Hear What They See

Monday, March 31, 2003

I made this curry. Man, does it rock or what? It was excellent. I'm not one for attempting to make curry dishes from scratch. They never taste very good. Too much turmeric or somesuch. Anyway, I found this stuff at Safeway and it is so great, I can hardly stand it. I cubed an eggplant, diced some chicken breast (raw), chopped some yellow onion, and sautèed the whole thing up with olive oil. Cook until all lightly browned, add about 2 cups of water, let boil, add curry mix and voilà! Curry magic at your fingertips. I also made this rice. Mind you, I'm half Hawaiian, rice is like, oh I dunno, Wonder bread to some households. I've never not had white rice in my life. It's a state of being. Anyway, there was a blip of rice leftover from last night. I threw it in a pan with about a 1/2 c. H2O and a tsp. butter (yes, the real kind), salt and this peppercorn grinder medley that I ADORE made by McCormick. Anyhow, heat through and stir. Finely chop a handful of cilantro, and through it in the rice as you are about to serve. It was so meraviglioso. But then I love cilantro. Some people hate it. "Not I," said the blind man as a he took a hammer and saw. It was a strange mix of flavors, curry & cilantro, but that's how I get ides for cooking. I make it up, see how something tastes on its own merit and then tuck it in the back of my chef's head for future reference when I need a quickie meal. ::note:: rice dish an excellent use for that Chinese takeout box of rice that sits in the fridge for 3 days and then gets tossed because no one will eat it. Recycle. It's good for our landfills.

I watched the Isaac Mizrahi movie Unzipped this morning. That's what I'd written about before this !@#$% computer crapped out on me (I'm still so irritated about it I almost had to forgo the post and go pout in a corner, but I'm better than this flippin' computer, by George). Anyhow, Jeff, gay co-worker to whom everyone seems to think I am married, let me borrow his video copy. I've had it for over a week, so since I stayed home from work today, I decided to watch it. I wasn't really very excited about it. It just seemed like it might potentially be one of those rockumentary things that are so overblown and fussy. But since I had about zero sleep last night and since I got woken up after 3 hours by my mother yelling through the door "Are you sick!?!?"(my car was still out front and I didn't wake up when she was knocking on the door because I had earplugs in precisely so I WOULDN'T wake up) and since I couldn't go back to sleep, I decided to watch the video. It was great! What candor. What a funny guy. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I want to go and watch it again just so I can write down some of the funny things he said. Use them like I'm dropping original lines of my own making.

Jeff said Isaac Mizrahi has a show on the oxygen channel. I've never seen it, but Jeff says it rules. Since I don't get the oh channel and since I hardly ever watch TV, it's no surprise. Now I wish I did just so I could watch him every now and again. In fact, Jeff thinks it rules so much that he emailed one of the producers of the show and asked if he could have one of the Isaac Mizrahi mugs that people drink from when they're on his show. Producer emailed back and said the mugs aren't for sale. Jeff emailed back and asked what he could do to get one. Producer emailed back that she'd see what she could do. Jeff emailed back a long missive on how indebted he would be forever and ever. Guess what? A week or 2 later he gets a mug from the Isaac Mizrahi show. He was absolutely aswish when he opened the package. I guess the producer had forewarned him that she'd sent him one and to not let it be known since those mugs are not for the public. Jeff was so excited, he promptly went on-line and bought her a $15 gift certificate to Illuminations. That's always so ironic. Somebody gives you something that you totally want. Then because they've done you this great favor, you go out and spend more money on them than you would ever have paid for the free thing in the first place. It's as though the act is worth more than the item and we feel obliged to warrant our worthiness or something. I don't know if that's why Jeff did it (he and I have these psychoanalytic conversations about this stuff all the time), but I think that's why I do it. Because I do exactly the same thing. I'm trying to break myself of the habit, but it's almost impossible. Pretty soon I shall take to hitting myself with a rolled up newspaper. "Bad, girl! BAD!" ::smack::

I found Alana Post's blog today when I was doing a search for Isaac Mizrahi. It was somewhat ironic because the entry was one sentence. But then I got all wrapped up in her words and started link hopping all over the place from her site. I found some nifty places. But I think what I'm going to do is link to another of my blogs with all the nifty links I find, with html and script and cool things and stuff on which to spend money I dunnot have. I hate trying out layout stuff here because inevitably I do something stupid and have to recreate the template. That's about as unfun as it gets.

Alana writes today:
That's the other thing. I have so much potential that people really go all out to help me succeed, and I feel a disproportionate amount of pressure when people support me. They bend rules for me and help me financially, they give me crazy amounts of leeway and I choke and self-sabotage and then I use the overwhelming guilty feelings of letting people down to beat myself up with. I've moved on from the more adolescent forms of self abuse to the subtle emotional kind that doesn't get me sympathy so much as it gets everybody angry with me. I feel less like a needy shit this way. When I was 13 and cutting, I felt like a real idiot. This way I at least feel a little more original. If I were a WASPy wife I wouldn't do the "semi secret alcoholic" thing... I'd probably put slightly too little salt in every meal I cooked, so that over time my husband would feel irritated with me but wouldn't know quite why he was irritated with me, and he'd probably start criticising me in other more readily identifiable areas, and then he'd feel guilty and I'd feel both victimized and awful for making him feel guilty and being a crazy manipulative self-injurer by proxy. Hypothetically speaking.
Why do I like that so much? It's zany and nutters but not in the way she thinks it is. It's just how people are, how we are. It's just us. Plain and simple. We are all messy and tiresome even when we think we aren't.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:26 PM

I hate this computer.
Computer: FREEZE
Post: GONE.
POS.
Dammit.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 3:09 PM

