
Italian terracotta Great Dane decoys. Price upon request. I used to think I would make an excellent rich person. Because it would seem that so many very rich people suck at having money. They buy horribly ugly things: ticky tacky ceramic dogs and lucite panthers. They coat their lives with Swavorski crystals seemingly because they can.
Bright "Escape" jumpsuit (quotation marks not mine). $1950.00. Very often the very rich dress like shit. Victims of either L.L. Bean or Paris, their eyes are obscured by rare gold coins and their wallets are housed in $24,000 handbags. I find this ridonkulous, perhaps because I am jealous, who knows? But the very rich often seem sad, too, alcoholic-y, lost, and I've always thought that if I were very rich I would be happy, found, massaged. Especially if I had the good sense not to spend $2k on a tie-dyed cotton fugly jumpsuit...
Swavorski crystal marlin. No worries if orange is not in your color scheme as it is also available in pink and yellow! $5000.00. But what I am finding lately is that I am exceptionally good at being poor. Ish. Not poor, because I'm not; it's a relative poor and I'm poor compared to what I used to be. So I am good at being poorish. A member of the post-economic meltdown Petite Poorgeoisie, I am good at making do with leftovers, creating cute outfits out of what is already in my closet. I am good at garnishing dinner with the basil that I grew, watering down juice, I am good at poorifying my life. A step above the new poorletariat, but I am only so-so at making puns out of poor.
Leaded crystal Baccarat Leaping Panther otherwise known as a big fat WHY? $1500.00. Sure I still want to be rich. I want facials and organic everything, a Mercedes Benz station wagon, Mallorca, I want these. But I also want what I already have which is not a lot and everything, and that, I've already got. So what would you want if you were very very rich? Assuming you are not already. And what are you good at as a member of La Petite Poorgeoisie?


So yes, there's that: my new house smelling like honey. Any ideas what it is? And then there's this: 



I must have been a fairly astute 9 year old because I found Jon to be a pervy pencil neck. I did not like Odie. But what really got me was Garfield and how he hated Mondays. I would spend ten minutes staring at a cartoon of Garfield in his cat box with the sheet pulled over his head, reading and re-reading the caption: I Hate Mondays. Why? Why Garfield do you hate Mondays? And why am I supposed to find that funny? (In related news: I had some book, I don't even remember which one, and I had dog-eared a page because there was a sentence that read: "Her mom doted on her." I would take out this book every night and stare at that sentence because I thought surely it was a typo. Her mom dotted on her? But that didn't make sense either. So in hindsight perhaps I was a little obsessive when it came to things I did not understand, my 9 year old self-esteem so intact that the errors of the world compelled me to, to... I don't know. To stand in my room and stare at them. Which is kind of why I'm a walking symbol of what is wrong with this country, but that is for another post, one which probably won't include videos of city councilmen farting.)
This guy. This photo. This makes me laugh and when I say laugh I mean to say it makes me fall on my knees grateful that this is not me. Thankyouthankyouthankyougodorwhoeveriloveyouandiwillbeagoodgirlforeveramen. So this is for you, people at work. Be grateful that you have very little chance of this happening to you today unless of course your job title just so happens to be Chief Jogger in Black Dolphin Shorts and you stopped at IHOP this morning for a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Frooty. In which case I suggest you clench and keep running, run like the wind! Oh, and p.s., don't come to me looking for a wet wipe, my daughter is potty trained and I don't know you.
You know what really pisses me off? My wisdom teeth. Okay, yes, fine, this was years ago, but I still find myself thinking about them. When I had my wisdom teeth removed I asked the surgeon dentist guy if I could have them afterward. He said yes. I counted backwards from ten, vaguely remember leaning out my car window to wave to people on the Golden Gate Bridge and the next thing I knew I was on my couch. Delicious drugs and done. At the follow-up appointment I asked the surgeon for my teeth and he said he forgot and threw them away. WTF Mr. Surgeon Guy??? Those were MY TEETH. I had big plans for those things. Spotlights on my mantel, a gold chain around my neck. Depending on how big they were I was going to make one into the gear shift knob on my car or maybe fashion one into the doorbell button at my house. Now they exist in some medical waste facility, no spotlights at all, and I still think about them sometimes. Okay, often. I think about my wisdom teeth often.

