Friday, August 29, 2008

¡Feliz cumpleaños! Con Giveaway!

Today is not my birthday. Tomorrow is, but tomorrow I will be at the beach with my family aging beneath the late August sun. But that is tomorrow and here we are today where I am still 35. Friday, August 29th, in the Year of our Lord 2008, and today I am commemorating my unbirthday. This post celebrates the three hundred sixty four unbirthdays I have every year in addition to the one birthday which is tomorrow.


In Spain it is tradition to buy your friends dinner on your birthday. I am not Spanish but sometimes I wish I were. In my family my mom would make sure she had a present for the child whose birthday it was not. So on January 27th my brother would blow out the candles and unwrap a mountain of gifts: one year a new Redliner bike, Atari, an adidas tracksuit another year, a Gumby doll. And then my mom would hand me my present: Pokey. My brother would be in his room playing asteroids and making the sound effects himself, beeoouuuuup, beeouppp, beeeouuuuup! Rocking the three nylon stripes and I’d be sitting there on the floor bending the legs of the little orange horse that nobody ever wanted.


Tomorrow I turn 36. Upper mid-thirties. This morning I noticed that the face lotion I use is called ACCEPT. What marketing genius thought of that brand positioning? Because oh honey, I just don’t think so. So here is your Pokey, an unbirthday giveaway. Tell me why I am not old and I will send you a real fossil. Seriously.


Hands off the nipple clamp, ma petite, you don't get the s&m.

This is an ammonite, 350 million years old, from the Devonian era, I believe. Ammonites are thought to have lived in the open water of ancient seas; this particular specimen was found in Morocco. It measures roughly 6.5” in diameter, looks stunning on a mantle and likes long walks on the beach. Plus, just by having it you will look smarter.

One year ago today I started this blog, a birthday present to myself. (You would be able to read that first post if I hadn’t deleted my own blog a few months ago, but that’s another story altogether…) I started this blog with a Langston Hughes poem:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

And here I am a year later, my dream still not yet realized but not entirely deferred anymore either. This blog has given me more than I ever thought it would: an outlet, an inspiration, a friend. You have all given me that. And so I offer this present as a way of saying thank you. Thank you for listening, for reading, for everything. Thank you for my blog. Thank you for keeping me from exploding.

Please leave me a comment (not an email! A comment in the comments section of this post) telling me why 36 years does not a fossil make. The comment that makes me laugh the hardest or convinces me that I am still 25 wins the ammonite. I will read all comments after 5pm on Monday night and will announce the winner on Tuesday. Please check back on Tuesday and if you’re the winner email me and give me your address and I’ll send you this unbirthday present. From me to you. Not a Pokey but a fossil. Don’t try to bend its legs. It doesn’t have any.

Again, thank you all. Happy Birthday, Happy UnBirthday. Just Happy.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Born Dependency