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Zoom Lens

Garden gnomes are one of those weird hybrids whose existence is contingent upon an infatuation with small, useless outdoor accoutrements and fairy tales. There was a house in town when I was a little kid that had every manner of plaster garden paraphernalia you could think of. Snow White, the 7 Dwarves, Bambi, Thumper, Thumper's family, birdbaths, and fake boulders. All of it was artistically arranged in the front yard amidst white yard rock. Instead of grass, it had rocks. In the rocks were stepping stones, those conglomerate rock stepping stones shaped like kidneys. The yard had an iron fence around it with barbed finials. Such a bucolic scene that could only be viewed through The Fence. You couldn't get close. That always bugged me. I guess I always wanted to get in closer, see what all of those plaster gnomes and rabbits were all about. But I always thought the yard was weird, even as a kid, because there were no plants in the yard. Just plaster gnomes and white yard rock. There weren't even any weeds. The lady who owned the house kept it spic 'n' span, no dandelions or crabgrass in her front yard, and boy, I bet she sure did save on her water bill. When mom got a garden gnome as a gift from Peter & Christina when they were visiting us from Germany about 8 years ago, she was somewhat nonplussed, though gracious. Mom has this habit, when she receives gifts of which she's not overly fond, of putting them in this big wicker chest in one of the extra bedrooms upstairs or else in the closet off the back porch. She's done this for years. I think I finally figured out why; I think she does it because if she keeps the stash long enough, she'll forget who gave it to her, think she bought it herself, wonder why she bought it, and happily wrap it up to give away to some poor unsuspecting soul for their birthday or anniversary or graduation. So far she's been lucky; she's never given anything to the original giver. I rescued the garden gnome a few years ago when I found him in the closet. Because he was only one garden gnome and not 800, he could be considered relatively cool in a kitschy sort of way. So I took him and plunked him in a pot of gerber daisies. And that's where he stayed until the day before yesterday when I decided he'd make a good subject for my digital camera photo sessions. See, I've gotten quite fond of taking digital photos. But not of anything practical, mind you, just of small, useless stuff. Like garden gnomes or fence posts. Up close and personal. At Close Range. I don't know why. I'm not a photographer. I think I just like the idea of being able to take pictures and immediately look at them. But even more so, it's being able to get in that close, that personal, and look at something from an angle I can't see very well because my eyes don't have a zoom lens. I got down on my hands and knees, in the grass. I looked at the gnome and saw just how much of his paint had come off from being exposed to the elements like he's been - rain, sun, wind, frost. His smiling face to the world, his colors just faded away. Then I turned him around and lo & behold, his rear was bright and cheery, like he'd been saving it as a surprise. I thought that was so funny. How his front, the smiling face and round cheeks, was faded and dun-colored, but his backside was chipper and jolly looking. What a quirky garden gnome! What an anomaly.

Mom went into the hospital on Monday for a "procedure." Something female. Not breast cancer, like before. Something to do with her uterus. They saw something during her last check-up that they didn't like. But they didn't say what, particularly. Just that they didn't like something. They used a camera. Had to knock her out because it's too invasive. Talk about getting up close & personal. I wonder what that camera saw? What did it reveal? She is washed out and faded, skin the grey tone of ill-health. She hasn't felt very well. I always freak out. Not in a major way that's visible on the outside, no one ever really sees it. I don't break down and cry and carry on and wonder how much time is left before my world is going to crash down on me. Mine's a slower response. But I bet if you put a camera inside of me, you'd be able to see the heart palpitations, the rush of blood, the constriction in the back of the throat. All those hidden and obscure sort of processes the body performs when it is having a physical reaction to emotional stimuli.

If I was that camera, what would I have seen? Would I have recognized the walls, that warm cozy place where I holed up for about 9 months? Would it have been like going home? Or would I have seen a new space, one that's hiding secrets, crowding the house with excessive cell growth and lumpy diseases? There's a contradiction, a division, in being a mother's daughter. Because there is that visceral understanding of being her daughter, but there is also the inherent acknowledgement of perhaps one day being a mother. In that acknowledgement one grasps they may one day be in the mother's shoes. From whence came life can also come death. It is ambiguity. It's up close and personal.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:04 PM

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

A Lesson in Hospitality

     In first grade I had a superset of Mr. Sketch markers. It wasn't the standard pack, this was the mega-pack with a dozen or so of those smelly markers with scents like blueberry and orange and cinnamon and lemon and lime. I loved those pens. I took them to school and showed them off, quite pleased with myself for having them. One day I let Kim use my Mr. Sketch pens. The entire first grade class was coloring. Everyone else had crayons; I had smelly markers. Kim sat next to me, so I shared. Kim wasn't much for coloring. It wasn't a matter of staying between the lines, she could barely stay on the paper. One of the colorers who smeared everything together until red, blue, green and yellow just looked brown. But that wasn't the worst. The worst was how she squashed the tips of my smelly markers. Pressed so hard the tips got smooshed into the plastic casing of the pens. It made me mad. So when she reached for the red cherry marker, I pulled it away.

