field (it was “owned” by several board members in a complicated trust arrangement – so profit was assured). Most squirrels were forced to move closer to the field to cut down on the commute and save themselves a few nuts. This drove up nesting site prices (the branches and trees in the immediate vicinity were owned by those board members that did not own the field). Many squirrels found themselves borrowing well beyond their nut-earning potential to buy their nests. They were told by nut-conomists that this was a good thing and they could always re-finance later. Besides, with limb prices skyrocketing, surely it was best to buy immediately.

The value of nuts began to decrease. The Board solved this problem by creating (and immediately increasing) the nut tax and borrowing nuts from neighboring colonies. This, they told the squirrels, would lead to a more stable nut-conomy.

Around this time, many of the squirrels who owned or were heavily invested in the nut production industry decided that, while outrageous profits were fun and all, more was MUCH better. They commissioned studies that “proved” that squirrels residing in the USA did not want to work entry-level or production jobs. The owners responded swiftly by out-sourcing the majority of production and customer service positions to other colonies, especially those on the unfashionable, eastern edge of the park where labor costs were decidedly cheaper and environmental protection laws were non-existent. Thousands of squirrels from the USA found themselves unemployed while the greedy squirrels grew very rich indeed.

In a frighteningly short amount of time (for the working-class squirrels, anyway) many of the squirrels who had been encouraged to borrow money to buy their nests were now unable to pay their mortgages. Many were foreclosed on and they became nest-less. The Board, who had financed the nests of most squirrels, blamed the nest owners and the nut-loaning industry (ignoring the fact that they, essentially, were the industry) for entering into ill-advised agreements.

Animal communities that had been contracted by the greedy squirrels began to realize that they could benefit themselves by diversifying and thus would not be reliant on the greedy squirrels of the USA. When it came time to renew their contracts with the owners in the USA they were able to increase their fees because, frankly, they had the owners by the nuts.

Meanwhile, The Squirrel Board had appointed the idiot son of a former leader to the post of Exalted Ruler of Squirrels. Using the surplus of nuts leftover from his predecessor, the idiot-son-of-a-squirrel declared war on a colony on the eastern side of the park. He justified his actions by claiming that the far-off colony held (or was developing) “weapons of mass deforestation”. Many suspected that the reasons for war were nothing more than an exercise in nut-grabbing, but it was unpatriotic to say so, so the many said nothing.

Of course, no weapons-of-mass-deforestation were ever found, not even a rusty hatchet. By this time, of course, it was too late.

As the war and occupation took their toll in nuts and blood, the surplus of nuts dwindled and the nut-conomy weakened. The value of the nut decreased in comparison to the cross-park acorns, walnuts, and pecans. Soon enough, even the more well-to-do squirrels were feeling the pinch and were unable to pay on their nut-loans. The Squirrel Board (having become foolish and greedy squirrels) refused to admit there was a problem until they realized that the banks were running out of nuts. As they were heavily invested in the banks (at least those that they did not own outright) one thing became clear…immediate and decisive action was required to avoid losing their nuts.

It was decided to spend 700 billion nuts to do, well…something. But all the pundits and experts agreed that this was just the thing to inspire investment.

It didn’t work. The Nut Market dropped like fall in Vermont, despite the promises that the bailout would inspire “confidence” in investors. Investors, it seemed, simply didn’t have the nuts. The 700 billion in nuts went directly to the squirrel elite (through a complicated series of subsidiaries used to hide where the nuts were really going, hence the name “shell” companies) while millions of squirrels lost their jobs and nests.

The moral (if indeed there is one) is this: When it comes to the present economy, it makes little difference if you are squirrel or human, ultimately you’ll end up taking it in the nuts.

the lunatic is on the grass.

I just had a 4-day holiday from work & it was a harsh reminder of how good it was to be a stay-at-home mom back in the day… usually when I get home from work I’m too bagged to do shitfuck, dinner is a CHORE (that GOB has thankfully taken on in abundance) and my girls piss me off.  But when I’m rested & feeling like myself again (even if I am bleeding like a freshly slaughtered animal) it’s not so bad.  It felt good to nurture again.

But today ended all that and now I’m back to my usual cranky self, hah.

In lieu of boring text about my boring life, I’ll bore you with some photos… let’s make this a Kodak moment.

