Thor

Current mood:mischievous

Here he is. You didn't know? Now you know. He'll be here on or about May 6. (He's one of those not-totally-predictable types.)

Yeah, he looks just like me. For various reasons, I had to keep this whole thing kind of under my cap for a while, and now it feels like so much time has passed that I can't even remember all of the things that have happened surrounding this little guy. So, I'm not going to go into how it all happened, or what everyone had to say about it, or all the crazy shit that has happened in the interim. I have kept a private journal for those kinds of things. It's personal, ok? Thank you.
But starting now, y'all can stay in the loop. After nearly five months I finally bought some maternity clothes, and I mostly feel like an impostor. I mean, who knew? I never thought this would be me, but here we are. Showing, even. My Dad got me a baby heart listening device for Christmas. I kind of wanted DDR Ultramix 3 for Xbox, but I guess that will have to wait for another day. I have a crib, a bag of clothes, and the comfort of knowing that pretty much every idiot on the planet has done this and made it through okay. I quit smoking and drinking and rock climbing. While I feel this should automatically qualify me for some kind of parenting award, I am told that this is pretty much the least I could do. Every day there is some new bizarre symptom that makes me want to contact the Discovery Channel because I just can't believe that this completely natural phenomenon is happening to me. In me.
I can't believe how much I love him already.

climbin'

Current mood:accomplished

Next topic: rock climbing
Many of you may know of my love of rock climbing, but not many of you probably know that I completely suck at it. To mitigate that fact, I am including some pictures that make me look as if I know what I'm doing.
Here is a picture of me chalking up. Notice the darting eyes.


If you're gonna step on a bird, step on an eagle.

Here I am, actually making it to the top. I cannot think of a worse camera angle, and in fact, I do not believe such an unflattering picture of my ass has ever been made available to the public. Fortunately, the picture is of poor quality. Enjoy.

campin'

At the end of October, I went camping with my buddy Bridget. We had a great time. We slept in a log. We killed a bear with a bow and arrow we made out of things we found in the woods. We drank filthy water.
Actually, we had a comfortable tent that Bridget rented from GSU, and we slept with a bunch of other camping parties in a pretty nice facility near Ellijay. The facility was called Bear Creek, so needless to say we drank bottled water.
Here is a picture of us getting on the road.

We took my three dogs and they absolutely loved it. They got to run free and scare the living fuck out of other campers. The first picture is of my beautiful Chibi Chee, affectionately referred to as the killing machine.

Here is a picture of Chibi and Astrid, the Doberman.

Here is stupid little LoJack, who I had to keep on a tie-out much of the time because he tried to start shit with a neighboring Boxer.

These are three rough looking bitches.

The next day we went hiking and saw this big-ass tree. It is the second largest tree in Georgia, I think. It is called the Gannett Poplar. Here is a picture of Bridget having a hippie moment.

unborn conjoined myslexic fetal squirrel, baby

Current mood:  scared

 

OK, haven't blogged for quite a while, sorry. The reason is that I have so many great pictures of everything I want to blog about, but I just now got my technology straight. So, here we go...
First topic of interest: the squirrel. This fall, a squirrel with an unborn conjoined myslexic fetal twin hanging off its shoulder came to live on my deck. It freaked the living fuck out of all of us. God, it was fucking horrible. There were like two little segments to it - a head nub and a little body with appendages that wiggled when it moved. It was like a horrible omen of things to come that never wound up coming but still scared us shitless.
So, for many days I stalked it, trying to get a picture of it, and then one day it just disappeared. Maybe it got done eating my herbs and just took off; maybe it got run over. Who can say? It just vanished.
The good news is that my brother made a visual representation of it out of this little delftware hedgehog that we had lying around the kitchen. This will give you some idea of the horror.

Me, My Sister, and a Queer Guy

So on Saturday my sister Margaret calls me and tells me that I HAVE TO come to the Mall of Georgia, which is like from here to Alpha Centauri away, because she's been selected for this big makeover thing. I go, and once again I find Margaret's use of hyperbole super annoying. The real deal is that there's this big L'Oreal promotion going on and they're giving everyone free makeup makeovers and lots of free samples. Problem? Their products are all lard-based. Ick.
The cosmetologist, or whatever these useless people like to be called these days, wipes off all my expensive, high-quality makeup and proceeds to coat my skin with disgusting L'Oreal paste. After the makeover, we went over to this counter where we got to meet this guy:

Yes, that's Kyan Douglas (whose name I am proud to say I did not know before), the "grooming guru" of the so-called fab five from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy". I have to say, though, either he really doesn't know his shit or he totally sold out to L'Oreal, because I could literally feel my face breaking out on the way home. That's Margaret on the left.
He was very nice, but both he and his lackey before him asked us the same question:
"Are you two about to get your makeovers?"
We both giggled politely and said no, we had already HAD our makeovers. What I wish I had said is:
"No, we already had our makeovers. That's why we look like ghosts."
Becasue that crap is so thick and pasty.