     "Let me use the red."
     "No."
     "LET ME USE THE RED."
     Bossy cow. "No."
     "YOUBETTER LETMEUSEYOURPENSORI'MGONNATELL!!"
     Shaking my head. "No."
     "Miss Devitt! Anea won't let me use her pens!!" Kim's raising her hand, waving it in the air. It's so embarrassing. She is so loud, always making noise like a big truck. MWONK-WONK with her big loud horn.
     Miss Devitt walks between the desks, down the aisle and stands with Kim and me on either side of her. "Kimberly, you can stop yelling now. NOW. Thank you. OK. Ladies, what is going on here?" Miss Devitt waits.
     "Anea won't let me use her pens. She let me before and I'm not done with my picture and now she won't let me anymore." Kim crosses her arms. She's mad. Well, good, so am I.
     "Anea? You don't want to let Kim use your pens anymore?"
     I shrug. I mean, I know I should share and when you go to Jesus' Catholic school I guess it's a sin if you don't share because then you're just being selfish and God and Mary and Joseph and Jesus Christ don't really like selfish little girls, that's what Father Monagle says in Church, but why does Kim have to be so dumb? Can't she see she's ruining my brand new Mr. Sketch pens that Grandma just got me because I wore out my other set and mommy said she won't buy me another set again because I go through markers like they're chewing gum?
     "Why don't you want Kim to use your markers?"
     "I dunno." I cross my feet. My socks have prickers in them from Brundage's field.
     "No particular reason?" Miss Devitt doesn't sound like she's mad. That's good. I don't want her to be mad at me. Miss Devitt is the best teacher in the whole wide world. She's a nun but she doesn't wear nun clothes. Well, not all the way. She sorta wears a nun dress, but it's white not black but she doesn't wear that nun headdress like in the movies. Like that one movie in Switzerland where all the kids run in the mountains to the sound of music with their nanny lady and sing all the time.
     "Yeah, you have to SHARE!" Kim leans past Miss Devitt. I don't want her to use my markers, I don't! But if I grab my box of pens now Miss Devitt is going to think I'm the most selfish girl ever. I hate Kim.
     Miss Devitt's hand swoops down and catches Kim's arm at the wrist. "Not so fast, young lady." She pushes Kim back into her seat. "Anea does NOT have to share if she doesn't want to. They are her pens after all, aren't they?"
     Goldfish OH, Kim's mouth hangs open. "Wuuulllll-"
     I don't have to share? I think Miss Devitt just said I don't have to share.
     "Are they or are they not Anea's pens?"
     "Wullll, yeah." Kim looks past her bangs at Miss Devitt. She blinks and her hair moves too.
     "So she can really do with them as she pleases."
     I don't have to share? But you always have to share. Always. But Miss Devitt just said I don't have to share if I don't want.
     "But-!"
     Miss Devitt crosses her arms. "OK. Now. Are we clear?"
     Kim nods. I nod. Miss Devitt turns. Kim's eyes are all squinty. I bet she's going to get me at lunch, say something mean, like how I'm a selfish brat or something. Say something about how my pens are stupid anyway even though she knows my pens are cooler than anyone else's crayons. I hate it when she says mean things about me. I wish I didn't sit next to her. "She's keeps smashing them." Words fast, I hurry them out in one breath before they can be stopped.
     "What was that?" Miss Devitt turns to me.
     I hold up the orange pen. "See? It's all smashed. She presses too hard." I peer over at Kim. She rolls her eyes and stares at the ceiling.
     "I don't either!"
     "Do too!"
     "Do not!"
     "Girls! Hush." Anthony looks over his shoulder at Kim. He has spiky brown hair and sits in front of her. He came into our classroom two weeks after school had started. Miss Devitt told us he'd moved here from Italy. That's the place where Chef Boyardee comes from. Anthony can speak just like us but sometimes he whispers words in his other language at Kim when she's being loud. I've seen him pick his nose and eat it and that is so gross. But he's not mean and he always smells like clean laundry. Kim kicks his chair. Anthony sticks his tongue out and whispers "Porca madonna." He ducks back around and keeps coloring. Miss Devitt takes the pen and inspects the tip. "Hmmm." Kim's scribble drawing has a little orange at the edges and there's a whole lot more on her desk. "Looks like you used the orange, huh Kim?" Kim nods. "And maybe you pressed a little too hard?" Miss Devitt holds the pen up. The tip is barely visible. Kim shrugs. "Maybe Anea doesn't like it when her pens get smooshed, hmm?" Nodding. "So, maybe Anea would let you use her pens again if you promised to be a little more careful and not press so hard."
     Kim looks at me. I look at Kim. I push the box of markers towards her. "Do you still wanna use the red?"

     It's not about not sharing. Because the Bottom Line, as Miss Devitt pointed out, is that you don't have to share your markers if I didn't want to. They are, after all, yours. Sharing requires effort on both sides. Whoever is getting the benefit of that share had better know a little bit about hospitality. Because I do like sharing. I just don't like the tips of my cool pens squashed into oblivion.

     Who does?

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 11:10 PM

Sunday, March 23, 2003

galleria

::: sampling 1986-1990 :::
...then i quit...

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 5:32 PM

Saturday, March 22, 2003

ISO: 10-Year Old Weblogger

I can't stand it.
Holy moly.

You know you're S-L-O-W when a 10-year old boy whose "obbsetions are Star Trek, legos, stamps,geography,science,computer games and histery!!" can start his own blog called Rocket Science 34 where he's managed to post links and get a weather pixie added to his page. Then you know you're even S-L-O-W-E-R when his 10-year old friend Bronwyn says on HER blog "It took me absalutly FOREVER to create this new style of website.It's going to take almost forever to fill up this big space."

They are 10.
I am 33.
I just figured this stuff out. I still have no idea what ftp means nor how to use it (ok, so I know it means file transfer protocol, and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out it's a means by which FILES are TRANSFERRED, but I dunno how to do it. OK? Yes, I'm a deaf mute when it comes to ProgramSpeak).

I have a programmer friend who I haven't been in contact with for over a year. So I looked him up, emailed, blathered. It was good to know where he was in the world. Then it occurred to me all the bajillion different questions I could have asked him when he still lived stateside. Why does the relevance of these things not hit until they're the past?

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:15 PM

Friday, March 21, 2003

satisfaction

sweetie

wild

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:38 PM

Sidebar War

The sidebars are what keep me riveted. Not the major themes, the ones that CNN places front and center, the ones with the bold, arial font and snazzy graphics. The stories of dead men and waring anti-warriors and peaceful negotiating military men do not keep me on the page. They're not sticky enough. But tell me about 40 kids causing a hubbub in the Nedumbassery International Airport in Kochi and you've got yourself a customer. Reading a 1st hand account and another keeps me glued to the screen. Not becasue I agree or disagree, but because these are the things that help me realize the world is close to me. It is right at my fingertips. I'm having a difficult time registering the fact that people are falling off the Golden Gate Bridge while they protest and 12 men are dead from a helicopter crash. It's topsy turvy and it makes my mouth hurt from clenching my jaw. There is a sense of solidarity for me, even in the clash of opinions and ideas and issues, that webloggers around the world are getting on their cyber soap boxes and having their say. I've clicked through them, perused the pages, the time and the effort people are putting into their words, their unfeigned and bombastic and scorching and quiet and grieved and rallying and remonstrative and outraged and simple words. There are words being thought and words being expressed and as long as these words are not stilled I can keep reading. It means I can breathe even when my lungs are pressed upon by sadness. I can still breathe.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:30 PM

Thursday, March 20, 2003

There was a woman riding her bicycle last Saturday at about 5:00p. She was hit by a car. The woman who hit her was charged with driving while intoxicated and released on $12,500 bail. As a result of the accident, the cyclist's right leg was severed, the other severely maimed. She is listed in critical condition. On Sunday morning, the woman who had hit the cyclist was found to have committed suicide. The woman who was hit is 28-years old. The woman who hit her was 45-years old with two small children.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 9:48 PM