This last Friday GOB ‘n the girls ‘n I spent the day at Wild Waves theme park… holy shit it was fun & filled with sunburns, woohoo!  The picture shows the Timberhawk, the first ride I insisted we all go on… none of us had ever been on a wooden roller coaster before.  omg.  H and I went on it twice in a row, the girls had to sit out the second time, hahah…

Check out my bug bites! – and hey, if you think YOUR skin looks great in ultra close up macro fashion you’re wrong… if you’re approaching 42, anyway.  What I was fascinated by was how the skin under my tattoo was black.  I know, wtf Sherlock… but I guess I just figured the ink wouldn’t go down that far, I dunno!  I do love the tattoo process… it’s beautiful.

A stairway at this park on Lake Washington.

We have a garden gnome.  I love dollar stores.

We have TWO garden gnomes!  I could so totally fill my garden with goofy shit.

Our first tomatoes are ready… the 2 Matinas got picked tonight for some sandwiches, mmm.  GOB got one & we shared the other with our neighbor Jill ‘cuz she’s rather cool…

Matina is small but cute!  I’m kinda surprised how small it is, but it’s an heirloom so what the hell… I don’t care…

Timberaxe, the only ride I wanted to tackle but couldn’t because my family doesn’t like to get shityerpants scared.  By the time we worked our way back over later in the afternoon & I was in total don’t-give-a-fuck-if-I-gotta-ride-alone mode, I was completely drenched (it’s a water park too) & I couldn’t get on the ride.  I was BUMMED.  I did get on one thrill shot by myself but this one eluded me.

The best parts about Wild Thing:  getting to go on it twice ‘cuz the ride operators were feeling uber generous; the loop gave us a brilliant shot of the sun when we were upside down; the corkscrew inversions (can’t see them in the picture) were the bomb with your hands in the air….. The worst part was how short the ride was.  It was, like, 50 seconds or so?  And we never got fast enough to hit that beautiful zero-g moment.

On a more mundane note, Guitar Hero World Tour is sucking the life out of me & my kids.  I actually got through Tool “Parabola” without being boo’d off stage!  And I managed to make sure I got Weird Al Yankovic’s “Eat It” lyrics in the girls’ heads so that “Beat It” (for the life of me I cannot figure out why this song is included) is no longer painful to listen to on a constant basis.

I would be ever-so-happy to NEVER hear Modest Mouse ever again, though… even if they do hail from my hometown.

death are the kids of you.

Talk about your dead blog, wtf… it’s funny, this always happens.  GOB & I finally figure we’re going to dual blog (again), it’s good for a while, then it collapses under its own feather weight.  So, in light of the money we’re wasting, I’ll waste some time here & take advantage of our arid domain.

The girls are out of school and the boredom is running at a frenzy… you know, I don’t think the ages of 13 and 17 are what they were 20 (or so, hah) years ago.  I mean, when I was a kid at either age it was pretty much feast or famine on my own at home.  I had to create time killers, shit to pass the time on my own since there were no brothers or sisters to maim & torture… and somehow I made it without texting or social networking to my friends how much my life sucked because my parents were poor & couldn’t afford all the empty glitter my friends had…

We try, we do… every parent worth their salt tries yet somehow we consistently fail because we’re not <insert youth vernacular for cool> enough to drop them off in downtown Seattle for anime/comic/gaming conventions filled with stalker freaks with pockets filled with cash to keep them occupied while we (GOB & I) go off & drink & socialize & do “grown-up” shit…

And this is the crap us abusive parents have to contend with – more, more more.  It’s never fucking enough… even when you’re finding creative ways to cook tofu & jasmine rice for dinner because lasagne isn’t in the damn budget this week… & tofu was all they wanted the week before… there’s never a moment to catch up.

A couple of years ago my oldest daughter, during her mental blight of family loyalty, voraciously complained to her friends that all I fed her & her sister for dinner was “oven food,” which was a combination of veggie chicken nuggets & strips served with oven fries… it hurt like hell but at the same time it was fucking hysterical because yanno… I asked them what they wanted for dinner.  Guess what the answer was?  OVEN FOOD.

So Ash decided (with the help of her chosen friends at the time) that I was trying to make them FAT.  HELLO?????  Jesus, sorry for helping you make healthy choices in your diet, and by the way you fucking asked for this, why the hell are you making me feel like shit for giving you the healthy alternative for what you want?  Oh, that’s right – it’s easier to complain than to effect a change and stand your ground.

Damn, I forgot something, that’s right.  I’m a messed up, selfish, piece of crap drug-addicted mother who spent your “college fund” (whatever the hell that was about) on dope and ramen.  Yup, that’s it.  You know what’s different about then & now?  Other than hypervigilance?

