Awkwardly Social

For some reason I find it incredibly hard not to laugh when a four year old comes running into the dining room covered head to waist in orange colored vomit, screaming bloody murder.

Fiona was doing particularly well, eating a whole bowl of rice and a couple of peas. She had gorged herself earlier on Cheetos and fruit and a sample of eggnog. With the promise of after dinner eggnog if she finished her meal without a fuss, Fiona wolfed it all down.

I handed her a half full glass. She chugged it. It was gone in moments. “I think I ate too much,” became her refrain for the next five minutes. We all told her when we eat to much we like to lay down.

She disappeared into the living room. Then I heard a little cough and splutter. I saw a little puddle of barf on the pillow next to her head. What I didn’t realize was that somehow she had barfed so much that it ran down the pillow into her hair and well just everywhere. She was covered in vomit. And very upset about it. It was kind of like if the kids in Carrie had poured watery orange colored oatmeal with orange and chicken chunks all over Carrie instead of pigs blood. That was what she looked like.

And I felt really bad for laughing. But I couldn’t stop.

My sister keeps putting up my blog on the tv computer* when I walk in the room and hitting refresh, then looking at me with a scowl when nothing new comes up.

So here I am sitting in the living room watching Amelia eat a belt and a hanger, my sister trying to crochet and Fiona cooking in the kitchen that “Santa” brought her, to get my new post up on the big screen tv.

We all survived the holidays and my mom’s birthday (which surprisingly enough she didn’t stretch out for a week like she normally does or make me drive everywhere “because it’s her birthday!” I guess she’s finally growing up).

The kids are adorable, Amelia has this delicious growl that makes her sound super evil and makes me want to eat her face off. Fiona is asserting her will everywhere she goes, making me proud that she’s going to grow up just as shit-bat crazy as I am but twice as hot making many, many men super sad and tormented.

Being here makes me tired. I have to watch my mouth (Fiona scolded me for calling the armrests in my sister’s mini-van stupid), I have to pratice my patience with Fiona the most, she can be a tough one, just getting through dinner without a fuss is impossible. 4. years. old. So glad I don’t have kids. So very, very glad. Anyway, it’s hard for me, especially since I am never around kids. Ever. They just don’t happen in my world. And when they do cross my path I can ignore them because they aren’t related to me and don’t call me their best friend.

*The ‘tv computer’ is my brother-in-law’s uber-geeky computer that illegally rips dvds, and also allows my sister to surf the internet using the ginormous tv screen. Having geeks in the family is so very comforting and amusing.

So… hi everybody! Merry Chrimess. Apparently I was drunk the entire months of November and December when I was on-line shopping for my family. Some things I never bought, other things don’t look familiar but I did buy, some people are getting the presents they want other people are just… getting a single present. Actually let’s be honest, no one is getting the right thing. Except my mom. I think. Whatever. I’m alive, I’m not mooching off my family anymore for things like auto insurance and I’m super healthy. (both my sister and my mom said I look skinny! that’s truly an awesome gift from them, they never say stuff like that. Maybe because I never am!)

My brother-in-law and I were talking about how absentminded and unfocused quitting smoking makes you. It’s true. We’re both basically ADHD kids walking around without our cancer-causing Ritalin sticks. Concerned about your child being medicated? Introduce them to the movies of the fifties, sixties and seventies! Your seven year old will be talking like Bette Davis or worse, Robert Deniro, and smoking Lucky filters in no time, but in addition, they will be focused on their coloring and spelling like nobody’s business.

While my flight was delayed, I wrote this -
safari keeps crashing and for some reason I’ve not got it in my head that it is some sort of sign. You know. Superstition. Something in my proximity keeps “crashing”… I’m getting on an airplane… geddit? but I must say my whole new Zen lifestyle has me kind of unworried about it all. My flight is delayed at least an hour? no problem. I woke up an hour late? showers are overrated! I might not make my connection to Seattle? I hear San Francisco is nice this time of year. If I do make my connection, my bags won’t get to my final destination? I’m sure Amelia and Fiona are just excited to see me, they won’t care about their presents…

I have mantras now. Maybe they aren’t real mantras, because I’m pretty sure real mantras are like OM OM OM. I’d look it up, but Safari, it keeps crashing! Most them I’m not going to share with you because it’s a little embarrassing to admit some of the things I have to repeat over and over again.

Oh what the hell, it’s Christmas! I’ll share anything!

Here’s a particularly good one. “It’s not [disease of the day], it’s not [disease of the day], it’s not [disease of the day].”

How about this one, “My ass is perfect, my ass is perfect, my ass is perfect.”

(Shut up. It IS perfect, I have the mantra to prove it.)

Ooo this is a good one, I use it often, especially in traffic, “Don’t pee your pants, don’t pee your pants, don’t pee your pants.”

It’s not always about me, sometimes it’s about my car. “there is plenty of gas, there is plenty of gas, there is plenty of gas.”

Or, “Oil changes are overrated, oil changes are overrated, oil changes are overrated.”