You know in those Bourne Identity movies how Matt Damon enters a restaurant and without even looking up from his menu he can tell that there is a man inside a phone booth across the street wearing a red tie and that the man dresses himself on the left side and speaks with a German accent? Well I’m kinda’ like that except of course I only have one passport and no muscle. I have no interest in what color tie anyone is wearing at any given moment but as the adult child of an alcoholic I can tell you the mood of everyone else in the restaurant right on down to the dishwasher and whether or not he is on edge and might need some alone time.
My dad has been friends with Bill W for about 16 years. I am not supposed to write that. I think. Anonymous and all. In Health class in the 10th grade we watched an after-school special starring Martin Sheen as an alcoholic father. In the movie he drank straight from the bottle and then flew into a rage and kicked the patio furniture into the swimming pool. We had a pool but no plastic patio furniture so I was in the clear and spent the class writing notes to my friend Tawna. Are you and Jason going to do it? Priorities. At night the lamps in my house would be dimmed and my dad would disappear into his office with a glass of cognac and some pot. My mom would have to remind my brother and I to turn down the tv. Our house was quiet and we all spent the evening in our respective bedrooms.
Bryan does not know how to read moods. He has muscle but only one passport like myself and he cannot ever tell when I want to be left alone. Is that Halle Berry? He leans over my shoulder when I am at the computer looking at a photo of Kim Kardashian’s butt. No, I say, the lights around me dim. Are you sure? he asks. Bryan’s mother does not know Bill W., nor does she need to meet his acquaintance. And so Bryan leans down farther into my personal space and I can feel my chest tightening.
Zoey is not a morning person. Nor is she a 4pm person. Or a person who takes the tear in a Hello Kitty sticker in stride. She does not like hair in her face or cheese in her eggs. She does not take kindly to whistling. Instinctively I know these things, not just because I am her mother but because I am codependent, hypervigilant to any change in the air around me. She hates me, Bryan says sometimes and of course he is wrong. It’s just that he is healthy and cannot tell that when she sits in that corner of the couch with her sippy cup tilted at an angle just so that it all means to give her some space. And me? I know because I am an al-anon action hero, a codependent CIA operative who will forever study the menu feeling the mood.
p.s. True to my codependent label I must make it clear that my dad is now sober, has made his amends. He is a wonderful father and nothing like Martin Sheen. And I am nothing like Matt Damon. Although Bryan is very much like Franka Potente. Scheiße Manni!

Community

The blogosphere is abuzz today with warm fuzzies and community...
For those of you that are not familiar with the Nienie Dialogues, Stephanie is a fellow blogger who, last month, was in a plane crash with her husband, Christian. Read about the accident and their recovery here and here.
I have posted a donation button to the right. Feel free to push it!
Or bid on one of the blogagillions of auctions taking place today all over the www, the proceeds of which will go toward the recovery and their children.
Lots of great stuff for an even better cause. Thank you.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Not So Happy Hump Day

Sad sad news from SF this morning. Del Martin, a pioneering lesbian rights activist who with her lifelong partner became a symbol for the movement to legalize gay marriage, died Wednesday morning. She was 87.
I don't know why this hits me so hard. I didn't know her. I am not gay. But something about the story of these two women... Bryan and I got married beneath the domed ceiling of San Francisco's City Hall. I know what it is to love someone with such ferocity, but I don't know what it is for the world to not accept it.
The best way to honor her life is to continue to support equality for all.
My thoughts go out to Phyllis Lyon and their friends and family.
Love,
Susannah

Happy Hump Day! The Sexy People Edition.

Mostly I find humanity disgusting, all those mustaches and guts, sweat, sebum, bad tee shirts and toenails grown too long. But every now and then I see something that does not even begin to apologize for itself and it is then that I find humanity endearing, the ugliness of the human race forging on with a grimace against a sponge-painted backdrop and crystalline skies.
Meet Pretty People, a website dedicated to the perfect portrait. Last night I spent much too long picking out my favorites…

Royal Aspirations.

Cousins.

A suggestive wedding portrait. With lace.

Oh. Oh dear.

Oh dear, male.

And lest you think I am being a snob, well, okay, fine. I am being a snob but I am a snob that harbors my own perfect portrait gone hideously awry, so there. Or here. Yes, here, behold:

Channeling Kenny Loggins and Loretta Lynn...


There is no explanation, just this: this gem was taken years ago before Bryan and I got married. Bryan’s mom had taken the whole family plus me to one of those portrait studios in the bad mall, you know, the mall with the Hot Topic store and the teenagers battling cystic acne? The photographer was 18 and wore an elf hat and for what seemed like eternity she posed us in clusters calling out, okay now big sister get behind big brother, put your hands on his shoulders! And smile! Remember you love big brother! And oh how I wanted to freak out the little elf and turn my big brother Bry around by his shoulders and make out with him, tongue and all. Perhaps this would not have surprised her much. Perhaps she had seen much worse in her gig as photog to the stars of the bad mall. Perhaps she would have kept on shooting, a chain store Diane Arbus who recognizes that all of society is a franchised fringe.