The Rotary Merchandiser

Current mood:  giggly

This may turn out to be one of those "you had to be there" moments, I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to give it a shot.
I went to Asheville, NC, this weekend with my niece to see my sister. Sunday we went to a pizza place with her husband and son. Alex (my nephew) is 12, Rebecky (my niece, Alex's cousin) is 5. So we give them, like, 10 dollars to play video games while we sit around waiting for the pizza to arrive. At some point my sister says, "Look how sweet Alex is. He's spending all his money trying to win that crystal heart for Rebekah."
So, I look over, and Alex is playing on this game that's kind of like the old bowling alley / roller rink game they used to have everywhere where you use a claw on a string and try to grab a prize out of the bin. Except, in this game, there is a bunch of stuff spinning slowly on a lazy susan type apparatus and you try and grab the stuff off the disc. So then the kids run out of money, and everyone scrambles to find more because Rebecky is standing there pouting and getting a little crazy and saying, "BUT I NEED IT. IT'S SO SHINY." So I go out to the car and find about 12 more quarters and my sister makes some deal with a waiter to give him a super sized tip in exchange for his quarters. The gaming commences.
Finally, we're all totally out of quarters, and even dollars for that matter. Rebecky is totally bummed. Alex promises to go to Dollar General and buy her a crystal heart after lunch. I'm a little stunned that this weird game totally subsumed our lives for a few moments there.
Me: God, it would have been cheaper to just buy the damn machine and take a sledgehammer to it.
Alex: Yeah, it's pretty addictive. They have one at the skate park and every time we go we spend like $40 on it.
So then we're all laughing about the ridiculousness of what's just happened to us. What a bunch of suckers! And then I notice the name of the game, and that's when I just totally lost it. You might think it would be called Grab-a-Prize or Whacky Wheel or something like that, but no, it's called THE ROTARY MERCHANDISER.
Me: The rotary fucking Merchandiser? What kind of name for a game is that? I can't believe you kids go to an arcade and go, "I wanna play Ms. Pac-Man! I wanna play Turbo Charged! No, wait, I wanna play THE ROTARY MERCHANDISER."
Alex: (dying laughing) I wanna play the Rotary Merchandiser!
Me: No Alex, the whole joke is that whenever you say Rotary Merchandiser, your eyes have to glaze over and you have to say it in the most boring tone possible.
Alex: (eyes a-glazin') I wanna play THE ROTARY MERCHANDISER.
So then Alex comes up with about 17 different sentences all containing the ROTARY MERCHANDISER and we all sit around cracking up, eating pizza.
Then we get out to the car and the song "Fancy Pants" by Ween comes on. If you've never heard this song, you need to go listen to it right now, preferably before you finish reading this.
Alex: This should be the theme song for THE ROTARY MERCHANDISER.

bliss

Current mood:  pensive

 

In a week when it seems that every move I make is a bad one, I made one really good call, which was to get a massage tonight. Oh hell yes, it was so fuckin' sweet. For all the usual reasons, of course, it feels good, it's relaxing, sometimes they actually fix stuff, etc. The best reason, though, is the way it makes your mind wander. I've had so much junk on my mind lately, just garbage, and the constant question of how to feel about all the garbage, you know, but I didn't think about any of it tonight during my massage. Instead, I thought of these things: Did you know massages raise your blood pressure temporarily? I thought about the last time I got a massage. It was from a friend who was "in training" to give massages. It was also on the same day I gave blood, and I started to feel woozy while she was working out my neck. Then I went out on the deck and went straight the fuck down. If someone hadn't made a half-assed attempt to catch me and slightly altered my trajectory, I would have hit my head on the corner of a metal table and probably died. That's just how hard I went down. I thought about how in elemenary school people would come up to you and squeeze your neck and if you flinched they would call you boycrazy. Fuck them, I like variety. I thought at one point I could actually feel her squeezing the lactic acid out of my back muscles, and how that lactic acid represented months of my life. Months of running, climbing, dancing, playing. I thought about how as the acid was squeezed from every part of every muscles, the muscles became still and empty and free of everything a muscle can understand - passion, anxiety, sex, violence, perseverance, fatigue - everything. I thought about the woman who was doing this to me. Her name was Sharon. I wondered what she was thinking about. I wondered how much of it she was phoning in. I wondered if she was thinking things like, "Oh, here's a tender spot," or "I can't wait to get back to my BK Broiler." I wondered if she was thinking about the money she was making, and if that made her feel relieved or greedy. I flipped onto my back and, as my muscles grew quieter still, I lay with my eyes closed, perfectly relaxed, and thought about one day when I would lie again like this, muscles finally still and quiet for good. There would probably be a woman hovering over me in much the same way, doing her work on my little pile of flesh and bones. She would do an efficient yet imperfect job while thinking about money or getting laid or whatever it is we think about while we work. Ocassionally thinking things like, "God, no wonder she croaked," or "Oops, should have done one stitch less." I thought about how it will be so nice to not give a shit, for once, about the quality of work I'm paying for. I thought about snow.