And this. This makes me happiest of all.
Watching 4th of July fireworks with my Petunia Faced Girl. She lets me have all the marshmallows I want and maybe one day, if I'm a really good mommy, she'll give me her wisdom teeth. Or she'll want to keep them for herself which will make me oh-so-proud.
As we were driving back from the beach on Sunday I said something about all of the dead trees. Dutch Elm or Live Oak, something: the rolling hills of West Marin were dotted with the brittle skeletons of dead trees. It's a sign that the end of world is coming, Bryan said, and then I fell asleep, not so much because I am indifferent to the impending death of our planet, more so because there is something about a hot car on a windy road, salt air and the sound of an open window that seriously knocks me the shit out. Anyway, since then I've noticed that he might be right. The dead trees are almost certainly a harbinger of the Apocalypse because every where I turn I see more and more signs.






It is easy to hate a child molester. No matter the background, the reason, if there can even be a reason for such a thing. It's black and white: child molesters are evil. They deserve The Portrait of Dorian Gray, for their noses to crumble, their skin to mottle, to be alone and sad, stewing in the decay of their own miserable wrong amid tacky marble statues of monkeys and castrati. Child molesters deserve to die. But what if Michael Jackson wasn't a child molester? I go back and forth with what I think. Maybemaybemaybe. The man was talented, of that there is no question. But maybemaybemaybe and now he's dead and I will never know anything but that maybe. How are we supposed to mourn such a divided maybe? Whatever the answer I do mourn this: New Year's Eve 1983. I guess I was eleven but I felt fourteen. My parents had left me alone while they went to a party, the first time ever, and my friend Tawna was spending the night. We partied with Martinelli's cider and MTV, one hand on the remote and the other sweaty on the receiver of the telephone. We were talking to Aaron Boyde. Aaron Boyde! The cutest guy in the sixth grade, his voice on the line telling us that at the stroke of midnight he would ask one of us to go. It was dreamy, sexy, romantic, Martinelli's and MTV, knowing that we were alone in the house on New Year's Eve. Aaron Boyde did the best centipede in class. Or was it called the caterpillar? I may be old now but I remember the way he waved his prone body across the assembly stage floor like ribbon, his red lips. At 11:55 the new Thriller video came on and we watched it enrapt, Tawna and I on the phone with Aaron Boyd, and at 11:59 the zombies began their synchronized dance and Aaron began his sentence with Tawna... I think what we will mourn most is our memories set to the music of Michael Jackson. The gloved one, P.Y.T., the freak with the pressurized oxygen chamber, not the man himself because we didn't actually know him. Was he a monster or a damaged man/boy? Who knows? He's dead and all we have left is a thousand and now two tributes to the King of Pop, the musician, the myth of Michael Jackson, this black and white maybe about a man with supposed vitiligo.
This morning I came out to find my tire had been punctured by a very long nail. It was flat. I got it fixed. Now I am doing yet more laundry. Yesterday sometime during the day our landlady gave Zoey a Princess Jasmine costume, and now she refuses to take it off. She is particularly fond of the wig, a black pompadour thing with a high ponytail that makes her look more like John Belushi's samurai than Princess Jasmine, though how could I break that bit of news to her as she pulled strands of polysynthetic hair out of her bowl of mac 'n cheese last night as if it were spun gold. I want this job. I do. If only so I can feel justified at getting increasingly pissy while stuck behind lumber trucks, if only for somewhere to go.
And yet there are other times when I feel as if I am mother to genius, her mind complex like sweet and sour borscht, an abundance of senses, synapse and red tongue-like edges. Mama! I have a song in my head! Yesterday she pressed her ear against mine again. Can you hear it? Sticky hot ear against sticky hot ear. What song is it, sweetpea? And this is what she said: It is a yellow song, mama, can you hear the yellow song in my head? So I pressed my ear hard against hers and I heard it, the song of my child who tastes spiney pokes and smells the sharp curve of fuschia. The song of yellow and why not.





For Local Blog