Something tells me that Diane Arbus wouldn't have swallowed handfuls of barbituates and slashed her wrists if she had access to Sexy People. Because I'm telling you, seeing all of these photos with feathered hair and parasols? Something about it, well, it just redeems humanity in all its pathetic glory.

Happy Hump Day!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Nothing That (S)He Knew Too Well

I tried very hard not to post today. Because I have nothing to say. Really. I drove to work thinking hm, self, maybe something interesting will happen on the way in that I can write about, but nope. Nothing. Then I sat at my desk and waiting some more for something to happen. And guess what? Soon it was noon and nothing had happened. Then I got hungry and went out to lunch when usually I just sit at my desk and eat some chips from the vending machine, but no, today I went out, hoping that something might happen that I could post for you. I bought dos tostada verduras with corn y zucchini and still--nothing happened. I even addressed the cashier by name thinking that might spark something. Gracias Jerry, I said eyeing his nametag, only I pronounced it Hairy on account of it being a Mexican restaurant and all, but nada. He didn't even correct me. Incidentally, you owe me $13.50 for the tostadas. Less the .85 cents I usually spend on the chips so I suppose that makes it $12.65 but if you factor in gas money it's probably more like $43 so I'm giving you a deal when I say it was $13.50. I'm good like that.
It is now 2:57pm and still nothing has happened. Most people would see this as a sign not to post but me? I'm afraid of not posting. I know myself. In my lifetime I have joined at least a dozen gyms and worked out maybe 4 times. Because the minute I tell myself self, just do it tomorrow, it's okay, then tomorrow becomes the next day and at the end of the year I have shelled out $1500 for a gym I've never gone to. I know myself and tomorrow is the gateway drug to never.
So here you go. A post about nothing without the benefit of a Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Am I going to lose readers with posts such as this? Maybe. But I'm telling you, I know myself (which is why I call myself self when I talk to myself) and it's either this or a year from now while I'm cleaning out my closet I find a never-before-worn pair of Reeboks and suddenly remember that once upon a time I had a blog called Petunia Face and you, that once upon a time I gave us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada, Amen Senor Hemingway.
Now on the off-chance this is not enough for you, like maybe you want your money back even though this blog is free, then I leave you with this:


Because as we all know (and because bumpers stickers are never ever wrong) even though nothing happened and I have nada to post, shit is a sure thing, sure as shit, and shit? Well shit always happens.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Boom Chicka Bow Wow (That's Porn Music for Those Who Don't Recognize the Sultry Strains)

Yesterday my finger slipped into my cat. Yes, you read that correctly. MY FINGER SLIPPED INTO MY CAT. Unfortunately, this is not a pornographic post and I am not trying to coyly say my finger slipped into my pussy, because really? Can anyone ever be coy in saying that? No, quite literally, yesterday afternoon we were out on our deck eating brie and apples (which I don’t think they do even in le porno français filme) and I leaned over to pick up Nacho and my finger slipped into a gaping wound on his belly. MY FINGER. GAPING WOUND. INSIDE. MOIST. GAAAH!!!
I am much more comfortable making off color jokes about porn and pussy, even slits, the worst slang in the history of pooty tang, because the memory of picking up Nacho and feeling that, that… that slit in his belly… I am pretty sure something inside of me was irrevocably changed in that split second when I felt the innards of my cat.
So you will please pardon my loopiness today. We took Nacho to the Emergency Pet Hospital where he underwent surgery and I underwent writing a check for $800. The vet put Nacho under, shaved his belly and stitched up two large lacerations then sent us home with a drugged up cat wearing an Elizabethan collar. For the rest of the night I had to listen as my proud Abyssinian alpha-male fell over from the sheer tilt of the planet, as he skittered his kibble across the laundry room trying to force his coned head into the small bowl, as he fell off the side of our bed with a thud and then decided to just lay on my robe there on the floor, his head at an angle sheathed in plastic, his eyes big and dark, simultaneously panicked and dopey. I did not sleep at all.
And then this morning I had to protect him from Zoey who very much wanted to paste a SpongeBob band-aid or two or twelve onto his freshly stapled belly.