We don’t talk important shit around the girls anymore.  And that’s sad because you know, of all the places in my life I thought was safe?  Under my own roof was tops on the list.  Oh, and shit happens to be a LOT more expensive these days than it was even 5 yrs ago when all they wanted were immense amounts of Lego.  SHIT, I forgot – we’re supposed to conjure up animal-friendly zoos and aquariums to visit so they can enjoy one day, just ONE day, out of the year.  Oh well, guess GOB & I will have to silently suck up their fake happiness for yet another year… while they go to bed thinking we’re oblivious to whatever disappointment we’re guilty of this year.

ANYWAY.  The girls are good, hahah.  Tomorrow is Mia’s 13th birthday… hello to an all new set of drama as we progress from tween into teen.  I’m so glad I won’t have any more kids.

Lots of death this week.  I used to feel really bad for Farrah Fawcett then Jen sent me before & after pics of her face & now I’m all disenchanted.  Someone should bottle Jen, the world would be… hey, that could be a meme, like that Chuck Norris thing…

• Jen can slam a revolving door.
• Some people wear Superman pajamas – Superman wears Jen pajamas.
• Jen does not sleep – she WAITS.
• Jen’s calendar goes straight from March 31 to April 2.  No one fools Jen.
• Jen counted to infinity.  Twice.

There’s also one I heard about Barbara.  She sleeps with a night light… not because she’s afraid of the dark, it’s because the dark is afraid of her.

If anything, I am an equal opportunity dork.

life flows on within you & without you.

It’s not that I’m completely devoid of things to talk about… that’s totally not the case. It’s just that my passion is in the garden right now, so make this your invitation to my little earthly orgy. :D

Look at our little tomatoes! If we didn’t grow Romas I’m sure GOB’s Sicilian ancestors would have hexed our place  so we grew a pot of those and some heirlooms in the ground. These are our first Matinas… next up is Big Zac & last & most anticipated, Momotaro.

Because you have to have basil with tomatoes.  I mean, why wouldn’t you?

A photo (sorta stolen since I don’t think I was supposed to have my camera out) of the entrance to the water garden at one of my favorite local nurseries.  You can kinda see the koi if you look closely in the water!  The only bad part about this section of the place is that it makes me deeply long for a water garden… holy shit the joy & serenity a garden + fountain of lotus & water cypress could give me… but I dunno.  That’s one of those heavy planning things.

We have so much wild bearded iris it’s crazaaay.  Such beautiful madness.

Depending on the angle of the sun, the next door neighbor’s lawn raccoon can look innocent & inquisitive or downright mean & undead.  Yeah, ok, so I took some liberties with it… but you get the idea, he’s my Rocky.  My eerie, weirdo creepy-assed happy Rocky.

Look at all that sex just waiting to happen.

I don’t dislike the color orange anymore.

The Limerick Joke

So, there’s this young cultural anthropology professor, see? His doctoral thesis, the study of “Cross-Gender Linguistic Morphology Through Participant Observation of the Limerick as a Means of Cultural and Class Assimilation Among Polytheistic Populations”, was well received and he was eager to attain tenure. Limericks were a hot property at the time and he was the closest his field had to a genuine expert. None of his colleagues were surprised when he received a huge research grant…and, of course, a massive textbook deal.

He carefully planned his junkets to Japan (to compare limericks with haiku) and created a complex algorithm that proved the cave paintings at Lascaux to be rudimentary attempts at the A-A-B-B-A (no relation) rhyming scheme. Everything was going well and proceeding according to plan – with one notable exception, he was in desperate need of examples of dirty limericks for chapter 17 (“Scatological and Fornicalogical* Themes in the Genre including Specific Reference to Nantucket”). He sent out inquires to his colleagues. He called old friends from college. He crossed three continents, reading every line written in men’s rooms in every bar and gas station he passed. Soon the submissions were flooding in.

With the publishing deadlines rapidly approaching, he became increasingly worried that he did not have an adequate sample of the species. Sure, he had plenty of the garden-variety dirty limericks…but he feared he was missing the one mother-of-all poem that would serve as the focal pivot, the one that would prove his theorem and establish his position.

It was just days before the deadline and he was losing weight, jittery from too much coffee, and his hair was falling out…when he received a late-night phone call from his old college roommate.

“Dude,” his friend exclaimed, “I have just heard the DIRTIEST, NASTIEST, RAUNCHIEST limerick EVER!”

*******

I interrupt this joke to make a dubious point.

There are some jokes that make me laugh consistently…for no explainable reason. Even my mother-in-law, a woman seriously lacking in the humor realm, has a favorite joke. It involves a station wagon full of penguins. It is a silly joke and one that normally wouldn’t crack me up to the point of uncontrolled giggling, but knowing that SHE (of all people) told it sends me into paroxysms of convulsive snickering. I am smiling right now, in fact, just thinking about her joke.