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

these are a few of my favorite things

Full Moon Nights

Gehricke Road

Gehricke Road

Sebastiani Winery

Moments That Make Me Stop for A Minute

5:30p: View out my window at work

Tom Thumb Cacti

Desktop: 3 cacti on a coaster

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:07 PM

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Marriage Redux

I found someone with worse tooth woes than moi-self. And I just found a word tonight (different place) that describes my eeling precisely: schadenfreude. schadenfreude \SHAHD-n-froy-duh\, noun: A malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others. Well, I wouldn't say that my satisfaction is particularly malicious, but it is relieved. Relieved to know I can stop feeling sorry for myself. I'm going to start feeling sorry for Michael instead. Maybe I'll even see if he can go visit my dentist (I do adore my dentist; he's so...so...so, I dunno, so withit; not in an overly trendy way or anything. But he wears bowties in his local newspaper advertising and I think that is rather courageous; especially since he looks to be about 22 years old even though he's in his 40's). Michael's teeth are cracking apart in his head. He grinds his jaw probably as badly as I do. My saving grace is my splint. It's cracked and chewed on, but it does save my jaw from worse terrors. But I don't have a necklace.
Monday, March 17, 2003

I meant to say that one of the weirdest things about me (and this) is that I don't mind that my teeth are falling apart and that I keep the pieces in canisters around my room. I still have my wisdom teeth (which were pulled) in the bag the doctor gave them to me. I wanted to put a string through them and make a necklace. The band Live had come out with their album "Mental Jewelry" a year or so before and I wanted this to be "Dental Jewelry." I was so happy with that name. I loved it. The gross out factor of wearing teeth was (and still is, to some degree) totally lost on me. I see it as a novelty. I'm not thinking about where the teeth came from, I'm thinking about the fact that no one else has a necklace like this and what kind of crazy guy wears a necklace like this?! Me, that's what kind of guy! I'm a weirdo - and an innovator! I'm different! Check me out!

Michael reminds me so much of David, it's strange. I wonder if he would say some of the things that Dave said to me Friday. In his blog, Michael is endearing in those same ways that David is. That feeling of wanting to scoop him up and take care, pay heed. Yet if pushed far enough into the misery of his past provoked by - long day, change in schedule, weird look in the supermarket - would Michael do what Dave does? Lash out with a tongue that just says words I never, ever, never want to hear again? Lash out at me and then feel so badly about it later he cries with relief when I break my 3-day silence and speak to him again? I don't know. Michael's not David. But I just wondered. Reading through his words, I couldn't help but wonder.

I found a poem in Word tonight. I guess David wrote it. I don't know when. He's never shown it to me or told me about it. I was trying to cut and paste some info into Notepad and this document came up. He called it alley wahine mind jotting.

i don't remember driving here
i don't' remember driving here
walls all around me
standing here for 9 years
no sun, just buildings
come this wahine at last
no, not really
no, really come on
no, i don't wanna
come on
no thanks
are you sure
yeah
ok, see you
hey, wait a minute where you going?
secret passageway
i followed
i fell in love
seven trumpets
jericho walls falling
wow, why didn't blow those before?
you never asked me

I married him knowing his propensity for depression. It was not a secret he did not reveal. I should have qualified my post on depression on 3/10/03 a little better. I should have said, "I mean, not to belittle those who are genuinely depressed and on meds(<---that's the part I should have added), because I know there are folks, but who are those people? All the people I know who are on meds aren't depressed, they are just really tired of dealing with juggling their lives around in a bajillion different directions." Because I do know a person who's more than just prone to depression, and I married him.

I pulled a typical move; I assumed he'd change. Folly! Always me. The beauty of this little jolly folly of mine is that people do change when they've been with me long enough; friends, boyfriends, co-workers, husbands. They all understand these lessons I try to teach in my insistently-persuasive-yet-diplomatic way. They GET these lessons. Dave has changed. There have been shifts in his head, also his heart. Visible signs. I take it to mean the over 2 years we've known each other have sunk in. But then a lapse will occur and the one who takes the bumps & bruises is always me. This time, though, it hit so hard. I know something's gotten me good when I don't get teary and weepy and harpyish. I just stood there. ::blink::...pause...::blink::...pause...::blink:: Outward calm. He was waiting for me to react. I wanted to. I really did. But I was so defeated at that point, there was really no need. There was no war left in me. Just tank-tracks. The whipping power of words amazes me.

There is a committment within David that I have not found in anyone before; perhaps my family but diffrerent even than this, than his sense of honor, perhaps. Last night we talked in bed. He said, "You are a saint. You are a saint." Burying his head between my arm and my breast.

I don't know that I want to be a saint. Maybe the responsibilities are too heavy, the forgiveness too exacting.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 11:46 PM

Monday, March 17, 2003

It's St. Paddy's Day. The UPS guy, Dave, had a smiley green shamrock necklace around his neck when he dropped off a package. Got it from Dr. Powers' office. The only green I'm currently sporting is the alfalfa sprout between my teeth. Dratted sprout, can't get it out. Blimey.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:08 PM

Sunday, March 16, 2003

Leulo, Lord O'the Lumber

Tired girl that I be, I just had to bring up Photoshop again and fiddle around some more. Guess who showed up? Luelo. Ya, that's right. LUELO. Lue for short. Mr. Lumberjack feller to the left, there. Ain't he smashing? With his buckteeth?

Right now I feel the same way about Photoshop that I felt in high school when an art teacher gave me a set of my first art pencils. Berol TURQUOISE Hs, HBs, an Bs. Til then, I'd only used a #2 pencil to draw, the kind you use to take a Scantron test. I didn't know there was anything else. Mr. Murphy handed over a Ziploc of pencil. When I got home and tried them out, I thought I had died and gone to heaven; the shading, oh man alive. It was so cool. I drew for hours on end, getting better and better, excited every time I hit my sketchbook. A blank page meant something new to draw, a new picture that had never been created before to be brought into the world! I would draw from a magazine, usually half-naked models in Vogue or black eye-linered musicians & heroin addicts in Interview. Mimicking was my thing. And I was good. I got the shading down like a dream back in the day, back in 1988 when I was a high school senior.

But I never did anything out of my head. That's why Scrumbles and Luelo, for as immature and smudgy as they are, they're mine. And that is so neat-o. I haven't felt such open-ended, anything-can-happen excitement about drawing since I was in school. It's been awhile. It feels good. Better than dealing with no sleep, swollen tonsils and a headache. Who cares when Scrumbles, Luelo and whomever else might be waiting to come out, waiting for me to Photoshop them into being?

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:47 PM

Scrumbling the Night Away

I haven't been to bed. I had planned on it, but I got involved with farting around on the computer. Always such an effort to teach one's self how to do anything. I still can't get the template how I want it. I am figuring out a blogging template because the template I call My Life is currently unavailable; you may need to refresh.