My poor Mr. Man, King of the Meeps, Bat Ears and Snakes. What have they done to your dignity? If I ever find out which neighborhood cat did this to you, rest assured, I will kick its ass and then let Zoey at him, a stack of Dora stickers in one hand, a glittery glue stick in the other. We've got your back, Nachinator, now you go rock that cone like it 'aint nobody's business. My shaved pussy will grow back and the slit will heal, and in the meantime, my apologies to all the randy men who found this post by typing words into a search engine with one hand. Just remember:

Friday, August 22, 2008

Voted Most Likely to Waste More Time

It's Friday and today I am voting myself Most Likely to Waste Time. Why, you ask? Okay, so maybe you didn't ask but here I am in Homeroom writing notes to you anyway. Doesn't Rachel look like a total skank today? Check this box for yes, this box for no. And then go check out this website to waste some time with me. Yearbook Yourself and find out what you would've looked like in high school from 1950 to 2000. It's peachy keen, groovy, bitchin.' Ah, here we go...

1964In 1964 my given name is still Susannah, of course, but people call me Dee on account of my Devilish side: you know, sometimes I say H, E, double hockey sticks and at the Homecoming Dance I let Ricky touch my boob. I think. I couldn't really feel anything what with the thick padded missile bra I wear in 1964. But he touched my boob and told his friends and then I was Dee.

1966

In 1966 I smoke Pall Malls and think I am going to meet and marry Dobie Gillis. I carry around a tattered copy of Kerouac's "On the Road" even though I have never read it. I don't know this yet but in one year I will be a freshman at the University of Kansas where I will have an affair with my married Philosophy instructor. He will open up my mind to Nietzsche and pot and leave me one rainy Saturday morning in a motel room in Wisconsin while I am still asleep.

1976 In 1976 I make people call me Stan. I dress in men's clothes and think Ziggy Stardust is God.

1982

Oh dear. In 1982 I have severe acne on my forehead but convince myself this hairstyle not only covers it up but looks rad. I dot all my i's with hearts and am constantly nursing a terrible yeast infection caused by Chemin de Fer jeans worn much too tight. They zip at the ankle.

1984
In 1984 I identify with Miss Piggy. I spend my lunch hours making school spirit signs in the hallway. Friday Pajama Day! Remember to Vote 4 Your King and Queen! When nobody is looking I huff away at the nib of all the pens and go to class lightheaded and sad, purple ink smudged at the tip of my nostrils.

1990 In 1990 I actually did graduate from high school. I looked nothing like this. However, I did wear vests with cut-off jeans and really wanted to be Emma from Kate and Allie.

Okay, that's it for now. The bells about to ring! Ta Ta For Now!
p.s. Do these bangs make my ass look fat?

Thursday, August 21, 2008

An Open Letter to My Husband


Dear Bryan,
I recognize that sometimes we have very different tastes. For example, this morning when I showed you my new shoes? And you glanced down at my super sweet flats with the olive colored bakelite button adorning the toe just so and you asked me with concern if I knew I had dropped cucumber slices on my new shoes? I realize now that was your way of saying you did not fully appreciate my new shoes. And I get it, truly I do. Ha ha, that was a good one, Bry. Cucumber on my shoes.
But here's the thing. My birthday is in T-minus 9 days. August 30th, not the 31st as you proudly exclaim when I quiz you on such things. Valentine's Day is February 14th, every single year, okay? Just like my birthday is on August 30th. Consistently. For like the last 36 years. Another tip? The thought does not count. Because really? The thought? The thought is just a fart when I want me some shit.
You didn't know you had married such an eloquent young lady, did you? And I am young. 36 is still young. Because no matter what I will always be 37 days younger than you.
Because you are old and doddering and I know oh-so tired, this year I am doing you a favor. This year I am making it so you don't have to take the time and effort to print out yet another gift certificate from the Anthro website. I mean, I know how you hate to use printer toner. No, this year, I'm telling you EXACTLY what I want. And what I want is this (no ink cartridge required):

I want a trip to Giraffe Manor. Just a long weekend, really. It's a good thing that my birthday this year falls on Labor Day weekend because with a telephone number that starts with + 254 I'm thinking it might take a while to get us there. But that's what I want. To feed a giraffe a slice of fresh mango through an open living room window on my birthday. Not a massage or a bauble or even a frock. A giraffe.