The point I am trying to make? Humor is a funny thing (hah!).

This joke above (and below) is one of my favorites. It was originally told to me by a guy named George. George was a friend until he totally blew up at me. I offended him by pointing out that ultra-right-wing bloggers (of which he is frighteningly enthusiastic) might have been just a touch off-base and out-of-line in attacking the credibility of Rosa Parks on the day of her death. Republicans don’t like when people disagree…with them or their friends, and George really didn’t like being told that the links he had sent me were in bad taste and showed a serious lack of sensitivity.

Anyway, George told me the Limerick Joke at a bar a few blocks away from the University of Washington campus…which should tell you a lot about my academic career.

I now return you to the joke.

*******

…so the professor is thrilled, despite being woken up at 3 am. “That’s great!” he said excitedly, “Tell it to me!”

His former roommate had reservations. “Whoa, no way dude, this is not just any old joke, ok? No way am I going to tell this to you over the phone, there are LAWS against that sort of thing fer chrissake.”

The professor was crestfallen, but refused to give in as time was critical. “Look,” he said in the calmest, most rational voice he could muster, “I have been researching limericks for nearly a decade. Just say “blank” for each of the offensive words in the joke, I’m sure that I can figure out the omitted vulgarities from there.”

His friend was less than convinced. “That won’t leave much of a joke…”, he mused.

“Just give it a try.” The professor was adamant. “Just say it quickly, I’ll write it down and figure it out from there.”

“Well, ok…here goes…”

The professor wrote frantically, without processing, as the caller rattled off the joke, then hung up the phone. Excitedly, he read the limerick:

“Blank-ety Blank-ety Blank,

Blank-ety Blank-ety Blank,

Blank Blank-ety Blank,

Blank Blank-ety Blank,

Blank-ety Blank-ety Fuck.”

=====================

* Yeah, I know it’s not a word…it’s a joke, ok? Get back up there and finish reading.

make it fast, make it quick.

A meme!  Go figure!  hah.

This time, you take the answers off the top of your head… just like I did.  :)

1. I need a cigarette:  Guess I’d better roll a couple more.

2. Sex:  Well hell yeah.

3. Relationships:  Complicated.  Very, very complicated.

4. Your Last Ex:  Lives in a world entirely different than the one I live in now.

5. Power:  Feel it.

6. Marijuana:  Funky skunky smelly green shit.

7. Crack: Ass?

8. Food:  Something I like to play with.

9. Your b/f or g/f?  Your face?

10. War:  Retarded enough to have some kind of fascination dominance.

11. Cars:  Wish I didn’t need one.

12. Gas Prices:  Like the blind kicking the quadriplegics.

13. Halloween:  Bad movie but that damn music during the stupid commercial during the movie lives with me forever.

14. Bon Jovi:  Could use some of my anti-frizz hair serum.

15. Religion:  Murder murder kill kill.

16. Worst Fear:  A sudden brain trauma that leaves me a vegetable.

17. Marriage:  Completely unnecessary.

18. Fashion:  Sucks.

19. Brunettes:  Who gives a shit?

20. Redheads:  Makes me wonder why so many women try so hard to be fake ones.

21: Work:  Don’t wanna think about that right now.

22: Pass the time:  I don’t pass time, I pass gas.

23: Football:  Depends who’s playing.

24: One night Stands:  Would probably make me feel cheap these days.

25: Pixie Stix:  Funny, I almost bought 2 giant ones for the girls this morning then realized that I was projecting…

26: Vanilla Ice:  I thought he got the deep-freeze a while ago?

27:  Porta Potties:  I HATE ALL THINGS HEMLEY.

28: High school:  nooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

29: Pajamas:  What fuckin’ pajamas?

30. Wood:  Depends who’s sportin’ it.

31. Surfers:  I’d love to try body surfing in my perfect Tahiti with no bugs, fish, or sharks.

32. Picture:  …of u and I engaged in a kiss – the sweat of your body covers me – can u my darling, can u picture this…

33. First Love:  sometimes still haunts me.

make yourself. le memememememememe.

The rules are usual… except the pictures have to be ones YOU took.  Follow if you wanna.  :)

What makes me employed.

(my  desk at work… no, there’s no glory.)

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What makes me stupid.

(Husky Stadium, without the mob mentality)

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What makes me marvel.

(My girls amaze me every day)

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What makes me worry.

(EMS is never a good thing when you’re on the treatment end.)

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What makes me pause.

(The love/hate relationship I have with nature… if I don’t pause I’ll go insane)

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