Played with Photoshop and out popped Mr. Scrumble. Not sure yet who he is or what he does or where he lives, but he seemed appropriate for St. Patrick's Day, no? I rather like him. There is something about him that is endearing. He shall need to tell his story. Posthaste.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:21 AM

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Lyrics.
A song lyric.
I don't recognize it. He literally cut & pasted it together.

Well, cut and taped it.

It's a poor excuse for an apology. I'm being bitter and old-sounding about it, but I do not want to hear words that were pirated from someone else. Those are words he finds meaning within, but they've never had any meaning for me, I've never even seen them before now. And they did not come from him to me. They are an easy way to try to say something that he ought to be taking the hard way to express.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:26 PM

Dave just came upstairs and handed me an envelope. I expected this. He's been drinking beer all day, carrying his notebook around (I have a sketchbook journal, he has a notebook). He left earlier, looking disoriented, opening and closing his car door 3 times; unlock, open, lock, close. Repeat. Repeat. He had a paper in his hands, he was reading it. I watched him through the glass of the front door, like a nervous old woman afraid the colored children on her lawn are going to defacate in the marigolds. I watched and waited, thinking the paper he held was for me, but he picked his notebook off of the hood and walked off down the street.

I don't know what is in the envelope.
I guess I should look.
I feel sick.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 5:11 PM

Another realization: if you're beautiful, you can say you want to stalk someone, some guy, and he would never bat an eyelash. "Beautiful, fuckable girl stalking me? YEAH!" But if you're not beautiful, not acceptable by the general standards of men's Beautiful Meter, you'd better not talk about stalking. You'd better not even let them know they're on your stalkable list.

Not that there's anyone I'd want to stalk. I'm really not a stalkable type. But people joke about it nowadays because of the media hype its gotten in the last few decades. It's now in our vocabulary. Anything in current jargon is fun to joke about.

But only if you're beautiful.
But beautiful girls never need to stalk anyone.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 1:04 PM

I just discovered something. My tears are much saltier this morning than they were last night. Last night they actually tasted a little sweet. This morning they are just briny.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 12:52 PM

Tired. I slept in my old bedroom last night. In my old twin bed. The same bed I slept in throughout childhood, adolescence and even part of my grown-uphood. The sheets were even the same. I woke up this morning crying. Everything looked like a pink cloud. My tears blurring the pink & white striped sheets into cotton candy. I felt like eating it. But I realized soon enough it was a cotton sheet & pillowcase, not candy. I decided, very intellectually, against ingestion.

When I was little, I used to pretend those sheets were a dress I would wear on Easter Sunday with a crinoline beneath. Cotton candy.
Those sheets are nearly 30 years old.

I went to bed at 4:30A. After writing a morbidly stupid email to a stranger. I shouldn't do things like that. I just tend to sound ingratiating and smarmy. People will think I've got an -ism wrong with me. I wrote for an hour in my sketchbook journal. All the things I will not write here. Aren't I nice? Write about what I won't write about. There's a tiger chasing and gobbling his own tail somewhere in that last sentence.

I like my sketchbook journal even though I hardly ever write and certainly never sketch - not anymore - in it. It's a cheap sketchbook I bought in college when I was taking art classes, when I thought I might actually be someone splashy. Intellectual and well-rounded. Not the "Thirty-Three Year Old Crying Lady Who Manages an Insurance Office for Her Mother." I suppose you can be intellectual & well-rounded and work in an insurance office. Maybe. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I had the same title minus the "for Her Mother" part, and was living in Pisa or Trondheim or Köln. I don't speak German, but I'd get my Norwegian back eventually, and my Italian is passable.

My sketchbook journal has only sketches in the first 10 or so pages. Nothing very good. I never did use it for art class much. Then it has some journaling from a few years ago, mid-90's maybe. Then it's got articles and newsy tidbits that's snipped from the paper or magazines. Taped or glued or stapled onto the white sketch paper. Then it's got more journaling from the late 90's. Now I've started using it, sporadically, to put my newspaper clippings and crisis moments. Thankfully it's only sporadic, but every crisis, every single one, is one resulting from my handicapped sense of love. Perhaps we all have this problem.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 12:44 PM

Friday, March 14, 2003

Sticky

Am realizing, one slow minute/second/nano-second at a time that God & life do not perform on a schedule nor an agenda to which I am or will ever be privy.

Calamities, when they are personal, seem far-fetched and barmy when you attempt to describe them to others. I am biting my lip, buttoning it up, I could bite a ragged hole right through it, in fact; it wouldn't really hurt til tomorrow. That's how the mind works. Funny, isn't it?
The people I love.
The people I love.
The people I love.
Sometimes they act in sub-human ways.
I want to lay on the tiles of the bathroom floor, do you know how that feels on bare feet? That coolness? I want to lay on the tiles of the bathroom floor. Cheek to tile, chin cupped in hand. I wouldn't even care about the hair on the floor, the toothpaste blobs, the peppered whiskers. I want to lay on the floor, in a curl, against the tiles. But it's melodramatic and useless, the appearance of it is, the look of a poorly acted Lady MacBeth. But the point of it, the real point, would be to feel that coolness against my cheek. A real feeling that knocks aside the numbness in an easy sweep.

I want to say here what I will not say. Why not? Because airing my dirty laundry, for as cathartic as it might seem now, would just feel like a bruise in the morning, a cramp I can't shake out. I would regret it and feel assinine. Because I do not want to be judged by the actions or words of another. If I write down those actions - give them a body, flesh them out - they take on a life of their own. We are judged, you know. Judged by the people we choose to love when they do or say stupid shite. By mere virtue of loving and associating with the person who's hurt us in some way, it's a reflection on ourselves. Belittles us. It points a finger directly to our bad decision, shakes its head and says, "Didn't I tell you? Who have you to blame but yourself, silly woman? Who else?"

But that is the contradiction of love, the strict birthright of that emotion. It is always a good and bad decision rolled into a big sticky bundle. There is no telling where good starts and bad ends, they are congenital defects of one another.