I really missed blogging, I missed reading blogs - actually, in the spirit of the baby Jesus I must say I failed miserably at the ‘reading hiatus.’ Honestly, I don’t know how one does that. How can you get through a day without reading? The first hour I was reading my Diet Coke can over and over. I didn’t read you guys, I felt like that was ‘healing’ enough. I don’t know who that lady thinks she is, but not reading is impossible! IMPOSSIBLE!

At some point I want to tell you about my truly terrible thursday, but i’m tired - look at that, too tired to capatilize. or psell right. spell. g’night.

oh, and a hot flight attendant (male) spilled a drink all over me and while wiping it up he rubbed my leg. then he gave me a double bloody mary instead of a single and now i am impregnated with his hot asian seed. louie just did a spit take. i’m not impregnated, but he was really trying, and if i wasn’t already the luckiest girl on the planet to have a boy like louie, i’d have totally let hot asian flight attendant with the cheekbones and the touchy hands impregnate me. my family mixes well with the asians. just ask my sister.

Louie asked me this weekend what kind of stuff I’ve been writing for The Artist’s Way. (A book my friend Jen calls a freaky cult book that should be avoided at all costs.) I kind of wiggled uncomfortably in my seat, sighed and looked out the window. I was trapped. In the car. Far away from my freaky cult book. Was this some kind of intervention? A prelude to a harsher set of questions?

me: um, you know. I’m just. It’s morning pages. Which is like a journal. Sort of a way to clear my head and make the page a safe place to put anything.

[My cult leader would be so proud of that answer! Artfully dodging yet still saying something that sounds like I’m actually saying something]

Louie: I thought you were going to say I had to buy the book or something.

[shit. he’s totally on to me! I was going to tell me he should read it if he wanted to understand it! stay cool.]

me: ha. hahaha. no. Nothing like that. Just clearing my head. Page is a safe place. Routine. You know, that kind of thing.

[and doing excersizes wherein I have to list people who are supportive and those who are not. I’m encouraged to excise the ones who aren’t from my life…]

Louie: Well. Good.

[Phew. Louie still technically supportive. Highly suspicious but supportive. He gets to stay. For now.]

I’m in Week 4 of this dumb book. I think this is the farthest I’ve gotten before and the exact week I quit. I know that because this week I’m supposed to go on a “Reading hiatus.” That is, I cannot read anything. Nada. Zilch.

I find this stupid. My cult leader tells me, of course someone who is addicted to words will find this stupid. But seriously, there are things that are attached to my paycheck that require me to read. Here’s where the cult leader actually told me to procrastinate. It’s some sort of weird trick.

Anyway, I’m going to do it, because when you are in a cult you do what your leader tells you to do, even if it involves drinking Koolaid or killing oneself while wearing a dorky purple robe. You just do it. That means I won’t be reading blogs or comments or books or magazines or news stories. Basically, everything won’t be read. Except stuff that gives me my paycheck.

Also, I’m taking the week off of blogging to get some screenwriting done.

My reading blackout week ends on Christmas Day. I’ll be voraciously checking up on your lives and I can’t think of a better Christmas present than that.

Happy Holidays! XOXOXO

The Artist’s Way (AKA AA for Writers) is going well. Pages are being written. My inner child is being trotted out and shown around LA (she likes it, she’s not crazy about the traffic, but the pretty lights, she really likes). And the biggest benefit is that I am exhausted. Wait, that’s not a benefit!

The woman who wrote the book and who wants us to let our inner child out, has clearly not spent a lot of time with real children. Because real children are exhausting, and kind of annoying, and really demanding, and they like cookies and ice cream. My inner child is a lot like that, she is cute, sure, but honestly I’m a little sick of the, ‘get up! let’s play, I’m bored I don’t wanna watch TV,’ monologue that my inner child is babbling 24/7 now. “Mommy needs a drink and a foot rub and no guff from you, go back inside and take a nap, inner child! Children need naps!” I am so tired and crafty and writey and feeling pulled in all sorts of directions. I have lists, and master lists, and sub lists and grocery lists, and life to do lists and I’m working on a craft project that has to be done by Monday morning so it can get into the mail, and seriously, I could use some crack so that I can keep up with myself. That or an inner child sized club so that I can club that little crafty bitch into submission.

(Hey, it’s hump day, and my inner child thinks that’s hilarious! I hate that stupid little girl. She has pigtails and freckles. Pigtails and freckles and gapped teeth. She is ruining my life!)

I am always dying. Always. Last night I had a heart attack. Or at least thought I did, because I convinced myself that my left arm was numb. I am crazy.

I watch too many medical dramas. Between House, and Bones, and Grey’s Anatomy and ER (re-runs only the new stuff is trash), I’m a walking TV Medical dictionary. TV Medical Dictionaries are different than regular Medical Dictionaries, because on TV if you have a symptom, you are going to die of the worst thing that symptom can be related to. Stuffy nose - you have a nasal pharyngeal tumor. Hurts when you pee - AIDs. Scratchy throat - TB. I could go on, but I’m starting to have shortness of breath, and you know what that means - Heart attack!