Is that so much to ask? Yeah, I didn't think so, either.

And the good news for you is that the website proclaims that the property is not only home to giraffes but the indigenous Bush Buck, and Lord knows how you love yourself some Bush Buck.

So there you go, dear husband. You can thank me later. And on the morning of August 30th I swear I will act surprised when I open my eyes to the flutter of long feathery giraffe eyelashes on my cheek.

Love you, too.

Your (much younger) wife.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Y, H, W, H

There once was a God so sacred it was forbidden to say his name out loud. Yoo-Hoo! Woo-Hoo! Instead the people referred to him as "the name," or "ha shem," because it is a sin to take God's name in vain. Yes, He Was Here. Written in Hebrew, the letters signify the name Yahweh, and they are believed to symbolize life, to possess magical and healing powers. Yes, He Will Heal. Because the people weren't allowed to say his name, the correct pronunciation of God has been forgotten, and we are left with just the letters. Y, H, W, H.
The best way to become a god is to disappear. To be silent, unspeakable. In not saying something I fear I have created a false god and I’m here to dispel the power, to say the words and stop believing. Or start. I don’t even really know what the eff I’m doing with this but I feel the need to fill in the blanks. You Hid, Waiting Here.

People have asked me how or why I am so open on this blog. Anxiety attacks, getting laid off, the fact that I have a flat ass, my relationship with my mother. You’d think I’d need a speculum to be any more open. But there is one thing I haven’t written about, one giant pachyderm standing in the middle of this blog and I cannot ignore it anymore. I’m stalling. But the floorboards are creaking from the weight and everyone knows that elephants return to bury their dead.
I will start with the facts: My step-father has multiple sclerosis. His name is Allen. I have known Allen since I can remember. He was my father’s best friend. Growing up, I would go out in the Pt. Reyes estuary with them, netting for clams. Or lobster. Something, I don’t know. All I know is they would bring chocolate bars and when we pulled up the net we would guess how many whatevers were in the net and I always won. Now I know that they let me win. I would sit at the bow of the boat and feel such peace knowing that those two men with big 70’s beards were good. Life was good.
At some point my dad and Allen had a falling out. Then my parents got divorced and it was ugly. War of the Roses ugly. Allen sided with my mom and things get a little mushy here. Allen was diagnosed with MS but he was still strong. Still bearded, a contractor who made jewelry. An artist who could figure out how to fix anything but his rapidly scarring myelin sheath. My mom and Allen got married. They bought a house and renovated the downstairs just in time for Allen not to be able to walk. Yield! Halt! Wait! Here!


This is getting much too wordy. The thing is I could write this story a thousand and one times in six different languages and I still wouldn’t get close to the truth of what is happening.

Just the facts: Allen is now a quadriplegic. He lives at home with Fijian caregivers while my mother lives in the city in a tiny apartment close to her work so that she can pay for it all. Before he was in a wheelchair Allen used to tell us he would kill himself when he lost the ability to walk. Then he did and he said he would die when he lost use of his hands. Then he did and now his voice is a whisper, his lungs shallow with oxygen from lack of movement. When he speaks I can hardly hear him and yet he is not dead.