I wasn't going to write tonight. Overly indulgent or something. But I was having a difficult time concentrating on the movie I was watching. My focus blurred. Tears and a runny nose. It all seems so silly. My teeth, my jaw, they're going to ache from the grinding in the morning.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 9:44 PM

Thursday, March 13, 2003

one of the ugliest pretty people on earth

I'm reading a blog tonight that made me sort of cock my head to one side and raise an eyebrow. Not in a bad way, mind you, just in one of those I'm-not-quite-sure-I-can-relate-to-this ways. Which only means I of course had to read more. It was one of my random picks, a recently published blog that happened to coincide with my sign on. Lucky day, blogger.

From what I can gather, she's been more than a tad reclusive the last few years. But she's got some kind of talent. I just can't figure out what, precisely. Photographer, painter, musician, writer, film maker? Renaissancey. Well-rounded. Only there's the real irony. She's not really very round. Not in the physical sense. She's probably more angular. Dealing with anorexia (...or "dealt," past tense? Or is it always a "dealing," gerund, process? I wouldn't know; I have the opposite affliction). The writing intrigues but always keeps you at a distance. Flagrant. She calls herself Flagrant. She rubs elbows with famous people. Hmm, maybe she's famous. Oh hell, it doesn't matter and even if that is the case, the likelihood of me knowing who she is, is rare.

I don't know who anybody is. I see people whose faces seem familiar from - a movie, a magazine, a book jacket - I cannot place them, the name nowhere near the tip of my tongue. But the everyday faces - the ex-cop lady, wears Wranglers, a western leather belt, the kind with the filagreed buckle, blue eyes and highlighted Farrah Fawcett hair (Terri H.), the alcoholic black man originally from Oklahoma but more recently of Florida who loves the Buccaneers ("Love 'em, those Bucs, eh-yeah."), has long, yellow fingernails, wears pale blue Sansabelt slacks (Charles K.), the bitter-voiced & overweight security guard who uses the F-word at the most inopportune moments, his coke-bottle glasses and wilted-lettuce moustache making his eyes look like a soon-to-be-slaughtered veal calf (Tony S.) - their names and stories and quirks, I can remember them all. Is it because of the interaction I have to have? Their lives linked to mine through their auto, their homeowners, their life insurance? Whereas famous or almost-famous people (those ether dwellers who can hang above the rest of us, clinging to the silver-bottomed clouds of the rarified air where the truly - famous/or swank/ or both - reside) live within details that are perhaps too excruciating or maybe even too laconic to look at?

What is it? Why is Flagrant so sad? I mean, I don't know, does it matter why? Is her sad any different than my sad of 2 days ago? When I wanted to chew through my skin to make all the crap just go away? I don't know that her sad is different. But it sure feels different. It feels privileged. And yet not by any fault of her own, not really (and is privilege, after all, even a fault?).

June 4, 2002
i actually went out of my home and drove to the bank during daylight hours, but the drive-thru was CLOSED because it was broken. i didn't know what to do, because i hate being looked at so much... i hate going out... so i had a massive panic attack and then went driving around even though i assumed the bank was about to close for the day. i didn't want to get out of my car and be seen walking up to the building, only to pull on the door and find it locked because things like that just embarrass me to no end. finally got up enough guts to go inside the bank and was the first person in line for a teller, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. i don't know what i am so scared of besides being looked at. a teller was reading the riot act to a customer who had apparently just raised his voice to her. thank god things like this happen, because then i know i am rather invisible in the room rather than feeling like a billboard for anorexia and bad fashion sense. *grumble* so i withdrew enough money for the *grumble*grumble* airline ticket to copenhagen. a summer airfare to europe. $$$$ what am i doing? why am i doing this?

June 9, 2002
dying. fending off the urge to overeat slightly undercooked banana pancakes and chocolate chips with some kind of cream- but i've never had that before and i couldn't possible get to the grocery store today as i feel that i am one of the ugliest pretty people on earth which is desperately worse than being one of the prettiest ugly people. i'm not thinking straight and i'm not driving straight and i've spent all of my money to say hi to someone at a party that i will undoubtedly leave early- that is, if i even get myself in the door. aaarrrggghhh! i need someone to come with me. anyone out there in copenhagen next week with nothing to do thursday night? i need someone to come with me and wander around an art museum. i'm serious.

"...one of the ugliest pretty people on earth which is desperately worse than being one of the prettiest ugly people." Let me think this out; when you're top of the heap, regardless of the kind of heap, you're still at the top. When you're at the bottom of a heap, it's just the bottom and you deal with the weight of all the scramblers atop you stepping on your ears, tangling your hair, bruising everything. Even if you are pretty, if you're not one of the prettiest, you're always going to be bottom rung. Here's the paradox: should you just switch ladders, skedaddle to a different heap? Step down so you're at the top of the ladder right below? Crown the summit of the next heap over? Isn't the one just a different name for the other? If being one of the ugliest pretty people is desperately worse than being one of the prettiest ugly people, then oughtn't one to change? Oh conundrums. But I'm wondering if that place where you're mired at the bottom of something which leaves you teetering upon the top of something else, couldn't it be the ultimate choice? Not stuck in the middle - middle-road pretty or middle-road ugly. In that place where bottom is top and top is bottom, it might seem like a curse, but it's actually a choice. A choice that no other has. It is, perhaps, a privilege after all.

It is not the worst there is. It is not useless. How to explain to the worst self-critic, the worst self-hater, that there is no thought in anyone else's head except of themselves? That people are so absorbed in their own me that they don't notice you, that they don't even see? <--- That, my biggest fear. To never really be seen. It's not easy to overlook a wild-haired hapa-haole wahine who likes too-dark red lipsticks. Yet my real trouble is not the surface; it matters, but not enough to kill me. The real trouble is the stuff that makes me want to chew through my skin. The stuff that I'm not sure anyone ever really sees.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 11:55 PM

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Beauty of the Upfront Contract

I had an hour long talk with a "coach" today. Her name's Sharon. She's really cool. I don't know exactly what a coach is but it sure as heck felt like talking to a therapist. She's supposed to be helping me to find my feet with running the office. Now that I'm the Big Time Office Manager and all :::said in my most snide, snotty voice that only daughters can use when speaking about their mothers::: Sharon helped us with our office retreat that we had in January, out on the coast. She's a powerhouse, reminds me of a female version of Robin Williams. She kind of looks like him, but more than that, she has that major energy that Robin Williams always seems to have in his movies and interviews. Toned down a bit, of course, for business purposes I guess. We got on the phone and she asked me a questions and I just burst into tears. Just boo-hooing my little heart out. My mascara was running and my doze wuz stuff'd ub. I was irritated with myself, but because I'd really hit it off with Sharon from the get go back in January, I didn't feel dumb. Actually, I felt kind of relieved to be talking to someone about everything.