I actually signed up for health insurance yesterday. I can’t really afford it, but I feel like with my medical history (all in my head of course) of tumors, the Hanta Virus, stroke, TB, Ebola, and now persistent heart attacks, I should really be covered. I’ll blow through my deductible in no time!

Hopefully I can find a GP who can treat my crazy, because mental hospital stays aren’t covered in my plan. (Which… I really should have shopped around for, judging by the above.)

Ok. So this morning I was having a little trouble breathing. Not in a physical sense, but in that weird psychological anxiety sense. I cannot take a deep breath when this happens, it’s like my diaphragm won’t fully extend. So while I am physically breathing, I feel like I’m not getting the full benefit.

I took my lunch break at the Retarded Noah’s Bagels. This Noah’s has somehow managed to simultaneously over staff and under employ itself. There are plenty of people working there, but not enough people actually working. I am always on the brink of throwing my keys in someone’s face while I am waiting for my bagel, but my love for the Asiago cheese with Salmon schmear always keeps my keys clenched tightly in my hand, not flung in their stupid slow bagel preparing faces. Today was no different, I waited and waited, but while I waited my hands slowly became unclenched because everybody else in the damned place was possessed by the holiday spirit. One guy had to sing along to “Silver Bells.” Verses were slipping out of his mouth before he could stop them. He just couldn’t help himself. And as soon as that ended “Rocking around the Christmas Tree” started up and two people were not only tapping their toes, they were wiggling their asses. One woman had a whole routine she was performing in her personal space. There was no room for impatient key clenchers in that line. To top all this insanity off, I went to Starbucks next door and ordered my coffee from a genuine little person. I swear to all that is efficient and speedy, I was served coffee by one of Santa’s little helpers.

I am not on drugs. Yet.

I did an ass load of baking this weekend. So much baking that on Sunday evening I had a major case of jitters, racing heart beat (from all the coffee) and felt like I was going out of my mind. I baked myself crazy. Crazy enough to want to go for a run. Since I had already completed my miles for the week, and the book is very specific about not over training, especially in the beginning, I went for a bike ride instead. (Which incidentally knocked off something off my 101 in 1001 list, and also my 55 in 2005 list.) Riding a bike in Los Angeles is terrifying, I’m not going to lie about that. Also, my ass kind of hurts this morning from using muscles that clearly are not required when running. I think they are the muscles that clench in terror when you are racing down a hill, not wearing a helmet, and are unsure if your brakes are going to hold up.

I made Snicker Doodles, which… were disgusting, but people politely ate them.
I made Brandy Balls, which… I think were OK, people politely ate them.
I made Chocolate Chip Cookies, which… were delicious and people ate them without having to appear polite.
I made White Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies, which… if I liked white chocolate chips, I probably would have liked, people ate them, I could not tell if they were being polite or not. I think I’ll make Oatmeal Raisin Cookies with Craisins instead, and see how my chips fall on that switch. That is, if I ever bake again.

I HATE Tony! Tony said he reads the blog. Has been reading it for quite some time. Has never commented.

I don’t hate Tony. His admitting to reading the blog for a long time made my day. Because that means, either he really likes it, or he’s stalking me. Either way, I come out a winner! Here are two equations - Fan = yay! Stalker = popular!

This was an unpublished draft from the old blog T and A. I don’t know how I wanted it to end, but I thought I’d post it anyway, because it eventually became my header.

I love this photo of me. That’s right, me. July, 1978. So I was 2 1/2 years old, depending on how dutiful my mom was about getting the photos developed.

For a period of time in my life I felt like I wasn’t white trash. That I lived in a white trash town, surrounded by trailer homes and pick-up trucks and dirt roads, but somehow I was above it all. It is clear that I was actually just denying my true roots.

The tummy, the posture, the hair in my eyes, my huge cheeks. The diaper? Or is it underwear?

So…I thought I had herpes, which I’m sure is no surprise to you. And there is nothing wrong with having herpes except for the crazy social stigma attached to it. But I don’t have it. So you can stop judging me now. For that. Keep judging me for the other stuff.

It is finally Friday. These days before Christmas vacation are really dragging. Probably why I keep making up fake diseases.

I ate cookies for dinner last night.

My beverage was Bailey’s and milk.

Honestly, it’s no wonder my body is falling apart. Cookies and Bailey’s for dinner? What am I a street urchin?

I would eat better, but Louie doesn’t cook. Which means I have to cook. Which means I’m eating cookies. I’m not technically blaming Louie for my poor health. I’m just pointing out that he doesn’t cook. He used to like ketchup in his spaghetti sauce, or was it as spaghetti sauce… either way, he’s no gourmet. [Louie claims he did not know about the ketchup until much later in life, I’m thinking that might be some sort of coping mechanism.]

I’m going to eventually be moving this site, or at least my writing here somewhere else. Allie doesn’t write here anymore and the only thing holding me back is naming the new site. Totally Tits is the only thing I’ve come up with, and while I find the expression hilarious and mortifying all at the same time, I’m not sure I can subject you guys to that banner every time you want to read the blog. T and A is bad enough.