The tragedy of this is what is unspeakable. I cannot wrap my head around the why and so, in its own way, it has become my god. You Had Waning Hope. I don’t know how to deal with it and so I go numb. I tingle. Literally. I tell people I have panic attacks and anxiety but that is really just a quick explanation for what is really happening. What is really happening is this: I get MS myself. I drag my foot. I cannot walk. Doctors and neurologists have examined me and there is nothing there but fear. I am a hypochondriac with a specialty, a head case, my own myelin sheath shiny and new, the wires in my brain a twisted tangle of what-the-fuck. If only I could use this power for good I would be able to bend spoons, to lift cars. I would be able to cure the ill. But I can’t so I take a tiny peach pill that makes me remember: I am healthy. He is not. So many many people are not.

Lately Allen has been in and out of the hospital. A bowel obstruction. Bladder infections. Pneumonia. Sepsis of his blood. Small maladies that pull at his dignity, this man with a beard who gave me chocolate for guessing how many whatevers were in the net even when my guess wasn’t right.


MS has torn my family apart, rendered us all paralyzed in a way waiting for what comes next. Allen will die someday not because he lost use of his legs or because he cannot move his hands. He will not die of his own accord. He will die because a cut on his foot won’t heal or because his bowel muscles won’t constrict to poop. He will die because of some insipid fuck-ass neurological disease, a disease that I don’t have but somehow sometimes convince myself I do because I don’t know how else to help.

And when Allen does die I can only hope that I remember him for who he is and not for his disease, this big terrible tragic god that invaded his nerves and our lives. Allen is a kind man who loves fixing clocks. A man who loves peanut butter and animals, plays on words, an artist who made the most beautiful jewelry years ago when his fingers moved like butterflies.


I was so afraid to write about this. It’s too real. Writing about it makes it all too real. But if I don’t write about it it becomes bigger and my toes, they tingle.

Today is Wednesday. There is nothing special about today. Allen is not in the hospital right now. And so I begin to write this knowing full well I will never get to the truth. It is what it is. Just the facts. Allen has MS and I do not. We are all dying and thus we spin gods from yarn and twigs. Why? What is the meaning anyway? There once was a god so sacred it was forbidden to say his name out loud. Yoo Hoo! Woo Hoo! Because the people weren’t allowed to say his name the correct pronunciation has been forgotten and we are left with just the letters. Y, H, W, H. But some of us are tired of waiting, and so we have to make up the name ourselves, in a language bereft of signs and symbols. In a language only we can teach ourselves. Y, H, W, H. You Have Wounded Him.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A Fairy Tale Road Trip. Oh, Indulge Me, Will Ya'?

Once upon a time there was a little girl with eyes wide blooms of petunia.
One day this little girl got into a car, an SUV if you must know, and drove drove drove down the coast of California, the theme song of D-D-D-D-D-Dora lilting out the open window like so many Willie Nelson tunes, weaving through San Luis Obispo and on into Del Mar, a tiny hamlet of sand and money by the sea.
The little girl soon realized that being holed up in hotels gave her even more power over her parents, so afraid were they of ruining other travelers' vacations with the gleeful joy of a toddler.
Wheeeeee! she screamed down the hallway at dawn, and was promptly given a cookie for her efforts. (At this rate, in fourteen years you just might see me handing Zoey the keys to a brand new Hummer on a very special Petunia Faced episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen. Kingston Rossdale is rumored to perform.)


On Thursday the little girl and her family arrived in Santa Monica for a wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, she was given her flower girl basket to practice and she quickly took the opportunity to wander through the restaurant tables collecting cash. Dollars flowed like so much wine and somewhere in the Greek Isles the honeymooners are now having a drink courtesy of the little girl and her panhandling Petunia Faced eyes.


Oh, sure, it was not all bills tucked into the tops of bikinis. There were moments of self-doubt. Moments when Mommy had to give the girl a pep talk. You can do this, she said, knowing all along that the best flower girls freeze. The best flower girls don't part with the petals. Instead, the best flower girls shuffle down the aisle, only realizing on the return trip that all eyes are on them. Then and only then the best flower girls stop mid-aisle and face the photographer smiling, tossing petals high overhead, spinning around and around on tippy toed Target glittery slippers like a cheap jewelry box ballerina. In this manner, the little girl was the best flower girl ever.