I'm one of those people who insists on believing she can do anything she sets her mind to. I mean, doggedly so. Like, "I can lose this extra poundage I put on since we got married." Or "I can teach myself HTML and Java." Or "I can do the weekly bulletins for church every Sunday." Or "I can get up and walk for an hour every day." Or "I can plan and cook healthy and delicious meals for the week." Or "I can read these 18 books on my dresser." Or "I can write in my blog every day and make it witty and charming and intriguing." Or "I can go to my writing class every Wednesday and make sure all my assignments are done beautifully." Or or or. The list goes on. The only problem is I try to do everything on the list at the same time. I now have a headache the size of Texas sitting on my forehead like a fat, warty troll. He's been there all day. Refuses to budge. Stuck his fingers in his earballs just a few minutes ago when I threatened to take some more ibuprofen. Waggled his digits at me like I was daft. But the overload is starting to show. These crying jags the last few days. The problems with my teeth. My neck is currently so stiff, I look like Joan Cusack in Sixteen Candles trying to get a drink of water from the fountain. Customer walks in, I'm so suave: "Hi can I help you and would you mind stepping right in front of me, oh yes, perfect, just like that, thanks, now I can see you." I know I need to deal with all the deep, dark oogey crud. It's starting to get the better of me. Starting to take it's toll. We get so accustomed to laying on the soft, white underbelly that when we have to shift our position and the exposure begins, the pain is almost too much.

So I guess coaching's been all the rage for the last few years. It's what the professional business person does. I guess the professional business person has a shrink and a coach and a podiatrist and an accupuncturist and a tea leaf reader. At the moment I just have a coach & a dentist. I guess she's going to coach me into "setting borders and boundaries" with my mother. I did actually have one of those a-ha moment today. I was grumbling about mom and how she doesn't always stick up to her end of the bargain. "That's because you let her," Sharon says before I've even finished my sentence. She must hear this every day.
     "Huh?"
     "You let her."
     "Whaddya bean?" I snorfle discreetly, trying to clear my nose.
     "Well, you didn't have a contract. You didn't say OK, here's the purpose, here're the logistics, here's your agenda, here's my agenda, and this is the expected outcome.
     Silence.
     Tapping of computer keyboard on her end. She can even multi-task through my dilemma. Wow.
     "Oh." I'm slightly non-plussed. She's absolutely right. Because mom and I have gone around and around about what needs to happen and even though I keep feeling like I'm keeping up my end, I never feel like she does. She pushes me off. She tells me all the other things she needs to do before she can deal with ME. And I always let her. I just let her. Guilt, obligation, indebtedness. You name it, I have and that's why I let her. UGH.

Why is it the obvious stuff always needs to be pointed at to you by people you're paying to talk to you? I guess that's the whole point, duh. You're paying them, they'd better tell you something. We'll see how it goes.

GO TEAM.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:59 PM

Monday, March 10, 2003

Dull Boomerang = Longer Life Span

I have been off. Off like how milk gets off, or the television when it's babbling at you and you aim the remote at it and hit POWER. OFF. There are about 800 million things going on in my head, yet none of them seem to make the rather short journey from my brain to my fingertips. It's only about, what, 3 feet? Maybe a tad less? Still & yet, I can't make the thoughts in HERE ::points to head:: get translated HERE ::points to blog:: I of course feel guilty as hell. Poor old Bert told me he'd check on my blog every day, just to make sure I get read (yes, that's how few people visit NeNe's address on cyberspace), and I don't even oblige with an entry or two.

Am I depressed? Yahoo. Who isn't these days? But I think if you have to ask yourself if you're depressed, you're not really depressed. No, depression is too easy. That's, like, the ultimate sell-out. I mean, not to belittle those who are genuinely depressed, because I know there are folks, but who are those people? All the people I know who are on meds aren't depressed, they are just really tired of dealing with juggling their lives around in a bajillion different directions. I can understand wanting to slow that spin. With wanting to not deal with the bombardment of EVERYTHING that comes at us from all directions. What did people do back when they had a horse and buggy and it was snowing like the devil and their wife was in labor and the horse threw a shoe and the buggy wheel was cracked and the doctor lived 10 miles away? They sure as shootin' didn't take a Xanax. They stoked up the fire, hoped their 8-year old son knew how to keep the kettle of hot water going, handed their wife a wooden spoon to bite down on, and prayed to God that she didn't die. I mean, comparatively, my life is roses. It really is. But maybe I would have preferred having the black and white version of life that we USED to have. You make it through childbirth because you have good hips and your baby is the same blood-type as yourself, or else you die. There was no such thing as life support or liver transplants. Again, I'm not saying these leaps in medicine and technology aren't grand. What I am saying is maybe I would have been better off in a time when the decisions you made had life or death consequences versus wondering about if I ought to drink a nonfat soy latte or really go full bore and just go for the fatted up version?

I was talking to mom in the kitchen Saturday morning. For some reason all of our conversations of any length and body take place in the kitchen. Perhaps we're hearkening back to our roots. Anyway. We're talking in the kitchen. I've been thinking a lot about my great granny Winnifred (my mom's mother's mother). She died in 1924 from scarlet fever. She was pregnant, and she and the baby boy died when she went into a premature labor due to the illness. I've been thinking about her a lot because I just realized last week how much she and I really look alike. I never saw it before. But then again, the last time I really looked hard at that picture I was younger than she was in the black and white photo. Now I'm older than she was when she died.

     "I don't think we really know very much about grief."
     Mom looked at me sideways from the sink, scrubbing the oatmeal from the pot i'd used earlier. "What do you mean?"
     "Well, for instance, back when Winnifred was alive, there was no such thing as chemo and radiation and all these things we have today. Seems like it was harder then."
     "Oh, I don't know. I think we grieve just as much today as then when people die. Look at Patty's family, that was her mother! Suffered from cancer for 4 months and now she's gone. It's so hard on them all." Shed gone to a funeral the week before for the mother of an old classmate.
     "But that's exactly what I mean! The family knew for 4 months. There was time to make peace, maybe even too much time. Enough time for people to maybe put it off, think they have another day. When Winnifred died, she and Grandpa Kenyon had to just get down to the bare bones. She was dying and he knew it and there wasn't a thing in the world he could do. They had to sit there and talk about if he should remarry and what to do with Grandma and Auntie Avis." Back in those days when a mother died, the kids would often get separated, sent to live with other family members. Winnfred didn't want her family broken up. She didn't want her girls without their mother and their father. She was emphatic.
     "But I think we still grieve!" Mom doesn't see where I'm going with my thought train. Maybe I don't either.
     "Well, I mean, when you were diagnosed, it was scary and we weren't sure from one day to the next what to expect, but there was always HOPE. We knew that the chemo and radiation might work. And they did! Five years later, you're still here. But there was always hope, I guess is what I mean."
     "So you think that means we don't grieve?"
     I shake my head, no, my hands in the air trying to emphasize my point. "It's like we expect it, like it's a right. Like we're entitled to live at any cost and if we don't someone screwed up, some doctor or nurse or medicine messed everything up. Our grief is allowed to be suspended, we don't have to deal with it immediately. We have the luxury of being able to wait." I'm saying this to her, my own mammy, knowing that if she'd died from breast cancer, I would have been devastated. Knowing how scared she still is that she might get the dreaded "C" word back in her system.

I'm not sure if she got what I was saying. I wasn't being glib. I really do wonder how different emotions feel in today's world compared to yesterday's.

But I still feel like a wanker. All I want to do is cry. My teeth are driving me bonkers. I have to go in tomorrow morning at 8:30 and see if the root canal from April 2002 is infected. They don't think they got the whole root. My gum swelled up and out gushed some gross, putrid stuff that isn't nice to talk about in public. Dr. Dentist thinks I need a "second opinion." So off I go in the morrow. My new gold cap on a different tooth that I just got last Monday is shiny and, well, gold. It's not a root canal, just a cap. But it will be a root canal, amrk my words. They always are. I grind my teeth until they are begging for mercy and my dentist finally complies and root canals the tooth into sweet oblivion. I do wear my splint very faithfully; wake up every morning drooling prettily into my pillow. Spit the splint out. Brush my teeth. Brush my splint with my Braun, fancy-shmancy does-everything-but-make-a-latte toothbrush. And still I can feel my molars each morning as they stretch their nerves, grumpily trying to readjust to having been ground down for the last 8 hours or so. My teeth bear the brunt of my inability to express my frustration with my world.

So this pseudo-depression thing. It's irritating. I was on a forum today that I post to regularly and just started crying as I typed. But let's get real. The world right now is a pretty weird place. Supposedly we're going to war in the Middle East on St. Paddy's, the California state budget is in the tank (a result of which will be my husband officially losing his teaching position at the end of this semester in June), the economy is wigged, and everyone is on some kind of mood or mind altering drug to control themselves. I feel like Alice, tumbling headlong down the rabbit hole, waiting to get to Wonderland. At least THERE the characters are entertaining. Here in this hole I just keep getting chunked on the head with a dirt clod or two, my little blue pinnafore whooshing over my head from the velocity of my fall, all by myself. But everyone seems to be feeling the jangle of all the world's unrest. I don't think I'm alone within this bluesy state I currently find myself. Only problem is that most of us here wear blinders so we have the illusion of being alone. A fool's paradise of bumbling boobs thinking the sky is falling, the sky is falling and I'm the only one who's going to feel the slam. It's real simple. If the sky does fall, we're all going to get squashed. So it's not like anyone should be taking it personally.

I'd really like to feel I could take my aggressions out on someone or something. But my husband won't stand still long enough and driving my truck off a cliff doesn't seem like a good practice for someone in the insurance business. But what would the point be in that, after all? Taking things out on others has this really insiduously stinkin' habit of coming right back on you, full swing. What's that saying about never sharpening your boomerang? Sharp words aimed at other people seem to follow that same principle.

But there is a big wish in my little heart right now. One that encompasses contentment and grace. I think maybe I'll hold it there for a time. There's no telling when it might be granted.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 5:19 PM

Monday, March 03, 2003

Rule of Three

That must mean it's a good day to write.

An old grit came into the office this morning to go over his auto insurance. As he sat down at Jeff's desk, Jeff asked him, "How're you doing?"
Old grit shrugged, smiled, put his hand out like an old Italian guy sitting in a piazza somewhere in Chianti drinking a morning capuccino and says, "I'm mildewing."
I laughed and laughed. Old grit was quite pleased with himself.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:30 PM

Saturday, March 01, 2003

Achtung! Salt Shakers Verboten.

I'm dehydrated. I need some water. But it's almost 2:00A and if I get up for water I'm going to wake my parents up since I'm in their house using the computer. But I can't get up just yet. I'm reading a blog that has me captivated. I shan't share it because I haven't yet asked permission, but she has had me alternately in stitches and blinking back tears. Occassionally I'll come across something on-line that whomps me on my tush and makes me stay there til it's good and ready to let me up again. There are rare occassions when I will come across someone who's opened themselves so wide, with such sweeping disregard for what others will think, that I am stopped .:blam:. in my tracks. I'm not talking the kind of self-indulgent writing that I read so much of these days; I read a blog yesterday that generally just pissed me off because the little blonde, tight-butted girl who wrote it (who made sure to include a flip and toothsome pic) was so proud of herself for using ripe & fetid expletives at every turn with coy little taglines that made them sound chic. I can swear with the best of the sailor class if I have to. But what's the point? It's so easy these days to pepper a few 4-lettered, grunty-sounding words amidst the pretty sentences, giving your writing a real "street" sense that gives you the false pretense of having Rocky instincts. But the bottom line is, for me, it just sounds boring and trite. Especially the forced contrast of a really pretty girl from a "nice" family talking like she's got her middle finger permanently jammed up her nose. It just bugs the hell out of me, these forced attempts to seem clever with language that is for the most part useless. So I digress.

The blog I'm reading right now, this very moment, between my own blogging (how post-modern is that? Baudrillard, eat your heart out!), is alternately making my heart break and soar. This woman is as real as they come. No conceit, no agenda, no motive. Her entry from 15 September 2002 made my heart stop. In her writing, I recognized much; of myself, of women in general and under a microscope, of men, of friends, of family, of strangers' cruelty, of senselessnes, of humour, of honesty, of fear, of hope. I am quietly paying homage to this un-named woman in my blog because she puts most of us to shame with her laid-bare self. The shell, peeled back, she knows there will be someone to shake salt on that tender flesh, yet she does not flinch in her words.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:19 AM