After the ceremony, emboldened by love, the little girl went out to find her own Prince Charming.


She looked all around but did not find her one true love. When suddenly!


The little girl looked up! And there it was! Her Prince Charming, his Royal Highness the Ferris Wheel, handsomest truss system in all of Carnie-landia.

Alas, the little girl was too small. You must be this tall to ride the ferris wheel, said a sign at the edge of the ride. And the little girl fell short. This fairy tale may well have ended here with a poisoned apple and a tantrum had the seldom-known eighth dwarf not appeared, a carnie named Bored. He allowed the little girl to ride the ferris wheel sandwiched between her parents, a bastion of safety was he.

And ride she did. Over and over and over. The little girl was enrapt.

And oh so happy.




Later, much later, the little girl discovered that there is no such thing as ONE true love when she met the older girls, a gaggle of cousins who fed her steak (the same steak she would not eat with her mother) and blew her bubbles. She was in love many times over, girl crushes galore. Soon the little girl was acting like a pre-teen and would have nothing to do with her parents. She scoffed and tch'ed and no'ed her mother, never once letting her cut in to dance with her.


The next day, clearly hungover from too many bubbles, her feet aching from tripping the light fantastic, the little girl allowed her parents to take her to the Santa Monica Pier where she got to ride yet another ferris wheel. This one had gondola seats and thus did not give the same sense of vertigo in rolling over the top. The little girl was not impressed.


Hmph.



And so it was that the girl who had begun the trip as little had grown just ever so much. A tch here, a ferris wheel there, as a mermaid swimming in pools, a flower girl whose feet never once touched the sand. The girl with the eyes wide blooms of petunia had blossomed on a trip by tossing rose petals high overhead on a ribbon of road studded by Bells of Taco and Big Dels Supreme.
And then we all lived Happily Ever After.
The End.

Monday, August 18, 2008

My Blogger Went on Vacation and All I Got Was This Lousy Post

I come home bearing no gifts. No San Diego fridge magnets, no miniature California license plate with your name on it to pimp out your banana seat bike. Not even an animated drawing of my head, big eyes and bigger cheeks, a cotton candy memory straight from the sweaty Santa Monica pier. Just one tired blog mama who had the best vacation ever.


Stories and photos to come tomorrow which I realize is the modern equivalent of me inviting you over to see slides of my family vacation, you all bored, squirmy and polite on my couch nursing a drink, me standing at the back of the room, clicker in hand. Click. And here we are at the beach. Click. And here we are at the other beach. See how the sand here is finer? Click. Oh look. Here we are at the far end of that beach. Click. Don’t worry. I’ll make the drinks strong and the slideshow short.
But really all I want to do today is my laundry. And thank all the lovely talented ladies who guest blogged for me. YOU ARE ALL EVER SO AWESOME. Really. I owe you. You name it. Like, if you ever need money or maybe my womb to house your fetus, just ask. I won't eat soft cheeses or drink any wine, really. I owe you all big time.
Although I do want to correct one statement made in the comments section of Paige’s post. The crotchless Spanx suck. Literally. You think you’re in the clear as you crouch over the toilet to pee but no, not necessarily. That ace bandage masking as a crotchless panty girdle doesn’t, um, open wide enough, and if you’re not careful you will pee onto the sides and the fabric wicks it up, quick! Like that. And then you are forced to hang out the rest of the night with the octogenarians of the family so if anyone smells urine they will assume it is wafting from the nether region of the old ladies, not you, no, never you in that skintight dress printed with peacocks. I mean personally I’d rather smell like piss than have a gut, but that’s just me. I’m just letting you all know so you can make your own decision.
Okie dokie artichokie, ready spaghetti, let’s go. See ya later alligators, same bat time, same bat place with pics and stories galore. Missed you all fiercely and now I am off like a prom dress!